Plan Be: warrior turned potter Matt Marasch

Matt Marasch: 0:00

Everything that's beautiful and close to you doesn't last forever. To me, that's what this project is about. It's about finding beauty in what's broken. I could care less if they become potters. It's not about pottery. It's about finding and loving the new you. And as you have different chapters in your life, you can only hang out your hat on being a veteran for so long. There's gotta be something more to you. And I have to hope that for myself. How anticlimatic is my life now, right? I was on top of the world when I was in my mid twenties. I'm in trouble.

Kelley Lynch: 0:49

Hi, I'm Kelley Lynch. Welcome to a new normal, a podcast about re-imagining a future that starts with each one of us. So here we are with the first of our, Be the Change stories. Stories about people who are being the change that they would like to see in their own communities. You'll notice that these stories are formatted a little bit differently, and we're going to try and keep them a bit shorter than the other podcast episodes. This week, our guest is Matt Marasch, a former infantry, paratrooper, and green Beret turned potter and healer. Starting a few years ago, Matt began losing a number of his veteran friends to suicide. And while he was struggling to reinvent himself, Matt decided to start looking for ways to bring veterans together, to build the kind of close relationships they once felt with their military brothers and sisters and Veteran Potter's House was born. I have to tell you, I love this story and it's not only because this warrior turned artists and healer narrative seems so unlikely. I love that as a guy whose successes in life have had nothing to do with living from his soft side, Matt is among the most humble, sensitive, open and vulnerable people I know. I also love this story because Matt is kind of like a younger brother to me. He was our neighbor in the mountains, outside Boulder, Colorado, and one of my brother's best friends. These days, he lives in Minnesota, but he's still a member of my virtual community and my extended family. And finally, I love this story because it illustrates so much of what I'm learning from this plan Be podcast project. In an evermore on your own disconnected and polarized America and at a time when so many of us can feel isolated from others, both physically and mentally, Matt story reveals so much about the good that can come from connecting with others and the healing that comes when we tip the scales from me back towards we. Matt Marasch, welcome to the podcast.

Matt Marasch: 3:13

Thank you.

Kelley Lynch: 3:15

You and I have been talking about this venture for a couple of years now. Maybe you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself and then we'll move into talking about what you're building.

Matt Marasch: 3:29

I've been working with databases for just over 20 years now for a company in the Minneapolis area. And previous to that, I was in the army and I served with the 82nd airborne division as an infantry paratrooper during desert storm desert shield. And then soon after getting back from Desert Storm, that's when I met my wife was a great change and still with her after 28 years. And I tried out for special forces about the same time that I met her. And the first three years of our marriage, I was around for all of about six months at the time. And the rest of it, I was traveling around South Central America or in school. After I got done with special forces, decided to get out and get back to college and that's when I went into technology. So what , transpired is a few years ago, something about, you know, knowing a lot of combat veterans and seeing, you know, how, as we all age, we fight with reinventing ourselves because you were brought in and you had a lot of success being the warrior. It was pride. It was your physical presence. It was being the protector. And that really made you who you were as a person, but as you age your body, can't keep up with that either mentally or physically anymore. And I noticed that there were a lot of people that seemed like they had great lives and things were going good for them that were committing suicide within my veteran network. So that really concerned me. And it also concerned me just knowing as a veteran that you miss the really close relationships that you had with the people that you served with. And I noticed that veterans tend to, you know, when you meet another veteran, there's an instant respect. You break through a lot of barriers really quick with each other. So I was trying to think of a good way to bring veterans together. And initially I was thinking of knife making and doing artwork with metal. And I had a friend that was doing that in Wisconsin, who had just left his day job and he made beautiful, beautiful knives. His name was Scott Warren, and he owned the airborne knife company. I had a friend that was doing blacksmithing, and I thought that was the answer for getting veterans together. And then I realized how physically hard that is and I'm like, Hey, maybe that's not a good idea as I'm getting old. I might not be able to do that too long without getting blacksmith elbow or something like that. So I was searching for something. And not far after that, my friend Scott Warren passed away, got the news. And he was another one that fell to suicide.

Kelley Lynch: 6:40

Isn't that your friend who was making the knives?

