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Making Space

Astonished, I end our zoom meeting and sit, staring into space. My proffered gift has been accepted. He’ll pay for shipping. All I need to do is select the pieces that will fit the large cabinet that he has purchased for their permanent display in The Museo.

Now the inner work begins. It’s time to let my extensive pottery collection go to a good home. I need to make space for something new to come and I want to keep the pieces together as a record of this artist’s unique method of glazing. Every time I went home to visit my parents, I bought one or two pots because I loved the simple beautiful shapes and his deep commitment to intentional development. It was an inadvertent collection, gathered over a 40-year period, spanning his most productive years and now I know those beautiful pots symbolized my own deepening sense of call in a different form through Church of the Saviour.

In the Advent text, John lays out the path to new life in plain speech.* If you have two coats, give away one. Too much food? Share with your neighbor. Collecting taxes? Take only what’s owed and no more. Have legal authority? No blackmail, no bribes. And I might add no revenge harassment either. The action of release makes room for spiritual renewal. 
 
I expect that letting go of my pottery collection will make space for something new to be born in me too. Is there something you can release during this Advent season? Something that is taking up psychic or spiritual space in your heart? 
--Marjory Zoet Bankson, InwardOutward Editor

“Stripping,” poem by Jan Richardson in Night Visions: searching the shadows of advent and christmas, p. 41.

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