The Raven

Subtitled: The Best Advice I’ve Gotten from My Mom This Year

My Mom is like a walking deep-thought-of-the-day calendar. I’m always bugging her to somehow record her wisdom so I can selfishly revisit it, instead of just mulling over the pieces I am able to latch onto as she doles them out. I’m sure there is far more to some of them that I’m missing because of how quick and familiar her insightful stories and anecdotes are. She has lived more lives than most people would suspect, and more than I will ever get to witness firsthand. What I have been around to see has been a privilege, and I, along with most who know her, have learned more from her gently given advice and experience than I could ever list. Today, on her 55th birthday, I’m attempting to capture one of her significant, big-picture lessons that I’ve been mulling over this year.

Happy birthday Mom.

The Raven

Mom worked in a fantastic art and gift shop for a few years. The owner was an woman who had taken on a bigger space for her own art, and set up a store filled to bursting with beautiful things, as well as a “paint your own ceramics” studio. Mom dealt with customers and all kinds of other things, which allowed the artist to spend some of her time creating.

There was one particular project of the artist’s that always stayed with Mom. A clay raven, life-size or so for Yellowknife (about the size of a chicken or slightly bigger), that took ages to painstakingly carve out of one solid block of clay. The carving was one huge step in the process, and had been done to an incredible level of quality; the raven was a beautiful piece when it was finished being shaped. The artist set the raven aside to dry in the warm furnace room with her other pieces.

One morning, Mom went in to work and saw a million shards of ceramic scattered across a work surface in the studio. She asked the artist what had happened, and she said:

“It wasn’t dry enough. I fired it too early, and the clay was still too damp. When the water left in the clay heated up in the kiln, it cracked the piece apart. I wrecked it because I didn’t wait long enough for it to dry.”

Mom reminds me this story when I’m impatient and frustrated, feeling stuck, or like life was not going at the pace I expect. So often we want to rush ahead, to do things when it works for our schedules or ideals. But there is purpose to sitting on the shelf, waiting for the time to be right. Seasons help prepare us for the next step of our process of becoming. Sometimes this feels like nothing is moving forward, but without seasons of waiting, seasons of drying, we might not withstand the firing process. Better to be a raven, intact and drying on the shelf, waiting patiently until ready for the next step.