But when we stop working with our hands, we cease to understand how the world really works.

I like that quotation - and I like the premise that doing things with our hands (be it gardening, knitting, sewing, woodworking, basic electronics work, repairing bicycles, making bread, playing an instrument, whatever) can kind of bring us back to ourselves, that it can help us mentally and spiritually. (And yes, I don't shy away from that word. I do think the spiritual dimension of a person's life is utterly important and that we neglect it at our peril. Whatever your beliefs, I think we all do have a spiritual component to us).

What I'm not so sure I agree with is the concept that "DIYers can Save The World!"

Because I guess I tend to be - not exactly cynical, but maybe a little doubtful - of the "outreach" or "evangelism" of DIY. (I have to admit I'm kind of uncomfortable with any kind of major evangelism. If someone asks me about my faith, or if they say something like, "You seem a pretty content person, what's your secret?" I'll tell them, but I don't like stopping relative strangers on the street and asking them pointed personal questions or wanting to "share" with them).

I guess it's because I fundamentally see things - like my faith, for example, which I know I don't talk much about here - as things that inform MY life, that tell ME how to live, and not so much directing me to tell others how to live (unless, as I said, they ask.) I guess it's not unlike the writings of a moderate American Muslim I read not too long after Sept. 11, 2001, where he said that from all he had been taught, the viewpoint that it was good for Islam to take your fight out there, to forcibly convert or even kill unbelievers, was wrong, that it was a misinterpretation of one of the terms using in the Koran - that the word used, which was a word that could, I guess, be translated as "fight," actually referred to an INDIVIDUAL'S fight with his or her baser nature - not giving in to temptation - rather than fighting against others out there.

And I guess that's kind of how I see a lot of things (not just my Christian beliefs) as primarily affecting me - that they are a guide for me, for what I am supposed to do, and that because I am not perfect in that I need to keep working rather than to go out and harangue people who are not a willing audience about what they should do and should believe.

(And I know I'm not perfect. As much as I read about, as I talk about, as in my better moods I think about making the effort to love everyone and see them as children of God, I still find that when I wind up boxed in in the Wal-mart parking lot, because there are people who have pulled up behind me so they can sit 5 minutes to wait for a "close" parking place to open up rather than walking that extra 40 feet, I find myself grumbling and saying things "to" them [which they can't actually hear] like "MOVE it! Some of us have lives we want to lead! Do you really think you are entitled to block everyone so you can get a closer spot? You're being a fool, you could be IN the store by now instead of sitting waiting burning gas!"

And yeah, when I get back home, I feel bad about it. Because it really is only 5 minutes. And maybe there was some reason - they had a relative with them who couldn't walk far, but who didn't have a handicapped tag, or something. But still. My patience and love of humanity get to be kind of thin at 4:30 pm in the grocery store parking lot).

But anyway. Back to craft. I enjoy doing it because, yes, I do think it re-connects me with a part of myself that too often gets overlooked. It allows me to do something purely for myself (or for myself and the other person for whom I am making the object). All the self-criticism and self-undermining can go out the window, which is kind of a relief.

(And now I think about it - another place where self-criticism and self-undermining kind of go out the window, and I relax into who I really am, is also in church. It is one of the few places where I feel "normal" when I'm having a bad week, doubting myself, wondering if I'm "too weird" to survive in this society...but there I have this feeling of OK-ness, that it doesn't matter that there are things about me that it seems parts of society would think were bizarre and borderline pathological)

And you know? I feel like it's enough for me to work on hanging on to what is good about my soul every week, without having to have the added burden of feeling that I'm saving the world. I guess that's what it is about the article that gets me - I do tend to have, if not exactly a Messiah complex, certainly mother-hen tendencies, where I want to FIX things and CURE things and say the just-right thing that will make a student's mind open up, and I get frustrated with myself when I don't seem to be living up to my expectations of what I think I should be able to do.

So I guess for me, the value of craft is primarily in that it brings my mind and my spirit back to a place where I am more "whole" than I am after a day of dealing with people who have different agendas than I do, or trying to fix things that won't fix, of being out among people who think it's deeply weird that I have something on the order of 7500 books in my house but that I drive a nearly 10-year-old car.

And I have to admit, I'm reluctant to attach all the weight of "saving American ingenuity" to the little socks and little toys that I make - because I'm not sure my craft is strong enough to support the weight of that hope. And I'm not sure I want to take on that responsibility. For me, it's enough that my craft heals some parts of my soul that get a few pinpricks or even holes in it every day...