Going Through the Motions Ch. 2 part 1

Tim had a frustratingly slow way of speaking. It was something like a southern drawl given to a northerner. Essentially, he would take just as long as a southerner to say something, but all of his words would be quick and succinct. He appreciated the efficiency of words, and the way in which Tim seemed to read them off of his mind as a sort of pre-speech proof-reading. But when he was burning with passionate argumentative energy, he wanted answers quick, damnit!

"You have got to understand," Tim was saying, "that you are asking excellent questions, but attacking instead of receiving. We can sit here all day and I can field your questions, but if none of my answers surprise you you won't stop and consider them to be truth."

What he was saying had a ring of truth to it. He had been sitting in Tim's wood shop aggressively questioning him for the past hour about his belief in Biblical mythology. At least, that's how he characterized the Biblical narrative anyway: it was a mythology that was comprised of a whole lot of superstitious people's writings.

Tim had agreed to let him work in his wood shop for some under-the-table cash until he could find a real job. Tim owned a small custom cabinetry business and did a number of other side projects. Apparently he was self-employed, but this being the third week of knowing Tim, he hadn't felt comfortable enough to ask. The only reason Tim had extended the offer to him was because Sally had told Tim that he needed a job badly. Since graduating college and buying a one-way ticket from Colorado, he hadn't even received so much as one call from his applications. So much for the Bachelor's degree in English literature.

But the wood shop was the perfect fit. There was something to working the wood. He had always felt calm and at peace, allowing his mind to wander and wrestle with the concerns that were weighing on it. Shop was actually his favorite class in High School, even more so than English, but his mother had told him that he had to go to college instead of jumping right into construction like he had wanted to. And who was he to argue against his mother while their world was all sorts of messed up?

Their current conversation was sparked by a slight comment that Tim had made while showing him the new project that Tim wanted him working on.

A hand planar and some shavings

"You know, Jesus was a carpenter." He had said, while walking towards the lathe. Something about the way Tim said that really irked him. It was an open invite into the conversation, but until that point the wood shop had been a sort of sacred ground where they did not talk about Jesus.

They had agreed to meet once a week to talk Jesus-talk since that first meeting two weeks ago, in a coffee shop that roasted its own fair-trade beans. But the time in the wood shop had always been strictly business and teaching how to work the different machines and stay safe in what was potentially a butchers workshop. Tim was missing part of his right pointer finger, the last bit. He would hold it up as a reminder of safety every time he was about to do something wrong with a machine.

It was a cool arrangement. He was actually something like an apprentice, but Tim hadn't called him that. It was just how it felt. Here is the wood stock. When we get orders, we'll plan out exactly what we need and you can pull out the materials. Measure carefully, because
we don't want any waste. "Measure twice cut once" is the rule. I'll show you how to use the lathe soon so you can help make spindles and work on some of your own projects if you want. 



Those sort of things. Hard not to think he was being trained for the long-haul. But Tim barely knew him. That sort of trust had him, well, distrustful.

And the comment about Jesus betrayed what he had thought was an unspoken agreement.

"What do you mean 'a carpenter'?" He had pulled up short, crossed his arms and leaned a little away from Tim, eyes drawn down in suspicion.

"I mean he worked with wood. 'Is not this the carpenter's son?' is the question asked by the people of Nazareth in Matthew 13:55, as they question Jesus' authority to preach and teach to them." Tim had noticed the abrupt stop and had slowed down and turned himself, propping himself up with a hand on a workbench.

"Sure, but he can't possibly have been a carpenter like this" he waived his hands around at the shop "could he?"

"Well no, not exactly... for one thing they didn't have electricity or these sort of tools. They did everything by hand, using tools like that" he pointed to the tool cabinet mounted into a far wall "to work, and glue was nothing like what we have now. It was mostly mortise and tenons or wooden pegs used to hold things together. Or other clever techniques. People have been working with wood since shortly after the Fall, and they really knew what they were doing. I sometimes do a project all by hand as a form of prayer and reflection myself."

"Right, well that makes sense. But Jesus himself, how do we know he was a carpenter? And isn't it true that there are something like two decades of his life missing from the Bible?"

And so the conversation went. It got to a heated standstill--well, heated on his side, Tim just calmly and methodically reflecting, answering, or addressing his questions--when Tim could only answer his question with "we believe it on faith."

Such a cop-out answer! He thought.

He had responded with a comment that led into Tim's accusation of his closed-mindedness.

"You take it on faith that people have passed down completely inerrant, and translated flawlessly, words that were delivered by God through people and that nobody throughout the centuries added their own ideas? That power-hungry people who could have and would have changed the words ever so slightly or even more drastically to suit their needs of control didn't ever do so?"

That's where Tim had stopped him.

"Look, why don't you take some time to cool down, work on some projects if it helps, and I'll come back later to check in. Marcy is going to have dinner up at the house later on if you'd like to join us and the kids. No pressure though."

Tim had pushed himself up form the workbench and was patting the sawdust out of his pants and shirt. He extended his hand to me as a sign of peace, and reluctantly he took it. No use it holding a grudge against the guy after he had just been ripping into him and his beliefs for the past hour.

Carhartt Pants

Tim walked toward the barn door, sliding it open a bit before exiting out into the warm midday sun. The autumn tinge was starting to hit the fabled New England leaves, but the weather was still nice enough for cargo shorts and a T-shirt if you wanted to. He was wearing his Carhartts and a waffled long-sleeve with the sleeves rolled up. With his beat-up work boots on he looked every bit the carpenter.

Did Jesus look like this? He wondered sarcastically.

He looked around the shop to gather himself a bit. The door was still slightly open, and Tim's figure had disappeared off to the right. It might behoove him to take a step outside into the speckled sunlight of the trees off to either side of the barn. Certainly some fresh air would help calm him before he started working with the machines. He wasn't dumb enough to try that one.

Stepping outside, he turned left. There were a few boulders tossed along side the barn, presumably from when it was built. The Coltman's lived on one of those old New England farms. Tim had explained to him that when he had purchased the house and property from its former owner, the barn's roof had collapsed in on itself, and it hadn't been used in over twenty used except for as storage.