Lopsided Clay
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
My wife is a potter. She has a wheel in the sun room and a kiln in the garage. She has a scale for mixing her own glazes, and she has a wedging board where she works the clay.
This metaphor of the potter and the clay is not new. We "get it" right away. We understand how the Potter works with the clay, kneading it and preparing it so that it can be formed into something creative and/or useful. We understand how the pot in the making may need to be destroyed, and that the Potter may have to throw the lifeless lump of clay on the wheel again and start over. We see the connection between that clay and ourselves, and the Potter and God.
It's a great metaphor.
But I'll tell you what: there's one aspect of "throwing a pot" that I didn't understand until my wife tried to teach me how to make a pot on the wheel. There is one step I hadn't heard about. After the potter wedges the clay and kneads it to a consistency suitable for throwing, the potter throws (literally) the lump of clay on the wheel. Then, before raising the clay into the form of a bowl or pot, she must "center" the clay.
Don't get the wrong idea. It's not like she burns incense, and goes into a Zen-like trance, murmuring, "Ommmmmmmmm," and stuff like that -- trying to center the clay consciousness so that when she works with it, the clay will be "willing" to become the beautiful vessel she imagines in some altered or heightened state of Buddha awareness. Nothing like that.
The clay must be physically centered on the wheel. If it is not, when she draws the clay up into a bowl, the clay will become lopsided and floppy and either will simply implode and collapse in her hands, or will go flying and spinning off the wheel, sticking to walls and windows beside her in hundreds of muddy and quite worthless fragments.
So, she centers the clay. It is so hard to do this. I've tried. I've tried with small lumps of clay. Jeanie can do it with huge chunks, which is amazing because she has to use incredible, physical strength to get the clay centered.
You cup your left hand around the clay, get the wheel spinning, and then using the heel of your right hand, you push against the clay until you've developed a cone of clay that's spinning around perfectly centered and symmetrical.
Only then, can the Potter begin to shape and transform the clay into something beautiful.
There are many Christians who say to God, "I'm here for you. Work on me, prepare me, knead me, make something beautiful out of my life." But when God gets them on the wheel of life, they resist being totally and perfectly centered. Instead, their lives are so full of other things, other distractions, that they can't possibly be fully attuned to what God wants to do with them. And that is how they stay: lumps of clay on the wheel spinning endlessly, out-of-center, wondering why their lives are so misshapen, distorted, without beauty, function, or form.
The hand of God we feel upon us is the hand of the Potter trying to center us, trying to focus us, and trying to prepare us to be a vessel that is awesome and beautiful.
This metaphor of the potter and the clay is not new. We "get it" right away. We understand how the Potter works with the clay, kneading it and preparing it so that it can be formed into something creative and/or useful. We understand how the pot in the making may need to be destroyed, and that the Potter may have to throw the lifeless lump of clay on the wheel again and start over. We see the connection between that clay and ourselves, and the Potter and God.
It's a great metaphor.
But I'll tell you what: there's one aspect of "throwing a pot" that I didn't understand until my wife tried to teach me how to make a pot on the wheel. There is one step I hadn't heard about. After the potter wedges the clay and kneads it to a consistency suitable for throwing, the potter throws (literally) the lump of clay on the wheel. Then, before raising the clay into the form of a bowl or pot, she must "center" the clay.
Don't get the wrong idea. It's not like she burns incense, and goes into a Zen-like trance, murmuring, "Ommmmmmmmm," and stuff like that -- trying to center the clay consciousness so that when she works with it, the clay will be "willing" to become the beautiful vessel she imagines in some altered or heightened state of Buddha awareness. Nothing like that.
The clay must be physically centered on the wheel. If it is not, when she draws the clay up into a bowl, the clay will become lopsided and floppy and either will simply implode and collapse in her hands, or will go flying and spinning off the wheel, sticking to walls and windows beside her in hundreds of muddy and quite worthless fragments.
So, she centers the clay. It is so hard to do this. I've tried. I've tried with small lumps of clay. Jeanie can do it with huge chunks, which is amazing because she has to use incredible, physical strength to get the clay centered.
You cup your left hand around the clay, get the wheel spinning, and then using the heel of your right hand, you push against the clay until you've developed a cone of clay that's spinning around perfectly centered and symmetrical.
Only then, can the Potter begin to shape and transform the clay into something beautiful.
There are many Christians who say to God, "I'm here for you. Work on me, prepare me, knead me, make something beautiful out of my life." But when God gets them on the wheel of life, they resist being totally and perfectly centered. Instead, their lives are so full of other things, other distractions, that they can't possibly be fully attuned to what God wants to do with them. And that is how they stay: lumps of clay on the wheel spinning endlessly, out-of-center, wondering why their lives are so misshapen, distorted, without beauty, function, or form.
The hand of God we feel upon us is the hand of the Potter trying to center us, trying to focus us, and trying to prepare us to be a vessel that is awesome and beautiful.
