José Luis Castro, the carpenter of our village,

is very good with his hands.

The wood, which knows that he loves it,

yields to his touch.

(Eduardo Galeano, El libro de los abrazos)

The wood lets itself be carved because it knows the carpenter loves it. Skill and feeling come together in the hands of the master craftsman. And from these hands comes out the perfect work that brings honour to the wood and to him who wrought it. The gentle curves along the exact veins, the due shape with the adaptation to the uses destined for it now in human service, the smell of the forest, and the touch of the workshop. Noble work in an honoured profession. Joint work of the hands that carve and the wood that yields. All that becomes possible because there is mutual trust and respect and love. That is the way to work.

The carpenter loves the wood. The wood knows it. And the masterpiece is born. That is the secret of art in action. To love what we work at, to love what we touch, to love what we do. And to love it in such a way that the things and the persons we love may feel themselves loved by us, and may thus respond with kindred feeling to the process that shapes them in shared responsibility. Never to force anything, never to impose, never to enslave. The wood knows itself to be loved, and that makes easy for it the generous submission to the cleaving process that gives it a new being.

Chuang Tzu tells of a carpenter who, on getting an order for a piece of furniture, would go to the forest and start asking the trees, one by one, whether they were suitable and ready for the job. He sensed their answers, weighed them, compared them, and finally chose the tree that was going to be most fitting to the work at hand. The wood knows better than the carpenter which is the best material for each work, and will say it if we know how to ask about it.

The vital point is that the wood may know itself to be loved. That it may not be the blind instrument of selfish gain. That it may not see itself as the helpless victim of cruel manipulation. That it may feel itself useful, beautiful, loved, and may perceive in its veins that it is precisely that painful and skilful transformation at expert hands that enhances its value as noble artefact in human presence. That it may surrender with joy because it trusts the hand that chooses it with love.

Another carpenter may work unwillingly, violently, spitefully. Maybe the external observer does not notice the difference, but the wood feels it. It is the flesh that feels the surgeon’s touch and the aggressor’s blow, and knows the difference. We all are carpenters, in one way or another, and can choose between loving the wood we work on as an ally or forcing it down as an enemy. The final work will be different, and so will our feeling towards it be.