It's called an "oxbow." Notice the shape of the river flowing through this beautiful scene that I saw yesterday and blogged about. See the meandering of the river, creating what is called, an oxbow effect. It's named that due to the river carving out a shape similar to that of the curves of an oxen yoke.I texted this picture to a friend of mine back east and he immediately saw it and said, "An Oxbow. Amazing how you can travel so far on a river only to wind up just a few hundred yards downstream by foot."Isn't that true in life. We can travel so very far through the years, yet make so little progress it seems. After all we go through in life, only to find we're just a few feet from where we started.I can easily imagine the oxbow effect on the early disciples who tried to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, yet kept stumbling back through the same issues of pride, power struggles and not really getting Jesus' intent at all after multiple times of hearing him and watching him. Aren't we really like those early followers---people who just can't seem to get what Jesus is up to in our life and we keep coming back to learn, re-learn and learn again the most basic principles of the spiritual life: I am the Beloved. Trust God. Lean on him not my own understanding and so much more.Stephen W. SmithPotter's InnAre you in an Oxbow place in your life? How can you move on through to greater and deeper realities of the spiritual life
Beauty Helps!
I saw this with my own eyes today. It's found in a place 30 minutes from the retreat near Tarryall, CO and called, the Lost Wilderness.I felt lost so going to a place called the Lost Wilderness was for me, like being pulled there by the Puller of My Soul. We got bad news twice yesterday. One kick in the gut for me about having to re-write most, if not all of my book I've been working on now for two years. Gwen's kick is for her to tell but both blows have made me seek some solace today.Beauty helps. Simone Weil wisely tells us, "There are only two things that pierce the soul. One is pain. The other is beauty." When you stop and think about it, how true that statement really is for us mere humans on this planet and who find themselves on the long, arduous journey to heaven. Pain shatters us--drops us to our knees and makes us cry out to anyone or anything in the Cosmos that might even remotely hear us. Beauty helps. Beauty draws us to humble amazement and we wonder as we wander through it and soon we find that beauty has helped. Beauty assuages the deep grief of the soul and heart.I'm going back to this place tomorrow. I'm glad it's close to where I'm doing my re-write of the book. I'm going to walk into that beauty with my bride. I texted her today and said, "You have to come up here tomorrow and walk into this epic scene of beauty. It will help you. It will help me. It will help us."Stephen W. SmithPotter's Inn
Sitting in the Potter's Inn: My need for Transformation!
by Stephen W. Smith at Potter's InnAs we began moving furniture into the brand new Inn, I sat alone in the Great Room for some moments to let what what happening sink into my soul. As I sat in a chair we had thought would look good in the Great Room and the thought came to me, how ironic to be sitting here alone in this place of transformation.I well remember in 2003 when Gwen and I started the venture of establishing an actual place for transformation to happen that it would be me, the first one called to sit upon the Potter's wheel and hear the Potter's wheel being spun around and around. If transformation is going to happen, then it has to happen with me first. That was my thinking....and that is what has been happening. As we have called others into the journey of spiritual transformation, we have always been mindful of our need for the Potter's hands to pinch here; squeeze there and impress hard here.As I sat yesterday in the Great Room, that same feeling came over me. If anyone needs transformation, then I must be willing to yield to the same process that we are calling others to embrace.So I sat. Sat some more. Prayed and asked the Potter to be so ever gentle with me for I have been feeling fragile.
This is a sculpture that God gave me a vision for in 2004 showing the two shaping hands of the Divine Potter. One is ever so gentle and one is digging in hard. Transformation requires both! I had the vision for this but could not actually sculpt it so I asked Clay Enoch, a renowuned sculpter in Colorado Springs, to help me. "Forming Hands" was the result and our ministry sold 2,500 of these sculptures which greatly aided in funding the early days of Potter's Inn ministry. Currently we are sold out and have no plans at the moment to resurrect this limited sculpture.