just one

This morning I started the day weeping. The Haiti numbers did it to me: 4,000 humans beings and 6 latrine toilets. Six. I trust that God is there. I know this to be true in my very core. And I choose to believe that somehow, even with the numbers of 4,000 and 6 that there is some divine order, some bigger picture that my pea brain cannot wrap around. But, how do I sit and drink my coffee and fret about all the many possible things I could do in the day with those numbers of 4,000 and 6?

Well, the phone rang and somebody asked if I would meet with their son. A full-grown son who has just gotten out of chemical dependence treatment--for the 5th time. "Of course," I say.

I put him to work with me laying stone ringed around my newly placed storage tank. We work and talk. No job, no money, no idea about what to do....As the stories come, I realize that this is what I do with the numbers of 4,000 and 6. I look for small numbers close by.

tank's in the ground

Yesterday I dug the hole; today I put something in it. Just happen to have three tanks: two 1700 gallons and one 10,000 gallons. problem is the tanks are out in a field that's still covered in snow and I can't figure out how to get them pulled out of there. My backhoe can lift them, but will slip in the snow. My truck can't lift the tank and will most likely get stuck trying to pull that much. But, I don't know, so I try.

Nope, can't pull a couple thousand pound tank while the wheel are in the snow, not even with 4WD, not even in low.

I go get every chain I've got down in the shop and, stringing them all together, I am able to get the truck out of the snowy field and onto the gravel road. Success. In 4WD low I am just able to get the tank sliding and I don't dare lose my momentum and keep dragging all the way to the sauna. A bit of careful chain rigging and I am able to get the tank up in the air, centered over the hole and down in. Then I back-filled around the tank and there it is. I would have liked it 1 ft lower, but I hit solid rock and couldn't dig any deeper.

According to my calculations, I should be able to drain the splash tank about 10 times before filling this tank. I take a sauna about once a month. So 3 seasons of saunas will fill the tank, and then summer gardening season will drain it. I should have about enough water in the tank to cover all my watering needs for the garden, since I use drip emitters for all the plants. So it's a system in balance: taking saunas, storing the splashtank water and growing tomatos.

for two gallons of fuel

Sunday, after church, after 2 fast-paced, fun-filled days with the kids, after dropping the kids off at Leigh's and it could be a crash-and-burn day: lonely, empty, all too quiet in the house.

A good day to dig with a backhoe, so I dug a hole today. Not mindless digging, mind you. I've been not real happy with dumping the water out of my splash tank every time I fire up the sauna. 200 plus gallons of good useable water gets drained out on the ground after each sauna--water that could be used for the garden. But, since I sauna all year and only garden for one season, I figured I need to cache that water.

Well, my neighbor, Dan, gave me 2 tanks last summer. They are 12 ft. long, 5 ft in diameter and hold 1700 gallons each. So, no, not mindless digging. I dug a hole right in front of the sauna building deep enough to contain that metal tank. Then I'll plump some pipe from the sauna splashtank to this buried tank. I figure this tank can hold the water from about 8 - 10 saunas. And in the area in front of the sauna is where the new garden will go, so I can take the water from the holding tank and go to right to the garden. I think I'll even put rain gutters on the sauna roof and collect that rainwater into the holding tank, too.

While I was digging I was listening to a new favorite song I stumbled on. The Moscow boys' choir singing Psalm 141, "Let my prayers rise up..." A breathe-taking piece that probably has not been played in many backhoes.

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What struck me about all of this was that, and this hit me whilst I stood deep in this huge hole I had just dug, I dug this hole--deep enough to bury a SUV so that nobody would ever see it again--in 2 hours and used maybe 2 gallons of diesel fuel. Think how long it would take to dig this by hand. And I just dug it in its entirety on a whim, after church, and because I felt like it. And all the energy needed was contained in 2 gallons of fuel. A jug of diesel cheated a week's worth of hard labor and aching muscles and blisters. Technology can short-cut some thing and make work-arounds, and there might not be any aching backs. But for all the back aches we can jump over, we're not able to get past heart aches and aches of the soul. "Lord, here my prayer" from myriad thousands of lips on thousands of forty-day stretches of Lents.