And so it begins

December 21, 2014 - It always takes awhile to get a studio in working order when starting from scratch. That was the one goal for this weekend. Get my space open, make my clay, and put get it running. Mission accomplished. Everything is set and there are 15 cups in varying states of being finished sitting on the shelves. 

And so it begins. 

I'm conducting research, in a way, this winter. I have a form in my mind, a curve, a line that I want. I need to learn how to throw it. How much clay to use, how much to leave to trim, how to make it right every single time. How to carry the same line across every form I want to throw. 

I love how quiet it is here in the winter. I have Thistle and Shamrock radio playing compliments of NPR online, and I think it is a winner for studio tunes. The soothing voice of Fiona Ritchie, the host, only helps the concentration. Also it makes me think of home. It is December-so close to Christmas after all. This is Dad's show, and where do you think the littlest Peden got her name? Two days till I go home!

But, for now it is good to be here, and to have my hands dirty again.

Breathing Home

Riding to work today, on the porch this evening, out and about last night this air has been affecting me. It's July in Tennessee for goodness sakes, no one knows what to think of weather that hovers between 60 and 75 degrees. I'm thinking a lot of things. I'm thinking of wholeness and home. I'm thinking of family. I'm thinking I could do anything on a day like this one.

It's funny how up until days like today if you were to ask me where "home" is I'd answer as usual...wherever my family is. But with my lungs full of clean, cool-yes, actually cool-air wave after wave of just beyond tangible memories and feelings and associations wash over me. I smell the north, that cleanness that I associate with the summers of my childhood- and maybe that actually is home. Open the windows and mix that air with the inside of a house and I smell every Saturday of early fall, after all the chores are done and when you sit in the clean house before the bustle of dinner time. Let that air blow and wash my skin as I drive and I feel the energy that has been sapped by summer heat filling all of me.

What a gift, a few days of breathing memories and wholeness! God is beyond good to me.

a coffee ceremony

I woke up this morning conscious. I watched the morning sunlight create patterns on the kitchen wall when it shone through the water I was pouring into the coffee pot. I was conscious this morning of the ritual I was taking part in. The thump, thump as I knock the old filter into the trash. I replace it with a fresh one, noticing the pleated ripples as I push them flush with the filter wall and the way that the white is gold with sunlight. The smell of freshly ground coffee fills the room as I scoop once, twice. I make coffee for just one here. As it brews, to the music of dripping and gurgling, I set out a mug. This morning it is one of my own, woodfired and steeped in memories of last summer. The final gurgling, louder than before, announces that the coffee is done brewing and in the morning stillness I take the pot and pour the liquid, glowing rich and exotic brown, into my mug. There is one spoon that is used for the morning coffee ceremony. Much like the Tea Master's bamboo whisk, the silver spoon, given to me by my mom is the only one I search for among the silverware. Partly because it is perfect for measuring the right amount of sugar for my coffee. I listen to the crystals make contact with the hot liquid and watch them disappear beneath the dark surface. Mostly, though, I use it because it is tradition. We use those spoons at home for our regular coffee ceremony, that event that creates pause in our day. My favorite part of this ritual is the cream. If you don't stir right off you can watch it turn and swirl creating the first art of the day. But it is not about the art this time, thank God. I don't have to make this piece. I only have to wake up conscious.

to all who labor

It is good to become conscious to the sound of rainfall. It is good to become conscious and be completely at rest. My body was heavy with the weight of the sleep I needed so badly, but through the fog as I woke, I welcomed to sounds telling me I was conscious-alive.

Awake and nothing pressing me. Awake and nothing waiting to be done. Just rest. And rainfall.

God created rest for us. He worked for six days on his masterwork-on his creation-and on the seventh day he rested. I doubt he was weary from his work-He's God! But I think he rested because he knew it was, like all his creation, good. He knew that we, unlike him, would toil and strive and weary ourselves with work and worry and need rest, so as a gift of love he gave it to us. And then, because his love is infinite and beyond our understanding, he created rest to the sound of rainfall, rest in the warmth of sunshine, rest in the shade of a rustling tree.

