"...See that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love; see that ye refrain from idleness" (Alma 38:12). Imagin the leather bridle that horses use. They are small and simple harnesses that fit over a horse's head and function as a way to direct or aim the horse. When a horse has been adequately trained, it usually won't fight the bridle. The rider can tug the reigns in a certain direction, the bridle turns the horse's head that way, and the rest of the body will follow. We aren't trying to kill our God-given passions. We're not trying to shut them off, crush them, or even micro-manage them. We are trying to aim our passions in a direction we want to go and allow our passions to carry us there.
Unbridled, passions are like river water without boundaries. They fluctuate between being like water in a river delta, or the water of a flood. In a delta the water goes in a bunch of directions, it loses speed and force and cannot carry even the smallest grains of sand. If that same water is focused into a single stream by river banks, it gains power. Under the right conditions, the same water that is powerless in a delta can move boulders and cut canyons. The water, or passion, is not the issue. It is the lack of effective boundaries that direct and aim the water, or passion, that is the problem. When you bridle your passions, you unleash power! Passion Projects are one way to unleash and channel that power into something good.
Passion Projects are not goals. They are not hobbies. They are a way to team up with God to minister to His children. The best Passion Projects unite your whole soul - spirit, body, head, and heart - to an inspired cause.
The book Like Dragons Did They Fight, which was written by the man who coined the term Passion Projects, describes them this way. Passion Projects….
Bring energy and enthusiasm back into your life.
Reinforce your new identity - connecting to your future and not your past.
Require Divine assistance to complete.
You must learn to set miraculous level goals...goals that cannot be achieved without an alliance with God.
Involve your unique set of "Super Powers" otherwise known as Spiritual Gifts.
Teamwork...requires you to align your strengths (superpowers/gifts of the spirit) with those of others.
Provide you with positive momentum to keep you from slipping backward.
Improve the lives of others...one person at a time or in groups of thousands.
Align your frontal lobe, with your spirit, and your more primal energies into a well-tuned harmony.
Create momentum in your life; keep you moving forward.
One purpose of Passion Projects is to replace unwanted patterns and behaviors in your life. This can include bad habits, addictions, or even personality traits you aren’t pleased with. For this to make sense it may be helpful to use a metaphor you may already be familiar with. Your mind, heart, and life are much like a garden. All of our gardens are in need of refinement. Unwanted habits, patterns, or addictions are like weeds or undesirable plants that are “cumbering the ground of our vineyards,” to misquote the Allegory of the Olive Tree from Jacob chapter 5 of the Book of Mormon. These unwanted plants must be forcibly removed from the garden. Spraying them with a weed-killer is not enough, you must dig around the plant and rip it out by the roots. But once the offending plant has been removed, it must be replaced. If you leave a hole in your soil and don't fill it with a plant of your choosing, the garden will fill it with a plant of its choosing. This is where Passion Projects become essential. Your Passion Project is the plant you have chosen to replace the weed. It will fill the hole in the soil and because you will care for and fertilize it, the new plant will receive even more nourishment than the original.
What qualifies as a Passion Project?
Pattern 1: Glowing Stones
There tend to be two main categories that Passion Projects fall into. They usually are a Glowing Stone experience or a Building the Ship experience.
When the Brother of Jared was preparing to cross the ocean to the Promised Land he went to God to solve three issues. How would they breathe, how would they steer, and how would they see. God solved the issues of fresh air and steering for him but told the Brother of Jared to find his own solution for a light source. When Moroni abridged this part of the story he made it sound really simple, "and [he] did molten out of a rock sixteen small stones; and they were white and clear, even as transparent glass" (Ether 3:1).
I thought it would be fun to do the same thing so I did some research trying to learn how. What I learned blew my mind and reshaped how I think about this story. This is not something the Brother of Jared did because he was bored. This is not something he randomly figured out. He almost certainly had done this many times before, perhaps as part of his profession before God confounded the languages of the people near the Tower of Babel.
Melting stone is not easy. You need to reach temperatures over 2000° F. Bread is baked at 400° F. Your normal campfire might be able to reach 900° F under the right conditions. Whether the Brother of Jared constructed a type of furnace, foundry, or a monster bonfire, he had to be intentional about it. He didn't just toss a rock into the cooking fire.
Also, the Brother of Jared couldn't grab just any rock off the beach to melt. Some stones melt more easily than others. Many stones don't become white and clear when they melt. The easiest way to make glass is by melting sand that has a high silica content. Doing it from a rock is harder.
Then, to prevent shattering or cracking, the molten glass needs to cool very slowly. Glassblowers usually let their finished pieces sit in a kiln at about 500° F overnight. To get his 16 clear stones, the Brother of Jared probably had to do something similar.
As I learned all of this it became apparent to me that this almost certainly was not the first time the Brother of Jared had done this. That's where this ties in with Passion Projects. Perhaps you already know almost all of the steps of what you need to do. Perhaps you've done it before. All you need this time is for God to put His finger on your work and make it glow.
Pattern 2: Building a Ship
The other main pattern that Passion Projects tend to follow is like Nephi's experience building a ship.
Nephi grew up near landlocked Jerusalem. Odds are that he never saw a ship before the Lord led his family down by the Red Sea. Though we don't know if they traded or interacted with other people, my guess would be that there was never a cause to set foot on a ship and look around. To build a ship would take nothing less than a miracle. Nephi probably didn't really know how he was going to do it, just that God would make it possible. So he started with the most basic and very first step, "I need tools, where can I find ore to make tools?" The process continued from there, he did what he knew how to do and "returned oft" to learn how to do those things that were new. "Where do I find the right timber? How do I shape the logs? Where do we get material to make sails?"
He did what he knew how to do, or what he'd been instructed to do until he received "further commandment" (1 Nephi 19:4) from the Lord. This was a pattern he had practiced before while trying to get the brass plates from Laban. 1 Nephi 4:6 "And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do."
He had an end vision. He knew he needed to get the plates. He knew some of the reasons why, but he didn't know how. He worked with what he had until he received further instruction. The same was true for the ship. He knew he was supposed to build one and some of the reasons why, but he didn't know how. He worked with the knowledge and materials he had until God gave him more.
Timelines and Chess
When first introduced to the idea of Passion Projects, it is normal to think of them as long-term commitments. They definitely can be, but they don't have to be. A friend of mine completed one in a single weekend. He and his wife were preparing for a weekend with extended family and they wanted to introduce their nieces and nephews to chess, but giant-sized. They were ministering to their nieces and nephews, but they didn't know how to pull it off. All 32 game pieces and the chessboard needed to fit in the back of their car. The pieces also needed to be light enough that small kids could move them. That eliminated the more obvious choices like wood or plastic.
They considered using the corrugated plastic material people use for signs on their front lawn, but that was too expensive. They needed to go to the dollar store to get Sharpies, so they chose to come back to the pieces’ dilemma and pursued what they knew how to do. At the store, they found a foam material like is used for tri-folds at the science fair. They discovered they could use that to make a silhouette of the chess piece and notch the bottom for another piece of foam which made it stand up. They used a white tarp with black squares painted on it for their game board. The tarp folds up and the pieces come apart and everything can be stacked inside of a laundry basket.
Many Passion Projects are long-term, but they don't have to be. You can accomplish yours in a weekend.
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