Practice

Normandy is a ceramic artist and she shares her love and insight found in working with clay. She delights in the spiritual discipline of committing to the task in her hands. She offers some photos as proof.

Clay is such a responsive material. Each choice and touch is in some way evident in the finished vessel, from its infancy as a mound of wet clay in my hand, to the finished vessel: glazed, fired, and functioning in the world. The process of making ceramic vessels by hand is rich in metaphors for ourselves and spiritual lives. Even the words potters use to describe a pot relates to our bodies: lip, foot, handle. The vessels of our lives are filled with our desires, relationships and beliefs as surely as the mug in my hand is filled with coffee. With all things, form follows function.

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Even as We are One

Isaac tells of making friends on an airplane and traveling in China and East-Africa. He questions some General Church assumptions about who is actually the heart and lungs of the Lord's church on earth. In the same vein, he wonders whether we are confused in making assumptions about who is in or out of the New Church. These types of questions are addressed further in the context of relationships by Garrett Smith and Meryl Mochado.

Last week I walked our family dog up Guinea Road and visited some dear old friends nestled in their vineyard spread on a hill not too far from my family's new home. I've been away in China and Africa for some time and it was gift of sweet mercy to near their home and enter the door into their smiles and share the Lord's love together. I was again awed by the peaceful view of the mountains from their spacious windows, mountains I knew, mountains I was used to seeing from a different angle. There was the Pinnacle, which I hiked as a boy and a young man, and another mountain, the Sharp, on whose face sat the beloved cabin my family called home.

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