Left Hand, Right Hand: Good Job!

There's a story, a legend or myth, about a man, like Maui or somebody, who has to accomplish a handful of impossible tasks in order to please the gods and convince them that they should give him what he wants. I can't remember the particulars-- maybe he fished out some Pacific islands with his sister's hair, maybe he had to capture the dog of Hell, maybe he lassoed a tornado to save a small village.  You know, something impossible. Anyway, I heard a telling of this character's story once where the emphasis was on the demigod's hands. Each time he accomplished the great difficulty he looked at his hands and said, "Left hand, right hand: good job!"

I've been thinking about hands a lot lately. My own are fairly small, though not remarkably feminine, not especially graceful or delicate. At Thanksgiving I was out camping in the desert. It was pretty cold and very dry. I'd been out scrambling and hiking, with a little rock hounding thrown in. My hands looked like garbage. They were sort of purple and chalky, and very, very dirty. At one point I weakly told them, "Left hand, right hand: good job." But they knew I didn't really mean it.

Just before Christmas I was in one of our temples participating in a worship service. At the end of this particular service there's an opportunity to symbolically join hands with God and have a bit of a conversation. It's something I've done a gazillion times, but this time it was different. Somehow what mattered were my own hands, my own identity, my own power. This time it wasn't about God, it was about me. And my hands.

I've been learning how to rock climb, just joined a local rock gym. I'm really new, but I love it. Yesterday I earned my first blood, ripped open my pinky a little. I asked the climber guys the best way to handle it so that I didn't over-damage my hand, but didn't undermine the callous-building process. As they explained the process of building tissue strength I looked at their hands: thick, knobby callouses punctuated their palms and fingers. For a moment I was afraid, my hands were going to become ugly and coarse; I felt my inner light flicker. I looked at my own hands, then at the climbers on the wall. Slowly, warmly, I thought, "Left hand, right hand: good job." Aesthetics aside. This girl is going to climb.

Later, as I washed my hands in hot water, I felt the places where my epidermal barrier had been breached: a handful of new little blisters, a tear in my pinky, and a rope burn across the back of my right thumb.

Suddenly, I realize how stupid I've been. This morning I'm staring with new respect my own flesh record: The nails of my left hand are short and stubby to accommodate my new ukulele obsession and sturdy callouses are forming on the tips of my fingers where I hold the strings to the fret board. The backs of both hands are peppered in small scars left over from the days when I was learning acetylene torch welding without gloves because I couldn't find any small enough to fit. The texture of the skin across the palm of my right hand and the side of my first finger is irregular as a result of months of blisters after a sustained allergic reaction of still unknown etiology. The distal-most knuckle on the second finger of my right hand has a big, knobby callous where I've held a crayon, pencil, or pen every day since I was three or four, and which hasn't diminished over time because I still believe in hand-written letters.

I feel Grace. I hear Isaiah telling me that "they shall build up the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities" (with their hands!), and that "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint." God promised me power to accomplish good things, and He keeps his promises. As the plates shift, and the cities fall waste I have the promise of my own hands.

Now, with growing gratitude, I think, "Left hand, right hand: good job."

Climbing? Climb on.