Why "I am the Clay"?

Clay - what a name! It means, "of the earth."

My earliest memories of my uncles are of them playing guitars and singing, and telling me my name was "Mud." I thought they meant I was in trouble for something. It was years later I realized my uncles were punning on my name, Clay, which is also a type of soil with very small particles. Wet clay = mud.

Now I am a soil scientist, and I get a lot of snickers and/or comments about the connection of my name and my profession. When I see a glint about that in someone's eye, I preempt it now with something like, "Yes, my parents doomed me to become a soil scientist when the named me Clay." When I was teaching at the university, my students felt I had a special connection with the soil because of the way I could ribbon soils (Google, "Texture by Feel").

How did I become a soil scientist? It was God's providence in taking care of someone too ignorant to know what they were doing. I had just completed a Master's in Plant Science after a Bachelor's in General Agriculture. I pulled an all-nighter to finish the corrections on my thesis. The next morning, a professor came in and handed me a position announcement for a soils TA position at Iowa State University. As I had already received more than fifteen flush letters from job applications (during the last recession), the TA position seemed a worthwhile opportunity since it paid almost as much as a full-time technician position at the local research station. I also received an award that allowed me to go for the first two years of my doctoral program tuition free. I had been there almost a year before I realized I was at one of the premier institutions in the nation and world to learn about soil.

There was another amusing thing about my name to a child. While singing "Have Thine Own Way" in church I would react to the line, "Thou art the Potter, I am the clay" (snicker, "That's me! I am the Clay," more snickering).

It was after a life-changing event when I was 21 (Look for a future blog called, "Staying Alive") that the hymn began to take new meaning for me. The hymn writer alluded to Jeremiah 18 when the Lord sent the prophet to the potter's house to watch. When the pot being fashioned was marred, the potter smashed it down and started anew with the same piece of clay. The potter has the right to make whatever he wants from the clay.

So, I am the Clay. I am in the Potter's hands for Him to make of me, and do with me, whatever He will.

I have shared this many times in the past twenty years, but this may be the first time I have recorded it.
October 16, 2011