Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s an exciting day today. I could barely get to sleep last night. Finally, at long last, I own a sewing machine that makes automatic buttonholes! You just slip a button into the holder and the machine calculates what size the buttonhole needs to be and makes it. I know, CRAZY, right? Yesterday, I made a little woolen waistcoat and deliberately designed it with too many buttons just to play with this feature on the new machine.

You might think I am a little dotty about tools. I won’t disagree. However, I will say that at the heart of any good tool is some sort of leverage that helps focus power into a more useable format. Being a relatively small mammal, with only average strength in my teeth and forearms, I will take all the help I can get.

Tools are just ways of harnessing power—power that might otherwise have been wasted in kicking the side of the lawnmower when it won’t start, or in mopping the bathroom floor when the toilet won’t flush. Harness power in the right way, and it’s very useful. Let it run amok, and the next thing you know…well… it might involve creatures with horns running through your house. (Sadly, in light of recent events, that doesn’t pertain to just me anymore.) Usually, tools used well help us get things done with less effort and more efficiency. It’s taken me a long time to see that Power, like money, like energy, is neutral—it’s all in how we use it that matters.

I have a fun new neighbor who has never before owned her own home. She comes over to talk (masked and standing ten feet away) about tools and tell me her latest adventures with squirrels in her attic. We commiserate about the secret ways we use garden implements that are probably against some sort of code. (I had just gotten done making washers for a leaky sink out of old rubber gloves.) We’ve both been on a fixing rampage lately. We are both too house-poor to hire professionals to do things so we are um, getting Creative, if not downright Inventive. As I continue to prove to the Good Hermits of Hermit Hollow, “any tool can be a hammer.” My Neighbor tells me about how she pried a board off her porch so the water from the roof could run through the space instead of being fed into her cellar, where it was creating a swamp. I help her find where the squirrels are getting in and she asks if I have some tools she could borrow. I offer her my hot pink tool bag and apologize ahead of time that the screwdriver is a mess. I’ve been using it as a chisel. I needed to move the strike plate on a door so that it would latch properly and, unable to find my chisel, I just drilled a ton of tiny holes in the wood until it resembled Swiss cheese and then chopped it all out with a screwdriver. Probably the most useful thing in the tool bag is all the old baling twine. It comes in handy for everything.

Her eyes glint as she stores the information away for later use. “You know,” she says, “You need another blog. We’ll do it together. It’ll be called ‘How Real Girls Fix Shit.’” I can tell that, despite all the problems she is having, she is also really excited about being empowered to fix things. It’s adorable to see how excited she is. It’s fun to use tools, even if it is the wrong way. I remember my dad, a masterful furniture maker, telling me that the two most important things in his toolbox were WD40 and duct tape. “If it’s supposed to move and it isn’t, try the WD40. If it’s not supposed to move and it is, then use the duct tape.”

I love fixing things.

I loved junior poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem today—especially the line where she says our nation “is not broken, but simply unfinished.” I could not agree more. In my profession, if it’s not fixed, it’s just not finished. Going forward, we need all our tools—fancy buttonholers and mangled screwdrivers and everything in between. If we work together, we will have all the power we’re going to need.

We’re going to need emotional and spiritual tools too.

I find a lot of these, along with the mowers and weed-whackers, in the barn. This morning, as every morning, I went into the sheep pen to sit and be Present with things—grateful to see my breath hang in the air and remind myself I am a little animal, alive Right Now, with other little animals—social animals with no concept of media or distancing. I sit on my little milk-crate-tuffet in the corner and they push all over me for scratches and cuddles, even after the corn chips are gone. They think nothing of staring deep into my eyes and belching lovingly into my face. They never say “excuse me.” Etiquette really isn’t their thing…

Incidentally, the sheep have had incredibly fresh-smelling breath lately. It smells like they are burping up Pine-sol but it’s really just Christmas tree. They have carefully stripped all the flesh and skin off this thing, peeling it with their razor-sharp lower teeth (sheep have no upper teeth in the front of their mouths) with the efficiency of expensive kitchen gadgets. Now, just the pale ribs and spine remain, like a beached sea creature in their paddock.

I tell them that a new day is dawning in America today. “A new dawn dawns every day,” they yawn. “Now what?” they want to know.

“Love means Work,” I say. “We need to gather our tools. We need to do a lot of repair work, starting with ourselves. We need to soften the hard edges of our words, meet hostility with gentility and kindness, cultivate Curiosity, and practice Gratitude.”

“Gratitude?” asks a young sheep curiously.

“She means Grassitude,” says an older sheep knowingly.

“What’s that?”

“It’s when you are knee deep in the tender shoots of spring and the sunshine and breeze are in total agreement to make the temperature just right and the whole fragrant meadow is in bloom and you can’t bite or gulp any faster—each chew is more delicious than the next but you don’t have time to taste it in the rush. Every now and then a bit of clover or a dandelion bud explodes mid-bite and drags a rainbow of flavor across your tongue, but you ignore it as you continue to snarf your way across the field with your friends. You hurry and hurry and hurry, anxiously thinking that where you are is ‘good’ but inside you are panicking because somewhere else might be better and you can’t help wondering if everyone else is getting something you aren’t. Later, when you are lying in the shade, Calm, you begin to Ruminate on your full belly. You see how vast the meadow is and know you are Always provided for. Then, you burp. You taste each bite again, slowly, and you chew thoroughly, extracting all the Nourishment. You realize, as if for the first time, how Good it all is. It feels good to rest, to breathe, to turn the volume down on the ambient anxiety that had your wooly undies all wadded up… You just breathe…. and chew…. You know that everything is going to be OK. That’s grassitude.”

“Ah yes,” the young sheep smiles. “I remember now.”

Well, Dear Ones, may we all remember… Gratitude invites Grace and there is SO much to be Grateful for today. I am grateful for YOU. (and ewe…and ewe…)(sorry, couldn’t resist!) Let the mending continue!

With sew much love,

Nancy