An honest day's work

...Tired, dirty, but somehow honorable for the tons of anthracite he had loaded...

...And, within the Mass, there are a couple of moments for me that always have special meaning...

...Our basic concerns are no different...

...How will it look on the screen or page...

...I am, in various ways and on various days, everything from an artist to a technician to a salesman...

...While I know I am a Catholic, in a sense that is put aside...

...To the reader or viewer, I am irrelevant...

...Guidance for my life's work during the past twenty-five years- when it comes in some form other then a rejection slip-comes from a very conventional Catholic source...

...At the computer, as I try to make my notes, research, and thoughts into some cohesive form, transcendence or any feeling of well-being is even further away...

...I've tried to make the work of my mind, hands, and mouth creditable, and in no small measure out of the trepidation that someday I would run into one of my Catholic school teachers and be asked to give an accounting of myself...

...The moments after Communion are calm...

...While my subjects are often religious and frequently Catholic, I don't have a sense of being a "Catholic writer and film maker...

...But, for the most part, I don't have to be ashamed of the vast majority...

...I am indeed asking him for my daily bread-as well as a mortgage payment, car insurance, new roof, kids' clothes, and something to put on that bread...

...There is also a moment of forgiveness for me at Mass: the words before Communion, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed...

...And yet, at day's end, either in the field or before my computer screen, while I rarely have a sense of well-being or confidence in what I am doing, I usually have the simple, primitive feeling of finishing an honest day's work...

...The groans and wails of the Psalms resonate within me...

...My word processing program works fine, but my mental processing is so primitive...

...AN HONEST DAY'S WORK GETTING REJECTED ISN'T ALL BAD PAUL WILKES THE LAITY &THE LIFE OF FAITH The Notre Dame Sisters at St...

...dy to live that day and do my work...

...The profligate son or his jealous brother...

...I am healed, forgiven-ready to start afresh...

...Why can't I put these pieces together with some felicity-it's all there on paper...

...The interviews with those who knew Merton best were surely fascinating and a rare opportunity...

...When I was the host for a PBS television series, I got a call from a talent agency and actually sat in a sumptuous New York office, drinking a Perrier while a well-known agent called Detroit to tell them to watch "the voice of the new credibility" that night...

...Where are my seeds being sown...

...In the twenty-five years I've pursued my work, I've found that I need constant reminders, frequent midcourse corrections (if I might use some space jargon) to keep me-if not on the right path-at least in sight of it I need this help because I am weak and venal and, if given a chance, would probably go astray...

...at home, I rise early and first tend to my bad back in a swimming pool and then to my frail soul with the 7:05 Mass with the Trappists at St...

...To keep a vision before me I need a lot of help...

...The Israelites roamed the desert...

...And, I want God to help...

...Why do my enemies seem to have the upper hand...

...Daily Mass...

...Am I conscious of my work transforming their reality...

...I am not that "Catholic in the world" we learned about in grade and high school, some sort of guerrilla fighter who constantly was infiltrating the minds and hearts of Jews, Protestants, and other unfortunate heathens to bring them the True Faith...

...I like that, a single word is all that is needed...

...My months with Father Joseph Greer, whom I profiled for the New Yorker magazine, register as a period of confusion, of not knowing how the piece would go, what I would put in, or if the story line would hold...

...Had I listened to the voices then that said I had a bright future in that kind of television, I have the feeling that today I might be a wealthier and better known man, but I don't think a happier one...

...At Mass, the words of Scripture never fail to educate and direct me, giving me moment to pause and reflect about my life and my work...

...Those worries are too far away...

...I often think of my father, once a coal miner, who, when the whistle blew went down the shaft and when it sounded again, came up...

...Throughout my seventeen years of Catholic education, the message came through loud, and clear, and frequently: the object in life is not to make the most money, be the most famous or powerful, but somehow to do good and make this world a better place...

...The project is right, the person, place, occurrence, or social movement I am addressing has inherent merit and should be told about...

...We're talking unassailable, irresistible honesty...

...Why do the folks who seem to be living amoral lives seem to be so bloody happy and prosperous...

...Give us this day our daily bread...

...I can't take credit for those midcourse corrections-I've just been rejected a lot...

...Am I the boastful guy at the front of the temple telling God how lucky he is to have me present or that fellow in back who can't get his eyes or ego off the floor...

