Maker

A friend recently made a relatively offhand comment about the current Maker fad. It struck me, since I make a lot of things myself.  It's true, there is a current faddy popularity in "Making", as it is called.  In typical fad fashion, it's got it's own jargon, etc. In short, it simply refers to people making things on their own.  It's different from crafting, or carpentry, or DIY in that making usually refers to technological or machine types of things, but they're all related.

I think the fad is being fueled somewhat, at least in my friend's circles, by forward thinking librarians and teachers who are rightfully trying to adapt outdated institutions to a world of increasing technology, consumerism, and independent and instant access to information.  It is a fallacy of our thinking to believe things will stay the same.  But the truth is, many of our seemingly permanent institutions are not nearly as permanent as we think.  For example, public school as we know it is only about a century old, and high school was not even common until the mid 20th century.  So in short, these places and professionals are trying to adapt to changing conditions...and this is good, even if they jump on fad trends in the process.

So, back to Making.  My friend comments that it's nothing new.  And that is right.  In fact, for me, this is part of the attraction.  You see, every culture once had an era when people understood the things around them in a way that we don't.  They crafted what they needed from the materials at hand.  Many cultures still operate in this way.  But our modern wealthy western culture has slowly distanced ourselves from this ability because of the unholy amount of readily available things to procure at great prices.  In fact, many people have turned shopping into a skill in itself.  But this falls far at the end of the chain of existence for these objects.  Back at the beginning there is still a person creating, designing, building, innovating, all of the stuff we buy.  Making is an attempt to back up to those earlier stages and understand manmade objects in a different way.  It's called Maker's Knowledge.

It's not some mystic understanding, it's just the ability to look at something and perceive the steps to constructing it.  For example, my Granddad was a Tarheel carpenter with no birth certificate and a 6th grade education.  To make something out of wood, he just needed a pattern...by which he meant a picture...not an exploded step-by-step drawing.  He could fathom the necessary steps to create it from just an image because he understood how woodwork was done.  I'm looking right now at a table he made me from a notebook sketch of a Japanese design I saw in which the table top is removable so a blanket can be placed under the frame. (In this way when it's cold, people's body heat is shared while they have a firm surface to eat, drink, or play games on...very efficient and cozy.  Some even put a small heater under the table to add warmth.)

Now, he's long dead, but I can do it with many things.  I can see an object in a store or catalog and build it myself.  Or even just dream it up and make it real.  Most of the furniture in my house is stuff I've built or modified to suit my needs.  Which leads to another aspect of Making: customization. But before I get into that, a bit more about Maker's Knowledge.

It isn't just about wood, as I said, Making refers more to technological or mechanically engineered sorts of items.  With these items, people are given a certain level of access.  A much smaller subset gains access to the 'repair and upgrade' parts of electronics.  But only the smallest fraction of people actually understand how to build it.  If it breaks, we just toss it and buy another one.  But without Maker's Knowledge, what's going to happen when replacements are no longer so easily available?  The objects will be lost along with the people who depend on them.  Not to mention, that without this knowledge, we are at the mercy of whoever has it.  We can only do what they allow us to do, for the fees they choose to charge us.  We are slaves and not free people.  We do not have access to the key means of production: the knowledge of how.  I'm not saying there's some grand conspiracy that creates this dynamic...it's simply the unintended consequence of a rich society with ample resources...but that's a whole other topic.  Here's an example closer to home.

Most people use a computer until it doesn't work.  Then they go get a tour of the new features of the latest offerings and find out "what they can do with it".  Then they buy it and adapt themselves to it's mode of operation until it again stops working.  They may have the merest understanding of how it actually works inside and may think there is nothing else to do about it.  That's just how it is, right?  Without special tools and years of high-level training, you'll never be able to build your own machine.  But this is entirely false.  I learned to build computers on my own, with self-study of advice from other Makers.  They are actually not so complicated at all.  Even the software is not so difficult.  With a little understanding, what was a black box which I simply had to expend funds on every few years has become a useful and beautiful machine that I can do anything with!  Now granted, I'm not coding from scratch...but I could with more study.  For my needs, I have found that components built by other Makers suit my needs just fine.  So I partake of their knowledge and share mine.  There's no threat in Makers sharing knowledge.  We all make what we need for ourselves and are proud to share, even happy to since our skills arise from joy.  Sharing knowledge is only threatening when our livelihood is tenuously built on others' lack.  Bad career choice, sorry.

