Sore

August 9, 2019

Everything hurts. It would be easier to list the parts of me that don’t hurt than the parts that do. I’ve been splitting and stacking wood all afternoon. Writer’s Circle in the morning is always a treat. I’ve made some good friends there who challenge and encourage me to grow as a writer and as a human being. On the way home, I stopped by the village park to cook hot dogs for the kids in our village recreation program. We are blessed with some great people who run the program not just as a summer job, but as a calling to serve the kids.

From then on, it was split and stack, split and stack. A hydraulic wood splitter borrowed from my son, and my tractor with a front end loader made the job manageable. As another chunk popped in two, I thought about our forebears who cut, split and stacked by hand. They needed much more of it than I do, and had to do the work without the benefit of the machinery I am blessed to have. And they had to do it alongside plowing, sowing, and harvesting fields, and caring for their animals. Our Amish friends still live by those old ways; although the slower pace their lives is appealing, the amount of sheer physical effort required simply to live (or is it “to live simply?”) is astounding. Tonight I am grateful for the tools that while not eliminating hard work, make it manageable.