Matt Marasch: 6:43

Yes. He did some beautiful work. He had orders lined up. And so, you know, I was still searching, trying to find something and it dawned on me, my parents both did pottery while I was growing up and I thought, well, why don't I start with pottery? And pottery was the perfect solution in my mind, because you can learn hand building, you can do carving, you can do sculpture, you can do glazing, you can get lost and spend years in the chemistry part of it. You could also just be happy firing the kiln and working on that aspect of it. Two years ago in September was my first pottery lessons . So I started classes at Edina Art Center in Edina Minnesota taking a class or two a week and did that for about a period of a year. And I found that after a w hile with the classes that really I needed more time behind the wheel. So I found another art studio, I pay a membership fee and I get a key, so I can come and go as I want. I've been there for exactly a year now. And it's a great community, lots of artists to share stories with and share , uh, you know, different experiences with pottery and help each other out to inspire each other. The other thing that's really great about pottery is the social interaction. As a Potter, you know, I can go and talk to other artists of all sorts of different backgrounds and beliefs. There's people that are just polar opposites with me politically. And we come together and we know each other are totally different in all these areas and we'll have a discussion. They laugh because they know where I'm coming from and we laugh . We're going to disagree our way . Yeah, I think so. You don't see them the next day and we're still friends. We're able to share those, those differences and able to communicate some different ways of looking at it, but we all have a love for pottery and, you know, finding that connecting point and that common ground, it just opens up so many different areas for communication.

Kelley Lynch: 9:08

Tell us more about what you're looking to set up and what you hope that it will do.

Matt Marasch: 9:14

So what ideally I'd have is a 12 wheel studio where we have 12 potter's wheels and also some slab rolling and some other equipment and a glazing area and several kilns. And what we would do is start by providing a place for veterans to learn pottery and to go and assist with the different areas of the pottery from the sales to the sitting down and throwing pottery together and teaching each other, and also work on the social interaction of bringing them out into the community. Also bringing a community inside of the studio so that we can provide a place for art therapy where certified counselors come in and also by interacting with different churches. And one of my ideas is to bring the pottery i nto churches for sales, instead of art shows where we, you d on't have a circuit of different churches and then a percentage of all of the sales then goes back to sponsoring a youth group or support groups, 12 step programs and such where they can come in for one night a week for the matter of a couple months. And that would be sponsored by this group of veterans who have learned skills and crafts within pottery in that area. And it helps provide them then with a place within the community where they're active and they're making a difference in the lives of others and finding a different mechanism other than, you know, just being a veteran to relate to others in the community. And there's also the mentorship, right. Okay, how do we take it the next level? How do I go and mentor the next person so that, you know. It's about a bunch of people coming together mentoring each other, and that creation really doesn't stop with just the creation of a nonprofit . It's the creation of the relationships and bonds and the mentoring and encouraging people to do more for others .

Kelley Lynch: 11:30

Is there something about the medium that you think will help people address specific challenges that they may have? Or is it really just about the opportunity to be creative?

Matt Marasch: 11:43

I think there's something about being creative and I think that it's also just very challenging. I mean, and it's very grounding. There's so many parallels between pottery and life as it exists. One is, you know, you have to be centered, right? Just like in your life you have to be centered and that centering means, you know that , yeah, you've gotta be physically active. You've gotta be mentally active. You've gotta be spiritually active. You can't have a higher purpose without a higher power. You need to eat right. You need to find that center. And that's much like centering a piece of clay. It's also, there's something about when you eat or drink out of a utensil that you made, it's very centering. There's nothing like the feeling of pouring a cup of coffee and having that and holding it in your hands with something that you made that started off as a piece of dirt. And even when you start pottery and you're first doing it , and it's a very basic, there's still something about this is something that I created and I take pride in it. And there's something about that because it forces you to find beauty in imperfection. And that to me is the key to finding peace in life. There's a lot of veterans out there. A lot of them are very high functioning in society, and nobody would ever think that anything's not perfect in their lives, but there's such a herd mentality and you're part of a bigger group. It's like a pack of wolves, right? And the minute that you leave the service, you leave your pack and you really can struggle years and years not finding a pack again. Many of us, we are, you know, my wife, I've been with her for 28 years, have a wonderful marriage, but she doesn't get me like my veteran friends get me. And there's just that camaraderie that is missed. And I think that is one of the, one of the most important things. A nd this gives us an excuse to do that over something that's not going to the VFW or the American Legion and not alcohol centered. You know, as I look back now, when I got back from Desert Storm and Shield, just how numb I was processing some of that, you know , how you compartmentalize things. It takes years to do that. And you find success in being as a ranger and an ex-Green Beret, you know, Matt's soft side, that's not what made me successful. But you know, as I've gotten older, it's like, I welcome that part back. It's part of me. It's back to being a kid and that's how I was created. And it's a beautiful thing to have weakness and that's how I'm meant to be. You know? So that's just one small example of something that's taken years for me to deconstruct and be able to figure out that that's okay and that being sensitive and in touch with your feelings is actually healthy. Life sometimes hands you some hard things. You know, there's some tough jagged pills that you gotta swallow and, and, you know, there's good support groups out there. And there's people that have experienced things similar to you, and it's very important to use them and very important to have that network and, you know, very important to focus on self-improvement. To me, it's about getting in a room, spending time with people and being able to be not just like a pottery mentor, but a life mentor as well.

