My favorite second cousin, "Annie", just joined facebook this summer. It's surreal to suddenly see daily pictures of her life after being out of contact with her for a couple of decades. As teenagers, we used to sit together at our yearly family reunions and talk, talk, talk.
We're so similar, that sometimes when I click on her Facebook page, I feel like I'm looking at pictures of a life I used to want to live--before Catholicism changed me. My cousin is an artist. She told me that she chose to have "no more than two kids"in order to save time for her art. Meanwhile, my Carmelite prayer journey got me to the exact opposite conclusion. I keep stuffing more and more children into the center of my heart, and delegate more and more of the "essential things that used to make up Abby" to the outer rim of my life and my thoughts.
A few weeks ago, I was at Daily Mass when the reading was about God as a potter at the potter's wheel. (Is that from Isaiah?) My priest was talking about being as flexible as clay in God's hands. An idea came to me "Annie's the potter. Abby's the pot!"
I love that!
I miss being an artist sometimes. Creativity is a lovely thing. Creating something bring us close to God the "Creator." Yet even more beautiful than my old dream of writing brilliant novels late into the night or sipping white wine at my husband's Art Gallery Openings, is this idea of letting my entire life become a beautiful piece of artwork in "the Master's hands."
