13 September

Dear friends,

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to visit the famous organ builders, Flentrop’s factory, on our annual Kerkenpad. To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew very little about how an organ is constructed, but, oh my, was I impressed. We basically immersed ourselves in a sacred world of artistry and slow creativity which is growing scarcer and scarcer in our fast-paced world of artificial (un)intelligence. It is hard to explain, though. The organ is made up of a complex series of many thousands of mechanical operations in order to produce those colourful sounds. I couldn’t wrap my head around the immense skill set these organ builders need to have. From wood joinery to artisan-level soldering. Nothing gets mass-produced. In fact, quite the opposite is true. In some cases, a slower process is preferred even though the modern process would be cheaper, better-sounding, and less time-consuming. The workers on the floor were all laser-focused. One person was carefully placing felt pads on the (beautiful handmade wood) windchest with tweezers. Another person, pictured here, was busy assembling what I believe is called the roller board. When asked how long he would take to complete this task, he simply said that he had been working on this board for two weeks now. After they receive the metalwork from the blacksmith, they soak tiny leather bits (all punched out by hand) in a solution before placing them in those tiny holes. It wasn’t only the technical skill that impressed me, though. If you look around the work floor, you can easily see the labour of love put into working there. Their workspace is a testimony to their artistry, with small trinkets hanging from cupboards, bumper stickers pasted to metal utensil containers, plants, personalised coffee mugs and so on. 

The word that stayed with us after the tour was “monnikenwerk”, which literally means “monk’s work”. I discovered this Dutch word for the first time on this trip. This is what we need in our world: meditative work, slow work, difficult work, and labour of love. Away with the quick fixes, the cookie-cutter mass production, and the need to streamline everything! 

I think Pierre Teilhard, SJ, says it well in his poem “Patient Trust”:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete. 

Marius