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Judith Maclean Miller

In the Shadow of the White Cabbage Moth: An Experience of Lectio Divina

Ever since I read The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris, I have been reflecting on Lectio Divina, that slow way of reading practised in monasteries, where the scriptures are read through, often aloud, not for information or interpretation or even instruction, but simply to be in the presence of, to experience. I have been trained to read critically, to assess, but I have always, nevertheless, insisted on the right to consider, to read a work in its own terms. With all the multiple ways of reading which surround me, perhaps I have been looking for something simpler. For whatever reason, I determined to learn a little more about this ancient way with books, and to try it.

Sacred Reading, a book by Michael Casey, almost fell off the shelf into my hand in a bookstore - and nudged me a little further along this path. By the time I arrived at it, I knew - mostly from browsing on the Internet-that Lectio Divina is usually applied to scriptures, is usually seen as a way to prayer, and is described as having four steps or stages: lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio. Lectio is receiving the word of God, meditatio, allowing the Word to be present in the awareness giving rise to oratio, prayer, and contemplatio is resting in the presence of God.

For a while, I pondered the words. Lectio, from the Latin means a reading, but I know from English studies, that "to read" is based in an old Anglo-Saxon word, meaning "to be advised," so it suggested a kind of showing up to be in the presence of a writer or a text which would extend or enrich life in some way. Meditatio comes from the Latin word for frequent: which led to some reflection: to frequent a place is to go there often, to spend time there, an idea I had not usually linked to meditation, but which I found pleasing. Oratio is often translated as prayer, but an earlier meaning of the Latin verb is simply "to speak," albeit in a ceremonial way. Sometimes the translation is given as "discourse." And "Oration" comes from the same root. That I thought I could manage. I was not at all sure about being moved to prayer, but discourse or oration seemed possible, even likely. Contemplatio was a little trickier. I fully expected that the meditation and the contemplation would merge into the same step, although I was intrigued to find that the root is templum, an open place, a place for observation. I expected that the space I would frequent would be a place of observing the text, taking pleasure in its concepts and its ways of working. I also wanted to use a text which was not scripture and not even, for that matter, a work which might be considered religious, partly because I firmly believe that creative work is always based in the spiritual and partly because I resist dividing the world into the sacred and the secular.

In the first sentences of Michael Casey's book, I discovered that The Rule of St. Benedict prescribed several hours of quiet reading every day, but did not insist that the time be spent only with scripture. As Casey points out, books were rare and precious, so any book could be approached "with the expectation that it would be worthwhile" (3). Casey also makes the point (5) that it is important to choose the text carefully and to make a commitment to seeing it through. Several novels suggested themselves, but in the end I chose Wood, Ink & Paper, by Gerard Brender à Brandis.

Describing the process of reading within this tradition, Casey observes that "reading became a dialogue with the text" (14). That suited me fine.

I began. Many hours and many handwritten pages later, I have emerged. My task now is to decide how much of that experience can be shared. I have decided to transcribe most of what I wrote on those pages, and to present Gerard's text in italics, indented.

Day #1

My July office is an old, rickety chaise longue in the shade of a tall white pine and a sunburst locust, facing this garden which I tend. This is the season of tall flowers: lilies, speedwell, milkweed and the first of the coneflowers. The lift and fall of butterflies among the blossoms never ceases to enchant me. This pen moves fluidly on the page, a pleasure of its own. It is easy for me, in this quiet garden space, to feel an affinity with those Benedictines who approached a text with care, expecting to be enriched by it, seeing it as an instrument of grace. I do not wish to read hurriedly, or for information. As I understand Lectio Divina, it is a slow reading, respectful. The first step is the reading - putting oneself into the presence of the text - opening oneself to it intellectually, imaginatively, perhaps emotionally. Kind of scary, actually. Will the sequence of four steps hold - or shift?

"It is clear that what Benedict has in mind is a very existential, life-related reading and not just mindless paging through any volume that comes to hand" (Casey, 5). That seems okay. "Wanting to grasp everything immediately is the best way to comprehend nothing. We need time to adjust our rate of being to a more plodding pace and move slowly into a different ambience" (Casey, 8). That is okay too, but I am not sure about "plodding." "As pilgrims, seeking may be more truthful for us than finding" (Casey, 8). That is reassuring.

The flutter of white cabbage moths, the splashing of two robins in the bird bath, a sprinkling of winged seeds onto my page: these are not distractions from the reading, but companions to it.

The "judgmental voices" are loud in my head, critical. I find myself answering them. Stop it, I tell myself. Just write. Trust the process. Begin. Not knowing where it will go. The butterflies will go with me - not the ones in my stomach - the ones in the milkweed. The pen creates its own truth. The shadow of the cabbage moth drifts across my page, and I am reminded of these fragile wings that go on long journeys, facing real dangers, not imagined ones. These are not real voices yelling at me - only imagined ones - says something about the power of the imagination, that it can stop me cold. Begin.

As I understand Benedict, presumptuous as that may be, he wanted the members of his order to give themselves to reading - to the text - and to quiet meditation on the text which was, in itself, a good, and which led to other graces: meditation, prayer, and being in the world, enriched and extended by those practices/disciplines.

I have chosen, for my Lectio Divina, a modest book by Gerard Brender à Brandis. It has only seven pages of writing: an essay, followed by prints from wood engravings, so reading it means reading words - and images. I flipped through it once, read it cursorily once, and have felt since that it deserved better, so I pick up Wood, Ink & Paper.

The first thing which I experience is its presence in the hand. Its cover is quiet brown paper, flecked with fibre. The black-inked engraving on the cover is of peonies, some in full flower, some in bud, among dark leaves. It is astonishing to me to think that every line on these complex flowers and leaves was carved into a block of wood.

