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Archives for February 2013

Barro Negro: Black Pottery

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

When we went to Oaxaca, our youngest son, Jeremy, who spent his honeymoon with his wife in this Mexican state—and who runs an immigration counseling service with a high number of Mexican clients, and who teaches Spanish as an adjunct professor at Wheaton College—gave us a list of items he wanted us to pick up for him and bring home. We actually spent a great deal of our free time roaming the mercados and artisan communities looking for the things he included on his list.

The barro negro (“black clay”) pottery, at the top of Jeremy’s list, are typical of Oaxacan pottery. In fact, the Valley of Oaxaca, in which the capital city resides, is renowned for its pottery-making tradition. What is amazing about barro negro is that it is turned without a potter’s wheel. Doña Rosa, now deceased, pioneered the turning of pots on a clay dish stacked on another clay dish, which is turned upside down and cemented to the ground with a plug of wet clay. The size and shape of the pots has been expanded by Doña Rosa’s many descendants, but the means of turning the pots remains the same. With wide eyes and open mouths, David and I and our eldest son watched a pot-making demonstration where the potter turned out what eventually became a large pitcher—without the traditional wheel. The little town of San Bartolo de Coyotepec is an artisan pottery village. Here we found the black pottery requested by our youngest son who had sent us off to Oaxaca with a list in hand.

The story of Doña Rosa intrigues me because it is one of the many examples I’ve discovered of artists who have found a way to create beauty despite the obstacles of their lives—lack of training or lack of artistic resources. In fact, there is a whole tradition known as “outsider art”; people, often uneducated, often impoverished, who create amazing expressions of that God-given urge outside of the parameters of the academic or recognized artistic community. Whenever I run into “outsider art” I am reminded that Scripture tells us we are all made in the image of God. This deep need to express, to create, to form, to design—no matter how, exactly, it finds its expression, is to me evidence that those Genesis passages are true. Even if we don’t recognize that God is the Original Creator of All, this urgency to emulate—sometimes without training, even without paints or brushes or clay or fabric—the God who is the Originator is evidence enough to me. I delight in the thought of a Mexican woman figuring out how to make clay pots without a potter’s wheel, and stacking an upright clay dish on top of an upside down clay dish, throwing the clay on the stack, turning the upright plate with one hand and pressing a hole in the clay mound with her other hand, then thinking to herself, Yes. This will work. This will work indeed.

I cannot deny the existence of a God when there are so many proliferating, sometimes profligate, examples of the need, of the urge, of the deep desire to create. “And God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image.’ … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’” —Genesis 1:26-27.

I spy God!

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The God HuntAward-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Nacimientos All Around

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

During the Christmas season, in Oaxaca, elaborate nacimientos are built in the courtyards and open plazas and churches around the city as both a cultural and spiritual exercise, reminders that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ. In this culture, as in our American culture, one wonders what kind of meaning people attach to this practice.

In the city of Oaxaca (both the state and the capital have the same name) in Mexico, we were strolling one evening and turned in at the gate of what we discovered was the beautifully restored Ex Convento de Sao Paolo, now dedicated to the development of reading. Turning in casually and then with mounting curiosity through the gates, we discovered a spacious courtyard bordered on one side by a modernized glass room. In here we discovered a huge Nativity that showed scenes from the life of Christ, beginning with the life of Mary and His earthly grandmother Anne and ending with the Flight into Egypt, the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Visitation of the Three Kings.

Beautifully created, a display of molds showed how the figures were cast, and we took our time absorbing each of the vignettes. I noticed a handsome Mexican man, guiding three of his children around the displays. Because he was speaking in Spanish, of course, I caught little of what he was saying. I’m pretty sure, however, that he was explaining what each of the stories meant to his eager and entranced offspring.

What a wonderful way to teach the Scripture, I thought, and remembered the exquisite Nativity, lit softly at night in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. A missionary friend sends us a small santon each year as a thank-you for our support of her. This French tradition includes a Nativity toward which all the townspeople are traveling—the washer-woman and the candle-maker, the bread man and the shepherd, the miller and the butcher. This set I leave out year-round, high enough in a little cabinet that it is out of the reach of my younger grandchildren. I love my collection of santons and will admit that I’ve coveted the large, expensive sets signed by recognized artists that adorn the shop windows in little French towns. Because those are out of my economic reach, perhaps I appreciate even more the miniature santon that gets added year by year from our friend.

I brought back a Nativity from Alcala, Spain, and display a beautiful ceramic rendition of the Holy Family on a table near the fireplace in the living room, given to me by another friend. David and I find unusual Nativities as we travel—a set for granddaughter Joscelyn we discovered in a shop in Sedona, Arizona, last spring, and another southwestern Nativity for her brother Ayden, with cowboys and Indians visiting the crèche.

Last year I came across a Nativity set handmade by a local artisan. The stable is crafted from discarded whiskey boxes and all the figures are hand-sewn. I didn’t have enough money to make the purchase, but this past season I bought the crèche and the Holy Family and the Three Wise Men and a camel. I figured I could buy the rest next year. This all for our family that has the youngest grandchildren. After I brought them home and showed them to my husband, he said, “Oh, just order the rest of the set. That way, they’ll have a complete Nativity.” So at his urging, I ordered a donkey and a cow and an angel and a shepherd.

Having been in Oaxaca, however, and having observed that father so carefully commenting on each scene in the extended nacimiento, it made me realize that it is not enough to have Nativity sets; we need to establish a tradition of telling our children what the Nativity set represents. (This is one of those “duh!” moments that frequents my human experience.)

