God's Love is a Tapestry

One of the poets at our women's retreat was a gift of a gal named Lori Martin.

In reflecting on this year's theme, "Woven Together in a Tapestry of God's Love," she crafted this:

God’s Love is a Tapestry

 I was thinking

what is “tapestry”

anyway?

What do I know

about weaving?

How can this metaphor

speak to my mind?

 

And then I thought:

tapestry  is just fabric, right?

Fabric – cloth – textiles

which surrounds me always.

Look here: carpet, curtains, upholstery, clothes…

I am enveloped in the stuff!

And never even notice it, really.

 

And then I thought

I do not rightly value TAPESTRY

Because I am in this culture

Of affluent self-sufficiency

Of Walmart mass production.

I walk into Target (consumer conscience,

soothes my guilt about the rights of workers)

and purchase, for the price of a Happy Meal,

a shirt – and think nothing of it.

My money clothes me,

it provides all my needs,

I, with my money, am self-sufficient,

and am in need of nothing.

If I want a tapestry, I go and buy it

from the Museum Store,

and THINK NOTHING OF IT.

(This is precisely the problem.)

 

And then I thought

WHAT IF

everything I have

in my closets and attic

and house and life,

every stitch and thread

every square inch of cloth

that I did not make myself –

 

(I mean MAKE as in

gathering fibers from

thorny plants or sheep

and washing them,

and dying them,

and combing them out

and twisting them,

spinning them into thread

and taking spools of thread

to a loom and stringing them

into a weft and a warp,

and weaving the threads

into cloth and cutting

the cloth into pieces and

stitching the pieces together)

 

What if everything

that I did not make

all by myself

from scratch

was taken from me?

 

My purchasing power

becomes meaningless

when faced with truly

providing my needs.

 

And now I think:

I have been believing a lie!

I have walked in pride, blind

Unable to see that I am wholly dependant

on my money, and on people

who have all of these skills

to gather and spin

and weave and sew

and everything else.

That if everything

That I did not make myself

Was taken from me

I would be naked, wholly destitute,

Crawling like Nebuchadnezzar

(read Daniel chapter 4 sometime)

unable to help myself in any way.

In my reliance on wealth and affluence,

I desperately need the hands of others

to cover my nakedness,

to shelter my body,

to provide the fabric of my life.

 

And this is the Truth.

I am naked, and ashamed.

I am cold, sunburned, exposed,

and I am incapable of doing anything about it.

 

But God

 

Has woven a Tapestry of Love.

 

This love of God is merciful to the needy.

Before God, I drop all of the things

I think I have made for myself,

And stand before the Maker wholly unmade,

with nothing, as nothing.

 

And God

with gentle hands

skillfully works a process

of long meticulous repetitions

with an eye for color and pattern

for symmetry and surprise.

God endures the pricks of thorns and needles,

shed blood and calloused fingers,

shoulders strong from holding me close

for hours, for days and years and decades

weaving a lifetime, observing every stitch,

making from miniscule fibers,

spiraled together, a whole thread,

from threads bound up, a yarn,

from thick yarns, spooled, chosen, placed,

a weft threaded long and wide,

a warp passed under, over,

many yarns at once in a tangle of detail,

or a long working with only one,

making from all of these

a thing of richness and beauty

A Tapestry, in which a picture slowly emerges,

A story told in the time it takes to live it.

 

And now I see:

This is the Tapestry God weaves

This is Love, the work of great worth

The difficult thing

that I can not do for myself

that I hardly even appreciate or understand,

and yet that I need so desperately.

 

And I pray, Oh God,

I am naked, and you clothe me.

I am nothing, and you make me.

Oh God, weave your tapestry of love. (copyright @2004 Lori Martin)

 

 

 

 

7:55:08 PM  #

comment []