A beautiful vessel

     Morning sun, morning shadow, morning smells wash over me as I sit, my window open just a little to welcome the fresh air. The sunshine is warm on my face, my arms. My hands are cradling my mug of coffee. The coffee is just right, lighter than Dad's, darker than Mom's. This mug has a character-and a name. It is my Megan Thompson mug. Its warm hardness is silk smooth to the touch. It is a gentle, healing presence in my stiff, sore hands, battered and tired from training and practicing to make objects like the one I hold.  They are weak and unskilled, but the mug I hold is a goal to strive for, an end to which I can fix my eyes.

     The WR-12 glaze over porcelain looks like wood right now, with a grain and places where it collected darker to form knots. Over it, with the sunlight highlighting its vivid color, is Georgia Red-like a surprise of blues and greens. Georgia Red runs-on this mug it pools at the foot in a labyrinth of colors. The depth and complexity of the swirling layers of color-blue, brown, black, green-is beyond me. The mystery of clay,of glaze, and a great fire, thousands of degrees hot, has produced this mystery of beauty that I am able to use every day. What a beautiful life, that and object of so much beauty can be used for such a mundane thing. I think that somehow this vessel transforms its duty into something more meaningful, as hands, morning-tired, cradle it in the beginning light of a new day.

 Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work

 2Timothy 2:20-21