This is not a warm fuzzy of an MBOB although it contains lots of good memories.

Disinterest in doing things well or, worse, living in a world where no one expects anything to be done well is where we are these days, to some extent.  Because I’ve had a couple of jolting interactions with employees in stores this week the business of practicing in order to do things better has been on my mind–and as I began remembering all of the things we practiced…….an MBOB emerged.

Practice does not make perfect but it does prepare one to be able to do things well and that was the goal as Mailboxes came and went and Old Barns played their part.

No one expected to be able to do everything well right off the bat but understood that the goal and the process were two different things and that was ok.  So they began–to practice.

Piano lessons were practiced twenty minutes a day at the very least.  There’s nothing private about either practicing or playing the piano. Every missed note, every hesitant bit of timing, every flawed rhythm pattern is apparent to everyone in the house which actually is ok since the purpose for practicing was not to impress, but to get better.

We also practiced multiplication tables and practiced writing checks.  We practiced writing letters and addressing envelopes.  We stood up, three by three, in front of our peers in classrooms and practiced introductions, one  student pretending to be another student’s mother, being introduced to a new friend.

We practiced answering the phone and setting the table.  We practiced filling out catalog orders using Spiegel’s, Monkey Wards or Penney’s forms from the catalogs that filled all of our homes.

We practiced making beds and practiced baking bread so that we would be able to make a bed and bake some bread.

The girls practiced making single crochet chains, and both boys and girls practiced hammering nails when our dads might give us a stray piece of lumber and a small pile of nails that were no longer needed. One Christmas Eve the best gift I opened was a twirling baton.  By the end of Christmas Day I had blisters on several of my fingers because I had been practicing.

The purpose of  practice was simply to get better at the thing.  Since anything doing was worth doing well, one way to get better at it was just to do it–over and over and over.

We practiced tying our shoes so that we would be one step closer to dressing ourselves.

During high school years, we practiced the typing skills that would provide us with an entry level job or provide the foundation for some more skilled position or college studies.

In second grade, we were reading out loud in school either alone or with others.  Later, we participated in choral readings where the entire class would stand together in the auditorium and present to our gathered parents line after line after line of some memorized work.

We practiced shifting gears on the stick shift 1953 robin’s egg blue Ford as it sat perfectly still in the garage, preparing for the day when we might be allowed to drive it gingerly around the big yard for the first time.  Then we practiced doing the arm signals for turns: left arm straight out–left turn; left arm up–right turn; left arm down–stop.  Those destined to milk cows practiced milking cows.

Things everyday and things special. Things complicated and things simple.  Things happily welcomed and things dreaded. All these things–we practiced.

We practiced our penmanship–making endless rows of i’s, o’s, m’s and whatever else the teacher indicated we should make endless rows of.

After entrance into beginning band, we practiced assembling our flutes and clarinets and saxophones, and practiced being able to make a note that didn’t squeak terribly.  Then we practiced our scales on those instruments and practiced the extension of tones that eventually had a bearable quality about them.

The girls practiced standing straight and walking on their first pair of high heels.  All of these things were practiced, because we understood that as we got older we would be expected to do them passably well.

By the time we were fifteen or sixteen, we needed to be able to multiply most numbers in our head, paint a wall without much supervision, write a check or write a letter and mail it, balance a checkbook, plan out the amount of wheat needed to plant a sixty acre field, shine our shoes and keep our band uniforms clean and ready for the concert, clean up the kitchen without supervision after a large family meal, cut the potatoes to prepare them for spring planting (leave an eye or two in each piece), change the bed, do the laundry, do the sprinkling and do the ironing.

Excellence was not required but completion of the task, done well enough that it didn’t have to be redone by someone else, was.

Practicing was considered necessary for improvement.  It was understood that no one wanted to turn eighteen and not know how to do these things. So we practiced until we knew how to do them.

There were wrong motives for practicing which were not tolerated–such as intending to show oneself to be better or faster or more on pitch than someone else,  or intending to demonstrate supposed perfection.  When such motives were revealed by body language or attitude, initially  they were ignored based on the assumption was that it was a childish and momentary problem that the offender would quickly correct.  If the offender persistence demonstrated that it was intentional they were told to stop it, and they did.

Practicing, with fairly decent motives most of the time, is not limited to the old days.  What perhaps is limited to the old days is the blessed phenomena that most teachers and parents, students and children, approached the business of learning in this very practical way.

The colorful and intricately designed quilts to be found across the land display skills honed by thousands of hours of practice–practicing making the designs, practice of cutting the material, practice of joining of the pieces, practice of the tiny stitches that are the second to the final step of completing such an heirloom.  And because of the very-nearly-perfect quilts resulting from all that practice, the most perfect of quilters among the Amish of Iowa or the Scandinavians of Minnesota will often include in their finished work what is called a humility square.

The humility square is employed deliberately (and with humility) by The Quilter Who Has Achieved Quilting Perfection, having done so much excellent quilting for so long that every completed quilt leaving her hands is perfection itself. In order to deliberately practice humility with regard to her creature abilities she will deliberately stitch in a mistake into one square.

That humility square is an acknowledgement of her own imperfections before the God she serves.  It is a deliberate marring of her work which may have been so close to human perfection that,  if left without error, it may tempt to pride.

The practice and pursuit of  purposeful excellence is a wonderful thing in the hands of those who choose to walk humbly within the confines of reality.  So practice.  Practice.  Practice.

Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our  hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands.  Psalm 90:17