In social work we write a lot. We are bureaucrats after all, filling out forms and connecting people with resources and services. This is important work because there are a lot of people in our world that need a lot of help. Dorothy Day, Jane Addams & Peter Maurin are my models...women and men who spent their lives reaching out to those in need...Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen and many others who quietly care for the needs of the needy.
But because we write a lot our fingers move more than the rest of us...and one of the things that needs to happen for me to be healthy is to have more movement, more reaching and standing and turning and bending and walking and swaying. Wood requires this of me. It needs me to sand and scrape and gnaw and abrade away the parts I don't need...especially hand-powered woodworking.
Besides all of my around-the-house projects (refinishing chairs, making picture frames, framing out a shop and bathroom and redoing a set of stairs) the major focus of my movement will be making a small sailing and rowing dory. I need this sort of project, most of what I've built during my social work career is filed away and/or digitized and shredded...after all, I created paper. There are the lives of the people I helped...the touching I did along the way...which is the most beautiful part of my vocational legacy - no presidential library is as valued nor as important to me as this work. And there is my family. My wife and daughter (and dog) are loci of much love, affection and investment...but sometimes a man needs to know he can make something with his hands and some tools.
I don't know what facing a terminal illness in your eighties elicits thought-wise, it seems to me that simply being in your eighties is a terminal illness as most people that make it to their eighties don't make it out. But I do know what facing a terminal illness in middle-age feels like. Most people make it out of their fifties, I might not. I don't feel like I'm done, and for that I'm the most frustrated (and sometimes angry). I'm not done raising my daughter, loving my wife and I'm not done working and reading and living...but I am also a person of faith who believes that there is restorative reward that awaits...a recreated earth and life. Past that I'm void of detail...I simply have hope and believe.
My little dory will demand movement of me. It will require that I walk and sway and stretch and reach to make it and use it, it will be something that will carry my family about in a state of 11,000 bodies of water...a way to slowly explore what this creation and our Creator has to share with us. It will also require something different of me than my vocation has, than my activism has.
But because we write a lot our fingers move more than the rest of us...and one of the things that needs to happen for me to be healthy is to have more movement, more reaching and standing and turning and bending and walking and swaying. Wood requires this of me. It needs me to sand and scrape and gnaw and abrade away the parts I don't need...especially hand-powered woodworking.
Besides all of my around-the-house projects (refinishing chairs, making picture frames, framing out a shop and bathroom and redoing a set of stairs) the major focus of my movement will be making a small sailing and rowing dory. I need this sort of project, most of what I've built during my social work career is filed away and/or digitized and shredded...after all, I created paper. There are the lives of the people I helped...the touching I did along the way...which is the most beautiful part of my vocational legacy - no presidential library is as valued nor as important to me as this work. And there is my family. My wife and daughter (and dog) are loci of much love, affection and investment...but sometimes a man needs to know he can make something with his hands and some tools.
I don't know what facing a terminal illness in your eighties elicits thought-wise, it seems to me that simply being in your eighties is a terminal illness as most people that make it to their eighties don't make it out. But I do know what facing a terminal illness in middle-age feels like. Most people make it out of their fifties, I might not. I don't feel like I'm done, and for that I'm the most frustrated (and sometimes angry). I'm not done raising my daughter, loving my wife and I'm not done working and reading and living...but I am also a person of faith who believes that there is restorative reward that awaits...a recreated earth and life. Past that I'm void of detail...I simply have hope and believe.
My little dory will demand movement of me. It will require that I walk and sway and stretch and reach to make it and use it, it will be something that will carry my family about in a state of 11,000 bodies of water...a way to slowly explore what this creation and our Creator has to share with us. It will also require something different of me than my vocation has, than my activism has.
