I’m sitting at home on a soggy afternoon. It’s a Tuesday, but school is cancelled—too much rain. (Those of you up north can just add it to the list of reasons we Southerners are softies when it comes to dealing with the weather!)
Days like today are heavenly manna to students. Sure, we’ve only been back from Christmas break for four days, but they are sooooo tired and soooo need a day to recover from the rigors of school.
For teachers, an unexpected snow (or rain) day is a mixed blessing. It’s nice to have a day off, but as that day wears on we begin to think about our lesson planning and losing a whole day of instruction and how we are already falling behind on the fifth day of the semester. By day’s end we’re more stressed than if we’d just had school.
Maybe you know what I mean. Many of us have jobs that operate with razor-thin margins. Some of our schedules are balanced so precariously that any unexpected bump, delay, or detour sends us into a tailspin. When life doesn’t go exactly according to plan, we don’t know how to live.
Our lives are like Dover Thrift Editions. Do you know the books I’m talking about? They have perfunctory paperback covers, tiny print, no margins, and sell for like two bucks—trying to squeeze every ounce of economy out of every page.
The problem is that those thrift editions have no room for contemplation. No room to take notes. No room to breathe. They’re ugly. They’re overwhelming. Admittedly, they’re books, but it’s like they weren’t meant to be read!
We need margins—not just in our books, but in our lives. We need space around the edges in our classrooms, our schedules, our finances, and our kitchens to scribble, to think, to allow kids, students, the poor, friends, messy family members to jostle and play with us.
Margins require waste—of effort, time, resources—after all, those thrift editions do away with margins because it reduces the number of pages. But I suspect our hesitancy to leave space around the edges doesn’t stem from a great love of thrift. Could it be that we secretly believe our own thoughts and deeds—our action!—are the things upholding our little world? And if we were to pause, to breathe, to waste an afternoon (or, God forbid, a whole day!), this globe may actually stop spinning?
Robert Capon writes, “Economy is not one of the necessary principles of the universe; it is one of the jokes which God indulges in precisely because He can afford it.” But can we? Can we rediscover the playfulness of youth that receives a snow (or rain!) day as a gift coming down from the Father of Lights himself?
You and I are living margins in God’s universe—completely superfluous creatures for which priceless blood was “wasted.” We can live in denial of that fact—or we can give ourselves enough margin to live.
The Right Tool for the Edges
I’ve made a few pies at this point. Up until last Christmas, I always used a pizza cutter to trim the edges of pie crust. It got the job done in a no-frills kind of way.
When we started the Hutch, Mindy bought me this simple pastry cutter with two wheels—one straight and one with a crimp. It wasn’t a necessary tool, but it’s amazing how much more beautiful my top crusts have become with this little guy’s help.
Now I use the straight wheel for cutting bottom crust and the crimped wheel for top crust. The slight wave it puts into the edges makes for a more finished look and disguises width irregularities like a champ!