Fourth on my Bucket List: The HOD

BUCKET LIST means different things to different people. Well, it means one thing to everyone in the world, and maybe something else to me. I think it means a list of buckets. So with the help of thesaurus.com, I came up with a literal bucket list and now I am trying to wax philosophical about each type of container, somehow relating it to our human condition. This is the list of containers I will be trying to empathize with this week: brazier, can, cask, hod, pail, vat, or vessel. So far I have delved into the brazier, the can and the cask.   Today's reading about THE HOD might make more sense if you click on those and read them first.

Have you ever heard of a hod?  If you have, how of a hod had you heard?  Ok, that's enough of that.  A hod is a bucket.  If a bucket is anything that contains something.  In this case a hod is  like an open box with the top, one side and one end removed.  A long pole attached to the underside where two sides meet allows the box to be carried over the shoulder.  Masons, or mason's helpers in particular, use a hod to carry either bricks or mortar from the base of a new brick wall project over, up, and across to wherever the masons are currently laying bricks.

If a hod is a tool that facilitates a mason's work, what is the 'hod' you depend on to do your job?  Today was a crazy mixed up day for me, and with this more general connotation applied,

you might say that I used several different hods.  This morning I was sanding the newly dried joint compound upstairs with a sanding pole.  Later I was brushing and rolling paint at a job, where I relied on my finesse and practiced technique.  (That sounds impressive eh?)  And then I ended up the afternoon hauling firewood!  My hod in the woods consisted of my arms, my back (ugh!) and my dwindling stamina.  Finally this evening my hods of duty and devotion came out of the tool box when I had to go shopping, make dinner, and run to the pharmacy!

So if there is a base tool for any activity, we'll call it a hod.  But I propose that there are really only a couple of basic elements we use in our work, and I ask;  is your hod your brain, or your brawn?  Perhaps most careers require an element of both.  I know at my age, that my brawn is tuckered out and ready for the old brain to take a good long turn.  

One thing I know for sure.  If every important task is associated with its relevant 'hod', our very life, our living body with attached soul and spirit, can be seen as the ultimate hod--a mere tool meant to facilitate a real goal.  Our duty then is to determine to what great end, we will direct our great lives.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”                                           Mark 10:45