Friday is Elephant Day!

 (If you haven't been following my blog recently, every Friday, I take one of the many elephants in my collection and write about it, the memories I have about it, the inspiration it might give me for daily living. So here's to another elephant!)

All of us have had a bad hair day, or two, or maybe you’re one of those individuals whose every day is bad hair day, or a no hair day.  Well, how about a “bad ear” day?  The next elephant I’m going to write about perpetually has a “bad ear” day!  But it’s those ears and the work in making them that means so much to me.

When Jessica was a child, I wanted so much to nurture her creative impulse that in addition to enrolling her in art classes each summer through the local arts council, I allowed her to be messy. Hindsight makes me wonder about that…Anyway one summer, when she was in the 2^nd or 3^rd grade, she took a ceramics class. The teacher of this class is a wonderfully warm, bubbly art teacher in the grade schools, who lived across the street when Jessica was a baby.  Later, after we had moved elsewhere, she and her husband moved into and rented our house. When you live in a smaller community, there are connections everywhere.  Not only did this art teacher rent our house she also married the cousin of one of our son-in-laws!

But I digress.  One of the projects out of this ceramics class was a small elephant “bowl” which Jessica made for me.  I’ve been collecting elephants all of her life, so several in my collection are from her.  She knew as others do, that when choosing a gift for me, one can’t go wrong with an elephant!  (unless of course, it’s a real one!)

This little elephant “bowl” is smaller than my fist, has no real legs or body, but  it does have tiny little holes for eyes, a tail, a trunk (without which an elephant would be nothing more than an enormous gray pig with long legs.)

But this elephant’s outstanding features are its ears—they stand straight up!  These ears are not smooth, but a collection of finger indentions pressing around the clay.  The art teacher later admitted that she helped Jessica construct the ears because keeping them attached to the bowl-face was problematic.  With these finger imprints, the ears advertise the amount of effort that went into creating them. 

I love this elephant!  I love it because my daughter made it, of course.  I love it because it is unique….this elephant does not have multiple clones sitting on store shelves; you won’t find one like it in anyone else’s collection.  I love it, too, because it’s an example of my daughter’s creative spirit. And when I look at those crazy ears, I’m also reminded of the help that she needed from the teacher in creating them.

God had something special in mind when He created each one of us.  He doesn’t need any help in putting together any of His creation.   Each of us, made in His image, has the need to create.  Each of us creates all the time, whether we recognize it or not.  We write letters or e-mails to loved ones; we cook a meal, plant a garden, solve a problem.  We make a birdhouse, knit a sweater or sew a quilt.  We might be more enterprising and build a house or a new company.  And whenever each of us creates something, if we are open to it, help will come along when things get tricky.  Some might call it their muse, or inspiration; others might call it providence.  I call it the Holy Spirit, guiding me in my creative endeavors.

Thanks be to God for that little girl who made this quirky elephant with the crazy ears! Thanks be to God for making each of us unique, creative, often helpless, but just as often, inspired.