#religious-authority

#religious-authority

As a child, Ruth is eccentric and absent-minded, and her mother often accuses her of "buddling," meaning "to waste time on little jobs; to fuss, to fiddle, to sit in a corner skinning twigs with the edge of a spoon instead of tidying up." When Ruth is older, her mother's warning turns prophetic: she spends much of her adult life doing odd tasks, only now at the behest of her church, which puts her to work digging fencepost holes.