Pottery, Faith and Brokenness

Pottery class is on Wednesday evening from 7 to 9:30. Often, Olivia is waiting up for me. I hear a faint, "Daddyyyyyyyyyyy?" coming from her room. "Yes Porkchop?" I answer. "Did you make me anything?" She expects me to bring her home something each week.

Every couple months I throw minis from the hump (sounds dirty doesn't it). Basically, that means that you take a large cone of clay, center it reasonably well and begin to throw very small pieces off the top of the hump of clay. I can make a dozen or so pieces, and have them trimmed, glazed and home in few weeks. Then I have a stash of pieces to give to O on a weekly basis.

A few months ago I brought home a really cute mini bowl I had made. It had an image of a dragonfly impressed into the center and a beautiful crystal green glaze. She loved it. She decided she was going to bring it in for sharing (show-and-tell for the older crowd) the next day at school. On the way out the door Kim dropped the piece on the tile floor and shattered it in several pieces.

Olivia was hysterical. They called me at work on the way to school. My Admin pulled me out of a meeting to talk to my sobbing daughter. I consoled her as best I could. Instead of the broken bowl, she brought an older piece into school. The teacher later told us that O introduced the piece in tears saying, "I was going to bring in my favorite piece, but my Mommy broke it. I'll never be happy again."

Broken pottery and broken faith. What happens when our beliefs are shattered. What happens when our loved ones die, when our plans are wiped out in a matter of minutes or when we get sick, really, really sick.

We have the ability to react in a variety of ways. Do we bury our heads in the sand, do we give up hope, or do we grieve and then try to make sense of our brokenness in the reality of our surroundings?

We're all broken. I know I'm broken. To me, that's pretty much the whole point of why Christ died. He died to fix our broken-ness. I use a lot of imagery in my life (to get through exercise, to visualize a finished piece of pottery or to figure out just what I'm asking for in prayer). I have an image of Jesus saying... "Look Mollo, you're totally fucked. (Sorry everyone, my Jesus swears). I know you know it. I'll take the hit for this one. Just try not to fuck (there he goes again) up so much. When you see it coming, turn the other way... don't hurt anyone, don't kill anyone, feed the hungry, give cash to the poor, smile at the homeless, befriend people, and most of all love. Seriously. Love." That's what Jesus says to me in a nutshell.

Pick up the pieces! Glue them back together. We did that with Olivia's bowl. The bowl is better for the cracks and the bits of glue. It's a reminder that she has people who love her enough to spend time putting the pieces back together with her. And that is a reminder that we're all better having our faiths mended.

Memorial Day, 2008




It was cold!

But O managed to enjoy herself.

A Reflection on Pottery, Faith & Imperfection



In my last post I posted pictures of several pieces I brought home from a recent firing. I had omitted this one on purpose. I love this glaze. It is called smoky brown. No one else in the studio likes it, so the entire rich bucket of glaze is essentially mine. It comes out a deep brown that has hints of a smoky blue haze in it. The picture doesn't really do the glaze justice.


I omitted this piece in my last post because of the a one-inch section where the glaze crawled (pulled away from the piece) leaving the white body exposed. For the most part, it is all I can see. If I force myself, I can see the big picture. The plate itself is gorgeous, and I love the glaze. If only it wasn't for that small imperfection. If only.


Many years ago, when I was Junior Warden (a lay leader position) of our church I was talking to parishioners individually about them taking up a leadership position on the Vestry (the leadership body of local church). I was talking to a woman who is about ten years older than me. When I asked her to consider running for Vestry she laughed nervously. After we spoke I learned that it had nothing to do with the time commitment. She told me that she didn't know exactly what she believed. She said that her faith wasn't nearly as strong as mine.


Then I laughed nervously. Me? Strong faith? Seriously, no.


No one thinks their faith is quite strong enough. Me included. I remember reading a Time article last summer about Mother Teresa's intense doubts and lack of faith. She had felt removed from God. The article stated, "In a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet... she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand." (Time Magazine, Aug 23, 2007). But yet, amidst that faith struggle, she lead a public life of service to the Christ she saw in humanity. Her doubts did not halt her action in the world.

What do we do with our imperfect pottery? I usually put mine on a shelf in a room no one goes into. And push it way to the back so no one will see it. To me, that small imperfection makes it ugly, and there isn't anything I can do with it. Right? Or, alternatively, should I be thinking about it differently? Should I hide it away or put that plate in the center of the table and celebrate it? Perhaps I should study it to learn what changes need to be made in my technique and learn to improve my glazing ability. Perhaps I should even learn to love the imperfection and accept it as part of the beauty of a piece.


