Sweat and Edging

Monday afternoon was warm, feeling more like June than mid-April, and I was working up a sweat.

The task, which demanded the use of my whole body, was edging.  Edging, if I am honest, is one of those things that isn't technically necessary,   Nice, neat, clearly defined boundaries to the driveway and the sidewalk are more a matter of personal preference than some pressing exigency.  Given that I really don't mind that my lawn is a heterogeneous blend of grasses and chickweed, it seems a little silly to desire neat linear boundaries around that mottled miscellany of variant green hues and tiny flowers.  

But I do.  It's so satisfying.

I tend to use a string trimmer to edge, but as the years have progressed, the lawn has begun to make incursions onto the concrete nevertheless, soil and groundcover spreading out onto the sidewalk.  Not much, mind you.  Just an inch or two on either side.  There was still plenty of sidewalk.  But it was losing that tidyness that makes a well edged lawn so satisfying, a marker that all is in order, in the way that a perfectly made bed can some days feel like the only sanctuary from the chaos of life.

So I was doing some more aggressive edging to re-establish the boundaries.  Power edgers are the way of the American suburb now, because they get the job done far quicker and with less effort.  Just drop a hundred and sixty to four hundred bucks, and the task will be complete before you know it.

I wasn't doing that.  I was using a metal t-bar attached to a flat blade.  No battery.  No gas.  Just me, my middle aged back and arms and legs, and my middle aged mass pressing down.  I'd line the blade up to a prior cut, then step down hard, then pull the blade from the earth, then repeat.  Ten inches at a time, slowly and surely working my way down the sidewalk.  It took about an hour.

I was not Optimized.  I was not Efficient.  I was Going to Feel It Later.  I could have been Using My Time More Productively.  Let a machine do it, whispered our culture.  You have better things to do.

Do I?  What better thing is there than to work in one's garden on a spring afternoon?

We recoil at the idea that machine minds can now do all of our thinking for us, that our minds will atrophy away into nothing if there is literally nothing left for us to do.  But this loss didn't begin with AI.  If machines do everything for us, if mechanisms and conveniences mean that we never once need to strain and feel the sweat blossoming on our brows, we lose all that comes with work that is incarnate, enfleshed, and that uses the living form we've been given.  That work has value.  It's real.  And being in the world has other collateral benefits.

During that hour, I talked with passing neighbors.  "Doing it old school, I see," said one.  "Yup.  Good exercise on a beautiful afternoon," I replied, and she smiled.

I heard the squeals of delight as children up the street ran around in circles, chasing one another across their yard, delighting in the blessing of being embodied.

Work, understood rightly, can be just as satisfying.

Mac and Cheese

That each of them may eat and drink, 

and find satisfaction in all their toil

—this is the gift of God. 

 Ecclesiastes 3:13

Last night I spent a little over an hour making mac and cheese.  

It's a recipe we've prepared before, and it requires a whole bunch of effort.  Butternut squash must be peeled, cubed, and roasted, and then blended up in a food processor.  After that, it's mixed with the macaroni and a buttery nutmeg/rosemary infused sauce in a large pan.  From there, it's poured into a casserole dish, topped with panko and baked.

It requires a significant period of sustained focus, as do many recipes, and at the end of the process, you have...mac and cheese.  Delicious, flavorful, utterly satisfying, it's vastly better than the boxed and powdered equivalent.  

But it takes five times more time to prepare than a buck-fifty box of Kraft.  It is inconvenient.  It provides no immediate gratification.  It is not easy to the point of mindlessness.

As I puttered about in the kitchen, sipping an inexpensive Cabernet with a chill synth-jazz theremin album humming through my headphones, I wondered at how we use our time and effort.

Because making the meal was work.  It required effort towards a singular purpose over time.  I was required to focus, measuring out ingredients, prestaging them neatly in bowls and cups.  Given the ingredients, that effort went back even further.  The butternut squash was my own, a cupboard-stored winter squash from my late fall harvest.  The tablespoon of chopped rosemary was clipped fresh from one of the two plants in my herb garden, five minutes before it was tossed into the pan.

The meal drew fractionally from many, many hours of labor, digging and composting, seedsaving and planting, watering and weeding.  A portion of the sweat of years, all contributing to the table. 

