People

Spiritual or Secular

By Connie Arnold

Sometimes we try to split our lives into two parts: One spiritual; one secular. Have you heard it said of someone that “he’s so spiritually minded that he’s of no earthly good”? I don’t know who can take the responsibility (credit?) for throwing out this observation but let’s delve into it. It’s a definition for those who seem to live in a spiritual world without concern for the every-day matters: someone who’s head is in the clouds, unaware of the mud on his feet.

My grandparents had ten children, two of whom died in infancy. The family made their home on a farm, taking their livelihood from the land. For entertainment at night after supper, my Grandpa Smith would sit on the front porch with the kids and sing ballads and hymns. My Aunt Audrey strummed the guitar, my mother would play the mandolin, and one of the boys would blow on the harmonica. While not a Christian in the earlier part of his life, my Grandpa Smith was an honest, God-fearing man. “Listen to your Ma,” he’d say. “Do as she teaches you.”

Mom Smith, my grandmother, fed her hungry family on prayer and a very large garden. The food harvested all summer long was canned, dried, and stored in the root cellar along with Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other cold-weather crops. Some cabbage would be turned into sauerkraut and packed in crocks to spice up winter meals. Chickens produced eggs for the table as well as for selling. Two cows gave all the milk they needed for drinking; for making cottage cheese; and butter was churned from the cream, leaving buttermilk for biscuit-and-cornbread making. Grandpa would kill and cure a hog, hanging it in the smokehouse. Lard would be rendered.

No motors eased the chore of farming. Grandpa Smith used the mule to plow the crop land and prepare the garden plot. His cash crops purchased flour, sugar, and cornmeal which would be stored in the winter-cold attic. They tried to store up a little extra, because their nearest neighbor always seemed to run out of flour and cornmeal. My grandparents were just ordinary people doing ordinary things like others who lived in the country. During the Depression, they never lacked for food.

One early spring morning when planting was to begin in earnest, Grandpa Smith came into the kitchen from the barn with bad news. “Ma,” he said, “the mule is down in the barn. Looks like ‘Ole’ Jack will not be able to get up again. Don’t know how we’ll be able to get the crops out, let alone dig the garden.” With a sigh, he sat down at the breakfast table, poured his coffee into a saucer, and sipped the hot, black liquid.

Evening-time milking came, and Mom Smith took her two pails and went to the barn. ‘Ole’ Jack still lay in the same place, eyes closed, breathing shallow. She went over, knelt down, and placed her hand on the mule’s head. “Lord, you know that we need this mule. I’m asking you to heal him,” she prayed. At that moment the spiritual and secular came together. The earthly problem needed a divine solution.

(II Kings 6:1-6) The disciples of the prophets said to Elisha, “The place where we’re staying is too small for all of us.” Elisha agreed that they should build a larger facility to house them all. He went with them while the disciples got their axes and proceeded to the trees that grew along the Jordan River. In the process of chopping into the wooden trunks, an axe head flew off of the handle and sank into the water of the Jordan River.

“Oh, no, master!” said a disciple to Elisha. “It was borrowed.” Another secular problem needing a divine solution.

“Where did it fall?” Elisha asked. When they showed him, he threw a piece of wood into the water, and the ax head floated. The disciple was able to reach it and pick it up.

The next morning on the Smith farm, my grandfather could be seen harnessing ‘Ole’ Jack to begin the springtime planting. The mule continued to live for many years, working in the fields and giving the children many hours of pleasure ‘horseback’ riding.