lenten journal: it's the little things

I finished Kathleen Flinn’s

today and found myself moved by her closing words:

With a little searching, I found a copy of “The Station,” for which I’m grateful. He follows the words Flinn quoted with these:

With those sentiments swirling in my soul, I made my (mostly) daily journey to The Writer’s Almanac to find today’s offering, “Meditation on Ruin” by Jay Hopler:

One of the things Flinn mentions more than once in her book that I have come to find both true and necessary in my work in the kitchen is a good cook cleans up between tasks. Part of the reason is basic hygiene: if you’re cutting raw meat, you need to change the cutting board and clean your knife before you start dicing vegetables. Part of the reason is practical: you run out of counter space in a hurry if you don’t take time to put away and wipe down. When I fail to keep up with my cleaning, I learn (again) what Hopler is saying: the little details will kill you.

And they will save you.

Before I could get too philosophical, my mind first took a country turn after reading the poem and dug up Robert Earl Keen’s song, “The Little Things,” from my mental juke box. Keen can be as cynical as he is country, and this song is no exception.

I’m not sure why the song has stuck with me over the years, because I don’t like it. I mean it’s a catchy little country number, but the sentiment is crass in that Henny-Youngman-take-my-wife-please attempt at humor sort of way that, well, isn’t funny. It is, however, instructive because Keen articulates the very despair in the details that Hopler warns against. A marriage falls apart just like the rest of the world: it’s the little things.

Or it’s the little things that build a life together, whatever the relationship. We find our joy in the journey when we travel together, whatever the destination. Ginger and I had lunch today with a friend from Massachusetts. We were talking about a mutual acquaintance and Ginger made the comment that it was hard for her when the woman demeaned her husband in public. I realized when she said it that she had never done that to me in our twenty years together.

It’s the little things.

Ginger and I met this afternoon with Keith from Bountiful Backyards, a company here in Durham that describes themselves as “edible landscapers,” working to get folks to do more with their yards than plant grass and flowers, but to think more in terms of food productions, soil nutrition, and water conservation. Last fall, we had to regrade our front yard, so there is nothing but dirt and stepping stones (underneath our giant pin oak); we needed help seeing what could be. Keith had tons of ideas and we talked about several possibilities. One of the most helpful things he said was to think in terms of it being a work in progress; it didn’t all have to happen right now. Gardening is a journey of its own. We will make some plans, dig in the dirt, plant some stuff, on our journey to make this house more and more our home – with a yard we can eat!

Years ago, my friend Billy and I wrote a song called “Traveling Mercies,” part of which said:

Yes. It’s the little things.

Peace,
Milton