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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
checked creative impulse
"People want objects that are real and personal."
Randy Merrel
"I do muscular work because of have muscles; and if
I don't use my muscles I shall become a bad tempered sitting-addict. Westerners
are mostly sitting-addicts. From the tycoon to the typist, from the logical
positivist to the positive thinker, Westerners
spend nine tenths of their time on foam rubber. Spongy seats for spongy
bottoms." - Vijaya, from Island byAldous Huxley
"People are retreating from
whirlwinds – the
whirlwinds of production demands and the
whirlwinds of an unstable
economy." - Barry Glassner, USCCraftsmanship offers personal satisfaction, economic stability and
emotional rewards.
As a craftsman i feel an urgency to build
objects of
value and worth,
objects
aesthetically pleasing.
As a
craftsman i am dedicated to providing the highest quality product and to take
the time to carefully execute each and every process .
Being a
craftsman is living a life style that includes care in all processes undertaken
and which rewards the individual with a feeling of
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 our 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
"The breakdown of
social structures occurs when
creative individuals fail to lead through the excercise of creative power." -
Arnold Toynbee
"Creativity is a matter of illusion. We take raw
materials (ink, paper, memory, perspective) 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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© Lawrence Turner
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