Barro Negro: Black Pottery

When we went to Oaxaca, our youngest son, Jeremy, who spent his honeymoon with his wife in this Mexican state—and who runs an immigration counseling service with a high number of Mexican clients, and who teaches Spanish as an adjunct professor at Wheaton College—gave us a list of items he wanted us to pick up for him and bring home. We actually spent a great deal of our free time roaming the mercados and artisan communities looking for the things he included on his list.

The barro negro (“black clay”) pottery, at the top of Jeremy’s list, are typical of Oaxacan pottery. In fact, the Valley of Oaxaca, in which the capital city resides, is renowned for its pottery-making tradition. What is amazing about barro negro is that it is turned without a potter’s wheel. Doña Rosa, now deceased, pioneered the turning of pots on a clay dish stacked on another clay dish, which is turned upside down and cemented to the ground with a plug of wet clay. The size and shape of the pots has been expanded by Doña Rosa’s many descendants, but the means of turning the pots remains the same. With wide eyes and open mouths, David and I and our eldest son watched a pot-making demonstration where the potter turned out what eventually became a large pitcher—without the traditional wheel. The little town of San Bartolo de Coyotepec is an artisan pottery village. Here we found the black pottery requested by our youngest son who had sent us off to Oaxaca with a list in hand.

The story of Doña Rosa intrigues me because it is one of the many examples I’ve discovered of artists who have found a way to create beauty despite the obstacles of their lives—lack of training or lack of artistic resources. In fact, there is a whole tradition known as “outsider art”; people, often uneducated, often impoverished, who create amazing expressions of that God-given urge outside of the parameters of the academic or recognized artistic community. Whenever I run into “outsider art” I am reminded that Scripture tells us we are all made in the image of God. This deep need to express, to create, to form, to design—no matter how, exactly, it finds its expression, is to me evidence that those Genesis passages are true. Even if we don’t recognize that God is the Original Creator of All, this urgency to emulate—sometimes without training, even without paints or brushes or clay or fabric—the God who is the Originator is evidence enough to me. I delight in the thought of a Mexican woman figuring out how to make clay pots without a potter’s wheel, and stacking an upright clay dish on top of an upside down clay dish, throwing the clay on the stack, turning the upright plate with one hand and pressing a hole in the clay mound with her other hand, then thinking to herself, Yes. This will work. This will work indeed.

I cannot deny the existence of a God when there are so many proliferating, sometimes profligate, examples of the need, of the urge, of the deep desire to create. “And God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image.’ … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’” —Genesis 1:26-27.

I spy God!

The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected Worldby by Jacqueline Novogratz

This is a wonderful book for any of us who want to make a difference for good in the world. If you give to a development organization, support overseas workers or are involved in any kind of social entrepreneurship efforts—microenterprise, microcredit loans, water projects overseas, etc.—this is a must read. It is a handbook that looks at the mistakes and lessons learned from the failures of well-meaning people and governments. Novogratz eventually leveraged her twenty years of mistakes and successes into the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital firm for the poor that invests in sustainable enterprises bringing healthcare, safe water, alternative energy and housing to low-income people in the developing world.

The flap copy explains: “ Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new was of tackling it. It all started back home in Virginia, with the blue sweater, a gift that quickly became her prized possession—until the day she outgrew it and gave it away to Goodwill. Eleven years later in Africa, she spotted a young boy wearing that very sweater, with her name still on the tab inside. That the sweater had made its trek all the way to Rwanda was ample evidence, she thought, of how we are all connected, how our actions—and inaction—touch people every day across the globe, people we may never know or meet.”

While reading, I highlighted extensively, knowing that I was sitting at the feet of someone who could help me bridge my own eager, but potentially misguided, desires to find ways to help the poor help themselves. My pages, marked by yellow, are an indicator of how valuable I found this book to be.

Tales of the Resistance

Hero’s participation in the underground taxi resistance against the evil Enchanter, leads to high drama, as everywhere he turns there are suffering people in need of his help! Feel the tension of Traffic Court and Burning Place, but mostly be reminded that the presence of the King dispels all darkness from our hearts and souls.

An exciting series from best-selling authors David and Karen Mains, the gold-medallion, award-winning Tales of the Resistance offers readers fast-paced action and exciting storytelling with a Christian theme. You’ll enjoy the beautiful, full-color illustrations as well.

The book, Tales of the Resistance, contains 12 stories about Hero’s participation in the underground taxi resistance against the evil Enchanter, challenger to the one True King. You’ll meet Carny, Doubletalk, Sewer Rat #1, the Boiler Brat and the Most Beautiful Player of All.

This is the second book in a trilogy, and is an exceptional storybook to give to your family and friends. 112 pages, hardcover with 12 full-color illustrations by Jack Stockman, and autographed by David and Karen Mains. These wonderful picture books have gone for up to $60 apiece on Ebay! This hardcover edition with full-color illustrations, is author autographed, and “signed” copies are exclusively available from us and no other source.

In Open Heart, Open Home

In Open Heart, Open Home (over 500,000 copies in print) award-winning Karen Mains steps far beyond how-to-entertain you hints to explore the deeper concepts of Christian hospitality-the Biblical way to use your home and an open heart to care for others like God wants us to. Countless pastors have recommended this classic resource as the meaningful example of how the Holy Spirit ministers to and through us to make other people feel truly welcome and deeply wanted.

Perfect for any womens bible study group, especially when used in tandem with the Opening Our Hearts & Homes Bible Study.

This new edition contains 54 helpful ways to make hospitality work whether you live on a country farm, in a house in the suburbs, or in an apartment in the city. Everyone in your bible study will appreciate the life-changing principles of this timeless classic.

Comforting One Another

Comforting One Another uses Michelangelo's Pieta as a metaphor for learning how to comfort those hurting in life.

Author Karen Mains references her personal pain experiences, and unfolds a theology around the meaning of mercy, with pietas from art, literature, film, news photography, poetry and real life building pictures of how God's love can demonstrate itself through us in tangible ways in today's modern world.

This is a book for those who are suffering and for those who want to hold and comfort those who are suffering.

Karen defines a pieta as any person or group of people comforting and holding those who are broken or suffering, and in need of the healing touch of our Lord.

Lonely No More

Lonely No More looks those lies finally in the eye and begins to deal with them honestly. "If my marriage is as perfect as I say it is, why am I so lonely?" "What are these dreams, these painful emotions, these attractions pointing to?" This book was extremely controversial in certain sections of ultra-conservative Christianity so I warn you, read it carefully. I stand behind every word, despite the controversy. It may even shake the ground beneath your feet. I will probably never write anything this well again. But I have certainly paid for the effort to be excellent, to be lovingly truthful, to want God. Covers age 45-52.

To read more, click Here. 

Making Sunday Special

In this insightful, encouraging, and delightful book, bestselling author Karen Mains challenges Christians to celebrate Sunday with a Sabbath heart—to make the Lord’s Day so special that its impact launches a weekly cycle of reflection and growing anticipation. Making Sunday Special will help you and your people restore the biblical “rhythm of the sacred” and then fall in love again and again with Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath.

To read more, click HERE.