Tag Archives: Instant Apostle

A Thousand Bottles of Tears

I have been so moved and amazed at the privilege of being involved in the Chaiya Art Awards and having the opportunity to write the book.   I interviewed the winner, the delightful Deborah Tompsett about her story. 

 

 Hand thrown clay vessels, each unique. Each pot formed from a heart-sized lump of clay from baby to adult. They are filled with handwritten messages and then re-fired.

Since the Davidic era, 1055BC, tear bottles have spoken of the sacredness of tears as messengers of grief, contrition and love.

 

 

WHERE IS GOD IN OUR 21ST CENTURY WORLD?

This piece of work was displayed at the gallery@oxo on the Southbank as a finalist in the inaugural theme based Chaiya Art Awards exhibition.   Deborah won the first prize of £10,000 for her stunning piece of work. 

 

I’m an artist specialising in ceramics.  I did a degree in fine art sculpture at Canterbury Art College in the late 70’s early 80’s.  It was a turbulent time. Sculpture was very male dominated and there was quite a bullying atmosphere amongst the tutors. It was also really difficult being a Christian.  I had been asked by my church for a piece of work and I was given permission to include it as part of my degree work.  However the head of the department went on sabbatical and the tutors refused to help her.  Fortunately the technicians were wonderful as it was a difficult piece of metalwork comprising of a large cross with thorns entwined around the top piece of the cross. The other students were really supportive, however, I found the atmosphere very difficult and didn’t do well in my final year.

I asked Deborah if she thought things had changed and she told me about a young student she had met studying at the Slade and she was bubbling with the support she was getting.  What did you do after finishing college as there must have been a feeling of great disappointment.

I thought I would go to Italy and do a course. So I worked as a home help, saved up and went. Didn’t know where I was going to stay and ended up working as an au pair able to do a part-time evening course.  I went everywhere I could to look and draw and it was a very fruitful time.

Deborah told me she was successful in becoming apprenticed to a potter in her village and learnt all the basics.  She also spent a summer in Beirut working with partially and non-sighted children making pots with them.  It was a very troubled area and hugely formative for her.

So where did you get the idea for the tear bottles?

The idea began to develop as I realised there is so much fuss in the world and we only get tiny snippets of peoples’ stories.  All these painful stories that are so private that no-one would know about but God knows and they are precious to him.  Nothing is lost.

I discovered there is an incredible tradition of tear bottles from centuries ago, tears almost actually physically held.  I thought if I made as many different bottles, each individual and each pot fashioned from a lump of clay the size of a human heart – from a baby to an adult.  The indicator of your heart size is your fist. 1000 seemed such a complete number and when people see the entire collection, it speaks to almost everyone.

 It did indeed speak to me.

     

 

 “You keep track of all my sorrows.

         You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

          You have recorded each one in your book.”

 Psalm 56:8  New Living Translation

 

 

I was curious to know what inspires Deborah.

I am inspired by poetry – TS Eliot, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Howard Hodgekin.  By other artists like Grayson Perry and Edmund de Waal, Anthony Gormley, Joan Mitchell, Philida Barlow, Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama.  Beauty is one aspect of the many characteristics art can display. Ugliness can have a strong message as well as incompleteness and many other things – all a reflection of the complexities of living life.

What was it like to win the Chaiya Art Awards 1st prize?

I felt it was amazing to be selected and exhibiting with artists I had heard of. That in itself was a privilege. Then to be in a London exhibition. On the night of the award my two sons rang me saying how proud they were of me.  It was one of the highlights of my life.  You work away to make ends meet, children, husband, busy job, beavering away to keep hope alive, then a big prize and some recognition is great.  Winning the money has opened up the possibility to have a studio away from home and I shall be in Ashburnham Place, a conference centre.  They want artists to work there and for them to contribute to the community. It looks like the tear bottles will go on semi-permanent display in their prayer centre.

I have to ask – what do you feel about the book?

I think it is a wonderfully unusual book in a completely different category to other art books.  I felt drawn in and have been hugely comfortable about giving and showing the book to others.  It is kind and welcoming.  It allows space for anyone to enjoy, to respond as they wish with nothing prescribed.   It is an opportunity to look deeper into spirituality. People are closer to God than they think.

I loved talking to Deborah and hearing a little of her story.  Her website is www.deborahtompsett.co.uk  and if you look you will see she creates much more than sculpture alone.  The following is one of her favourite quotes:

“Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand.

Love every leaf, every ray of light.

Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing.

