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