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| Picture taken from http://www.sha.org/bottle/body.htm |
Last weekend, we talked about glass. Glass, in its hot liquid form, on the edge of a blowpipe after we collected it from the molten in the furnace and kept turning the pipe so it wouldn’t drip. It was rolled into a solid cylinder on a marble table and reheated again in a glory hole before came the first blow. Lips upon pipe, all breath sent down a long steel pole to create a bubble within the solid molten. Then, back to the glory hole to reheat. After, another blow, this time to expand the molten into something resembling a sphere. From there, the process could be repeated—the reheating, the blowing, the marvering and blocking—all while constantly turning the pipe to keep things centered, to make whatever you chose to. Or, for those limited, whatever you could possibly churn out before the glass became too thin, too cool, or too lopsided.
We remembered our days in that lab, all skin covered and wet socks on our hands. We remembered seeing it done by our professor and the excitement that came from what seemed to be a relatively simple procedural process. He made a vase. He made a glass. He made a flower. He made and made, on and on, beauty again and again displayed effortlessly, as he sought to teach the craft to those willing.
Three years later, I saw the bookcase that once stood in the apartment we called ours. My best friend and I, taking one last college class together, produced a collection that would stand in no other gallery other than our own. I remembered our collection of lopsided bubbles, vases thicker on one side than the other, flowers that could be called somewhat abstract, and a glass that was triumphant just because it made it out in one piece. We participated in a beautiful craft over the course of 10 weeks, but it was much harder and far more humbling than we ever anticipated it to be. We found that when working with glass, you could get two out of the three elements right, but there would always be the third one that would trip us up—whether it would be the temperature of the glass not remaining optimal, air holes or uneven structure within the molten, or forgetting to. Always. Keep. Turning. The. Blowpipe. So from week to week, we would learn and improve slightly, but never get anywhere close to our professor who had been doing it for decades.
In my last two years of high school, I focused on ceramic work, and got into using the potter’s wheel. In that, there were also three main elements—thickness, whether it was centered, and moistness—but the difference between clay and glass is that clay is far more forgiving in its creation process. You can always stop the potter’s wheel to observe it, add more water, and then turn it back on and continue. In glass, the process must keep moving in some forms at all times in the creation of a piece.
I found it fitting that ceramic work came in high school—a time when things are markedly more black and white, easier viewed as “success” or “fail,” and the fact that the learning process was far more forgiving. Again, I found it fitting that glassblowing came at the end of college—a time where my world was to change with marriage, with moving away, with a year of transition, and a time of still being in some form of transition three years later—the process has been much more dynamic, much more involved, and harder and humbling than anticipated at many moments. It’s as if questions are asked constantly. There is always some form of evaluation going on, whether intrinsically or externally. There is always some progression of moving forward, mixed in with others that remain stationary for a while, and like a glassblower with a pipe of molten glass, you’re faced with answering one of many questions that will lead to a different result this time around—do you keep blowing? Do you open it up? Do you add color? Do you warm it up for a while? Do you call it done and move onto the next piece?
I remember my parents often saying when I was growing up and thought I knew almost everything, that when I got older, the world wouldn’t be as black and white and the more that I learned, the more that I knew I had to learn. We have heard words like these generations over generations, yet we each have to reach this realization for ourselves. There are so many things at play in a given time. So, we seek to create to the best of our ability at the present, with hopes that we will grow.
My husband and I look at each other in conversation across the glass dinner table often—so glad and thankful for what God has done, where He has placed us, what we are able to do and be a part of, yet we are often exhausted in it as well. We attempt to physically rest as we can, but moreso, spiritually rest in the One whom we believe to be certain, unchanging. He is an ever patient Father and teacher, yet also one with a passion of love and jealousy as uncontainable as the molten glass in the furnace. I know He is zealous for my affections and my time. And as I’ve been reminded lately in the feeling of being overwhelmed by the prospect of adding more things to do on top of what I am already doing—it’s not about adding more things, it’s about doing more with what He has already placed before me, what He already has me doing. Not that this entry is ultimately about glass—but for final metaphor’s stake, it would be something like registering for a glassblowing class again the following quarter if I were still in college, and laboring in the good days and hard days. I would seek to continue learning and improving in that which was difficult, because that is often the process of ultimately making something beautiful and of worth, regardless of the form it eventually ends up taking.
