What WOULD Jesus Do?

Jesus was a carpenter.

He'd get a bigger hammer. And a smaller one.

He'd hit his thumb with each one at least once.

He'd sharpen his chisles when they're dull.

He would own all his own tools, buy the nails, buy the glue.

He would buy the ugliest donkey in town, too poor to get anything else. Taking pity on the miserable ass, he would vow to give it care and nourishment, and the satisfaction of working again, carrying his tools to the job.

He would try not to hate the donkey.

He'd admit to the client that the bid was too low, and he needs to pay his suppliers for materials. Or not, and just pay them with advance money from the next client that was supposed to go toward a new donkey.

He'd injure himself on the job, and just suck it up and keep working.

Eventually he would quit his job and take up street preaching.

Bad Idea. It only leads to crying.




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Here is what the Carpenter would do:

Measure
Mark
Cut
Assemble
Clamp
Join

Frankly, that's what every worker does. A businessman has to measure, mark and cut the money, labor and materials; assemble the project; clamp a deal and join it with a contract.

This is another part of the "five minute self-help seminar," probably in day three of the $3000 weekend.

So far only one guy has claimed to be the Son of God. Maybe he was. I wasn't there. As an agnostic, I have to take it with a grain of salt. I claimed to be a carpenter for a while, and found great joy in it. Measure, mark and cut. Assemble, clamp and join. The Shakers found God while working, and used the focused activity as a meditation or prayer. Make this chair as if God were watching. Remember that this house will outlive you.

The Lesson of the Sticks

One of my Inner Carpenter's last dying acts was remodeling a room for the boys.

Constant interruption.

"You missed a spot."

Where the fuck is my tape measure?

Can I trust those around me to trust me to do the work? Why don't they seem to believe in my abilities - am I really as incompetent as they seem to think?

Roll out tools.
Work for a while, but not a full day, and you don't get to finish the task at hand.
Roll up tools.
Wait until allowed to work again.
Repeat until . . .

Such agony.

Remodeling a room is like building an entire house from scratch, only smaller and less profitable. It requires all the tools, all the skills, all the order-of-operations, all the organized thinking required to build an entire house. Only smaller, and you have to keep the dust out of the rest of the house.

The final step is installing the trim. Baseboard, door and window moulding. Measure, mark, cut, assemble, remark, recut, reassemble, clamp and join.

The entire point of carpentry is to take a pile of individual sticks, each with a middle and two ends, and hide all the ends. House, chair, doorjamb, desk, whatever. It's all sticks. If you cut a stick too long or too short, the error is a very small percentage of the total stick, but a very large percentage of the functionality.

Somewhere along the project, the living carpenter within me, the part that wants and cares, died. Never able to feed himself with the satisfaction of completion, he starved. Poisoned by the doubts of others, a cancer of self-doubt grew inside and consumed his self-confidence. Injured by failures, he feared failing.

And always fearing the next interruption, having to drop the tools and walk away to do something totally different. Never focused, never praying to the work, never meditating on perfection.

The window trim was the last step. Prepainted, waiting for measure, mark and cut. Measured, marked, cut, pre-assembled and found to be too long. Taken back to the saw. Panic and hatred.

Finally, I just nailed it up and said "There!" without trimming that last time. It looks like shit. Someone else saw it and said "Oh that looks fine. It's not that bad." Insulting, and oblivious.

No matter what the middles of the sticks are like, if the ends of the sticks are not right, it isn't right. But fuck it. If nobody else cares, why should I?

If you think you need a cross, go get a T-square.