And so, when this last week, I packed up the Nativity to ready it for its journey from our basement family-room (where it was displayed during this last Christmas) to my son’s attic, where it will be stored for the next holy season, I included a picture book that tells the story of Christmas—a tool for my adult children to establish a better way of keeping the tradition of the nacimiento than I have kept it in the past.

I hold the memory of that father and his three children because it reminds me that all of life is filled with moments that allow us to teach the ones we love about the God who also loves us. We just have to learn to pay attention to the opportunities.

I spy God!

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The God HuntAward-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Tres Rejos Majos: Oaxaca, Mexico

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

Cirilo Leon, who lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, and comes up each March for the gardening season immigration and returns home each October, has become a friend. He lives with us rent-free during those months in return for a couple hours of help around our yard each week.

Cirilo maintains that Americans “don’t know how to hold a fiesta.” So when we finally were able to clear our schedule this January and travel to Oaxaca to meet his family, Cirilo met us at the airport and announced, “Oh, my cousin is having a fiesta. You can come!” We arrived in Oaxaca on January 5th. Tres Rejos Majos (or Dia de los Rejos—“Three Kings Day”) is January 6th. Cirilo explained that this is the end of the Christmas season and celebrations.

A walk the evening that we arrived in the zocalo (the nearby public square) on January 5 convinced us that this day, indeed, was a national event. Beautifully sheltered by huge overhanging trees, Christmas lights filled the climate night. Families joyfully celebrated being together. Children’s toys—balloons and balls and windup animals—were available from vendors. The band shell was in the middle, two street sides of the square were lined with diners in open-air restaurants, and strolling musicians and a marimbist added to the ambiance. Mothers pushed infants in strollers; fathers hoisted children onto their shoulders. Grandparents chatted and kept watchful eyes on their progeny (the teens as well as the toddlers). Pathways, broadly laid out with flat stones, were lined with rows of poinsettias. It was an exquisite time to visit Mexico.

The next morning, January 6, Cirilo picked us up to take us a half-hour out of Oaxaca city to his home in the small town of La Cienega. Here for the first time we met his wife, Lucia, who was making tortillas on the open fire in the courtyard of our friend’s compound. A master gardener, Cirilo had planted as many fruit trees as his half-acre plot would hold. We also met his three sons, the goats and sheep, the three pet dogs and the chickens.

Over lunch we kept hearing booming noises. “That’s my cousin,” Cirilo explained. “We go there later.” Cirilo’s cousin, I was to learn, was one of some 80 cousins, 30 of whom I think we met. “He has fiesta for friends and family today.”

Sure enough, later in the afternoon, we walked around the corner to the gated compound where Cirilo’s cousin lived. Dancers in traditional costumes were entertaining the gathering crowd. Eventually, the number of “friends and family” totaled some 600 folks (there are only about 1500 people in the town). Like clockwork, soft drinks were dispensed to the crowd. The first of several bands played (loudly), the dancers ended their performance, and tables were set up all over the dance floor and the bare earth. Appetizers were served—tortillas and salsa, bowls of soup. At that moment (by this time the tequila and mescal were also flowing), two huge barbecued bulls were hoisted and carried in by men in the family. We were seated in a place where we could see the women pulling the meat with their bare hands, stirring huge pots of rice, slicing avocados and green peppers and serving up endless trays, each bearing about eight very-full paper plates.

Talk about organization. I’ve fed crowds of people all my life, but I know I couldn’t pull off this kind of event—at least not without a family who knows how to throw a fiesta! “Who pays for all this?” I questioned one of the cousins, a young man with good-enough English to converse with me because he had worked in New York for several years. He explained that the host paid for the bands and the bulls; everyone else in the family (think at least 200 people) brought everything else. I watched as more crates of soft drinks were carried through the crowd and as more trays, now bearing desserts, were distributed.

By 5:30, David was beginning to experience something like tinnitus from the excessive noise of the band. We thought that if we left early, Cirilo could drive us into Oaxaca and return home for the rest of the fiesta (which we learned went onto about 2:00 a.m. the next morning—at least, that’s when Cirilo and Lucia got home.)

I have come to the conclusion that Cirilo is right—we Americans do not know how to have a fiesta. But I also look at this event with gratitude in my heart. As is the experience of most tourists who travel anywhere, Americans who visit Mexico don’t get the opportunity to plunge into the heart of the culture. David and I (and our oldest son, Randall, who turned 50 in January—as I turned 70 the same month, and joined us for a mutual birthday journey) were welcomed into the heart of the culture. Our participation in this Tres Rejos Majos fiesta, made possible by our friends Cirilo and Lucia, was an enchanting introduction into life behind the gates. We were brought into the embrace of Cirilo’s extended family, talked the best we could given our language deficiencies but somehow made our way just the same, had a driver who showed up at our door each morning and was eager to expose us to the sights and customs of his country, where we participated in the music and laughter and jokes and history and fell in love with Oaxaca.

I think I will always celebrate life’s fiestas a little differently from now on. Give thanks to God who loves all cultures and delights whenever his children get a glimpse of the riches in the diversity He has created.

W.H. Auden once wrote, “Bless what there is for being.” I bless the people of Oaxaca with their love of color and their exquisite handicraft, with their five kinds of mole and endless amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables. I bless them that they know how to be present at life’s parties. I bless what there is for being.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

The God HuntAward-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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