Slow Stitched Contemplation Cloths
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
-Naomi Shihab Nye, from her poem, Kindness
This practice has been about intimacy, about getting close to myself in ways I hadn’t before through the simple repetition of one stitch at a time on large, often old, handmade cloth touched by hands across the world. It was a process that revealed itself to me when I was journeying through layers of grief, sorrow and loss in my life and something guided me to develop this practice to keep those energies moving inside me so they didn’t get stuck and harden. It is a practice I began in my first year of sobriety after a 20 year addiction to alcohol.
The practice of creating these cloths has been intuitive and tender. It has taught me how to get close and stay close to what I feel inside, to not run away or numb my intense feelings and thoughts and learn how to sit with them, allow them to be fully there and listen deeply to what they needed me to know on a deeper level.
This has been a practice of mindfulness and meditation, the slow stitching gave me a steady rhythm and anchor to return to again and again where I didn’t have to think about what I was making, I didn’t have to conceptualize anything or plan anything, I just had to return to the simple repetition of the flow of stitches, like entering a stream. Because at the time, my mind and my heart were so full of anxiety, fear, worry, doubt, overwhelm, confusion, shame, embarrassment, anger and distress that I had no space, no energy for planning or conceptualizing what I would make. My creative spirit guided me to what I needed most, a soft refuge to unravel my mind and my heart and get to know them in a much deeper way than I ever had before.
I was amazed at what incredible depths were revealed to me when I stayed put and continued to breathe. How touching these soft cloths and adding my touch to them, my heart, changed me and healed me.
