Weaving

I want to write about color, and clash, and the weaving together of that which appears to be discordant. I weave because it is my nature to weave. My surname is Webster, so perhaps that is the explanation. I know it has always been easy for me to hold disparate ideas and combine them in new forms, or to help a room full of unique individuals find their common vision. Weaving is breath to me.

Weaving is easy. Knitting is not! I think my mother taught me the skill when I was very small. I probably pestered her until she gave in and put the needles in my hand, guiding me through the process. Once I learned, I promptly abandoned the habit. As an adult, for a few years, I had a small herd of alpaca. With the alpacas came shearing, carding, spinning and weaving or knitting. I loved the animals, but I was indifferent when it came to any sort of handicraft. I never thoroughly cleaned the fleece, carding bored me, and spinning . . . I just never quite quite learned to spin an even thread.

Fast forward a few years, and I find I need different colors of thread or yarn for an activity our women's group is doing. I went out and bought a couple of dozen shades of brightly colored yarn. After the activity, I was left with most of it, and it was abandoned in the dark corner of a storage cupboard. This last week, I unearthed it all, and decided I'd use those ends of unused color. I'd weave them together. I'd knit again.

So, I began to knit. The colors that I placed side-by-side in rows are never colors I'd wear together. They clash. They scream at each other. But I accept each one as it comes up next in the pile, and weave it into the mix. I knit while it rains. I knit because I need a break from hours of teleconferencing. I knit while I listen to webinars.

And here is where it gets interesting, at least to me, I FEEL LIKE I AM WEAVING THINGS TOGETHER. Each stitch is contemplative. Each stitch is as important as the last. The purple that sits next to the orange is somehow in harmony. I feel like I am making something whole. Last weekend, the knitting was a prayer. My dearest friend was hospitalized with the virus, and I knit out a healing chant, envisioning a day when I could wrap it around her neck as a gift, a labor or love. Today, I knit in time with the rain.

In the book 5 Ways of Forgiveness by Ursula LeGuin I found some words that seemed to offer me an interpretation of my recent obsession with knitting:

“You can’t change anything from outside it. Standing apart, looking down, taking the overview, you see the pattern. What’s wrong. What’s missing. You want to fix it. But you can’t patch it. You have to be in it, weaving it. You have to be part of the weaving. That’s what I learned growing up. To accept. Not to change the world. Only to change the soul. So that it can be in the world. Be rightly in the world.”

I feel like I am inside it all, weaving it, stitch by stitch. The laughter and tears of friends. The high and lows. I am not trying to make it "pretty." I am letting the colors shout out in their unique ways. I am trusting the process, and I am not seeking a product. I am weaving myself into the pattern, and my friends, and even those I might have named enemy. There is room for all of us here.

This makes no sense. How can I be weaving the world together? But maybe we all are, one breath at a time, breathing our very selves, our planet, and our future into being. Weaving a world that is healthy. Weaving a world where we can stand side by side, even when the colors clash. Maybe you aren't a weaver. Maybe you are a dancer, and you are dancing our world into being. Maybe you are a gardener, and you are sowing the seeds of our future. Find your metaphor, and make sure it is writ large. Our world needs that right now, and we need to weave, write, dance, sing, cook, garden, our way to wholeness.