Text of Sister Maria Sena's Remarks at the Blessing of Lucy Pottery Studio

October 28, 2002.

This blessing is a way of centering Franciscan Pottery and asking God's blessing on allour works of centering and shaping clay in this Lucy Pottery Studio.

Centering is an organic process. Centering as an archetype comes through the potter's wheel and the spinning clay taking shape. But archetypes are beings of special subtlety and paradox. Centering is a way of balancing, a spiritual resource in times of conflict, an imagination centering an integration of purposes and an integration of consciousness.

I am grateful to Mother Shaun, master potter, and my Franciscan Community for this Portiuncula, this little portion, as a place for centering Franciscan Pottery in a new way, for shaping and forming clay and for providing clay therapy.

Sister Jilda Marie, Brother Leo and I are happy to be included here on the Franciscan Life Center campus with so many of our services where many persons have been "wedged, centered, formed, shaped and fired," that is, irreversibly changed from a former state.

My mother would be very happy, honored and humbled to have this studio named in her memory. Stars will shine brightly on us and our work.

There are so many marvelous stories of potters in ancient China. In one of them, a noble is riding through a town and he passes a potter at work. He admires the pots the man is making: their grace and a kind of rude strength in them. He dismounts from his horse and speaks with the potter, "How are you able to form these vessels so that they possess such beauty?" "Oh," answers the potter, "You are looking at the mere outward shape. What I am forming lies within. I am interested only in what remains after the pot has been broken."