Something amazing happens when one person gives serious attention to another person’s story. This interests me for this is my profession as a healthcare chaplain. It is also interests me as a husband, father, brother and friend who longs for meaningful connection and intimacy.
My wife and I traveled recently to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a conference/vacation. Our stories encountered others. I was pleased to learn that a fellow chaplain from Ft. Wayne, IN is also a collegiate alumnus. I met another man from Anaheim, CA whose hospital routinely serves Disneyland tourists. I also witnessed thousands of motorcyclists converge on the city in a raucous forty-year-old tradition.
Brookgreen Gardens rests thirty minutes down the coast. Archer and Anna Huntington were an accomplished couple from Connecticut who bought the former hunting club grounds in 1931 and made it their winter home. They built a splendid home modeled after Moorish castles they had seen in Spain. Anna Huntington displayed her many sculptures in a vast complex of gardens. After Mr. Huntington died in 1955 the place was deeded over to a foundation and eventually became the place it is today.
Nadine and I walked one afternoon through tree-lined lanes that led us to pools and inspirational statuary. The thing about Brookgreen Gardens is that all the images are of living things: people or animals.
You never know when your story and that of another will cross in a significant way. It happened for me as our guide introduced us to “Man Carving Out His Own Destiny” by the Czech artist Albin Polasek (1879-1965).
As others pressed on to the next stop, I stood in the hot South Carolina sun transfixed by this statue of a muscled man holding a hammer over his head. His other hand holds a chisel that is half-buried in a block of granite that encases him. He had been working for some time to shape the block. A lot more effort seemed to lie ahead before his legs would appear and his body take full form. I could sense the gigantic effort this nameless man was exerting.
Starting in 1907, he created different editions of this statue as his skill and life experience broadened. Perhaps there are various “destinies” that appear for us that we do not see until we are hip-deep in life. We may let go of one to take on another, all along believing that the work will continue to be worthwhile. I don’t know if the artist trashed his earlier versions. I’d like to think not. It can help to review on how our chiseling changes through life’s victories and defeats.
Polasek retired at age 70 to Winter Park, Florida. He suffered a stroke the next year that paralyzed his left side and confined him to a wheelchair. In spite of this, he continued to paint, draw, sculpt, and carve. He created a total of 18 major works before his death.
I find myself recalling my now six decades of labor for what I value. I think of Archer and Anna Huntington who had married in their fifties after long lives of art, poetry, successful business endeavors, and philanthropy. They are buried beside each other in New England. Years later, through the effort of committed volunteers, their contribution continues. That day, I was one more traveler who had happened upon their old walking paths and found inspiration to live a life of beauty and gladness.
Someone has said that character is destiny. We are born into our times and given our moments. We craft them into a life. If our lives are stories being written or sculptures being shaped, they deserve intentional and enduring attention. Someone has to wield the pen or the hammer. If we don’t do it, who will? Yet, the older we grow the more we realize that so much remains beyond us. Are we truly “by ourselves” as we work? Even as we chip away a piece that crumbles and then leave a section that doesn’t shine as brightly as we had hoped, we do so because we believe that what we are doing is part of something greater than simply our own satisfaction.
Most of us won’t leave behind gardens of statues. Hopefully, people who follow after us will crack open some photo albums and share more than a few tales as they reflect on how the chips flew.
For another reflection on Polasek’s art, I offer this link:
I appreciate your thoughts on the sculpture, especially destiny’s appearance when we are hip deep in life.