Breaking bowls, breaking patterns

I have broken three bowls in two weeks. Surprisingly, I smiled each time. I have learned to look at anything that happens with bowls in my life as some sort of Divine sign. These three broken bowls mean something.

These bowls are kitchen bowls. Used for soup and cereal, we have had them for almost two decades. As a family of five, we've gone from seven bowls to now four. It means we can't all eat cereal or soup at the same time. We either take turns or get creative and use mugs as bowls. A sense of order is broken, shattered even, but it seems to be okay this time.

I find myself rejoicing in these broken bowls because it means there is now space for new ones. I am not going to go and buy someone else's creation but make my own. Okay, I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I have wanted to make a set of dishes and bowls for some time now. Maybe this is why pottery has reappeared in my life. Maybe this is why the bowls have broken. A push into a new pattern. My creative self accepts the invitation to make the bowls I have dreamed of making. My real self awakens.

While this making of bowls will take time, and I will be the one using a mug for soup, I am learning to stay open. And I am learning to let go. There are a whole set of life patterns I would like to shatter on the floor. In one swoosh, I could break them, sweep, gather, and bin them. Ah, if it could be that easy!

More and more I am see life as a journey to the self , the real self, the real me and the real you. We are all pilgrims on this journey. My journey happens to be one in which I carry bowls. When bowls appear, I am more aware of Divine presence. You probably have your own motifs, your own Divine signs and symbols. We also all have life patterns or paths that help us find the real self. Sometimes we outgrow the paths and patterns. Sometimes we need to shatter those patterns, sweep, gather, and bin them in order to make room for the new.

I am not so good at the letting go process, but my eyes and my heart and my ears are tuned in to seeing and feeling and listening differently thanks to my broken bowls. For now, I am like the bowl--more open. I wonder what pattern has been hibernating all these years and now wants to speak.

I wait and I listen.

A bowl and a box of blond curly hair, part 2

Now on to the my dancing bowl with water.

I have placed it on my writing desk. Initially I collected it from the kitchen because I was creating a new writing space for myself. I want those objects that are meaningful to my writing life to be near. Creating a sacred space for one's voice needs support. My box of curly blond hair and my bowl of water encourage me.

When I received my Autumnal bowl two weeks ago, I was shocked because it was yet another bowl appearing in my life. I wondered what sort of sign the universe was sending my way. Putting my literary analysis to work, I began analyzing the motif. This is a turning point for the main character, I notice. Her time of discernment. Will she follow the pottery thread, the writing thread, or some different path? Which way will she choose. What is the way forward for her? Clearly the author moves the narrative along with all these bowls, but what does it all mean?

Sometimes analysis is too much because in our earnest openness for an answer, we miss the most obvious message. For me, my message came through another character in the novel. "Maybe it just means to keep on doing what you are already doing. Maybe it is an affirmation." But what am I already doing?

Well, I have taken a pause from my public ministry. I spend more calm time (means I am less stressed) with my children. I read more books to them, get on the floor to put puzzles together, play with stuffed animals (even though I feel like I have lost the ability to be creative in that way), and I recently spent 3 hours sorting Legos (my older children were so grateful for my presence even though I was not actually building with them--taught me about what it means to a child for a parent to just be with them). My children have even noticed the shift in me. Play time is not alwasy easy for me, but I am having fun learning how to play again. Trying to enjoy the process. Well, keep on doing this, right?

And two days a week I have the mornings to write. Scheduling in time to write has been liberating because it is a date I set with myself each week. As my confidence builds, I know I want to keep on doing this too.

And the pottery thread? Once a week I throw, and while I dream of the wheel throughout the week, this too seems just right.

So all of these bowls that have appeared are affirmations. Keep going. Keep writing, keeping throwing pottery, keep spending time with my children, really being present to all these aspects, for this is the holy work that is my life.

So, while I have put this bowl on my desk to claim this space as sacred, it affirms my life. "Keep going," I hear it say, "this seems so right." And because it is full of water, I know new life is coming.

A bowl and a box of curly blond hair

A bowl and a box of curly blond hair.

They both sit on my desk. The bowl has water in it, it is my dancing bowl. I have moved it from the kitchen to my writing area. The blond curly hair is a handful. It is in a clear box so I can see it. Yes, I suppose a bowl of water and a clear box of hair are odd objects to have close by. My own children think the hair is a bit creepy, and if you do too, I am not offended. Maybe as I tell the story of both, you might understand a bit more why I need this hair and this water, this clear box and pottered bowl close by.