To what better use could I have put that time?  Because the gardening was a pleasure, and the preparation was a pleasure, and the meal was a pleasure.

Should I have been doomscrolling instead?  Or passively consuming a prepackaged entertainment?  

That would have robbed me of the delight of the work of my hands, and the flavor of time well-spent.

A Taste of Fire and Water

It had been an unseasonably warm day in Garrett County, where my in-laws have had a vacation home since the mid-1980s.  Late December and upper 40s to lower fifties, barely even jacket weather, which is the new normal now.  But the forecast was for a storm front, followed by temperatures plunging.  

As the wind howled and the first waves of sleet fell, we were comfortable and unaffected.  On the agenda for the day was going out to a nearby brewpub, where we were to meet up with another family for pizza and hoppy beverages.

The trees roared and thrummed, and the roads were strewn with branches, but it wasn't a big deal.  We gathered at the brewery, chatting and reconnecting, ordering appetizers and meals and insulated from the storm, as bitter winds drove the temperature to below freezing.

Then the pub lights flickered, flickered again, and went out.  The restaurant was without power, which meant no heat and no light.   The pizza ovens were still going, though, and overhead skylights meant we could see, so we continued with our pleasant lunch.  Things did cool down a bit, and new patrons were turned away, but it was still enjoyable.  Paying was a bit more of a challenge, but the battery powered card readers had an emergency offline mode, so that proved surmountable.

We returned to the houses, the one we own and the one we were renting nearby, and discovered some challenges.  The wind had blown open a door in our house, the one where the family dogs were awaiting our return.  None had scarpered it, because they prefer warm and cozy to cold driving winds, rain, and sleet.  But the house was colder.  The rental house had an electronic door lock, which wasn't working.

One dark cold house, one dark inaccessible house.    

The colder house has a woodburning fireplace, and I set about getting a fire going.  It's got a terrible draw, and is a bit finicky to get roaring, but once it's going, it'll heat the entire house up.  Folks gathered around the hearth, and I tended the fire until it had enough ember and fuel to be left for a little while.  I set myself to the next task: water.

Not for drinking, but for flushing.  Being off of municipal water, the house has a well, and that well relies on a pump to pressurize the system.  No power means no pressure, and that means each toilet has one flush only.  Which, given the meal, the libations, and the eleven souls in one house, was not going to be enough.  I mean, one could squat in the woods, I suppose, but that seemed a bit unpleasant with sleet and sixty mile and hour gusts.

So water had to be secured, and I knew where to get it.  Up the street from the house is a fire pond.  Down I went with two buckets, which I filled with pondwater.  Back to the house I went, a bucket in each hand.  I filled the tank in one of the bathrooms, and then refilled it as folks did their business.  That proved enough for three flushes.  On the third fill in the darkened bathroom, I considered the possibility this could yet take several more hours, and began the ten minute process of water gathering again.

Trudging back, I noticed lights in other homes flickering for a moment, then powering off, then flickering again and remaining on.

By the time I returned to the house, I was greeted with cheery affirmations that yes, the power was back.  My buckets, unnecessary.  Lights and Wifi and all the comforts had returned.

As I dumped the buckets, I thought: how many millions live like this, all of the time?  Find water.  Make fire.  Find water.  Tend fire.   Walks down to rivers and streams or a common well.  Collecting fuel for the fire, whatever can be found.  All day, every day, that's the task, if life is to be sustained.

There is so much that we take for granted.

Pick Up Sticks

With the winter now almost upon us, the days are short and the nights are cold, and that means fires in our hearth many nights.  We've got an old-school woodburning fireplace, which...now that it's been supplemented by a hefty cast iron fireback...really does keep the heart of the house nice and toasty.

Not being a gas fireplace, it requires a fair amount of effort to get going and manage, and that includes not just acquiring wood and keeping a stock of matches, but kindling.  Kindling is absolutely key, as the building of a proper fire cannot happen without it.

