POINTS:

To Bless The Space Between Us: (John O- Donohue, A Book of Blessings)

When we arrive on earth, we are provided with no map for our life journey. Only gradually, as our identity forms and we get an inkling of who we are, do possibilities begin to emerge that call us.

The shape of each soul is different. No one else feels your life the way you do. No one else sees or hears the world as you do. The creation of the individual is a divine masterpiece. We were dreamed for a long time before we were born. Our souls, minds, and hearts fashioned in the divine imagination.

To be yourself, you have to learn how to become who you were dreamed to be. Each person has a unique destiny. To be born is to be chosen. There is something special that each of us has to do in the world. If someone else could do it, they would be here and not us. At the heart of each destiny is hidden a unique life calling.

It is such a relief and joy to find the calling that expresses and incarnates your spirit.

Vessels are Hallow

Wedged and thrown, the ball of clay

spins, plays in liquid hands.

Mastery of thumbs and fingers

persuade perfect balance, symmetry,

a rearrangement of raw earth

rising against resistant forces,

forming a hollow the clay anticipates, desires.

Its character awaits this test, this moment,

every moment.

The potter senses through clay-skin and

cracked and muscled hands, through

terracotta under fingernails,

a thrilling, urgent shaping,

an accelerating wheel, a dizzy race.

But she dreams:

molten clay

explosions in the kiln

sentinels on pedestals

warnings

and finally, a settled fearless voice

heard beneath it all.

Daybreak verge,

she bypasses the wheel,

stands before studio shelves,

selects a crazed, wide-mouthed raku pot;

an ornament, hand-built, fired once.

She smiles

at each face in turn,

listens to each line and incline speak.

She prepares a generous glaze,

Patient green in its hollow.

A second firing, risking, cooling.

Slowly she runs her finger-tips

over the rough and tepid surface,

raises the pot to the light,

examines its interior for cracks, flaws.

She smells the pot,

takes breath from it hollow.

She speaks into it

and from it –

an ornament no more,

a ready vessel.