Inside, I find a blank, richly green page and then a self-portrait of Gerard, beside purple coneflowers. On the title page, I note that the publisher is "The Porcupine's Quill, Incorporated," in Erin, Ontario, not very far away. I had forgotten that the title page also bears the inscription, "For Judith with Regards, Gerard Brender à Brandis." It seems more and more the appropriate choice. I bought this book on a visit to his open, welcoming cottage/studio in Stratford. He is a man who values ancient practices, old ways of doing things. He makes wood engravings, meticulously carved. He also hand sets type for books - pages, to my delight, were hung to dry in his studio. He works onto handmade paper, and he weaves handspun flax into covers for his books.

Reading even the title page of this book with attention has opened into a wide place. Good friends had taken me to visit his studio and garden. I have decided to refer to him as "Gerard" throughout this writing because B à B seems disrespectful, and writing it all out is too cumbersome.

The next page tells me that this book was copyright in 1980 and that this, the seventh printing, was done in 1997. Surprising that this book has needed seven printings - and pleasing. I also encounter on this page the imp with ink and paper which is Porcupine Quill's mark. Just to keep me from taking myself too seriously! I also discover here that the book was designed by Tim and Elke Inkster, who have a warm and well-deserved reputation as fine book designers. The type is Cartier, composed at the Coach House press (Toronto), a small brave press which published some of Canada's finest writers. The paper stock is Zephyr laid. I do not know exactly what that means, but the thought of paper named for the freshness of a light wind gladdens me - and turns my attention to the gentleness of the air moving past me, touching the wind chime into quiet, single, tones.

There is also an ISBN number on this page, which reminds me that this volume is part of a wide world of books. I have access to more books - I probably own more books - than a whole monastery would have had. That is exactly why it is lovely to pause over one book carefully made, intended to be appreciated, lingered over, as the scent of lilies behind me lingers in my senses. I smile to myself as I think of the differences between me and the monks Benedict likely had in mind - and the differences in my circumstances. I can read in the open air of a beautiful garden. Could they? I know they had wonderful gardens, but were the books portable enough?

The strength of a tall mullein defines the next page. As I study the engraving of the mullein, I notice grasses, nearly as tall, growing around it. They have seed heads - or are they called "blossoms" - which look braided. I have been learning the names of grasses, and I think this is quack grass.

As I open the first page of the text, chickadees are chattering in the trees around me - three of them - chickadees, that is. They are cracking open sunflower seeds from the feeder.

Across the top of the first page is a flowering vine which I cannot name: periwinkle? I have read the first sentence three times:

The craft of printing designs from wooden blocks may have been brought by the Mongol invaders from China to the Near East . . .

Long pause while I think about the implications of that. Would they have carried such blocks with them - or the idea of them - or the skill to make them? When did the Mongol invaders move between China and the Near East? How far west did they come? What does the "Near East" mean, exactly? My twenty first century mind does not store "facts," but I immediately expect to find answers to such questions. Casey reminds me that medieval monks did not have reference books. They had to puzzle out meaning from the text itself, within the understanding they had of their world. So I have fallen quickly into Error, into reading for information. I allow myself, instead, to visualize wild horsemen, tearing across the steppes on long journeys with the wind, carrying engraved and beautiful blocks of wood in their saddle bags.

. . . and then by Moslems or Crusaders to Western Europe . . .

That whole long history of the Moslems and the Crusaders clatters all the way into the late twentieth century, the early twenty first century; that lasting conflict saddens and in many ways frightens me. Each of those worlds is rich in the culture of beautiful things and wise understandings. In this reading, I choose to link them, rather than have them struggle for ascendancy. I can think of the Crusaders marveling over the engraved blocks, choosing some to take home as curiosities to share with loved ones, beautiful treasures to make prints from - over and over again, on household linens or on stationery.

. . . or it may have been invented quite independently by a European carver who saw the application of his craft to supplying the demand for printed fabrics and playing cards created by the increase of culture and trade in the later Middle Ages.

And I have come to the end of the first sentence, smack in the Middle Ages - which seems to me the place where I started all this. This explanation is not as swashbuckling as the earlier one, but it is not without its pleasure: a quiet craftsman, maybe even an apprentice, trying something different with a scrap of wood. Inventing. Discovering. The playing cards do not interest me much (were they for Tarot?) but the idea of printing fabric this way charms me. For some time, I have been wanting to know how to make a print on fabric. The closest I have come is a leaf print, but I am reluctant to use leaves in that way.

Travel. Exchange. Discovery. Invention. Over long periods of time. To be acknowledged. To be given thanks for. As I would give thanks for this chatter of goldfinches. Creation: in this quiet time of evening, it seems to me treasure of an enormity which is chastening. One of the great, good gifts. I had thought, for me, that oratio would mean to give voice to. I am not surprised by the meditation, the lingering in the place of this book. I am surprised by this almost-prayer, of thanksgiving. I knew that I could slow my reading down, but I did not expect to take a whole evening on one sentence. I am glad I chose this book and not a 400 page novel.

Day #2

As I first looked at the four steps of the Lectio, I was quite certain that meditatio and contemplatio would merge into one step: a deep contemplation of the text. It was, therefore, somewhat disconcerting when that did not happen. Meditation on the text and on meanings/memories well beyond the text happened pretty much as I had expected, but reached deep. The prayer-like nature of the written response surprised me. But the real surprise was the contemplation, the quiet centeredness, the moving in a kind of quiet through my garden and house, after I closed the book. It did feel like being in another place, a place to look out from, to observe from. I went to pick a bouquet for the house, beginning with the lime green blossoms of the lady's mantle. I found myself deeply satisfied by a few sprays of the lady's mantle and one purple-pink blossom from the bergamot. The glad peacefulness lasted a long time. I awoke at 1:00 a.m. and worked till 3:00 a.m. on a task I had to do for today, so that I would be free to return to a time of Lectio.