Kelley Lynch: 16:02

So I guess you could say you also want to work as a healer.

Matt Marasch: 16:08

Yeah. And it's , it's really interesting because I'm not going to mention my first mentorees' name, but, you know, we, we talked and he said , uh , people just don't understand me, Matt. To be connected and know that there's somebody that you can tell anything to no matter how dark it is and that there won't be judgment for it. There's something special about that. And it is healing. And somebody that can relate to having had hard times that are out of their control, you know, and how did you deal with it? There's power in that. And there's power in community and the silent killer really is being alone. It's isolation. Sometimes it's not physical isolation, but just mental isolation. Nobody relates with me. So I'm not going to share what I'm really feeling. I couldn't figure out what to name this. And I wanted it to be something special. So I took it to the Bible and out of Jeremiah 18, it says, "This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, go down to the Potter's house. And I will give you my message. So I went to the Potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel, but the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred by his hands. So the Potter formed that into another pot shaping it as seemed to best to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, can I not do with you Israel as the Potter does? declares the Lord. Like clay in the hand of the Potter. So you are in my hand Israel." So that to me was like, this is it's about transformation. It's about transformation of the individual. It's about transformation of what you're doing with their hands. And furthermore, it's about finding beauty in what's broken. Everything that's beautiful and close to you doesn't last forever. To me, that's what this project is about. I could care less if they become potters. It's not about pottery. It's about finding and loving the new you. And as you have different chapters in your life, you can only hang out your hat on being a veteran so long. There's gotta be something more to you. And I have to hope that for myself, because how anti-climatic is my life now, right? I was on top of the world when I was in my mid twenties. I'm in trouble, you know , but it's like, okay. Yeah. I'm like Green Beret and now I go to Ranger School and I'm like, you know, what, how am I going to push myself further, you know? At some point in time in your life, you need to find peace and you can't do that without transforming, you know, your reality and to me, that's what this project is really about.

Kelley Lynch: 19:27

Do you have any particular timeframes for all of this or is this just something that you will evolve as you go along?

Matt Marasch: 19:37

So I think there's a little bit of both that realistically of, you know, evolving and my timeline is I would ideally like in five years to have this be my full-time thing, but I don't know that I'll be ready financially in five years. I don't know if the community will be ready to support me in five years. There's a lot of pieces to it. So really right now, I just want to enjoy the path.

Kelley Lynch: 20:09

This has obviously been a long road and there's still a lot of road left to travel. So what advice do you have for people who might be considering setting up something in their own backyard?

Matt Marasch: 20:28

I would say number one, start simple. Don't go for everything all at once. And number two, network and communicate. Talk to others about it. Pray about it and be careful because you will find a lot of people in the community that will want to partner and want to talk you into a bigger role in a bigger enterprise and be very mindful of what's healthy for you and keep it simple. That's great advice. So Matt, where can people find you, your work? I mean, who knows, maybe somebody wants to buy your work. Maybe some other person wants to talk to you about mentoring or whatever the case may be. Where can people, how can people find you? The best places on Facebook at Veteran Potter's House? That's the best place right now? I don't have an Etsy store set up yet. That's on my to do list. And there's some great videos on YouTube under Veteran Potter's House. Some of the firing process that I do is a Raku firing process. It's a Japanese for. The Zen Buddhist used to use it for tea ceremonies. And it's really cool because you, you go and you fire it to just under 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and you open the kiln and you pull it out while it's cherry hot and you transferred onto organic material in a secondary chamber trashcan, basically lined with some fire bricks in the bottom and you have to drop it on newspaper and you end up with really beautiful effects.

Kelley Lynch: 22:30

All right, Matt. Well, thank you so, so much for talking with us today and for sharing all of that really appreciate it. Bye. Hey, it's me again. I really hope that you enjoyed Matt's story. And if you know somebody who has a great story that we should feature on the podcast, I really hope you'll get in touch. You can find our contact information along with everything else at our website, a new normal podcast.com. Check it out. It's Thanksgiving next week. So we won't be here, but we will be back the following week with another episode, we'll see in a couple of weeks. Bye.