Layer #4

I'm working on a little project that I hope to post soon. Art Direction isn't my specialty but I love to create. And because I'm focusing on vision and vocation, Advent is the perfect time to show you one of the images. It's presently called Layer #4.

Layer #4 depicts an advertising employee in relationships with her agency and with an end user. Becoming a good neighbor to the consumer next door requires attention to both of these, and as long as there is greed, laziness and self-centeredness in the world, she'll have her work cut out for her.

Most importantly, she views the end user as a recipient of her care. Then she continues by pushing and pulling her agency - including her subordinates, superiors, colleagues and clients - to do the same. The work is never done, and she knows it won't be.

She knows she can't cure us all of consumerism. She also knows her agency won't avoid every compromise of integrity. But she believes her work matters and that if she submits to a grander perspective, she'll find strength to keep at it.

On this note, I'll leave you with the oft-quoted, mis-attributed and wonderful poem, A Future Not Our Own:

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

- Attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero, but composed by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw