There’s nothing much more satisfying than stacking firewood.
Piece by piece the wood that was once a tree that blew down in the wind, was blocking the view of the mountain for a neighbor, or that needed to be taken down due to disease or to create a better fire barrier, goes from the stack in the shed into a wheelbarrow and onto the stack on the back porch.
That firewood serves a purpose.
It fuels the fire around which we gather. It brings people together, as has been true for most of human history. Time together around a fire warms the collective, reminding us that we are not alone, that we belong to one another, are meant to live in relationship with one another and not left out in the cold on our own.
Stacking the wood is a collection of elements that make for a worthwhile project.
It is manual labor. Work done with the hands of humans. It is meaningful labor. Work that accomplishes something that matters. It is methodical labor. Steady and purposeful effort toward a desired outcome.
Today I re-stacked the firewood onto the stack in the shed.
It’s fire season and we will be away from home for a while. Wood on the porch under the eaves of the house could ignite in the event of a wildfire, putting our home at risk. Moving the wood, piece by piece, from one stack to another, I was reminded—by a friend who shares my love for stacking wood—of the pattern by which Richard Rohr teaches that all transformation takes place. Order. Disorder. Reorder. That’s how transformation works. And as much as we cling to our desire for order and want to keep things all neat and buttoned up, there is no skipping the messy middle disorder. It is only in the midst of the mess and jumble of the pieces that we are able to put life back together in ways that will better serves what life is asking of us.
Like it or not, we are in the midst of disorder on a national and global scale. Rather than gathering together around the hearth of the common good, we are increasingly a people divided by difference rallying around blazes fueled by fear.
Re-stacking the wood of the world is our collective task.
It is the manual labor that can only be done by human, the meaningful labor that has the potential to accomplish something that matters, and the methodical labor comprised of steady and purposeful effort towards a desired outcome.
Re-stacking the wood for the common good, might, just might, keep us from going up in flames.
