When the teapot lid doesn’t fit! The Sunday Muse (aka Yin Yoga instructor) brought this reading into my life this morning! From the book Centering in Pottery, Poems and the Person, by Mary Caroline Richards
“It took me half my life to believe I was OK even if I didn’t experience love in a undiscriminating way and did not know for sure the difference between good and bad – but that change when I became a Potter. So then, what is the connection between pottery, poetry, teaching and the person? It is said, in order to teach you must be able to listen. You must be able to hear what the person before you means. You can’t assume the meanings and be a teacher, you must enter into dialogue – with all senses alert to the human meanings expressed, however implicit. (Similiar the experience of the potter listening to the clay strengthens this capacity.) One must be able to hear the inner questions, the unspoken ones; the inner hopes and misgivings and dreams, timidities, potentialities and stupidities. As I grew in my pottery, I began to grieve when I could not make a close fitting lid for a canister or teapot. It wasn’t until I received a gift from a friend who lived in Korea, an ancient Korean pot, about a thousand years old that I had an awakening. I loved this gift at once! He wrote, it reminded him of something I might have made, because the lid didn’t fit. It was a museum piece, so to speak, it mused and inspired me because of it’s beauty and it made me stop worrying about whether my lids fit.” #whispersinmyhheart
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