Guard and Give, A Beginning

Peregrinatio est tacere

Welcome.

We begin with a paradox for artists: peregrinatio est tacere.

It’s the same paradox that I acknowledge at the end of my first book of poetry. The phrase comes from the Desert Fathers. One translation reads, “to be on pilgrimage is to be silent.” A sharper version, attributed to Abba Tithoes: “pilgrimage means a man should control his tongue.” A hard word for writers and artists, whose very path is to give themselves away. And yet one we still somehow understand in its relation to contemplation.

Paradoxes are meant to be lived more than to be understood, if they are to come true. You must both guard your fire and give it away. Be quiet and speak. Got it? Now go figure out how.

Here, I’ll try to do just that: to rightly guard and give a few sparks from my practice as a poet, iconographer, director of an arts residency, folk musician, and restoration artisan. Anything along the creative path in the way of art and beauty is fair game. And, from time to time, “some good things that found me recently.” I trust the form will find itself in the end.

And perhaps with enough grace we might even learn together to give what we don’t yet possess, like the bell maker in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. The pride and risk and faith and intuition and obedience of it all. And the ring, if it rings. Let the bell break the silence more often than the tongue.

Thanks for being here.