Woolgathering

Woolgathering
by Karen Beth Pike, Columnist

"Taking Care"

September 8, 2003

woolgathering n. Absent-minded indulgence in fanciful daydreams. – adj. Indulging in fancies; absent-minded. woolgatherer n.

It amazes me that as our language grows and changes it tends to turn an attitude of ridicule to our own past. Woolgathering used to be a way for the less-fortunate among us to have wool to spin. Much in the same way as gleaners were permitted into a field to gather the grain left behind by the threshing teams, woolgatherers would walk along the walls and fences lifting the bits of wool left behind as the sheep moved from place to place. I’m sure that those people did do some daydreaming as they walked along talking to one another. It was a simpler time, and I’ll guess that their dreams were simpler too. There are those among us that understand this, especially when we come upon hard times of our own. Who hasn’t visited with another at the water cooler or coffee station about what they’d do if they won the lottery or had a million dollars?

I have done spinning demonstrations and it amazes me how many of the children are horrified by a bag of washed wool. They think the animal had to die for me to have the wool to spin. I’ve taken to having the sheep with me when I do those demonstrations now, so that the people can truly see that the animal is not harmed. So few children are taught where the things that they have or use come from, especially if it is a place like a farm. If you ask a child where milk comes from, they’ll tell you “the grocery store” and give you a look that indicates you’ve lost your marbles. As we move more generations away from our connection to the farm we lose more than just our knowledge of where food comes from.

There is an amusing story from my own family about such a thing. My father was out with his Grandpa and was going to learn how to milk the family cow. Since he was a young boy, and the weather was cold, he had on his mittens. After Grandpa brought the cow in and gave her grain, he washed and sanitized her udder and pulled over the milking stool and bucket, then invited the young boy to help him milk. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with cows and udders, there are four teats or quarters that are milked. So two people can milk at the same time.) The boy reached for the teats just like Grandpa did, and Grandpa noticed that the mittens were still in place. When asked to remove the mittens, the boy said “you mean I have to TOUCH those things?”

How many of us have the same affliction in our lives? We hesitate to do something that we know we should, something that will help to lift another person’s spirits because that person is somehow “untouchable” to us. Perhaps they need a bath, or a meal, or even a kind word – and rather than share of our abundance enough to give them even that, we turn away in disgust, or worse, fear. How much does a kind word or a smile cost us? I wonder if perhaps the change in the word woolgathering is appropriate as we forget our past and become absent-minded about the worth of souls.

As we isolate and sanitize ourselves from all of the things that frighten or annoy us in our civilized society, we lose touch with what we are. We have made tremendous accomplishments to be sure, and yet we back away hastily when we encounter something we don’t understand, or something we prefer to forget because it seems unclean or offensive to our sanitized sensibilities. The current wave of allergies and infections in children comes from some of this. Before we got so clean and antibacterial we actually had dirt under our fingernails and between our toes. Kids didn’t have inhalers and pills for their sniffles, they had a hanky. Some children of the past even walked barefoot in the barnyard! And why not? Bodies wash, and skin comes clean with a little scrubbing. Studies have shown that we build immunity to the irritants in our environment if we actually live in our environment instead of hiding in our air conditioned, filtered and purified homes and workplaces.

We have made dirt the enemy, when in fact, it provides us with all we consume in one way or another, we have become absent-minded indeed. ***

Photo of Karen Beth Pike courtesy of the author