Courtesy photo
BY FATHER THEOPHAN MACKEY
My first beginning throwing class at the Los Alamos Arts Council/Fuller Lodge has finished. I had a great time helping the students work through the mechanics of making their first pottery on the potter’s wheel, centering, trimming, and pulling handles. I hope they feel the same way.
A person I taught before called me an “earthbender”. I’ll take that. We’re making earthbenders!
What I have found is that each person needs a different approach in learning. Some need diagrams, some need verbal instruction, and some just won’t get it until they are up to their elbows in clay slip, sweating and cursing under their breath.
I describe the exertion needed to center the clay as, “the kind of push you use to move a car, not shove a friend into the pool.” It needs to be centered low in the body, and smooth and consistent and strong. Sometimes, when people are having trouble, I have them push against my fist as if it were the ball of clay they were trying to center. To a one, they are not pushing hard enough or consistently enough.
It is the same with us. When we want something, a quick or abrupt change, a crash diet or drastic haircut or impulse purchase, is the easiest thing to do. And it may scratch the itch we have for something different. As with most things, however, it likely will not stick. The good things in life come through struggle. Meaning comes through struggle. Purpose comes through striving for something.
But if we are to make a real change, it must be consistent and strong. Initiating the hard conversations, setting proper and strong boundaries, building new habits and changing our perspective. These are the things that will make things better, even if they are painful in their institution.
I was asked yesterday if, as a priest, I believed in luck. The best I could do was the quote by Samuel Goldwyn, classic movie producer, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Sometimes things just work out and we get lucky, but you can’t count on it.
A Slavic quote comes to mind as well. “Pray to God, but keep rowing.” Or this one from my youth, “The one who asks God to move a mountain should be ready to pick up a shovel.”
Consistency, even if it is small, adds up to real progress over time.
Centering two pounds of clay on the wheel has become second nature for me. I can literally do it with my eyes closed, sometimes it’s even easier that way. But that is thirty years of practice (on and off) and sweating and cursing under my breath.
Watching people master something difficult is such a delightful experience. I love sharing it.