So what do we do with our imperfect faith? The parishioner I was talking to about joining Vestry did join. She realized what I'm beginning to realize about my pottery. We don't necessarily need to hide away our fears and doubts. When we show them, and discuss them in groups we have the opportunity to grow and develop in faith and community. When I was in the ordination process a professor once told me that being a priest is, in part, struggling with your faith publicly. I think we all have the opportunity to do this in the community of a church. If we squirrel our doubts to the back of a shelf we will never move beyond them. We must provide forums in church to discuss our doubts so we can grow in faith and service to God and community.

Bringin' Home the Booty



Remember a few weeks ago when I posted that there was craziness going on in my life and I needed a brief escape? I went to the pottery studio and spent an hour or two glazing. Well, the alone time was worth it. It resulted in some very creative pieces.

Well, here are some of the results.

Overall, I'm really pleased. The tan and white short vase was thrown, wrapped in rope and unwound. It has some nice markings on it.

The two plum pieces with white on the rim are very nice. Some of the nicest glazed pieces I've done, I think. The platter and green (faux vogel) vase are also nice, but a little heavy - so don't pick them up.

A set... at last...




I have a matching paten (the Eucharist plate) to the chalice that I posted last month. These are three pictures of the same set.

I have two new chalices to glaze in the coming weeks.

Proud Mollo... Keep on Turnin'...

November in Newark! I'll be with Tina!

And they bowed...

O and I looked through all of her recital videos and she wanted this one posted too! I'm not precisely sure what this song is or what language it is (I think it's French, K thinks it's Dutch). I think the story in the song is about a poor family who go to the fair. They don't care that they don't have money and bow to everyone they meet. Or it could be about a bunch of kids with the bends - who knows?!

This Little Light of Mine...



I realized I never posted any pictures of the candlesticks I made.

These are basically chalice stems. I made three of each color (vc bronze and plum). While the glazing matches well, the shapes don't. (Right, go to Target if you want matching ones). I think they turned out well.


I think they'd look good on a table if there were multiple candlesticks of differing heights. Perhaps they need a toast and a few clinking wine glasses over them!

O's debut...

I'm posting a couple videos of O's music class recital.

She's got it all goin' on!

Chee Chee Cha...

Bum out?

Pottery, Faith and Prayer.

I tend to only pray in Church, at dinner (led by O) or in times of great stress. I agree with many who argue that a response of awe in nature is also prayer, but I'm talking about hands-clasped, eyes-closed prayer. I may sneak in an occasional moment of thanks and praise as I drift off to sleep but that has been rare - until recently.

Pottery has helped me use prayer more deeply in my life. I find myself saying a brief prayer or asking God a question as I begin to wedge clay. As I slam the clay down on the wheel head, (Gunshots Dickie! - movie reference anyone?) I spend a moment focusing on the Holy. I focus on finding the beauty of the object that already resides within the clay.

When I know that I am planning to make a chalice or a paten, I ask for help to turn the beauty of the clay into a functional object to serve God and man. When I hold a chalice I have made, I know that I have prayed over its creation and I know that throughout the creative process I have praised and thanked God so that we might use this chalice to better know God and our role in community.

Over time, as I have prayed over this mud, I have grown mindful of the impact of prayer in the rest of my life. I have, slowly, begun to use prayer more fully in other moments. While I had been praying primarily for strength in the past, I now find myself praying to give thanks and praise, for motivation and for peace (both individual and communal).

The crossroads between the artistic and holy has had broad reaching impacts for me. It has allowed me to decompartmentalize my life. I no longer look at my life as my work-life, my church-life, my family-life and my pottery-life. My experience with pottery has made me more mindful of God's presence in all of these facets of my life.

How can we collectively harness God's presence in those 'non-Church parts' of our lives and allow that presence to grow, spread and gain roots?

But it's a dry heat...

I'm headed to Phoenix for the week for a conference.

I checked the weather. It's around 95F all week - give or take a firestorm.

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Be back on Friday!

Further Reflections on Pottery & Faith: What it Means to You

Whenever our friend, Larry, comes over we spend a little time looking at the latest pieces of pottery that I have brought home from the studio. We did that last night at a birthday party we had for Paul. (Check out the video of Paul and O below).

We also spent some time talking about my blog and the posts on pottery and faith. I use the language of religion and the holy when speaking about pottery. Larry told me that to him, pottery is based in relationship.