The line between the sacred and the secular is even more porous than I thought it was. "The monks of the Benedictine tradition regarded reading as an essential element in living a spiritual life . . ." (Casey, 3). I have always seen writing as one of those elements, participating in creation, and I have always known that writing is imbued with spirituality. I had not, until last night, seen reading as a way of tapping into/participating in that spirituality.

With some trepidation, I prepare to read the second sentence of Gerard's essay. It is cool today, and I am curled up inside on a well-worn loveseat, in a corner of the basement, at eye level with, or a little below, the coneflowers outside the window, which are waving in the same wind which is moving through the wind chime. Light through the petals of the flowers is luminous. They are sturdy on their stems, petals uplifted and green or purple-pink beginning to curve down from the centre which will become the cone. A honey bee is busy out there. I am glad of the crocheted afghan, warm on my legs, almost exactly the colour of the first page in Gerard's book. A golden dog is sound asleep, curled up on the floor as close to me as he can get, so that I cannot go anywhere without his knowing. A stem of grass is arched across the window. Oh, I think, remembering Gerard's engraving, does it often grow among coneflowers?

Beyond the coneflowers are the seed heads of the clematis, growing into the weeping pea tree, and a glimpse of black snakeroot. The smell of summer drifts in, through the window along with the chattering of chickadees, the voices of men working on the roof next door.

In any case, it was being used in the early fifteenth century for printing books, a block being used for each page. It was Johannes Gutenberg's contribution to realize that, if each block had only one letter on it, the blocks used to make up a page could be re-assembled to compose another.

A whole page of letters and words carved into one block of wood. A whole page, printed at one time, as one print. Many wood blocks stored together, all the pages of a book. Were they kept on shelves or in boxes? How many times could they print from one block? How many hours to write/carve one block? "Writing," then, still meant very much "to incise," "to cut into." No wonder the monks could approach a book reverentially, sure of something valuable. No matter what the words meant, they had a rich, incised, printed presence on the page: vellum or rag paper. What a sensuous experience reading must have been for them. (Roland Barthes: The Pleasure of the Text, quite literally.) As this book is for me: wood, ink and paper, in the hand. How must it have been to fragment pages, into words and letters, to combine and re-combine, changes suggested by the woodblocks themselves, as materials always suggest/direct their use. I smile to think of the agility of letters freed from that block. Single.

But the use of the wood block did not disappear from printing when Gutenberg replaced wood with cast metal. It remained the material for large initials, borders and illustrations.

My eye moves to the border at the top of this page. I think of the scrolled and decorated initial letters in the old books. This book in my hand curves back through the ages, to the ones they bent over in the monasteries, took joy from. How wise Benedict was: to know this reading, this way of being with, in, beyond a book, which is its text - and so much more.

In the Oriental and earlier European process, the design was cut on the side or plank grain of blocks of cherry or pear wood with knives and gouges.

The scent of those woods must have been a presence in the book, on the page: sub-text, inter-text, like the lingering smells of summer, which include birdsong as well as lavender and spicy lilies. I keep thinking about one page, pressed into being, under the hand. Montaigne said that the work of the hands is the work of the soul.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century an English printer's apprentice, Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) began engraving on the end-grain of boxwood blocks with burins. These tiny solid chisels differ from the sort used to engrave on metal only by the angle to which they are sharpened.

Cheeky little apprentice. Did he do this when he was supposed to be doing something else? Did he ask himself, "What if . . ." and turn a piece of wood on its end, running a finger speculatively over the finer grain?

Bewick's own work covered an enormous range, from tickets and labels to large, detailed prints of birds and animals. He is best known for his suites of prints of birds and animals which he published in large volumes and sold very readily.

He noticed birds and animals. To draw, to engrave, means seeing closely, in fine detail. Did he live among birds and animals? Did he have to seek them out? Could I see any of those suites of prints? Or reproductions of them? Strange. I used to think reading was about answers. I find myself teetering on these questions, used to having access to answers.

The humility of not-knowing, of a small book. One book. To read and write. And re-write. In a sense, to co-write. Copying out passages, mulling over them, one century blends into another. Those engravings, these engravings. Those birds, these birds in my garden. The humility of this small place in time, in space. So far removed from Bewick and the monks. So close. The humility of what I thought I knew - or knew where to find out. Gutenberg - Bewick - Brender à Brandis - they all connect to what I know of William Morris, of making the humble beautiful, of noticing what happens in a garden, what is in a garden. The humility of learning that I thought I knew how to read. All these centuries, side by side, in my hand, rippling into one another, nudging one another: "What if?" "Look at this." "Did you know . . ." No. I did not know. And I thought I did.

Today, again, I know when the reading is done, and I know that I did not decide that it was done. I did, though, manage to recognize when it was finished. Tomorrow, I get to turn the page.

If yesterday's was a prayer of gratitude, today's is a prayer of humility. Eating humble pie: I always thought of it as doughy, not very good eating. But I find it has crisp edges, not bad on the tongue. There is, I discover, a difference between humility (arriving at) and humiliation (being forced into).

Day #3

Sparrows are vociferous in the dampness of a cloudy morning. The spice of lilies on the breeze coming in the window is sharp. I have curled up again, on the loveseat, under the afghan. It feels safe here, like one of the secret places of childhood. I have pulled on warm, white, hand-knit socks. Yesterday, when I finished reading, I sat a while watching the play of light on the coneflower leaves. It is good to look up at the coneflowers, at their varying degrees of purpleness and of openness. Then I ironed two shirts, not perfectly, but meticulously. I made supper, walked the dog and laid a fire for the cool evening. Not perfectly. But attentively. Delightful to discover the difference. The Zen masters' description of "living in the now" has always puzzled me, but perhaps this is something of what they mean.

