From The Very Esteemed Callie Janoff
Simple and captivating:
The Church of Craft is both of these things. “Church” is a concept that makes a lot of us uncomfortable, but why? After all, what is a church? Generally speaking it is a community organized by their faith, their spiritual practice. Any church is no more and no less than its members, it’s yours, and you are making it. This church’s purpose is to be a constant act of creation. We create it every time making dinner makes us happy, we create it when doodling helps us focus our thoughts. This church’s purpose is to help us see the power that creativity and making works in our lives.
Making things is our spiritual practice.
For some of us it is simply what we do, and what we have always done. Many of us don’t really take the spiritual parts of our life very seriously; it never seems to require our attention, so we don’t pay it much mind. But some of us have begun to ask ourselves these esoteric questions. How am I spiritual? What do I believe in? What in life moves me, compels me, gives me strength and makes me happy? The answers to all these questions are both simple and complicated. The simple answer for us is: love, love of ourselves, and the love between each other. But what gives us the courage to love? What allows us to feel the love around us? That is very complicated. Love in our lives depends on our confidence and security, our peace and serenity, and something ineffable; a feeling that is impossible to explain with words but that we hint at with what we make. It is in the pictures we take, the shelves we build, the waffles we make and the words that we write, that you are reading even now. When we create, we make our lives a place of love.
Making things isn’t easy.
Our lives conspire to keep us from acts of creation. We are very well bred consumers; that is to say–we have learned well how to consume our food, culture, knowledge, power… We eat our lives and that makes us who we are. Consumption is passive, and we seek the path of least resistance. When we consume our identity, we are filled with self doubt: what if someone finds out that we are not as cool as our shoes might lead one to believe? Our consumption plagues our quiet lives, filling it with broadcast noise and boxes of macaroni and cheese. But when we make something, we are filled with satisfaction, the kind you feel to your core. Consider the presents you give: the one you bought (I hope this will match her living room furniture) vs. the one you made (I hope she can tell by the way that I have made this how I feel about her). Which kind of gift would you rather give? We are not suggesting we should all move to Vermont and subsistence farm. Rather, we can all find moments of creation in our lives and fill our hearts minds and bodies with the courage to see love, and make love.
And that is what the Church of Craft is for, to help us remember how to find moments of creation in our lives.
We come together, and we make things, and we affirm the craft we see in each other. Then we go home inspired, confident, peaceful, and we live our lives with all the happiness and love we can.