ora et labora for a reluctant but patient novice...

For the past four days I have been living into the ora et labora rhythm of prayer

and work as summer ripens. Mostly it has been labora with a bit of ora thrown in for good measure. Our lovely wooden deck and back doors serve us well all year long. Over the past 13 years, however, they have been in constant use and this summer quietly called out for some in serious rebuilding. After all, they are well over 30 years old - and ours is an OLD house. An old wooden house in the rolling hills of New England. So while I am still older than our domicile, the wooden structure was brought into being in 1955 with modest wooden shingles that needs regular attention given the damp, snow, rain, wind and moss peculiar to these parts. In the past I worked on our parts of the deck with a dear and skilled friend. But in these days of corona contagion, it was time to fly solo - and, in doing so, I learned a few things.

+ A great number of things on this house are "irregular." That is partly due to changing building code standards, partly the handiwork of the highly talented previous owner, and partly the work of Satan. There can be no other explanation for why the wood molding around our doors measures 2 1/4" in width but you can only purchase 1" or 3" molding. Or why the local lumber yard will sell you all types of wood but will not cut it for length. For width, no problem. But ask to take 1" off a 3" board and now we're talking things forbidden which casts novice carpenters like myself into yet another circle of hell. When I expressed my distress, the very wise, very young and ultimately very stubborn clerk said, "Oh, you don't have a circular saw?" with a look that implied I probably did not have my parent's permission to be shopping let alone working with power tools.  He quickly added, "We have some on sale, you know..."  Oh yes, I nodded, I DID know, but refused to take the bait. Upon returning home I learned just how difficult it is to saw a straight line for 11 inches let alone 6 feet. Twice on this first day I struck out trying to do this and chose to cobble together another homemade solution that was far easier but not nearly as aesthetically satisfying. All the while I was counting on Bruce Springsteen's wisdom in "Human Touch" to save the day where he assures us that all it takes is "a little touch up and a bit of paint." But after nine hours, the jury was still out on the whether advice from the Boss on love can be transferred to wood working. Let's just say that I now have a new appreciation for the limits of beginner's mind. Building, demolishing and rebuilding two door's worth of molding and frames will do this to a soul. 

+ Carpentry for beginners ALWAYS takes twice as long as you anticipate - and always costs twice your budget. On day two there was much less cursing. There was a little more prayer as well as a variety of extended silences that were only interrupted by the deep sighs born of my aching back. I was moving at half speed on knees that now ached like an old man's. Ok, ok, I AM an old man - and I felt like one on day number two as my lower back engaged me in constant conversation and complaint. David Bromberg used to sing, "You've got to suffer if you want to sing the blues" and I made some stunning discoveries through my pain: like boards that have been labeled 12 feet in length are really 3/4 of an inch shorter. Who knew and why has this been kept a secret from me and those I love? Thank God i bought up all the available 12" and 10" boards on  Monday morning. There were none to purchase on Sunday afternoon given the covid production lag. A quick Google search told me that this was true across the US of A. So I returned to the lumber yard on Monday morning where I scored all the wood I needed only to find that the entire aisle of deck screws was now empty. And I mean totally void of anything looking like the 2 or 3 inch coated screws necessary in holding deck planks to their appropriate joists. This required a third scouting expedition on Tuesday morning where I found six lonely boxes of screws - and yes, I counted them - sitting in sad isolation. Instinctively I grabbed two like Jean Val Jean stuffing bread inside his shirt in "Les Mis"  and rushed to the self check-out line praying there was not a screw quota.

+ Who knew that it would take 45 minutes to chisel through a strong

albeit very thin piece of molding wood? I mistakenly believed that day number three would be a walk in the park. There was only a 7" splice to be made on a rotting board along the roof. So, just a cut here, a replacement there, a dab of paint and then crank out the sangria, right? Except that the one little piece of molding wanted a fight. Only 2 inches were rotten - the rest was strong and healthy and oh so goddamn stubborn! Forty five minutes later, perched 8 feet in the air using a chisel like I was carving the Hebrew commandments into stone, I completed a reasonably straight cut all the while despising this tiny freaking piece of wood. Di often laughs when I curse inanimate objects. "That's one of the funniest things you do," she often tells me. Rest assured, I did not think that stinking little bastard of a board was a laughing matter at all. The silver lining was that now the words of the Boss did make some sense and with a little touch up an a bit of paint things looked pretty good. I still had to wrestle with plastic wood in the afternoon. That stuff is like quick sand. It is supposed to fill in holes and then harden so that compromised wood might last another season. But it sticks to your fingers - and putty knife - without always adhering to the gap in the wood. My brother wrote something like, "I admire your courage taking on all this without every once consulting You Tube or 'This Old House,' right?" How did he know? I wrapped up this encounter with work and prayer this morning by touching up some fading paint on other exterior walls.

Cynthia Bourgeault makes a point in her wisdom training school that one of the reasons monks of the Western tradition insist upon a balance between prayer and work is that one feeds the other. Silence over long stretches of time doing repetitive labor does open the mind and heart to deep thoughts. It's a great time to memorize texts, songs, and prayers, too. This week I was able to sort out what I can share on my Sunday live-streaming reflection . I had the time to hold loved ones in prayer even as I came to terms with the fact that it will remain impossible for me to travel to the L'Arche Ottawa community until sometime in 2021. My soul is nourished by the time I spend in community - and I love nearly everyone I have met at L'Arche. During my working prayers this week it became clear that I need another layer of engagement and accountability. There is just so much I can expect from Zoom. So, I renewed my associate membership in the Iona Community this week as a way of reaching out for the spiritual, intellectual and artistic interaction I need personally. I continue to cherish my engagement with L'Arche even as I add the guidance of the Rule of Iona to my shifting spirituality.

As I have noted elsewhere, I am much more of a friar on pilgrimage than a monk living in cloistered stability. My Brooklyn buddy, Pam, wrote to me that this was a dilemma for Herman Hesse, too and he resolved it by choosing a life on the road. That is not an option now so, like Merton advised, I need to grow where I am planted. And the Rule of Iona is a resource to keep me focused. It has been a rich, demanding, physically painful but aesthetically satisfying week of prayer and work. Macrina Wiederkehr has written: "If I am slavishly attached to the previous moment or if I'm already living tomorrow's moments, then I am not free for the moment of the eternal now." Thanks be to God.