The Power of Logs and Their Splitting

 We split logs. 

It was among the coldest days of winter thus far – bitter, but at least sunny and still; unlike the previous day of breeze and freezing rain.  Multiple mounds of oversized logs had languished for months, long after the more readily useable ones had been claimed following the tree trimming and removal in the fall.  This was to be the day for dispatching the formidable remains.

 

It was new territory for me, and I’ll admit to some trepidation. For a city kid more accustomed to books and guitar strings, power equipment intimidates me.  My dreams toss with anticipatory calamities involving broken bones and crushed extremities from hydraulic force gone awry.  But John had booked the rental of the splitter, and we were anxious for the wooden rubble to be gone.  He eyed the wood as fuel for the wood stove heating part of his house.  Our socially centering fire pit could use the rest.  All that, plus the prospect of physical activity was compelling.  Holidays aren’t known for their exercise, and these days had been illustrations of the point.  Too much kitchen time, followed by too much table time had led to too much sofa time.  My body ached for a change.

 

Never mind, then, the cold; I picked up John in the pickup, headed over to the hardware store, and hitched up the splitter which looked like it had seen better days.  That, of course, only added to my apprehension.  Back home, we abandoned caution, pulled the engine rope, and set ourselves to the task at hand.

 

I will say that, despite the age and state of this particular piece of equipment – hardly a model of maintenance - the splitter is a marvel of basic ingenuity – marrying power and physics in a productive partnership.  Position the log on the platform, pull the handle, and the modest lawn-mower-sized engine animates the hydraulics to slowly propel the iron wedge up against and then through the wood, grain divorcing grain, cleaving the whole into dismembered sections.  Fellowship and warmth, the benefactors.

 

The work went quickly, methodically.  By the time Larry joined us late morning to contribute an extra set of hands, the project for which we had set aside the day, was largely accomplished.  Oak and walnut and Osage orange; log by half, by quarter, by stack.    And it felt good, this active exertion on a holiday morning, gloved and frosty breath, recycling the farm’s woody harvest with friends, in embodied anticipation of life in the new year.  

 

Towing the splitter back into parking lot, unhitching and paying for the abbreviated day, we drove away, smiling; as warm inside from a day well spent as the fires and the friendships our labors would fuel.

Even Here. Even Now

 In years past, the barn has been given over to Advent.  The equipment has been pushed aside to make room for a lighted tree, wreaths and a piano, holiday treats and carols, and the eventually hushed recollection that we are someplace reminiscent.   Even in this barn – even in this metal building with a cement floor whose only livestock has been an occasional brooder with baby chicks – holiness could be born.  

 

Remembering that it happened once

Writes Wendell Berry,

We cannot turn away the thought,

As we go out, cold, to our barns

Toward the long night’s end, that we

Ourselves are living in the world 

It happened in when it first happened.

That we ourselves, opening a stall

(A latch thrown open countless times

Before), might find them breathing there…

 

Somehow, even in this enclosure smelling more of diesel and grease and soup and cinnamon than hay and manure and animal sweat; even in this collection of red sweaters singing of snowmen and bells, silent nights and a prayerful Dona Nobis Pacem, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in our very midst.  And into the night and the encircling days and the poignancy of it all reawakens a dormant reverence.  Eventually the room is left dark and the door is locked and the last of the taillights disappears down the drive, but the songs somehow reverberate in and beyond this silent night made audible.

 

In years past.

 

This year, like the one it follows, the barn remains dark and crowded with tools instead of friends.  The tractor dominates the corner instead of the lighted tree.  Empty buckets an apparent metaphor for yet another COVID Christmas.

 

But “apparent” is the revelatory word, for we have long-since known that appearances can deceive.  Holiness, we have long-since heard it preached, has this quixotic habit of appearing where we least expect it – in barns, yes, and babies; but even in less likely vessels…

 

…like me and you, like living rooms and Zoom, like memories and hopes and songs sung on mute, like the space cleared by the clear-eyed conviction that no place is infertile; that no place is beyond the germinating potential of redeeming grace, and reconstituting peace.

 

Even amidst a pandemic.

 

Even here, and now, on this less-than-silent, socially distanced night…

 

…we can sing.

The Rests Between the Notes

quo·tid·i·an

/kwōˈtidēən/

adjective

1. of or occurring every day; daily.

o ordinary or everyday, especially when mundane.

 

These are those days. Ordinary.  Mundane.  

Outside the chores are reduced to chicken feed and water.  It is simple work – almost rhythmic – with, as the word suggests, a common dailyness that lends the morning hours the faintest hint of structure.  There is an occasional egg to collect, or two.  Otherwise, ordinariness is the norm.

Inside, yes, there is decorating to do for the holidays – among my favorite days of the year.  Carols in the background, tree lights and treasured ornaments in the foreground.  Christmas cookies iced with memories along with the sprinkles.  But the festivization of the living spaces will be accomplished soon enough, and the oven will return to commoner baking.   

Which is not to bemoan these quotidian days – inside or out. To call them “ordinary” or “mundane” is not to mock or malign them.  There is something replenishing about the plod of the days; centering.   I think back to the wise insight a mentor once offered a youthful me:  “If every moment were a mountaintop experience your body couldn’t handle the electricity.” 

I’m grateful for those mountaintop exhilarations, whenever they occasionally occur, but I’m equally grateful for these slower, ordinary, pedestrian ones.   

Music needs rests to elevate the notes.

Gardens need fallow seasons else fertility declines.

As we need the mundanity of days.  

Feeding and watering outside.  Washing and laundering, sorting and discarding inside.  And reading – replenishing the soil of mind and soul.  Patient chronos, preparing space for kairos.  Snow is finally in the extended forecast – three consecutive days next week.  If it falls and if it blankets the ground the pace will dial down even more.  Meanwhile, the clock ticks, the heart beats, the sun rises and, soon enough, sets.    Sleep, and then rising yet again.    

Metronoming the simpler rhythms of these quotidian days.