Minnow Bucket for Fishers of Men
© 1997 Ginger Henry Geyer
tinted porcelain with underglaze
8 ½” x 10 ½” x 9”
Adaptation of Ghirlandaio and workshop's, Calling of the Apostles,
Thomas Merton wrote that "In God's no-thingness is his perfect freedom". He describes how we are asked to lose all and to be emptied out, in order to be filled with the very fullness of God. This holey liner for a minnow bucket is shot full of holes and is openly empty.
Living water flows through the bucket; it keeps the fish alive. They can even get out if they want to—the hole in the side is where a flaw in the clay insisted on opening up. After a few attempts at repair, I let it go. The vernacular poem painted inside the bucket criticizes the type of evangelism which assumes people are nothing but worms:
Can't go fishin' without any bait
Them fish are bitin' and just can't wait!
But worm theology, it don't fly
'Cause folks is more than some small fry.
So forget the minnows, forget the grubs,
Fishers of men need empty tubs!
Throw back that catch in King James's book
That lets us gals get off the hook.
The only bait that'll catch 'em, y'all
Is no bait, no thing, nothing at all.
The only bait, the perfect lure
Is the Lord, who's no thing,
Nothing for sure!
The small painting on the bucket's lid is a detail of a huge wall fresco in the Sistine Chapel. In between the holes it shows a pink-clad Christ calling Simon Peter, James and John, and a small group. Each calling is a separate episode within the single space of the picture, using the art convention of "continuous narration." An apt term for any calling, I'd say.