There’s a light-hearted corrective in this for our fraught life together — for if I contradict myself all the time, so does everyone I see one-dimensionally as a problem. And there’s a healing corrective in it, too, for the narrowing ways the world into which I was born categorized people by their profession — collapsing the notion of vocation and personal calling into job title. It is humanizing and life-giving to acknowledge that there are many callings in any given life. We are called not merely to be professional people, but to be friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, citizens, lovers of the world. Also, in the course of any lifetime, different callings take precedence at different times. All of that is a long-winded way of pointing at the delight of meeting Nick Offerman for this week’s show. He is, as I’m sure he’s primarily described in every bio you might find, an actor/comedian. But what I learned as I looked beneath that category is that he is first a person who works with his hands. He made a living as a woodworker before and while his career took off with his role as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation. He still runs the Offerman Woodshop in Los Angeles, which is, by the way, led by women. He wrote an interesting book last year, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, that got a lot of attention. But I fell in love with his earlier book, Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop. It is not an exaggeration that we put “the meaning of life” in the title of this touching and fun show that emerged from my conversation with Nick. From his origins as an Illinois farm boy, to traveling with a Kabuki sensei, to entering the world of Wendell Berry, he offers fresh, companionable good sense towards our lives as humans and on this planet. I hope you’re enjoying this season of shows as much as we are enjoying making it. Please spread the word, rate the podcast, and subscribe to it if you haven’t already. It's one way to invite more people into this community of conversation and living. |
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