I actually had a chance to spend an hour or so in the garage yesterday. I know. Doesn't sound all that appealing to me, either. But after all, it is December, the time of year when those of us who attempt to carve a Christmas present out of a block of wood that is worth presenting to our wives on Christmas morning, must get down to some serious work. My giftee has always been Chris. She made the mistake of saying she really liked my earliest fumbling attempts, so it just encouraged me.
I was hoping that when I slipped with the knife the last time I was working out there and cut a hole in my new blue jeans that I was done with the inevitable carving fingers accidents. But alas, it was not to be. Once again, as I do virtually every year, I have tiny little cuts on my hands. And they are, as always, in just the right places to be quite bothersome when I do things like tie my shoes or pick up a cup of coffee or type. But I am determined to tough it out once again and get the carving finished.
I actually had an idea about what the carving would be before I began this year. Not that I am at liberty to say what it is destined to become. Sometimes I just start cutting and see if it begins to remind me of anything. That's the Michaelangelo approach. I heard what he did when he carved was to chip away everything that didn't look like it belonged, and then brighten up the rest. Of course he usually worked in marble. Not much room for error there. I need a lot of room for error. Think I'll stick to wood.
I started out this whole carving thing way back in the day when we were first married. We used to get a real Christmas tree, and for a month or so I would cough and hack and pop antihistamines. Then our children were born. And when they started coughing and hacking for a month around Christmas, it didn't take long for the lovable pediatric nurse among us to put two and two together. We got a fake tree. Helped me out, too. So when you bought a real tree back then – don't know if it's still true now – they would cut off an inch or so of the bottom so the tree could more effectively soak up the water and nutrients you were of course remembering to put in your tree stand. It was that couple of inches of tree trunk that provided the base material for my earliest carvings.
And my early attempts were pretty sad. One year I made coasters by using one of those heat guns to burn pictures into the wood. Another year it ended up being a candle with its single flame rising from the center of what looked like, well, a hunk of a tree trunk. As the years progressed and we no longer had the yearly tree trunk to draw from, I used chunks of wood I found in the street or around the garage. A few years I used balsa wood from Hobby Lobby, but that stuff was too soft. Very difficult to carve. One year I used part of the tree that feel after Hurricane Ike. Many of the figures started their career intended to be race cars formed by the eager young hands of Cub Scouts. Their blocks of soft pinewood proved to just the right consistency for carving, so I search all year for cast-off pine. Sometimes I can find it in hobby stores, too, marketed as carving wood. That's what I used this year, but my stash is running dangerously low since being wiped out by Hurricane Ike.
I like to do animals. A frog. A hippopotamus. A giraffe. A beaver. A camel. A dolphin. Over one two year period I did a manger scene. This year … nope. Can't reveal it yet. But now I'm down to the sandpapering. Never the most fun part of the process, but at least it means I'm close to the end for another year.
Isaiah 30:15 says, "This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.'"
Father, I long for some of that quietness and rest. I understand it'll begin with repentance and trust. Help me get there. Amen.
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