Article April 14, 1980 Issue

Who's in charge here?

BRIAN D. WRIGHT

One of the most comical but frustrating experiences I've ever had is being outwitted by an inanimate lump of mud. But I learned a spiritual lesson out of it. When I began my education as a potter, I was amazed at how much stubborn resistance a little clay seemed to exert against my attempts to form it on a potter's wheel. As it turned, the clay jerked my hands back and forth or collapsed, unexpectedly. Clay in the hands of a skilled potter, though, seemed so much more cooperative, even totally subservient. It wasn't hard to see that the difference wasn't in the clay but in the potters.

One day a friend told me, "Don't watch what the clay is doing, watch your hands! Hold them steady, and the clay will be under control." I did, and slowly the clay became submissive and obedient.

The prophet Jeremiah said: "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel."^{Jer. 18:6;} Man and the universe are forever under the harmonious and total control of God, Spirit, who originates, operates, and maintains all existence in perfect order. Creation is the natural derivative of Spirit's perfection and allness. God has complete dominion over every action and object in His universe; and man, God's consequence, mirrors this dominion. Man is not clay but idea, derived wholly of Spirit, formed by divine Mind, God, and ruled absolutely by divine Principle.