Faith: God's children much more alike than they are different

Garages are like dogs.

All dogs are descended, canine genetic researchers tell us, from wolves. (A canine genetic researcher is not, I should mention, a dog who does genetic research. “Genetic canine researcher” is nonsensical. “Researchers who study canine genetics.” There ya go.) No, your garage has nothing to do with wolves. Be patient.

Chihuahuas are dogs. Weimaraners are dogs. Pomeranians are dogs.

My garage is a garage. My friend’s garage, down the street, is a garage. Same word. Descended from the French word garer, which has to do with “docking” or “mooring” as in “docking a boat.” And also the Old French word varer, “to protect oneself against.”

The theory is, I suppose, that a garage is a place where a vehicle can be docked and kept safe. But, in practicality, my garage bears about as much resemblance to my friend’s garage as a chihuahua does to a pit bull. Still, we use the same word for his and for mine.

My friend’s garage has walls. Mine does, too. But you can see his garage walls; you can see only a few square inches of mine. When I wanted to hang up a dart board, I was forced to create a fold-down wooden panel upon which to mount it. No wall space available.

He can park a car, as in “docking” or “mooring” his car, or even two, in his garage. If I can ever park even one car in mine, I’m rather amazed.

His garage is clean. I wonder if he ever does anything, makes anything, putters about working on anything. His garage is too clean to provide evidence of useful activity beyond his work.

My garage is dirty. Pretty much always. Evidence of activity, useful or not, abounds. I do projects, make stuff (much of it mostly useless), and occasionally fix stuff. And I keep old stuff. New stuff. Almost all stuff. I putter around in the garage, cutting stuff, sanding stuff, soldering stuff, gluing stuff, occasionally taking a break to offer stogie incense as I pause the messing with stuff. Then I continue nailing stuff, mixing stuff, painting stuff, staining stuff, destroying stuff, building stuff, and piling up all sorts of collateral stuff dust and debris. (Debris is from the Middle French word debriser, “to break into pieces.” Yep.)

A person could eat off of my friend’s garage floor. Even sweeping mine is a dirty job. And blowing it out should never be done without donning a mask or respirator.

My friend’s garage has about four tools, catalogued and hung perfectly above a small unused workbench. My garage includes many tools and many tool duplications because it’s always true that one or two of the same tools that I have are lost or buried in the garage, and I “needed” another one. If I get hit by a truck or stroke out, the kids are gonna have a tough job mining that garage, but they will occasionally find, I predict, a lost nugget of treasure.

Even now for me, a rare “clean the garage day” is frustrating, but it’s also almost as good as Christmas when I find that which was lost. (Hmm. Sounds like a parable.)

My garage. His garage. Both theoretically docking places for vehicle safe-keeping. His, mostly used for that very purpose. Mine, much more used than his but not for that purpose. My garage, a shaggy Australian Shepherd. His garage, a hairless Xoloitzcuintle (some people actually prefer a “hairless” dog with a “primitive temper”).

OK, I admit that my friend is a fictional composite whose character is based on the garages of several friends whose garages are too clean to belong to mentally healthy and well-balanced people like me.

But you get it, right? All dogs are dogs. All garages are garages. But inside the same category, their specific iterations are spectacularly different.

This is not profound. It is mostly, I suppose, evidence that I need some petting the dog time, or some garage time. Or some time off from writing stuff time.

But it does remind me that it’s no contradiction to say that even as God’s children are more alike than they are different, the gifts we are given can be very much alike, even as they are incredibly different. The same. Different.

I need to think more about this. Maybe in the garage ... Maybe discuss it with the dog ...

Curtis Shelburne writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at:

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