Meditations on a Pitcher
Form:
The most content-laden vessel form in ceramic, a pitcher, is the perfect personification of our own position and membership in society. The anatomy of a pitcher carries the metaphor further and includes a lip, throat, body, etc. These members must all operate in concert with one another to maximize the aesthetic and functional facets of the pitcher’s life of service.
Foundation:
Good evening, my name is Herrick H. Smith and I am a potter here in Saint Augustine. I have come before you this evening to share some meditations derived from my experience with clay, specifically, concepts related to identity, containment, and outpouring.
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
To begin hyper-local, specifically here in St. Augustine, people have been working with clay for at least 5,000 years. To put that in context, that’s 3,000 BC and before the Celts invaded Brittan, before the Maya settled the Yucatan, before king Tut and even before the time of Abraham. Again, that is right here, in this county, beginning with what’s know as the “orange period”, native peoples have been forming and firing clay objects for millennia. In fact, my first introduction to clay was walking on a beach on this map, finding pottery shards, and playing in the clay by the river’s edge. This began a lifelong exploration in clay despite several intermissions exploring other careers.
Regardless of your religious beliefs you have no-doubt heard the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”.
This passage from the Book of Common Prayer, captures the sentiment and conveys the temporal and ultimately insubstantial nature of our existence on this earth. However, the sense of being more than mere clay transcends societies and the desire to fill one’s life with meaning is instinctual to our existence. The mixed metaphor of our human condition and that of a vessel of clay is one that has existed for millennia across cultures and is used both for blessing and cursing depending on the context.
The vessel of clay has held both the common and the uncommon throughout the centuries and the same media is used for both a chamber pot and funerary urns.
Service:
To return to the pitcher, it is designed for serving. Service is the foundational grounds from which the formal design elements take their cue. Every element of construction (including aesthetics) is subservient to the greater function of filling an other. If just one component of the arrangement is out of place, as in music, the entire composition is prevented from fulfillment. That compositional whole allows the vessel to achieve realization yet remains definitionally an object of service. A Pitcher is designed for serving.
Fullness
Inescapably and fundamentally formed for filling others through the emptying of itself, the sequence begins first with containment and then outpouring. Ceramic, inflexible and brittle, is limited in its ability to contain, to the hard confines of the volume. By contrast, the most-humble, down-trodden, and unexpected members of our society are often those who contain the most hidden forms of fullness. A pitcher may only fill from that with which it is already full.
Further, a pitcher must be constantly re filled to allow the form to full fil the designed function. Otherwise, it will lose both its explicit and implicit function.
My prayer is that one would curate that with which one is filled, as it is from the fullness of the heart that the mouth speaks. Making sure only what is edifying flows up from the fullness, past the lips and into the lives of those around us. Seek to fill yourself with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
This is the catch, that fullness, if not closely monitored with meditation and self-reflection can also pour poison into the lives of those whom you love most. All manner of creatures have been tamed by man but who can tame the tongue? From the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. Or consider a ship, though driven by strong winds, the rudder takes it wherever the pilot wants to go.
Extra admiration must therefore be given to those breaking the chains of generational sin and damming up the flow of trauma into their children. My own grandfather had the reputation of being a rather harsh man. Yet, when the critique grew too heavy, my dad was quick to point out the links in the chains of physical abuse that my grandad fought so hard to free from around his family.
We have a choice. The well from which we draw to fill the vessel of ourselves, has generational implications and what we allow to be poured from ourselves can change the trajectories of entire families. One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. Can both fresh and salt water flow from the same spring?
Finally, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, consider these things.
Thank you.