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BUMPS IN THE ROAD
Address by Lars-Erik Wiberg
for Sunday, December 26, 2004
Last month's address was in a serious vein and, in some places rather
dire with its discussion of how crucial it is for us to minimze our
weaknesses in our employments and activities. I also emphasized just
how important it is for us to maximize our strengths if we want to
reach our true potential and use. The tone of the message was
leavened somewhat by an outline of what we will be trying to do in
Uses Trust for the benefit of our Faith. But the focus on
Occupational Compatibility was really rather serious business. One
must acknowledge, however, that there surely are going to be bumps in
the road as we wend our way through our careers. These
disconcertions, as we shall see, will not affect the value of our
efforts so long as we are doing our best, and they lend themselves to
illustration in a much lighter vein such as follows:
My military service was under the care and feeding of the United
States Air Force during the early 50's. It was precipitated by a
call from the Melrose, Massachusetts Draft Board explaining that when
next they met I would be called up into the United States Army. I
immediately enlisted otherwise and was shipped out to Sampson Air
Force Base in Geneva, New York for basic training on the shores of
Seneca Lake.
Basic training consisted of drill, going to classes, drill, cleaning
the barracks, drill, policing the area, drill, running the obstacle
course, drill, KP, drill, area work details, and then more drill. We
marched everywhere we went under the demanding presence of Sgt.
Lemuel Hoxter, in what the Airforce calls a Flight. It's the rough
equivalent of an Army Platoon, and consists of Squads each, when on
the march, led by the tallest man in it, tapering backward to the
shortest. The shortest man of all is the Right Guide who marches in
front of the Right Squad, and establishes a cadence which is picked
up by the Squad leaders, and it is hoped, mimicked faithfully to the
rear, assisted by the Right Guide's cadence count. I mention this
because I was one of four Squad Leaders, being one of the four
tallest men in our flight.
One fine day our flight was assigned the collective duty of Kitchen
Police. Our morning began with a short march to the mess hall where
the KP assignments were read off by a Staff Sergeant. He had two
clip boards: On one were the listed duties to be performed and the
number of trainees needed for each, and on the other our flight's
roster which was in alphabetical order. So he started at the top
and worked his way down through both lists, until there were just two
Ws left. My remaining buddy was another Squad Leader, one Frank
Wodyka, a large, cheerful, Chicagoan of Polish descent. We both
wondered what jobs could possibly be left, because it seemed that
absolutely everything that had to do with preparing meals - -
unloading trucks, basic food prep, scouring pots and pans and urns,
washing dishes, stacking and storing supplies, cleaning the mess
hall, and more - - all these had been assigned. Maybe we'd be
excused. But no. There was an assignment for us that we could never
have anticipated. We would be cutting butter. Two of the four
largest men in the flight would cut butter. The Right Guide, George
Alford, the smallest man in the flight was off-loading and storing
supplies which included hundred-pound sacks of sugar and flour.
Wodyka and I were introduced to the butter supply which was in a room
full of massive refrigerators. One of these was packed full of
butter in, if I remember correctly, two-pound blocks. We were to
slice these into pats using carving knives. Then we would place the
pats on trays in tiers separated by waxed paper and return them to
the reefer Now we realized why it was that the butter pats we had
been seeing in the chow line presented such a freakish array of
shapes and sizes. We started carving and discovered that the butter
had been chilled to the consistency of brick. So at first it was
almost impossible to slice. However, by the time we finished slicing
a block it was sticking to the carving knife. We cut a few blocks
into strange shapes and had a smoke.
Wodyka noticed a gadget set at the very end of the long counter where
we were working which had wires sticking out every which way. It had
a lever attached to a frame that was supposed to press the wires onto
a flat platform, and it took no imagination to realize that it was
intended to be a butter cutter. But many of the wires were missing,
and most of the rest were loose. That gadget wouldn't help us. But
when we reconnoitered further, we saw another butter cutter at the
other end of the counter in similar condition. Lights went on!
Bells rang! We scurried around looking for something to use as a
screwdriver because that's all that would be necessary to free up the
wires we needed, clamp them into one of the gadgets, and presto! A
butter cutter that worked. Luckily we were in the area where the
cutlery was kept and we found a knife with which we could rebuild one
of the butter cutters so that it was almost as good as new.
Now we were in production, and by noon, we had cut and stacked every
block of butter in the refrigerator. All it took was one pass of the
butter cutter to slice the block into slabs. Then another pass,
after rotating it 90 degrees, and we had sticks like the ones you buy
in a regular one-pound package. Then, using a set of wires that were
closer together, we cut the sticks into pats. It was now an
advantage for the butter to be cold because the pats didn't stick
together, and that made it easy to stack them on the waxed paper.
Around chow time, the Sergeant came back to see how we were getting
along, and we were having a smoke. I told him we'd finished, and he
looked puzzled. Wodyka opened the reefer and there was all the
butter they had, neatly stacked on trays in perfect pats.
