Room for Error, Room for Rest

Here are four pieces of wood that are in the process of being shaped into ‘stems’ for the double ends of my current boats. These pieces fit the lengthwise frames some of the hull together, and stand where the water meets the boat and passes by.

(Speaking of boats and water, I’ll have some new guest posts in the coming weeks about fishing, water creatures, as well contemplative crafting. Look for them!

Also a link to my sermon and children’s message at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 2/21/21.)

Back to boats. In the rip cut I’ve left room for error. The saying goes, you can remove more wood, but you can’t really put it back. The 1/4” or so that is left can be planed away in thin curls until the surface and angle is pretty close to precise.

I try to leave room for error and room for rest. Anymore I mostly try not getting in a hurry. People may not always like my slowdowns, but I seem to keep busy enough, make fewer mistakes, and learn more from the ones I do make. And I think many people are waiting for the chance to slow down, for someone to invite them to do so.

I keep better in the zone of ‘optimal frustration,’ …at least in the shop. Just frustrated, unsettled, energized enough to keep pondering and pressing forward at a task that calls, yet more settled where I am, aware of what I need, what I don’t know. Careful.

The writer Robert Pirsig describes something like this in the narrator’s description of ‘gumption traps’ in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. How to keep in the place of energy and peace while carefully working along with reality as it emerges at hand, in his case on motorcycles? It’s a contemplative attitude cultivated in the midst of activity, facing reality.

Some christian spiritualities invite people into such a contemplative attitude, accepting gracious guidance along with a will to work. At least for me, I invite Christ and the Holy Spirit to be with me while I work, and find that I am invited to be nearer to the peace and rest of of God while I struggle and flow along with the work.

remember us according to your mercy and steadfast love, Psalm 25

So, I’m learning better how to leave room for error, and room for rest.

It’s a broadly faced challenge. Our working environments and ‘superiors’ may not leave such room, or even appreciate the need for it. And you may not always feel freedom to leave your working situation, or change it, in order to receive such room.

So, try bringing along an inner guest, who let’s the lovingkindness of God rest with you in a moment of distress, anxiety or deep frustration. Maybe a word to repeat can help you-“be still” or “remember me” or something else simple, maybe from scripture.

How might God carve room for error and room for rest? How might you work and be differently in that little moment and place of the new creation?

It might give you a better appreciation of your freedom-in, freedom-for. It might help you recognize your responsibility to guide and shape the work and pace of others. To see and connect with those you work with, those you live with, those you pray with.

May we find people and things that invite us into gracious, spacious places. And learn to make room for error and for rest.