Wisdom of the Hands

Its about time that I highlight here another of my favorite daily blog visits- Doug Stowe's Wisdom of the Hands

Some of you may know, I was a Jeweler for many years, culminating in my own design practice - it was when and where I learned so much about the things of the Spirit that you see me speak about here- the doorways of perception, we might call it - I left that work many years ago now, to pursue "deeper things" (a story for another day) but I find Doug's blog about teaching youngsters in Arkansas and the world over the Love of handwork to be one of the most spirit filled that anyone might find anywhere...

Here is a particularly deep conversation (how can they be ready for that?) and below, one of my comments that came from reading Doug's and others lookings in that thread...

what we are talking about here is the mistaking of Craft for Art...

Art should never be spoken of- should never be practiced- should never be valued- should never be pursued

Craft, is Love... love of the material, love of the source of that material, love of the tools that work that material and of the toolmaker that makes the tools, love for the person for whom this material will form into usefulness, love for the person who delivered the material to the shop in which it will be worked...

Art is the product of that Love
pursuit of Art is foolishness, because it will be absent of Love, and instead, filled with the "what about me" thought- as Doug called it, "measurement"... "what will I get out of this?" - "what will THEY think of me?" - "how much will this be worth?" - "will I be respected by THEM?"

all of these are thoughts of separation - of me and you - of I and other - there is no Love there in these thoughts, and this is what "Art" has become... I say, let us not speak of Art at all... let us instead put ourselves to the material, and learn of it... learn of earth, and dirt, and sunlight, and tree, and mountain, and brook, and ocean, and all the creatures therein... learn them through the love of the Meeting - through the Wisdom of the Hands - through the Union of Heart and Mind and the materials of the earth... This is what Craft is- Love!

as well, the materials do not have to be of the earth, although it is surely with them that we will come to learn this... but the materials are also YOU- your life- your heart- your thought- your experience- your loves- your losses- your craft... that also, is the material of this Love- and there is where the true meeting will take place! the truest of all learnings, is not that which might produce a craft, but that which meets the other fully, as they are, without measurement and in FULL recognition- of the falseness of our perceived separation - seeing the mirror of the other- seeing me, when I look at you, when I look at a tree, a bird, a field mouse, a pine cone, a pumpkin, a grapevine, a crystal of tourmaline trapped in some rock, the sediment at the bottom of a stream bed... this is what the materials of the earth are there to teach us- LOOK at their sacrifice! that we may learn this lesson!

Trees, Mountains, Creatures, give their LIFE, that we may come to this meeting! That you and I are not the separate things we think we are- that you and I are one thing, and in that oneness, everything... this is the purpose of Craft, of Love!

let us not speak of Art- let us instead learn what Art is, through the meeting with the materials of this earth, these planets, these suns... this existence...