A Reflection by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
October 10, 2004
Reading from Zen and the Art of Knitting by Bernadette Murphy. Avon, MA: Adams Media Corporation, 2002.
Copyright 2004, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
I have here this lovely blanket. Some of you may recognize it, since you had a part in making it. It is the blanket that the knitting group of this church made for my son, Henry. I love it for so many reasons. I love it because it’s purple. I love it because it is beautiful. I love it because it was made by people I know and love, who I know care about me and my family. I love it because it is a gift of hand and heart. I love it because it is soft and warm, and because my son loves to cuddle up in it to sleep.
I actually am not a knitter. I have made attempts but I am not very good at it. My mom is. I have watched her create beautiful and personal sweaters: ones with dog bones for my dad, with planets, stars and spaceships for my son Sam, or even a sweater with a scene of recycling for a friend who is an environmental engineer! Then of course, there is the knitting group that has grown out of this church. Knitting is an important part of this community. Committee meetings, worship services, Sunday school classes…there is a good chance I will see someone with a pair of needles and a ball of yarn. What I like about the knitting group is what it reflects back about the larger community. It grew out of a shared love between members of this congregation, and not out of some official manual that said all healthy churches have a knitting group program or committee. It is open, and welcomes interested people, no matter their skill. However, not joining the group does not you remain an outsider in the larger community. The members create beautiful and original things that reflect who they are as individuals. I see mentoring: skilled knitters teaching novices, adults going to RE classes and teaching youth members. I can remember a moment in my office on Christmas Eve with Phyllis King and Sally Seekings, while waiting for the service to begin. Sally had a long scarf in the making and was saying to Phyllis, "But I don’t know how to cast off!" or peeking in the high school class and seeing several heads bent intently over yarn and needles, or a coffee hour when Debra Grad proudly showed off that first scarf she made. Knitting has provided a reason to get together away from the demands of home, family, and work, for the pleasure of the craft, to be in communion, at one with, others, in the spirit of creativity and fellowship.
So, when I saw Zen and the Art of Knitting, I knew this was a book I had to use in a sermon with this congregation. For Bernadette Murphy, her knitting started as a way to relate to her resigned and old fashioned Catholic aunt. It provided a means to work through the complicated and silent grief surrounding her mother’s, her aunt’s sister’s, death. She then explored the spirituality of knitting for others: as a way of centering, as a form of meditation and prayer, as a way of thinking through a problem or escaping one, as an expression of creativity, as a way of connecting with the past, as a way of giving to and reaching out to others, as a way of being in community. She saw knitting as a spiritual teaching tool. It taught about making mistakes: some of reach are small enough to live with, noticeable only to the knitter, while others required going back to figure out what went wrong. Although in knitting, unlike in life, it is always possible to go back and fix your mistakes. Knitting taught about having trust in something you can’t see at first but doing the work to bring it into being, and not always being in control of how it turns out.
I think she is right when says, "Knitting is a metaphor for so many things in life…Knitting is ancient and connects us with all the knitters who have come before us. Knitting tells me that just as a sweater is made up of countless stitches, countless sections that of themselves seem rather meaningless, so my life is made up of the many countless actions I take. Every kind word or cutting remark, the moments when I recognize the wonder of life and the many times I fail to do so, all these seemingly inconsequential moments add up, stitch upon stitch, to create the fabric of my life…When I knit, I stop to look. I take the time to be still and know that God is God. I find in these moments the peace of mind necessary to see clearly the miracle of my own existence, the preciousness of those I love. I get a glimpse once again of the goodness found in daily life and the many, many ways my life is graced." (pp. 31-33)
The purpose of worship is to give voice and vision, name and shape to those things that matter deeply to us, that are so wide and deep and awesome and alive for us, that we don’t always have adequate words. Given our last principle, that we affirm and promote the interdependent web of life of which we are a part", images of knitting, weaving, and yarn seem appropriate metaphors for describing our covenantal community. Taking a lesson from Bernadette Murphy, I would like to play a bit in worship today but using them to make tangible the ways in which we walk together as a Unitarian Universalist community of faith.
(The congregation then created a web out of yarn around the sanctuary.)