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| A door twice as old as the United States of America. |
Some might judge this title overly-sensational. Others might say “So what?” Regardless of what others might think, I
happen to think the door to St. Mary’s Church is significant, as well as a cool
historical artifact.
As he did with the font cover, which I discussed in “Let Me
Show You This,” Ted demonstrated his church's front door for me. This door, big enough to have ushered farm animals in and out of barns (but way too elegant for that purpose), was made for the church in the fifteenth century. At over six hundred years old, I
expected to hear it creak and groan as it moved. (I know I would). For its weight, I expected it to take a
lot of energy to move. Yet it swung
easily and quietly for Ted.
I still don’t get it, Dragon Dave. Why are you (and why was Ted) making such a
big deal about a door, regardless of its age?
Wood, as an organic material, changes in regard to
conditions such as temperature and humidity.
It shrinks when it gets cold, and swells when the temperature
rises. Due to these variances, many
large items of furniture, even those made strictly for interior use, are built
largely of plywood. This material,
essentially fragments of wood glued together, keeps its shape more readily than
large pieces of wood. Consider the wide,
thick slabs of wood that had to be joined together to fashion this door, and
imagine how, each year, those various individual pieces would have shrunk or
swelled from exposure to the elements.
Had the wood not been cut and matched well, the pieces would have
separated and warped. This is not
counting the effect of wind, rain, and snow, the moisture from which would also
have affected the wood. Yet those large
sections of wood have retained their cohesiveness: not even the decorative
scrollwork has warped.
Door-making is a specialized skill, not something attempted
by your average craftsman. Measurements
must be precise. Pieces must be joined
together securely, yet sufficient spacing left between the various pieces of
wood to allow for expansion and contraction.
I once spoke with a man who was remodeling his house. He showed me some of the impressive Shaker
style Oak furniture he had made, and the walls he was putting up. After he finished those walls and ran all the
electricity through them, he would tear down the old ones that didn’t fit in
with his plan. Then he would change the
level of his living room floor, making some areas lower, others higher. He was even going to build a fireplace and
chimney. He had a full workshop, with
all manner of power- and hand-tools, out in his back yard. But with all that expertise and capability,
he wouldn’t contemplate making his own doors.
Those he would order from a firm where assembly-line workers made doors
all day long. He didn’t want to worry
about getting all the dimensions right down to the fractions of an inch
necessary to ensure that the door worked well in all seasons, year after
year. And he lived along the coast in sunny
San Diego, not inland where doors would endure major changes in temperature and
moisture several times each year.
 |
| Ted demonstrates how well his door still works. |
This door, as you may notice, is actually two doors in
one. The priest, or other church
workers, might use the smaller door to enter and leave when the church wasn’t
open to the public. So what applies to
the door as a whole also applies to this door-within-a-door. If the smaller door wasn’t well-hung, its
measurements slightly off, the pieces not constructed well, each year the
smaller door would swell and stick fast in its frame, let in the rain, or cause
other problems. I’m not saying that this
large double-door hasn’t needed minor adjustments on a regular basis. But the fact that it has stood the test of
time suggests that it was built to last.
So often our activities seem spelled out for us, our duties
decided by others. We are constantly
handed lists of tasks that must be addressed immediately, if not
yesterday. Amid so many urgent duties,
it can be easy to let slide those tasks that we view as truly important. When we manage to sneak in (or steal) a
little time for the tasks we deem important, do we really devote our best
energies to them, or just make a rough pass at them, figuring that a decent
effort is better than none at all?
Whether such important tasks involve your career, your
relationships, or what you wish to do for others, remember this door. Left unmade, a gaping hole exists in your
life. Devote less than your best efforts
to the task, and that door will jam (keeping out that which you wish to
include), or fall apart (allowing destructive forces inside). But give of your best, don’t stop until you
know the task is complete, and what you seek to do, build, or create—whatever
it is—will stand the test of time.
Depending upon what you build, how you build it, and how
effectively it serves others, the task you deemed important to complete may
continue to benefit others long after your lifetime. Who knows, maybe hundreds of years from now,
someone like Ted will feel so enthusiastically about what you’ve done that
he’ll show off its beauty and utility to complete strangers.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty cool to me.
Trying to focus on what's important,
Dragon Dave
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