fashioning a Christian ethic of clothing
I'm always attentive to textile references and delight when I hear song lyrics using textile imagery tell a story or communicate a feeling. Lately I've been enjoying the Rain for Roots albums with my baby, and today I heard something about "the fabric of faith." Looking up the full lyrics, I discovered that the song… Continue reading Texts & Textiles: Rain for Roots
In the four years I’ve called Community First! Village home, I haven’t had much room for sewing or weaving. However, I’ve had access to abundant outdoor space, and so while my farmer-husband has handled growing our vegetables, I’ve cultivated several experimental textile crops: first cotton, and then dye plants. Two years ago, I received seeds… Continue reading Uprooting
I’ve always loved hand-me-downs. As a child, I refused to wear clothes without “stories” – either the story of how my Mama made it, or the story of the person who owned and wore it before me. Having a baby has renewed my love for hand-me-downs. Recently, some friends of my husband gave us their… Continue reading Make Do and Mend: Jogging Stroller Strap Replacement
The peace-makers quiet the winds of the world ever ready to be up and blowing; they tend and cherish the interlacing roots of the ministering grass; they spin and twist many uniting cords, and they weave many supporting bands...[but] every self-assertion, every form of self-seeking however small or poor, world-noble or grotesque, is a separating… Continue reading Texts & Textiles: George MacDonald
My spirit isn't exactly troubled these days, but it is brimful of ideas, hopes, questions, plans, and projects.
Weaving, sewing, care for the poor -- all springing from the love of Christ.
For the last few months, I've stepped away from my keyboard and let sleep knit the raveled sleeve of so many cares.
I finished it just before midnight; the final stitches were my Easter vigil. As I draped the cloth, I was forgiving my body for her failures, forgiving my God for His delay.
Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, Each soft spring recurrent; It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the… Continue reading Texts & Textiles: John Updike
As a scholar of literature, I find rich meaning in Mary's engagement with her Book, but I can't help mourn the disappearance of the spindle. While Mary's reading calls our minds to the invisible work of the Spirit as we hear the Word, her spindle affirms that the Incarnation transforms the daily work of our hands into worship -- work with eternal consequences.