So once again, we are led to the customization aspect.  Tools for the workers, not workers for the tools.  How many features of your phone or computer or blender do you never use?  How many times have you wished something did what it doesn't do?  Part of Making is to be able to create what you need and nothing more, but exactly what you need and nothing less.  It's a quest for harmony and balance.  Whether that be a device to take digital pictures from far overhead, a bicycle that fits your body, ability, terrain, and use, or a piece of furniture that perfectly matches and nestles into the space available for it.  You see, there was a time when most objects were like this.  You only had one carriage throughout your life and it was altered to meet your needs as they changed.  If you needed a table or a desk, you built it, or had someone build it, to fit the space and style and use.  It would be unlike anyone elses', an expression of who you are.  Making is an attempt to recapture this.

So granted, "making" and "makerspaces" and such are a fad.  But at the heart is a real community and real ideals.  Fads are often the vehicle by which ideals spread.  Sure, no one needs a one-string electric cigar-box guitar or bicycle that rides backward.  But in making them, people are learning new skills that apply elsewhere.  They're exploring new ways of thinking, new ways of living, and new abilities.  They are becoming more independent and whole, more connected to their roots, and to the roots of all people.  They are improving their own chances of thriving and perhaps even of surviving.

I think a true story will illustrate.  During hurricane Katrina, many people were trapped in attics and rooftops.  Many of them also had cell phones and video cameras.  One family videoed the devastation from their roof where they had barely been able to break through and now sat, the mother in total shock and nearly catatonic.  The father bemoaning the impending death that awaited them and pleading to no one for help.  Another family had gathered themselves and their neighbors into their finished attic with a full cooler of supplies and a full chest of tools.  They had freed their boat to float from the trailer and moored it to the roof.  Then they videoed as they called out to a fear-paralyzed family to get in an abandoned boat and float across to them.  When they got no response they set about rigging up a harness and pull line which they boated over and proceeded to haul the entire family across with them.  The first family thought they could always go get what they needed.  Life would never change and they never thought about it.  Until that illusion was shattered and they couldn't cope.  The second family had Maker's Knowledge.  They understood that they were capable and adaptable and they used those skills they had built.  They were happy and thriving even in a one of  the worst disasters the US has ever seen.

I'm not saying we're all going to face this kind of test.  But Making is beneficial even up through this type of problem.  At least, we get a custom life with unique and beautiful things, and develop some very healthy skills that keep body strong and mind sharp.  At most, we use our skills to better the lives of people who can't do for themselves.  There's no downside.  So bring it on.  Make, create, grow, innovate.  These are virtues and the more the better.

Afterburn

My last post was a rant.  I won't apologize for it.  It needed to be said.  But know that nothing on this blog is for show.  I post what I am wrestling with.  And I've continued to think about this.  Many points came out in the last post that I think could bear further explanation...Or rather, I want to talk about my history to help create understanding...see a previous post on that...perhaps then I will make more sense to those who don't get it and those who might think they get it can see how my ideas might differ or align with theirs.  Not that anyone is really reading this anyway, so who cares either way.  (Sidebar: thanks to the fanbase, I know both of you are reading.)

Where to start?  If you say you used to be a Christian, then you never were...or you still are.  It's not the kind of thing that can be undone.  It's not a system of beliefs.  It's not a culture.  It's not a bunch of fables and moralisms.  It's not a vague idea of the cosmic good.  It's not a magic hat that makes life good.  It isn't even to simply follow Jesus' teachings.  If you left it, then you never really understood it or if you really truly had hope in it and left over some disappointment, then you still are a Christian. 

