13 Comments

Ashley, this was so timely and encouraging! I resonate so deeply with every bit of this reflection. Thank you for sharing these thoughts. Grateful for your work♥️.

Expand full comment

I'm so grateful for you, Paola.

Expand full comment

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Expand full comment

Thanks friend for your help in this.

Expand full comment

I’m well past middle age, so I’m looking at people like Luci Shaw who is still releasing books at 90+ and asking where the spark is coming from! I wonder if it’s coming from her ability to engage with the “small things” in a way that stirs her creativity?

Certainly we are all called to serve, and I think you have made an important point. If my gifting equips me to lift another person’s load in some way, then I think the work could be called generative.

Expand full comment

I love Luci Shaw's work. And I do wonder if the creative work we do and the generative lives we lead as we age do make us more childlike, too. Shaw seems as vivaciously joyful and curious still. Thanks, Michele, too for noting about gifting enabling service. Steve Garber in Visions of Vocation talks about responsibility leads to caring and I think that is much the same.

Expand full comment

Since I usually see “generative” used as a an adjective for AI, this was a refreshing take.

I also appreciate the reframe of productivity away from something that can be counted in terms of GDP.

Expand full comment

It's hard isn't it to see what we produce as good in and of itself and not in a consumer model?

Expand full comment

Generative goes back all the way to “I believe God created the heavens and the earth.” Thanks for getting my brain thinking.

Expand full comment

Your words remind me of Ben Palpant’s book Letters from the Mountain. Have you read it?

Expand full comment

I haven't!

Expand full comment

I really liked it. The book itself is generative (the premise being a father’s notes on life and creativity to his daughter), and he talks quite a bit about a generative posture in our work. It might be worth a peek. 👀

Expand full comment

Everything in the world comes from human relationships with things

Expand full comment