Greetings!  

Some years ago I signed up for an evening pottery class. I had to drive twelve miles one way to get there in the dead of winter...February, if I remember. I gave the class to myself as a birthday present. But after a day of work at the mental health clinic I'd come home exhausted, fix dinner and then have to talk myself into actually going to that class. Who did I think I was trying to create something from mud? Maybe my time could be better spent. Being a new step-parent of a teenager had its challenges and frankly, sleep allured...

But I was reminded of author and artist Mary Anne Radmacher who notes that the most important promises are the ones we make to ourselves. I'd made that commitment, spent my money. I would go.

I dragged myself into the Redmond High School arts room, put my purse on the floor, sloughed off my coat - this was Central Oregon winter - and plopped at the round wheel stained with years of other students' clay. The instructor (Mary Belvins, artistic and wise) plopped that hunk of clay on the wheel in front of me. I'd dip my hands in water and step on the pedal that turned the wheel.  Wet hands on orange clay, slippery as an otter sliding on mud. The thumpa-thumpa rhythm was like a calming heart beat.  Before I knew it, I was lost. Lost to the irritations of the day. Lost to the ache of my feet, the worry about the future, the condition of the road on my way home. None of these thoughts entered my pottery-occluded brain.

The pottery wheel required presence. I had to keep my mind (and the clay) on the center for that is the key to creating something from clay: the clay must be centered on the wheel to avoid lopsided lumps.  Being centered was what it was all about.  Out of that evening came respite: the act of creation gave me calm from weary days and inspiration for the days ahead. Being centered made the creation possible.

My creations were primitive at best. A small bowl and cup I gave to my godson (who just had a child himself this past Christmas!).  I think I gave my sister a vase. The items weren't beautiful but they were made with love and I felt a kind of kinship with people of the past who worked with clay.

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote: "Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on wheels." The prophet wasn't speaking metaphorically at that moment I don't think but his narration of heading to the potter's house and beholding a creation reminded me of how difficult it was at times to get myself convinced that I should go "down to the potter's house."  The creation most beholding had nothing to do with my primitive art but with that centering of the soul that occurred because of it. But first I had to pull in past experiences to remind myself that once I arrived I'd be glad I went. And I always was. But it was a path in life I'd often repeat,  of how easily I could discount the commitments made to myself, how cavalier I could be about my promises to me even though once I committed to someone else I'd crawl over glass to be faithful to my word. I wasn't so faithful to my own lump of clay.

These past four months have been reminders of that time...when I'm so tired that I don't really want to drive the seven miles to my caregiver support group. I don't really want to make that appointment to get my hair cut even though I know once I do that I'll feel better!  I feel too tired to take the dogs to the dog park even though when I do their jumps and sniffs and running always make me laugh and glad I'm there with them. Making time for ourselves is often difficult and the women I write about I find often shared that trait, of being able to give to family and friends but often short-changing themselves in the process.

So in the month of "love" that February has come to be, in the time of Lent where we face our fears and disappointments I hope to remember the promises I've made to be more centered and I wish the same for you.  May you put fears and mistakes and baggage carried into the center of that wheel that goes round and round and discover as T.S. Elliot a "still place in a turning world." And may you see it as something to behold.

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The devotional, Promises of Hope for Difficult Times arrived! It has a soft-ish feel in the colors of spring but it also just became available as an e-book. A favorite scripture of mine is from Psalm 66:12 "You brought us to a place of abundance."  Those words reminded me of a Robert Frost poem "Two Look at Two." The poem is about a couple climbing a hill together. They reach the top and see the splendor of the view and the poet says, "'This is all,' they sighed. But there was more." He goes on to share what more they saw, heard, experienced.

In Promises, I wrote of that poem and the phrase: "'This is all,' they sighed. But there was more" I remembered especially a day when Jerry and I had gone to bed early on the ranch. Around 2:00 am the dogs began to bark and Jerry walked down the oak steps to see what the problem was. "You need to come down here," he called up to me snuggled warm in my February bed. "Really?"  Yes, really, he insisted. So I joined him on the deck that faced the river and gasped. Before us was a magenta night sky, a color I've never seen duplicated in my normal world. The Aurora Borealis filled the space above the river's breaks.  Through the deep pink were black streaks as though a broom had swept through the color here and there. Within each of the black strips danced stars. I'd never seen anything as beautiful. We had gone to bed believing "this is all...But there was more."

Now when I see the tree outside my window filled with tiny yellow-breasted birds or gather up the dogs from a fresh bath, all blow-dry and fluff I take the experience in and do not say, "This is all."  Instead I wonder what more God has in store.