Slow Stitched Contemplation Cloths

This practice is about intimacy, it’s about getting close and touching soft cloth that holds hidden stories and listening for the silent questions to arise within me that take me somewhere new, that open a door I didn’t know was there, It’s about sensing subtle depths with my fingers, my eyes and my heart as I settle into the rhythm of one stitch after another, head bowing down, eyes focused, responding to the stories of the cloth with my energy, my presence, my hands, my voice. It’s about sitting in stillness, retreating into quiet and listening to what wants to be heard.

These contemplation cloths hold me steady as I go exploring inside, I imagine roots gently expanding into the soft earth of the cloth...

They are soft vessels for whatever I bring to them. They alchemize emotions and thoughts, they help release them from my body and invite me to a deeper place underneath them where insight is born, where poems grow from, where collective consciousness and ancient wisdom is reconnected to…

When I look at hand stitching on cloth, I now wonder what is hidden within it…who held the cloth and the needle and thread? Who’s bodies did the cloth drape across as they stitched? What did those bodies experience and keep hidden away? What went through their minds and hearts as they stitched? What has the cloth witnessed and absorbed in its lifetime? What earth stories does the stitching hold that desperately need to be felt and remembered inside of my own animal body so I can return to a deeper way of being and knowing?

This practice is also about stretching out my energy and my mind, consciously choosing to do something that takes a long time, that isn’t fast or efficient but that is slow and requires me to sit with myself and go inside. It’s an attempt to reclaim my attention and discover what it can teach me when I give it space and time to unfurl and expand.

When I return to a cloth, I feel like I’m re-entering its stream, it’s flow, it’s river. I pick up where I left off and begin to travel again…