Month: January 2021

Formation

To examine one’s own life is to notice the patterns.  What keeps appearing?  What happens over and over again? What is life trying to teach me? Yesterday I had an open house at my pottery studio.  Guests came to visit, in masks, some from an hour’s drive, one at a time and sat...

Loopholes

The difference between faith and belief is one of those loopholes which has long kept me out of trouble among my more pious clergy friends.  I’m always getting yelled at about things I write. It’s fun; it’s sort of like ecclesial bumper cars. I love loopholes.  They can be so...

Resilience

The clay I form on the pottery wheel when I have some time off from work, is a kind of companion to me.  We talk.  Sometimes we argue. Sometimes we just sit together looking out the long windows that offer a view of the island’s rainy, green forests. Yes, we sit together,...

Delightful Darkness

In the darkness of the Dark Ages (about 500 ad to about 800 ad), God was presented to the people by the bishops and clergy as a fearful, veiled mystery, off in the distant darkness, angry, brooding and vengeful. God was presented more like a vicious teenager than a loving creator.  It kept...

Leaving a mark

These are the chop markers I use to leave a mark on the pots I make at my potter’s wheel.  This is a tea bowl that I had recently turned upside-down, up-ending it to carve the “foot” of the bowl smooth and then marking it as “by the hand of...