Who holds the pen?
Jens holds the pen.
In the early 2000s, after the first skirmishes in my career were over, I found my way unexpectedly into the least glamorous job in the burgeoning mobile phone industry…managing returns and repairs for a European-wide mobile phone retailer.
For three years, I spent my days at the pick face of distribution centers, mobile phone repair hubs, and the back rooms of retail stores, trying to lessen customer dissatisfaction and lower the cost of broken screens, glitchy software, and non-functioning on/off buttons.
As I said,…officially the least glamorous job in what was fast becoming the world’s most glamorous and valuable industry.
…and I loved every minute of it.
Billund in Denmark. Home to Lego…and mobile phone repair centers
Those three years will always hold a particularly cherished place in my memory.
I left a clue as to why in the opening paragraph. My employer was “European-wide,” and I was responsible for all repairs and returns in Europe, which meant that those days spent groveling around in the back rooms of stores were spent groveling around back rooms in Paris, Madrid, and Stockholm.
Those grim repair centers were in Leipzig, Billund, and Muenster. And the whole of Europe was one huge distribution network for which I had a license to roam with a British Airways Club Card, a European Railcard, and a company expense account.
What my days lacked in glamour, my nights more than made up for. I could lay claim to watching opera in Vienna, International soccer matches at the Bernabeu in Madrid (and in every major city), knowing my way around the Louvre, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, and being ‘in’ on where to find great salted cod in Lisbon.
And that was just the weeknights. On the weekends, I could find my way to ski slopes, beaches, mountains, and even Monaco for the Grand Prix, tying the whole thing together with curiosity, overnight train trips, and a nose for the new. One year, I got in over 20 days of skiing without burning a single day of my vacation allowance.
Checkpoint Charlie Museum, Berlin documents extraordinary efforts at escape from the Soviet bloc.
It really was as great as it sounds and made even more enjoyable by the friendships I struck up with the people I worked with daily. I genuinely liked my colleagues in every country I visited, enjoyed their quirks (personal and cultural), and learned from their numerous ways of setting about and accomplishing the same kinds of tasks in a smorgasbord of nationally distinct ways.
I looked forward to visiting each of the nine countries I was responsible for, in its turn, but possibly none more so than Sweden.
I could give you any number of reasons why. Such as, the Swedes ate Reindeer in evocatively lit restaurants, and Are, the most under-rated ski resort in Europe, was a romantic over-Friday-night train ride away for 6 months of the year…but high up on the list would be hanging out with Jens, my counterpart there.
Jens was dry-witted, thoughtful, diligent, and exceptionally hard-working. His repairs and returns business was under complete control and recognized as a positive asset to the company. Nothing bad, unexpected, or even faintly resembling a crisis ever happened in Sweden. (A claim that I couldn’t make for most of the other stops on my tour of duty.)
Jen’s organization of meetings was either the result of or (more likely) the reason for this. He was the undisputed European champion of the pre-meeting agenda and the post-meeting minutes, which he would write with unerring accuracy and care. Our meetings would always run to the set agenda, and Jen’s notes and action register would reliably determine our next steps.
He who holds the pen, holds the power
Within an hour of any meeting, his neat and concise notes and next steps would be circulated in Swedish and English, identifying the attendees, their contributions, and assigned actions. Jen’s name would always appear twice on the attendee list; first for his role in the meeting and second after the designation; “Holding the Pen.”...aka “The Note Taker.”
Regardless of the meeting’s contents or constituents, Jen’s made it his business to always be “holding the pen.” What, for most of us, would have been a boring chore forcing us to pay complete attention, for Jens, was, if not a pleasure, certainly the meat and potatoes of getting the job done.
He would have fought us to do it. So we were happy to let him.
After one particularly long, dry meeting about OEM warranty repair repayment rates (I said it was unglamorous work) for which I was unlikely to have the stomach to read the notes, let alone write them. I asked him, “Jen’s, how come you’re always holding the pen? You could get other people to do that, you know.”
His reply, delivered with a conspiratorial wink, has become a favorite life-navigating aphorism.
“Andy, ‘he who holds the pen, holds the power’.”
The person who “holds the pen” records the history. They determine what gets discussed, what is recorded as important, what gets quietly dropped, and, importantly, who is assigned which tasks after the event.
What looks like the job of a subordinate is, in the hands of the determined “pen holder,” the pivotal role. And with that pithy observation and brief explanation, Jens went back to writing up his notes and assigning me a few extra tasks for good measure.
“These words are trustworthy and true”
While it is true that the person holding the pen has the power, that power is lost if the record itself isn’t trustworthy and true. This week, we hand-copied Revelation 21. God reveals the new heaven and the new earth to John and commands him to write down his words so that we, millennia later, can know of his plan and find real hope in it.
God literally dictated his plan to John, just as he had to so many inspired writers before him. Setting everything down in writing so there could be no doubt as to his future plans and purposes. Because John wrote these words down then, we have them today to meditate on and to treasure.
John did not make any of these words up. He wrote them down faithfully as he was charged. He was “holding the pen” for God so that we could know his plan and play our part.
Bible Copy Club is “God’s word, in your hand.” In copying them out, we get closer to them than we can by reading and meditating on them alone. We experience them in new, more intimate ways. God’s word is always enduring and infallible.
Written in your hand, the version you have in front of you is also truly unique.
