We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Gregory a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
David, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I entered college as a biochemistry major, but found myself completely disenchanted with the physical sciences within a couple of months, as I took requisite philosophy and theology courses alongside my pre-med stuff. My philosophy professor, a fellow by the name of Frank Ambrosio, informed our first class in “The Beginning of Philosophy” that “philosophy is the practice of dying well”. I couldn’t sleep that night, and realized that if I really wanted to get into the medical sciences, I could do so after college, but I wanted to learn how to die well.
After finishing with a double major in philosophy and theology (I graduated from Georgetown, a Catholic university affiliated with the Society of Jesus, an order better known as the “Jesuits”), I entered the Jesuits to become a priest. The Jesuits are known for being very involved with education, and my Jesuit mentors and professors were the most generous, funniest, brilliant, and kindest folks I knew. They lived well, at least according to a very different sort of standards in the eyes of many, and so I thought that meant they would die well also. I spent two wonderful years in the Jesuit novitiate, but was kicked out for non-scandalous reasons before I professed perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; poverty and chastity are the easy ones, but I just wasn’t built for obedience.
I entered the Jesuits because I saw myself becoming a priest-educator: as it turns out, my existential fulfillment comes from helping to nurture young adults into their humanities, and I didn’t need to become a priest to do that well. I spent 11 years in weird little Catholic high schools, teaching theology to students who were mostly neither Catholic nor religious, and wound up writing a dissertation on how theology teachers in Catholic high schools educate religiously diverse students.
All that is not a direct answer to the question at hand, but it is important context for my self-understanding: I never saw myself becoming an entrepreneur, and I have no desire to participate in late stage capitalism. I’m sort of a self-hating neo-Marxist, and I literally could not care less about selling wine, apart from the fact that having a business allows my family to be fed and housed, and allows us to provide just wages to our employees, some of whom are former students.
Where do I find my purpose? Certainly not in selling for the sake of profit. My wine shop and bar, called “Ora et Labora,” is named as an homage to the monastic tradition of winemaking, as monks throughout Europe gave us wine as we know it, in many ways. This is the Latin motto of the Benedictine and Cistercian monks, the orders primarily responsible for cultivating the vine throughout Europe, and translates to “prayer and labor.” Wine results from the interweaving of human toil working with things outside of our control, and we love both the symbolism and the historical connection behind the name.
In sum, my purpose is not so much entrepreneurship as it is creating a space where people feel welcome down to their bones. We find meaning in exposing our customers to wines from small, family-owned wineries, who subsist on the twofold passions of growing grapes and making wine. Wine is the medium, but not the goal.
On a much more personal level, as a Catholic, I’m beginning to understand what monks are about when it comes to hospitality. Saint Benedict wrote over 1500 years ago that his monks were to accept every guest as Christ. Fail as I might, I hope that I do the same for our patrons. I hope that I provide a human connection to those I am fortunate to meet.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I answered much of this question already, but my favorite parts about my shop are the following.
First, we support family-owned wineries and local independent winemakers. We’re not focused on helping large corporations get larger, and so we avoid big brands owned by conglomerates. Second, we opened OEL to be a place focused on wine education, and I get to teach wine education classes on a weekly basis.
Wine is ultimately a thing of intellectual hedonism and hedonic intellectualism. I geek out over history, geography, and winemaking, the vast majority of which is not of interest to the average consumer. But that’s what enraptured me about wine, and I am so grateful that I get to help people do the same. This said, wine is about pleasure. It’s been made for thousands of years because it helps people enjoy their lives on a wide variety of levels. I hope we can bring light and joy to people’s lives through the pursuit of pleasure in moderation,
We’re constantly bringing in winemakers, hosting classes, and so on. It never ends!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I’m so glad I had teachers who taught me how to read well, write well, speak well, and think well. Cultivating attention to the most minute details in writing and reading and thinking critically are invaluable, and can be learned in the engagement of any academic discipline. The vast majority of us do not work in fields directly to our formal areas of academic study, but no doubt our academic paths influence us in untold ways. Studying the humanities liberated my mind, and taught me how to engage the world around me with sincerity and intentionality.
Second, when I was a kid I had a terrible stutter. I couldn’t complete a sentence, and was a very awkward pre-teen. However, a magic shop opened near my house, and I got into magic to the point I became a competitive close-up card magician. Doing tricks for people taught me how to communicate, how to listen, how to engage, and all that. But there are reasons I had no issues with celibacy.
Third, I am grateful that I spent years learning about and teaching religion and theology. Religious or secular, we all believe in non-falsifiable things, and we all have to choose what sort of ethics we base our lives around. Theology, and the reality of human belief, are at the heart of what makes us tick. Is theology practical? Yes and no, to the extreme. It doesn’t get most folks jobs, but it does teach us about the deepest realities of human existence, and how we engage mystery.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
The primary challenge I’m facing is one of balancing time between family and this nascent business, which seems to go through some sort of major expansion (“major” being relative for a small business) every number of months. Sarah and I welcomed our second kiddo into the world back in February, and so we’re at the point now where Sarah’s able to come into the shop more and more, as our four year-old is in preschool.
When we opened our shop, we thought it would be more of a bottle shop than a bar, as we wanted to make sure that the business did not negatively impact our family life. However, as any small business owner will attest: this stuff is more time-consuming than one would think, and it’s really, really challenging to adjust our offerings to meet the demands of the market that we serve while still maintaining a work/life balance.
We’re just constantly working on ways to work more efficiently.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.oraetlabora.wine
- Instagram: @oelwineshop
Image Credits
Stephanie Kotaniemi (photos)
Karen Farmer (watercolor)
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
