Watch this short film of a man who found joy and magic in his work.
As a kid, I loved loved loved legos. I confess that I still love them.
A typical Saturday at our house will be cartoons on the Disney channel with legos spread across the living room. Pure joy.
I don’t build much with legos during my work day at Laity Renewal and High Calling, though. Mostly, I build with sentences now. This year, I’ve been given the opportunity to try my hand at building a team as well. Pure joy.
Before I build, I sketch and plan and dream. I find my own little factory and go there in my mind, sometimes taking people with me like Dan Roloff, Gordon Atkinson, Chris Cree, L. L. Barkat, Bradley Moore, Sam Van Eman, Laura Boggess, Ann Kroeker, and Dan King. But enough about me.
Make this your own. What is on YOUR sketch pad? What is in YOUR secret factory? Who helps YOU plan and build?
And most important of all what are you building in your daily work–relationships? students and citizens? healthier patients? community? products? services?
Are you building things that help you–or others–to soar? What are you building?
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In his futures forecasting work, my husband often uses toys and games to get his clients to give up and challenge their assumptions and make breakthroughs to achieve goals. This week, he’s in a course on government proposal writing (serious, hard stuff) that is being led by an expert who is an actor.
Yesterday, I was listening to a fascinating discussion on learning and projects being undertaken to explain, beyond anecdotal evidence, why play is so important to how we think, to how we devise imaginative solutions, to what we achieve, etc.
So, don’t be too quick to give up or put away the Legos when you head to the office or when you’re sitting around a conference table. You never know what a little “factory building” with your colleagues will spark.
My sketch pad, by the way, is a blank computer screen. My secret factory is a mind full of words that I never stop visualizing.
What I’m building now is my art-licensing business, and that is all about building connections. My tag line is “One Thread Connects Us All”. Images I license from talented artists in the U.S. are recaptured in hand-embroidery by artisans in Vietnam and then the art that is inspired by art is sold to customers everywhere. What I do supports and promotes a craft that is centuries-old, helps support the artists whose work I license, and connects purchasers to artists and artisans whose work is entirely hand-made. I’ve met some wonderful people through my business.
marcus great question to ponder…..building with song each day as a music teacher …a little softness with scissors and paper as well on my art blog ~elk
i bought all my kids lego for christmas – i love playing it with them
a secret
place this
intersection
i can not see
i fly
through clouds
and snow
air flowing over
and through
wings
it sings
of places beyond
me
I discovered during a recent 2-week road trip and a major change of scenery that my creative juices started to flow again. Driving through the Arizona desert, I was reminded of a movie idea I had (which has to do with the desert…appropriate, huh?) and started to imagine the characters and how they would meet; pictured some of the main events and thought about the story progression. I had thought the idea was dead, but I was inspired to tinker with it again.
I think getting out of my normal routine, and encountering new situations, new locations, gives me a creative jolt and fuel for the factory, so to speak.
Each new day is my sketch pad. In my professional life I help build healthier outlooks…reframe the ways people see their world. In my secret factory are memories, hopes, and dreams. Sculpting thought patterns, altering perceptions…such is the life of a therapist.
But I’ve been building a little with words too
And I’m liking the scale model.
People, I hope. More generally, though, I suppose I’m working on building fewer sandcastles.
Tough questions. I guess I’m building servants–future Christian adult men (only one man) and women (five of those) who will set out on the calling Christ has for all of us. Unfortunately, my sketchpad is often my children themselves, having nobody to guide me and no prior experience. Christian joy and forgiveness are our building blocks, and I believe that washes over the mistakes as we all learn together.
Unfortunately? UNFORTUNATELY? Christy B., you are no longer allowed to talk like that about your current calling to raise children. These kids need you. Raising them up to be leaders who know God and who find purpose in their work and their relationships–this is no small feat, no small task, and nothing nothing nothing to belittle or diminish with words like “unfortunately.”
Sorry for the rant. But this is important. I don’t want us to lift up some callings over others. We’re not higher calling blogs. I don’t edit the higher calling. No. This is not a comparison. Not a competition. Not a contest.
You have a high calling to love these kids and help them discover their talents.
Maybe this rant misreads your intention, and you weren’t trying to belittle your calling at all–but I still need to say it here in case any one else feels like belittling their calling.
On the other hand, just this morning I cried out on twitter: “I just don’t want to waste my life, you know?” So I hear you. But we have to remember that we are not wasting our lives. There is nothing unfortunate about working and serving and, yes, having ambitions to do amazing things in the world, things that honor God, things that serve others.
Somebody take away this soapbox before I fall off and hurt myself…
Ha ha! I so totally agree with you Marcus that I’m laughing, because I TOTALLY did not mean what I apparently sounded like I meant. What I meant by UNFORTUNATELY is that my poor dear children are the sketchpads on which I try my new ideas, test my parenting wings, so to speak. I gain wisdom as I go, so the later children benefit from that wisdom, but the older children are assisting in building the structure of their lives and my own parenthood. By the time they are grown, I will be a very wise parent. In the meantime, they are parented by a work in progress.
Nobody should ever undermine the value of any Christian servant. Motherhood is the ultimate experience, and I wouldn’t exchange it for the world and more. It is so amazingly ironic that I am the one that triggered that soapbox, because that is usually the soapbox upon which I stand.
Unfortunate for my children that I am not a wiser woman–fortunate for me that God has seen fit to put me in this remarkable and amazing position as Mommy. I know He will carry my children through my inexperience, and that they are learning as well. Every conscientious mother sees where she can improve and the failures she’s made in the past, and feels badly when her own faults are mirrored in her children, self-corrected too late. That is all I meant–nothing more. Praise God for forgiveness.
Thanks for seeking this clarification! God’s peace!
Good soapbox to be on, Marcus, even if Christy B did mean something else. I’m always ranking one vocation over/under another, wondering where mine fits in my fabricated, socially-influenced, value system. And parenthood isn’t excluded.
An article called Motherhood as Vocation inspired me to think more carefully about this subject a few months ago.
Sam, I did not mean what it sounded like I meant. Oops!
I enjoyed your thoughtful response to Marcus. Here’s to parenting!