I will start with the clear box. In one of my home education purchasing whims, I bought a number of clear boxes with the hope of us collecting all sorts of natural objects to examine under our magnifying glasses. I did not check the size of the boxes when I placed the order, and as a result, I have some very large boxes that sit in my garage. Only now am I finding unexpected ways to use these boxes.

I like the clear box because I see through it. Allowing light to pass through, its form reminds me of my own longing for clarity. But what I really like about it is what it holds, my three year old son's long blond curly hair--a remnant of his first haircut one year ago. There are far too many things to say about why I keep this hair so visible. My other two children have only a small piece of hair from their first hair cut, saved in a small envelope, stored in their childhood treasure box, hidden away in some closet. It is not the first hair cut I want to remember, but rather all that this hair symbolizes.

I keep the hair close by because it reminds me of the pregnancy of my soul. That wild time as I turned toward forty when there was so much growth and gestation. I was becoming. My son's hair reflected my soul in such a way that I often saw his hair as a manifestation of some greater alignment with the Divine.

Children live in holy time. They are so open, clear, and interested in the world. They are so close to the holy that it is difficult to ever imagine why we separate the mundane from the sacred and the physical from the spiritual.

So, I became the protector of my son's long, blond, curly hair. I waited for some sign, instinct or a slight shift in awareness, something that would guide me in my timing, something that would say, "now is the time to cut."

I was a holding out. My poor husband who had heard too many times: "oh, what a lovely daughter you have, and her hair is so beautiful," was ready to cut his hair far sooner than I. While he was tired of the continuous gender confusion, I was reveling in how his hair was so wild and full and curly and that people recognized its uniqueness. I imagined, and maybe I was just fooling myself, that even though we don't have the language for it, in their admiration of his beautiful hair, they saw the sacred. Looking beyond gender, and even looking beyond the individual, I clearly saw innocence, fullness of life, and a deep wildness that is so natural to who we truly are.

My son's hair became my own call for wildness. Remember I was approaching forty. I was looking for something in my life that had purpose. Scanning backwards, I was looking for the lost threads, trying to notice the themes, the holy sparks, hoping that when I found them, I could truly step in to who I really am. I was looking for something that was essentially me and wild was my way in.

Wild is a funny word. Culturally, it has so many negative connotations: unruly, uncivilized, uncontrollable emotion. And yet, it is who we really are before we are tamed, domesticated, and told to keep our deepest emotions hidden. But what if our emotions were indeed allow to have more say? What if the domestication of our true selves have gone a bit too far? If that is the case, then returning to our raw, wild selves might be a way to step into our true essence.

My son's hair reminds me to walk the fine line between wild as harmful and wild as liberating. I need to clearly see his hair right now to find my own voice, natural, free, and wild, so it can grow and develop, so it can finally be free from all those moments in my life when I suppressed my true self, my soul, and even my emotions in order to be just what others expected me to be.

There are no accidents

Something really good took place this week. I was unexpectedly given a bowl. The exciting thing about this is that the gift-giver had no idea about my current journey with bowls. Ah, surprises like this nourish my soul. Is it chance? Or is it synchronicity? And if it is the later, what does it mean?

This bowl is not the type of bowl I would choose for myself. The colors are not my favorite ones, the shape a bit too tall and a bit too deep, but because this bowl is a bowl and has come at this time in my life, it is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Its Autumnal colors (green, yellow, mutted red and orange) remind me of tall leaf piles, oak trees, and the deep October sun--all things I associate with home. And because it speaks so clearly of a place and time I long for, I know this bowl is about so much more than this physical world.

It is funny how one object can evoke so many different feelings and meet so many of my unmet needs. I feel affirmed, connected, and finally seen for who I truly am. Is the real me somehow reflected in this bowl? Is a portion of myself held in its shape and color? And what about the giver? What does it reveal about her?

Emerson once wrote, "the only gift is a portion of thyself." I have tried for years to understand this quote as a gift-giver. I have always understood this to mean that the gift reflects the giver, specifically what the giver can share with the receiver, but with this bowl, there is a reversal. With this bowl, I now see how the gift reflects the receiver as well. The perfect gift is when both the giver and the receiver are reflected in ways that we can't necessarily put into words. The gift reflects some inward grace, some unseen energy or spirit, some sense of openness, some different level of consciousness. The gift is an outward sign of something deeply holy.

