The space inside

Sue made this pot more than thirty years ago. 

The thumbprints still fit her thumbs, the pot balances perfectly in her palm, and as she caresses it with the thumbs and fingers that made it, she observes that the pot has not changed nearly as much as her 74-year-old hands. They are wrinkled and scarred, spotted and marked. “What mattered to me was not the walls of the pot,” she explained to me as she held it for me to photograph, “but the space inside the pot.” What it might hold. Time, space.

We made this photograph on Saturday, and on Sunday we joined a webinar called “Bearing Witness Together: Navigating Turmoil” offered by Roshi Joan Halifax and Frank Ostaseski. Sue has worked with Frank; I’ve worked with Roshi Joan. They were brilliant together as they talked about bearing witness, being compassion. Compassion, they say, feeds the one who receives it, the one who gives it, and any who witness it. Compassion is our ability to hold what arrives, to know we can hold it, and to hold it with respect. We clear ourselves out of the way to be the space of holding and tenderness for whatever comes.

Extra: a slightly larger pot, in its subtle colors.