Smudge and the Book of Mistakes (4 page)

Brother Gregory took up his brushes. As he worked, he groaned, he sighed, his forehead was pleated with wrinkles.

Frightened, Smudge asked, “Is there something wrong, Brother Gregory?”

“It is a pleasure to do one's best, Smudge, but there is also pain in the effort, for you always wish your work better than it is. Do you not find that is so?”

Smudge did. Wanting to make each letter perfect was a great strain, but when the well-formed letter stood there in all its black glory the pleasure was worth the pain.

 

There was no telling where Brother Gregory would find subjects for his drawings. When he was painting the scene of the stable where the Christ child lay, he studied the monastery's farm animals, the chickens and sheep and the monastery donkey. Even the monastery cats and the mice they chased found their way into his paintings.

One day a fly flew into the cell and Brother Gregory put it into a border he was painting.

“The image of a fly in a sacred illumination?” Smudge was shocked.

“Ah, Smudge,” Brother Gregory said, “everything around us speaks of God's glory and the ordinary and simple things most of all.”

It was on the Feast of Saint Ita that Smudge made a mistake.

To celebrate the feast day the monks had honey with their bread. Eager to return to work Smudge did not take time to wash his hands. He picked up his goose quill and began to form a new paragraph beginning with the letter
B
. It was one of his favorites, for he loved its bumpiness.

The quill clung to his sticky fingers and the bumps in the
B
were two different sizes. The top bump was big and generous and the bottom bump was puny and stingy.

“Oh, Brother Gregory!” Smudge wailed. “Just look at the mistake I have made! I have ruined your beautiful sheet of parchment.”

Brother Gregory frowned. He was as silent as the moment before a storm when the winds take a great gulp and get ready to blow. Smudge trembled.

Brother Gregory took up his brush. In the top bump he painted a flower in full bloom. In the bottom bump a delicate leaf.

“Always try to make an opportunity of your mistake, Smudge, and not a regret.”

On Christmas morning the abbot and the monks gathered in the chapel. There was a special feast in honor of the day: apples for everyone, whortleberry jam on thick slabs of bread, cider to drink instead of water. Brother Gregory stood before the abbot, the manuscript of the finished Christmas Story in his hands.

The ancient and stubborn abbot was relieved to find that though the story was finished, he, himself, was very much alive. Could angels make a mistake? Probably not, but surely they could change their minds.

He looked at the familiar words put before him. The first letter of each paragraph had a small and perfect picture of the story the paragraph told. All the other letters were shapely and flawless. In a sinful show of pride he told himself no other monastery could boast a manuscript as fine as this one.

The abbot marveled at how a handful of letters could be placed first one way and then another to form words and the words used to make thoughts. Without words, thoughts would disappear and the whole world would have to begin each day with no lesson learned. Without letters there would be no knowledge of the Christmas promise made and the Christmas promise kept.

 

Smudge (now known as Brother Cuthbert) became the monastery's official scribe but he still looked the same. His robe still trailed on the floor, his sleeves covered his hands, his hood fell over his face. And like the rest of us, all his life he made mistakes.