When working with clay, there is certainly a relationship that you must have with the clay - but Larry meant something different, something deeper. Pottery for him is analogous to how he is in relationship with others. You must respect the clay, understand it's limits and it's possibilities. This is why he is so successful in being in relationship with people. He knows people's limits and possibilities and he is always respectful. When he enters into a true friendship with someone, he does so knowingly and deeply. When he is potting, he does so deeply and fully. This is reflected in his work. His work is rich and vibrant, it reflects his life very distinctly.

This conversation made me more clearly understand that how I approach my faith is likely drastically different than the way others understand God and Church. While relationship and the spiritual are intertwined, Larry and I have different analogies imbedded in our pysches about pottery. Clearly, others approach the church from similarly diverse angles.

At times, I get so deeply rooted in my understandings and trying to work out God's action in my life, that I forget others have different ways of seeing God's hand at work. We're a nation often divided by religion. This is reflected in the diverse denominational choices a church-shopper has presented to them.

However, there is failure in our country to enter into the the true deep dialogue of understanding that Larry understands so well. We are so willing, as a nation, to accept the 20 second soundbite. We believe, all to willingly, that the two sentence quote from a Rev. Jeremiah Wright sermon represents precisely the point he was making. We need to be willing to spend the time to develop our understandings, our relationships, our pottery and our faith if we have any desire for true growth. Are we willing to get your hands dirty and root around in the mud and clay to understand where the true beauty lies?

Wake Me Up!

This is O's current favourite song!

Happy Birthday Uncle Paul!

We love you!

Reflections on Pottery & Faith: On Falling Short

Making plates is difficult. It doesn't seem hard, but if you don't compact the clay enough the plates are prone to cracking in the bisque firing. And if you don't compact the clay evenly, your plate will be disproportioned or warped. I threw a fantastic plate a couple months ago. It sat on my glaze shelf for a month or so before I decided how I wanted to glaze it.

A month ago I finally glazed it. I dipped the entire plate in yim (the color of the chalice I posted a few weeks ago) and took a big rubber bulb and filled it with white glaze and splattered it all over the plate. Two weeks later I picked up the plate. I hated it. The glaze was all over the place. It was a mess.

It made me wonder what happens when we fall short - in pottery, in life or in faith.

I feel I always fall short of my own and other's expectations. Don't get me wrong, I'm not self-depricating. I celebrate my successes and don't live as a failure. The reality is that little in life is ever fully how we expect it. We have pretty pictures in our heads of what our lives will turn out like, what our pots will come out like, and what our faith will develop into. And then... life happens. People get sick, jobs are lost, pots break and many of us have the sense that God has betrayed us.

How we deal with falling short speaks to who we are as people and as Christians (or whatever faith you abide in). Do you respond in despair at all that is lost or in hope and grace in what has been created or what lies before you?

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There is a line in Amazing Grace that speaks to me and my repeated failures and provides the motivation for me to get up once again and know that this time I will succeed.

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When we've been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We've no less days to sing God's praise

Than when we first begun.

Ready for Pentecost?

O was a week early with her Pentecost outfit. In case you didn't know, you're supposed to wear red on Pentecost Sunday. Red recalls the tongues of flame in which the Holy Spirit descended on the first Pentecost. On Sunday, after Church O, and her peers descend on the parish hall in flames. We're lucky they haven't burnt the place down yet!

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Here's to hoping Pentecost shakes the cobwebs out of us all!

Why I Love Pottery Class: Reason #37

alternate title: Nice Shirt

This is me throwing a bowl. It is the first time I'm throwing anything with Porcelain. The clay is so smooth and light. It's like throwin' a big ball a-buttah!

Anyway, the voices in the background are two women (who are fantastic by the way) that are in my class who shall remain nameless. We were talking about what our 'escape fantasies'. You know, where do you escape to in your head during tough times in your life (screaming kids, sick relatives, etc). This was just after a very deep conversation we had about God and the Spirit World. You never know what we'll be talking about on Wednesday nights!

Can you do it? I mean really do it?

I'm on tons of email lists at work. One that I scan regularly had a link to the following story out of Chicago. I sat staring at my computer for a few minutes.

In from the cold -- and 2 lives are changed
WEST LOOP Effort by entrepreneur to help homeless man has stunning impact
May 4, 2008

BY STEPHANIE ZIMMERMANN Staff Reporter szimmermann@suntimes.com

Pete Kadens, a Chicago entrepreneur, and Troy McCullough, a homeless man, met, by chance, one chilly morning eight days ago.

