The simple words of a quote written on archival paper brought forth a rush of longing and peaceful insight. “Work to become not to acquire”. Bursting forth the seedlings of understanding and revelation, our trip to Buffalo to visit our best friends, may not be Paris in springtime, but it has turned out to be much more.  The quote by the founder of the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Community, Elbert Hubbard, sat waiting for me to discover it, and the underlying reason for what initially appeared to be just a vacation to the home of friends.  “Work to become not to acquire”. That simple sentiment bespeaks great wisdom, and a philosophy that I desperately needed to ingest, as I have been feeding on the seeds of discontent.

As with most traveling, ours has been a week of frenetic, fun activity, with endless to-ing and fro-ing, in a valiant attempt to experience the hometown of our hosts.  Their history both old and new, former homes, family, place, culture, and ethnic Polish food have defined our stay in East Aurora, N.Y., the “southtown” suburb of the big city, Buffalo.  We’ve been on the go for five days, so today was by design a day of rest, Sabbath like in its quietness and cessation from activity.  Before lunch however, we decided to make an unhurried visit to the birthplace of the American Arts and Crafts movement.  This impromptu jaunt turned out to be a truly spiritual experience, as profound as any Sabbath, and certainly more worshipful.  The Roycroft Campus of the early 1900’s is dotted with beautifully crafted stone buildings, and is nestled just a few blocks away from our home away from home this vacation week.  After a leisurely morning of coffee, newspaper, and luxuriating in our pajamas until 10:00, we decided to clean up a bit, head out, and get the stink blown off of us.  This wasn’t a sightseeing day by any means, just a quick hop down the block to see the Roycroft.  As we peeked our heads in to several of the old stone buildings, and took a quick look inside the famed Roycroft Inn, my day took on a whole new meaning, and the deeper Spiritual significance of our trip to Buffalo in May fully revealed itself. Through the discovery and purchase of an antique book of quotations by the founder of this place, Elbert Hubbard, I learned he was a struggling, obscure writer.  Be still my heart, a compadre’, a fellow sojourner, and a struggling author. In 1895 Mr. Hubbard created the Roycroft Press as a means of publishing his own work.  Tired of the numerous rejections, having begged the big publishers for years, but to no avail.  No longer content to toil in obscurity, he became a self-published author.  His dream of being a writer, finally realized through his own initiative.  He printed a monthly magazine and wrote a feature called, “Little Journeys”, about his visits to the homes of various people.  He built his platform by mailing copies to people throughout the country, and this direct mail campaign proved highly successful.  Over the next several years, Roycroft Press continued to print both magazines and books.  In 1899 Hubbard wrote and printed an essay called, “A Message to Garcia”, which turned him into a very well known public figure apparently.  This essay, written as a treatise on business, has many lessons for all of us, its theme being “initiative”.  As a noun, the word initiative means, “an introductory step, an energy or aptitude displayed in initiation of action, enterprise”.  What an inspiring tone is set in this piece.  As a result of his new found notoriety, people flocked to the Roycroft campus in upstate New York.  A community of like minded people developed and his influence on the American Arts and Craft movement proved to be significant.

The irony of discovering this history about Hubbard and the Roycroft is overwhelming, Spiritual in fact. All of this, unfolding as I visit the home of friends and write about my experiences.  Synchronicity? I don’t think this is a chance occurrence, but once again the encouragement of Divine Grace in my life. My brief visit to the Roycroft campus has added to my resolute determination to keep writing in an attempt to heal the problems of my life, to learn from my numerous mistakes, to understand myself more fully and embrace the journey to wholeness. My writing process hopefully will help me to overcome all that gets in the way of what I want, as soon as I figure out what that is exactly.  One of my favorite characters in a television show about high school kids who sing and dance, stated recently, “Oh I have a dream, I definitely have a dream, I just don’t know how to get there”.   This entire trip to Buffalo, and specifically to East Aurora, and by fate, the Roycroft Arts and Crafts campus, has been to breathe a word of encouragement into my spirit.  As countless generations before have labored with the page, so too I must toil.  Discovering the story behind Roycroft, it’s founder Elbert Hubbard, and his desire to become a successful writer, has buoyed me in ways unimaginable. God has once again encouraged me on this path, this time using the little motto book of Hubbard’s quotes to light the fire under me.  Today, deep within me arose the thought that I need to write like my life depends on it. Ominous almost.  Keep going, take the initiative, the first draft of life, or the last act, and write it, now.  One must have hope to continue on life’s path with it’s undefined twists and turns, meandering through the barren fields when you’re a sprinter at heart, when you are searching for spring flowers in the dead of winter.  Summer, come to my soul.  The tiny green buds on prickly branches are the symbols of the newness and continuation of life, metaphorically my writing life.  Still in it’s infancy but feeling as tired and old as the big oak tree outside this window, weathered and straining to stay upright.  Buffalo in springtime.  Hubbard’s admonition to “work to become, not to acquire”, resounds deeply, for through my writing I’m becoming the person I’m meant to be.  There is a payoff through it all.  The satisfying joy of writing my story, though the story at times can be like a chewy piece of gristle on an otherwise delicious steak, a chunk of sinew that you have to spit out on the side of your dinner plate next to the soggy brussel sprouts.

The desire to be published must by necessity recede to the background, letting go of results, as I keep digging down and reaching forth to become. To quote my dear friend Justin, “the secret to being the person you have always wanted to be is to start, right now, being the person you have always wanted to be”. His words are engaging in their simplicity, and profound in their challenge. This trip to the home of our best friends has been an affirmation to continue on, to initiate the life that I long for, and to write as though my life depends on it.