Tapestries

In thinking of my life as a tapestry, I can remember a large piece of artwork I saw as a child. My parents would go to these kennel club meetings that were held in either a blind or deaf school in Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was rather large and hung on the wall. It was a landscape and I think bits and pieces of things like feathers were woven in. If you looked at only a small piece, it might look very ugly and full of nonsense, but as a whole it was beautiful and I would just stare at it.

I think of Perry as silk threads, a shiny time in my life... perhaps he is a pool of water or a shimmering green field. If you know silk, it slubs easily, although there is no natural fabric that compares. The oddity of silk is that though it shines as man made fabric sometimes will, it is actually not cold like artificial threads and will gather your own body heat on a cold day. My daughter is soft mohair, she is strong, but brings pleasure, a warm feeling. She would make the hills and mountains of my life, a very vibrant green hue. And my husband is wool, it is scratchy sometimes, but keeps you warm even in the wettest gale. Combined with a silk undershirt it can be your favorite, and although it forms piles it is reliable. When crafted by loving hands, wool shelters you even when you leave the safety of your home. My Mother and all the people I love form the rest of the landscape, even the animals leave feathers or bits of shell that make the work richer.

When a child dies, you feel as if your tapestry has been torn. I have recently realized that as the weaver, God can repair it and work it into the design, even if another hand tore his work. Our life never really leaves the loom until we are through here. Even when we are through, this life work remains. Hands may continue to touch it, people look back and study it.

I think of our soul as the loom. We choose how large, we shape ourselves. Some work with pot holders because they choose not to make the loom larger, and others form works so vast it is hard for me to comprehend the machinery that made it.

When this work is done, we begin again. I can't really describe what that work is like then, I do not know. The people that formed the threads of our life are there again... this time instead of a small field or tiny pond I would like to think that God will allow me to form a large ocean with Perry's threads. The ocean wraps around this spherical work that is no longer square with a top and a bottom. I don't understand how it works, this new weaving, but we just have to have faith that the shuttle will fly again.