“The human heart is like a millstone in a mill: when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then ‘tis itself it grinds and wears away.” -Martin Luther
In the modern world, we don’t use millstones to grind grains anymore, but you probably know what they are—two large round stones, the lower stone fixed, the upper stone turning, with grain between the two. As the upper stone turns, the grains are crushed and shredded into a powder, flour. The two stones are both exceedingly heavy. I’ve seen a few preserved millstones in my travels, and I am amazed at the engineering that early civilizations devised to create flour for baking their bread.
The metaphor most often used with the millstone is to describe something that is hard to handle, a burden that weighs one down, as in: “The unfinished manuscript was a millstone around the playwright’s neck.” Many of life’s circumstances might be seen as millstones—an unexpected medical diagnosis, a failing marriage, a dead end job, a house that needs a lot of repairs, a lengthy jail sentence.
It’s not a phrase I use often, to say that something in my life is a millstone around my neck, but I understand the sentiment behind it. Plenty of curveballs thrown my way could have been viewed as millstones. When seen this way, though, hope becomes vanishingly thin, and melancholy can set in. That happens of course, so how can we turn a millstone into a milestone?
Like my last blog post, which focused on turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones, if we can change our perspective, sometimes what weighs us down can, in hindsight, be seen as a turning point, a milestone, a marker of a significant event.
Now, I can look back at my time as a caregiver to my husband as a major milestone in my life, probably the largest. Yes, it was exceedingly hard, but it taught me than I am stronger than I think I am. I adapted to the millstone and found ways to claim joy even when my back was breaking under the weight. The support that I felt from friends and family kept me from feeling completely dragged down by its heaviness.
But Martin Luther’s quote makes a different metaphor of the millstone, focusing not on its weight, but on its function.
By comparing the human heart to a millstone, Luther is saying that it takes an input of love to create an output of even finer love. Our hearts must have something to incorporate in order to produce acts of compassion in turn.
If there is no love in our hearts, we internalize the nothingness and grind ourselves down. The heart continues to do its work, but nothing comes of it except a weariness of the spirit.
It is only by receiving love that we can respond with love.
I don’t wish to “make light” of whatever millstone you are carrying. I pray that its burden on you can be shared by your support system and that it will eventually become a milestone that marks a significant time in your life. I pray, too, that the love you feel from Spirit, friends, family, and community will produce a finer grade of love for all humanity.