I remember her hands. It was Easter Sunday, 1979. After Easter services and dinner, a staff member of our church in Los Alamos, New Mexico took us down the mesa to San Ildefonso Pueblo to witness the pueblo’s dances, ceremonies, and fascinating celebration of Easter.
While visiting the pueblo, we were invited into the home of legendary American Indian potter, Maria Martinez. Maria and her late husband, Julian, revolutionized American Indian pueblo pottery. If you have ever seen Indian pottery that is completely black (black on black is the name of the style) it is Maria and her husband that created this from a particular clay and unique firing method.
Maria’s work commands thousands of dollars today and is on permanent display in the Louve in Paris. You don’t, however, need to travel to the City of Lights or even New Mexico to see her work. It is on display in the ASU Ceramic Art Museum as well as Basha’s headquarters in Chandler and, of course, the Heard Museum in Phoenix.
The 91 year old Maria was gracious to us. She reached out both hands to clasp ours. My hands at the time were 24 years old, however I immediately noticed how smooth the hands were of this famous, creative, and skilled, potter. Maybe there was something in her secret stash of clay, hidden somewhere in a hillside or river bank on pueblo grounds, that kept them so smooth. Or perhaps her gift as a potter came from those very unique hands that molded and shaped pots and dishes over the decades. Yes, I remember both the smile on her face and I remember the touch of her hands.
We tend to think of God in anthropomorphic terms, taking on human traits and characteristics, even to the point of human physicality. Certainly we believe in the incarnation, that God inhabits the human flesh of God’s creation to do God’s work and to encounter that human creation close up and at eye level. We even have songs proclaiming, “He has the Whole World in his Hands.”
This does mean God can reach out to us and touch us personally, even physically. At times God reaches out with a calloused hand offering some help in a chore. Other times in the wrinkled hands of someone wizened by age, or hands with fingers bent by arthritis to extend some love to us. God can reach out to us in the soft, unblemished hands of an infant or toddler or the hands of someone missing a digit or more. God is unafraid to reach out to us with hands deformed at birth or damaged in some way by life. The point is God keeps reaching out.
With the pandemic still visible but in our rear view mirror, there is not much hand shaking nowadays. I am not arguing for its return, but I do recognize the loss of some person to person contact; a loss that at times may leave us apart from God’s physical touch. You see, I also remember the hands of many who have taken mine over the years in gestures of welcome or expressions of solidarity or empathy.
Ah, but God’s hands while working through those of others are also metaphorical hands; an expression to remind us God reaches out to us in so many ways. Not even a pandemic can take that outreach away. God, after all, does have the whole world in God’s hands.