Reviewed By

Kathie Kurtz

"This story is about a bowl. A bowl--waiting to be filled." So begins Bender's reflections on the condition in her life of never having enough, never being enough. She is intrigued by the image of a monk going out each day with an empty begging bowl. Whatever he is given in his bowl will be enough, the nourishment needed for that day. But before she can begin writing Bender is off to her studio to create clay bowls of her own. Bowls seem to be everywhere as she moves more deeply into her work. In one of her more memorable stories she tells of visiting a friend who had taken on the assignment of making I 00 photographs of the same bowl, each in a different setting, perspective or light. As this friend struggled to find I 00 ways to view her bowl she began to notice properties and aspects of the bowl which she had not seen in her casual looking. This story could well be taken as a metaphor for the entire book.

Never straying far from her original theme Bender examines such topics as starting, searching for meaning, time, objects, and art as teachers, serendipity, expectations, sufficiency, generosity, acceptance, and small miracles. A chapter that was particularly significant to me was the one on generosity in which she tells stories of women who lost their homes in one of California's fierce forest fires. These women who had lost many irreplaceable family objects had stories to tell of generosity offered and returned that will stay with me a long time.

While Bender does not write from an explicit Christian perspective there is little in the book that strays from the themes of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. It is a book about considering the lilies of the fields, being meek, being pure in heart, and storing up treasures where they will last.