What a Difference Two Weeks Makes

Greetings, Dear Ones,

What a difference two weeks can make, especially in New England in the spring.  I took a walk again today, and now there are daffodils along the road, and the bushes and trees are showing signs of leaves ready to come out soon.  The little lake at the end of my road has shed the last of its ice, and the muddy road is passable, finally!

But the best part of the change was my reason for going out walking. Two weeks ago I went out after admitting defeat.  I wasn't going to get my dissertation chapter done as quickly as I'd hoped, so I walked away from it to clear my head and resign myself to the delay.  This time it was very different.  I've been revising my writing, and checking my footnotes, and lo and behold, the chapter got sent out at 1:41 this afternoon.  My walk up the road to the lake was a treat, not a defeat.

I found myself thinking about Tolkein again, as I'd done last time.  I was asking myself, was the chapter late?  I'd promised to send it in sometime in March, but that didn't happen.  Then I thought surely by Easter, but no, not even Easter.  And then I'd wanted to send it in by the end of April, and I couldn't even manage that.  But was the chapter actually late?


"You're late," said Frodo. "A wizard is never late," Gandalf replied.  "He always arrives exactly when he means to."  (That's a free recollection of the text.)  And actually, that's what this chapter did.  It arrived exactly when it was meant to.  These deadlines are all made up in my head, of course, fantasies of how quickly I can get the work done, balanced against everything else I have to do.

How do I know when a chapter will be done?  I don't. It will be done at exactly the proper time, however, if I am attentive to its needs.  Does it cover what needs to be covered?  Does it make sense internally?  Can someone else read it and understand what I'm talking about?  Is it accurate?  Do I make a convincing case?  Sure there are deadlines.  But there's another dimension to this project, this dissertation on three amazing saints.  Each time I sit down at the computer I am asked to be faithful to my subject, in this case Saint Cuthbert.  Have I brought across, not the man himself, but the literary and theological portrait that the writer in c.700 wished his readers to see?  Have I, in some sense, brought that image to life?  That's the work I'm engaged in just now. That's what I need to keep in mind.  If I can do that, each and every day I devote to the dissertation, then each chapter will be done just when it means to be.

I can live with that. (Daffodils help.)