I was 17 when my Mom decided I needed a hobby and should try oil painting. That was her first mistake. Her second one was giving me a box of paints, an easel and a palette for Christmas.

For starters, I was not a Mary Cassat wannabe. I had no yearning to express myself in greasy paints and smelly turpentine. I was a writer, already, and had been since the age of six.

But you can’t hang writing on a wall. Mostly, when you’re as bad as I was, you put it in a drawer and hope it will go away.

Today two of my masterworks are someplace in the basement. Once they’d graced the spare room of my parents’ home, where, I assume, only their guests were afflicted with them. One is a pot of flowers—and the miracle is that after many scrapings of old paint and fresh dollops of new, some of them actually resemble flowers.

The second is of a ship sailing on the high seas. It’s not bad, but there’s one small problem: The sails are billowing in one direction and the waves in the other. I never was one for details.

After I married, I dutifully kept ruining perfectly good canvasses, but when my babies got old enough to think it was great fun to squeeze yellow ochre onto the sofa—and onto each other—I finally put my paints away for the last time. Not however, with regret. I knew the darned flowers were the best I’d ever do, and, as I gently explained to Mom, I wanted to quit while I was behind.

Still, it seemed to me that people who create are finishing the work that God started in this world, and that has to be a wonderful thing. It was my fate to be their artistically challenged but unstinting admirer.

Then one day I learned that the folks at the Washington Theological Union, where was studying, believed that art enhances ministry and ministry enhances art—and so they offered free art lessons. All you needed was the will to try.

I’m not going to tell you that I took up the palette again and that Van Gogh should grow another ear I’m so good. No. What happened was that I met the school’s resident potter—a smiling young blond whose love of life and people made me feel instantly welcome in her studio and unafraid to make a fool of myself with clay.

The first day I watched while she worked with another student, a large mustachioed priest from Holland. I leaned in close to listen while the ever-patient Leslie taught him to wedge the clay to get the air bubbles out, cut it to test it, slap it together again, and throw it on the wheel.
And as I watched I prayed: “Let me really hear her words, let me truly see what her fingers are doing. Let me pay attention.”

That first day I threw two pots. I was hooked.

Soon I was looking for a used pottery wheel, reading books on pottery, pricing clay, watching pottery shows on PBS, and talking Shepherdstown potters Ren and Pam Parziale into allowing me to watch them work.

Since then I’ve been reflecting on why this messy way of expressing one’s inner self with the very earth on which we walk has become so important to me. This is what I think.

First of all, working with clay is primal. Getting one’s hands and arms and clothes and even one’s shoes splattered with wet, sticky gray stuff harks back to a time when the only way to have a pot for water or grain was to make it. If you were to ask a Pueblo Indian potter, “Why did you become an artist?” she might look at you quizzically and say, “I am not an artist; I am a potter. And I do it because I must.”

So, is pottery a thing that cooperates with the Creator just as painting and music, sculpture and dance—and yes, writing—do?

Watch.

The potter spins her wheel and shapes the wet clay as it spins. Suddenly, where the potter has pressed too hard, there’s a hole in the side of the pot. Does she throw it out? The prophet Jeremiah says, “Whenever a piece of clay turns out imperfect, the potter takes the clay and turns it into something else.”

Nothing in the pottery studio is ever wasted. Everything is used again, just as the Master Potter does with us. Did you make a mistake last week? Lose your temper? Grab a box of paper clips from the office? Gaze with lust upon someone not your mate? Turn back to the Potter and trust. He will make something beautiful of you.

We can cooperate in the work, too. We can affirm someone. Forgive someone. Love someone. Sometimes we are the potter and sometimes the pot. An as the quote in this month’s column title indicates, maybe we’ve achieved perfect union when we can’t tell the difference.

Donna loves to hear from her readers. You can reach her at WriteforPub@aol.com