Creation (My Clay Woman)

I spent last week at Taize, in silence. The week contained a lot of unexpected things for me. For example, I expected some big revelation, about really anything at all, but it never came. [Rather, one sort of came, but then was later swept away by a giant wave of doubt, leaving me in the same place as ever, but this time a little, just barely, one breath, more at peace. This is how things often are? God knows what he's doing?]

One of the things I did not expect to learn about was creation. I would have expected to learn mostly about Jesus' time on earth: each day we were given a few "gospel situations" or other Scripture to meditate on. (One was from the Book of Wisdom! Guys, that's not even in my Bible...) I tried to play along, especially the first few days, but the last few days' "assigned" texts didn't speak to me at all, because we were supposed to dig into the emotion in them, and I didn't have any. So I admit: I cheated on my gospel situations with my regular Bible reading plan. I was doing this little by little since Tuesday. Don't tell Sister Dominique.

And let me tell you, my regular Bible reading plan was good to me. Words jumped off the page and danced in my eyes, elevating my heart rate and making me laugh. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters, even though there was no light by which this concept might have been made visual. Music from nowhere poured into my ears (okay, loosely based on that Moby song*) as I tried to conceptualize what was before all things. I read about God breathing the spirit of life into humans and I stopped reading for five minutes to stare at my hand and marvel at God's detail. And this is the back story of why I was so impressed:

At the beginning of the week Sister Dominique gave us some tips for how to structure (or not structure) our silent days. One of the resources available to us was this outdoor shack full of clay we could play with. She advised that we should just enjoy seeing the "empreintes, how do you say empreintes?" "marks? fingerprints?" that our fingers made in the clay. In her words, "...you had the pleasure of touching clay-- you don't have to make something who look like something."

But because I had five hours of free time to kill, and because I was inspired by clay creations left behind by past silent pilgrims,** I did want to "make something who look like something." I wanted to make a woman. She was going to be the best woman ever. Before I even began to create my woman, I began to be possessive of her, and fond of her. The lump of clay I chose to bring with me already had taken shape in my mind, I just needed to make a few tweaks and she would be perfect. I carried the lump with me to a moss-covered stone wall overlooking a beautiful stretch of farms and villages. I broke it into a few pieces to loosely ration out different body parts and got to work.

I soon learned that clay cracks like crazy on a hot sunny day. Even if you shield it from the sun with your own body. This would not do. Back to the shack. I returned to my spot with a red plastic bowl with a little water in it. Now creation was new. If I dipped a few fingers in water, suddenly the whole surface of the clay glided and flowed. This was easier, and funner. More satisfying. And unexpectedly, more emotional. I have heard so many times this idea that God is the potter and we are the clay.. for good reason, it's in the Bible.. and that we are marked with his very fingerprints. But never had I ever once considered this concept of what creating us does to God. That what we are made of gets all over his hands.

I spent over an hour on my woman. I didn't get that far. I was astonished how much work went into her. Also how many of the modifications I made for practical reasons also naturally made her look more realistic. Largely in the stomach/torso area. Also her one thigh I made. At one time I was running out of torso clay and I had to make her chest smaller. I thought apologetically, "Your creator loves you very much, but not enough to walk practically all the way back to the house for some boob clay." And, do you, reader, have any idea how much work goes into shaping a pair of breasts? It is WAY harder than I would have ever imagined. No matter what I did they looked terrible, and/or fake. I didn't know what else to try.

I know this sounds flippant, but I am serious when I tell you that this experience gave me more respect for God's handiwork. Not just breasts (I'm still being serious here) but all kinds of things that we have. When I was reading Genesis later and staring at my hands as I mentioned earlier, it was because how the heck would I have ever given my woman fingernails? Much less those tiny tiny little triangles on the skin of backs of hands. And even if I had made her technically perfect (to my specifications), no matter how well I did, I could never lean down and breathe the spirit of life into her like God did with Adam. How amazing is that! Gosh.

After my brush with creation, I felt sure that God is way more careful with creating us than I thought. I believe he purposely makes each human that has ever existed, but even if he had only made Adam and Eve and set them in motion, that would be enough to impress me. And God is never too lazy to go back for more clay if he wants to make you a certain way. And furthermore, if my personal attachment to that chunk of clay is any indicator at all, God loves you very deeply while he is creating you, and smiles to himself often about how great you are going to be, delights in it, gets lost in thinking about it.

