Our sewing
My weekend of sewing reverberates with questions:
>Why could I say nothing of the altars in my home?
>What did I find of myself in the crooked patterns of stitches, the lines of folded cloth that do not run straight?
>Why did my needle lose its thread so many times?
>Why was the light never bright enough to see my stiches?
These are my fields, my weeds, my harvest, the roots of the coming spring's growth, the foundation of everything that I do.
>Why could I say nothing of the altars in my home?
>What did I find of myself in the crooked patterns of stitches, the lines of folded cloth that do not run straight?
>Why did my needle lose its thread so many times?
>Why was the light never bright enough to see my stiches?
These are my fields, my weeds, my harvest, the roots of the coming spring's growth, the foundation of everything that I do.
posted by Dwight at 5:56 PM
3 Comments:
HI Dwight
Could you say more about "the foundation." The threads? Stitches?
My sewing grew in focus through effort and then it seemed to fall away from it. For a while I was very deliberate in making the best stiches I could at as regular an interval as I could get. Then it became increasing difficult for me to see and I wanted each row to be over as soon as possible.
Those feel like the patterns of my life -- rising towards something with effort and enthusisasm and then falling away with fatigue and difficulty.
To speak of this as my foundation is to accept and to cherish my imprecise and irregular ways and to sustain my efforts knowing that fatigue and difficulty erode them.
I love that the rakasu is an image of rice paddies which I remember from my travels in India. The building of the walls that hold the water; the planting of the little rice plants is achieved with great effort; the many aspects of these tasks are essential to sustain life. People are always present in the rice fields, bending, digging, planting. Yet also the individual person seems to disappear in the patterns of earth, water and growing plants.
Nothing is hidden from practice.
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