Sunday, February 8, 2009

Weekend away and within



For the weekend away, I gathered yarn for a new project. When people asked me what I was making, I didn't have an answer. This is often the case when I am making some assortment of squares using the log cabin technique. So, I am sorry to say even now that I don't know what this will become. I enjoyed assembling the colors and choosing the way the strips of yarn would form a design. Coincidentally, the colors of the hotel room perfectly coordinated. The table top boasted a similar design. There were squares on the sofa pillows and hanging on the walls.

Then, to prod me along in my quilting journey, the backdrop for the altar/speaking platform for council (an annual meeting for Episcopal clergy and lay persons in a diocese), was comprised of 40 hanging strips of improvisational piecing. One woman from Hattiesburg worked on the bulk of it. It was beautiful. It featured 30 words taken from The Book of Common Prayer.

Lately, inspiration surrounds me in the most unexpected places. Getting out of town, I was not enthusiastic. Leaving the meeting, I was very glad that I had been there.

Two highlights from the weekend away:
  • Meeting Rebecca Ding, the wife of the Bishop from a new diocese in southern Sudan. She radiated hopefulness and gave me a new perspective.
  • Listening to Bishop Gray's annual address on Friday night. Hearing his passionate words about reconciliation, I could have become a pentecostal. I look forward to doing my part--especially in the area of education.
Two blog posts that describe the meeting in greater detail and offer thoughtful theological perspectives are here and here. Currently, I have too many questions, hopes, fears, and ideas swirling in my mind and heart to be as coherent as my clergy friends, but I am grateful for their words and insights.

It was a weekend away, but it was also a weekend within. And, like my knitting project above, it remains to be seen what this talk of reconciliation will become. We can get started, though, even if we don't know how the various threads will knit together.


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1 comment:

Jen said...

I'm so glad you've shared a close-up picture of the hanging. I didn't realize they were really strips of fabric - from a distance it looked like ribbon, I thought. I love the pattern in the close-up you show, and suspect that all the others would be lovely to see, too.

Now I understand the connection between these and the ones that hang in the chapel at Gray Center - the same person made them, right? I never grow tired of looking at the hangings at Gray Center with all their variations and textures and colors...

Can't wait to see what your new log cabin squares decide to become! What a wonderful metaphor for the beginning of a missionary journey...