Only one book. No reference sources. No place else to look. I would have said that I did not read for information, but for the pleasure of the text. I did not realize how fully I rely on being able to turn to information if I want to. Not having much information/fact about Gutenberg and Bewick forces me to look deeply into this book, shifts me in time and place so that I meet them in this context, of a beautifully made book, filled with carefully chosen type, with words and a suite of prints. And how utterly appropriate it is. These testaments to them, to their work and its meaning: still here. A richness opens into a wide vista, where time slows, deepens, blossoms into plenty instead of scarcity.

From Bewick's time until the latter part of the nineteenth century wood engraving was used primarily for commercial purposes such as the reproduction of paintings in the catalogues of public and private collections, the illustration of books, newspapers, and advertisements.

Like these: one small engraving brightens each of the pages open in front of me: a pine cone, with needled twigs around it and a beetle - a ladybug? in a suggestion of leaf, stem and earth. They become part of the commerce of my reading. "Commercial" does not need to have such an unpleasant set of associations. Surely it simply means bringing things together.

There were a few notable exceptions, including the elaborate colour prints of George Baxter (1804-1867) whose artistry and skill have not been widely recognized.

Someone else I do not know. Someone who worked quietly, and it seems, in some isolation - now, if not then. "Artistry and skill" - yes. They do need to go together. Gerard could have the skill of carving clear lines into a block of wood, but without artistry nothing much would happen. Observation, skill, artistry all went into the making and placing of this single pine cone. And they are collaborative, as book-making has always been. Someone, like Gerard, writes an evocative text, does the engravings. Someone designs the book, as the Inksters placed this print two-thirds of the way down this page, so that the text narrows, shaped around it. Someone else set the type, someone else bound the pages. Many hands, working.

Wood engraving was then gradually replaced by the appearance of photogravure, only to re-emerge as an artist's medium in the rebirth of fine printing by private presses, most notably the Kelmscott press owned and operated by William Morris (1834-1896).

"Photogravure." I have no idea what that is. When I say it aloud, my tongue is glad to curl around the French vowels and consonants. "The rebirth of fine printing" is gratifying to think about: a gentle technique was, perhaps, pushed too hard, so that it subsided and then appeared again, in a quieter place, somewhere closer to its original impulse, to make beautiful things, for their own sake. The way a pine cone insists on its own shape, its own purposes. Reassuring: that integrity of things-in-themselves. That insistence, that trust. So much depends upon allowing, giving space to.

Although Morris drew and engraved some blocks himself (there seems to be very little in the field of arts and crafts he did not do himself), he relied on his friend, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, for much of the design, and on the Dalziel brothers for most of the engraving of the borders, decorative initials and illustrations of his editions. Private presses with more modest budgets, such as Lucien and Esther Pissarro's Eragny press or the Vale press operated by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, usually completed all the work including the design and cutting of blocks themselves.

There is a sense of continuing presence, of persistence, in "the engraving of the borders, decorative initials and illustrations." They have appeared again and again through the ages. It seems that in each period or epoch, someone keeps that process, that memory, alive: enjoys it and passes it on, so that this creation of lovely books, artifacts, is not lost. Making drawings and making text need not be separate. They began in the same process: carving/incising into wood, to print onto paper, to record, to share. The illustrations, then, are not "decoration," not peripheral but integral: text, texture, textile: right into the very fibre of the paper. The illustration/the illumination, giving light. A place to see/read in a different way. Illuminated pages: pages given light.

I begin to understand that Lectio Divina persists in this same way, through the ages. Michael Casey writes, "I am not advocating a return to the ways of antiquity. I am simply asserting that there are elements of universal human experience that are overlooked in our culture that can be rediscovered by paying attention to the insights of another time and situation" (viii). There is something challenging, too, about re-discovering this way of reading many centuries later, to see that there are habits to carry with us, the way we have carried engraving and fine books, to understand that there are persistent wisdoms. Standing in and standing through, insisting and persisting.

I knew that to read was to be advised, to be taught, or at least to be in the presence of. For some reason, though, that only applied to letters and words, sentences and paragraphs. Reading had nothing to do with looking at pictures, images, which was, somehow a totally separate, other activity. If I am attentive to this pinecone on the page, I learn, am advised about line, arrangement, juxtaposition, light, shadow, pattern, solitariness, humour, form, celebration. This is not (blush) a place to rest the eye on the page, but a place to do a different, complementary kind of reading.

A picture is worth a thousand words. That statement has always irked me. A word is a picture, I always thought, even if I did not say it. In its presence, shape, form on the page, each word is a complex picture. "Word," I muttered often, is a close relative of "weird," of magic, of spell. I did not know that a picture, a representation is also word - albeit spelled differently. The simplest understandings always seem to take me such a long time. Every child knows how to read pictures . . . Words on the page began as hieroglyphs. Picture books are for children . . . Oh, dear. This small pinecone grows out of wood as surely as engraving does, with even more immediacy.

The nuthatch's "crank, crank" outside the window expresses how I feel very clearly. How can a person be so dumb - or so one-dimensional? Better late than never, I guess. I bet St. Benedict had a name for this state of mind . . . but I do not know what it is. So this has been a prayer of new insight, but mostly of aggravation/irritation with myself. How do I take the next step, to get beyond this annoyance? When I look up and out the window, I see the quiet presence of the white pine tree beyond the coneflowers. I think it might be laughing: gently. I begin to know how close this book is to this geography.

