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craftsmanship
"You work that you
may keep pace with the Soul of the
Earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
to step out of life's
procession marching towards the infinite.
When you work the
whispering of the hours turns to
music.
Which of you would be silent when all else sings together in
unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a
misfortune.
I say to you that when you work you
fulfill a Dream,
assigned
to you when that Dream was
Born,
In keeping yourself with labor you
are in Truth Loving Life,
to love life through labor is to be
intimate the inmost secrets of life.
Those who see
birth as an affliction and
the flesh a curse,
I answer that naught but the sweat of
your brow shall wash that away.
You have been told also
life is darkness,
and in your
weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
I say that life is indeed darkness save when
there is desire to live,
yet
all desire to live is blind save when there is knowledge,
and all knowledge is vain save when
there is work.
All work is empty save when there is Compassion;
when you work with Compassion you bind yourself to Creation.
What is it to work with Compassion?
To weave the cloth with
threads drawn from your heart,
Even as if your Beloved were to wear
that cloth.
It is to
build a house with affection,
Even as if your Beloved were to dwell
in that house.
It is to sow
seeds with tenderness and reap the Harvest with Joy,
Even as if your Beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own
spirit,
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a
song made sweeter by his own loving.
Labor is compassion made
Visible."
- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
Craftsmanship offers personal
satisfaction, economic stability and emotional satisfaction.
Craftsmen feel an urgency to build aesthetically pleasing objects of
value.
Craftsman are dedicated to
providing the highest quality product by taking the time to carefully execute
each and every process .
The life style a craftsman rewards the
individual with a feeling of
gratitude and contentment in living a meaningful
existence.
"More individuals are going back to work with their hands
than ever before. There has been a growing renaissance in the crafts for quite
a few years." - Sam Maloof
It is unfortunate that craftsmanship has been
denigrated by the marketers of slickly packaged manufactured goods.
"Today our lifestyle is
supported by our income, instead of our income having to stay up with our
lifestyle. A one individual business is
really a life form." - Ann Reiss
A craftsman takes pride in work
whereas the laboror is there for
his paycheck and may never even touch
the manufactured object.
A
craftsman works on the human scale.
"Moments of elation are
counterbalanced with failures, and these, too, are vivid, taking place right
before your eyes.
With stakes that are often high and immediate, the
manual trades elicit heedful absorption in work.
They are punctuated by
moments of pleasure that take
place against a darker backdrop:
a keen awareness of catastrophe
as an always-present possibility.
The core experience is one of individual
responsibility.
There is
an ethic of paying attention
that develops in the trades through hard experience - an
enlightened
self-interest.
The
good life comes in a variety of forms" - Matthew B.
Crawford
creativity
"Creativity is a matter of illusion.
We
take raw materials and fashion something that,
no matter how faithful to our
experience, is a contrivance, an invention,
an elaborate shadow play.
That's the miracle -
that we can believe it at
all, that these tools, imperfect as they are,
can stir us into trusting something
that is, on the most basic level, not actually there." - David L.
Ulin
To sing and
play an instrument, to dance,
to draw,
to create beautifully crafted hand made
objects from the materials available in the environment, is
as natural a part of being human as
it is to walk, talk, and play.
The atrophy of these functions began with the advent of the Neolithic
division of labor, and accelerated as the
division of labor intensified with
the global industrial revolution, which also forged the means
to replace beautifully crafted hand made
objects with mass-produced substitutes. |
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This website defines a
new perspective with
which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The author feels that the
falsification of reality outside personal experience has forged a populace
unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done
purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish
to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance
occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious
beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the
founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the Way of the
Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based on reason
which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no
church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to
develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer through the pursuit
of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that
has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of the
Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on this web site by the
author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in
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This web site in no way condones
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already occurring due to the international corporate cartels desire to control
the human race. The international corporate cartel already controls the world
economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global industrial military
entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the
elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems.
Civilization is based on coöperation. Coöperation does not occur at
the point of a gun.
American social mores and values have declined
precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has
garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the
populace in general through corporate media by pressing emotional buttons which
have been preprogrammed into the population through prior corporate media
psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the family
and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt
international elites vision of a
perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of
the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the
corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which
further their purposes.
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 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
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