TURNING
THE SOUL
Isaiah 64:1-8
Matthew 9:9-13
"We are the clay and you are the potter."
"I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."
The Abbot, who recently read my new book Sawdust
and Soul, asked me to give a meditation on "turning the
soul." So I have been obedient and
prepared one. But first I want to
demonstrate how not to interpret the
Bible, just in case some of you missed the workshops on Biblical Interpretation
during the past fortnight. We know that we can prove most things from the Bible,
and we also know that it is not a good idea to read into the Bible what is not
there. And that, of course, was the
danger in doing what the abbot asked me to do. For where in the Bible is wood turning
mentioned, let alone turning the soul?
One possible text comes from Ecclesiastes
" So I turned -- to consider wisdom and madness and folly." (2:8-13) After all, there is good reason to I go into
my workshop to consider wisdom and folly while I turn. But no, that is not what the text is about
however you look at it. But there are
other texts I could possibly use.
"You shall not turn -- to the right or to the left.."(Deut.
5:32) ""Turn -- to me and be
gracious to me." (Psalm 119:132)
"Turn now, all of you --- from your evil ways." (Jer. 18:11),
an appropriate text for Lent. "I
will turn ---their mourning into joy." (Jer. 31:13) And Jesus words: "Turn the other
cheek." It does not take a biblical
scholar to know that none of these have to do with woodturning. so it would be
a travesty of Biblical interpretation to use any of them for my meditation. The fact is, the English word
"turn" can be used in different ways:
"take your turn," or "he had a turn for the worse,"
being two more of them, and wood-turning another. No wonder people who are not English-speakers
find learning English rather difficult. Yet there is a connection between the
different uses of the word. For turning
means to rotate or change direction. And
both are appropriate in thinking about turning the soul."
Woodturning is all about rotation, for it
is as the wood goes round and round that you are able to cut, shape and sand
it. Which provides a clue to what the
abbot thinking about when he asked me to talk about "turning the
soul?" Maybe he had just read the
following passage from Sawdust and Soul:
You can imagine my excitement ... as a bowl begins to take shape on my
lathe, dictating its future form as much as I do, as though I am all the time
consulting with the wood, moulding it like clay on a wheel according to its own
inbred character. This is the fun, joy and wonder of turning. I also think this
is what ... Christian formation is about: allowing the uniqueness of each
person to be brought to the surface, enabling the inside core, or soul, to
reveal itself in its own way and time, until the amazing grain that lies within
is seen in all its beauty and radiance. Turning bowls is a parable of
discerning and enabling the growth of embodied soul.
Even though woodturning is not the same
process as working with clay on a potter's wheel, there is a striking
resemblance. And the picture of clay being shaped by a potter is used more than
once to describe the way in which God shapes the life of his people, and our
own lives as well.
This past week or two Anton and I have been
making a large eight-seater dining room table.
My main task was to turn the four legs.
There are two basic ways to do that.
In furniture factories they use a duplicating lathe. This means that every leg will turn out the
same, in other words, they will all be identical. But when you turn each leg separately, as I had
to do, they are never identical. They
may look the same to most people, but the wood turner will see the
differences. I guess it is the same with
pottery. What a wonderful analogy this
is for our own growth as persons. We may
all be human, just as all bowls turned on a lathe are made from wood, but we are not clones of one another we are
all different. So "turning the soul"
is all about enabling each person to become what God wants and intends him or
her to be.
There is a kind of Christianity which tries
to force everyone into the same mould, often described as the "being born
again" mould. When evangelists seek
to do that they are acting like duplicating lathes in a furniture factory,
producing identical "born again" Christians. But that is not how God works. Consider Jesus' ministry as we read about it
in the gospels. Jesus treats each person
in a way which recognises her or his uniqueness. Peter is not Mary Magdalene, nor is Matthew
the tax-collector Zacchaeus the publican, or doubting Thomas the single minded
Pharisee turned apostle, St. Paul. Yes,
notice my choice of the word "turned." Paul's whole life was turned around when he
encountered Jesus. Which brings me to
the second meaning of turning. It is not
just rotation, but also about starting again, turning a corner, turning a new
leaf, changing direction. Before Peter
or Paul, Matthew or Mary, Zacchaeus or Thomas could be turned and shaped, they
had to change direction.
A synonym for "turning" in this
sense is "converting," that is
being turned around. The word used in
the OT is "return" to the Lord, turn back or repent. Which is, of course, the message of Lent
which we are now entering. But now the
two meanings: rotating and changing direction come together and help us
understand what "turning the soul" is about. When God turns us around -- conversion -- God
respects our individual uniqueness just as a wood turner works with different
pieces of wood, turning each according to its own character, grain, texture,
size and potential. You can make a salad
bowl out of a large piece of jacaranda,
but not out of a small chunk of olive wood.
Yet each can become a useful or beautiful object. So, we too, in the hands of the master wood turner,
can not only start afresh but also become more truly ourselves. Rabbi Zusya once said: "When I get to
heaven, God will not ask me why I was not Moses; he will ask me 'Why were you
not Rabbi Zusya?'" Why were you not
the person you were really meant to be?
That rough piece of wood being turned around and becoming all that it
could become? Lent is all about "turning
the soul." Turning us around to
follow Jesus more faithfully and in the process being shaped and formed into the
person God intends us to be.
John de Gruchy
tVolmoed 19 February 2015
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