Even God is a knitter (in addition to
being a potter, an artist, a poet, fire, and lots of other creative pursuits).
The Psalmst tells us,
You made all the delicate, inner parts
of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so
wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it. You
watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in
the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was
recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had
passed.”
Psalm 139:13-16
As I wrap gifts for CHRISTmas this
year for the first time ever I get to give a ‘grown up’ handmade gift. Not an
ornament, not a foot angel but a scarf. Last winter I got the fantastic idea
that I was going to learn how to knit. I had done it before so really it was
just going to be getting back on the bicycle. How wrong I was, knitting for me
was not like getting on a bicycle, or maybe it was as learning how to ride a
bike for me was very difficult but more on that another time. After a tense December for a multitude of
reasons I looked upon January as a time of new beginnings, a way to restart to
learn something new.
Again I had
no idea just what I was getting myself into. Susan who taught me how to knit
and I would sit on Sunday nights and watch ABC’s Once Upon a Time and
knit together. Even though she taught me our techniques where different but
both still produced knitting. She was a knitter who would rip out messed up
stitches and I would just let them be. I’m not really sure why I did not feel
the need to rip the stitches out. Granted in my first scarf this led to a HUGE
hole. But she also told me that knitting reflects the state of our souls. I
think of knitting as an embodied prayer, the clacking of the two sticks
together the conversations that go on during group knitting, the bumping of
hands that meet when trying to show how to hold the needles just right. That
first scarf became a goal scarf for me; it was a sign that I could do something
good, after a time of feeling that I was only capable of failure.
But back to
the Christmas scarf, I started this scarf in my room at Drew casting on 30
stitches. Then knitted a few rows in the international terminal at JFK, a few
more rows in Antakya Turkey, then some more on the road between Tarus and
Nevisher Turkey. More on the Turkey trip some other time. Then I got home and
worked on it on and off, trying to work out my frustrations with life in those
sticks and fiber. Trying to knit the holes of my own life together. I had
thought from the start that I would give this scarf away. But about half way
though I wondered how I could give this scarf to anyone with all of these
broken feelings that I had fed into it in the process of turning it into a
scarf.
But then I
thought of the person I was giving it to. Someone who fully gets the brokenness
that I feel, for they have felt it also.
Working to battle the holes and the frustrations, the sadness but
likewise the joy that I worked into that scarf. So I give this scarf to this
person with all of this, knowing that all of the individual stitches work
together to create rows of bumps, that form into inches, that form into the
scarf. Knowing that this person and I are knitted together forever in our souls
just like this scarf.
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