Made by Hand: A Meditation with Clay
by Marjory Zoet Bankson
Before we begin this meditation, look around your house for a handmade bowl or mug which you can hold during this meditation. It can be a child’s creation or a highly finished piece—whatever you have. If you have clay or even play dough, that will work too. Throughout this meditation, I will refer to this handmade object as “the clay.”
Now find a comfortable place to sit, holding your clay cupped in your hands. As you breathe in, notice the ease and naturalness of your breath, and as you breathe out, let go of anything you do not need in order to be present, here and now.
With each gentle breath, in and out, let your eyes close or go soft. Let your mind rest in the clay.
Now come with me back to the beginning of the story… starting with stardust and light from the original explosion… 15 billion years ago.
It’s a story of change and adaption, collapse and renewal, held by the clay.
You are holding the whole story of creation in your hands.
About 5 billion years ago,* our solar system began to take shape around the sun… and earth found itself in the middle, just the right size for gravity to hold a thin blanket of atmosphere around churning waters and volcanic continents… Earth was a stark blue-grey landscape of stone and water.
Water erodes stone to make sand, but clay requires the SLIME OF DECAY to make the stone particles sticky and pliable. In other words, clay requires the life and death of plants to become what it is … soft, pliable, and able to hold an impression.
About 1 billion years ago, in a shallow pool at the edge of a barren rocky continent, life began when one cell devoured another. The act of eating was accompanied by the release of waste, and the cycle of life and death was born. Death and decay made clay possible.
Clay began to form in thin layers at the bottom of puddles and ponds, quiet enough for the clay platelets to settle and merge into a sticky layer of soil.
Pottery shards recall our human capacity for play and imagination as well as utility and need. The beginnings of art and expression became possible.
About 370 million years ago, amphibians ventured out of the sea and took their first steps on the land. The age of dinosaurs began. Clay held their footprints and bones.
Other layers settled into those footprints, and the weight of more layers created fossils … which tell us the story of their lives ,… and so clay became the earth’s memory.
Species developed… and disappeared. Glaciers came… and went. Clay continued to record the development of life on earth.
Human beings developed about 300,000 years ago. They settled near streams and rivers for fresh water.
Along those streams, veins of clay were exposed. Someone discovered that raw clay could be smeared inside a basket to hold water, and someone else discovered that fire could make raw clay hard and water-tight.
Fire burns away the organic material in clay, leaving the mineral structure that is hard as stone – because it is stone again… in a new shape… made by human hands.
Early humans decorated clay bowls—just for FUN! Pottery shards from these early humans tell of our human capacity for play and imagination as well as utility and need. The beginnings of art and expression become possible.
Cave drawings date back 35,000 years. Red and ochre clay were used to record animal shapes and human handprints. They give us a record of keen observation and a religious sensibility, a sense of wonder and relationship with the mysteries of life and death.
Early forms of writing began to be preserved and small figurines held prayers for fertility.
Ancient civilizations began to arise some 4,000 years ago, and the first written records of what became the Bible date back to the time of King David, around 3,000 years ago… much of it recorded on clay tablets.
Because clay can be both pliable and permanent, it has been used for everything from writing to brick-making, from cave drawing to cooking vessels. Every culture has left its mark in some form of clay.
And the clay that you are holding today carries the whole story of creation, 15 billion years in the making.
Just sit with the wonder of clay—so common and yet so miraculous.
Then take a few minutes to write or draw your own experience with the clay.
*Chronology from Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry, The Universe Story (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).
Marjory Zoet Bankson is a published author, working artist, and seasoned spiritual guide. As a skilled potter, her biodegradable burial urns have been shown in Baltimore and Washington, DC. A graduate of Radcliffe College (Harvard University), Marjory has an MA in American history from the University of Alaska and an honorary doctorate from Virginia Theological Seminary—cited for her work in lay ministry. Some of her books include Call to the Soul, Creative Aging, The Soulwork of Clay, and most recently, Stalking the Spirit, a history of Seekers, a Church of the Saviour community in DC., where she is a Steward and regularly preaches and teaches. She and her husband, Peter Bankson, have been married more than 60 years and currently live in Washington, DC.
