WOMAN’S HEAD, BY KATHRYN HOLT, PHOTO MARY VAN BALEN
Years ago, my daughter sculpted a womans head for an art class but forgot to make a hole in the base to allow the escape of heated air. The piece exploded in the kiln, and she was irritated at her oversight. Her instructor, ceramicist Tony Davenport, had a different opinion.
Dont worry, he said as she glued together large pieces that remained. This may be the best thing that happened to it.
Kathryn wasnt sure how to take his remark. Did the hours painstakingly dedicated to creating the head count less towards its artistic merit than the accidental explosion? As days passed and she looked at the head with its gaping holes, her perspective changed. Lines where pieces had been rejoined and empty places suggested not only struggle and pain, but also survival. The head emanated a hard-won dignity.
Are we not the same, embracing life with energy and hope, sometimes successfully meeting challenges and opportunities, sometimes not? Life takes unexpected turns that break our bodies and hearts into pieces. At times we can put them back together; at other times we are left with gaping holes. We are blessed when people, like Kathryns professor, can see beauty and opportunity where we see ruin.
We make choices and mistakes that change the course of our lives in major as well as minor ways: What job to accept, who to marry, where to live, how to eat, what to say, where to study. The list is endless, and as Robert Frost writes, Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back,* each choice leads to another. Like Kathryns sculpture, we are the a mosaic of life and our responses to it.
Tony took a creative effort, a mistake, and its results and helped my daughter make something meaningful from them. Our Creator helps us embrace life, whatever it holds, and fashion something meaningful. We are disappointed, but we have hope. We are hurt, but we heal. We are overwhelmed, but we rise again. We are blessed and we give thanks. We are broken, but we are beautiful.
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“The Road Not Taken”
© 2010 Mary van Balen
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