The Value of Work: Sinfulness to Sanctification

 "For the LORD your God will bless you... in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete." ~ Deuteronomy 16:15

It all started in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had just eaten the forbidden fruit. In His just wisdom, God said to Adam, "Cursed is the ground because of you... through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food... until you return to the ground." (Genesis 3:17) It may seem like this is just an evil curse from God, but what man did was the true wrong, and this was the means of redeeming it. In one bite, the perfection meant for man was shattered; his entire future, his very nature changed, broken. We went from walking with God in a beautiful garden, picking the fruits of God's love, to being destined to toil for all the rest of time. And yet God, as always, is infinitely forgiving, and through that toil-filled curse gave us the means of regaining one fragment of that unblemished relationship man once had with God.

A closer look into the nature of work will reveal to us how very merciful God is to even give us that. Work redeems us through the virtues that it requires. Strictly speaking, these would be the seven cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity. Work is the epitome of these disciplines, both for the body and mind. Work disciplines us to have the prudence to know what the right thing is, and through justice to act upon it. Temperance is achieved through self-control and going against the current of sinful desires, not losing yourself in what you want, but rather doing hard things and pushing through to the end. That is the very essence of true, hard, work. But all of this requires, while at the same time affirming courage. Work is hard, becoming a better person is hard, that is why God calls us to have, through this hardness, complete faith and hope in Him. And it is through all of these things that we can truly love God. Work is about love. God created us and gave us a paradise to live in out of love. But when we shattered that gift, he still loved us so much that he allowed us, through our well-deserved fate of work and toil, to piece together the fragments which we had broken, to love him.

"We see in work, in men’s noble creative toil, not only one of the highest human values, but also a sign of God’s Love for His creatures, and of men’s love for each other and for God: we see in work a means of perfection, a way to sanctity." ~ Saint Josemaria Escriva


~This topic is definitely something that I want to keep thinking and posting about, this is hopefully just the beginning. But I would love to know what your thoughts and/or questions might be on this. :)

Excuses? Updates? Or just a post...finally.

Well...I am back...and all I can say is that it has been a very, very, long time.
A lot has happened in my life during this indefinite blogging absence. I could give excuses as to why I have not blogged, I could also give you all the updates of the past year, but instead I will just say...hello again my dear blog readers and thank you for being patient.
There are so many thoughts and inspirations and ideas racing through my head of what I could possibly say and post, but you are again going to have to have patience with me as I get back into the swing of blogging and try to present them in a (somewhat) coherent way.
It is a bit like coming home after a long trip, there is so much to do and say, but one doesn't know exactly where to start. So as I am figuring this all out, I thought I would post some of the things that I have done (a.k.a written, thought, or read about) over the last year.

I do have one request of you though: could you (whoever you are) please leave a comment so that I know if and who is still reading my blog? Not only would it motivate me to post more often but also it would help me get to know my readers a little bit more. ;) Thank You!

World of blogging here I come...

I, Pencil

Whew... sorry I haven't posted in a while!
I heard this poem or story a little while ago, and found it simply profound. It has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and I thought it was kind of a good run up to my "Story of Stuff" post.
It is pretty long but here it is:

I, Pencil
My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.*

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."


I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.


Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.


Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this "wood-clinched" sandwich.

My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

It has been said that "only God can make a tree." Why do we agree with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, "If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing." For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental "master-minding."

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

It really just makes me realize how utterly disconnected we are from everything we have and from each other. That seems to be one of our huge modern tragedies: disconnection.

Disconnection from:

~People: This is the age of... ipods and cell phones, where you walk on any street and almost everybody is holding up some device to their ears, cutting of any opportunity for real human interaction; of vehicles whizzing past you and your house, and not a clue or care as to who is in them; of computers and televisions and many other machines that replace real human interactions and experiences, real culture and life with some cyber and psuedo reality.

~Nature: I know how often for myself I can drive quickly by the same thing on our street hundreds of times and never notice anything for I am not going slowly enough to notice the beauty, then walk or ride my bike past the exact same things and notice so many beautiful or interesting little things I had never noticed before. How often this happens, and how much beauty and how many little kisses from the Creator am I missing out on just because I am so distracted and so disconnected from nature and ultimately God.

