Tender Loving Care In Art, Craftsmanship and Our Work

Picking up on our last post, let's explore the idea of tender loving care in art, craftsmanship, and our work. Our launching pad has been the writer Taylor Caldwell and her book about St. Luke, Dear and Glorious Physician. We've been parsing through three elements of this work as they apply to all of us at work. The first two: Research/Historical Perspective; Thorough Attention to Detail. Now it's time to attend to:

Tender Loving Care:

Consistent with our approach, we begin with this element in art and craftsmanship, then see how this can apply to all of us. So beginning with our author, one cannot help but see the tender loving care put into it. A bit of digging and you'll find that this work of this prolific author was something special to her. Her creative plot was the result of decades of research, based on hard facts. These fueled her artistic imagination. Combined with an exquisite craftsmanship, we wind up with Dear and Glorious Physician.

We'll see in a bit but one example of this exquisite craftsmanship. But let's look at our own work first. Do we apply tender and loving care to it?

May seem odd at first blush, this tender and loving care (unless, of course, we are artists or craftsmen). After all, some work - like, let's say our sanitation workers in NYC - don't seem to require tender loving care. Care perhaps, but tender loving while picking up the garbage? On perhaps the other extreme end of the spectrum, the sort of work many of do requires us to use a laptop or tablet all day, mostly sitting at a desk and staring at a screen as we do some combination of looking, reading, tapping etc. Care applies, but does a tender loving variety also apply? It could. In my own work, the more tender loving care, the better the outcome. The tender loving comes in because my outcomes have a direct relationship to individuals, and sometimes can have a beneficial impact on them. So, being a Christian, with "love of neighbor" an important foundation for my thoughts, words, and deeds each day, you can see that tender loving makes sense.

We may have a nexus here with all our work, no matter the type: people. To go back to that other end of the spectrum, if the garbage man steps back from his dirty smelly physical activity, maybe he (or she) remembers that his actions serve people, real live people, creatures of God. Perhaps this knowledge can lift up the daily toil and bring in some level of tender loving care.

Couldn't this apply to pretty much any sort of work?

And it's not just that most work serves people in some fashion. We might also include those for whom and with whom we work. We can apply tender loving care to our relationships with these folks.

Of course, if we have a boss for whom we work who's a real pain in the you-know-what, having a spirit of tender loving care apply to this guy or gal might be a challenge. But recalling that we are followers of Jesus Christ, who wish to follow - best we can - His example of how to live, shouldn't we incorporate some level of tender loving care in how we treat anyone for whom we work? Even if it's simply praying for them, specifically for their salvation. Especially in those moments when their supervision or management of our daily activities becomes oppressive, such a prayer carries great merit.

As for those with whom we work, we've discussed this many times in the past. We may not have used the descriptor of "tender loving" but it's embedded in our being charitable all the time. The tender loving part helps us to avoid applying a kind of mechanical or disembodied charity to our relationships. That's certainly better than being uncharitable, but real charity requires us to step outside ourselves and put the other's welfare first. The more we can make charity sincere and heartfelt, the better for them and for us.

But wait. What about that "We'll see in a bit" an example of exquisite craftsmanship done with tender loving care from Taylor Caldwell? Well, our diving into tender loving care in our work extended a bit further than originally planned . It seems thinking about this spurred a lot more brain-fire than anticipated. Perhaps the result of attending to a simple blog post with tender loving care?

In any case, we'll get to that example next time...