...The quality others will have to judge, but at least the subjects don't make me cringe...

...As I sat with his doctors discussing his bone marrow cancer, I felt dull and stupid, unable to understand the medical procedures to which he was being subjected...

...One is a line from the Our Father which I'm sure was written especially for the free-lance writers of the world...

...I have tried to take other paths, believe me...

...When money is not coming in and is not even a prospect and I am keeping our anemic checkbook balance a secret from my wife, it is a moment for ardent prayer...

...Protestants are much better at remembering and quoting Scripture, but that one is burned into my brain...

...And, with that unspoken but felt word, I can go on...

...Oddly enough, although I am always working to produce an end product, I rarely think about that...

...The making of the PBS documentary on Thomas Merton was filled with too many days when I felt like a huckster in a pinched-back suit and an ingratiating smile as I begged, wheedled, and cajoled potential sponsors for the hundreds of thousands of dollars such an undertaking requires...

...I am ready to live that day and do my work...

...Why do I know so little about history...

...I've said that before and better...

...Benedict's grade school and the Marianists at Cathedral Latin High in Cleveland, Marquette did their work well...

...If you want those new commercials to sell some cars, here is the man who can do the job for you, continued the agent...

...While I do make a great effort to choose good subjects-and to carry out that mandate to make this world a better place by virtue of the information I will impart-my work day is strangely devoid of any feeling of transcendence or a sense that I am actually doing any good at all...

...I'm not that sure that the millions of words that I have committed to paper or the documentaries I have made or the classes I have taught have changed anyone or indeed made this a better time and place, but I haven't forgotten what was drummed into me in my more formative years...

...When I am on a college campus, I find the chapel...

...I sit in a church...

...And with Communion, I am confronted with the awesome reality that the God who made the sand, the dinosaurs, apples, my family, and me is about to enter my body...

...Not that everything I've worked on has been infused with meaning or worth-my clips reveal many stories about the fleeting and the inane (from movie starlets to basketball players to corporate wars...

...What shall it profit a man if he...

...They do not want to know of me, they want to know of my subject, and only when I prove to be an inadequate conduit between subject and audience am I noticed...

...Why can't I get this right...

...Does this description work...

...What reaction will it produce...

...The most important, most powerful, most loving Being ever comes to me in that tiny piece of unleavened bread...

...God is far away...

...Hardly...

...The Trappists are especially wonderful: they pause after readings and unhurriedly say the prayers so that a person can join in without that breathless, impatient pace that seems endemic to many Sunday Masses...

...my past omissions, commissions, and general stupidities are now history...

...The worker hired at the beginning of the day or the end...

...The Ford Motor Company, the agent said in a low and reverent voice, might be the lucky car maker to have Paul Wilkes draped over the hood of its new models...

...The boss in the vineyard...

...What's wrong...

...I am not made of strong stuff...

...A year later, I watched a videotape of a morning talk show for which I was a summer replacement as host and saw a glib, supercilious, shallow but uncomfortably enticing me...

...I, on the other hand, may have worked in vain and nothing of that day's efforts will ever appear or be of use (coal, on the other hand, never had to pass an editor's muster), but because I felt the subject itself was worthwhile, my work was not a waste...

...Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts...

...I sit with my friend...

...Yes, I can still remember the Dalai Lama's wonderful laugh and clear-eyed look, but those dozens of tiny pills for dysentery, and night terrors about road dust in our camera are equally vivid...

...For most of those days, I was acutely aware that I was probably wasting time, that my questions were blunt instruments with which I was flogging him and not fluttering wings on which he could soar...

...I just want to be the best craftsman I can in whatever tasks I perform that day...

...I am genuinely worried...

...I have written silly book proposals and screenplays that, thank God, never garnered much interest...

...I have never been a big fan of experimental liturgies and folk Masses, and while good preaching is a bonus, I prefer the quiet and solitude of weekday Mass...

...And with those rejections, I was inevitably steered back to projects that turned out to be somewhat more worthwhile-a profile of a parish priest, a film on Thomas Merton, a novel about a man's spiritual search, a book of essays on people I consider inspirational, a business school's ethics course...

...Besides, I will not be in the room when it happens...

...But getting to the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala required months of frustrating dealings with the government of India-one of the world's most highly developed bureaucracies-a brutal six-teen-hour van ride over poor roads, and the guarantee of weeks of dysentery...