You see, you can call yourself anything.  But when a person truly encounters the living God it changes things.  Things inside are different.  I'm not going to theologize and give you "3 signs you know you're saved" or any nonsense you might have heard before.  When you feel that Love call you and recognize who you are hearing, feeling, whatever, you know it.  There's no going back.  The job of the Church, which is people, not place or organization, is to stand beside you until you do know it.  Period.

I was raised in the typical modern Evangelical church.  I was fortunate to receive a good deal of training in the Bible.  I know it well.  I can argue the apologetics.  I was actually trained in persuading someone with the gospel...Literally, "if they say this, you counter with this."  It wasn't evil.  It was simply schooling in the classic sense.  I studied the arguments of great theologians and could cite the verses they used to answer heresies, etc.  The goal wasn't to brow beat people.  We never did that.  Just a principle that prudent study and in-depth knowledge of the Bible were weapons for life and salvation.  Think Allistair Begg, Bill Bright, Chuck Colson.  It's a whole world that you'd have to be in to understand.  I still have great respect for these people.

But I was also a depressive kid.  Serious for my age, with difficulty understanding the stupid kids around me.  Part of it I now know was due to a rare physical condition that was undiscovered then.  But part is simply my nature.  I began to see the fruitlessness of our shallow cushy lives.  I sank slowly into nihilism.  I knew that in the end, nothing we did mattered.  What would happen would happen.  Bad to good people, good to bad people.  Indifference to most.  Nothing made sense, so there was no meaning.  Read Camus' The Stranger to see what life is like from a purely nihilistic perspective.  It's terrifying.  I lived there.  Too apathetic to kill myself.  Pointless to strive.  Just waiting for something to kill me.  I drove my Jeep without doors and no seatbelts.  I laid on the double yellow lines of a bend in the road just hoping.  I sliced my arms and chest up just to feel anything.  I worked at a nursery and dug my arms into rose bushes, carried cactuses with bare arms so the needles would drive in.  This was a double benefit.  It woke up some sensation in me, and hid the knife slices.  I remember once, hanging from the rafters of the stockroom "to clean them".  I had swung out about 20 feet and dangled there two stories up with a broom in one hand.  I didn't care.  I even almost broke a kids neck for cutting in the lunch line.  I don't mean we got in a fight.  I mean he did it, didn't pay any attention to me, but was standing right in front of me where the line doubled back with back turned.  The adrenlaine flowed, my hands clenched and I was reaching for him when I realized what I was about to do and bolted out of there.    I ran out of the school and shivered in cold sweats for 20 minutes.  I used to smash my head into bathroom mirrors hoping they'd break and bleed my skull.  A school custodian caught me once.  He didn't know whether to pray for me or run me off.  Of course to everyone else, I was the perfect responsible kid.  Few saw it, few knew what to do, and few cared as long as I functioned in some fashion.

Somewhere in there I started having spiritual experiences, which you can read about elsewhere on the internet.  Just google cavvvp...all you'll get is me.  I didn't understand these things and it wrecked me.  I could barely hold together.  But in that world, Jesus found me.  He revealed himself as real in a way that was undeniable.  Either I had experienced what I did, or I was psychotic.

I learned that there were other people like me.  I met a bunch of the craziest punk people you could ever meet because the guitarist at my church also played music there.  In fact, that guitarist had a huge impact on me that I'm sure he doesn't even know.  He was one of the few people in that time who didn't judge.  Didn't put on a face.  He was a former drug addict from a rock band.  His wife was a drug addicted stripper.  He told me once that he'd seen our Elders' record collections, "and man they got all the same stuff we do." said even as they condemned me for being loose and rebellious.  So I began to distinguish the real from the hypocritical.  I saw those punk Christians ostracized when they came around.  I was told by the church next door to ours that "they didn't dispute my salvation, but only associated with churches of like faith and order" when I asked if their kids wanted to come to a party I was having for our kids.

I began to see that so-called Christians were the bulk of the problem!  We were the Pharisees!  So I left mainstream churches and joined the punks.  We packed the house.  Drug addicts, prostitutes, gay, gutter punks, homeless, hippies, new age, transgender, and just plain mentally disturbed.  We even had a church meeting in which we decided that someone was always going to bring a jacket just in case one of the strippers or prostitutes showed up in her work clothes!  I'm not kidding!  The pastor there became a friend and mentor.  He was a wreck of a person.  God love him and so do I.  His warts were apparent and he didn't shy from it. He was saved by grace and openly said what good was in him was from God.  And even now I will stand beside him at the Judgement and claim his as a friend, many of whom are there because of him. 

