This morning, over pain a la ancienne and strong coffee with cream, I read a striking passage in a book of essays by Wendell Berry. I turned it over in my head a few times — it seemed right, and timely, working as I am right now full-time on launching a new project. Here it is:

I used to think of meaning as something that one had recourse to — a touchstone or a base. Now it seems to me that unless an act or an occupation is suffused with meaning, constantly and indivisibly meaningful, it is meaningless. It is not possible to work at meaningless work, and then go home or to church or to a museum and experience meaning, as one would recharge a battery. The model would be the life of the primitive hunter or farmer, whose work was never divided from ceremony.