~Necessities/Belongings/Food: If you read the above poem and think, "wow all that just went into that pencil that I used a second ago," then think how much more goes into everything else we own. The clothes on your back, how many people were involved in creating your shirt and getting it to you so that you can wear it today? The chair you are sitting in, how many little pieces are in that thing and how much energy, how many resources, how much labor was used in the production of it? The computer that I am typing this on. This object that I take so much for granted, is marked by how many peoples sweat and labors? Or food! If you open your refrigerator and pull something off the shelf, how many other peoples hands touched it? If you had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, how many lives were involved to get that to your table, so that you could then eat it. First there is the milk, where are the cow/s that produced that milk and who do they belong to? Who milked them? And who ran the machines to process the milk? Then there is the cereal if you have wheat in your cereal, who owned the land? Who planted, and harvested and processed the wheat? Who transported the wheat? Nuts, where and who grew the nuts, who processed them, who transported them from place to place? Oil, who grew the nut, bean, etc. to make the oil from, who was involved in the making and transporting of it. The list goes on with EVERY other ingredient in the cereal. Then finally the combining of all of those ingredients and all of those peoples' labors in to a box ( which people are also involved with,) and then the transportation (which of course uses gas which people had to work for to get out of the ground and processed, and the metal and all the other parts of the vehicle,) to get it to the store at which point you could buy it. Imagine that, all the hundreds, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people involved in just one bite of cereal.
And yet how often do we actually care or think about it and them, all those people who exist somewhere in the world right now.
It is very difficult for me to put my mind around all this, and not feel a pang of guilt. Is it really right for me to eat the cereal when all those people, the running of all those factories and therefore pollution, and all those resources, etc. were all used just so I could eat it for breakfast without even acknowledging their existence and labors??? Sure they are paid, but are those nut growers in Brazil, or wheat farmers, or cow milkers really getting paid enough for what they worked hard for, when I only pay a buck and a half for that box of cereal? I honestly don't know! And it just goes to show how truly disconnected we have become from the very things that feed and keep us alive.

~God: Really I think ultimately the worst thing is that it makes us more disconnected from God. The farther away we step from the natural order, and the way He created things to be, the more disconnected we are from Him.

I don't really understand this (which is precisely why I posted, helps me to sort my thoughts I guess, :) and I don't expect anyone, myself included to never eat cereal again, or use a pencil, but I do find that poem very interesting, and I do think this is worth thinking about because it does make us realize our dependence on the sweat of other people and it makes me more grateful for what I do have.
I must say though there is quite an appeal to try and buy things more local. Imagine if your entire bowl of cereal could be traced within a 30-60 mile radius of your house. And because you make your own cereal, you get the wheat from a farmer friend down the road, the nuts from your local almond and pecan orchard, your honey from the beehive a friend has, the oil from melted butter that you got from your local dairy, where you also got your milk. Right, I know this is imaginary thinking, but it does seem so much nobler a breakfast, than that of the one with ingredients from all over the world, produced by people who we had no clue existed.
In the past it was always this way. If the family or person didn't milk the cow, and grow the wheat themselves, they would get it from friends or from the local store that got it from the local people. Before machines there was no way to transport things such far distances as we do now. And people either made it themselves (and therefore had a completely direct connection with it) or got it locally, with the exception of maybe sugar, which was probably extremely expensive anyways.
Why is our culture so completely different now and should it be this way? It all connects back up with disconnection. :)

A Second Blog

Well I have been hesitating to do this because I don't want to have a bunch of different blogs all over the place, but I finally decided to start a second blog. It is a cooking, gardening, health, etc. blog. This is more of my intellectual blog, so I didn't want to mix the two. Here is the link: http://www.homesteadblogger.com/pursuitofthe3h/
I will also have a link to it below.
Hope you enjoy it and feel free to leave a comment to let me know you have been there.

A Poem...

The Old Meeting Hall:
by Dick Warwick

An Old Grange hall stands bereft
In a field of waving wheat
The people all have long since left
Where once with flying feet

They danced the fiddle's lively reels,
And do-si-doed in squares
But television and automobiles
Have ended such affairs

Thee neighbors all came from their farms
For camaraderie
From tiny newborn babes in arms
To the deaf and doddery

And they knew eachother well, with all
their virtues, strengths, and faults;
They'd get together in the hall
For the foxtrot and the waltz

To share their pies and socialize,
Talk of kids and kitchens-
Of critters, crops, and days gone by;
Mark births and deaths and hitchin's.

For we were all one family then,
Though perhaps not blood related-
Yes, I remember way back when
We all cooperated.

We all helped each other in a pinch
Or sometimes just for fun;
If you needed help it was a cinch
Your project would get done.

Though times back then were somewhat lean,
Entertainment- it was free;
When folks would in that hall convene
And friends and neighbors see.

And that old grange all speaks to me
Of things gone quite askew
In our present-day society
With it's hype and ballyhoo.

For now folks travel fast and far,
Meet schedules with precision;
And when they're not out in the car
They're watching television.

The art of actual conversation
Is rather antiquated-
We've lots of information,
But can't communicate it.

Oh sure, we can download it
And shift it place to place;
But there's few who can decode it
Into words of style and grace.

So I miss the meeting hall of old,
And I wish you could have known
How it was to cross the threshold
Of that place, now overgrown.

And dance all night with the neighbor gal
That you'd known since you were small;
Or meet your fated femme fatale,
And in love forever fall.

Now that old building stands forlorn
Yet still foursquare and sound;
Though by the wind and weather worn
It could someday be rebound,

For it hasn't yet been set aflame
Nor from its footings torn,
And it may yet receive acclaim
From dancers yet unborn.

So keep the roof in good repair
And doors and windows sealed;
For the past and future meet right there
In that grange hall in the field.

