I am the fortunate recipient of my Grandma Leota's Good Cheer Birthday Book, which is basically a calendar where you write the names of your friends and relatives on lines under the appropriate date. Each day has a quote by a famous writer next to it. On the day of my birth, March 18, next to where Grandma wrote my name, the quote comes from Hawthorne. It reads, "People never feel so much like angels as when they are doing what little good they may." I love this quote, and I love this book. The little book was published in 1921, and Grandma received it as a birthday gift on 12/07/1922, her 16th birthday. I love that, too.This book is 100 years old this year. As I hold it, thumbing gently through the pages and reading quotes from writers I know and many I don't, I ponder the quality. This little book is printed on nice, thick paper and is bound in leather. The title is embossed with gold ink, and a beautiful vine-like border is pressed into the leather surrounding the title. I think it's gorgeous. The soft leather, the yellowed pages, the love with which my grandmother wrote in the names of her friends and family through the years - these are evocative of a coziness and a quality that seems rare these days. It is a feeling like that described by the Danish word Hygge - pronounced something like "Hoo-Gah" - a feeling of belonging, of happiness, of deep rootedness.
     The quality of this book is more than just the feeling evoked by tactile and visual beauty, it is also evident in how it has held up over the years. It has outlived not only its recipient, but its publisher, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, which was founded in 1876, sold to Dun and Bradstreet in 1968, and was eventually acquired by Harper & Row in 1980. Of late, I have wondered why books no longer come with the lovely bindings they once did. I cannot help but pick up old books that feel as if they were written, printed, and bound by folks who truly loved their craft. I hold them, caress them, inhale their fragrance, and I feel happy.
    I begin to think about quality, what it means, where we've lost it, and where we need it most. I come to the conclusion that we have lost quality in a lot of areas of our lives, and perhaps not least in our spiritual lives. In his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig wrote about his obsession with the pursuit of quality and its defininition. He wrote, "Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation...What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word ‘quality’ cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct." Philosopher Thomas Dylan Daniel boils Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality in this way: "People do better work, feel better about their lives, and generally succeed more often when they care about the problems they address."
     Quality is a result of caring. True Quality in life results from caring about what we do in life. Quality is, to me, a kind of mindfulness in which we give all of our attention to whatever we are doing and whomever we are with. I live a life of Quality when I truly care. I see Quality somewhat like I see faith. If I live faithfully, I focus my attention on living life without worrying that things will fall apart. This applies to every endeavor, from cutting carrots for the family's stew to my relationship with the Divine. If I rush through life, chopping vegetables unfocused, chatting mindlessly, simply going through the motions of expected behavior, or worrying needlessly, my life is not one of Quality. It is not a life of faith. If I do my job by rote simply to get the paycheck without caring for the purpose of the necessary tasks or the people affected by them, my life is not one of Quality. To me, the goal of spirituality is the pursuit of a life of Quality. From this, it follows that the goal of religion is to help the people toward living a life of Quality, a life of faith. John Wesley would call it "Perfection." Unfortunately, it seems to me that many religious systems are constructed around dogma as "truth," rather than the goal of spiritual growth, or Quality, and faith becomes simply another word for "belief."
     Pirsig wrote, “The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.” (italics mine). Religious dogma is not reality, but a construct built around the goal of spiritual attainment. Whether we call it "enlightenment," "satori," "perfection," "heaven," or nirvana," the path to arriving at the destination is a life of goodness, faith, or Quality.
     Achieving such a life includes caring about the works one does in the world. It's not about doing what needs to be done because we are told we need to do it, but doing it because we truly care about what we are doing and who we are doing it for. The makers of my little 100 year old Birthday Book clearly cared about the product they were making, and they gave it the attention it needed to provide a product of quality for the consumer. They cared about the people who would purchase the book as well as the book itself. They had faith in the process that because they put their caring, their Quality, into their work, the product would provide value, and that promise was fulfilled. Likewise, if we have faith in our spiritual process, putting our Quality into our work and our walk, we will achieve our goals. Quality shows. It's not something hidden away, only evident to God. However, it is not visible apart from our behaviors. If we are truly living a live of Quality - a life of faith - not only will others notice, but we will be solid in our actions and more confident in our spiritual walk. These will not be actions taken because we are directed to do so by dogma, but to which we are driven because of our faith. As James wrote, "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith."

     It is my goal to live an honest life of Quality. For me, that means doing what I am called to do, whether or not what I do meets the criteria of another's definition of truth, spirituality, or religion. This pursuit has taken me along many paths, through many doors, and sometimes back again. Sometimes along the way I falter, allowing what I think others expect of me to affect my perception of my own Walk. When that happens, I sometimes find I've put on a bit of 'otherness' that is not me and become apologetic for the bit of me that I think others don't like or which doesn't seem to meet their criteria of goodness. Maybe we all do this.
     I want Brigid in the Desert to be a safe place for all of us to discover what Quality, faith, and goodness mean to us, individually. I want us all to support one another in our individual works, whether we band together to do something or simply share with each other and provide ideas or guidance. This newsletter is one way to share, as are the social media outlets. When we meet in person, we can do our best sharing and encouraging, and I truly look forward to when we can get together again.

Until next time, go forth and "be excellent to each other!" Have a wonderful month!

 

Bright Blessings,

Rev. Suzy Cherry, Parish Priest/ess