The Brickyard

I’m not sure what kind of work you are in.  Maybe you are a school teacher, marketing exec, contract laborer, professional athlete or stay-at-home parent.  Regardless of vocation we all experience the trappings of the Brickyard.

The Brickyard is the monotonous place of production without realization or gratification.  The Brickyard is focused on maintaining the status quo for sake of the bottom line.  There is no need to be creative within the Brickyard for our role is already laid out, planned, and neatly organized (no need for free-thinking beings in the highly regulated brickyard).  The Brickyard gives the allure of safety but steals our individual identity.  Demands and quotas are the only incentives in the Brickyard. 

In the Brickyard, industry thrives at the expense of our humanness.

The myth of the Brickyard is that if we work hard enough, complete the latest project, or do as we are told it will finally pay off.  Yet it never does.  There are always more bricks to make and more walls to construct.

Walter Brueggemann writes, “the brickyard is a place of hopelessness.  Not only must we produce for the others, but there is no prospect, not in our wildest imagination, that things are ever going to change.  There will never be enough bricks to meet the quota”.

Sadness and despair set in where we lose our creative imagination for what life may bring.  Life is viewed as “the daily grind” - something we try to get through and survive, rather than a gift that is anticipated and received.

Stepping outside of the Brickyard takes courage and faith.  Courage to stand up against the managers and systems that relish in holding to the company line and faith, that when reach out in trust, the Divine reaches back.  The choice for you and I is simple:  choose between those who say, “Make more bricks” or the God who says, “Let my people go”.