the mystical dog plane, (or Hugh of St. Victor #1)
I’ve been building a coffee table. I came up with a design whose proportions and simple style I liked, and thought my wife and family would enjoy. It’s about time I got us a ‘grown-up’ table. The table top and shelf are edge-joined knotty alder, the legs are just 2x4 ‘spruce-pine-fir’ lumber that I ripped and planed to shape. You can see it has a ways to go, but my dog checks the progress and quality of my work.
As I take gradual steps to measure, mark, and cut wood, I discover that I’m invited to pause often, and envision what my next steps are, as well as the final table. I proceed when a certain inner clarity and quietness arrive.
Such work lends itself to discovering a deeper sort of mind within you and around you. With any new project one undertakes, or new skill one seeks to practice towards mastery, one discovers how much one does not know or see. The wisdom that comes with seeking to do good work requires one to wait upon what one needs to see, learn and put into practice right now. A love for the good of the work, a loving expectation for the good and delight it can provide, and a love of wisdom itself all motivate learning.
Right now, I have the table top held tightly on the workbench, in order to plane the surface smooth and even. But first, I decided to sharpen my bench planes. I bought one in an affordable three plane set for beginners a few years ago. The other my father found at an auction, and I cleaned it up for shop use. Along the way I carved a new handle for it. When I started to build a boat half a decade ago, I began to see how useful and elegant handplanes are, and how little I knew how to use them. I find the variety of plane types, purposes and categories amazing and a little daunting. At a different time in my life, I would have felt driven to grasp the system of how planes are categorized by number, the histories and reasons for their designs, and their technical nomeclature. Thankfully, right now I’d rather just repair, maintain and use these planes well, and let my understanding be led by love and a delight in caring for things of earth. These aren’t fancy, expensive tools. Those are great in the hands of people who use them well. My handplane apprenticeship came with the treasured gift of a salvaged plane that I cleaned and repaired. Thru it I had the chance to carve a new handle, which turned out nicely, and serves its purpose well. And I’m a little better at the care and use of my planes to shape wood. I know better when and how to sharpen them. For me, it’s a nice image of how all things are being restored.
In order to learn we need love. We need a desire to understand, a will to do good work. We need love to tolerate the significant frustration of learning, and love to help and receive help in situations where assorted obstacles arise in the way. The medieval mystic Hugh of St Victor has helped me to see work and learning more and more like this. Hugh was a monastic of the 12th century whose Didascalicon these blog posts will explore over the next two months. Hugh of St Victor offers a mystical vision of human arts and learning as the path of salvation. His opening words show his keen sense that all people face obstacles to learning, but what makes a difference is whether we have the love and desire to carry us forward in the path on which we are placed to learn and work.
Hugh’s concern for learning flows from a love of God, and a desire orient the whole of human knowledge and activity toward the healing and restoration of humankind to the divine image and likeness. He makes room both for hopeful openness toward higher understanding, and humble realism about our needs and limitations. For Hugh humans both suffer weakness by nature, and find their origin and destiny in the image and likeness of God. For Hugh, God is at work in us through the work we do, and the learning we pursue. The whole of human arts, guide by a love of wisdom, prepare our body and mind to read with the world and the inner life with new sight. Step by step we undertake a path on which God renews the eyes of our heart. With such contemplative sight, we can better follow in the next steps of restoration and healing, to which the divine Wisdom invites us on earth.
“Of all things to be sought,
first is that Wisdom
in which the form of the perfect good stands fixed.”