Sawdust and Soul

A Conversation about Woodworking and Spirituality

William Johnson Everett, John W. de Gruchy

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625644633
  9781498222228
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630877378
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

An American ethicist and a South African theologian reflect on their work with wood and how it has helped them find creativity and meaning in experiences of both loss and transformation. Through their friendship, correspondence, and work together they have developed a rich narrative about the way this craftwork has shaped their relationships with family, friends, and their natural environment. Their conversation invites both craftspeople and religious seekers to join them on a spiritual journey toward fresh insight and inspiration.

Building with Wood

Bill’s Round Table

For many years my theological interests had revolved around the task of moving from a monarchical and patriarchal model for faith and religious language to one that reflects the values of democratic, constitutional republics. In short, I was working on my own version of the larger social change from hierarchical to circular processes of governance. In 1991 and 1992, I had done research on the rise of the “roundtable” experience in the early stages of German reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had written of these roundtables as little nuclei of the public order for which people were yearning.

I subsequently wrote a small book detailing the way worship forms could integrate the circle experience of reconciliation and conflict transformation into the very core of worship. In this view, worship is a rehearsal of the reconciled relations of God’s new creation yet to come. So, from the intellectual side, I was ready to make this a practical reality. With the maturation of these ideas, my inner being spoke its readiness to address this task more physically. The design began to emerge in my mind. The table that would reflect this understanding of worship as a rehearsal of reconciliation would be a double gate-leg table. The drop-leaves supported by the gate-legs would contain inlays of symbols of baptism and communion—dove, seashell, Trinity, grapes, wheat.

It was natural for me to turn to the woods around me for materials. At first, with the aid of Eric and a local friend (my insurance agent Don Overbay, in fact) I sliced boards from a large cherry log from my property to make the legs, but they would require too much time to cure, so Don ended up offering me some cherry large enough to make the legs. The rest of the wood—cherry for the pedestal and hard maple for the top—I bought at Gennett Lumber, one of the region’s oldest hardwood lumberyards, whose history stretches back to the earliest days of scientific forestry here in these mountains.

My failure to use the cherry from my own land was due to the fact that hardwoods need to cure in the air for one year for each inch of thickness. Kiln drying reduces that time to a few weeks, but it usually robs the wood of some of its beauty. At the very outset, my desire to move quickly from plan to reality encountered the slow time of natural processes. I learned that the first virtue of woodworking is patience. It is built into the very nature of the wood itself. I would have to await the wood’s time as it gave up its water to the air, moving from a moisture content of 30 percent to only 6 or 7 percent. I would have to be patient as it settled its fibers to lie flat for my plane. I would have to take the time to check design against measurements, grain, and figure to reduce splitting, checking, and chipping at the ends. Method and patience would join to slow me down, focus my mind and hands, and eliminate the multi-tasking and distractions that had shaped my life for decades. Just as I had had to labor over footnotes and citations, so now I labored over shaping wood to fit its fellow members, align with my design, yield its beauty to the eye and hand. But I still had much to learn.

In making the table I had set out on a different way of understanding how we communicate values and perspectives that change our lives. The table would not seek to shape people’s lives through the process of seeing and hearing words. “Hearing the Word”—that was the way of my Protestant ancestors. In the words of a German book I had read years ago, I was raised more as an “ear-man” (Ohrenmensch) than the “eye-man” (Augenmensch) of Catholic sensibilities. The Augenmensch found revelation not by hearing words but by seeing the colors, visions, architecture, and forms of sculptures, furniture, and figures brought together in the rituals of worship. And even more, like any piece of furniture, the table organized the relationships among people, shaping their movements in a space. It shaped action in a way different from the commands contained in words. The table emphasizes the way we are “Kinetischmensch”—kinetic humans— who learn and communicate through the way we move our bodies. In short, it is a world of dance, of choreography. I was not only building a table for worship, I was entering into a new understanding about how deeper realities are mediated, indeed, revealed, to us.

Unlike the inherent individualism of the Protestant focus on reading the Word, the table invites people into a communal action of eating, drinking, and conversation. It was inherently social, if not necessarily truly public. I had been prepared for this by many years of teaching in a Catholic seminary and immersing myself in its liturgy during that wonderful time of ecumenical engagement after Vatican II. Now it was flowing to my hands and my connection to the forests and people of these mountains.

At this point I had to refine my drawings of the table to arrive at exact measurements for each piece. Now here is where the details really matter! It’s actually taken me years to really respect the importance of the construction drawing. There is an inevitable math behind the world’s design. It’s at this point that I start muttering about our failure to adopt a metric system in this country. Sometimes I feel like an author writing on papyrus.

•

Bill, “I can feel your pain,” as one of your Presidents said. When I was doing woodwork in junior school all our measurements were in imperial or standard inches and feet. South Africa only switched to metric in 1961. All of a sudden we had to work in millimeters, centimeters, and meters, just as our currency switched from pounds and shillings to rands and cents. The transition wasn’t as difficult as we had thought and nobody I know has ever regretted the change. I know something about the difficulties involved in making such a change in the US, but I do think it is a great pity that it never happened when the chance came. Oh, well, let me not get embroiled in that controversy, though I know you are on my side! Fortunately we can now get tape measures that are in both standard and metric, so that helps when we are working together. I must also say that I am the equivalent of ambidextrous when it comes to using both systems in any case, and often think in terms of inches and feet, as well as miles. This is not true of my children, and certainly not of my grandchildren. But you and I have had our moments working together when mistakes crept in because of our two systems.

