Five Holes

May 25, 2020

Greetings from the opening,

I am rarely asked to contribute to the landscaping in our yard unless it is to cut something off, which always feels counterintuitive to growing things.  The process of keeping grass at a uniform height, or fighting back unruly vines, or removing large unsightly branches, is the arena I am invited to participate.

The design of the environment is left to the more talented, intelligent and horticulturally inclined in the household, to whom I bow in arboristic deference.

Add to that milieu, holes.

New plants of some size were added to our menagerie.  I will call them ‘euonymus’ because that’s what I call every plant, mostly because I like how the word feels in my mouth.  I also enjoy the word ‘Malbec’ because I like how it feels in my mouth, both figuratively and literally.

These new adoptees, in order to best feel at home with us, required that they be settled deep in well prepared soil, and so it was given to me to create space where there was once earth.

I have dug plenty, but not lately.  I have trained my body to move across the surface of the earth, but plowing down into it is something for which I am out of practice.  I brought my tools to the designated space, put on my ratty old work gloves, and sunk the spade into the dirt.

You probably have had experiences like this, where something comes to you, triggered by a color or a sound or a word, and you are transported to that memory.  And so it was for me after the first scoop of soil.  I felt a long tear inside me, as if I were digging into myself.  It seems so dramatic to write it now, but it is still true.

Images from nearly two decades ago, bolder each time I sunk the spade in the soil.  I resented being reminded on this sunny afternoon, in this innocent puttering moment.  Angry, I dug deeper, now far too deep for the hapless euonymus, sitting idly in its pot nearby.

After two holes the images passed, and I thought of other holes.  I was sweating now, dirt clinging to me.  I thought of the postholes I dug in the indifferent clay when I built the kid’s hillhouse.  Thought of one of their favorite books ‘Holes’.  Thought of one of my favorite books ‘Jayber Crowe’, in which the title character wandered into being a gravedigger, digging the ultimate hole. 

In the third hole it came to me how lucky I was.  I had put most of this soil around the house over the last couple decades, planted and removed all manner of euonymus and its kin.  So there were very few rocks and the soil was pliable and willing. By the fourth hole I was finally getting the dimensions right, feeling satisfied with my work.

In the fifth hole I was in front of the house.  I have been here countless times but maybe it was the digging that reminded me that I was in that place the images came from.  I didn’t intend to share this but this morning as I sat down to write about five holes, I realized it was the most important thing for me.  And so, I looked back and found what I wrote to you in September of 2001.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I am hacking at the dirt next to my house, hewing through clay, spraying top soil, shredding roots.  I am digging a hole next to the foundation of our house, looking for a likely place where water infiltrated our basement last winter.  I am attacking the job, intent on defeating the dirt.  Soon I am shoulder deep, and I am thinking of the hundreds of rescue workers in New York, digging through rubble.  I sit down, rest my back against the house.  This isn’t working.

I fiddle idly with the soil at the foundation, and right there is the source of my problem, a small crack in the cement.  Just like that.  I’m not looking for it, and it appears.

Some dirt slides into the hole from above and I look up to see Sawyer, standing at the rim of the pit I am crouched in.  He asks me what I’m doing, and I explain I’ve just found the hole in the house where the water leaks in.  He considers this for a moment.

“I’ll go get the duct tape” he says and is gone before I can start laughing.

Sitting at the bottom of the hole, laughing and trying not to inhale dirt, I am beginning to get the message.  Have faith, and God will provide the solution.  It may come in church, but maybe not from the pastor.  It may come at the bottom of a pit delivered by a seven year old boy.   It doesn’t necessarily come to you in a blinding light or some revelation of thought.  Sometimes you absorb it as life happens around you.

In that moment at the bottom of that hole, I felt the first glimmer of hope in a dark moment.  I found it after beating myself into exhaustion, after crying, and doubting, after arguing, wondering and nearly giving up.  After digging a hole. 

The hole, of course, was not the vehicle, but it distracted me long enough so that the message could begin to seep in.  There was not going to be clear answers written on tablets, or voices from bushes.  The answers would mostly come from a long life of living and seeking and thinking and listening.  And, as Jayber Crowe discovered, maybe not then.

It is given to us to live, our purpose is to take in this experience and make the most of it with our personal set of gifts, seeking joy, seeking love, perhaps each finding our version of ‘arete’ as we go.  In the process we will mingle with other travelers and we will exchange our thoughts about what happens, and as we can, make sense of it and our place in it.

The answers, such as they are, will not come in a single page, an inspired sermon, or a lively argument.  They will not come from one person or a single mountaintop experience or revelations at the bottom of a hole.  Sometimes we will feel the peace our Creator offers in searching, and sometimes we absorb it from the very life about which we wonder.

Hope this finds you digging in,

David

If you would like to read the rest of the essay from 2001 you can find it here: 

https://wordsmith2.blogspot.com/2020/05/still-healing.html

Copyright © 2020 David Smith