Tag: hope

tea bowls, heavens and hells

  When I sat at my potter’s wheel, and the wheel began to spin, I found myself making tea bowls.  I had no need of them, though some of the great Japanese tea bowls had been on my mind like small children tugging at my clothes… “make us, make us,...

Heavy with Hope

Kai-the-dog is 12 years old today, New Year’s Day.  He is slowing down, rising off the carpet with a heaviness of years and on aching muscles. The same thing is happening to me.  We are getting old together. Who new!? A parishioner in my curacy in Charlottesville once said of...

warm pots, warm lives

It is good to stand by as things are being transformed by fire.   It is a mystical process. Everything is changing and yet only the fires move, undulate like snakes, like waves, like whirling leaves in a gentle wind.  The clay and the glaze are all changing.  Small pockets of...

a balloon liturgy

In October, Albuquerque’s big sky is filled with balloons and I am like a puppy beneath a ball. The playful, joyful atmosphere of these floating billboards of delight and color take even the grouchiest by storm and inspire a smile.  Add to that the native American fry-bread and green chilies...

The Sacred Green

This stone hangs on a black cord.  One may see its size based on the key to my car sitting beside it.  My friend Helen asked to see it recently. The stone comes from a beach of a thousand, thousand, thousand stones like it on the edge of the Island...

Interim Blessing

A friend read this blessing recently, reminding me that John had a blessing for an interim period in his book of blessings and so I pass it along today.  It is a wonderful blessing for a church in an in-between place and for Mary and John who lived their lives...