Getting My Hands Dirty

For years Amy has thought I should have been diagnosed with tactile defensiveness when I was a child. Maybe. I don't like finger paint. I avoid mud (even while playing soccer), slimy stuff, and even steered away from my own boyhood sandbox. Food texture is an important consideration for me when I consider what I like to eat.

Fatherhood has knocked out some of this. Babies are just messy - what goes in, and what comes out. And you just do what you have to do.

Still, Amy is at least partially right. And that's why I'm especially proud of this picture. Part of the health theme of my sabbatical was to try doing something I would not otherwise do: something creative, meditative, indulgent. I considered a number of things, but finally decided to accept a friend's gracious invitation to teach me pottery.

So, I go to his studio. We talk about clay. Handle clay. Center clay. Make clay slimy. Shape clay. And I love it. As I and my friend noticed it's easy to see how pottery turns into a spiritual experience. For me, the expression of friendship being extended to me was part of the spiritual experience. His hospitality was God's presence to me yesterday...

Back to the picture: it's a cut away of my first attempt at a cylinder. As I learn the various techniques at the pottery wheel we'll destroy more than we keep so I can see what's actually happening to the clay between my fingers. Yes, that's right, slimy and malleable clay right in my hands. I did that.

Without the impetus of my sabbatical there's no way I would have done this and I would be missing out. It makes me wonder, what else am I missing out on because I have some sort of undefinable and unjustifiable defensiveness: maybe I should take a hip-hop dance class. Maybe not.