Day #4

Michael Casey suggests, "Many people find that a little ritual enhances the quality of sacred reading: an opening prayer, a particular posture, the use of flowers or candles or icons" (Casey, 27). I pull on warm wool socks, check for earwigs, arrange myself under the afghan and turn my face to the scent coming in the window. Casey does not mention any of these specifics, but perhaps I have achieved "a particular posture."

I have been thinking about another statement of Casey's: "In an era of hyperstimulation it can be difficult for people to realize that enlightenment comes not by increasing the level of excitement, but by moving more deeply into calm" (Casey, 8). It seems a great privilege to move "more deeply into calm," into that open place where many women and men have been before, to experience the sense of their having been there, of their having moved quietly in that calm, in that place from which to observe. This has been a dialogue with this text, in the presence of handknit socks, in the company of coneflowers. I run my hand over the cover of the book, enjoying the texture of the paper and discover that the title is lightly embossed.

In Canada, wood engraving has few champions: many have tried it but only a handful of artists chose it as their principal medium. Walter J. Phillips (1884-) and H. Eric Bergman (1893-1958) are among the best known.Bruno Bobak (1924-), Thoreau MacDonald (1901-), Leonard Hutchinson (1896-), Laurence Hyde (1914-) and Julius Griffith (1912-) have all worked on end-grain wood. Rosemary Kilbourn (1929-), though perhaps better known for her work in paint and stained glass, has produced what I feel to be the most exciting contemporary work in this medium in the country.

And, of course, I am a little overwhelmed by this litany of names, where I recognize only two. "In Canada," this Canada, this cardinal chirring outside the window, this windchime, I can only resolve to look for this work, beginning with Rosemary Kilbourn. I wonder what she sees - and engraves.

At a recent exhibition of the Society of Wood Engravers and Relief Printers in London, England (August, 1977), I saw not one print that could be called non-objective. Whether this reflects an overly-conservative and tradition-bound attitude on the part of the wood engravers to their work, or whether it may be attributed to an honest recognition that this medium is indeed best suited to representational modes of expression, I am not prepared to decide. My own single foray into non-objective design was most unsatisfying and I have no intention of pursuing that direction.

To be "tradition-bound" would not be good, but to use an ancient technique to interpret, record, even see what is around may, paradoxically, be freeing. It is probably what I am in the midst of doing . . . or trying to do. To carve words, as this process apparently did, seems very abstract and non-objective, so it is interesting that this technique has evolved into the representational. This is a somewhat vexed issue for me, because I have always enjoyed, preferred, non-realist art. I have said (aloud) that realism is boring. Perhaps it is only that I like to see the presence or insight of the artist, rather than an "objective" realism. Representation, I realize, suggests re-presentation, filtered through the artist's consciousness - which is always part of wood engraving. In Gerard's engravings, I see a light humour, which often makes me smile: a small rabbit, greatly pleased with himself, slightly coy, is in some way very true.

On the other hand, the close relation of black-and-white visual imagery with literary imagery seems to me a limitless field. The selection of poems or prose and the appropriate engraving is not always easy. Since the engravings are precise, definite and linear there must be something of the same in the words. The misty convolutions of psychological exploration seem to be more or less incompatible with engraving.

Hmm. I have to think about that for a while. The engravings are "precise, definite and linear," but so is a line of type, no matter what it may be "about." It would seem to me that the presence of wood engravings printed beside, among, lines of text can be appropriate whatever the content.

The beetle I enjoy on this page would be at home on any page of text. A particularly "misty" text might benefit most of all from an engraving of a beetle - or an earthworm. I understand that the "real" world may be a better inspiration for the engravings themselves than something indeterminate, but the finished engravings are at home anywhere. What would Blake think about this issue? Certainly, his engravings came out of fairly abstract constructs, but I would have to acknowledge that he made his way into eternity through a closely observed grittiness.

This comfortable connection between wood engraving and the printed word is only one of the reasons that I prefer to present my prints in books rather than in frames. I am happiest when working on a small scale, both because my ideas for prints are usually such that they will fill only a small space and because, in a small design, each stroke of the burin counts for a great deal more than simply contributing to a large area of texture.

Yes. Filling in large areas of texture and background on a needlepoint canvas is often a sore trial. I am glad Gerard chooses to put his prints into a book like this one, because then I can have many of them. I could not have many in frames - and, anyway, where would I put them? The book. The book in the hand. We are, after all, a people of the book. The reading of a print, with its complex lines, is as satisfying as reading the complex lines of a text. Black on white. And white space, around the text, defines shape, meaning, pause and rhythm. Text as print on a page. A print. Space marked and space left unmarked. Reading.

Copying out words onto this page is activity which today seems utterly satisfying: black-on-white in another way, a slowly growing print of ink-on-the-page, the line of text not present all at once, but arrived at slowly, one letter and then another. One line and then another. Complex curves and lines define the space around them - which before was only blank, only empty.

Raindrops falling on the leaves of the coneflowers leave their print. I am always caught by the prints of autumn leaves, perfect on the cement sidewalk. The small tracks of animals in the snow are text, story, which I find almost unbearably moving. There is something elemental about printing: fingerprint, footprint, thumb print. Identity.

Small prints should be looked at from a short distance and with good light: one is more inclined to take a book to a window and hold it at a good angle than is one with a framed print. Any pictures on the wall are inclined to become over-familiar, while a book, opened on the occasions when the urge is felt, remains less of a worn experience. Books allow one to see the prints without the barrier of glass and its inevitable reflections or distortions and to look in a book is usually a private and intimate experience--one holds and touches the print rather than standing back at a polite distance as in a public gallery. Altogether I find that looking at prints in a book is the most satisfactory way to enjoy them.

