lessons in non-attachment.

my mom and i recently took some pottery classes at a local pottery studio and one of the takeaways for me, besides some cute bowls and a mug, was how pottery is a significant lesson in "non-attachment" and how that lesson can really transfer to other facets of life.

let's talk about the pottery process for a minute: you start by cutting a piece of clay off of the slab and you wedge it like bread dough until it's this pliable ball of clay that's ready to be thrown. then, you grab a bucket of water and a sponge and you sit down at the wheel. you place your clay on the center of the wheel and you get into your throwing position -- foot on the pedal, elbows anchored on your legs, hovering directly over the wheel. then, you wet your hands and you take a deep breath as you press down on the pedal and the wheel begins to spin. as soon as you put your hands on the clay, it’s go time.

you immediately begin the muscle work of centering the clay as it spins in your hands, and that's one of the hardest parts. you're molding the clay, working with your hands and gravity to get it into this perfectly concentric, balanced gum-drop shaped ball right in the middle of the bat, and once you do, it's ready for the next step. but you can't even think about doing anything else with the clay until you get it centered. sometimes it takes four tries and four separate balls of clay before you get it centered just right. centering is hard, but it's crucial.

once your clay is centered, you can start to form and pull and manipulate the clay into whatever you're hoping to make. and sometimes midway through, you realize that it's not going at all how you planned... the bowl you were making is suddenly a plate, the cup you wanted was perfect until you accidentally nicked it with your fingernail or put too much pressure on the sides and they caved in. it's ruined, and you've got to start over. so, you take what you learned, you grab another ball and you begin again. and that's just the throwing stage!

once you’ve thrown a piece you like, it's on to the next stage. you wait a while (sometimes days) for the piece to get ‘leather hard’, then you trim it, and you prepare it for the bisque firing, hoping it survives its first visit to the kiln. if/when it does, you can then sand it, glaze it, and again pray it makes it out of the final glaze firing unscathed and un-shattered. it's crazy to me that one finished piece of pottery has to make it through so many stages of uncertainty. i think life is like that sometimes, too.

sometimes things turn out. and other times, even after so much work, so much planning, so much hope, they just… don’t.

just like in pottery…
sometimes it doesn’t work out because we didn't invest enough time or effort into the foundation.
sometimes it doesn’t work out because we tried too hard; we tried to force it.
sometimes it doesn’t work out because we looked away for one moment and we lost sight of the end goal.
sometimes it doesn’t work out because that's how life happens — it’s a continuous and bittersweet ebb and flow of things working out and things breaking; sometimes in the same moment.

now let’s talk about attachment:
it’s easy to get attached to things - the bowl you just threw out of clay, the project at work, the house that just hit the market, the cake you just put in the oven, the new person you just started dating, the snuggly dog laying at your feet every morning, the little baby growing in your belly, the job you’ve been at for 8 years, your favorite sweatshirt - attached.

for me, the attaching is the easy part. sometimes it's hard for me to grasp that things can change so suddenly - the next thing you know your boss pulled the plug on your project, you burned the cake that you baked with your last egg, the house you wanted sold, you got ghosted by the guy you were dating and they’re now dating someone else, you lost a loved one, you had to shelf a dream because the logistics fell through -- in a moment something that you hold dear can shatter like a piece of pottery on the studio floor.

i’m an empath. i'm easily attached to people, and i'm sometimes admittedly too attached to outcomes. i give myself fully and intentionally to things that matter to me and i always want things to work out well. when they don't, my innate paradigm defaults to fear or worry and i suddenly want to wrap everything i'm attached to in proverbial bubble wrap so that nothing bad will happen. but where's the growth in that? where’s the faith?

what i'm finding every single day is that it's okay to be attached to things, good even -- because being attached and invested in things that matter is what helps us savor them. and for me, that's what a life chalk full of meaning is about. in a world of speed, impatience, instant gratification and the constant search for dopamine hit after dopamine hit — stopping to savor is the antidote.

and yes, savoring comes with the caveat of potential loss, but we can't succumb to the fear of losing simply because we feel temporary protection from the pang of fear in that initial moment. that type of mentality amounts to a life on auto-pilot where we stay on the surface and cruise along unscathed and unfulfilled. it’s like eating food but never tasting it.

now more than ever it is crucial that we show up, dig in, get our hands dirty, and take an intentional deep-dive in investing in the things, the relationships, and the moments we find meaning, value and fulfillment in.

we have to stay present, we have to work to shed the habitual fear after a fall and cling without reservation to what matters — even with the ever-present risk of potentially losing what we're attached to. it's like that saying, "leave room in your heart for the unimaginable". i love that quote, but i believe that the “unimaginable” can go both ways -- the unimaginable can be blessings beyond your wildest dreams or sorrow-filled dark days.

we're never going to know the fruit on the other side of hardship if we let the residual post-loss fear creep in. it feels easy to want to crawl under the covers and peer out when the horizon seems bright and safe, but we won't grow if we don't allow ourselves to get past the sting of loss and forge the grit that helps us get back up and keep going.

certainly in today's society, the narrative is that it's okay to throw in the towel, curse the world and demand a refund on the investments we made that didn't work out. but that’s a poor methodology to me. i think we as believers know that a journey is never without sacrifice. we see all throughout scripture that some journeys inevitably include obstacles, left-turns when we wanted to go right, prayers that feel unanswered, aches and pains and longings for what was, especially when the uncertainty of what will be in the future seems at times hopeless and grim. and i think this makes it easier to not get attached or invested - it makes it easier to turn on the cruise control and go through life mundanely. but that's not where the good stuff is. i’m finding that the good stuff happens when you press on past those barriers and commit. even (and especially) in the instances where the feelings of attachment suddenly become an abrupt lesson in non-attachment, loss, or the beauty of carrying on. they’re all opportunities for growth — even if it means growing in a different direction.

do you know what happens to all the of clay that’s set aside from the mess-ups and the fails? it gets placed in a pile with all of the other used clay where it dries out and gets re-wedged into a new block of clay to be made into something new.

and what about the finished pieces of pottery that get shattered, cracked or broken? they get collected, ground down into a powder and once it’s added to water and mixed, it becomes clay that’s once again ready to be made into something new.

all of the fails, the dark days, the losses, the canceled plans and the abrupt endings can forge the way for something new to be reborn. keep pressing on, even if pressing on in the moment looks like grabbing the broom and through teary eyes sweeping up the broken pieces into the dustpan and starting again.

be encouraged that the broken pottery and the broken hearts and the broken dreams aren't the end. what’s broken can be rebuilt. and keep in mind that these lessons aren't signs that darkness is your new residence, but they may be indications that your foundation needs to be centered before you begin again.

often my lessons in non-attachment point me right back to God. He doesn't break. He doesn't ghost. He doesn't pull the rug from underneath us. He stands strong. He reciprocates our attachment 10-fold. He hears us even when we don't have the words to speak. He takes the broken pieces and rebuilds and renews with extra portions of love and grace and goodness. He is the potter, we are the clay and our lives have the opportunity to reflect the good, holy, beautiful work of His hands. i think there’s so much peace in that truth.

so friends, stop to savor when things work out and when they don’t. either way, whatever the circumstance, we’re growing — and we’re winning because of that growth. 

here‘s to the long wild way and what’s ahead 🖤✨