Do you remember the rosewood entrance hall table I made, the one with the turned legs, and how you arrived to give a hand just when I was fitting the drawers? I have never quite worked out why we did not get the left hand one to fit properly (though only you and I know that—and God), but when I think about it, I wonder whether the problem was that we were measuring differently! I am not sure, mind you, and since the drawer works reasonably well I will let the matter rest. Of course, you may have a different reason for the mistake. But I know that ever since then we have been extra careful when working together. The truth is, and many who obtain tools across borders don’t always get this, you can’t just buy plug cutters and router bits in the US or the UK and expect them to fit in Europe or South Africa. A 1/4” router bit simply does not fit into an 8mm router, nor does a 1/2” plug cutter cut plugs that will fit a 10 mm hole! The difference may appear slight, but it is more than enough to create problems. I have had router bits simply fall out in the middle of a job, making a mess of a table edge in doing so, because of this.

While on measuring, let me repeat here what I am sure everybody who is anybody in the woodworking business knows, but it is still the best advice ever given: “Measure twice, cut once.” I taught this adage to an assistant, Darrington Nceka, I had early on at Volmoed and he soon learnt its importance. But on one occasion when I made a total mess up cutting wood for one of our projects on the bandsaw, he muttered under his breath: “You seem to have cut seven times and measured only once!” Darrington was right. I will always remember him, not only for that reason, but because he had a fetish for tidying up at the end of the sessions so thoroughly that I sometimes had difficulty in finding my tools. So my habit now is that when Serghay and I end a day’s work, everything gets back to where it should be in one of my tool cabinets, and I make sure he knows where everything belongs. A great time and frustration saver.

Incidentally, Serghay and I don’t have a problem with metric, but sometimes we do with language. He is Afrikaans speaking and while I am reasonably fluent in it, and he reasonably fluent in English, now and again technical terms elude us. So we have learnt to make sure we are understanding each other to prevent mishaps. Say it twice or thrice if need be, and you might avoid cutting your fingers! I never thought that multi-culturalism would be an issue in the workshop, but it is. Even communication between you and me sometimes flounders when you insist on speaking improper English!

•

And Southern at that, John! But your recall of communication in the shop amplifies my awareness of our need for mediators, which is a nice way to return to my story of the round table—my symbol of mediation and reconciliation. After gathering the cherry and maple, and ordering some thin wood for the inlays (holly from Georgia, purpleheart from Central America, walnut from regional forests), I set about planing it to proper thickness before cutting it to size. So much of woodworking, like sculpture, is a process of elimination, of cutting away. Anything of beauty, depth, and staying power arises out of purging. Whether it is the refiner’s fire of biblical visions, the ascetic practices of fasting or exile, the self-emptying of genuine love—it is all a cutting away of what is not needed. Working with wood has a way of guiding you to “the one thing most needful.” The shavings and sawdust would go into the compost (except the walnut, which is toxic!) or into my wood stove in the winter. It would all be useful. But the table would arise from the cutting away. My hands and their tools were doing what religious traditions had long proclaimed.

With the wood prepared, I had to fashion tenons and the mortises to receive them at just the right places. In marking out the placements I had to keep moving my mind back and forth between the parts and the whole. How does the entire table fit together and what does this imply for this particular part? Which will be the facing surface? Which will be inside? As I struggled with this task of joinery, I realized how important this capacity to think constantly about part to whole extends to all of life.

One of the requirements of cabinetry, with all its parts, is that you have to label everything. You can even find these marks hidden deep inside old cabinets as well as new ones such as my own. Arrows point up, down, and out. Letters and numbers identify each piece—its overall dimensions, its tenons or mortises, its dado grooves or mating surfaces. It’s way more complicated than Adam’s task in the Garden. Not just cherry this and walnut that, but Part A4, this end up, this side out, mortise here, glue face there. I can’t count how many times a failure to do this completely and thoroughly has gotten me in trouble.

All this has reminded me that our failure to think relationally lies beneath our ecological crisis and our inability to think of our place within a more universal system. It accompanies our persistence, especially in my American culture, of thinking about rights (the part) more than responsibilities (my relation to the whole). Joinery, or cabinetry, as others have pointed out, fosters a cooperative, communal, and collaborative sense of being part of a whole, one member in an ensemble. It’s a strain of thought and values that went through John Ruskin, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts movement in the nineteenth century. Working on the table was a way of re-awakening this connection of artisanry, communalism, and a table-centered Christianity.

A failure to think in this relational way consistently led me to make mistakes. The mortises were too wide or in the wrong place. In one case it simply meant that the best side of the leg would face in rather than out. I accepted this. In other cases, it meant I had to patch in some shims to give the tenons a tight fit.

Because of the very nature of a tree, lumber usually comes in straight boards of varying lengths, width, and thickness. This is what makes it “lumber” rather than “wood.” And indeed, much of the furniture fashioned from it has straight lines and right angles. Keeping things aligned on these axes is a constant preoccupation as I move around with square, straight-edge, and calipers.

However, roundness is also a quality of being a tree. Unfortunately the roundness is weak because of the way grain works. Wood is essentially a bundle of straws bound together. It splits along the straws and holds firm against forces that seek to break the straws. Whether we’re turning wood on the lathe along the line of these straws or against them, we always have to keep in mind this fundamental fact. So now, I hope this gives the old phrase “grasping at straws” a new meaning, for that’s what I’m doing all the time when I’m work...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• About This Book
• Living with Wood
• Working with Wood
• Building with Wood
• Remembering with Wood
• Meanings In Wood
• Connecting with Wood
• A Short Glossary
• Bibliography
• About the Authors