As a tiny and pyrophilic pup, I'd pay close attention as my father set the fire, and he'd happily describe the necessary process for getting a good roaring blaze going.  Three stages were necessary, as I came to understand it.  First, ignition kindling, something one had in quantity that would catch quickly and burn fast.  Newspaper, crumpled and pressed into a bed?  That was ideal.  But if you only used newspaper and split logs, the paper would burn off before the wood caught.  So you needed an intermediate stage, which was a big mess of twigs and sticks and small branches.  They all needed to be dry, inside and out, the sort of sticks that break with a snap rather than bending.

Gathering those sticks was a child's job.  Go, O my Son, and gather kindling, that we might have a fire! Yes, O my venerable Father, I shall do so!  Or so that conversation never went, as I was sent scampering out into the yard to find appropriately sized bits of tree-fall.  That pattern continued with my own sons when they were little.

It's a perfectly kid-sized task, one with clear benefits and purpose.  The goal is achievable.  It engages mind and body, and the results are warmth and coziness.  On a particularly good night, when one is making S'mores, the acquisition of a good marshmellow roasting stick can be added to the mission.

Yesterday, I was thinking all of these things as I wandered through our wooded back yard.  The day was warm, almost unseasonably so, but the forecast was for rain, followed by a stark drop in temperature.  So if there was to be a fire, I'd need a good stock of wood bits to get it going.

In between housework, writing, and church work, I took a few minutes to putter about in the yard, gathering sticks.  Our kids are grown, and so the labor of gathering kindling falls to me.  It doesn't take long, less than ten minutes of bending and picking up.  My eyes flit across the ground, assessing every option, choosing a blend of sizes and thicknesses that fill a small bucket.  Occasionally, I'll test a questionable stick, keeping it if it snaps, tossing it into the ivy if it does not.

As I gather, I also consider this: I am a grown man, doing a child's work.  It's ten fifteen on a Thursday morning, and I'm not in a meeting or working on a memo or analyzing data or reviewing the work of my AI assistant.  I'm picking up sticks.  Am I bothered by this?

I am not.  Nor should I be.  It's true that it's a rudimentary task, blissfully simple.  It's not something one gets paid to do, so basic that it runs beneath the valuations of the marketplace.  But it also has a radiantly clear purpose, and a definitive outcome.  Your labor is necessary for the hearth, and the hearth warms the house.  It's the sort of task that gives us a sense that work has meaning, and that it has intrinsic value.

How much of how we fill our days is as obviously useful, and has such a pleasant result?

Beans and Berries and Sweat on the Brow

This morning, as the sun crested the small rise to the East, I was out in my garden picking the last of the blueberries. 

 The day was going to be fiercely hot, stinky sticky smothering hot, with humidity in the eighties and real temperatures potentially cresting one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.  It's the sort of day when spending time outside is best done early, the sort of day when the heat doesn't dissipate with the setting of the sun. 

The last of the succulent deep-purple berries hung fat on my bushes, though, and my greenbeans were poppin', so there was harvesting to be done.  After walking the dog, drinking my coffee, and attending briefly to the daily mess of world news, I took a couple of shiny metal bowls out into the yard and started picking.

I'd already pulled a gallon and a half worth of berries off of our two bushes, and so there wasn't much left worth plucking.  Just about a cup of ripe fruit remained, the berries perfect and ready, popping off their stems with only the very lightest of effort.  The dull faint tink of each falling fruit against the bottom of the stainless steel bowl was pleasing to the ear, chiming to mark the sultry end of my blueberry season.  

Then it was on to my four by eight bean patch, where I squatted and plucked again, pinching beans from stems with thumb and forefinger.  My trusty old bush beans, seedsaved for nearly a decade, were starting to produce.  

As I picked, the heat continued to rise, and sweat prickled across my forehead beneath the shade of my hat-brim.  I felt the effort in my middle-aged thighs as I squatted, moving counterclockwise around the raised bed.  I peered into the dense interwoven foliage, gently parting it with my hand, eyes moving from bean to bean, my mind sorting between those that are ready and those worth leaving for another harvest later in the week.  About a half-gallon of beans today, filling my larger bowl.

It's simple work, physical and wholly engaging.  For forty five minutes or an hour before the heat of the day becomes too much, it's no great burden.  But for a whole day?  For eight hours, even with breaks?  It would be utterly exhausting, and the endurance required to work in the fields seems...to my flaccid suburban flesh...herculean.

