Jer 18:1-6
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Allowing Ourselves to be Remade
Do I recognize that I am still clay, not a kiln-fired pot? Can I consider letting go of all I have invested in some aspect of myself and starting over? What’s to keep my fragile self-respect from collapsing and never taking form again? Do I trust that loving hands will remake something beautiful?
Entertaining the idea of admitting that I have not taken my intended shape can be shame-inducing in our culture that lionizes the “self-made-person,” much less asking the divine to reshape me.
Yet the people I admire most have admitted that their lives were out of control and were in need of handing themselves over to a higher power.
Our culture seems allergic to this sort of humility, dominated by leaders with fragile egos who can’t help but blame others for both personal and public ills.
—Michael Coffey is the Executive Director of Casa Romero Renewal Center, a Jesuit, urban, bilingual spirituality center in the central city of Milwaukee.
Prayer
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
—John Donne