Here is one of my (Chris’s) big old pots. I got excited when I made it, then when I glazed and raku fired it, I hated it. It sat in a dark corner for a while then more recently I pulled it out again and decided… that I liked it after all. I wonder if some of you other artists have had the same fluctuating relationship with your work? Perhaps this comes from the usual doubts and insecurities of most creative processes – or the way that it always feels like we are reaching for something just otside of reach.
I remembed too the words we inscribed on this pot and perhaps there is a clue here too about encounter. About how it can be useful to encounter something that is ‘other’ rather than familiar, so that we can see things differently.
Set me free so I might go to new places, there to meet people who disagree, whose circumstances dictate a shape I might never else encounter.
We are grateful for this poem from Jim Kucher today, as we look forward towards the events of the weekend to come. It is suggesting that we look beyond what we are familiar with towards a wider, more generous understanding of the Easter story.
No Substitutions
j.h. kucher
No transaction was performed
that day
up on the hill.
No eye for eye,
no life for life.
The curtain was not torn
by catastrophe or ire;
but that we –
in our darkest days,
our deepest pain,
can know
that our Creator knows
EXACTLY
how we feel.
