I must have been about 11 or 12 when I was driving to the hardware store with my Dad — like used to happen to me in bookstores, the hardware store had very little to do with the actual purchase…it had to do with the fact that he was trying to figure something out — I knew that hardware store trips were lengthy and quiet. I was there to tag along and distract him from whatever was eating away on the inside. I know that feeling.
As we rounded the corner to the aisle with the nails and bolts and fasteners of all kinds…I told him that something was bothering me and wondered if this was a good time. With his affirmation that it was as good as ever, I simply said, “So Lite…I am confused — are we rich or poor?”
He wheeled around and did a reverse sigh and in retrospect, I think that my question likely united with his. It hit him in the place of his own deep wondering and longing. Looking me straight in the eye and leaning intently on the pole in the middle of the hardware store he gave me a teaching that I am still unfolding.
You see, being born to my parents after the glimmer of early adulthood had warn off and the trek to the top of the corporate mountain didn’t leave the view he was expecting, I often was the recipient of the reflection he had from down under — from the inside out.
He said to me…”I don’t honestly know. There is never enough because there is always something lacking. I can’t work any harder to get us everything I want for you, We have hit some hard times. But we have the tools to be rich if we are building the right things. Be sure you build the right things and you will be the richest kid in town.”
And we proceeded to the bracket aisle to find what he had been looking for.
Then, as now, I had my trusty notebook with me and wrote down the words in case I needed them. A few days ago, in the mist of Lenten detachment, I found the tattered notebook and the ‘gospel according to the hardware store’. I trust that the lesson is for now.
From the inside out….the question remains…am I using the tools to build the right things? Or am I still wandering around in the aisle looking for the right tools?
David Brooks in his book “Road to Character” describes the cultivation of two kinds of virtues — those for the resumee and those for the eulogy. The eulogy virtues, he contends, are those that really matter — that we care most about– what will be said about us at the end of life. Resume virtues are those that we spend most of our adult lives cultivating.
Lent, it seems to me, is about cultivating eulogy virtues — finding the right tools and choosing to build the right things. Sometimes, we get part way into a project and realize it’s not building the right things. It may have taken the process of beginning to clarify the right path.
In my life, it is the moments of silence…of silent walking through the hardware store to find the right tools…to build what may not have yet been started or to finish what has been dormant…it is building the Kingdom….cultivated by the tools we are given — if we let Lent wake us up — from the inside out.
Happy Week Two of Lent!
