This picture came from About.com's gallery of scrap quilts, and the quilt and picture were made by Momof11 (!). She calls the quilt "Flowers for Laurie". Credit where credit is due!
Just lately, I have been revisiting my recurring passion for quilting. I have dusted off some unfinished projects, and assembled materials for some new ones. I crave the feeling of fabric in my hands, the precision of setting the pieces (not always as precise as I'd like it to be), the interplay of color and shape. I drink in images of the work of quilters who are more accomplished than I. I wander through fabric stores savoring the richness of color and texture on display.
Quilting, like drawing, crochet, cross stitch, playing music, reading, and writing, sits in my closet of dusty passions a lot of the time simply because the projects I have conceived to this point would take longer to complete than I have to live. But from time to time, each of my passions will call to me. There is always a reason.
The art of quilting was born of frugality and necessity. By piecing together scraps of outworn clothing, brightly colored feed sacks, and whatever else came to hand, a blanket could be made that was large enough to be useful. The multiple layers provided warmth. A quilt could be plain, or even homely, and be serviceable, but our foremothers put their creative spirits into arranging the pieces so the quilts were not just warm, but beautiful and meaningful. The traditional patterns -- Birds in the Air, Path Through the Woods, Churn Dash, Log Cabin, Cross and Crown -- represented familiar objects, moments in time, ideas, and elements of faith. The careful choice of color, distinction between figure and ground, the precision of the piecing, and the skill and craftsmanship with which the pattern was pieced and the stitches were taken turned something ordinary into something stunningly beautiful. Each stitch and each scrap of fabric contributed to the meaning and the pattern.
During one of my early morning discussions with my Father, it became clear to me why quilting has spoken to me just lately. My life right now is an assembly of bits and pieces : faith, family, the farm, school, the horses, community organizations, dividing my time and emotional energy between two households, the need to create, the need to be still and listen. Each scrap is rich in color and has a part to play in the bigger picture. But with the start of the new school year, the pieces seem to be smaller and more oddly shaped, and the fragmentation becomes more apparent. The question is, what am I going to make of it all? Something chaotic and unrealized? Something clumsy and plain, but serviceable? Or something carefully crafted to be meaningful and beautiful?
The works of talented quilters, like the lives of the Saints, point the way to the discipline, the love, the craftsmanship, and the artistry to make something warm, colorful, orderly, and unique from my pile of scraps. I pray for the vision to see the pattern, the commitment to cut and piece the elements precisely, and the patience to take each stitch with care.
There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart ~ Celia Thaxter
It seems that every summer goes by more quickly than the one before. This one in particular ran like water through my hands, and next week I go back to school. The delicious margin of summer becomes crowded with schedules that don't depend on weather and whim.
My resolve this year is to keep that summertime feel all year long.
We women, in particular, seem to spend a lot of time dwelling on how "stressed" we are. We define and validate ourselves in terms of "stress", we describe our lives as "hectic, frantic, super-busy" and do a lot of exasperated sighing.
I am at that stage of mid-life when sleep is an unruly guest -- it drops in uninvited, and leaves abruptly in the middle of the night without warning, slamming the door loudly on the way out. Lately I've been trying to spend less of that wee-hours ceiling inspection time grinding my teeth and fretting about things, and more of it talking to my Father, and, more importantly, LISTENING to Him. So He and I have been talking about this phenomenon of stress just lately. I asked myself that if I eliminated the word and the concept of "stress" from my life, what would be left? This morning at 5 AM I got a verse of scripture, and not one, but three answers to that question.
The verse that came to me was from Isaiah: " Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee." Is. 26:3. The three answers all revolve around trust in God.
So, what IS left, if one drops out of the stress sweepstakes and does some redefining?
First, there are blessings for which I am not appropriately grateful. This includes the opportunity to serve people I love, and the work involved in keeping up the home and the farm that I have dreamed of since I was a child. It includes my job -- which is a perfect fit for my skill set, experiences, and somewhat sideways outlook on life, and on top of all that, gives me summers to work on the farm. I love all these things, passionately, but sometimes I can feel crowded or overwhelmed, and that leads to resentment.
My abundant life is a big one, and I am not properly grateful. When I flip my resentments on their heads, it's ludicrous that I would complain about having people in my life, after years of crushing loneliness, that I love so much and can do a few little things to help and serve. It's absurd to resent the beyond-my-wildest dream that is this farm. It is unthinkable to kick against a job that I love that pays for all of it. What's left is not overwhelming stress, but overwhelming gratitude. Look at all this! And all these gifts point to the Giver. If He has given me so much of what I want, how can He not be trusted to give me what I need?
No one is saying life is perfect. Money is tight, time is tighter, I make mistakes, I make bad judgments, things fall apart, relationships are sometimes strained, people I love are hurting, and all these things can add up to stress. Feeling helpless, powerless, unhappy with how things are, afraid of what is going to happen next - if that isn't stress, what is it?
Perhaps it's a set of challenges that, if I trust Him, God and I can handle together. No, it's not easy. But God is able and willing to equip me to get through it, if I can trust Him to lead, and rely on His strength to sustain and enable me, and His love to get me through the inevitable losses. No, I can't. But He and I together -- we can!
Finally, some of that "stress" can be redefined as nothing more than excess baggage. Do I really need to let my life in the here and now be influenced or controlled by things that happened in another time, another place, with other people? Do I really need to do so much -- or ANYTHING -- to validate myself or earn approval from God or people I love? Do I need other people's problems, and other people's drama? Do I need more things than I can take care of, and more tasks than I can accomplish? Or do they add up to a hamster wheel that keeps me running in circles, and steals precious time and energy from the things in life that are truly important? Do I trust God to love me whether I juggle more bowling pins than other people or just a few? Do I trust Him enough to let go of what doesn't bless my life?
I want my summertime margin. So to keep it, when I begin to feel stressed, I will ask myself "If there is no such thing as stress, then what IS this?" If it's a blessing -- I need to be grateful. If it's a challenge -- I need to trust God's providence, put on my big girl britches, and get to work. And if it's garbage -- I need to dump it!
