With Passion

My involvement in an arena where innovation is the focus has brought to light some interesting points.  Not surprisingly but appreciatively, I realize there are important connections with the spiritual arena in which I am normally doing my work.

Possibly the most important conception with respect to innovation is passion.  Before I began to be involved in the world of innovation, I would never have guessed that passion was the superstar.  No doubt, I would have missed the crucial role it plays because it is a given.  And once the process of innovation is underway---once we see an innovator at work---we do not always see up front the passion.  But passion is the energy, the desire, and the drive to initiate an innovation process.

It is important to differentiate innovation from invention.  Clearly, someone who invents something is an innovator.  Thomas Edison is one of the more famous inventors in our American history.  Bill Gates and the Microsoft world is doubtlessly the richest in my memory.  He has done very well for a college dropout!

And that is a related theme of passion.  Bill Gates already had a dream and the passion---desire, drive, and energy---to begin to pull it off.  That actually got in the way of finishing college.  I wonder if his mom wondered whether he could get a job!

Clearly, Bill Gates is a very bright guy.  But more importantly, he had passion.  Had he been content with just being bright, he would have finished his Harvard undergraduate degree and, perhaps, moved on to graduate school.  I could imagine this career track would have him teaching computer science in some well-known university.  He would have done well, but I would likely never have heard of him.

So it is passion more than brains that propel the innovative process.  What I also know is an innovator with passion can find smart people to help fill in the gaps of the innovator’s skills and knowledge.  For example, if I need to know certain aspects of the law, I do not need to go to law school.  I simply hook up with a lawyer.  That is much more efficient.  Besides, law school always seemed boring to me!

And now the connection to spirituality.  Perhaps, it is already becoming obvious.  Think of the major innovators in the religious traditions.  I think immediately of the “biggies.”  For sure, there are Moses, Jesus, Confucius, Mohammed, and the Buddha.  One can go to the sub-sets in any particular major tradition.  If we stick to Christianity, we think of Martin Luther, John Wesley, and others would come to mind.  They all had passion.

Many folks can have a vision.  But they often go to bed, go to sleep, and wake up and keep doing what they always have done.  An innovator has a passion that will not let him or her go.  The innovator is passionately drawn to a new way…to a renewing of the old way.

In what might be seen as a quirky move, I can even imagine the call to discipleship as a call to be an innovator.  If we heed the call into the discipleship of spirituality, we open ourselves to being renewed.  We begin to participate in a process which will make us over.  We agree to become new women and new men.

Without passion we cannot sustain this transforming process.  We, too, will figuratively go to be, go to sleep, and wake up tomorrow the same old woman or man we always have been.

The passion of spirituality calls us to be new people and to do new things.  And passion sustains this newness into growth.  And passion nurtures the growth into maturity.  And passion produces the saints of every major religious tradition.

And the minute I say, “oh, I cannot be a saint,” I should realize I am not an innovator.  At some point, my spirituality is committed to the old way.  There’s nothing wrong with this.  But it is not the fullness of life promised by the Spirit.  I know I want more….you, too?