Monday, July 27, 2015

Unique Reflecting

The Mystery within...
I was on a “Women Gathering” retreat this past weekend.  It is a happy time when I leave everyday activities behind and sit in a circle with other women who want to explore what life is all about.  I look forward to this annual coming together.  Who I am becomes more apparent and I leave these weekends with a sense of fragile wholeness. 

There is always a craft project to symbolize the theme of our gathering.  This year’s theme was “Endings and Beginnings” with the symbol of a spiral depicting life as one continuous flow with ending events turning into new beginnings.  I’m not fond of doing crafts and always feel some resistance to the task.  This year was no exception, with not one, but two anxiety producing crafts for me.  But in naming what I struggle with I always find healing. 

My first project was to glue a length of twine to a piece of cardboard with Elmer’s glue in the shape of a spiral that symbolized my life thus far.  My fingers found the stiff twine hard to turn and keep glued down so I did the best I could with just looping it back and forth and decided it represented the twists and turns in my life that have become a little more gentle as I age.  But the two ends of my twine didn’t meet and I thought they should until I saw the distance between them representing the time I have left in this life before I return back to where I initially came from.  Everyone else did manage unique and widely differing spirals highlighting how different and special each one of is.

And then came the instructive, all afternoon weaving project, where we were provided a weaving board, a myriad of colorful yarns, textures, and ribbons, and were invited to weave a depiction of our life thus far.  One thing I was sure of was I needed to keep mine simple.  My board’s base yarn had to be easy to work with as well as using just one texture of yarn to weave throughout.  I choose a soft multicolored yarn in shades of green to represent the heart chakra’s color that to my surprise turned to a soft gold near the end.  All I needed was to trust my heart and embrace my fears and it would be okay.  And it was.  I did need some help in taking my weaving off the board and hiding some mistakes.  But I didn’t want too much help.  I wanted to see and fix those flaws myself, even if imperfectly.  And I knew how true that is for all of us who struggle to come to our own insights in how best to find answers for healing.  I was reminded of a paragraph from my memoir, “God Never Hurries,” as Bear, the Shepherd/Husky, searched for his yellow tennis ball in the back yard after an early snowfall:

“Just as I watched Bear out of the corner of my eye as he frantically searched for his ball of sunshine, so too God was watching me as I worriedly searched for answers to my care giving problems.  God knew I needed to find the answers myself in order to grow.”

Each of us gathered was gifted with a beautiful spiral pendant to help us remember the weekend and how we learned from listening to others’ unique stories and sharing our own.  No matter that my spiral turned out to be a loop de loop and my weaving has memorable flaws.  It is all good.


What if we all had opportunities to appreciate one another’s uniqueness and find our own true path through sharing?

1 comment :

  1. How delightful to read your accounting of your experience at the WomenGathering. Your presence in the circle of women brings wisdom and grace. I am grateful. Cathy

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