Consider the idea of man made stuff. I'll try not to use the politically
incorrect phrase here again, but just for once, think about how much stuff
there is around that isn't an untouched original creation of God. Putting aside
for a moment the philosophical viewpoint that God creates everything, just look
at all of the things that have been designed, shaped, extruded, woven, poured,
hammered, cut, and shaped by people.
Consider the anonymity of the worker who laid down the rug that you walk on,
who constructed the stairway that you run up and down each day. Who made your
shirt? Who sewed the label on your blue jeans? Think of the anonymous pride of
the worker who sat down to sew excellent clothing for someone they would never
see.
It's fascinating to think that every inch of our homes and workplaces and
streets were worked over, handled, shaped and perfected by other people.
I used to have a fantasy that I could somehow see a red footmark for every
place that I had ever stepped. That I could look around everywhere that I
lived, worked or played and see red footprints where I had put down my feet.
Think of all of the red footprints in some places. In some places solid red,
almost everywhere. On the other hand, what about the places with no red, maybe
even in your own home, where for some unknown, serendipitous reason, you had
never set foot.
Similarly, what if the marks of people's hands on the objects around us could
somehow be visible. What if we could see everything and everywhere that people
had handled, shaped, and created the objects around us? I'm not talking about
the handprints of casual users of the handrail or the doorknob, but the marks
of the creators, craftspeople, painter/carpenter/seamstress/ruglayer.
It creates a sense of gratefulness, in some way, that all around us are the
marks of human skill and effort. That somebody did a job, and did it well in
most cases, right there where we live, where we walk, drive, or in the clothing
we wear.
What about the book that you are reading? Somebody wrote it, certainly. But
some unsung hero actually put the thing together, handled it in some way, or at
least packed it into a box for you.
Once you start thinking about these things, you're stuck for a while. You see
it everywhere.
When I painted houses one summer I used to jokingly say that I was a painter
specializing in "monochromatic works." But they never let us sign the houses.
Still, I have a special feeling for the houses that I once recolored all over,
like getting up close to an enormous horse and currying it. When you care for
something, your heart goes into it and you become connected to it.
Maybe when the construction worker who helped build your house drives by he (or
she) thinks of how it was to work there when the wind had free rein through the
bones of the two by four scaffolding and the blows of the hammer rang through
the neighborhood. And maybe they wonder about the secrets of your home, like if
they lost that tape measure in the attic under the blown-in insulation, or
sheet-rocked it into the corner of the bathroom that night when the light was
failing.
Or maybe it's like the male gynecologist who can know the most private physical
world of every woman in town, and yet tune it out when he meets those people at
the grocery store or on the tennis court.
Still, I see the hands of people all over my world, building, coaxing, shaping,
painting, and carving an environment out of all of God's raw material. When you
look around, there's a lot of man made, or at least "people influenced" stuff
hanging around.
When you think about it like this, the role of human works in the world seems
important. But then, of course, all you have to do is go sit by the Grand
Canyon for a while.
1/29/94
© Paul Stokstad 1994