Certainly, I would be unlikely to be holding this "dialogue with the text" in an art gallery. I would not have the added dimensions of the smells and sounds of summer. I probably would not wear these cozy socks to an art gallery. This afghan would not be tucked around me. This work of the grandmothers surrounds me as I read these words and these prints. Engravings have a long association with books, it seems. Their lines are akin to the lines of words-on-the-page.

Today's reading seems to be copying, writing these words onto this page, another way of reading, of engaging, less cerebral, more immediate, experiencing the shapes of the words and the letters, a way of seeing, just as drawing the flowers in the garden is a way of seeing them, through eye and hand. Today, my hand is reading.

I have turned another page, to an engraving of a fern, like a frost pattern on a window. The fern is creamy against a black background, in pleasing contrast to the text, which is black on the creamy texture of the page.

I would not want to suggest, however, that a book is merely a preferred alternative to a frame as a presentation for prints. When I plan a book I plan a sequence of communication, an experience with an element of passing time, a production with a beginning, middle and end, with a certain rhythm and climax, much like a small theatrical production. I also see the book as an important object in itself, a tactile and three-dimensional being. The book is not merely a container holding a number of small works of art - it is a work of art. And further, a book is, to me, a social creative event, a collaboration between several people, blending their ideals and skills.

Yes - and then passing it on to other people, who participate in the creative event which is a book, receiving and extending it.

I begin to feel that, while I know something about how to read these words-on-the-page, I am not at all sure that I know how to read the pages which have only engravings, without text. They seem curiously vulnerable in the wide open spaces of those pages, without the companionship of text, without surrounding texture, which is so much a part of this artifact, this page in front of me.

Gerard might suspect that this Lectio is leading me into "misty" places. But it does not feel that way at all to me. This space of meditatio is clear and open, light-filled. Sometimes, more than others, it leads directly into oratio, sometimes expression is slower in happening, and sometimes it does not seem necessary at all.

When I began my art studies I had never heard of wood engraving. I had done a few lino-cuts and woodcuts, but the inherent coarseness of these media left me dissatisfied because of my pleasure in small detail. I looked forward to etching, in which I knew fine detail was possible, but was disappointed when I found it necessary to work with dangerous and foul-smelling acids, and distressed by the 'feel' of working with metal. Then, too, there was the further obstacle of the need for a costly etching press to proof the plates. Imagine my delight on being introduced to a medium which allowed me to include every tiny line and dot the eye could see and yet work in the most responsive and congenial material I knew--wood. For several years I proofed my blocks and printed my editions by burnishing (rubbing the back of the paper with a wooden spatula) until 1971, when I acquired an Albion hand-press.

From the Mongols, to the Near East, to Europe in the Middle Ages, down the ages into Canada and into the very particular world of this particular printmaker in Stratford, Ontario, a journey is made possible through the ingenuity of those long-ago craftspeople who imagined printing and then achieved printing-as-book. It is easy to romanticize those faraway times and people, but the wonder of the present, especially as placed in that larger context, is ineffable. I cannot visit their workshops and studios, but I can visit Gerard's. Elsewhere and elsewhen are enticing. Here is here.

My working methods have not changed much since I began, though the finished products have shown variation in style. I make preliminary sketches, usually in pencil, in front of the subject, only rarely trusting my memory for accuracy of form and detail. I have great difficulty in using photographs as a means of collecting information about subjects because they do not allow the editing and selecting possible in a sketch. Photographs, I find, are most useful to recapture the feel or atmosphere of a time and place. Only occasionally do I draw directly from the subject onto the block without an intervening sketch. In the case of buildings or specific landscapes or asymmetrical objects, I must reverse the drawing so that it appears in 'mirror image' on the block. Botanical and wildlife subjects are not normally reversed. My drawings on paper or on the block are very sketchy, defining outline and tone but avoiding specific texture. If I were to produce a very precise drawing on the block, I fear that the engraving process would become mechanical, and thus, boring. I want the cutting of the design to remain as free, challenging and creative as possible.

What Gerard feels may be something like beginning a reading/writing with only the sketch of the Lectio Divina as guide: so the practice is as "free, challenging and creative as possible." What seemed a clear sequence of steps has swirled and shifted into the unexpected: lectio as copying out, taking pleasure in the shape of each letter on the page, reflecting on shape and form as part of meaning, discovering reading as the work of the hands, and that work as oratio, discourse, perhaps prayer. Contemplation reaches well beyond the text, opening out from the text, which is not only words but also images, some carried in the words and others in the prints. On this page, a small curled mouse contemplates the very tip of its tail, among the grasses, carved onto a block of wood and pressed onto this page, copied, made accessible.

This would seem to be where today's reading ends. It never ceases to surprise me, this quiet closing of the book. Enough. This mouse-on-the-page begins a re-membering of mice I have known, sends me into the kitchen, into the quiet tasks of preparing supper and the evening, carrying with me this perception of reading as work of the hands, as inscribing.

Day # 5

I rolled out of bed eagerly this morning, looking forward to the day and its tasks and this reading, like a secret pleasure/reward. The early morning dew, as I watered new sod, was icy on my bare feet, so the wool socks are an especially warm place, as is this richly green afghan. Strange to be looking for warmth in July. Usually I am groaning in the heat. The freshness of these mornings delights the robins - and me.

So many people observe, when looking at a completed block, that it must require a good deal of patience to produce one. My invariable answer is "No." Good eyesight and a steady hand, yes, but not patience. I enjoy chipping away at a design immensely, though it can be very tense and tiring work, as a slip of the tool will usually destroy the design and each stroke of the burin must be accurately determined. Lines cut into wood cannot be erased as those that are drawn onto paper with pencil. I try to engrave not more than three or four hours per day, using the remaining working hours for the many other activities of a working studio.

