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♥️.
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.
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.
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. 👀
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♥️.
I'm so grateful for you, Paola.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks friend for your help in this.
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.
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.
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.
It's hard isn't it to see what we produce as good in and of itself and not in a consumer model?
Generative goes back all the way to “I believe God created the heavens and the earth.” Thanks for getting my brain thinking.
Your words remind me of Ben Palpant’s book Letters from the Mountain. Have you read it?
I haven't!
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. 👀
Everything in the world comes from human relationships with things