Stuff...

My family and I just watched the little movie "The Story of Stuff" at the website in the picture above. (If you want your thoughts to be provoked and you have 20 minutes I recommend you watch it too, it was really good.) And it really got me thinking (uh oh, there she goes again :)...So where does all this stuff come from?
Currently I am sitting in a mostly plastic chair, where did the plastic come from, who owned the factory where it was manufactured, who and where are the people who were involved in all the of the different steps involved in the making and getting the chair to me now, where I am sitting in it? I don't know...and part of the problem is, up until this point I didn't care. Just look around you now, do you know where half the things around you came from? Not only that but have we ever thought about all the energy, effort, and people who were behind each little object and possession of ours, all our JUNK??!
With everything we have now coming from big factories or imported from other countries, we have been trained to become so detached and separated from the things we buy and own and where or who they came from. There is no longer a connection between maker and buyer.
And the big corps probably want it to be that way too. Kind of the way they want you to be with God, just enjoy and use and waste all of this creation and beauty that God gave us, but never even stop to think about who it came from and why he gave it to us; it is yours so now you can use and trash it as you wish. What is the most sad thing is that just as we trash nature, we trash the stuff we have, and thereby trashing the effort that went into them. Statistics show that 99% of the stuff we buy is thrown out within the first 6 months of owning it. Not only is that unsustainable physically, it is unsustainable morally. What kind of moral character is being promoted and practiced. I like to say that we are a throw away nation, if something is ugly, if you don't like it or want it, if it is outdated, or old, even if there is a small fixable problem, what do we do... THROW IT AWAY!
I remember reading Farmer Boy, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, about her husband's childhood. One thing that distinctly popped out in my brain was that each child had ONE, (not 2 not 5 not 10, ) 1 pair of shoes that they wore and used. Then if they were worn or they had grown out of them by the end of the year, the cobbler would stop by their house on his yearly rounds and measure and specially fit a new pair of shoes for the children. In fact he was a family friend and the family always looked forward to his yearly visit, to share meals, tell stories. And sometimes if the parents didn't have enough money, they would trade something they had in exchange for the shoes. Now what kind of a different mindset, what kind of different moral character does that show? The kids knew how to take care of their stuff, they knew where it came from, and saw with their own eyes the effort their cobbler friend put into them. They couldn't or wouldn't trash those shoes. Look at the huge contrast between then and now, that was less than 150 years ago. How could things have changed so much and so drastically?
At times like this I just feel hopeless, I feel like nothing will last and there is nothing we can do to help such a gargantuan problem. Then I have a speck of hope and think that half the work is acknowledging the problem and taking little steps every day to try and fix it. It all starts in the heart with the decision to value the things we have and the effort behind them, and once we have that perspective we can change a whole lot of things. Where there's a will there's a way!

(P.S.) I would love to know what your thoughts are on this, if I am absolutely crazy to you or what. :) More and more things have been sprouting up in my brain as a result of this, I am already formulating a whole new post in my brain, that is kind of an off shoot of this one. So let me know what you think! :)

Wedding, Life, Time... all that good stuff

So this has been life recently...


Brandon and Morielle Danevicius were married on July 6 2008.

Wow that is weird... (I know it has already been almost 2 weeks, but I am still soaking it all up.)
After the wedding I realized how incredibly fast time goes by, and how I have all these memories about Morielle as fresh as the air I breath, but that are all now just the past. So I would like to post this poem that I wrote after the wedding, as I was trying to comprehend time and how it was the my sister is now a married woman.


Blink and it's gone

Just a few minutes ago you were taking your first breath
Everything was new and you couldn't even think of death

You blinked and it was all just the past
Now you are five, walking, talking, and everything happening so fast

Just a moment later you are blowing out ten candles on your birthday cake...
you are two digits now, with both hands counting your age
Blink and you'll see how many years time can take

Years passes by like seconds, and now you're a teen
dreaming about the future, as everyone does at 15

Don't wait another moment to savor every memory
Because then you'll blink and it will all be history

As quick as a breath five more years went by
And now you are walking with your daddy down the aisle
now ready for true love's first kiss
Just blink and you will see how many years you did miss

First five and then five more, and then ten years are gone like a bolt
You're forty now with a trail of kids behind you
your oldest an adult
With just one blink you saw how fast your children grew

Forty more years flew by like forty more seconds
A heart full of memories is all you have left
then when death was approaching and you didn't have long
It was then that you realized that you blinked and it was gone

After one moment you found what you waited your whole life to see
a place that no matter how many blinks
Time would stay still in happy eternity


This is not exactly Morielle's life it was just inspired by her wedding, and my revelation that because every blink means history, I have to savor life and spend it the best I can.

(Check back soon I am now hoping to keep my blog up more dutifully... and maybe if you persuade me I will start Saturday Sketches back up, (not that you want it or anything.) It just helps me to be more regular with my blog... we shall see... actually we shall blink. :)

God bless everyone!

:)