THE
P RTAL
February 2016
Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
Standing or sitting
Dr Stephen Morgan muses upon the fact that
Blessed John Henry Newman stood at his desk
to write his Apologia pro vita sua
addishness - a neologism which my computer’s spell-checker doesn’t recognise, incidentally -
F
characterises much of modern life. Driven by the need for the editors of glossy magazines and Sunday
newspaper “Lifestyle” sections, it seems as if every week a new practice of food or attitude is prescribed as
the way to a happy, more successful and (inevitably) more prosperous life. I am told that recently the panacea
for all our ills, for the growing obesity crisis arising from our sedentary jobs, has become the standing desk.
No longer are we to sit comfortably on our office
stools and chairs - conscious ever of our core muscles
and the need to maintain good posture - but, it seems,
now we are to stand at high-writing desks as we draft
our emails and populate our spreadsheets’ little preformatted cells.
was still wet. Not yet it is a mark of the genius and
evident holiness of Newman, as he wrote one of
the great spiritual autobiographies of the Christian
tradition, that there is barely an awkward phrase, an
ill-judged expression or an unmeasured opinion.
Standing at his desk, seized of an urgent compulsion
to answer Kingsley’s libel, John Henry Newman
combined penetrating self-understanding with
charitable assessments of others, in an account that is
both complete and concise: a genuine “great book” of
human culture.
This, it is said, will make us more efficient, less
inclined to wallow in indecision, slumped over
our blotters like so many slaves over the oars of the
Venetian galleys, and, what is more, will ensure that
we burn more calories without even noticing it. There
For most of us, the risk of standing desks and
is nothing new under the sun, as the author of the
a proper sense of urgency is that we won’t give
book of Ecclesiastes might have put it.
important business, that crucial sensitive letter,
Of course, there are those for whom standing at a the difficult problem the leisured consideration it
desk is made necessary by a medical condition - one deserves. Few can have escaped the growing sense
such works in our diocesan offices - and most of us are of regret, turning to shamed dread that comes from
aware that, at least since the time of Queen Victoria, having dashed off a quick response to an email on a
that most curious survival of the medieval Curia Regis, contentious matter. Suetonius tells us that Octavian Caesar Augustus - was a meticulous planner, whose
the Privy Council has met standing.
favouring Greek expression was speude bradeos,
I have even removed the tables and chair from which the Roman historian rendered by the more
board rooms when chairing meetings to effect the familiar festina lente.
same dispatch in dealing with important, yet routine
Our magpie tongue has rendered this prosaically as
business, which the resident bore might turn into an
“make haste slowly” or more poetically in the aphorism
opportunity to expatiate at length on trivial items.
“more haste, less speed”. There are those who can stand
When he felt obliged, compelled even, to respond at their desks, churning out measured responses to
to the allegations of insincerity levelled at him by the daily avalanche of rude, badly constructed, crass
Charles Kingsley, in a little over six weeks John Henry emails that arrive through the ether. Most of us aren’t
Newman wrote his Apologia pro vita sua. He wrote it able to do so and, pace Lifestyle gurus, that doesn’t
standing, at a high writing desk that you may, if you make us bad people. A comfortable chair, or do we
ask the fathers of the Birmingham Oratory politely, stand at our desks?
see in the library of the Oratory House on the Hagley
Once in a while, however, it does us good to be
Road.
reminded that some, even the very great, have ways of
The story is that the printer was so keen to have doing things which they, at least, are able to do without
the manuscript that his messenger-boy would take the evident down-side risks attendant upon those
the completed sheets from the desk whilst the ink practices for us lesser mortals.
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