by Kathy Berklund-Pagé

     Three weeks into the process of preparing our home to go on the market, we live in chaos as larger repairs eclipse the small upgrades we had planned. Exhaust fans and banisters are no longer up to code. Accessing bathroom lights required removing a kitchen cabinet. When my husband checked a pipe behind the toilet, it burst, spewing water in all directions.

     Part of me—the purely rational, objective part—can laugh, but I’m also aware of a growing franticness. As I poke about in the feeling, I find that house frustrations are only the top layer. A tangled jumble of fears and worries lie beneath. The unknowness of where we will live and work next . . . the teenaged children I must set free to choose their own paths . . . the realization that I no longer hear the characters in my novel talking to each other, or to me. Have they moved away, feeling neglected and offended? Or are they still there, their words lost in the cacophony of other voices shrieking for my attention?

     In both my novel and my real life, I find myself increasingly tight and retreated, with a deep desire to control events and people. Where is the oasis the core of my being needs for passion, love, and imagination, to be released? I ache for something, someone bigger than me, to be bedrock for my heart to rest on.

     I could go to God. But if I do, will I find my creator to be enough?

by Larry Cole

“What is this strange compulsion? Are there others out there like me?” I ask myself these questions on a semi-regular basis. I am talking about this overwhelming desire to alter everything I come into contact with. This phenomenon has become brutally apparent as my wife and I are working through a remodel of our home.

We have now spent significantly more on the remodel of our home than we spent to buy our home just seven years ago. We are ripping out perfectly good toilets, countertops, light fixtures, doorknobs, etc, all in the name of personal preference. This isn’t our first journey down this slippery slope either. We have been through the exact same situation with multiple cars, home furnishings, children’s toys, motorcycles, etc. I don’t know if the problem is a “designer thing,” an “art thing,” or just a Larry Cole thing. But I do know that it is definitely a real thing.

The truth is that I can’t leave anything stock or as-is. If it can simply be purchased off-the-shelf, than that just aint gonna cut it! I have to paint, faux finish, embellish, reinforce, modify, electroplate, alter, and ultimately improve everything. Luckily, I have a very patient spouse who allows me to do my creative thing. For the most part, I even think she generally enjoys the results. In fact, maybe I have rubbed off on her because she owns and drives a 1995 GMC Suburban with an air ride suspension, smoothed exterior, 18” jet black rims, custom emblems, with a somewhat less than stock motor under the hood. Yes, that is correct, that is my dear wife’s grocery-getter.

I find myself modifying everything I touch. In my art gallery I painted all the electrical outlets, covers and light switches. I made my own floor molding out of galvanized metal, and I personally rewired all the lighting in the entire gallery. If that weren’t enough, I designed my own light boxes to backlight my front signage and had a friend of mine make the boxes based on a prototype I fabricated.

I find myself up all hours of the night researching, investigating, and designing my own creative solutions for everything. I utilized rain gutters and down spouts as wire management devices in my office. I am currently working on a medicine cabinet, which will slide directly out of the wall in my master bathroom. I used industrial hanging hooks for curtain tie-backs in my bedroom and a piece electrical industrial superstrut for a hanging rod in my wife’s new cedar closet. Long story short, I just won’t be satisfied unless I leave a wake of change behind me as I travel through life on planet earth.

Am I the only one that suffers from Obsessive Creative Disorder? I hope not. Did you have to buy a kiln because you simply could not settle for off-the-shelf dinnerware? Maybe you purchased a perfectly good vase so you could break it and glue it all back together in a less than perfect way. I surely hope that I am not alone in this insatiable desire to change the universe one can of Krylon at a time.

Gary Bradley recently spoke on this topic at the Minneapolis gathering.  The following is another reflection by Gary on the work of our hands…

“If I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree today…” Martin Luther

Psalm 90
12 So teach us to consider our mortality,
so that we might live wisely.
16 Let Your work appear to Your servants
And Your majesty to their children.
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
Psalm 104
24 How many living things you have made, O LORD!
You have exhibited great skill in making all of them;
the earth is full of the living things you have made.

I have been wondering about the culture in which I was formed as a Christian and a few things that do not seem to fit have caused me to ask, “What is the value of the work of my hands?”

First, I have heard that everything is going to burn up and that the earth will dissolve. Is this true? Because if it is, then, this raises the question that perhaps the only things that are useful are those with the greatest utility for right now.

This conclusion would go nicely with the idea that we often hear: people are “resources” rather than uniquely created expressions of the triune Godhead. What about a piece of art, a composition like “the Messiah” or Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring, or any other multitude of expressions? What about your pet dog, Fido, or a well made pair of jeans? What has value if it is all going to burn? These questions wrongly answered drive us to make “Christian art;” they drive people to work at “religious occupations” which do not reflect their first born gifts (as painters, carpenters, web masters, writers, et al).

A similar question that has pushed many to live denying their first born gift is “What really counts for eternity?” The answer often given is: “The souls of men and the word of God.” I agree that they are both of eternal value. But is that all? What about the works of my hands? Do they have eternal value or does all of this life stop at the grave? Such thinking has given rise to the vacuous concept that “art for art’s sake” is a valid motif for making art.

In an immature way I could respond and say “perhaps I should destroy everything that I do because it is all going to burn anyway. I could save God some time at judgment and maybe he would look favorably on me for having seen the fruitlessness of my work.” In my worst dreams I could end up in heaven in a white robe singing Kumbaya.

What do you think is the value of the work of our hands?

Sure. Spending a year in Kosovo as a military peacekeeper was difficult. Leaving my wife, my job, our new house to pursue the Army’s objectives overseas required a large adjustment—a reorientation to life. I had a calendar in my Kosovo barracks with a large X over every day passed, counting down the days to my homecoming.

I did not foresee, however, that coming home would be more difficult than leaving home. It took me more than a year before I began to feel ‘normal’ again—like I belonged in my family, home and country. It took a week before I could leave the house. It took two weeks before I mustered the strength to go to the mall. Two months into my homecoming my wife and I agreed that I should rent a car and hit the road. I would go to Colorado to see a counselor.

While the three days I spent with a team of counselors certainly aided my recovery, nothing was as nourishing for my soul as the road itself. I set out with no itinerary but to reach Colorado in three days and come home sometime afterward. Three years later, it seems like just last week when I was kicking up gravel thirty minutes from a paved road in any direction, surrounded by buffalo and badlands; when I was watching neighbors on a reservation pound odd pieces of tin to cover holes in their roof, creating the only echoing sound across a five block town; when I set the cruise at 95 passing through Wyoming ranches without a tree in site.

I drank coffee in 6 states, but the coffee tasted best late at night in a downtown Omaha warehouse, surrounded by old brick roads and artists on the streets. I remember calling my wife from Colorado after being gone for a week, “I could do this every day.” “Do what?” she asks. “Drive. Wander.” There was silence on the other end of the line. She wanted me to want to be home. But I was experiencing an awakening. The last time I had felt this creative, this free and at peace in my thoughts, I had just started college ten years earlier.

Wandering reminded me of something I had forgotten. I was creative. I am not sure what happened on that trip, but I somehow felt divinely reassured that I was ok. Somehow, at that moment, not knowing where I was going to sleep on a given night was as important to me as life itself. For me, it seems, creativity needs space to wander, and every good journey needs a loved place to wander from. This spring my wife smiled and asked me when I was taking off; maybe she has always understood me better than I have understood myself.

More on the ascetic of wandering to come…