Recycled

Pieces of broken clay pottery

I've always loved pottery and the uniqueness of each handmade piece. Every trip we make to the North Georgia mountains, I beg my husband to stop at little pottery shops so I can scour the shelves for something special to add to my collection. There's one place in particular that I love to go, the Mark of the Potter, just above Helen, Georgia. In that little shop, there's always a potter's wheel set up in the middle of an upstairs room and if you're lucky, you'll catch the potter just as he or she takes a large lump of wet clay and throws it onto the spinning wheel. I could stand there for hours watching as the potter shapes and molds the clay into something special. As I watch, I always wish I'd taken pottery lessons.

I don't know why pottery captures my heart so, but it does. Maybe the scene from "Ghost" with Demi Moore and Patrick Swazye has something to do with it. In the movie, Demi Moore is an artist who uses pottery as one of her favorite mediums. There's a romantic scene at the potter's wheel where Demi is working on a piece of clay and Patrick, her live in boyfriend, sneaks up behind her and sits with her at the wheel. He places his hands over hers as they guide the clay into shape. Inevitably, Patrick causes the clay form to come off center and it begins to wobble. That's no big problem for a potter though. It's easy enough to just collapse the piece and start again.

As I thought about pottery this morning, I remembered some information an old family friend shared with me as a teen when I was taking a hand throwing class in pottery. Although I would rather have learned to use the potter's wheel, I was thankful to just be learning about pottery in general. Ann Nunemacher, was a dear friend of my mother's and she had agreed to teach a hand throwing class during one summer at a Girl Scout camp. Since I've always been interested in any and every sort of craft you could imagine, I was ecstatic to find out she was going to teach. Ann's trade was graphic design, but she was skilled and knowledgeable in many different art forms. I was thankful she was willing to impart knowledge to a group of giddy school girls.

In our first class, Ann taught us all about the different types of clay. She taught us that the clay contained air bubbles and if a piece of art was made without breaking those bubbles by hand before firing or curing the clay, the piece would become weak and break. In order to break the bubbles, the clay had to be repeatedly thrown against a hard surface. This is how the name for the class was obtained..."hand throwing." It wasn't easy to work with the clay. It was very hard and unpliable. Water had to be added in small amounts at a time and it had to be gently worked into the clay to render it workable. We learned to master the clay by adding just the right amount of water to make it soft enough to work, but not so wet that it wouldn't hold together well. When we had the clay at the perfect consistency, Ann taught us how to use potter's tools to shape and cut designs into the wet clay. We were allowed to be as creative as we dared and if we needed help or guidance, Ann was right there. Since we had no kiln at our Girl Scout camp, our clay pieces had to be air dried and cured. It would take many days in the hot Georgia sun for the pieces to be completely dry.

Some of the girls became impatient in waiting for their art to dry. They would pick up the piece, not heeding Ann's warning, and then shudder in disappointment as their piece fell apart. Instead of sweeping the pieces up and throwing them into the trash, Ann explained that the broken pieces of clay could be crushed and added to the new, wet clay forming an even stronger clay for the next throwing. The ground up, broken pieces were called "grog." The cool, wet clay was called "slump." It amazed me how the broken, normally discarded pieces could enhance the workable clay making it stronger. This concept caused me to think about my life as it is now.

God has allowed me to be broken many times in my life. Just like the clay, He's taken my broken pieces and used them to make me stronger. He has allowed me to be crushed and shattered but not for my own purposes. He's allowed it for His purposes. During my times of brokenness, I have experienced not only a weakened spirit, but a weakened body. Just like a potter's clay vessel, spinning off center on a potter's wheel, what I thought I was intended to be wasn't what I was at all. My image of myself didn't always line up with God's image and more often than not, He would cave in the sides of my wet clay and start all over again...remolding, reshaping, reforming. At each trial and at each instance of suffering, He took the broken pieces and added them back into the "slump," the moldable me, making me stronger not only in my faith, but also in my spirit.

There have been many times when my body was broken. I've suffered many physical ailments, surgeries, and broken bones. There are times when my brokenness hasn't been visible to the human eye...the times when my heart was crushed through disappointments or unmet expectations. In each instance, God has done a restorative work. He's taken the broken pieces of my life and fit them together again making an even stronger, more usable vessel.

I still have "learn wheel throwing" on my bucket list and one day, I know I'll learn that skill and cross it off the list. Until then, I'll keep watching God as He takes the strong, firm, dried pieces of my brokenness and adds them to the soft, weak parts of my life. That process gives me new strength and makes me even more usable for His glory.

Trials and brokenness are never easy, but who am I to tell the Master Potter what I think! I'm so thankful I was able to take Ann's class and learn all about clay and pottery. I'm even more thankful that God has used that knowledge to teach me more about His way of using, molding, and re-sculpting my life from shards of brokenness into a vessel of beauty.

©bonnie annis all rights reserved

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words." So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. (Jeremiah 18:1-4 RSV)

But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.Isaiah 64:8

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?Isaiah 29:16

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? Romans 9:21