If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all;

And when once thou perceive this,

thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it;

Until thou come at last to love the whole world

with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

The book is available from bookstores and www.chaiyaartawards.co.uk

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

 

My workspace is at the top of our house.  We have wide windows that allow uninterrupted sky, trees, birds and a view of the homes amongst which we nestle.  As I write I look again at the semi-detached house opposite me.  Weeks ago they began work on the roof.  It looks like some new windows are to be inserted and the slates replaced.  Shortly after they started, the rain came, so they stopped.  They haven’t come back.  The scaffolding remains; the ladders reach into the blue; the tarpaulins stretch across the broken roof; the piled bricks are next to the child’s swing.  What has happened? The weather has changed, and we have basked glorious heat and sunshine for several weeks now.

Unfinished business.  To begin with its messy.  Gradually it becomes so much a part of the landscape of our lives we cease to see it.  The children dance around the scaffold struts playing games of their own.  We reason to ourselves, ‘we’ve never used a room in the roof so we don’t miss anything’.  The pain of things begun and yet uncompleted dims.  We accommodate, we allow, and disappointment and regret replaces hearts of hope and expectation.

When we made our film, Shaking Dreamland it was exciting. Actors saying lines I had written. Scene after scene completed.  The wrap party a triumph.   But we didn’t have a film. Unless we pushed through what was an even harder few months of time, effort, and creativity we would hold nothing in our hands.  It needed editing; music and Foley added; without this we still had nothing.   Once concluded an audience must found.  It was a tortuous process but the end product was something to be proud of and I loved our premiere.

Whatever we start it takes discipline to finish.  Becoming a starter/finisher is important otherwise things drift, negative feelings build and a voice in your head gets increasingly strident and destructive.  This will then affect everything you do and perhaps makes you give up trying.    Here are some thoughts on being a starter/finisher:

  • Procrastination–don’t allow yourself to be deflected by the urgent, but always give the important consideration. An example is relationships. They mean so much to me, for them I will stop, allow myself to be interrupted and go with the flow. However I will then return to the task I set myself.
  • Never happy with what you produce? Does the voice in your inner ear trip you up constantly? Does it tell the truth?  Choose to listen to a truthful voice.
  • When you start something decide what the goal is and make sure it is achievable. Be specific.  I elect to write write a novel.   My end product is a manuscript.
  • Learn to discipline yourself. As a writer I am required to write words on a page.
  • Don’t begin too much. One step at a time.   Attending to the small tasks in life helps learn the habit of finishing.  Do all the dishes; pay all the bills on time; do that swim regularly.
  • Make short-term goals in a long-term process and celebrate hitting each one. We don’t celebrate enough.  I am trying to learn.
  • Allow yourself to recognise when you set up something you cannot do and make a decision. You can stop. You can change the goal.
  • It is hard to finish something important to us because then we open ourselves up to criticism. Whenever I create I am nervous how it will be received. I always want to create something beautiful and perfect and it never is.    I put my heart and soul into my creating and I can do no more.  ‘I have done what I can’–to vaguely quote Arthur Ashe.  I can live with that whatever comes my way.

We may leave business unfinished, but strangely I have discovered, it won’t leave us and without attention often turns into a stumbling block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 Steps to becoming trustworthy

Trust one who has tried (Virgil)

To have good friends requires being a good friend.  Being a good friend is built on trust.  So what does being trustworthy mean?  Trust is an elusive component in life, but essential.  Building trust takes time, effort and commitment. 

  1. Be there. You have to spend time with a person to gain trust. Someone who hangs in with another however tough things get.   Ready with a word of kindness but also practical.  Our actions speak so much louder than our words.   We must allow our lives to get interrupted at the most inconvenient of times when the person on the phone, or at the door, needs our company.
  2. Learn to listen. When you are with someone do not allow electronic or any other interruption. At that moment they are the most important person in the world. 
  3. Be honest but with kindness – say what you think. It is amazing how difficult we find it to tell the truth in all circumstances.  We make a mistake and rather than owning up we lie.  Don’t deceive people or tell lies to make ourselves something we are not.  Most of us hate confrontation so rather than express what we are truly feeling, we say nothing.  It is so difficult to build a relationship with someone who will not say what they feel.  It makes both parties feel insecure. 
  4. Do what you say you will do. If you make a promise keep it or if it becomes impossible say so and apologise. Learn to be efficient – some are better at this than others, but we can all learn to do better at what we put our hands to. Be punctual. Meet deadlines. Be reliable.
  5. Be loyal. Be someone your friend knows will never betray them.   In any and all circumstances you have their back.
  6. Speak well at all times in all situations. Don’t jump in and say you can do something only to realise you cannot. If you are asked to help and you are unable to, say so. We are allowed to say no.
  7. No gossip. When people share themselves with us, they must know they will not be talked about when they leave the room. The confidences that have been aired will not be expressed to anyone else.
  8. Be empathetic. Learning to stand in another’s shoes and see what the world looks like from their viewpoint.  It means we can stand with our friend, utter words that will soothe and heal because we understand.
  9. Choose close friends carefully. Go for quality not quantity.  We can befriend many people, but not all people can or should be close friends. 
  10. Learn to say sorry. Take responsibility for all we do including the bad things, the wrong things, and the mistakes. Never blame others.
  11. Avoid denial. When things happen that disrupt a relationship don’t push it under the carpet. Face what has happened, talk openly and find a way through.  If we fail to confront difficulty eventually we will lose each other and the relationship.
  12. Stay consistent. Hold fast to the values of trustworthiness and don’t allow misunderstanding or unkindness to sway you. 

