Centering

I was angry this morning. Surely you could tell by reading that last post. After stewing around and huffing and puffing and ranting and raving, I was still angry after lunch. I headed down to my "studio," which is actually our garage that houses my wheel, kiln, clay, etc. and busied myself by making a few coffee mugs. (I'm making them to sell at a friend's coffee shop.) I made three fairly quickly, and sat staring at another lump of clay.

For anyone who has never thrown on a wheel, or hasn't heard me talk about the therapeutic benefits of it, just know that it can be a healing process. When I sit at a wheel, time seems to stop. I am immersed in the act of creating--of readying, centering, opening, raising, and shaping a lump of clay into a beautiful vessel. It is a wonderful thing for me.

So anyway, the lump of clay and I just sat there, looking at one another. "What do you want to be?" I asked it. With anger still welling up in my heart, the word "healing" popped into my mind, and the clay and I decided it should be a chalice. I'm not great at making communion plates, but I've gotten pretty good at making chalices. So I quickly whipped up a chalice top--the part the wine / juice goes into. Then I began to craft the bottom, or the stem. This is really only slightly harder to do, mainly because the natural inclination, for me anyway, is to pull the clay outward so that it begins to resemble a bowl. But with the stem of a chalice, it must be bigger at the bottom, and go inward as it rises. There are tricks to make it do that, and since I'm not yet good enough to do it easily, I rely on those tricks. Usually they work for me. But today I bombed. I can usually salvage my mistakes, but today I gave up on not one, but two chalice bottoms. See, the key is that when you make a chalice, you have to make the bottom and top in one sitting, or else it's a hassle to make sure they dry at the same rate and are ready to assemble at the same time. So NOT making one is not an option I usually give myself. Finally, on my third attempt, I got the message the clay (?) was sending me. I made a stem for this chalice that was / is far from perfect. It twists grotesquely from bottom to top, and looks as if it was forced into its shape rather than gradually and carefully coerced and cajoled into its shape. Hmmmm...

I don't know what this experience means for me and my anger right now--I'm still pondering it. But I do know that I look forward to assembling the chalice, with its beautiful top and grotesque-looking stem. Perhaps I will glaze it and keep it nearby as a reminder. There's something there about the power of a heavy hand and the way that it can hinder creation, reconciliation, growth, healing, and wholeness. I'm still pondering...