Interesting that we often look at a completed project and assume that it took a great deal of patience, which seems to imply suffering. Most extended creative work involves a great many emotions, tasks, responses, but patience is not one of them. Maybe we are puzzled by the kind of long attentiveness which is implicit in such a project. It is easy to miss the joy of such attentiveness, and of application: "good eyesight and a steady hand:" observation, skill and focus: artistry. The slip of the tool or of attention can destroy a whole design. I wonder if Gerard finds, on a day when the engraving has gone well, that the other tasks of the studio fall smoothly into their place. I have been discovering that several hours of careful attentiveness can become like the warmth of a good fire at the centre of the day, of being. Some of that warmth hovers around a work of art. It is, I expect, a major reason why we need art in our lives. We access it as we read the art: lectio.

Every stroke of the burin produces a white mark in the finished print since, in wood engraving as in other relief' printmaking processes, the ink is rolled onto the surface of the block. This means that the black lines of the drawing are left standing and everything else cut away - a kind of 'negative' drawing. This process pleases me particularly, since I am introducing light into an otherwise dark space. To render light dark is to do the devil's work: to bring or add light has more positive connotations. The length of time it requires to engrave a block depends more on the amount of white in the design and the fineness of texture and detail than on the actual size of the block. There are no grey tones in wood engraving, as all the printing surface is covered with black ink. The subtlety of cutting fine textures may suggest grey tones to the eye and mind, and small areas may be slightly lowered with a chisel prior to engraving so that they will print with slightly less pressure and appear grey.

Like sunlight sudden across the garden: "The black lines of the drawing are left standing and everything else cut away," so that he is working with light, engraving light where there was darkness. The black lines that I trace onto this paper are given form by the white surrounding them. In an engraved wood block, the process works the other way. No wonder a print from an engraving on a page of text adds dimension: it opens into another way of seeing.

The apparently simple print of a small spider at the side of this page of Gerard's text takes on new meaning, when I understand that the "writing" of it is in the delicate openness of the web. The meaning is in the spaces, as it so often is in a poem. Into those spaces gather all the images I have stored of morning cobwebs, of Grandmother Spider/Creatrix, of Arachne. I wriggle my toes in these hand-knitted socks under the afghan, both of them from/of grandmothers, both of them made in designs very like web making. Letters, I realize, carved into a wooden block, are defined by the white space around them. In a very real sense, they are the white space around them. Why does that matter so much? Because I have always delighted in the shape of letters and words on a page. When I cannot do/make anything else, I fill a page with writing and then turn it sideways, writing across it to create a beautiful weaving of words, like my grandmother's letters. This Lectio Divina has also been an exercise in learning about how open space defines, creates meaning. In quiet spaces, there is room for awareness to expand.

Casey says, "It takes time for us to become attuned to the subtle rhythms of a particular writing; the more we can slow down our reading, the more likely it is that we will catch sight of something unexpected" (Casey, 24). The writing/incising of the spider's web is the something unexpected on this page, as I learn more about how to read. The writing of the spaces of a spider's web has an immediacy, a delicacy, a mysticism which I find irresistible. The multiple readings of it eddy around one another, and around me. "Writing" began among northern peoples as an incising into rock, or wood, where the mark, the cut itself was the letter, the meaning. That the process should shift to cut away the surrounding wood, so that only the line which hitherto was carved into the wood should remain, standing out from it, in relief, mirror image, to be printed onto a page, into itself again, is mystery, shift of consciousness, opening into possibility. Miracle: that which is wondered at. "Trilliums," one of the suite of prints which follows Gerard's essay makes interesting reading. The importance of white in this incising is exactly appropriate, bringing light to the page as the trillium brings light to the forest floor in spring time, with blossom and with the promise of blossom in the furled bud.

"Frog" sits slightly superior and plump, shadow and light complacent among the grasses, which are, in turn, light and shadow.

"Saw-whet Owl" is curious, observant and stern, a shadow among shadows in an old barn, illuminated by its eyes, by a knot-hole in the old barn-board, by the feathers of its breast. And by gaps between the boards.

"Kitchen Corner," like my grandmother's kitchen, is wood upon wood, full of simplicity and of memories, of goings and comings, morning and evening light.

"Ponderosa" pine cone has settled among the acorns and leaves. The light of fruit fallen onto the waiting, recurring, darkness of the earth.

"The Gift" is the light and shadow intricacies of the pine cone, meticulously designed, petals layered one upon another, cradled in the hand: offered.

"Poetaz Narcissus," offers the surprise of the blossom among the leaves, like grasses, where poem is in the spaces, this opening out among the lines.

Learning to read what is written, what is inscribed. Learning to look into spaces, to enter into stillness, to allow the surprises. Learning to write coneflowers. Can surprise be a kind of prayer?

Day # 6

No matter what I plant in the garden for the butterflies, they like the coneflowers best: this morning a stunning, large, yellow butterfly with black markings. I have no idea what it is called. It is still cool today and the warm socks are welcome. The sky is overcast, but the petals of the coneflowers, oddly, are full of light.

The printing of these blocks is a less routine matter than might be expected. Some blocks print best when inked lightly and pressed firmly: others are better inked heavily and given what printers call a 'kiss' impression. Some are well suited to being printed on the somewhat rough-surfaced European papers whereas others call for the polished tissue of oriental mulberry fibre. Almost all printing is facilitated by a more than usually humid atmosphere and fairly warm temperature. Predictably, there is no agreement among printmakers or collectors as to which impressions are 'best': one will prefer a very black print while another will choose an impression that allows the texture of the paper to show through the ink - a 'lean' impression, I call it, and usually the sort I look for when selecting a print for my own collection. Invariably some impressions will have to be discarded, either because of faulty technique such as over- or under-inking or because some flaw in the paper not noticed earlier becomes apparent when the print is made.

