“Cracked pots”

 

Cracked pots…we are all cracked pots!

Once made whole, now fractured, gaping holes of sadness

shot through and showing the empty insides

of worn and ridged clay.

We try to stand whole, hiding sharp edges behind our

glazed, shiny surface,

hoping that the buyer will admire,

the collector will grasp us and take us home

to live loved, wanted, polished and cherished.

But when turned, we reveal the dark gaps:

some wrought as we broke our own holy molds,

and others innocent wounds, tragic aftermath

of collisions with the unyielding surface of reality.

Greed and hate come when the clay pulls itself too soon

from the hands of the potter,

wishing for worth like a work of art, the level of The Louvre!

Despair and pain arrive when the dried, fired clay has been shoved

by forces to strong to resist

and resilience has been crushed into pieces,

powdering down to the floor. 

But one day a new, wise, worn hand reaches for our cracked pots,

gently lifting each of us,

turning us as we try to hide the holes,

peering into each one,

seeing that through the resisted openings light has come to our interior! 

A short breath puffs the dust away

as we are held high in the Artist’s eye that loves our broken character

and longs to own us.

And in that moment of admiration,

greed is transformed into gratitude; hate into hospitality; 

despair becomes devotion

and pain a pathway.

Cracked pots…we are all cracked pots!

 

“We have this treasure in clay jars…” II Corinthians 4.7

The Rev. Anne O. Weatherholt

July 2006