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You
cannot have uncommon results by common means.
Nature does not allow it.
Only
the too socialized believe they can have excellence
and their comfort. Only the dull confuse the
tools of building with the act of building.
The
insecure want their rules. Only a coward demands
control. Life must be lived, not managed.
Blinded
by fear and ambition and stale, used up rules,
we battle our way through embittered days. We
take all the joy out of our work. We succumb
to accountancy. And we destroy our lives and
our planet. Heartless, joyless, we become killers.
We kill the Human Spirit, and in doing so, kill
everything else.
Trees
become boards, a commodity to build unwanted,
unseen, neglected walls. What is a wall anyway?
Nothing important. Nothing to have meaning,
beauty, pride, presence. Nothing to shelter,
to make space, to organize life, to inspire
praise.
Nothing.
A
waste of a tree. A waste of the life force that
built. A box to trap a promising life and a
dying spirit.
Why
do we do this? Why do we fail ourselves? Why
do we let our lives become meaningless by failing
to give meaning to our work? To make money?
You cannot make money. You make a building [or
an enterprise]. In doing so you make value.
Value allows money.
To
build is to reveal your soul. To build is to
engage, to act, to touch, to love. If you want
a Cathedral you have to be a Cathedral builder.
You
have to stand in bright light and be counted.
You cannot hide in mists of mediocrity and safety--of
normalcy. You cannot accept limits, yours or
anybody's, as mandated, given, immutable. A
Cathedral uplifts. It inspires. It demands.
It transforms. A Cathedral is a temple for the
God in each of us. Its budget is the measure
of our ability to give passionately, without
reservation, fear or self-centeredness.
A
Cathedral is not ordinary and it cannot be had
by ordinary means. I have one question to ask
of you: Why? Why would you ever build anything
less than a Cathedral?
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