Gardening, I reflected as I popped plump beans into my bowl, is a good reminder of what it takes to bring food to our tables.  It's the most fundamentally necessary labor, but also the labor that we've chosen to ignore as a society.  It's viewed as unworthy of our effort, as the most menial and lowly of tasks, to be performed by those at the very bottom of the economic food chain.   It is the work of migrants and the imprisoned, not that there seems much difference between those two categories in America these days.

That such labor is disrespected is an abomination.  That it is a thousand times less lucrative than dooping around with some AI-enhanced blockchain folderol seems a perversion of the order of things.  It's an inhuman and unnatural misvaluation.  As a substantial portion of our culture turns snarling against those whose sweat and strain feeds it, this seems a form of madness.  Is it seething resentment at our dependence, that we rely utterly upon the work of others, and that our "superiority" is nothing but a mask for our weakness?  Perhaps. 

Or perhaps we're just fools.

Perhaps we are as brimming with hubris as the Spartans, who imagined that their monomaniacal worship of Ares made them stronger than their slaves.  For without the humble helots who grew the crops and tended the livestock, all the martial disciplines of Leonidas wouldn't have kept him alive for a week.  Or are we like Midas, perhaps?  Are we about to break our teeth on grapes gone hard to our touch, feeling our thirst rise as we peer down at the unquenching metal of our Mammonists desire that now fills our glass?

A little less time in the false halls of golden delusion might clear our addled minds, and return us to right appreciation of the things that matter.  

A little more time in our gardens, with the fruit of the earth before us and sweet honest sweat on our brow. 

 

Work Breaks, the Law, and Sabbath Imperatives

It was Monday, and May-warm-lovely out, so it was a day for chores, both in the yard and in the house.

I don't mind them, to be honest, as they're just part of caring for one's little patch of land, but they do take energy.  I trimmed back bushes, cut back ivy, and cleared away the clippings.  I edged and mowed the front yard.  I emptied the kitchen compost bin into the compost pile, which I had turned with a pitchfork prior to burying that mess of semi-decomposed waste deep in the warm steaming pile.

It was the labor of an entire morning, and as I was my own boss, I took it at my own pace.

Being deep into the creaks and groans of middle age, that meant taking a pause every half hour or so.  I'd pop in the house for a sip of water, or to sit for a moment.  It'd be a minute or two or five, and then I'd bop back outside to get back into it.

That morning, I worked for about three hours.  I took at least three breaks of varying lengths.  When done, there were chores in the house...attacking the pile of dishes, vacuuming up the endless stream of hair that flows from our dog, walking said dog, feeding said dog, making dinner...and by the time the hour struck ten, I was ready to sleep.

Physical labor requires physical rest.  It's a basic reality.

Which is why I find myself fuddled by the latest kerfuffle coming from the big dangling nether states.  Texas and Florida legislatures have both recently made it illegal for counties to require water and rest breaks for farm workers.

Here, I confess to being of two minds.  Most of the souls whose hands and backs bring us our food are Latino, and many work here without the protections of citizenship.  There's a strong profit motivation for unscrupulous growers to take advantage of that status, knowing that people who fear summary arrest, detention, and deportation are far more likely to endure abusive work conditions.  Protecting those human beings would be best and first accomplished by providing a clear, sane, and open path to citizenship.  

As a still yet more important matter, ensuring humane working conditions seems necessary if you're not, well, evil.  If you can't run a business without inflicting harm on your workers, then that business is an abomination in the sight of the Lord.  Biblically speaking, I'm on solid ground here.

But...then there are the regulations being proposed.  'Cause the county regulations in question seem insufficient.  In Florida, they mandate one ten minute water and shade break every two hours.

This is...peculiar.  I mean, isn't it?  Am I wrong here?  I work outside in the summer on the regular, and that's just not quite enough, bro.  The hotter it gets, the more true that becomes.

Field work is physically intensive, and when temperatures rise into the 90s and 100s  (that's in the thirties, for the rest of the world), you've got to have water available all the time.  You've got to take shade breaks whenever you're feeling pressed.  When it's humid out, that gets even harder.

