In 1938 or '39, "Leaf by Niggle" was written, either in Tolkien's rounded, Hobbithole-like handwriting, or on a typewriter with impossibly crude, round keys on long, arching supports. I imagine him sitting at a desk in his home, a desk facing a lattice-like window patterned with the slow, downward dance of English rain, the drops shivering occasionally in wind gusts; perhaps, as he wrote, Tolkien wondered about the subtle, rather ominous rattling of the shingles on his roof: a true professor never knows quite what to do with ominous rattlings in a house--too practical a problem--so perhaps he simply incorporated the rattling into his short story about Niggle, and his neighbor Parish, who seem to live in perpetual rattling of shingles and rainstorms. I imagine Tolkien took the rattling into his fingers and his soul and made it, somehow, part of a great and deep parable about the landscape beyond the leaf, the work beyond work.
I just re-read "Leaf by Niggle" in the midst of great soul-pain: feeling rattled, blown about, unheard and unwanted in my own work, knowing somehow, simultaneously, how unworthy I am to be heard, how paltry is my work as a teacher and guide of young people in comparison to others, to my mentors, to the work of Our Lord in His lifetime. Within, we are all artists in a sense--we work on the art of rhetoric, or plumbing, or mathematics, or mothering and fathering. We have arts we perceive clearly as those we are working on, and we desire to be affirmed, to make a difference in the world.
Niggle, like myself, worked on his great painting, and like myself, he loved the sheen of light and color on single leaves; he built great landscapes around the leaves; they were details that drove meaning: like myself, he failed, and was failed by, his human community. His great work was housed in a shed on the remains of a garden; his neighbor Parish, an artisan-gardener, and highly annoying to Niggle, assumed what Niggle was doing was no more than a waste of good roofing canvas. Like myself, Niggle was also selfish with brief flashes of true charity, and was deeply wounded by being unseen--and like me, he was never sure during his lifetime of what, really, his art, his great work, his passion was all about.
After Niggle's death, his canvas is used to patch roofs, namely Parish's; the 'great work' does real work-a-day work by becoming roof-tarp to keep Parish and his wife dry under their rattling shingles. Yet, one corner of the painting, a beautiful leaf-spray with mountains in the distance, is found later on the ground below the roof, fluttering in the grass; it is framed and put in the museum under the rather lame, generic title "Leaf by Niggle"--and eventually, even the meaning of 'Niggle' is forgot in the business of life, of rattling shingles and storms.
I resign my teaching post, my community, now, and in great sorrow and pain at the leaving; I am primarily a educator, one with great passion "to lead out"--into the light beyond the cave, I hope--though, I, like Niggle, also paint--I leave at WCC paintings of leaves and mountains, and beautiful words of St. Bernard and St. Paul on the walls of the Latin Room; I leave my calligraphy and paintings of Dr. Carlson's beloved poems on the hallway outside my now empty office; my office name plate will come down soon, my title "Tami Kozinski, Faculty" is now defunct, and Mrs. K's office will become again an empty shell until another artisan fills it. My signatures "tkozinski '10" on my paintings and calligraphy will remain a little longer in the collective memory, but soon, very soon, "tkozinski" will have no meaning here anymore: just a name inside a black frame.
What is left? As the last semester wound down, I felt a failure in so many ways--so much sin in me, so many weaknesses as an artist, as a human being; I felt failed in many ways--unseen, unknown, unheard, flotsam and jetsam.
Then on a whim, I re-read "Leaf by Niggle"--it popped into my head as a help to my daughter, also struggling with feelings of failure in her art. We read it aloud together, and she had to finish reading it, as I was weeping almost with abandon by the end. In trying to help her, I was given also a great vision, a healing vision.
Niggle dies, leaves his art, his community, his neighbor, and must do penance; he must be healed in the hospital beyond the grave; when he learns the humble joy of diligence and anonymity, he is sent on to a land he recognizes as his own painting: it is the work beyond the paltry work, and it is built around the tree that contains all his beautiful leaves. He understands how to truly work on it now, and eventually Parish comes and joins him, providing necessary gardening artisanship--and they realize that they needed each other all along--Parish is astounded at Niggle's true vision, his work beyond his weakness, his art beyond his failures; Niggle is supported and able to finish the work because of Parish's expertise in gardening and his discipline.
I die, in a sense, now: Leaving, like all leavings--this leaving a profound one for me, a leaving of a deep part of my life's work, to help grow a beautiful institution that Our Lady wanted in Wyoming--is a death, but being here was also the hospital in which I began to learn my deep faults. I do not know if leaving here is a mistake and failure also (does Death also feel like a failure?); I only saw, like Niggle, what more I could have done, how I felt impeded or misunderstood, or how I could have done better.
Yet, in my pain and discouragement, in leaving, the Lord gave me the rare chance to see the real work I helped Him do here, and it was a landscape far beyond, but built around, single leaves: as they said goodbye, students began to tell me about the work I did, the image I placed in their souls, the leading out: it was the work in the soul of a young person for which the academics are only a precursor. They left little yellow leaves on my door, post-it notes: I found that I was seen as a model of what it meant to be a woman, a person, a teacher, a learner, a follower of Christ; I was taken by surprise at the depth to which my simple leaves rooted themselves in young souls, the landscape the leaves built.
The real moments, the true leaf-spray in all the work, the years, the attempts? Great teaching moments? My expertise? Not primarily. I kept being told that I "saw" them, or tried to; I "heard"...it was the leaves of love bursting from the branches of the classroom, the teaching, that did the real work, and opened the passageway to the mountains beyond, the mountains down which the Lord comes to meet the young souls. I recalled my inspiration, long ago, out of fear of the responsibility of teaching, to pray before each class for the Holy Spirit to use me as He wished : As a teacher, but more importantly, as one who, through writing and rhetoric, through counseling and just being, I tried to free their voices, to hear and see who they really are and tell them they are loved and to have hope in the Lord, to speak about Him in everything they say or do, that as they speak truth, they speak about Him. In this, I know that it is utmost joy of the artist: To have God bring good out of what we attempt, to see Him make a beautiful painting out of our small attempts at beauty and love.
Rare, I think, in this life, does the Lord give us the gift to see a glimpse of the harvest, of our real work: He does this to encourage, to humble us, to set us straight, and because He also wants us to know that He sees us--since the first childhood reading of Moses' desire to see God face-to face, I also have burned with this same desire--and now, through my own real work of trying to see others in the midst our mutual lousiness, I know He is face-to-face with us, though we are often blind, though we are disfigured and swollen at times. Using Martin Buber's great term "I-Thou as the look of lovers," I know He is face-to-face with us, because He has the human face of Christ. Through this face, God is always the Lover. He tells me through this also to remember that my art is only done also through the help of my colleagues and neighbors, that He uses for my good even those who do not see me, or what I am doing. It also teaches me that in community we must humble ourselves to look and see our colleagues in the light of God's work, not our own.
Because of the glimpse of myself reflected in His eyes beyond my paltry attempts at painting leaves, I also know that each person brought into this world, even if only for a brief bird's life like my Ellie who died before even being born, has a real work beyond, yet somehow based upon the imperfect art each pursues and is, and based upon the deep and great foundation of human and divine communion that is necessary for the making of a leaf.
