Courtesy/Father Theophan

By Father Theophan
Saint Job of Pochaiv Orthodox Church
Los Alamos

The pandemic shutdown has had a silver lining for me. It has afforded me the time to rediscover my love for making ceramics and to organize and set up a studio in our garage. My parishioners and wife have been encouraging in my hobby.

To retain her sanity and to continue seeing me on a regular basis, my wife took the chance on having me teach her how to throw on the pottery wheel. Teaching one’s spouse or learning from one’s spouse can be a touchy proposition. But with a little grace, given and received, she has been learning from me and has advanced quite well. She has recently drunk from a mug that she, herself has made.

We are both eating more and more from bowls that we have made. There is something grounding, something real about using crafted things over those manufactured.

Almost everyone visits the ubiquitous source for cheap, plastic crap now and then, or orders something from the great river of consumerism. Global trade and efficient manufacturing have made those options economical. But it has impoverished us in other ways. The uniformity and efficiency of the modern world has not been an unmitigated blessing.

Even our connections are increasingly electronic, increasingly distant, increasingly unreal. While it allows us some connection in a time when face to face contact is deemed risky, it is not equal to a hug or a handshake. If 80% of our communication is non-verbal, how much of that are we missing from the floating head on a Zoom meeting?

Beside which, it often adds a level of technological complication (read: frustration) to meetings or classes that may already be challenging.

It is not good for man, it is not good for people, to be alone. We are social creatures and no matter how introverted, need contact, need connection, need real affection. Most of us are struggling with this drought.

We need to seek out and treasure those interactions that we are allowed: a church service, a meal al fresco, a walk and talk in the open air at the park. These are worth the effort

Is electronic contact better than nothing? Maybe. Is a paper coffee cup better than a mug made by a craftsman whose name you know, who lives in town, who shares your school district? It is not better for the environment, that’s for sure. If it is what we can afford, it is what we do.

To quote the immortal Crocodile Dundee, “Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like dung.” Too much of what we are surviving on tastes awful.

So I drink my third cup of coffee from my dark blue speckled mug and psych myself up for a Zoom board meeting this afternoon.

Now if I could just break myself of the Keurig.

I know, I know.