Loose Threads - Exquisite Lace

Our feet moved across the cobble stones, the heels of our shoes clicked against them, and we meandered through the narrow steep streets of Positano as we headed to visit an elderly lady. The door was tucked in behind the stone wall and at first it was hard to believe there was a house there. Yet when the door was opened, we entered into a small but airy space that was simply furnished and the colour of sunshine and the smell of espresso enveloped us. In a corner window that gave a vista of the beach along this stretch of the Amalfi coast, stood a frame with a large round pillow that held hundreds of threads, kept in place by straight pins. A pattern had begun to appear as these threads were twisted and plaited together to create an exquisite pattern of lace! In this small “room with a view”, an elderly woman passed her time by intricately and precisely creating lace from hundreds of loose threads.

In a recent morning as I drove to work I thought about holes in the heart; holes left by the storms that have battered and broken the heart. Holes that seem impossible to mend and put back together again could just take up so much space in our lives. I was thinking of someone who has huge holes in their heart in this season of life.

My mother used to darn the holes in our socks which meant they were still useful and wearable. But is the mending or healing of the holes left in the soul and heart, which may take a lifetime or beyond, only so we are “useful” in life? If we are created for passionate living and God redeems the pain, it seems to me that it isn’t just about mending the breaks so my life is “useful”. That sounds so…oh just so utilitarian, so emotionless, so without feel, passion, purpose or hope, so scientific.

Could it be that somehow there is a way that all those loose threads within the soul and heart can be taken with infinite patience and immense vision and woven into a beautiful pattern of lace so that my heart, my feminine heart and soul can live out this side of God’s character? As a woman can I let this slow process of twisting and plaiting those threads, the movement of the needle and the waiting while others are tended to, be seen as a “lace making” part of the redemption of the wild and dark storms in my life?

“Lace is a lightweight, openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric.” Wikipedia

How mysterious that what was “previously woven” and “open spaces” are what give the beauty and uniqueness to the feminine lace of my heart.

What Religion is Grace?

Foreign films are always of interest to me and I find them deeply provocative in the areas of social justice, relationship, culture and history.

Live and Become, a film by Radu Mihaileanu, which I viewed this week, rates very high in all these areas. While it deals with poverty, women in poverty, ones’ life story, the hiding and then the revealing of story, redemption, faith and culture, what I have been pondering today is how this particular film story reveals grace – grace that has little to do with religion and everything to do with being created in the image of the Almighty.

Schlomo, living in a refugee camp in the Sudan, was sent to Israel by his Christian mother with a Jewish woman whose son had just died. The mother instinct to do anything to save her son, and the guilt he lives with as a survivor is a strong cord in this film. Schlomo is not Jewish at all yet hides this fact for many years. He becomes a good student of the Torah and is mentored by the Falasha leader. To reveal his secret can cost him his life, his home, his community, the woman he falls in love with – yet in a desperate place he finally reveals the truth to the Falasha/Rabbi. The love of a Sephardic Jewish family who adopts him, the love of the Falasha leader – all signs of grace that somehow we think of as “Christian” behaviour, that are being revealed through characters that do not recognize Jesus as the revealer of Truth.

This is where my thoughts have been percolating today – why do we, or rather I, think grace, compassion, kindness, redemption, and sacrifices are “Christian” qualities? If we are all in the image of God our Creator, are they not qualities of the Almighty that are given to every single image bearer, no matter what faith they are? Just as this is so every single fanatical “religion” has the qualities that have no resemblance to who God is. Where does the line between religion and grace come in? Where does one become faith and the other fanaticism?

It brings me back to embracing the truth that all of us are made in God’s image. All of us are created equal, and all of us are on a journey to discovering Truth and the relationship with the Almighty that Truth draws us into. The search for this Truth often leaves me with more questions, or undefined pieces, yet each time I find a piece like this question of “grace”, I am drawn more deeply into my own sense of knowing the reality of the Almighty in my life.

Change of Perspective

Writing has always been from a solo perspective, from living a life on my own, and sitting with those feelings without speaking to anyone before writing them down. Yet this perspective has changed in the last months with the entrance of an amazing man in my life, spending time with him and now looking forward to our wedding in the later part of the summer. The shift inwardly has caused me to talk more with my beloved than to writing it down on my blog!

Yet writing and blogging those thoughts is an expression and activity that will continue and be revived, coming from the place of partnering in a way that has taken me totally by surprise! I have been sitting with those changes in this period of time walking towards our committment day of partnering together for life.

In the embracing of these changes I have also treasured the solitude moments in Holy Presence in a new way, knowing these minutes will be shared differently.

This weeks meditation from A Mystical Heart by Edwina Gately draws one into the reality of change, the embracing of Holy Presence, and the wonder of how redemption is unfolded:
Whatever happens to me in life
I must believe that somewhere,
in the mess or madness of it all,
there is a sacred potential -
a possibility for wondrous redemption
in the embracing of all that is.
For in the unfolding of my journey,
in all its soaring delight
and crushing pain,
I may be sure that God is there -
always ahead, behind, below, and above,
encompassing all that befalls me
in a circle of deep compassion.
And there,
above the darkness
that wraps me round
the bright wings of the Dove
hover and beat
in gentle healing love
and invitation to
New Rising