Old-fashioned workshops are fascinating places. I visited this one today to collect a newly repaired item, and as always warmed to the location: numerous tools in perhaps the same place as they were a hundred years ago; more tools and all sorts of other items scattered across heavy workbenches; pools of bright light illuminating work in progress; artisans focused on the work in hand; the gentle hiss of a burner; an indescribable smell. It's a step back in time to a more human, personal, one might say hand-crafted era - and a photographer's paradise too!
Out of this place, so full of character, emerges beautifully made silverware. Its elegance and sparkle contrast sharply with the worn, toned browns, functional layout and gentle down-to-earth camaraderie of the workshop. Sleek computerised assembly lines in stark over-lit industrial units may produce consumer goods with great efficiency, but the creation of works of art paradoxically requires the detritus of the craftsman.
If we're growing as people - growing in grace and virtue; producing character of real beauty and worth - then our lives will resemble the workshop more than the factory. Creativity and growth arise as our character forms, not according to someone else's ideal, but as we become who we're created to be.
Out of this place, so full of character, emerges beautifully made silverware. Its elegance and sparkle contrast sharply with the worn, toned browns, functional layout and gentle down-to-earth camaraderie of the workshop. Sleek computerised assembly lines in stark over-lit industrial units may produce consumer goods with great efficiency, but the creation of works of art paradoxically requires the detritus of the craftsman.
If we're growing as people - growing in grace and virtue; producing character of real beauty and worth - then our lives will resemble the workshop more than the factory. Creativity and growth arise as our character forms, not according to someone else's ideal, but as we become who we're created to be.
So who are we created to be? How can we discover more truly who we are?
Christian teaching is that we need to learn to be attentive to God. We listen in prayer and silence. We open spaces for God through worship, through contemplation of beauty, art and nature. We heed the words of others when God speaks through them. We persevere through the hard times, and remain faithful through the good. Yes, it's untidy, unscientific, inefficient even. Yet little by little, imperceptibly, God works in us and through us. And our lives become real: neither sanitised nor chaotic, but individually suited to the calling which God has given us.
Because God too is a craftsman, and his work is your life and mine. As St Paul wrote, 'We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.' And only if we allow God to craft us will we in turn produce the fruits of goodness, creativity and beauty which are our true vocation.
Christian teaching is that we need to learn to be attentive to God. We listen in prayer and silence. We open spaces for God through worship, through contemplation of beauty, art and nature. We heed the words of others when God speaks through them. We persevere through the hard times, and remain faithful through the good. Yes, it's untidy, unscientific, inefficient even. Yet little by little, imperceptibly, God works in us and through us. And our lives become real: neither sanitised nor chaotic, but individually suited to the calling which God has given us.
Because God too is a craftsman, and his work is your life and mine. As St Paul wrote, 'We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.' And only if we allow God to craft us will we in turn produce the fruits of goodness, creativity and beauty which are our true vocation.
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