His pleasure…

The corn here in east-central Iowa, in this, the near-edge of summer of 2009, is knee-high and growing inches by the day. And many an adjacent field, now, as for so many seasons before, is carpeted, if only ankle-high, in soybeans, leaves pale-green, the color so reminiscent of Vermont in so many a wistful and now-remembered spring.

And even if that is news to you, I suspect that you are more interested in where I have been, all these many months, ever since my blog whispered to a seeming close in November.

Short version of a long story: Six of ten physician faculty at my residency resigned, each one of them for very good reason, leaving the four survivors with so much more to do, not the least of it saving the residency itself. And yet, in good time, and for equally good reason, I, too, resigned, and so did yet another friend and faculty member. Only, in the end, I chose to stay on. Only because I could not give up teaching. Only because, maybe, just maybe, there is such a thing, feathered or not, as hope.

Nonetheless, all that I and my many colleagues endured these many months certainly deserved my resignation. And even though I have decided to remain on the faculty, it has cost me dearly, whether in terms of friends lost or in a path ahead made less certain, with my own desire to again be the writer I was wobbling in winds beyond my control, even as I continue to be the physician I am.

And yet here I am.

Still heading to work each day as physician and teacher. Still hoping again to be the writer I was. Still wishing that life might somehow become less complicated, somewhat less convoluted.

And yet, and yet, I so miss writing…

For those of you who knew me back when, I truly loved what I did.

For years, first on the staff of Doubleday and later at Time-Life Books, I went to work eager to prove every day that I could do what no other copywriter could do, not ever for ego, but only because I was aware of a certain gift, a gift that was mine to give in return.

Later still, as a freelancer, I had little choice but to excel as a writer, the better to keep my family roofed, clothed, in good health and in food. And, at some point, back in the mid-1980s, I started writing chapters for books, and, happily, editors liked what I wrote.

And always, always, as my bride Karen knows, whether I was writing those books or writing advertising, I wrote for that burn of a moment when I knew that I had done all that I ever could do, when there was nothing I myself could not do better, that moment analogous to that of the Scots runner in Chariots of Fire, who, against a verdant and scalloped backdrop, not unlike that of my own loved and lamented Vermont, confided to his sister, “I believe that God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

God, how I felt His pleasure. God, how I miss that today…

But, you ask, you’re now a physician, and isn’t there pleasure to be had in that?

There is.

But not like the pleasure I felt before as a scribbler.

Sure, patients appreciate to whatever extent whatever I do, and the residents, I want to think, are grateful for the teaching I do. And on most days I leave work having accomplished something greater than the effort invested.

But to again feel God’s pleasure…to feel His pleasure as once I did…to know that I had done the best on any day with the gifts given me…ah, to again do that, and so often…such is pleasure, His pleasure…and why I run..and fast.

© 2009 Dónal Kevin Gordon