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

a gift for you

One gift of pure love that God has given us is warmth. Think about it. Think about the sun on your face, the heat of a fire on a chilled night, stepping into a heated house on a icy day, taking a hot shower. What kind of a love He must have for us to cause him to give us such a gift! But he didn't stop there. He gave us the warmth of the sun on a beautiful day like today, and then as the sun begins to set and the chill begins to fall again I am able to feel the radiation of all the day's warmth, an echo and a replay, coming from the bricks outside the studio as I sit leaning up against them. This warmth is a gift of the purest, greatest love, solely for the joy of humans, I believe. It relaxes the muscles in my tired back, and I am able to feel the tension of a long day melt away. He gives good gifts, doesn't he?

Holding on

Great is Thy Faithfulness! Great is Thy Faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see.

Morning by morning. Sometimes this means greeting the sun at daybreak, sometimes it means working through the night to a new day, but there is great joy in finding each morning that no matter how you've come to it His mercies are new.

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

This is my prayer for this new day, my prayer for every new day. I honestly cannot make it through without His gift of strength each day and hope to carry me to the next. I feel like recently my body has been at war with me, screaming constantly in the background,

Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Give up. Go to bed! Sleep!

I push its demands aside once more, and then again, to do one more thing, to study one more thing, to finish something well. But then if I stop moving, if I sit and rest, the force of the demand washes over me again. It is not as if I haven't been sleeping-I have, as much as can be expected in my current circumstances-it is just that I am in a place where weariness is a constant companion. I praise God for songs like this that speak truth and give me something to hold to until this time passes.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee. All I have needed Thy hand has provided, Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

In the Twilight

There is a twilight between sleep and wakefulness, a grey dawn where the lingering remains of dreams reside. If you catch hold of the thoughts that begin to stir and flit about like the early rising sparrow that flicks its wings and skips about, the first movement on a crisp fall morning, if, when you find yourself in this twilight world, you manage to coax the thoughts that rise like wisps of fog that are slowly rising and melting away to come to rest in your hand, you are sometimes privileged to catch a glimpse of the deepest part of your mind. The ideas that you manage to catch hold of are some of the most real, sincere and profound ideas that you will ever encounter.

As an artist it does no good to live in a stupor, crashing into the realm of sleep when exhaustion overcomes, then blundering out of it when the night is over, too muddied and disgruntled at daylight to live well in this brief moment of life. It is for the artist to live one the edge, living completely and abundantly, even in the twilight between the black and the light of a new morning.

thoughts of spring

I think I'm having my first taste of spring. Winter has been long, and I feel like I have been suffering from an involuntary hibernation when it comes to my creativity and to having eyes to take in the world around me. It has been too long that I have had to push through the thickness in my brain to have any sort of thoughts, too long that I have pulled out a blank page only to stare at it and walk away leaving it still blank, too long since I have had any words to write. It is funny that this spring is coming now, in the coldest month of the winter, but somehow I don't care that the wind is biting and that my head aches as I walk through the cold, because at last I am alive again. 

I've been thinking about a table, set for a meal, but someone is missing. One place setting is broken. I've been thinking about a second table that is whole. Whole. That word is a healing word. Healing the broken, filling the empty. Complete. Finished. I've been thinking about a quilt. It is pieces being put together into a whole. Again, that word. I've been thinking about building, about restoration. We're supposed to be doing that, you know. Restoration is our calling. I once heard that our task is to restore, piece by piece, the Shalom-Peace that once was over our world, the peace that was torn and broken when man fell, all for the return of our King. So I've been thinking about a table, and a meal of fellowship, a communion of saints and a wedding feast. And I have been thinking about being whole.

These hands

I look down at my hands and feel out of place. They aren't big or ugly, they're just uncomfortable in this unfamiliar setting. My hands, confident at work, are strong. I know, I have seen them guide errant clay to center. They are sensitive too. It is hard to describe what a wall of a pot feels like when it is too thin and about to collapse, or thick and holding extra weight, but my hands know. Put a pen in them and images appear in the margins of my notes, faces staring, forms lining the edges. Give them something to hold and they will hold it. Give them something to clean, they'll clean it. They will hold a child's hand, brush a sister's hair, knead and shape dough into loaves of bread. But if you lay them, idle, next to a dress of satin and put a thin silver bracelet around my wrist they feel uncomfortable and useless. Take off the apron and work boots and they feel too large and awkward. The hands that are so capable in one setting fidget, unsure in this setting, just waiting to be released from the fine trappings and games of elegance. All they want is to be let go to wash a dish or something. But something, please!