I go to glaze pottery for Amma. The ashram in California is planting trees. Tens of thousands of them; like everything her organization does: be it hospitals, schools, homes for disaster relief victims etc etc etc.

Making art and then giving it away, leaving it there as I drive off is very liberating. I do my best and leave. There is no exhibition to worry about, no sales to hope for. I have a bit of a hope (as I stand in the balcony watching next month when Amma is here) to see someone in the line to be hugged, who has bought my pot with it’s seedling in it, taking it to Amma, who will hold it for a moment and then pass it on to someone else who will also pass it on and eventually it will be planted.

The seedling is the important thing, the glazed pot is just the carrier. I don’t even know what happens to it in the end. Perhaps it gets broken to release the grown seedling, which is, of course, no longer a seedling.

As I am glazing pots, I am talking to a woman also glazing pots. At one point in the conversation, she refers to the divine plan; as in one can’t argue with it or control it much. I tell her, not without sadness, that I don’t much believe in the divine plan anymore. I used to but…
This is received by understandable silence. I think of a New Yorker cartoon I saw a couple months ago where the person is sobbing, head down on the desk, the caption reading , “There is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny and no God!”

Still, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that.