Rock Hammers and Whole Food

​Beloved:

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Rock Hammer is an apt name for this giant beast.  Six days a week at precisely 7 AM, no fewer than three rock hammers go to work less than a mile from my house.  The pounding and thumping are now and then interrupted by the blasting dynamite.  The dogs feel it coming before I do and no longer even raise their heads as my windows rattle in their frames. 
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Construction noise is louder than highway traffic but, like the dogs, I hardly notice either anymore, until I drive to town.  Indiana countryside, field and forest mainly, has been turned to rubble made of limestone and red clay.  The hammers pound boulders into rocks (thus the name), to load and haul them somewhere else.  I hear the stones hit steel and the back-up beeping as dump trucks pull away.  Twelve, thirteen hours a day they work right now to maximize June’s daylight.  The newspapers tell no end of the complaining, broken contracts and budget overruns.  They say the whole project is now years behind schedule.  All the same, a road is coming into view. 

I’d like to ask an expert to explain the difference between art and engineering.  Are new roads as beautiful drawn on paper as when laid upon the earth?  The math alone must have cost a thousand pencils!  For all the bother and delay, it’s wonderful to watch these workers work and imagine their pride in building something so useful as a road. 

I’m not so naïve I don’t know the purpose of this road is to make rich people richer.  But all the same it still reminds me that we can do most anything we set our minds on doing, anything to which we apply this gift of God called human imagination.  We can now catch the wind and sunlight.  I have a jacket made of soda bottles.  Some Indiana farmers I know grow a special strain of corn [see www.bhrp.org] and ship it to the world’s poorest people who thrive on it even if they have nothing else to eat.  Talk about whole food!  Once upon a time each was a person’s idea, a dream.  Amazing!  I pray this beautiful day offers you the space to nurse the ideas in your own heart and mind. 

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

And a Recipe:  Something new and yummy I’m eating this summer is spinach, water-melon, red onion, feta cheese salad.  In a big bowl use about equal parts spinach and watermelon, a generous dump of feta, onion slivers and only a tablespoon or so of oil.  Mix it up and let it sit in the fridge a few hours.  Stir the salty, watermelony, slightly oniony runoff back over the spinach and eat a big pile of it.  Summertime for your mouth!