The hermit worked the clay. With a patient attitude he kneaded it, shaping it little by little.

With precision, he fired it to the exact point at which it acquired the consistency its function required. From his hand came bowls and vessels of many different shapes.

They were peculiar objects; they seemed strange because of a certain indefinable finish. They could have been displayed without looking out of place in a corner of urban craftsmen, at an indigenous fair on the border or in the most elegant shop of a luxurious mall.

The fact is that he certainly added value to the pieces. Perhaps it was the glaze on some of them, the patinated paint or the natural objects with which he used to decorate them; his solitary condition was put at stake as his products gained growing fame.

When I asked him about the unusual quality with which his vessels seemed to be endowed, he answered by saying that “it is the emptiness of the vessel that makes it what it is and gives it usefulness, not the material from which it is made.”

I replied, somewhat sarcastically, that without the material the emptiness could not show itself. But he answered quickly, looking me in the eyes: “That is not true. The emptiness is there anyway. The material comes to divide it and to point it out. It is merely a device to avoid fear.”

Although I did not clearly understand, I was left with an unpleasant aftertaste, like when you jump from a place higher than it seemed.

While he unhurriedly packed the pieces I had bought from him, I asked him whether that prayer he kept repeating had become a habit, whether by now it was like a tic he no longer noticed, and I wanted to know why he did it almost all the time.

He looked at me again, as if smiling, but only with his eyes. He told me that when he prayed his mind remained occupied with the litany, and so whatever created the vessel could express itself without interference.

I did not understand then, or did not want to understand. He went on: “In this case I try to make myself a vessel; prayer becomes the material, strokes that point to receptivity.”

I was left perplexed and divided. One part of me was thrilled by the inner possibilities of what he described, and the other already wanted to head back to the city.

Finally, after we had loaded everything into the car, I asked him, not without a certain condescension: And why do you ask Jesus Christ for mercy? “It is my way of asking Him to use me as a tool of His pottery,” he told me.

The mountain road was winding and long and had to be travelled slowly. I saw the lights of the city in the distance and, at a bend, I made out the valley flooded with light.

Even so, I had the feeling that the light remained behind, in the midst of the darkness of the forest.

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