Thank you for joining us!
Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to THANK YOU all for your love on our one-year anniversary post last week! And instead of sharing one specific Comment Highlight, I would love for you all to check out the responses to last week’s discussion and even add your own response so we can keep the joy and celebration rolling!
We’ll have a normal Comment Highlight again next week, so if you want a chance to be featured, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!
Now, on with this week’s devotional…
unseen God's tiniest hands are moving underground, sightless they weave torn threads and warm frozen feet and nourish that which we thought dead, turning decay into a womb from which spring will rise; a miracle (crocus) (daffodil) (snowdrop) we have names for.
This weekend, I was struggling to find a word for something. It’s the term for the work that a creator does around their creation when not actively working on the creation.
What do I mean? I’m not sure, either, let me see if I can explain.
For a writer, it’s stuff like research, organizing files on the computer, creating outlines, worldbuilding. For artists it’s loose sketching, cleaning and organizing their materials and media, spending time looking at the work of others they admire. For gardeners it’s sorting seeds, emptying old pots of soil, tidying the potting table. For cooks it’s washing dishes, choosing groceries, reading recipes, selecting the right tools to have in the kitchen.
It’s not the actual act of creating the big stuff, the stuff others will see. It’s not writing the novel, working on the painting, planting or nurturing the seeds, or throwing the chopped onions in the pan. But it’s still part of the craft. It’s still essential to the act of creating. It’s the backstage stuff, the stuff that happens at every stage of the creation process.
Is there a word for that? I don’t know. I started calling it pericraft.
When you Google “pericraft” you get a handful of businesses and some dubious social media accounts, so I guess it’s not a real word. But I like it. I think it captures what I’m looking for.
And I think it’s beautiful that craft requires these things, these ephemera. You can’t get away from it. You can’t jump into creation without preparing, and you can’t sustain that creation without maintenance. Repair. The stuff around the stuff.
Pericraft.
Not to stretch my new word too far, here, but early spring is the season of pericraft. It is the preparation phase, the time when there’s a whole lot of stuff around the stuff. A lot of it is invisible, happening under the surface. Plants are repairing themselves, getting ready for a later show of color. Life is being built from deep below. The dead stuff of winter will be tidied away by organisms whose task it is, and brown will give way to green.
The fact that pericraft exists, that preparation and maintenance and repair are needed for creation to occur, is a blessing to me. It is a sign to me that this God of Spring is a God of the process, not the outcome.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m grateful this is so.
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I like this word a lot. I also do not know if there's another word for it, but *pericraft* has a succinctness to it that is satisfying.
In fiction writing, the word one might use is "worldbuilding"--creating the world within which the story lives. The richer and deeper the worldbuilding, the more real-feeling the story, because it connects to something outside of it. If the story is all there is, you can tell--the world feels narrow and shallow and one dimensional.
In Gardening, as I have learned through a year of your reflections, there is more than just planting and watering seeds. Caring for the soil, *timing* the planting, pruning leaves, keeping away bugs--this is all work that is necessary but as you say, invisible.
One more example: in a Catholic Mass, the service is divided into two parts: The liturgy of the word where the scriptures are read; and the liturgy of the Eucharist where the Eucharist is prepared and offered. The priests are consecrated for the *craft* of handling our Eucharistic Lord and offering Him to the congregation at communion. The pericraft comes before: bringing out the vessels, blessing them, consecrating the host; and the pericraft comes after: 'purifying the vessels', putting them away, restoring the altar.
It is telling that Christ was a carpenter: He would have been intimately familiar with the pericraft associated with carpentry (preparing the tools, cleaning the tools, cleaning the workshop, etc)--not to mention the pericraft associated with creating Creation.
Pericraft is a fitting word for spring too, I like this line: "Life is being built from deep below." It gives me Tolkein-esque shivers.
Thank you for this!
I'll try to use 'pericraft' in conversation today. If I learn something new, its only proper I also sow the seed into fertile spring-like soil.