Dear Friends,

Do you sometimes wonder how we come to be using some of our common phrases or sayings? The BBC has recently started a series of programmes on Monday evenings on BBC2 on this theme, called "Balderdash and Piffle", so I suppose they must reckon there will be a reasonable number of people interested in such things. I was made to think about this the other day when I was talking to someone about work and as we parted he said, "Oh well, keep your nose to the grindstone." I knew exactly what he meant, but as I walked away I thought what an odd turn of phrase this was and I wondered how it had acquired the sort of common usage and understanding it has amongst us. So, I looked it up.

We, apparently, have a different explanation for the derivation of this little saying from the Americans. It seems the American version comes out of the operation of traditional water-powered grist mills, grinding corn. The grindstones had to be set just the right distance apart. If the gap were too big the corn would not grind properly. On the other hand, if the gap between the grindstones were too small the grain would overheat and begin to burn. Because of the way the mills were designed, the miller could not see the gap between the stones, so he had to work by smell and he had to be alert to the slightest trace of burning so that he could immediately adjust the grindstones and avert harm. As a result, he had to stay close to the grindstones and thus keep his nose to the grindstone.

Unfortunately, this rather enjoyable explanation doesn't quite get over to the hearer the sense in which we use the saying. When we use it, we mean something like being continuously engaged in fairly hard and maybe very routine work. So, the people who look into these things think that the grindstones in our version, which is almost certainly earlier than the American version, are the grindstones used by a smith for putting a sharp edge on a tool. And this makes much more sense of our original use of the saying, which was to hold someone else's nose to the grindstone - sort of grinding them down. Apparently, there is a cartoon from the mid seventeenth century showing the then future Charles II's nose being held to the grindstone by the Scots. Over the years the meaning of the saying has been softened somewhat so that it doesn't have quite that very negative sense to it.

Thinking about this made me reflect a bit about this month of February. This is a month when there is nothing particularly special happening in the Church's year. The Christmas and Epiphany season ends on February 2nd with the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple or Candlemas. The month of March starts with Ash Wendesday and so the season of Lent runs all the way through that month. But the weeks of February this year are a sort of in between time, a sort of waiting time, and they are just the right sort of time for getting on with all the routine things that need to be done and that really should not be left - in other words, it's the time for keeping your nose to the grindstone and just getting on with it all. If that seems a bit boring, then it made me remember what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Lutheran theologian of the Second World War, said. He was arrested and eventually executed by Hitler for his opposition to the Nazi regime. Writing from his prison cell as he awaited his death, he spoke of the need for 'this-worldliness', by which he meant "living unreservedly in life's routines, duties, problems, successes, failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God." This is a version of a traditional Lutheran perspective which sees the most ordinary and routine things of life as the arena in which God will make Himself known to us and through which we can show our devotion to God.

So maybe keeping your nose to the grindstone is not such a bad thing and in any case, February will give us all every opportunity.

Colin Cheeseman