A public life. A life’s work.
Two things that sound official, intentional, inevitable.
Both have come my way, and neither have that sound to them, not to my ear.
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It is a joy to be surprised by one’s little life, to be taken aback.
I am joyful that way.
It is a relief to be the worker and not the architect of that life.
I am relieved in work.
It is a blessing to be afforded an echo for the sound one makes while the heart’s at work.
I am blessed in being heard.
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A blessing is more honour than approval or agreement.
That echo is the regard people have for your work, their willingness to proceed as if you’ve done something worthy of their attention. It’s the shape your work takes once you’re done working.
*
The boon of the solstice in the north of the hemisphere is that it positions you for circumspection.
I have lived long enough, and been granted a working lucidity and some facility with the one language I know, that some kind of arc or shape has come to my work. I have been intemperate in saying yes to several decades worth of interviews, podcasts, counsel sessions and book-length encounters, wherein that arc and that shape came into view. I’ve spoken my way towards wonder.
And now some have begun to gather around that shape, around those sounds I’ve made. They are proposing to make an archive of it all, a bricks-and-mortar record of all they can track down.
It stills me.
This is to announce the inauguration in early 2025 of The Scriptorium: Echos of an Orphan Wisdom.
Stephen Jenkinson
Founder of Orphan Wisdom
