The Hammer and Chisel

Why the Chisel and Hammer?

A good friend of ours, and professional artist, Ryan Hunter (https://www.instagram.com/rhunterart/) hand drew this piece. Our logo is an embodiment of one of our core values at Boundless Co. - Discipline and Adversity. The idea was inspired by a quote from the book SEAL of God, written by former Navy Seal, Chad Williams. The following is a brief summary of the book:

"Days before Chad Williams was to report to military duty in Great Lakes, Illinois, he turned on a television and was greeted with the horrifying images of his mentor, US Navy SEAL Scott Helvenston, being brutally murdered in a premeditated ambush on the roads of Fallujah, Iraq. Steeled in his resolve, Chad followed in Scott’s footsteps and completed the US military’s most difficult and grueling training to become a Navy SEAL. One of only 13 from a class of 173 to make it straight through to graduation, Chad served his country on SEAL Teams One and Seven for five years, completing tours of duty in the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Iraq.

Part memoir, part evangelism piece, SEAL of God follows Chad’s journey through the grueling Naval Ops training and onto the streets of Iraq, where he witnessed the horrors of war up close. Along the way, Chad shares his own radical conversion story and talks about how he draws on his own experiences as a SEAL to help others better understand the depths of Christ’s sacrifice and love." (1)

Greg Laurie, a pastor in California, writes this in the foreword:

"God shapes his men with the Hammer of Adversity and the Chisel of Discipline."

This was an evident theme throughout Chad's life, military training, and his testimony. We are no strangers to discipline and adversity. Growing up in the military and losing our father helped forge us into the people we are today, and the men we seek to become. A motto that we at Boundless Company use to push each other every day is "Do hard things." That's it. That's our simple message - to not shy away from struggles, hardships, adversity and discipline, but to embrace these inevitables of life and use them to grow. That is, in fact, the only path to growth... to embrace the furies of life. 

This idea of choosing the hard path in part came also in a book we draw inspiration from, Killing Lions. It is a series of letters between a father and son, John and Sam Eldredge, about love, money, work, God, and life. The theme of the book, "Killing Lions," comes from a story the author read about a young Massai man who came from Africa to the U.S. to pursue a doctoral degree. Before leaving his village, he was called upon to kill a lion that had attacked the livestock of his village. Rooted in deep tradition in the village, young men were required to kill a lion, armed only with a spear, were one to attack the village. Something Sam Edlredge wrote in the preface of Killing Lions:

"I can't imagine any university final or job interview being very daunting for a man with lion scars across his chest."

This gave us the radical notion, that what if we, when everything inside us screams at us to run to comfort and ease, make the choice to embrace challenge. The thing that we cannot forget in this pursuit of something greater, is that we are not alone. The brotherhood and God that we have are there to conquer the mountains and kill the lions with us. If we were to step out and embrace "the strenuous life," as former President Theodore Roosevelt called it, what confidence would we walk with, knowing that nothing life can throw at us can conquer us? It would be revolutionary.

Back to the Chisel and Hammer. 

I guess the idea is that taking on the challenges of the life represented by the chisel and hammer goes beyond just donning the emblem. It is a representation of our embrace of discipline and adversity, and how God will use these things to shape us, and you, into the people he desires us to be.

(1) https://books.google.com/books/about/SEAL_of_God.html?id=B0WzFE1MoCAC