Well, I ended up smashing my woman. I am just a fickle human creator, not God. She had a head, but no face or hair. She had one upper arm, one thigh, and a torso that was kickin' from the back but not so great from the front. I could not do her justice, and I knew it. Also the back of my neck was getting hot. I thought if I had time in the week I might revisit her, but I am glad now that I smushed her because it would be too sad for her to have dried into that pitiable condition forever.

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*Look up "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" by Moby and give it a listen. Please? You will not regret it.
**This is a metaphor.. don't picture the Puritans with the big buckles on their shoes and hats...

Boats at Sea

Usually we don't realize what's going on around us in a given moment. Only in hindsight can one see (and marvel at) all that was taking shape at a given time, and how it all worked together to bring about the present moment. We're thrown into situations and have to figure stuff out while it's already going on, and there's no pause button. [A friend said of this: it's like a boat at sea. You can never dock it on dry land to patch holes or whatever; you have to make all your repairs while still keeping yourself afloat.]

The whole process of growing up fits this pattern. To use a super simple example, we had bodies long before we knew what bodies were, or that we could control our hands and feet using our thoughts. Which, sidebar, seems pretty miraculous when you think about it. This wordless fluency with which we pilot these bodies we didn't choose and often don't understand.

In a relationship with God you eventually look back and realize He was pursuing you all along, way before you were aware. He works before you give Him permission, to get you to a place where you will give Him permission.

All of life is improv. Maybe this is why on-stage improv can be possible. It's not nonsensical to step into a pre-existing situation/"scene", or, if it is, at least each player/actor has loads of experience from doing this every single day of their life. People say to me all the time that improv must be scary, and I appreciate what they mean by this, and don't mind the comment, but each moment of their own life has been improv. No matter how much you prepare for something, it's never exactly how you expected it, and you must adapt or face grave consequences. "Yeah, but you have to be funny," they reply. Well, it's easier to be funny than to be loving, kind, brave, gentle, good. Much. I would know.

I like clean breaks. Clear beginnings, wrapped-up endings. But I rarely seem to get them. I recently read that "closure" is an idea that often makes people unhappy by getting them to think it is a real thing. This was both a relief and a great disappointment. I'm sure closure is a real thing, but I am equally sure it is way more elusive than anyone wants. Certainly more elusive than I was able to admit to myself before reading that it might be fake.

You don't get the hang of almost anything until you've been doing it for a while. Here's an example about getting involved in a new place. I've been telling people about this theory I have that it takes, say, 51 times showing up somewhere to reach the tipping point. The first 50 times you show up somewhere (examples: Bible study, the teachers' lounge) in a foreign country, you see strangers and any contact is necessarily shallow and you feel awkward and have to make an effort not to leave. But that 51st time you enter the room and are greeted by name and surrounded by familiar faces, probably friendly and smiling ones. If you are living somewhere for only a semester, you can hit this sweet spot right before it's time for you to move away. Here in France, the other teachers seemed to be nicer to me than ever in my last two weeks of teaching.

It's sometimes difficult for me not to feel a little regret and wonder how this year (this seven-month?) would have turned out if I had been more outgoing and taken more risks earlier on. But, two problems with that: 1) I can't turn back time, and there are plenty of great things about this experience, I'm not going to go out of my way to engage a bad feeling; and 2) I think you always appreciate people the most at the moment you say goodbye to them. This was one of my favorite things about the study abroad experience. I appreciated my college and all my friends sooooo much when I left the country, but unlike with graduation, I got to come back the next year and appreciate them in person again. In my experience you can't rush this goodbye- closeness/attachment/appreciation. I suspect it's brought on by the pending separation. That was why studying-abroad "worked" in this way: I really left, and really came back.

Is there a lesson I gained from this? I think it changed my interactions with people because I began to think, "This is fleeting. When I look back on this, how will I want to say it all went down?" Which I think is a good way for me to live in general, in relationships or in other areas. Because life is pretty short when all is said and done. And I loathe the idea that someone could be feeling unappreciated or unloved and have to wait until, like, their retirement party to find out what they meant to people. Or worse. But I bet that happens often. People say really nice things at funerals. When we die, hopefully we go to heaven and see what we meant to others, though while we were alive we just had to trust that it was Something and that there was a current guiding our little bobbing undockable boats that we just woke up inside one day with no warning.