Holy Shit

After two solid days of moving manure piles and getting a good four inches of muck out of the cow shed, it's time for the final detail work.  My husband gets in a scoop and the girls shovel away to fill it up. It's heating up and this isn't pleasant work.  Blessedly we have a swimming trip planned this evening.

Those piles of manure translated into a bigger turned pile than we expected.  When you get frustrated and say, "that's a pile of shit," now you have a visual reference.  What you don't have, unless you come on over, is the smell.  It's not overwhelming, but it is pervasive and unpleasant.  The girls set up fans in the shed while they work and last night we slept with the windows closed. 

While my husband and daughters are outside working, I'm inside cooking.  First I skimmed milk, froze some, and froze some cream.  Then I made bread and started yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, and butter.  I hung a fromage blanc and moved frozen strawberries off cookie sheets and into bags.

My long day yesterday ended with a bag of broccoli for the freezer.  Last year I was lazy and didn't pull the plants and discovered they gave a larger crop in the fall.  So I'll be lazy again and see what they do this fall!

Busy days like these make me wonder about the meaning of life.  Sometimes it seems like life is all work with little interruptions for leisure and relationship.  I am not the first one to think this way.  The ancient Israelites named toil as a result of original sin.  "Cursed be the ground because of you!  In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:17).

Pope John Paul II wrote a encyclical about work that gives a different view, not as punishment or as meaningless drudgery, but as cooperation with God.  When we work, we are creating something new.  My husband and daughters are creating a new manure pile and new cleaned shed.  I am creating new bread and new yogurt.  When we create something new we are creators, but we only do it in cooperation with The Creator.  In that view, work is sacred because God is sacred.  Work isn't something to be endured until "real" life happens, it is real life because God is present.  In fact, work is a fundamental way that we experience God because of the way God is with us when we work. 

Christ spent only three years of his life in ministry, the bulk of his life was spent in manual labor as a carpenter.  Did he feel the presence of God the Father as he cut and carved and sanded?  Do I feel the presence of God the Creator as I stir and bag and knead?  Do my kids feel God's strength as they shovel and scoop?  It's one more reminder that God isn't a feeling, because sometimes I don't feel God, but that's because of my lack of sensitivity, not because God isn't there.