Reflection

It has been a long time since I have had the time to sit down and write - The children have all changed their positions in life and I have watched as another season has entered and exited.

 I have recently returned from my almost annual pilgrimage to the wilderness for a respite and recovery from the maddening world we have created for ourselves. I have returned from my journey with a new perspective on my season and am beginning to understand that the most important gift I have to give is passing on as much of the skills and craft and lore that I have gathered  over my life. Not that I won't continue to gather more, but passing on what I have learned to insure the knowledge and craft is not lost. Insuring that the skills and nuance of true craft are there to peak the interest and captivate the desire for learning and provide for the skills and understanding the future may need to remember. Just how to teach the skills and craft I have accumulated is going to be a challenge......Getting interest generated is difficult with all the distractions we have.

I was reflecting on great books and how they provided for getting along in our world, and provide a code which, if followed, provides a reasonable amount of sanity dealing with each other in our societies. There are other books and electronic resources which provide recipes for concocting all manner of things, or building any device or structure you may wish, but the true transfer of skill and craftsmanship seems no longer a necessity for making a livelihood. It is lost as a structured part of the educational process. Mastery is now a personal thing rather then a trade learned by apprenticeship. I do not mean to discount the trades and apprenticeships which still exist, there are still many but far fewer than were part of our societies even three generations ago. Some of the skills and craft I know of from my family's past are gone.....or at least they no longer require hand craftsmanship, machines have the replaced the skills and we no longer toil at those things.
But is that better? What have we lost? Have we traded away things of great value? What have we gained?