Lessons in the woodshop

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Bill moved a stack of pine in curvy, looping patterns beneath the hum of a band saw. When his hands touched it – stiffened by his disease though they were – the pine moved like melting butter.
He sliced the wood’s reddish veins in a smooth mesmerizing rhythm releasing a crisp forest of clean air. Slowly, he carved away a graceful budding cross.
Bill Hassel will always be “Pastor” Bill to me, though I only knew him for a short while before he was forced to leave his church. His body, stiffened by the terminal amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, pushed him into a wheelchair and ended his service to God in one building, but opened it in another less likely place.
His vocal cords – dampened and mostly stolen by the muscle-killing disease – keep him from talking, but with the chatter of the band saw we didn’t need words.
He handed me a slice of wood.
I’d never done this before, but wanted to spend some of my last moments in this town with the man who I admire more than anyone. He’s led thousands from his wheelchair to raise money for ALS research and has a star role in a documentary I helped produce called “Breadth of Hope.”
I took the board and cut away. The saw screeched, yelped and tugged its own path. I tried to gear it back on course to follow the penciled budding cross pattern we traced. I cut awkwardly around the looping design Bill had just sailed through, and while he breezed through his like melting butter, I moved mine like frozen lard. He sat resting and watched, non-judgmental, silent, as my budding cross slowly grew.
Next was a straight Latin cross, he says, represents our most basic belief in Christ. The lines were easy to follow, right angles and short.
“Follow the straight and narrow,” I thought, though it’s scarcely something I do or believe.
“Sometimes the straight lines are just as hard to follow as the curved,” Bill said, assuring me I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Bill makes the crosses to sell and raise money for a cure for his neurological disease. They’re all nailed together in the end and net about $15 for ALS research. Three crosses represent faith, hope and charity, and in his words are, “A person of faith, hoping for a cure, giving to charity.”  Bill’s made almost $2,000.

I’m hardly a religious person. I seek God when I’m desperate, lonely or hurt, like most people I assume, but the smallest, the Latin cross, became an act of faith.

You see, the crosses represent our connection to God. We start off crude, rigid and dull – barely spiritual at all. Just a vieny slab of something that came from the earth. Slowly though, with a little moving, meandering, starts and stops, we bud into something more luxurious. Something rich.
After I got through with the second cross, Bill handed me the biggest slice of wood. It was so large it hardly fit on the saw’s table. The pattern was giant and even more intricate than the budding cross. Bulging fleur-de-lis lily petals spilled on the edges of the cross pattern with daring curves.
“Have at it,” he said, huffing out as much air to compensate for his distorted vocals.
So I went curve after curve tracing out the winding pattern entranced, fully consumed in the shop, the pine dust billows and God. I thought about life, its cruelties, and how someone so loving could experience something so hurtful. How could this carpenter, this man of God, who used his voice to connect people to heaven, lose that? How could this active, athletic preacher be forced into a chair?
The former Rev. Bill Hassel didn’t speak a word about God, his faith or his hope, but what I learned will never leave me.
Our lives are miracles from a higher power, that with a little carving, etching, sanding, starting and stopping can grow into something beautiful. If we just let go, meditate and lose ourselves in what God’s doing, we will blossom into something perfect.

I’m hardly a spiritual person, but I do believe that God was in the wood shop that day, as he is with Bill always.
“He’s right here with me in this chair,” Bill says.
And if God can be with Bill in his chair – I think he can be with all of us.

Pursuing Pain

My hipbone clicked, my thighs were lead, and a baby passed me while cooing a gentle “screw yooo” in a stroller.

It’s a regular happening when I’m running a trail, a race or pounding the pavement. I used running as a way to help myself plow though a painful breakup about a year and a half ago and never stopped.

I’m not a marathoner, a competitive athlete or elite racer. Usually, I’m fulfilled trudging miles in silence while dodging cars on Victoria’s pothole-riddled roads.

The headstones of the cemetery along my path inspire me to enjoy life more. I think of my running as a mission for them. I run for every person’s unfulfilled life who might be resting under a heap of earth. And I run for those who I know who can run no longer.

I’m never dead last when it comes to running, nor am I ever first.

In many ways, running parallels our approach to life.

We have a goal in mind, yet putting every foot in front of the other can seem so tedious. There’s an end in mind, but the whole thing really isn’t about the end. Part of it can be painful, but other parts mind-numbingly satisfying. Running takes us places and jars our minds into a different view of reality.

It’s not about beating the baby in the stroller or the soccer mom in the sports bra. Sure we can use those people to inspire us to keep going or to do more, but meeting the finish line is all about beating yourself. It’s about proving to yourself that the pain is meaningful. The pain makes you a better person and there’s no way to become everything you can, without taking the risk. Pain is a risk. It’s a thrill of sorts, but that’s what we live for.