Cindy Tee’s Reviews > The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art > Status Update

P19: Which leads us to this realization: the only art we can create is that which authentically reflects who we are. Our soul is the material for all we create. Thus, to nurture the artisan soul, in essence is far more important than talent.

P17: Paul wrote 2000 years ago that each person is given different gifts and each of us has a unique place in service and a unique part to play. The Scriptures have never been about conformity, and certainly Jesus's early movement was never described in terms of standardization. Jesus's early followers formed a movement of dreamers and visionaries.
(reminder to scripture check this one)

P16: What gives me great hope is the number of companies that have broken away from the Industrial Revolution vision of people as cogs in a wheel to see people as the organization's greatest resource..Radically redefining work as a place where people no longer simply fill a slot but are empowered to bring their best selves and unlock their full creative potential.

P12: Though we may create many beautiful works of art, the most important works of art to which we will ever give ourselves are the lives we live. No matter what else we produce in life—even if we create something for generations of people to marvel at—we will never create anything more powerful or significant than our lives. The complexity is that we are both works of art and artists at work.

P12: The church's lack of creativity should never be used to argue that creativity is not our most spiritual act. We must instead go back to the beginning and remind ourselves who we really are. [We are more than mere worker bees.] Art exists to remind us that we have a soul, and all we need to be an artist is a soul.

P11-12: God created us through the universe's most creative and intimate act. He designed us in his own image; he designed us with both intellect and imagination; he designed us with both reason and passion, he designed us to dream, risk, and to create.

P11: Love is the defining mark of the church, but we have far to often fallen short of that mark. Still, we do not give up on love. We continue to make it our ideal. We understand that this is God's standard. We are most human when love is our motive. It is the same with creativity.

P9: We were never intended to create apart from God..Each human being is uniquely designed to be a part of the creative act. To move forward together, we have to realize that life itself is a work of art.
In Response: We are God's masterpieces, the pinnacle of his creation. We are invited to join with him in the forming our lives and others, and the world into something beautiful and glorifying to God.

P9: There is an order to the creative process: we dream, we risk, we create. We cannot create without risk. There is no riskier way to life than the artisan way. Anything less is just existing. What if the creative act is a reflection of his image within us?

P8: It is easier to control people if we convince them that they are inherently uncreative—everyone simply conforms and cooperates. If we want to create a better world, we had better start to unleash the creative potential inside each person to create all that is good and beautiful and true.