If you do woodworking - because you enjoy it - you've probably experienced the "Zen Thing". You get into doing something this "thing" happens where stuff just happens and you're just part of whatever "it" is. Evertyhing does what it's supposed to do effortlessly - just so. Ambient noise just disappears, time stops, things just happen - and though you're a part of whatever this thing is - you're just that - a part of something - somehow linked to something unimaginably larger- and older - though relative time, or time itself is anything other than a human construct to mark our individual comparitively brief existence.
But the "Zen Thing" is like a dim star in the night's sky. If you try and focus on it and really try and see it - you can't. But - if you can put it in your field of vision - but not focus on it - it's there to see - but not directly.
Most of us live in a night environment filled with streetlights and signs and car lights, man made attempts to conquer darkness, to impose our will on our environment. The price tag of course is that often those lights hide the wonders of a clear "dark" night's sky - and all the amazement of all those little points of light out there - and perhaps the realization that what we can see is just a tiny part of an inconceivable whole.
For me, it's when "I" get out of the way "we" tap into something that can't be explained but only experienced. It doesn't happen very often, but just often enough to act as a reminder that Me/Not Me, Them vs Us keep me from being part of that Zen Thing. And that carries over into other daily things which makes life, this manifestation of a minute part of the whole, fun.
charlie b taking off his robe, hanging up his meditation beads and heading off to play WITH some wood, make a Shellac Shake - and maybe, just maybe Get In The Zone - again.