We’ll Do the Best We Know

“So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.”

Wendell Berry

By Chris Wheeler

At breakfast the other day, over country-fried steak and bottomless cups of coffee, while the world turned more frigid outside, I had a heated argument with an old friend. Heated, but littered with assurances. At the end, neither of us convinced of the other’s points but understanding more of why he held them, my friend quoted an old adage: “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

And it was true. We were ironclad still in our beliefs, forged as they were in different fires, but we came out of the sparring sharper in our awareness, in our care and respect for one another, in our understanding. And I thought, we don’t have to see eye to eye to be able to see the world through someone else’s eyes. We don't have to be the same to love one another. We don’t even have to agree on fundamental truths. We just have to be willing to meet for breakfast next month and do it all over again.

I know plenty of would-be warriors who don't meet for breakfast, whose sparring doesn’t ring true, but click-clacks over keyboards in their virtual realities. I gave up on those fronts long ago. The day-to-day, in-place, face-to-face – that is where I need to be. The only reality that can sharpen my love for the world is the one where I confront my neighbor’s humanity in the flesh. I can pass them a hot cup of coffee and wait to see if they burn their tongues on it or warm their hands. You can’t do that in cyberspace. There’s no friction there, and so, no traction. Give me face to face. Spit in my eye. Shake my hand. I don’t care, as long as it’s in real life.

In another life, one of my friends was a soprano in the Lyric Opera. She would gather three dear friends of hers to concertize together: an evangelical alto from the Deep South, a gay tenor, and a foul-mouthed atheist of a bass – and they would make amazing music. I was lucky enough to accompany them on keys, cutting my collaborative teeth on Verdi, Puccini, and Bernstein.

As a young dude straight out of Bible college, I was also getting a crash course in what it might look like to be a follower of Jesus in the real world. It didn’t involve a lot of evangelism or pious name-calling. It did involve friendship, care, telling the truth, and donuts. For one recital season, those singers brought the house down with the finale from Candide:

“Let dreamers dream what worlds they please

Those Edens can’t be found

The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees

Are grown in solid ground…”

These days, I click-clack away at books and courses, catching passive voice and excessive commas. I tickle the ivories at my church for singers ranging from operatic baritones to tone-deaf grandpas to squawking babies. It’s one of the sweetest sounds I know. My kids are growing like weeds, my church family is helping me to grow in my faith, my wife is loving me beyond what I deserve. I go to breakfast with old friends. I make new ones.

And every year in the winter months, as the temperatures plummet and the snow piles high, long before the turn of the season into spring, we plan our garden out – what worked, what didn’t, what we want to try out new. No growing season is perfect, and no garden exists without work: hoeing, mulching, weeding, watering, fencing out the deer and spraying back the bugs.

But from that friction, from that simple, honest sharpening of tools and putting them to good use, comes a harvest I can eat with my family and friends.

I hear from those virtual warriors that we need to do more, be more, get involved on all the fronts. This, they say, is love. But I wonder how much of it is just grasping for control, beyond the true scope of our love: the folks right in front of us.

I think of Wendell, doing things that don't compute. I think of my soprano friend, pulling beautiful music from paradoxical singers. I think of the dairy farmer and the machinist in my congregation who have taught me more about following Jesus than any of my professors in college have. I think of my iron-clad friend, always up for coffee and conversation.

And I hear in the back of my head:

“We’re neither pure nor wise nor good

We’ll do the best we know

We’ll build our house, and chop our wood

And make our garden grow.”

Follow Chris Wheeler at chriswheelerwrites.substack.com.

Angelica Frausto is aka Nerdy Brown Kid she is a frequent contributor to PAN-O-PLY and is a fearless artist nerdybrownkid.com.