Pottery

​Last weekend my parents came down to visit, have lunch, and celebrate 16 years of remission with me and my spouse. During the visit, my mom pulled out a pottery project I made in first or second grade–a mug–kind of. She was giving it back to me after years in her loving care, as my nephew (her grandson) had begun playing with it and filling it up with water–or at least that was the excuse she gave me for returning this gift I had given her so many years ago.

I can’t say that I truly blame her. I mean, as far as mugs go, this one had some pretty fatal flaws–chief among them being it wasn’t sealed in a way that made it safe to actually drink from it. But there was a lot more wrong than right with the mug.

The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, so let me paint a picture for you: The mug was made of a reddish clay that had been wrapped around an old aluminum can that we had been instructed to bring to art class. The lines from the aluminum can are actually visible when looking inside the mug. At the bottom is a circular piece of clay that had been joined to the top part of the mug through pinching and smearing the pieces together. I never really got this part right, so the mug sits at an angle. The top rim of the mug is irregular in shape, thickness, and constitution, while the handle, arguably the best part of the mug, gives testimony to what so often comes of one’s best laid plans. 

The mug is painted with various colors of glazes that–it’s clear–turned out to be something other than what I was going for after being fired in the kiln. Across the face of the mug, the following message is engraved in the clay:  MMOM! Evidently I didn’t think my mom would notice the extra “M” that I didn’t bother trying to smooth out in the clay, and, evidently, the exclamation point gave nod to my apparent desire for her heart to be strangely warmed every time she looked at the engraved message and imagined the sound of my voice yelling for her. 

The pottery mug is as imperfect as my love for my mother. It has voids where I wish voids were not. It leans away when I wish it would sit plumb. It has lines and divots and mistakes–permanently etched in the contours of its body–signs of being shaped and formed by immature hands. 

And yet, even with its imperfections, and even though it can’t hold liquid at all, that mug is still a vessel. It still carries evidence of my desire to tangibly show love to the one who birthed me. It still carries evidence of the hard truth that desire only gets a person so far. It still carries evidence of the budding relationship between a girl and her Mom (or MMOM!), and the ways in which love gives of itself imperfectly, as well as the ways in which love receives just as imperfectly. It is a vessel filled with good intention, poor execution, and the knowledge that love is always big enough to hold more than one thing at the same time. That mug is a vessel…and so are we. 

Sometimes, though, I think we’re vessels who judge ourselves too harshly–focused only on what we can’t hold or what we aren’t made to do, rather than what we can and what we are. I think we often look at our own lines, divots, and mistakes as permanent flaws, instead of hallmarks of our journeys to becoming. I think we look at the love we have received that wasn’t what we needed or wanted or how we needed or wanted, and we discount the desire of the one who extended that imperfect love to us. 

We are vessels, living testimonies that love is, in fact, big enough to hold more than one thing at the same time, and that we needn’t reduce ourselves, others, the world, or God to either/or, black/white, right/wrong, binaried thinking. We can find solace in a moment AND hope for something better than what the current moment holds. We can hold onto a beautiful memory AND live fully in the present where future memories are made. We can receive the love that has been extended to us AND name that, at times, that same love was insufficient. 

We are vessels–living, breathing, complex, and beautiful vessels that, although imperfect in our execution at times, are perfectly equipped to live and love here and now. We may not hold what everyone always needs us to hold or what we think we should be able to hold, but always we carry within us evidence of the One who first held us, whose fingerprints are all over us, whose love is found in the depths of each void, every perceived imperfection, and every mistake we’ve ever made. And perhaps that’s plenty for one vessel to hold.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa 

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