Our American Wisdom Project at William & Mary and our Virginia House Project with Colonial Williamsburg have lately brought us a new circle of students and readers, many of whom are naturally unfamiliar with the long search that led to this place in our Foundation’s work. For long-accustomed intimates of that journey, our proof is in the pudding, with no further explanation of purpose required. But with each new circle reached, we welcome the opportunity to give an account of ourselves, however hopelessly.
In the language of that wonderful story by Hawthorne, we are Artists of the Beautiful, the benefit of whose work, even if it fly to the ends of the earth, cannot be pragmatically defined. To know us over time is to allow our work to proceed loosely understood as an Art of Life lived in public, a kind of outward keeping of the inward fire, for the most ineffable things can too easily be defined right out of existence.
Now, that kind of transcendental talk may pass naturally enough with the transcendentalists among us. And perhaps it is natural that it should receive a warm reception at William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, for they are in many ways our locally transcendental forebears. It even passes at the Registry of Charitable Trusts.
Only when we cross one of those unpredictable thresholds of new acquaintance where a password is required, do we newly cast about for something resembling a conventional statement of mission. Happily, we have a brilliantly articulate body of advisors and friends who are always delighted to take up the challenge from their own point of view. Last week I had occasion to look back over a few years of those statements as we feel our way yet again toward another Unstatement of Unmission.
The first goes back seven years. It is the draft statement we used in working documents before we were granted our 501c3 nonprofit status. Even now, it's not too bad:
The Innermost House Foundation is a nonprofit organization conceived as a living experiment in the transcendental strain of "plain living and high thinking" in American life. Our special mission is to influence thought culture and promote public awareness of the transcendental dimension in our laws and institutions, literature and arts, natural history and philosophy, spirituality and wilderness. This we propose to pursue through sponsored scholarship, published writings, film and photography, public speaking and conversation forums, employing both traditional and electronic media.