Allowing the texture of the paper to show through the ink is an interesting idea. I am more accustomed to the texture of the paper showing between the lines, but it is pleasing to think that wood, ink, and paper could collaborate so closely to create a design, with the very fibre of the paper contributing to the final effect.

Fortunately, there is almost no limit to the number of impressions that can be pulled from a well-cut block of sound boxwood. In contrast to a copper plate worked in dry point, which may yield as few as twenty impressions before wearing of the plate becomes offensive, end-grain blocks have been known to produce over a hundred thousand clear impressions. The limiting of editions from these blocks is therefore a more or less artificial exercise, done perhaps to increase the selling price of the prints (usually demanded by dealers and collectors who see art primarily as investment) or because the artist is not eager to subject himself to the tedium of printing thousands of nearly identical impressions but wishes instead to move on to new work. It is usual to have blocks that are not to be printed again planed down and polished so as to extend use of the rare and precious boxwood.

G. Brender à Brandis

A hundred thousand clear impressions. From one block. So such a technology could create "available" art, for many people, at reasonable prices. William Morris's ideas about accessible art keep nudging into my life, most recently in a book about how he took designs from the details of plants and leaves in his garden. One hundred thousand people, all the citizens of a good-sized town, could have a copy of such a print.

I suppose planing and polishing away an engraving in the boxwood is also part of the nature of things, more like the garden than I might have expected. Are there any really ancient blocks around? Ones which no one could bear to plane away? I hope so.

The final print in Gerard's essay is the whiteness of a small cabbage moth on a dark leaf, a leaf which arches as a caterpillar might. Having begun this reading/writing in the shadow of the cabbage moth, it seems right to be ending in the light of the cabbage moth on the page. This reading of not-very-many pages has taken several days. It is strange to be finished reading.

I set out to do Lectio Divina, with the four stages of lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio, expecting that meditatio and contemplatio would blend into one step. I expected to show that oratio was simply a speaking, a discourse or a writing, not necessarily prayer. Although usually applied to scripture, this seemed a way of reading that could be applied to a secular text, to extend appreciation of it, to dialogue with it, to be enriched by it.

What happened? It took many days longer than I expected, demanding close attention to small pieces. Gerard's text is certainly not scripture and it could not be called "religious," although I have always believed that at the centre of any creative act is a strong spiritual impulse. It is true that this particular "filter" showed up that aspect of his writing. Its way of echoing through time makes it a very spacious text. My responses to it came closer to prayer than I would have thought possible: statements of gratitude, appreciation, reflection, humility, irritation with myself, forgiveness, surprise, acknowledgment and probably others that I do not recognize.

Meditation and contemplation remained very distinct steps. The meditation was quiet reflection on the text and its implications, frequenting a particular place and text, much as I expected, although reaching deeper than I might have predicted into implications and associations. The blending of that with the coneflowers, with their growth and change had not occurred to me. Even more unexpected has been the contemplation, the opening out well beyond the reading into quiet, into grace, so that the reading itself became a kind of still centre in a day, around which other activities and responses have eddied.

The notion of "reading" as being advised has always irritated me a little. I do not read, I thought, to be preached at, and of course this Lectio has not preached at me - no instruction, but much learning: showing up, being in the space, permitting. Maybe I need to think of reading as being made aware of . . . Anyone who has practised Lectio Divina is probably smiling smugly, or indulgently, about now. Never mind: some things I have to experience for myself.

I did discover, in Casey's book, that Benedict did not confine Lectio to scripture - which seems to be a more recent and perhaps unfortunate development. Gerard's essay is not scripture, is not theology, is not "religious" in any usual sense of that word, but it is thoughtful, respectful and carefully written, in its words and in its prints. It lent itself wonderfully to this close and quiet reading.

This "dialogue with the text" certainly widened my understanding of writing/inscription/printing as well as of white space and what it means in a text or in a print. I had not thought of drawing as writing in quite this way before. I would have said that I was not an unsophisticated reader. Now, I suspect, I am a simpler reader. Ideas, knowledge, intuition came together in rewarding ways. Reading a print was not something I had foreseen. Neither was writing a coneflower. Perhaps most surprising, and pleasing, was the opening out of time in what was feeling like a hurried, harried summer. Time slowed to the pace of the pen on the page, copying out passages, recording meditation, finding expression, unhurried - and often rapid. The satisfaction of the work of the hands, so that reading became writing, and writing was a way of reading.

I thought I was going to demonstrate that Lectio Divina could be a secular activity, and I wanted to bring forward old, perhaps lost or forgotten skills. Instead of calling it "Sacred Reading," I considered "Creative Reading," or even "Reading Creativity." Now? I might choose "Creative Reading," knowing that "creative" here includes the work/inspiration of the original author as well as pathways of response where new meaning is experienced and created. I am less uneasy with the name "Lectio Divina" than I was, but perhaps more uncomfortable with "Sacred Reading." That seems to me too limiting for too many people. I thought I was working toward another way of doing criticism. I found out what happens when criticism is suspended, replaced by openness, by showing up at a text, to dialogue with it on its own terms. Maybe, in the end, I am content with "Lectio Divina:" divination, seeking the obscured or the hidden, the taken for granted or the missed, is no bad thing, after all.

In the spring of 2001, An Artist's Garden, the sequel to Wood, Ink & Paper will appear from The Porcupine's Quill, 68 Main St., Erin, Ontario N0B 1T0.
http://www.sentex.net/~pql

Works Cited

Brender à Brandis, Gerard. Wood, Ink & Paper. Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine's Quill, 1980. Seventh printing, 1997.

Casey, Michael. Sacred Reading; the Ancient Art of Lectio Divina. Ligouri, Missouri: Ligouri/Triumph, 1996.