Franciscan Novice Sister Leslie Fills Up Empty Bowls

Franciscan Novice Sister Leslie participates in ‘Let’s Fill Up the Empty Bowls in Our Community’ sponsored by the Two Rivers Optimist Club supporting the Two Rivers Ecumenical Pantry, a food pantry supported by 12 churches of 9 different denominations in the Two Rivers and Mishicot, WI areas.

Working with clay can be a very meaningful experience. Since, I generally struggle with it, it is an experience of not giving up and being humble enough to try again.

Patience is a requirement for pottery. I had the experience of taking a ceramics class last semester with Sr. Mariella and it took at least two months of trying before anything actually came of my work at the wheel. It took me two months of trying to make one little pot. That pot ironically got smashed against the wall due to an art accident. I could have given up but I chose not to. I took my failures in stride and it means much more to me that now I can more often than not sucessfully throw a pot on the wheel. I had to swallow a lot of pride during that semster of ceramics. It is not fun to continually try to do somthing that I am not good at. However, I grew to like pottery and what was once stressful became fun.

The best part in my opinion is glazing the pots after they have been created. I like to use Over Glaze because it looks completely different going into the kiln than it does coming out. Glazing is an adventure and it is a lot like life. I have a general idea of how things will work out but I can’t be sure of how one glaze is going to react with another glaze. Sometimes the results are wonderful and other times they are really ugly. However, I get another chance to try to fix my mistakes. I can put another glaze or two on the pot, refire it, and hope that it turns out this time. Somtimes it might take five fireings before it is just right. However, each layer of glaze adds interest to the pot. It is all a part of what the pot is to become. Just like life some of the worst mistakes can turn into beautiful relationship building expereinces or maybe just a good lesson that helps one go into the future wiser.