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.