I haven’t written on the blog in so long that WordPress kicked me out of my login. Life has been beyond full, but I’ve been fighting to be fully present and to stand where my feet are for the past few months. We’ve had AP exams, college visits, SAT prep, driver’s education, baseball, soccer tryouts, and track season on the family front, not to mention membership classes, Women’s Bible study, and retreats on the church front. For someone who loves to live within the wide margins that promote sanity and cultivate creativity, these past couple months have been stretching, to say the least. Today, I’m finally able to write about a concept that has been helping me in this insanely full season of life.

Giornata

Recently, I read a lovely book called All the Beauty in the World written by Patrick Bringley, an art- and philosophy-loving man who worked as a security guard in The Met as he grieved the loss of his beloved brother. It seems that spending hours of stillness standing among some of the most beautiful pieces of art in the world has shaping power. When writing about the incredible scope of Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel, Bringley introduced me to giornata, the Italian word for a day’s work.

We see one finished work, Michelangelo experienced five hundred and seventy giornata. Those who visit stand in awe under the dome of a master’s finished work, but Michelangelo himself was easily defeated by the work set before him. In a collection of notes and sketches that were exhibited in The Met, Bringley was able to see a rare glimpse into the art of an artist mid-process. One of the notes in margin ready, “I am not in a good place. I am no painter.” In another notebook, Michelangelo wrote, “I’ve wasted my time without result… God help me!” Mind you, this is Michelangelo speaking. Apparently he was in process as was his artwork. How incredibly humanizing and freeing.

I am so thankful, as is every art-loving human to live since he did, that Michelangelo did not quit in overwhelm at the scope of the Sistine Chapel. We are indebted to his ability to press through his own fears of inadequacy and insecurity as an artist and a man. He kept moving, one giornata at a time.

Days were God’s Good Idea

The Italian language makes everything sounds beautiful, does it not? That’s why I gripped onto giornata: it gives a smooth word for a bumpy reality. But day-to-day living was God’s good and glorious idea. When making the earth perfectly and intentionally habitable for human flourishing, God tilted our sphere in such a way and placed it as such a distance from the sun that we were gifted 24 hour days. He measured and meted out the units of time that best served the crown of his creation. When the Incarnate Christ dwelt on said sphere, he continually pointed his disciples and friends to live in the present. When they pressed ahead to know the details of his return, he told them it wasn’t for them (or even him) to know. That was the Father’s business; leave it to him. You’ve plenty to keep you occupied in trying to live obediently today. In the Sermon on the Mount, he gently reasoned, “And which one of you, by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6: 27).

I keep trying to get ahead over here on the college application scene or the writing front. I keep trying to press through the present into the future, but in so doing, I am cheating the present giornata. In trying to set us up well for the future, I have been inadvertently robbing us of joy in the present. I am trying to practice what Jesus taught and Michelangelo learned to live in his art: giornata by giornata.

The result of each day may not look like much from where I stand, but stacked up and spread over time, they will become a more full story, a step towards the masterpiece our sovereign God is creating.

I can’t stay any longer, I’ve a giornata to which I must attend.