I have a trailblazer friend. She is extremely talented and, since I’ve known her, she has tried her hand at many arts. And yet, finding your passion is not about being talented but about being brave, open and perseverent. And there are seasons we go through.
She says she loves beautiful things and I believe she sees beauty all around her, especially in people. The way she expresses her adoration for God, she delights in His beauty and He reflects His beauty in her.
Yesterday she shared with us her passion for clay. Yet again, an expression of God as a Potter and us, the soft clay in his hands, worked, exposed to the elements, kneaded and smacked, modeled and dried, and then baked in extreme temperature.
As a teen I wrote a poem about clay pots, and how the cracked ones let out the light and the big sturdy ones carry the wine, or age the yogurt.
I’ve seen short stories of Marta as @Terra.Aeterna. She has highly polished her art. Excellence and beauty define her. The soft linen colors and calm gray, the dry soft flowers, the white linen… she is a vision. But I didn’t fully grasp through those videos the magic of her work. She was mesmerizing yesterday, and contrary to what the videos express, she shines the light on the Potter with such grace and humility and joy. She speaks the gospel through her art.
She is a vision, and she is inspiring.
Jeremiah At the Potter’s House
18 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.
Isaiah 64:8
Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
As she talks about the suffering that the oven might symbolize, the high temperature that might crack us open if we didn’t embrace the previous steps of being kneaded, of being formed well and being patiently dried before going through the test of fire, I realize that suffering can be translated as passion. Think The Passion of the Christ. The suffering of Christ.
We think passion is living intensely, satisfied, fulfilled, but passion is also pain, sacrifice, fire…
“Live passionately” was and is our invitation. We may feel our lives are too dull or too busy to live passionately.
All of us are somewhere in the process. We may be the not yet sifted clay, mixed with all the impurities. We may have been chosen but left out to freeze. We may be already chosen and cleaned but currently kneaded punch after punch, and that makes no sense. We may be formed but left out to dry and we wait and wait and the wait seems endless. And when we finally arrive at the glazing point, smoothed and dressed and beautifully colored, we get our final test of passion, at absurd temperatures.
As the potter opens the oven, may we see the light, transformed, strong, serene, bright with elegance and color. And may we know that even that is not the end. May we rest in the Potter’s hand. May He delight in us always.