An employer who didn't provide access to water and shade as needed in the conditions that will increasingly become the norm in the American South wouldn't be doing their workers any favors.  With temperatures rising due to climate change (words redacted for Florida readers), any farmer or rancher who worked to the rule would find their workers struggling.  

Sure, the argument that county-by-county regulations are too scattershot might have validity.  But is it a real argument? Are the folks making that argument arguing for clearer federal and state level regulations, or suggesting that business should be utterly free?  Are they arguing that the biblical injunction to give adequate sabbath to laborers and to never ever oppress or profit maximize doesn't apply, because Reasons?

Then something rather different is at play.  

A Spoonful of Singing

It was a bright spring morning, still a little crisp, but with the promise of warmth.  As the morning light spilled into my little neighborhood, I heard the sound of singing.  

It wasn't, truth be told, the most tuneful noise.  It rode in with the arrival of a garbage truck, and the vocalist wasn't particularly concerned with either tonal or lyrical accuracy.  His voice, a baritono alto, was belting out bits and bobs of some popular Latino music, and what it lacked in precision and consistency it made up for in exuberance.  

As the truck rumbled down the hill towards our house, the singer came into view.

They weren't stopping at every house, as this was evidently a garden waste pickup, and so the truck was booking along at a healthy pace.  He was young and eager and wearing headphones, hanging as far off the back of the truck as he could, one arm extended out to catch the breeze.  It slowed as it approached the house of a neighbor who'd set out the correct materials.

As they approached the bins, he leapt off, still singing along to whatever he was listening to.  Grabbing a can, he dumped it rhythmically into the maw of the crusher, clearly timing his motions with the music.

He returned the bin to the curb with a playful flick, then ran to his place on the truck.  He leapt up to grab the rear bar with all the pleasure of a child jumping aboard a merry-go-round, and as the truck pulled away, he leaned again into the wind.  He extended his arm and open hand to play through the rush of air as he disappeared down the street, still serenading the morning like a trash truck Julie Andrews.

It's amazing how an attitude can change the flavor of our day.

Labor and Vocation

It's Labor Day, and on this Labor Day, I'm looking at a new job.  Starting the first Sunday in October, I'll be making that ride out to Poolesville on a far more frequent basis, as I take the position of Supply Pastor at Poolesville Presbyterian Church.  

By some of the more commonly used metrics of employment, some folks might look at the transition I'm making with befuddlement.

The salary is...like my current small church...indexed to the minimum acceptable to Presbytery.  As this is a half-time position and my current position is three-quarter-time, well, you do the math.   It's less money.  The commute goes from twenty minutes without traffic to one hour and ten without traffic.  Each way.   

Less pay?  Longer commute?   And yet, I'm totally psyched.

Being the mutant that I am, salary levels just don't matter to me.  Well, that's not entirely true.  What matters to me is twofold.  First, that salary be sufficient to allow me to shoulder a fair share of the costs of maintaining a household.  As the husband of a working woman, I'm not the sole income provider, eh?  This salary will be sufficient for that.  Second, that salary should be fair relative to what you're doing.  I love pastoring, and marvel that it is even possible to preach and teach the Gospel and talk about the meaning and purpose of our existence...and receive compensation.  This does tend to put me at a bit of a negotiating disadvantage.  Pesky thing about vocation, I guess.  It's so much more than just a "job."

The commute matters.  Too many Americans have come to assume that those two hours a day they spend in traffic are fine and normal.   If I had to make this commute every day, it might get old fast.  But...I'm not.  Nor does the church expect me to.  It's twice a week.  Any other work, like emailing, texting, prepping sermons and talking on the phone and doing reports and creating web-content, that can be done remotely.  And at twice a week, the gorgeous country roads that lead to Poolesville feel like a retreat in and of themselves, particularly in the saddle of a motorcycle.  I'd ride that ride for the good of my soul.

Then there are the benefits, and by benefits, I don't mean pension and major medical.  I mean those other intangibles that make your work feel less like work.  Like, say, a community that laughs easily, and that radiates interpersonal warmth.  Or a place that recognizes the need for human beings to be flexible with one another, and values a life lived in balance.  When I say I need time to care for kids, and to work on doctoral studies, and to write...it's good to see nods around the table. 

Work does not exist for the sake of work, after all.