I have received many gifts in my years that have been so off, so not me that I have wondered if the person even knows me. And yet, I am sure I have given gifts to family and friends and they have wondered what on earth I was thinking about when I choose a particular gift to send. While I believe and love the idea that gift giving is truly about intention and seeing the other while also giving from one's own abundance, it is so surprising when the gift hits the spot.

This bowl, my Autumnal bowl, surely hits the spot. In life there are no accidents, only synchronicity.

A character in a novel

I feel like a character in a novel who has been ascribed a motif or a symbol by the author. Whenever I appear in the story, there is a bowl close at hand. Like Hester Pryne and her Scarlet A, I come carrying a bowl. I wonder what it means, really, this bowl? Any insight?

Here are this week's highlights of bowl appearances and a comment from another character in this novel:

1. The bowl is now full of water. Clear cool water. It now holds an illusion. It appears empty (one can see through water) and yet it holds an abundance of water. Of course, the main character was the one to put water in it and because she realized that she is in fact not empty and even though she goes through the meditative process of emptying herself, there is still so much abundant material in her that it would seem silly to leave this bowl empty. Water's transparency holds the tension perfectly: empty but full.

2. The bowl is now moved to the windowsill that sits just above the kitchen sink. A good place for the character to notice it as she stands at the sink washing dishes. She can look out into the world, the hills, the sky, and yet, still remain in her inside world. This bowl is on the edge of both worlds.

3. A new character has appeared this week, speaking of bowls. This new character, a potter, said to the main character as she sat down at the potter's wheel, "Let's start with a bowl because everything wants to be a bowl." Everything wants to open up, embrace, catch, hold, take the form of a bowl. Everything. All forms.

Another spiral and a new bowl

Making things is the work of the soul.

I have tried something new this week. Pulling out my brand new sewing machine from its 15 year hibernation, I set out to make my daughter a rope and fabric bowl, the same kind of bowl I talked about a few weeks ago, made for my pregnant friend. Using leftover scraps from the quilt I made her last year (I really did only the cutting, my mom did the sewing, and I hired a woman to quilt it professionally), I began to work on this bowl. This is the bowl I will now use each year to tell her the story of her birth.

I chose the fabric scraps carefully, using materials that recall her sleep and play patterns: an old scarlet dress, flowery blue trousers, a striped baby onesie, and her pink crib sheet. When I look at these pieces, I remember. She will know that these were from her clothes and from her bed, but the memories these baby and childhood clothes evoke seem more like mine than hers.

As I begin to sew together this bowl, restarting five times until I succeed with the starter piece, a real test of patience for someone with very little, I notice the pattern forming, a spiral. Ah, yes, the beloved spiral appears as the base of this bowl. My daughter loves spirals, just like me, and I know she will like this bowl.

Often times when I make gifts or write verses for my children, I think the gifts are more for me. It is that way with birthdays especially. Of course, we celebrate each birthday as a special day to remember that child's birth, but since I was there too, and it happened to me, it is a day I remember that something in me was birthed. Yes, a child, but also a piece of my soul. I never tell them this, but I feel it on their birthdays. My childrens' birthdays are my birthing days too.

So as I make this birthday bowl, it is a bowl to celebrate my daughter's birth but also to celebrate my experience of birth, my celebration of creation, and my role in the process of life. It is when I finish the bowl and place it over my womb as if I am pregnant, it is that size, that I realize that this empty bowl holds power in its patterns.

The bowl is very imperfect, and while I am a recovering perfectionist, I did have a slight slip with the thought that I could unwind it and start over, and it would be neater, but I didn't. I will leave it how it is. I am trying to see that the imperfections help me remember the process of making it, giving it its shape and form, making spiral after spiral, smiling, and yes, even cussing. But all the other memories--like my daughter playing outside in the fallen leaves, wearing her Autumnal scarlet dress or placing her to bed on her pink sheets and the memory of her quick birth--these memories I remember too when I look at this bowl.

It is funny how it is not the end product that matters at all, but rather the experiences and memories of all that came before the bowl. But it is also about making the bowl, learning to see that if I actually slowed down, if I actually took my time and was not so focused on the end product, that I would not have had to go back over the many places where the zigzag stitches did not take hold and connect. But ah, that is the way it is in real life, isn't it? So often the same patterns emerge and re-emerge until they take hold.

For now, I like to hold this bowl and admire its powerful patterns, but I know I still have so much to learn.

Another bowl, the hope of birth, and a blessing

Empty bowls seem to be everywhere lately.

