[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Dandelions and Garden Paths

Two artsfests on adjoining weekends: last weekend was the Dandelion 
Festival, up in Westport; last weekend and this weekend was the 
Thousand Islands Arts' Up the Garden Path festival. Both involved 
tours of artists' and artisans' studios. I had a blast.

I drove up to Westport through a landscape gilded with dandelions. 
(Which are no longer considered the Bad Guys but are cheerfully 
received -- in fact, a dandelion-free stretch of lawn is mildly 
disreputable, as it shows that the owner has not yet got the message 
about cosmetic pesticides, which are now illegal. Sorry. That was an 
aside, but it needed to get in there somewhere.) I drove enough 
twisty back roads even to satisfy my Shield-loving soul, and the 
woods were the freshest new-summer green. The studio people were 
reasonably friendly, if a tad overwhelmed -- Westport draws several 
thousand people, and artists/artisans are not normally strong 
extroverts. I saw some lovely stuff and had good chat with a couple 
of glass-workers.

But the Up the Garden Path festival, stretching along the St. 
Lawrence River, was even more fun, not because the stuff on sale was 
significantly better -- both festivals were equally excellent -- but 
because all concerned seemed to be having such a good time. (Probably 
because they weren't so overwhelmed.)

What came across in both places was that creativity is sheer joy. 
These people really love what they do. That doesn't mean that it's 
pain-free and invariably easy; we all have our struggles. But there's 
passion and devotion and delight in everything they say about their art.

Perhaps it's the river -- the St. Lawrence is itself a river of great 
spiritual power, and the Thousand Islands are the collision of two 
strong landscapes -- but I felt a sort of delighted spirituality in 
the TIA studios. They felt like places where a soul could speak 
freely and with authenticity. They felt like arms held open wide.

I thought, driving home along the peaceful river, so quiet it was 
mirror-silver, how in our small way, we who try to create with 
whatever comes to hand -- clay, glass, paint, beads, wool, wood, 
whatever -- are testifying to the existence of God. Whenever I get 
one of those "is this God-person really real?" moments, and they do 
still sometimes happen, I take up in my mind the Problem of Creation, 
to which God is the only really elegant (in the mathematical sense) solution.

I think of the studio people, taking a piece of glass or a lump of 
clay or the burl of a Manitoba maple and studying it, asking it what 
it wants to become. The potter has more obvious say with the clay 
than the glass artist has with glass, because of the nature of the 
beast. But it's still a matter of co-creation. And because artists 
and artisans are individuals, not factories, the point of the 
production isn't reproducibility or perfection but individuality and 
expression.

Isn't that perhaps how we could reconsider the Potter and the clay 
that we are? Not that God is forcibly turning us into whatever God 
wants, because God is not a factory stamping out identical pieces. 
But we, as clay, respond to the Potter's hand. I used to think that 
the Potter's hand was strong on the clay, but from watching potters 
up close, I've learned otherwise. It's up to us how we're going to 
respond; unlike the clay, we're conscious of the process and can 
cooperate with it or insist on going our own way.

But God loves and joys in his creatures, as proudly as any artisan 
loves and joys in the work he or she creates. We even love -- perhaps 
especially love -- the ones that didn't really turn out the way we'd planned.

God's on the lookout for any beauty he can tease out in us, even when 
we feel least beautiful. Manitoba maple is considered a weed tree; 
you'd think that the burl of a weed tree would be as low down the 
creative ladder as a chunk of wood could get. But the artisan had 
found the beauty at its heart, cutting it into two symmetrical slabs, 
sanding and finishing it to a rich gloss, opening it up to show a 
golden grain marked with mysterious darker swirls and spots, like 
writing in some unearthly tongue.

I got home and took the little mosaic panel I'd made of iridized 
glass, bits and pieces, the one that turned out lumpy and stolid and 
unsatisfying. With great care, I heated the solder seams, allowing 
the molten metal to flow out into a collecting jar (solder is 
expensive, so I recycle a lot). When I was done, I had a piece of 
angular glass lace in peacock hues and clear ripple. Yes, it took me 
a couple of tries. But I'm just learning. God, on the other hand, has 
had lots and lots of practice.



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