Wondering how I lead the people on my San Antonio team today…. Are they making progress? Yes. Am I making progress? Yes. And maybe. I don’t know. What I want to know – I don’t know how to verify. Maybe the question is more, am I being patient? Maybe it’s through patience that true growth happens. Maybe it’s through the longsuffering, through discomfort, patiently that God will indeed answer my prayers. It will be like Moses, “I pray thee, show me Thy glory!” To which He says, “No man shall see My glory and live.” Is it true that no man can see God’s glory? That we can only see the after effect? Try. What can you see? Even in my stillest moments, all I see are vague flashes of light. I can affect nothing.
I am subject to Nature’s law. I cannot break it, postpone it, yet perhaps I may hide my head in the sand, act like Nature’s law does not march on. I break myself against it. My task is to align, to sense and align again. But how can I even do that?
My people today, my workers. How do I move them from worker to Artisan? [later comment, date unknown – I cannot move them. I can only provide an environment for self movement. They must move themselves.] Surely every Artisan is a worker, but not every worker is an Artisan. Every Artisan indeed is a worker, but what kind of worker? And if a worker is not yet an Artisan, what kind of work will contribute to the emergence of the Artisan within?
Surely there are many types of work. There are many ways to work. What is the way? Not all ways are THE way. What is THE way?
It is the desire to master a movement.
If you are at work – do you master a movement? Are you working to master a movement?
Working towards? Just what are you working for? Is there someone you are working for? Who is that someone? Is it merely an employer? What are you working on? Is it possible to work on a project for someone else AND at same time master a movement? Working on mastering a movement that you then own? That no one can take away from you? That you yourself earned? Can a person simultaneously work for another person and work for themselves? Can a person use the work that another provides to also work for one’s self? Obviously this is the case. Woe to the person who does not operate this way. Missed opportunity to say the least. This is the Artisan Way. The Way of the Artisan is that no matter the task – the task is to master that movement for that task. How is a person to work? Work so that every motion is spent mastering a movement.
Sometimes a breakthrough seems as though it will never come. The question then is, “do I have the mental fortitude, the mental toughness, the longsuffering, the patience to see the journey through?
Nature refuses to reward those who refuse to persevere. And grabbing a reward for yourself up front before putting in the work doesn’t cheat the system, it cheats the self. You get a reward, but that’s all you’ll get.
Rewarding yourself is actually no escape at all. To reward one’s self, to shortcut the process is to deny Nature’s reward – the true reward. It is to say that Nature’s reward is not worth MY time. The arrogance. What is nature’s reward? It is true adaptation. It is true ability. True competence. True authority. It is the death of the old self and resurrection of the new. The old, incompetent self left behind, left to die and decay, the shedding of the skin to the emergence of the new, competent self.
How does this happen? Is it not through the old self being broken, in all its incompetence against the strength, ability and competence of the new? Is it not a legitimate rebirth?
One must discover and face incompetence, insufficiency, inability, inadequacy, – fear of not being ready, fear of the unknown. Is this not where I am now? Is this not me? Do I not feel incompetent? Not ready for the task? Am I not battling a fear of failure? Of inadequacy? Yet what is the reward for breaking through all these voices shouting obscenities at me? Is it not a resurrection? Is it not the phoenix rising from the ashes?
It is.
And it will be that one day I will look back at all the sequences of events and behold their goldenness, their glow and realize that God’s glory that has indeed passed by. The same way that it happens even now, that as I look back from this exact moment on how all the events of my life sequenced perfectly to lead up to right now and maybe, just maybe in that day I will realize, and perhaps own the security contained within in the idea, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” All will have grown in spite of me, all during that time of longsuffering and patience. The platform for learning will have been built. Apprentices will have learned and I will stand amazed and wonder why I was ever anxious, ever doubted, ever afraid.
And I will be thankful then, as I am thankful now.
Thank you Lord for guiding me through this time.
Power is perfected in weakness.
