Praying with Clay

by Ivan Richardson

Recently while in a retreat setting at Camp Calvin Crest with Faith at Work, I entered into a " praying with clay" exercise with less than enthusiastic expectation. I am not artistic. Thus when I was handed a rather large square of red clay I didn't expect anything meaningful to happen. I thought I would try to do a simple replication of a giant rock which I had seen years ago .It rose out of the center of a lake in the National Forest of Rainy Lake in Minnesota.

The lake itself is accessible only by seaplane or a thirty minute hike from Rainy Lake shore which we had reached by houseboat. There in the center of the lake was a huge granite boulder the size of a house. The rock was distinctive because of two horizontal lines across it. One was about a third of the way up and the other at two thirds. I had read about the history of that area and knew that two different glaciers had moved through the area in the distant past (about one and two million years ago if I remember right). As I stood on the cliff overlooking that scene I was aware of the presence of God, the God of creation in the years past and the God of the here-and-now. I wanted to recreate the moment in clay. Besides, I thought it would be the simplest thing a non-artistic person could do.

I worked for about five minutes trying to shape the clay into a round ball. Yet the ball would not take shape without cracking. My time was spent in trying to smooth out each crack. I would get one crack closed and another would appear. Suddenly the experience became an introspective study of my relationship with God - God trying to smooth out every flaw in my life. God was speaking and I was responding with thanksgiving and praise for God's patience with me. Still, I was frustrated with the lack of success in trying to duplicate the rock and the moment of great inspiration I had experienced a decade and a half ago.

I gave up on creating the rock and decided on a simple bowl instead. The ball of clay soon took the rough shape of a bowl, yet the cracks which I couldn't eliminate from the ball were in the bowl also. I continued to work to smooth the inside , and as time for the experience was running out, I turned the bowl over to work on the other side. When I did, it showed more cracks than I could ever hope to smooth out, and looked like a rough approximation of the human brain. There again God was speaking to me out of the clay about the reading I had been doing about God in the Mind. I am a "thinking"(left-brained" person with only limited ability to process feelings. Yet as I was holding the clay, I experienced myself being held in the hands of God - not only held by God, but affirmed as the person created by God.

The exercise which I had entered into with little or no expectation of being meaningful was suddenly an experience of prayer in the fullest sense - communion with God-where I was being spoken to and was responding back with a grateful heart.

Written after the Soul Food Event in Nebraska led by Nancy Boyle and Kathryn Wysockey-Johnson, October 10-11, 2003.

Ivan D. Richardson is a retired pastor at 1st UMC, Omaha and is a regular teacher there.