Kadens had arrived early for a 6:45 a.m. conference in the West Loop. He was sitting in his warm car and noticed a man in a well-worn shirt and tie, outside the offices of StreetWise, the newspaper sold by homeless people.



Troy McCullough (left) says he wound up living on the streets after his wife died, he suffered a stroke, then lost his job. Pete Kadens (right) set up a fund to help him get off the streets. (Courtesy)

It was McCullough, waiting for the doors to open at 7 a.m. so he'd be first to get his bundle of papers.

McCullough, 52, looked like "he had a mission," according to Kadens, who invited him in from the cold, to wait in his car.

They started talking. McCullough told Kadens how he'd come to live on the streets. He talked about his wife's death in 1996, about a major stroke he had two years later, and how he'd lost his laborer's job after that. He was in a nursing home a while but, with no long-term care insurance, ended up living in alleys, parks and churches.

He'd had some tough breaks, McCullough said, but he kept selling his papers six days a week, didn't drink or use drugs and always made it to church, not missing a Sunday in the last year.
Kadens listened. He ended up being late for the conference.

What struck him, he said, was, "that every one of us is only a few bad breaks from being like Troy."

Kadens wanted to help. But first he issued McCullough a challenge: Be here tomorrow morning, and I'll see what I can do.

The next day, a Sunday, McCullough was there at 6:45 that morning in suit and tie.
Kadens gave him $200. Then, he went home, set up a Web site -- www.savetroy.com -- and e-mailed about 50 friends and business associates. He asked them to help him raise $10,300 -- what he figured it would cost for a studio apartment, basic furnishings, groceries and medical care for McCullough for a year. If McCullough could bank at least 70 percent of his StreetWise sales, Kadens figured, he'd have $12,480 in a year, enough to cover a second year of expenses.
Maybe it was the way Kadens opened people's eyes with McCullough's story. Maybe it was the way McCullough didn't fit stereotypes about the homeless.

Whatever the reason, the response was overwhelming. In just a week, the Web site raised $15,000, plus $20,000 more in donated items and services. Word spread quickly. Donations came from 32 states, Mexico and Canada.

"It's been unbelievable," said Kadens, who's 30.

Now, he's working to roll the extra money into a not-for-profit fund to help another homeless person.

"I helped one person, but hopefully I challenged people to think a little bit differently about people who live on the street," Kadens said.

McCullough called Kadens "an angel that's sent from heaven.

"Someday," he said, "I'll be there for somebody else, too."

For Uncle Larry...

Uncle Larry is a huge Mae West fan. And O is a big fan of Uncle Larry's.

Today's wisdom...

This kid is gonna be a star!

I'll be like Momma Rose!

Pottery and Faith: Thoughts on Being Alone.

Last week was a tough week. We had a lot of things going on at home.... good and bad. But it was a complete overload for all of us. K & O took a nap together and I decided I needed a little alone time. Alone time is rare for me. I'm an exhausting extrovert who loves to be around people (almost any people) that will talk and laugh with me. It will shock none of you that know me to hear me say that I don't meditate well. I don't do solo sports well. I don't do much well that requires silence and contemplation.

I needed silence last weekend though. So I went to the pottery studio and cleaned off my bisque shelf and glazed everything. I glazed at least 20 pieces in the span of an hour and a half (vases, mugs, patens, etc). I was alone with music I could sing along to playing in the background. Yes, I had music playing. I took the step to be alone, you don't think I'm going to do it in complete silence. I'm not a monk.

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I tried several glazes in combinations that I hadn't before. I was grumpy and took risks. I didn't try to get out of the bad mood. I just accepted it for what it was and worked with it. I think there will be some great pieces that come out of the next kiln firing.

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As I was there I began thinking about how this need to be in class (or community) with my pottery peers as well as be alone in the pottery studio experimenting with new glazes and techniques is very similar to my experience with Church and with God.

I love Church. I love the music, the readings, the high shine that the altar guild gets on the brass, the intellectual sermons, the Eucharist, the coffee hour, the kids tearing the parish hall apart and the Community (big C). I love worshiping in unison. I love saying prayers and hearing our communal voices echo off the big wooden overturned hull of a boat that is our ceiling.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I need silence. I need to be alone - to pray, or give praise, or work some idea out that has been gnawing at my soul.

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There are parallels in both these artistic and spiritual journeys. For me, they require both communal and individual focus. I'm not much of an introvert, but am growing to respect the benefits that come from focusing on that small part of myself.

Better.