Tina and I got to visit Elias this weekend on a quiet Saturday morning. Before we left, we walked out on Rowan Boulevard and stood in front of this statue. It's called "The Glassblower", and commemorates the history of the glass industry in Glassboro, NJ dating back to 1779.
Glassblower Bronze Statue
In 2018, the Borough of Glassboro commissioned a bronze statue of our namesake, the Glassblower, to be made for the Town Square. Glassblowing is a glass forming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble (or parison), with the aid of a blowpipe (or blow tube). A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer.
Glassboro's early history was built on the manufacturing of glass. The town was first established in 1779 by Solomon Stanger as "Glass Works in the Woods.” The sand in the area proved perfect to create glass, and the oak trees in the area were able to fuel the production. Glassboro's proximity to Philadelphia also made it an ideal location to be the heart of the Glass Industry in South Jersey and to allow the Glass Works to become a leader in the production of glass.
The choice of background here is intentional.
When you read this brief history of glassblowing in South Jersey, you may be tempted to conclude that the Stanger's motivation was to create a business, and found the Glassboro area to be advantageous to meet that goal. No doubt that played a part. I suspect, however, that Mr. Stanger had an even deeper motivation which drove him to start his business. It's a common drive we all share - the drive to create.
We easily assign the ability to create to certain artists - visual artists, dramatic artists, musicians. Those are the obvious. I would suggest that deep in our DNA, we all have a predisposition to create. If you hold to the idea we were created in the image of God (by whatever means He chose to use), then part of that image must be that we were designed to carry on the work of creating. It doesn't have to be an object - it may be situation, or an environment, or simply something that wasn't there before. It will, however, serve some higher purpose. If you don't hold to that idea, you may still recognize the deep down craving to make something out of nothing. You may also recognize a deep sense of fulfillment when you do that, and a sense of loss when you don't.
Elias has always had the propensity to create. He is in Rowan Engineering to give him better tools to do just that. We are working under the assumption that this is the avenue for him to reach that goal. The path may change, but the goal of finding a way for him to create will not.
My own goal of becoming a creator in my own right has certainly taken many avenues and many turns. I couldn't even clearly define the goal itself for much of my life. I aimed for the effects of the goal, like self-fulfillment, making a contribution to society, using my natural inclinations and gifts (shoot, I still get sidetracked by making those things a goal). We may actually experience those, but as a side effect. I've come to believe that getting the goal right is the first step.
I could phrase that goal exactly as I understand it, but I choose not to. However, I will say this - it goes back to the beginning, to the core of who we were meant to be. We have to figure out what we were meant to create.
