Song of the Clay

Deep in the muck and the mud and the mire I began to be formed long before the fire. At first I was dry, lifeless and void, nothing of value or goodness; abhorred. But for the hands of the potter supreme who made me and formed me and molded me to be a vessel of truth and purity, a vessel of usefulness and integrity.

From the muck and the mire he dug me up from the pit and the darkness and deepest desire of the earth and its abominable fire. He dug me up from the grave and the pit, and threw me deep in the water and spit.

He pushed and He pulled me and washed me again; He tugged, hewed, parted and folded and then I was pliant and able to bare the pressure of the wheel and his constant stare. He looked upon me and thought for a while and decided what I’d be with a smile.

Upon the wheel he hurled me with a thud and began the process of forming this mud. He pushed and he pulled, sweated too, as he turned and he turned this blob that is me potential only for the potter to see.

He held in his mind a vision of a vessel of beauty and light but for the turning of his wheel and his might. He turned and he turned and turned me again. He pushed me and pulled me again and again; I turned until then He shaped a shape unlike before.

I became the sketch of a vessel He held in his heart, only then did he stop for a moment to rest. He looked at this vessel forming near His breast and then He crushed me and pushed me again into a ball to push out the flaws the bubbles and all. Then He formed me again as quick as a wink and put me next to the water at the sink.

He set me aside and then stoked up his furnace to remove my pride. When the furnace was hot and intense enough in it I went with a clunk. I was bronzed, blackened and burned by the heat. The weakness was flushed out of me but for his love, which did penetrate till nothing I’d see; only the vision of the glaze to be put upon me.

Out I did come and back on the shelf to cool of a bit and rest from this stuff. A glaze He did make and spread over me colors’ to pure for the naked eye to see. Radiant and perfect I soon became, and there sat a vessel of use to contain nothing but this; the wine of the creator: His bliss.

Now do not miss the meaning of this song; you too are a vessel if only in the love and longing of the potter for his clay. For in you this day he is making a vessel of which soon He’ll say “you are useful to me and you shall see a place of honor and glory with me.”

Kenwood California Dawn Hill Road.