The Ordinary Theology of Tools

How Our Tools Extend Our Creaturely Participation in Stewardship

Dear Gentle Reader,

I’d like to take a moment to welcome an influx of new readers, many of whom have found me from my recent piece at Mere Orthodoxy. If “Stewards of the Soil” resonated with you, this little corner of the internet may feel familiar: less like a soapbox, more like a garden gate, where ideas are tended alongside herbs and hens. You may find you don’t particularly like everything that grows here — I, for instance, hate Brussels sprouts — but I hope that you will recognize the value and stay for the things that you do find nourishing.

Here, I write about how faith meets matter, and how stewardship extends throughout our lives. And stewardship, after all, requires not just willing hands, but the means by which those hands might work. Perhaps, then, it would be a useful interlude to talk about the things that make stewardship possible: our tools.

I have spent the weekend at my mother’s home, taking up the soaker hoses from the raised beds in her garden and draining the irrigation system. Dad built her an excellent garden, designed to allow her to continue to cultivate fruits, vegetables, and faith even as the physical challenges that come with being 80 make themselves felt. But all of the tight connections that allow her to water with ease all summer long are a bit much for her hands when it’s time to put it to bed before the snow flies.

This is a task I am more than happy to take on, but I always feel just a bit discombobulated. I am away from home, away from my familiar array of tools, and reduced to asking her where to find each item, hindered by the fact that she often doesn’t know what they are called.

I need the Channel Locks.
No, the Channel Locks.
That’s a wrench, it’s too small.
Yes, the ‘big mouth pliers.’ See the channels? Channel Locks.

Likewise, when we come back in and dusk falls, I’m happy to help her in the kitchen. There are fresh apples from the local orchard just waiting to be made into a pie. But it’s not my kitchen. I don’t have my trusty French rolling pin. Or my paring knife. Or any of a dozen tools I reach for every day. Everything is slower, more difficult, and involves asking for her help when I am trying to provide my own.

Tools mediate our ability to approach the rawness of the world as it is and turn it to our intentions. Genesis 2:15 admonishes us, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Tools to work — to cultivate — the land are part of our mandate. Many tasks cannot be performed without them. I cannot prune my apple trees without a pruning saw. I cannot sew an outfit for one of my children without needles. Tools, rightly used, are one of the original fruits of obedience.

Using a good tool has the effect of training us at the same time. Repetition teaches our hands, minds, and hearts to focus; to learn more deeply than memory alone. Muscle and sinew record the actions required for the task and gradually become able to repeat it without our conscious effort. I always smile when I see a colleague knitting during a seminar. She’s not ignoring the speaker; she’s keeping her hands busy in a way that lets her mind focus more sharply than it would, otherwise. I have found that when I knit while listening to something, I recall it in sharp detail the next time I pick up my needles.

Tools help us to form habits of attentiveness, patience, and care. Few things can sharpen the senses like cutting an apple with a very sharp knife. It’s a skill that an older child can certainly learn. Would it be faster and would I end up with more consistent slices if I did it myself? Of course. But I would be depriving the child of one of the many, many repetitions that will be required for her to learn to do that task well.

While all tools participate in our formation, not all of them teach good lessons. One of the tools that was, for a while, very popular was the bread machine. I loathed them. I didn’t care for the end product. And I cared even less for the way it cut me out of the process. The acts of measuring ingredients, blooming the yeast, adding flour until there was “enough,” and then kneading by hand on the countertop are meditative. I don’t know “how long” to knead the dough. I know when it feels right. When the way it springs back from each push, the smooth stretch as I pull the ball back to me, and the cessation of its attempts to cling to my fingers tell me it’s done, then it’s done. Cover it with a soft, threadbare but clean kitchen towel, and set it next to the stove to rise. Punch it down, portion the dough, and then shape it into loaves. Into the oven, watched closely for just the right doneness, and then tipped out of pans to have tops buttered and start to cool.

The bread machine bypasses this homely liturgy. The user merely dumps in the mix and some water and presses a button. The computer cycles through its program - set intervals for mixing, kneading, rising, baking. The heating element provides warmth for the rise, and then heat for the baking, beeping when the loaf is deemed “done.” It might even sit, forgotten, within the machine until someone notices. After all, nothing about the process required any sort of attentiveness. But it’s still “homemade bread,” right?

What, then, is the baker even for? Sometimes, in a fit of domestic pique, I will make sure to roll out one of my loaves and fill it with a bit of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon before popping it into its pan alongside its brothers. Take that, machine. Cinnamon swirl toast puts to shame the bread facsimile you produce.

This has been a bit of a confession. I did, once, own a bread machine — a gift from a well-meaning soul. And it got a certain amount of use, mostly from my husband who rather delighted in access to fresh bread that did not require my labor and attention. He could make bread for himself whenever I was too busy. And early in our marriage, when I still spent much of my time on call for emergencies, that was often the case. I always resented the thing, at least a little. Even when I had to acknowledge that I had not had the time to bake.

The bread machine has gone. The baker is returned to her proper place. And, even if it might not be as frequent as he would prefer, my husband absolutely delights in a fresh, warm loaf. Made with buttermilk, honey, and wifely hands and skill. It is as much an act of service as a source of sustenance.

Perhaps that is the central lesson of tools: they call us back to participation. The task is to keep tools in their proper place. A good tool, a proper tool, is less an object to be picked up than a co-laborer in our shared task of stewardship. If a nonsentient one. Our tools serve us, and we must take care not to allow that relationship to become inverted. We should also honor our tools, keeping them in good repair. Dad’s shop tools always hung neatly on pegboards. Mom’s kitchen tools each have a spot in cabinet or drawer. I make a point to sharpen my knives and dress my cutting boards with beeswax on a regular basis.

Before the advent of our current disposable era, it was common for tools to be passed down from one generation to the next. It was not possible, for instance, to be a blacksmith without an anvil, tongs, and hammer. To fulfill vocation, to serve creation, means to pick up some sort of tool. Learning to use them well, care for them, and teach their use on to the next generation is an act of rebellion against our throwaway culture.

It can be very difficult to differentiate between a true tool that extends our embodied capacity for service, and a machine that replaces or diminishes it. Some tools can do either, depending on their use. But determining when a tool is acting as part of our formation and when it might be creating deformation is a topic for another day.

Tools are not relics of a forgotten past, but links to our creaturely calling. To tend the soil — whether of field, home, or community — is to participate in God’s patient work of cultivation. Tools are our tutors in patience, humility, and good stewardship.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to try to further explore when agrarian imagination and participation is not a nostalgic escape or a curated performance, but a patient apprenticeship in right relationship to the created order.

For now, may your tools teach your hands what your heart hopes to learn, be they pen, plow, or prayerbook.

Warm Regards,

Holly - The Country Mouse

P.S. I won’t judge you if you still love your bread machine. I am no Luddite. But for those of you who remember VeggieTales, I point you at the example of Speigel, the Flobbit, and his love of “labor-saving devices.”