[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Bird

I can't call it stained glass, because the glass isn't coloured. I 
can't really call it art glass either, because that implies both 
creativity and artful technique, and I used someone else's pattern, 
and my technique is kindergarten level. So I'm not sure what to call it.

Just call it the bird.

It's a simple piece of four curved pieces of textured, clear, 
iridescent glass that I have succeeded in glueing together with 
solder (not too bad for a first-timer), forming a small fat bird. I 
would have loved a streamlined dove, but what I've got is a sort of 
chickadee with a big silvery solder eye.

I've been thinking about this for a while. I've usually been found, 
in the past, with a stick and a bit of fibre, whether it's embroidery 
or spinning or weaving or knitting, but I had a sudden outburst of 
need for COLOUR. This may have to do with the fact that we, in 
Eastern Ontario, are now in the depths of Forevruary, that 
interminable period between Christmas and Easter when the landscape 
is bleached into white, grey, charcoal, and sepia. Bleagh.

Glass has COLOUR. So it was worth checking out.

Also, it's a new form of geekiness. I am a sucker for arcana, the 
language and craft and trade secrets of weird old stuff, like how to 
knit chain mail and what the name is for the bits of a loom that go 
up and down to make the pattern (answers: garter stitch and 
harnesses). Now I know that "came" is a noun, and an ancient one.

And finally, every time I get hands-on with another way of creating, 
my admiration of those who create in this medium goes right through 
the roof. I will never be a water-colour painter, or a potter, or a 
real weaver, but I have now tried these things and am awe-struck by 
those who have mastered them. You can't appreciate what makes good 
hand-made pottery until you've tried to throw a pot (a disaster, in 
my case). I haven't actually tried blowing glass, but I've watched it 
enough to be seriously intimidated by the skill involved.

Crafts are good for the humility, which in turn is good for the soul. 
Please feel free to email this to the fitness-freak high-achievement 
technofinancial guru of your choice.

Now, I've tried something that goes back a couple of millennia, one 
of the ur-art forms: taking pieces of glass -- this weird frozen 
liquid of silica and pigments -- and making something out of it, 
joining it to create. It's a bit mind-blowing.

What's even more mind-blowing is the art and beauty going back 
centuries upon centuries of people making glass, cutting glass, 
putting glass together, to make God-language.

The bird is nothing special, by art-glass standards. I had to learn 
the very baby steps of cutting out pieces of glass and then putting 
them together. Since I am either-handed and not much coordinated, 
this was particularly tricky. I have learned that -- at least for now 
-- I cut glass left-handed and solder right-handed. I remember what 
master weavers say about weaving: "There isn't a mistake that you can 
make that I haven't made before you." Right. Grasping, however 
lightly, the functional end of a soldering iron is not a good idea. I 
have a blister to prove it.

But I made the bird. Not a dove, but a fat sparrow.

I made it out of clear glass for a reason.

A little of the reason was nervousness; I'm not stepping out into the 
thin air of colour without giving it some thought. But most of the 
reason was spiritual. I wanted light to come through my bird with 
colour, but without being coloured. Hence iridescent glass.

On the way home, I thought: Our job is to be glass through which 
God's love passes to the next person, and how we transmit that love 
is going to vary tremendously. Some glass is opalescent; it quietly 
diffuses light so that it comes across softly as a glow, and that may 
be important for the needy-of-love who can't bear any brilliance. 
Some glass is transparent, so that the light comes across full-force, 
but coloured by whatever colours the glass.

I wanted the light to reach me unbroken by opalescence or colour, but 
given the dance of iridescence -- its playfulness, its delicacy and 
delight. It's what I've always wanted and rarely achieved.

My bird is waiting to be put up on its home window by my computer. 
I'm hesitant about the next project. But I have signed up for a course....



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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in 
no other way. -- Mark Twain