The video above is one I found in my aimless wanderings on YouTube. The thing to bear in mind, if you watch it through (it’s not long) is that while I was watching it the first time, I had no idea what the artisan’s intention was. I thought at first the goal was a kind of Chippendale chair rail, and I simply found it visually engrossing, the same way I used to watch my Windows computer defrag.

And then it became “captive rings” (something I’d never heard of before), and I was astonished. What a wonderful thing, I thought.

And then it came into my mind –

[Let me just break in here with a disclaimer. I think I’ve made it clear before that I don’t believe in extra-biblical revelations, in the sense of treating them as the words of God. If I, or an angel from Heaven, tell you, “I have a new revelation from God for you,” run away.

On the other hand, I don’t doubt that God sometimes speaks to us personally, to encourage or even guide us. This may be a case of that. Or not. Remains to be seen. But I like it enough to share it here.]

So it came into my mind that maybe I’m like that piece of wood.

I’ve probably mentioned, in one or more of my too frequent navel-gazing posts, that the personality I possess now is not the one I was born with. I have it on good authority, from uncles and aunts, that when I was a little boy I was outgoing and friendly. These traits were knocked out of me in my upbringing, leaving me desperately shy and socially awkward.

To make it worse, all my life I’ve been informed by a series of employers (often while they were firing me) that it was precisely those personality traits (the ones I lost) that they wanted and didn’t get from me.

But looking at that woodturning video, it occurred to me, “Maybe I’m like that piece of wood. It didn’t start out to be a set of captive rings. It started out as a perfectly good, useful tree branch. First it was cut off, then it was dried in a kiln, then it was put in a lathe and subjected to a series of cuts and gouges which I can’t help anthropomorphizing as extremely painful.

But the result is something that delighted me. The captive ring piece is, to me, for want of a better word, wonderful.

Just possibly (I thought) I was put through all the stuff I’ve been through to make something wonderful out of me. (My guess would be my books, but who knows? Maybe I said the right words to somebody thirty years ago, and I’ve been riding on that one good act ever since.) I’m reminded of the potter in Jeremiah 18.

Of course, being me, I can’t resist looking at the question from the other side too. One should never forget the wisdom of this old internet meme: