"if a picture paints a thousand words..."

"If a picture paints 

a thousand words, 

then why can't I paint you?

the words will never show,

the you i've come to know..." 

I remember the cover to this "Best of Bread" album, as if it were the face of a loved one.  I played it over and over again.  David Gates' beautiful vocals on "If," were filled with the kind of melancholy I was feeling that year. 

I was thinking about this song, recently, after my niece took a photograph of me.  

We were at a camp social and she had just received a new instamatic camera.  She quietly snapped a photo, waited for it to come out of the slot and then walked over and placed it in my shirt pocket for processing, and said, "I took a photo of you while you weren't looking."  I was in the middle of a conversation, and completely forgot about it until later that night. 

I have never liked having my photo taken.  It's hard to explain, but every photo I have ever seen of myself feels like a picture of someone I don't know.  Even photos of me, doing what I love most, feel like I am looking at someone else - a familiar face that I don't feel connected to. 

So it was strangely beautiful - when remembered my niece's photo in the pocket of my shirt - to find the perfect portrait of "the me" that I have come to know.  It wasn't a face, or a form -- it was a color.  

The entire image was a shade of blue.  A deep, achingly beautiful shade of blue.  And I felt it.  I felt so connected to that photo that I gasped, and then I cried - just a bit.  This little instagram photograph captured how I feel about myself.  It felt accurate and perceptive. It felt as if my niece had bored into my heart and discovered something hidden.  

And for the past few weeks, it has had me thinking about identity, perception, and image.  I have long-resisted identifying with a face in the mirror, the shape that I put clothing on, or the changing features that look back at me from my driver's license -- or any profile photo on Facebook or Instagram.  

Perhaps some of us aren't capable of simply being outlined by a layer of skin punctuated with features - eyes, nose, shoulders, etc.  What if we are not "that," -- whatever that is.  And what if, instead, I am best identified as a color, and you are a sound that makes birds sing, and someone else is the scent of cedar or cinnamon -- or both.  

Just as we often think that answered prayer will come in the form of words -- and so we let the deep feelings that have no words, or the sounds that cannot be described, pass through us without noting their message, while we wait for the illusive English text to float across the mental page.  In the same way, what if our faces and body shapes and hair color, are not necessarily the way we experience ourselves as God's image and likeness - most clearly.  What if it's a shade of blue, or a minor chord, or the taste of grapefruit, or the touch of a breeze, or the silence of a prayer...

In her compilation, Miscellaneous Writings 1883 - 1896, Mary Baker Eddy refers to a "fourth dimension "when she writes:  

"Christian Science translates Mind, God, to mortals.  It is the infinite calculus defining the line, plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit. It absolutely refutes the amalgamation, transmigration, absorption, or annihilation of individuality."  

and elsewhere she states: 

"Comeliness and grace are independent of matter.  Being possesses its qualities before they are perceived humanly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color." 

What if our sense of who we are, and how we are defined to one another, that has been limited by a collectively agreed upon expectation that we are three dimensional humans form made up of lines, shapes, and features.  Or that this is the only way of experiencing and communicating our identities - our truth and beauty.  

What if deepening our color, or perfecting the pitch of our voice, or enriching the scent that we leave upon everything we touch, were as important to being known, as the cut of our hair, or the shape of our eyes, or the tilt of our head?

These are the questions I am in tonight.  In the meantime, I am so grateful that my niece was able to capture what no photographer has ever been able to do -- a photo of "the me I've come to know."  A perfect shade of blue.

Disclaimer:  if this post seems a bit abstract or out in left field -- i completely understand.  

offered with Love, 

Cate 

  

"bend me, shape me..."

"bend me
shape me,
anyway You want me,
long as You love me,
it's alright..."

The chorus from The American Breed's 1968 hit, "Bend Me, Shape Me,"   was what came to me this morning, as I thought about my return last night to the warm cocoon of the pottery studio.

I had already spent an hour at the studio, before dinner and church -- letting a couple of vessels find their form in my hands. So, there really wasn't a reason to return. But on my way home from church -- through the dark, cold, streets of our empty mid-winter mountain town -- I felt drawn to that space again.

It was exactly where I needed to be. There is a peace there, one that is holy for me. The kiln was running, the room was warm, the steam flowing through the hot water pipes gave a soft hum to the room. And there is a lovely order for me in that space. I know which tools to collect and place on the workbench. My movements feel choreographed as I turn on the vacuum and extruder - to gather clay from the pug mill. I lay mats on the slab roller. I am ready.

It is not like any other part of my life. I have no planned outcome. I am not lining up tools to cook a meal - that I have imagined, or books to study from. I am waiting, in a quiet readiness. I am completely free of self-design. I really do let the clay speak to me about how it should drape, fall, curve, sit in my hand.

Yesterday was full and demanding. Church was inspiring and emotional for me. From the opening notes of the prelude, through the scriptural selections, hymns, prayer, and testimonies -- I felt drained of self. I didn't have a stitch of "me" left to navigate a conversation or interaction. It wasn't a bad feeling. It was just a feeling.  A feeling of being so fully emptied, that "Kate" had little left to give at that moment.

I was deeply grateful for a friend who didn't need words. He just put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. It was perfect. As I drove away from church, I asked myself, "what do you need right now?" Well, I knew that I probably needed to make sure that the bowls I'd worked on earlier that day, had stable bottoms that wouldn't wobble after they were fired. So, since that was all I knew was needed at that moment, I headed to the studio -- assuming I would be in and out in less than five minutes.

But from the moment I arrived, the thought of holding a waiting lump of clay in my hands -- felt like a moment of sanctuary offering itself up -- like a chalice during communion. I didn't even take off my coat. I just began gathering the tools of my sacrament. My vestments were an old clay, and glaze, splattered flannel shirt.  There is something so beautiful in this simple ritual. It all leads to that exact moment when I am waiting -- letting my fingers smooth, and mold, and shape the clay into what it is asking to become.

The prayers that flow in that space are as pure, and free of self, as any I have ever known. They are a sacrament: "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."

My hands cease to be "my hands" and are, as St. Francis prayed, "an instrument of Thy peace." These are moments so holy that by the time I am finished, I am completely surprised that "time" has even passed.

Sometimes a friend shares this space. Our time together is as balanced as a church service, or the shared sacrament of communion - kneeling, praying, silence, movement, rising, singing, praying -- together. We work side-by-side. We let the quiet be as deep as the conversation. I am always moved by these times of fellowship, while serving the beauty of Soul with our hearts and our hands.

Last night I was particularly moved by how that space of sanctuary was calling me into shape. It wasn't just that I was listening for the shape of the vessel forming in my hands, but I was being shaped by the clay itself. There was a moment when the surface of the clay felt dry and intractable. Rather than becoming frustrated, I stopped and asked what I needed to be. God clearly said, "softer." So my hands and my heart softened their touch, on the clay and in my prayers.

The vessel that birthed itself was as lovely in my hands as any I have ever held. The prayer that formed in my heart was as full of gentle self-compassion, and impartial tenderness for humanity, as any I have every "heard."

We are not of this world. But we are in it. We navigate streets of asphalt. We hold hands that are soft with youth, and burled by experience. We sit at tables that have been crafted in hearts, before they are carved in wood.

I hope you will let your love for God lead you to a deeper love for all that you see, hear and feel beneath your fingertips -- whether it is the soft hair of an infant, or the clear lines of a sculpted stone. I hope that the things you love -- what your hands have handled of the word of God -- lead you deeper into the kingdom of heaven -- where all things are His. There is, in fact, no matter. All is spiritual. For, "all is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation."  God, truly is, All-in-all.

offered with Love,

Kate