When I was growing up in North Dakota, Dad often took my brother and me to a nearby lake. We'd fish for a while, and then, when we got bored, would often start skipping stones - which pretty much guaranteed no further bites for the day. For anybody.The best stones are flat and smooth; they'll sail along for six, even eight skips before coming to rest at the bottom of the lake. Unless you've experienced it, you will never understand the joys of a good skipping stone. They just feel so good in the hand: they fit in the palm of your hand, have a nice heft. And to stroke the smooth surface is particularly gratifying in its way. Some have interesting colors - or maybe you just notice whatever color it is, and it's interesting. Even gray can hold its fascination. (Boys don't think this way; the appreciation is there, the words aren't.)
You can get so fascinated in a stone that you almost forget why you picked it up in the first place. And that's where a problem sometimes comes up: do you keep it and hunt for another,
maybe less pretty rock to skip? or do you give this one a good throw, and maybe beat your personal record of skips? You know that if you throw it well, you're bound to get beautiful results. But if you do, you won't get to admire the stone anymore. It won't be yours.
Nine times out of ten, you throw it; after all, that was the point. Besides, if you put it in your pocket and take it home, what happens? It ends up in a drawer, and you won't think of it again until you're rooting around for a paper clip. You remember the rock-skipping; you forget the rock in your drawer.
- - -
I forgot about all this until almost a year ago. There was a Taize workshop here, my first chance to find out what it was all about. The theme of the day was love, drawing on John 15:11-13. Due to some recent events in my personal life, it was already a pressing theme. So the question kept turning in my head the whole day; I wanted to find some answers.
In the afternoon we had a workshop in clay molding. The leader set some music on a CD player, and instructed us to form the clay as we saw fit. (For you writers out there, a sort of freewriting session, only with clay.) I had no idea what to do with my lump of clay, so - better to just muddle through until something happens. (That's something I learned from freewriting: you can't stay truly aimless for very long. Sooner or later you'll strike out in some direction.)
After a few tries, I discovered that I could make the clay smooth by stroking it. Soon afterward I found that I could make round discs that were smooth just by holding the clay in one hand, covering it with the other, and rotating them in opposite directions.
It quickly became an obsession to make a perfectly round, flat piece, smooth all over. No depiction of anything in particular (so I thought), only the desire to make the perfect form. What was going on around me, I had no clue. The question of love was turning more now. My hands went and did their thing as I kept thinking on the question. Only gradually, as I kept trying to get it right, did the memories of skipping stones arise. The rock hefted in my hand, the soft texture of the hard stone. I remembered the joy of the act - of finding a good stone, winding up for the throw, launching it sidearm, watching it arc and arc again over the water, leaving a line of splashes behind.
The leader called for us to wind it up; I snapped out of the trance. She asked us to place our work on the table in front. I was surprised at how elaborate and - well, how big some of the pieces were. What did I have? A few crappy pieces of meaningless abstract form, and a couple small discs. They'd get lost up there. Maybe be taken as leftovers, rather than a finished piece. The leader encouraged us to talk about our work; if we wanted to, we could explain what the pieces meant. Many did, and some had quite elaborate ideas going on. I had some memories, and that's all.
I put it aside, on a nearby desk. I didn't know anybody there, I hadn't known what to expect there. I wasn't going to embarrass myself by stammering through some disjointed memories and pointing to a little lump of clay that you could barely see. No way.
We packed up and headed out for dinner. Another fellow told me he couldn't think of anything either; I wonder if he wasn't in the same boat as me. As we left the room, I noticed that my lumps were piled together with all the other pieces of leftover clay. It was just as I expected - only an explanation could have saved them, and I'd wasted my chance. Still, it hurt a little to see them treated that way. They weren't much, but I had tried to make something of them.
- - -
A couple nights ago, the memory of all this came up again. It started making more sense this time around, and I felt that somehow it was worth saying. Rather than try and analyze it to death, it seemed better to just place on the table for you to see. If it has anything to say, it will. So, for what it's worth, here you are.
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