I’m no expert on the potter’s wheel. In fact, I prefer moulding and shaping by hand. Nothing is uniform with me, and you can’t stack the items I make but it’s quite fashionable in some circles to have wonky dinnerware, I’m told. I seem to gravitate toward bowl shapes and then like to pierce holes in the bottom. “What is it with all these bowls with holes?” my aunt puzzles? I fill them with soil and delicate little plants or with blueberries that can be washed in the very bowl they will remain in until eaten. Things like soap and sponges need places to live too. Drainage holes are good for plants and food and soap and sponges and if you turn these bowls upside down and put a tea light candle underneath, the light shines out of all the little holes. A miniature dome of a sky filled with stars. That these strange, humble bowls can be useful is my delight. We are like this too – We have this treasure (of Christ Himself) in our jars of clay bodies. That we are useful and delightful and filled with power is a significant mystery (2 Corinthians 4 v 7–9.) I sit there making my holey bowls (or maybe holy bowls) and that is one thing, but I watch the goings on at the wheel and I marvel.
The process needs water. Hands and clay cannot do what needs to be done in a drought. Without water, clay is dust. It hardens and cracks and cannot be fashioned into anything at all. It makes us cough and our eyes burn and there can be no life if there is no water. Shapes form and rough edges are smoothed as the water washes over hands and lump of clay alike. God’s words are likened to water – they cleanse and revive. Every word is truth, carrying promise, delivering life. Every piece needs a baptism, just as a baby floats in the waters of the womb and is delivered in a carrying whoosh of fluid. When the water of the word washes, we are fashioned with ease, born in a rush, with minimal pain and distress, free of cracks. I read something once about how water is the answer for everything in mothering. Cranky children? Just add water. How about a drink, a bath or a swim? Let’s jump in puddles, make mud pies, go fishing or find a canoe on a lake. If in doubt, add water. When our time on earth is over and the water of our bodies (and we are made up mostly of water!) evaporates, it’s dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Water and earth in pottery and birth.
The wheel is designed to rotate. The spin brings refinement. The seasons of life get revisited in a cyclical manner and strength grows from revisiting the same angle time and again. Round and round we go and with each turn we discover that we have come a long way. We gain curves in all the right places and astounding symmetry unfolds and everything the potter was imagining starts to become a reality. At the time of delivery, babies instinctively rotate in the birth canal. They know without knowing that to be unbending at such a time would delay the process. They move as they journey toward the light. You’ve got to wonder about a world spinning just so on its axis every twenty four hours, rotating around the sun over the course of a year. A miracle of a globe twirling in space under the Potter’s constant scrutiny and kind hands. Too big to fix, impossible to mend? Never! Healing and restoration, washing with water, periods of dark and light, seasons of warmth and chill, hope in the midst of it all! Keep moving, keep spinning, you are held.
Have you ever watched how a piece that is not taking shape as it should be can be pressed down and held again in the spinning middle? The centre where all is still because in the very middle of every hurricane there is complete peace; the eye of the storm where the Potter’s eye is on me. Everything gathered together even as the wheel turns, the unruly edges and flustered overbalancing brought back into position for a new beginning. We need to be perfectly centred or else we are weak and wobbly and difficult to form. There is frustration and a fight in the process unless we yield to the hands of the maker. But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”(Romans 9 v 20)
I wanted to just let us stay on the wheel for always, but there is more. The firing is an important part of the process. Fragile, unusable, air dried clay is transformed into a new substance when the clay goes through the fire. Ceramics, the new substance, are tough and durable, standing the test of time unless dropped or mistreated. How often have we found ourselves in situations that have burnt us? Perhaps we even felt tortured, confused, abandoned or left to wither up and die. Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, said “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” In the intense heat of the kiln, this is true. The flames are not meant to destroy us but are used to create in us endurance, versatility, stability and lasting strength. It would make no sense to create something potentially useful and to keep it from the heat. The one creating does not miss out stages, and every phase is for the good of the creation. Maybe it’s what they call ‘tough love.’ A sense of being cruel to be kind. We might not want the trial, but we need it. The fire forges, it does not destroy.
After the first firing comes the fun part. Glazing. This is when colour, texture and design come flooding into the process. Soothing and stimulating after time in the kiln. The glaze adds shine to what was once a dull surface and not only does each piece become visually enhanced, but glazing makes the wares waterproof and food safe. You would hope one firing would be sufficient, but after colour is added and artistic touches are completed, the heat is necessary once again. Heat in a specific range, mind you. Not too hot or else the glaze melts and runs off, but if not hot enough the glaze will not mature. It takes an expert to know when the temperature is just right. The ingredients melt together and beauty is established right there where we might not choose to be if we had it our own way. Thank goodness we are in a divine collaboration. We have free will, choices to make and lives to live, but we are not alone. I am the clay, He is the potter; I choose to keep myself in His hands and He is not done with me yet.
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