The presence of a dog

I share this farm house with my English black lab named "Kai." The name comes from "kairos" which is a Greek term for "the time in which God lives." There are two kinds of time in theological terms. One kind of time is chronos time - chronos - like chronology - the clicking of seconds and minutes and hours of human clock time. This kind of time in which humans live on earth, based on the movement of the planets, did not become much of a big deal until the early 1800's when time became "money" in our western culture as factories became prevalent and clocking-in for work became the way people were managed and - soon - the way humanity was judged by itself.

Kairos time, on the other hand, is not linear like chronos time is. Kairos time does not move from second to second to minute to hour to day and to year in a line moving forward in one direction with the past lost and the future unknown. Kairos time is less like a line on a page with notches moving relentlessly in one direction. Kairos time is not an advancement of a commodity which is lost as it moves forward. Kairos time is a way of being.

Kairos time, that "time" in which God lives is not linear but is three-dimensional. Kairos time is a time of constant love, playfulness and creativity. kairos time is not gained or lost. It is not used up or spent. Kairos time is a way of being rather than the being itself. If chronos time is seen as a line with notches in it then Kairos time is "laughter at a dinner table" or "two fiends sharing their lives with each other" or "sex" or "one's favorite food."

God lives in the midst of three persons, as three persons - and God's only experience of "alone" was very brief and still, was in the context of a simultaneous experience of not being alone. God lives in a constant kaleidoscope of love and playfulness and joyful self-expression and a bit of silliness (take , for example, the platypus, the blue-footed booboe or a puppy chasing his tail!).

I named my silly, goofie, loving lab "Kai" because he draws me out of chronos time and into Kairos time. He draws me out of a time of post-industrial revolution time-cards and day-timers and into the silly, loving playfulness to which we are all called every moment and into which we may dive with reckless abandon if we give ourselves the counter-cultural permission to do so.

An artistic decision

Here is an example of the addition of a slice of agate to the lid of a large clay vessel in oxidation glaze fired to cone 6. By installing the slice atop the piece, I can let the light show off the stone so that the work holds the stone up to the light. This way I am able to celebrate not only my manipulation of the clay body, the silica and the other natural oxieds which make the piece a "pot" but I can also acknowledge that God has made the earth from which the elements come and God has made the hands which have made the pot.

Some church musicians will sign their work "deo gloria" or some other term which celebrates that the glory goes not to the artist but to the God who made the artist, his or her tools, his or her elements and his or her hands and brain. Am I an artist who "made these things" or am I an artist who simply took materilas and re-ordered them - thereby celebrating the CREATOR, the elements of the creation and the creator or "artist"? I think the latter.

artist (from etymology on line)
1580s, "one who cultivates one of the fine arts," from M.Fr. artiste (14c.), from It. artista, from M.L. artista, from L. ars (see art (n.)). Originally used especially of the arts presided over by the Muses (history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dancing, astronomy), but also used 17c. for "one skilled in any art or craft" (including professors, surgeons, craftsmen, cooks). Now especially of "one who practices the arts of design or visual arts" (a sense first attested 1747).

co-creativity

This is Blackwater Bluff, an 1848 farmhouse(left) and pottery studio (above) on a bluff over the Blackwater River. I have begun this blog in order to have a wider conversation with friends and family as well as other potters and artists. I do not expect to tell you what I am doing as much as how I am choosing to live. This blog comes out of the enjoyment I get from writing an article of the same name in the New Hampshire Episcopal News - an article the subject of which I would call "rural, domestic spirituality."

Today, I have made a decision about my pottery! The theme of using a stone on the top of lidded vessels is going to be my signature for art vessels. It allows me to be creative with my use of the elements of the earth - chemicals, clay bodies, etc. while at the same time letting "The Creator" be the final word on each pot by taking a "creation" from the earth and mounting it atop the work. It seems a good way to express the theology of co-creativity in my pottery. here is an example.