The Sergeant's face fell. You could see that he was worried about
losing butter cutting assignments for at least a week or ten days. I
showed him, with some satisfaction, how we had rebuilt a butter
cutter, but it didn't cheer him up overmuch. To make matters worse,
he'd have to think of something else for us to do. Butter cutting
was supposed to be an all-day job. Luckily it was now chow time, and
he'd have a chance to ponder that. We speculated that we might get
the afternoon off. Not a chance.
After lunch we were assigned to finish offloading a large truck that
was backed against the loading dock. The objective of the moment was
to motivate 100 pound sacks of flour from the truck to where they
were stacked inside, at least 100 feet away. Our buddies were
carrying these loads, two men to a sack, each grasping one end by its
corners and crabwalking it to the main stack. The reason they were
doing it this way was because there had been a problem earlier when
one man had tried to carry a sack the whole distance by himself and
had dropped it with the result that it burst and flour had puffed
out everywhere and was still blowing around.
I said that there ought to be a dolly for that job and was told there
was one but that it had disappeared. I looked at Wodyka, and he
looked at me. The dolly hadn't disappeared; it had been used to
ferry something heavy, maybe crates of butter, and been left in a
corner of the reefer room. We fetched it, and it was put to instant
use. I climbed up on the stack of flour sacks to a position about
six feet off the ground. When the flour arrived at the stack on the
dolly, Wodyka would heave the sack up to me, and I'd pile it on a
higher tier. We soon finished that chore, and, when the Sergeant
showed up, we were all taking a break. He assigned the crew we had
been helping to the job of scrubbing down the area and cleaning up
the spilled flour which was getting onto everything. As for Wodyka
and me, we were taken into the mess hall and assigned the task of
topping up the salt and pepper shakers.
Last month we had the privilege of hearing the Rev. Everett Carlton
Goodwin preach. He is the father of our assistant in ministry, Leah
Grace Goodwin, and he preached on the topic "In the Meantime." He
called to mind such events and responsibilities as we encounter in
between our most highly productive moments. Indeed, most of our
lives are spent "in the meantime." We never have anything close to a
succession of what the psychologist Abraham Maslow termed "peak
experiences"- - those high points in our most useful productivity.
And we don't have them even if we are working at trades, occupations
or professions that are ideal for us and do make use of our strengths
and minimize our weaknesses. Fortunately, neither do we have a
meantime that is overly freighted with what Frank Wodyka and I
experienced courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
But even though our experiences that day were almost as haywire as
the broken butter cutters, did we not enjoy a bit of success here and
there? Now we weren't dealing with complex challenges by any means.
Yet, on the other hand, having been assigned duties we could hardly
escape, however cockeyed the system used to make our assignments may
have been, we did repair a butter cutter; cut all the butter into
perfect pats; locate the dolly; and stack the remaining flour. We
did this menial work about as well as it could have been done. It is
hard to fathom how we could have been any more useful than we were
considering the opportunities at hand.
A natural question arises: Does Emanuel Swedenborg have anything to
say that bears on situations such as this? You bet he does! It
turns out that it is the attitude of being useful in connection with
the work at hand that is of greater significance that the intrinsic
value of the specific work itself. In a worldly way I can be more
useful as a superior butter cutter than, say, a so-so diamond
cutter. It's the intention that counts.
You have already heard today from the writings that "The deeds of a
man are only gestures, and regarded abstractedly from the will, are
only motions variously formed and as it were articulated, not unlike
the motions of a machine, thus inanimate." Swedenborg also writes in
Apocalypse Explained ¶ 185 "Works (or deeds) signify the things that
are of a man's life both good and evil. (For) works are the effects
of life . . . if the life is good, the works are good; but if the
life is evil, the works are evil. The life that is in the works is
the intention that is of the will . . . Without this life in works,
they would be only motions like those of an automaton. This is why
the wise do not look to the works but to the life in the works,
namely the intention."
Swedenborg also writes in Arcana Coelestia ¶ 6405 ". . . works are
nothing but the will and understanding in act. What saves them is
the intention to do good." And finally as you have already heard
from Apocalypse Explained ¶ 116 "Works signify things of the will .
. . for will is the cause and works are the effects . . . The will of
man is spiritual, and the derivative works are natural.
So although it is extremely helpful to have a Swedenborgian
perspective on the matter, it is by no means necessary to be a
Swedenborgian. When Wodyka and I were fulfilling our assignments
that day on the shores of Seneca Lake, we were merely two basic
trainees with absolutely no insight whatsoever as to the interplay of
will and work. Nevertheless, the will was there somehow, and our
deeds did benefit from our simply having done what came naturally.
And isn't that the saving grace for all those deeds and works and
expressions of a healthy will that serve us "in the meantime" when we
are contending with those bumps in the road that have no direct
career significance?
Have you ever picked up the salt or pepper shaker in a restaurant and
found it packed so full it wouldn't shake - - maybe had to take some
salt or pepper out so that the shaker would work? Just in case
you're wondering, when Wodyka and I filled the salt and pepper
shakers in that mess hall, we left at least a half inch of space at
the top.
Amen
Copyright 2004 by Lars-Erik Wiberg
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