We invaded dark and sinister places.  We have seen God part crowds in Ybor, open dance floors in clubs.  I once sat in a wiccan coffee house that was run by not the nice kind of wiccan.  I have not experienced more spiritual warfare than in that place.  I could feel the oppression as we prayed for protection of my friends and others in the place...and this wizard was fighting us hard to drive us out and claim these people.  I could see it in his face.  He knew we were opposing him and neither of us said a word or gave an overt sign.  Just sat there silently praying while drinking some cheap brew.

But things change.  People are flawed.  Things run their course.  And this did.  People were lost.  Schisms happened.  Eventually we joined a friend's church.  I hit it off with this pastor who is still my mentor and spiritual director.  But I watched as several iterations of forcing two very different types of people together failed, leaving pain in their wake.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  The "normal" people just weren't comfortable with the grittiness of the others.  They couldn't see us as partners.  We were always projects.  The punks cloistered and refused to integrate because they knew they weren't wanted.  No one likes to be looked at like that, even unintentionally! And emotionally damaged people like many of these can't actually even handle it.  It crushes them, so they drive away good intentions and close the circle even tighter.

Time and time again, I've seen it.  Mainstreamers get some idea that they're edgy or cool and try to step into a world they don't get.  I have seen some notable exceptions.  But they are few and far between.


And not all of this type look weird on the outside.  Many would fit right in.  You eat, shop, and work right beside them.  I've even seen relatively normal people who are starting to discover this real, honest, classless faith continually wounded and turned away by churches.  The churches seek the majority in the "war for souls" and don't have time for the complaints, the dissenters, the ones who fall through the cracks.  Acceptable losses.  I emphatically stand up and defy that mindset.  No, never is one lost, not any are acceptable.  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 to find the one.  I say the 99 should be looking too!  People will conflict.  But resources are probably there if you'd open your mind to look for them and step aside when it isn't you.  Why not partner instead of compete?  There's churches on every corner and they all act like they're the only one in the wilderness of lost people.  Here's an example of what I mean:

A wiccan couple came in to a mainstream church I worked at and introduced themselves as such.  Now why would they do that?  If they were just checking it out, they would simple come in like anyone else.  No one need know.  The reason they did it is because they were testing.  They wanted something and wanted to see how they were received.  I told people, come get me when they get here.  I'll talk to them.  I know what they believe and can welcome them.  I even pulled a little Paul and cited my qualifications to do so.  Of course, I wasn't worthy to do that.  Instead some "better qualified" pastor talked to them and they never came back.  No doubt he comforts himself that you can't win them all and they just must not have been ready.  Wow!  You sound like me.  I thought you were Evangelical?  If there's a tool in your tool box you have to make use of it!  That's being a good steward, dude!  Leverage everything, remember that sermon?  I even told you I was there so there's no excuse.  You just blew it, they could be going to hell because of it.

Thankfully, I don't believe it is up to us to save anyone.  So I can easily forgive this man and know that God is far greater than our feebleness.  He doesn't depend on us.  He doesn't.  But by the standard you mete, it is meted to you.  This man's own theology condemns him!

So where does this long ramble leave us?  I am a bridge.  I am an interpreter.  I can communicate across boundaries.  This is my gift.  I am pitbull, donkey stubborn and will not back down from what is right.  This is my gift.  I can love and forgive, but will not participate in what is not right.  I speak for my flock of black sheep.  I'm not the shepherd.  That's Jesus.  I'm just a sheepdog, and I'm not alone.  If anyone comes after my sheep, I'll bite.  If anyone inadvertently hurts my sheep, you'll hear me bark.  And if you're sitting out there lost, hurt, fending off the wild beasts, or being pushed around by the prettier sheep, just make what noise you can...I'm coming...and I won't leave until the Shepherd finds you.