When I arrived at my friend's house for a blessingway for a pregnant friend, I was delighted to see a beautifully handmade bowl, made of fabric and twine and stitches. The colors of the earth, brown and green, and the color of blood, the earth of the womb, are distinctively different from my empty clay colored bowl that sits upon my table. And yet, both empty bowls speak of a hospitality, an openness, and a reception that I had not noticed before.

But my friend's bowl is a birthing bowl. It is a bowl of creation. Throughout the night we offered blessings and small objects that hold the treasures of the earth: shells, wool, lavender, poetry, a needlepoint thistle. These were our offerings and our blessings for a new birth. With its hues and textures and imperfect form, this bowl holds the whispers of the eternal.

My bowl, it still remains empty, waiting for something, although I know not what, but it too holds a whisper. As I now consider its emptiness as a sign of hospitality and an openness to Divine love, I too await for a new birth, and my soul feels the pangs of early labor.

Synchronicity, I love when it happens, another whisper.

Longing to be empty

My empty bowl keeps moving from our kitchen table to the counter and then back again to the table. I do not give much notice to it throughout the day. Sometimes it gets lost amongst math books, colored pencils, and cut-up pieces of paper. I am not sure who moves it, it might even be me, although I can't seem to remember, but often it is on the counter by the evening time. And every time I move it back to the table, I am reminded why I want it there.

Our kitchen table is the center of my daily activity. It is the place where I meet my children, feed them, and nurture them. It is the heart of our family. And while I find so much value in all the activity that fills the space of my kitchen, I need to have my bowl on my table to remind me that my sabbatical time is about paying attention to emptiness.

While I do not want to empty my kitchen of the activity that holds us together as a family, I do want to empty myself of a certain way of being present in my kitchen. I want to empty myself not of the cooking, cutting, and teaching, but rather of the way in which I listen (which by the way is not really listening because I am thinking of so many other things!). You might recognize what this type of listening looks like: glazy eyes, a few assuring nods, some positve affirmations to make it look like I am really listening, but I know I am not. I am pretty sure they know I am not too but they do not have a name for it.

It feels heartless, really, to listen this way. I want to empty myself of thinking about all the others things I need to do or the meals I want to prepare or the books I want to buy or the letters I want to write to friends or the blog post I want to write. I want to stop multi-tasking. It hurts my brain and my heart. Instead, I want to just sit and listen and be and let time pass for a few moments without thinking about what needs to happen next. I just want to practice idleness. I want to just be less busy in my brain. More thoughtful. I want to just be empty.

An Empty Bowl

I have set on my table an empty bowl. It is a piece of pottery that I bought 15 years ago and I have carried it with me to three continents. Just on the inside of the rim are dancing stick figures, looking very primitive, they make one continuous dancing circle, mirroring the shape of the bowl. I have placed it in on my table to remind me that I have emptied my bowl, emptying myself, freeing myself to dream.

My problem with dreams is that I have too many. I have wanted to be a singer since I was 3 years old, a potter since I was 20, an herbalist/gardener since I was 25. A writer since I was born (well, seems like it). I don't know which thread to follow? And I do not know what fear is holding me back.

What I think I really want is to change my path. Or maybe add to it something different. With dreams like these, I could easier join a choir, take singing lessons, volunteer at the botanic garden and learn as I go, you know, make a hobby of my dreams, but really, I want one of these to be something I spend my time doing. I want to be a singer, be a potter, be a gardener, or be a writer. Maybe be all of them!

But I also dream of a landscape with trees, a river, four seasons, a walled garden, a greenhouse, a pond, a log cabin in the woods. So many dreams, I feel overwhelmed, dizzy.

Tonight at dinner I finally began the dance of verbalizing all my dreams aloud to my husband and three children. As we sat around the table, I sent hopes out to the universe for many manifestations. It was funny how my children responded. They jumped right in. My three year old left the table to go draw his house, my daughter got so excited that she said she never wanted to live away from me, and my oldest son asked enthusiastically and hopefully, "how can we find the money to do all of this?" They were right with me in my dreams and I couldn't believe the feeling. I felt free. I felt connected. I felt like I made the first step in a long dance.

When I placed that empty bowl on the table as a reminder of my life, I had no idea what it would spark. Tonight the bowl filled with dreams, dreams that seem more reachable today than they did yesterday. Since deciding to take a sabbatical from my ministry, I am finding the joy in the emptiness of myself, my raw self, and I really really like it.

My empty bowl is now my dancing dream bowl. I wonder what the bowl will bring tomorrow.