Susan LaffertyThe temple is dark. Noisy with chants. Crowds press through. Men, women, children bowing before multiple idols.
Shiny cloth drapes several of these gods. Gods of stone and clay and metal.
I watch a father guide his young son from one graven image to the next. Showing him how to bow, what to say, where to place the offering.
A way of life. Inherited. Passed down from one generation to the next.
Standing there in the dark, I feel the weight of it.
I keep it on my desk. This broken piece of a red clay. What remained after the common clay jar fell off the shelf one day. My one semester in pottery class taught me a lot about clay and kilns. And the fragility of earthen vessels. One small pebble could break apart a potter’s masterpiece as it was formed on the wheel or as it baked in the kiln.
In the week before Easter, I’m reading the Book of Job. Plodding through the verbose ponderings of his “friends” as they opine and try to make sense of Job’s suffering and misery.
Job is not impressed.
“You are all miserable comforters. Is there no end to your empty words? …How long will you torment me and crush me with words?” (Job 16:1-2; 19:2).