Nativity Catholic Church
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Thanks, But We'll Do it Ourselves
A "FIRESTARTER" Spiritual Essay by Rev.
Dr. Benjamin
Berinti, C.Pp.S.
Driving through a local neighborhood the other day, I spied a grand tree house/fort sturdily constructed in the mammoth limbs of an oak tree. It was quite the construction! Almost looked like the designing gang from HGTV came out for a few days and put their creative heads together (all, of course, without telling you the final cost of the project!). Now, I didn’t see any children playing in the cedar-planked loft, nor do I know whether any children ever climb up there to while away the hours (probably too hot…too high…too childish…too whatever). The sight of the tree house/fort brought me back to my childhood and the woods that kept my friends and me company for many hours in our youth. Between the vast wilderness behind my house and the one surrounding my grandparent’s home, where I spent many weekends growing up, we were never at a loss for something to do or some place to go. The woods provided an array of exciting opportunities for us. The most important of which, of course, were the virgin trees just crying for a loft, or shack, or tree house/fort to be built in their arching limbs. But the tree house I saw the other day had only one thing in common with the “forts” of my childhood—it was up in a tree! Other than that, the quality of wood, the perfect balance of the beams, the sophisticated stairway leading to the entrance, the cedar planks covering the exterior had nothing to do with the kind of places where my friends and I hung out. Our treetop abodes were conglomerations of pilfered leftovers from garages and new home construction sites, donated nails from several kids’ fathers’ workshops, scraps of tar paper from a recent roof job, and bits and pieces of junk we gathered from the monthly curbside trash collection (the ones that had the really BIG stuff available). Our tools hardly included levels and circular saws—more like rusty saws from the junk pile and hammers with only one part of the claw still intact. No, our tree houses/forts were not HGTV quality, but they were ours. And we were proud of them, in spite of their uneven floors, cockeyed frames, and dangerous-to-climb wood slats nailed to the side of the tree that provided our access to the top. We scrounged for the materials ourselves (an equally exciting part of the adventure of having a fort), slapped them together ourselves, and enjoyed the freedom and satisfaction that comes from a job well done—all the hard work giving a sense of accomplishment. Even when someone’s father or older brother tried to insert himself into our business, offering the luxury of experience and expertise, we simply said, “Thanks…but we’ll do it ourselves!” But there were other forts, though, and they were more like the one I passed by the other day. Someone’s dad, of course, built these places. These were the places with store-bought wood, real power tools, and oh-so-perfect measurements. In all honesty, at times, my friends and I pined for such perfection, and in fact on occasion, seethed with jealousy. But in the end, we came to know the joy of doing something ourselves, of working hard, and learning the meaning of sweat-equity. And, to tell the truth, our places had more “character” than those pseudo-tree condos (even though, at the time, I’m sure we didn’t really know the meaning of “character”). Even more so, though, our tree houses/forts were actually used…for quite some time…even after the other kids abandoned their dad-built monuments to perfection (and the easy way of doing things). The spiritual life is something very much like the construction of the tree shacks my friends and I built. It takes hard work, and effort, and a good bit of scrounging around to find the pieces we need. Sometimes, however, we want others to do the work for us. We expect some spiritual guru to come along and get everything together for us. We rely on ready-made prayers and sure-fire novenas, or priests and religious who “do their job” for us, or simple solutions to age-old questions, or the perfect insight, or 7-easy-step-handbook. Sometimes, we look with envy at other people and their “spiritual lives,” and we imagine them to be better “put together” than we are. Without really knowing their interior life, we make judgments about what we see on the exterior—and we judge ourselves to be quite deficient in their shadows. Perhaps it’s natural for human beings to make comparisons, even about the quality of our spiritual lives. But ultimately, such comparisons fail, and actually lead us away from the heart of growing in our relationship with God, Jesus Christ and the Spirit—that we must put hard work and discipline and effort into those relationships—and we cannot wait for someone else to do it for us. Driving along the other day, while surely admiring the great advances that have obviously been made in the construction and development of children’s treetop hangouts since I was a kid, I wasn’t surprised to see the place abandoned. Seems we appreciate that which we are part of much more than something that is merely handed to us or done for us. No, the tree houses/forts of my day may pale in comparison to the pressure-treated “custom” tree homes of today, but I relish the memories that they were ours, without outside interference, without the precision equipment, without picture-perfect appearance. Sometimes, when journeying the path that my spiritual life follows, I honestly do wish that someone else could do the work for me, could put the pieces all together, and could make the finished product “pleasing to God.” But then I recall the words of the Creator to his own-image-and-likeness children—“be fruitful and multiply” and become co-creators with me. God invites each of us into partnership in the building and constructing of God’s world—and that requires something of us…something that we simply cannot leave to someone else.
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