Learning to be trustworthy is a journey. I have made so many mistakes in my life. Every single point I have written about I have at some time done the opposite.  However, I have learnt.  I continue to learn.  I want to be a trustworthy person, an authentic faithful friend, and treat the relationships I have as the treasure I have discovered they are.

How to flourish

This is a holly tree. It is not remarkable.  When we brought the bonsai from our previous home, the plant looked as if it was dying.  The greenery had gone.  There remained a few scattered individual leaves.  It was a tree due for termination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My determined husband placed it in front of our new house, to give the shrub another season.  Imagine my surprise when over the next months this happened.  In its fresh position it flourished.

  1. Love–we all long to be loved and accepted as we are. Sometimes we feel this is our right.  True for a child.  However, as an adult we need to become lovers in order to give and to accept being loved.  Life is challenging, painful, distressing, and alienating.  Choosing to love and also to receive love releases the oil of gladness into our hearts and minds
  2. Community–we are social beings and isolation and aloneness cripple us. It is not only elderly people who suffer from loneliness.  In our busy, over-stretched lives, making time for genuine friendships is something we all need to do.  Failing to give time is detrimental to health and well-being.
  3. Encouragement–the challenge is to discipline what comes out of our mouths and our fingers. Our tongues can indulge in gossip and tear into people, our fingers can do the same through social media. This is destructive and upsetting.  I remember gossiping about someone and then they walked into the room.  Shamed I vowed I would try never to gossip again. 
  4. Work–whether paid or unpaid, we all need gainful employment. Earning money is vital.  We need money to live, but work is also about well-being. Volunteer to help somewhere if you cannot find work.  I have done some boring and excruciating paid jobs, but it was therapeutic to give my best.  The work I loved I did after hours crucial because that work filled me with well-being.

Are we flourishing?  Do we need to change our position?  Do we need to change our environment?  Can we assist others to flourish?

We all need back-up!

Remember “About a Boy”? I’m recalling the film of the book by Nick Hornby.  Marcus, a 12-year-old somewhat odd son of an unstable single mother recognises they need friends or ‘back up’ when things get tough.  They do as his mother is so unhappy she tries to die. However, a small unlikely community grows around them, including a confirmed bachelor Will, terrified of growing up. When the bad times happen friendship sees everyone through. 

Why is community important?                                           

1. We need each other:   nurturing human connection is essential for our well-being. We need to be touched, to be hugged a certain number of times daily. I’m not talking about sex, but about human beings appreciating and loving each other.

2. Be a friend: Let’s not wait for people to befriend us, why not foster friendship ourselves. We don’t have to do anything grand. One of my friends rarely had someone round for a meal because entertaining was so stressful for her.  She believed she must clean the house completely;  provide outstanding food; be the perfect host.  She had a difficult full-time job, so she was exhausted before she began.

3. Eat together:   we all need to eat, why not organise mealtimes to eat with others? We have had people living with us for years and we tried to eat together.  The quality of food depended on when I shopped but there was food of some description!  People didn’t care. They loved being invited.

4. Know your neighbours:   we need each other.  Do you have elderly neighbours? Can you check on them, perhaps pop in with a pack of biscuits to share a cup of tea?  Elderly people are among the loneliest in our society.  When I walk my streets I remember those who live around me. I feel I belong.  Are we too busy to stop and have a chat?   Send an invitation to neighbours for a Christmas drink it might surprise you who you meet. 

5. Volunteer:   doing something positive, serving your community is a great privilege. It brings a sense of belonging, of ownership and has certainly helped me to understand and care about the people I live amongst. On occasion we band together.   I lend my voice as we stand against what we view as destructive initiatives in our neighbourhood.

6. Life is more than me:   let’s allow ourselves to be part of something greater than ourselves. If my life was only about myself, it would be paltry indeed.

7. Living without fear:   being part of, and living within a community brings a sense of safety and security.  I know my streets, I love my streets, I love the people who live here and I pray for us regularly.