Sometimes it is Blessed to Receive

By: Ayesha Foot

"What would you like for your birthday?", asked my friend. How difficult I found it to open to receive a gift, though I realised that she wanted to give; even more difficult to name what I wanted, not what would be useful. I hesitated so long that she exclaimed, "Oh, you have everything, I suppose!"

"What I would really like is a lump of clay..."

Several weeks later she came bearing a basket almost too heavy to lift, and inside was an unprepossessing plastic bag. It felt cool, exciting, yielding to the touch, yet still I found reasons not to play with it. There are always more important, more immediate activities which provide an escape from tackling what one deeply wants to do. So often one feels it is "selfish" - how does it help the happiness of all beings if I sit down and play with a lump of clay? It is not as if I am an artist and can create an object of beauty which will inspire.

She telephoned, "Have you played with your clay yet?"

So I made a date with myself for Sunday afternoon.

Taking the clay in my hands, I closed my eyes and quite spontaneously began a chant to Hokhmah. Then I just let go, remembering Eckhart, and let my hands play. What happened was so deeply moving that I felt later that day that I wanted to express it verbally:

Silky smooth and moist The clay moves of itself In my unskilled hands. The shapeless lump begins to grow Reaching up to the unknown Uncertain of its destiny Mutating from flower to cradle, Snake, leech and triumphant spiral.
Powerfully She emerges Huge breasts, swollen belly Strong arms curved to cradle the future. But the head so lovingly inclined Half cat, half human - Surely my hands have not shaped her? She came of herself.
Her child, placed in her arms Itself demands its own Which craves another babe. Too small for eyes too see The generations stretch To the end of time Just as She, rising from the fluid earth Existed before the beginning.

We are immersed In the primaeval slime Warm, slippery Joyously, flowingly Alive.

A few days later I happened to see a picture of Bast and recognised the source of my inspiration. Intellectually I felt some discomfort in recognising a cat-headed goddess as a face of the divine within myself, almost a fear of heresy. After all, witches and their cats were burned by the church in the past. There is no doubt there is something deeply feminine, abundant, creative and maternal in the figure that emerged, and though it is not "Art" in any sense, I put it on my altar.

By allowing myself to accept a gift, to play without expectation that anything useful would come of it, I discovered a little more about my inner self. And Mohammed said,

"The man who knows his own soul, knows Allah."

What a gift!