Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

Foreword to the Second Edition "Ideas do not belong to people. Ideas live in the world as we do. We discover certain ideas at certain times." So writes M. C. Richards in Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (p. 28), a book that has touched and influenced tens of thousands of people in the twenty-five years ofits "living in the world as we do." I consider this book one of the great works of American philosophy: it is so cosmological, so feminist (without once using that term), so original, so full of wisdom, so post-Cartesian, so nondualistic , so moral, and so fully a part of the mystical tradition of the West that one wonders from what source it arrived in our world. Was it a virgin birth? Whatever its source, I am certain this book will endure. For it is truthful from an ancient, prepatriarchal , source of truth. It is truthful from the source of our bodies, our bodying forth, our clay-being and our movement being. Aslong as we are clay and as long as we can move and make move we shall learn from this book. Who is this author who challenges us to imagine "inventing yellow" or "a cherry curve" (p. 70)? She tells us that she is one who "listen[s] to what is not audible" and tries "to say what is not speakable" (p. 146). Should we allow her to play with us this way? Is she mocking us all, or just our condition? Or is she living the ancient mystical truth of paradox and humor and letting go? Is she urging us to develop what Meister Eckhart calls "unselfconsciousness"? Clearly the author is a mystic who is in love with the ineffable—as allmystics are. She appears to have more courage than many mystics do, however, judging from the vast scope of this book. We all have our motives for continuing to read this book even though it frustrates and challenges and disturbs and destroys. Like the prophets ofold, the author "roots up and destroys" as well as "builds and plants" (Jeremiah i: 10). This is a prophetic and vii mystical book. Such books are dangerous. They are the kind dictators burn, churches tend to ignore, and consumer cultures leave on the shelf. For they have the power to awaken, to stir, to disturb, and to transform. I have heard many stories these past twelve years (since I personally came upon this work) from people whose lives were as deeply affected as my own by this work. I shall merely tell my story. The first time I read this book I was in the process ofdesigning a master's program in spirituality. I had traveled the country examining all the spirituality programs then in existence and had written a report in which I summarized my findings: all were lacking in their treatment of the role of art, justice, feminism, and body, and all were lacking practical tools for drawing the mystic out of persons. I concluded that a new model was necessary to truly educate (i.e., to evoke growth) in spirituality. The heartof this model must be what I called, based on Claudio Naranjo's work, "extrovert meditation " or "art as meditation." I eventually began such a program and have been heavily involved in it for the past twelve years. In the initial planning stages I had doubts: Who am I to throw out two hundred years of Descartes's educational philosophy? What makes you so sure art is the missing ingredient in education? If art is so central to mysticism then why haven't more persons who were mystics told us so? If you say everyone is an artist aren't you destroying the vocation of the especially gifted one? Then I read M. C. Richards's Centering. I realized I was not alone. If I was a crazy educator, I was in good company! If I was a slayer of the artist in my effort to draw the artist out of everyone, at least I had a willing accomplice. At that time I wrote an article, "The Case for Extrovert Meditation," that has become something of a staple piece for anyone attending our Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality. In that article I interact with M. C. Richards and Claudio Naranjo. Centering has become a kind of Bible for the nine thousand students who have studied with us over the years. Meeting M. C. Richards, viewing an exhibit...