The other day I spent three hours shoveling out the horse barn. I then spent another three hours making repairs on it. The barn is an old wooden structure that looks something like a boxcar. The walls are tongue-in-groove and it was well constructed. But it is very old and there is quite a bit of rot in the walls and some sections of the floor.
After our run-in shelter blew down last year the horses had no refuge against rain storms, ice, or snow. I cut a doorway in the eastern wall of the barn, giving them access to a harbor in inclement weather. But that means another building to muck out and the eternal question of what to do with all that waste. Whoever imagined that waste would be an eternal question?
Life is consumed with waste management - the physical, mental, and spiritual. I cannot tell you the amount of manure that I have had to shovel out of congregations, families, marriages, social service agencies, careers, and so on. The hard truth is that wherever there is organic life there will be litter. Human beings, other animals, and every manner of human organization create dregs and dross.
I always have to figure out what to do with all that horse, chicken, and goat poop. Of course we can think up all of the composting metaphors. And, indeed, some of it goes into the garden. Neighbors are welcome to take some for their flower or vegetable plats. Some can be spread across the pasture. But there always remains a pile that just seems to sit there forever. Metaphors have their limits.
Our personal lives, our churches, our corporations, and all of our civic organizations face the same challenge. We have no choice but to do the shoveling. We have to make choices about where to shovel it. If you do not muck out a horse barn with some regularity it not only piles up, its gets stomped down and is ever harder to excavate. It will deteriorate the floor. Hoof diseases can become your next problem. Think what it does to the soul or the mind.
We can expend a lot of emotional energy being angry about the reality of waste management. Or we can pick up the shovel and start to work. It is, after all, an honest days work.
