Cracked Pots

one of my garden pots

I love Sue Bender's writings about "cracked pots" recognizing that one may indeed look at whole, broken and mended pots in relation to one's own life.  As she quotes M.C.Richards, "It's not pots we are forming, it's ourselves."

In Everyday Sacred, Sue Bender writes, "We start out whole. Complete. Along the way, we may feel that something is wrong, or missing, We aren't the way we'd like to be or the way we think we should be.  A crossroads, a new stage in life, a turning point, a crisis, when we feel we may crack, or we do crack, can be a difficult, frightening time.

And, sometimes we deliberately crack our own bowl... With time and great care and tender patience, we can re-examine the pieces, knowing that when we are ready, a solution will come.  We can glue the pieces back together.

This bowl looks far more interesting, more beautiful than before it broke.  The pieces are the same, but it's a different bowl than when I started...Our imperfections are a gift, the very qualities that make us unique.  If we make the shift to see them that way - we can value ourselves...just as we are."

Now I have yet to locate a "mended" pot to check out its beauty and usefulness, but I do choose to believe that a "mended" soul produces a more beautiful person.

My sister, Michelle, was, perhaps still is, a potter and has made beautiful bowls, vases, and plates a few of which have made their way to my house. I love these bowls!!

Michelle is also a quilter, and somehow I think a quilter is similar to a "mender of broken pots" in that a quilter purposely cuts beautiful material into pieces and then mends/sews them together into a beautiful quilt... a quilt might be a good picture of one's life.

You can check out Michelle's creative endeavours at this link: 
http://periwinklequiltingandbeyond.blogspot.com/