Weaving

What’s feeling true of me still is the utmost joy in trying to name something, to write, or to understand and as soon as I try and ‘get it’ it disappears like candle smoke and I am lost back into the mystery and wonder of the whole thing. Respectfully seeing how naming things can have some necessity and at times meaningful relation I do still wonder in a human world our craving of controlling that our naming is simply a leash and a moment of seeking safety and distance of how big this whole life really is. I wonder of a landscape with no names, a wild rhythm.

I am pulled by the sentience of seasons and being in the presence of those who are not confused in being here. The bees, sheep, a forest rooted painting a blue sky. Being in the presence of them is intoxicating in relation to a human body that in this day can so quickly become paralyzed, bewildered, and well, confused. My feeling of this when I work with the bees or sheep when the climate and landscape is evolving more quickly, their is some suffering and trouble in their adaptation, I feel at fault for these troubles. Though in the presence of this their is not a moment I find them to be confused at all, they simply attend, mouths chewing cuds, bees pollinating. I wouldn’t trade this body, heart, or mind, don’t wish to be anything different than what I am but I yearn for that faith and simplicity at times.

I am feeling deeply, an unraveling of self and a complete devotion and love for my dependence on everything that is literally making it possible for me to be here at all. I play with the social field, finding a balance to provoke some wondrous questions, how did we get here, how do we wish to begin now? Providing workshops and ways for folks to attend, a price, a program, a time available, awareness to help get them into the door. Community collectives and endeavors that feel inclusive without cost, gifts, trades, barters. Some things get named but the truth is if I can get a day or a moment where we as people simply gather with everything that is bigger at the table and between us, that’s a really good day. A broom, a flock of sheep, clover and timothy, sap tapping from a Maple they simply work wonders and they don’t ask for much from us but to attend.

I’ve begun a new craft thanks to a shearer and a dear friend of so long, processed wool. Skeins of wool, roving, and rug yarn. I built a peg loom and I am weaving. As I began weaving very quickly I was moved with emotion, very quickly I knew for now this is not for sale. My hands weaving, repairing, reconciling, weaving the heart work of dependence. My hands wind around the pegs and I feel in those first days of being human, naked, that a sheep offered themselves for us to be here, warm, nourished. Not from a human survival and mastery, but that of the offering of another for something else to be here, and in that being here the other may be here too. So I am here weaving, holding on to that offering that we may be warm still, and that a flock still teaching this lack of confusion for being here together.

In writing, or providing a broom workshop, or even weaving a rug I don’t feel this sense of doing it to feel good, that’s not why I am here, not principally. This act is to recognize my willingness and gratitude for being here and that took something of the other to be possible at all. I feel in a way something is really at stake when I am weaving this wool. For a shepherd and a flock, a landscape of everything that is good on this earth my doubling down on belonging amidst this. I wish not to live in a world without this relation with sheep. As I weave I am pummeled at how simple it is, I don’t believe through our partnering it was ever meant to be confusing or conflicting or even complicated to exist peacefully as enough. Look around and these beings still uphold the house of these trusts. Everything is waiting.

Sap is tapping, like dead reckoning I am pulled in again rounding a grove collecting buckets. A wild rhythm for each to recognize its own, so in the days to come another generation may find a thread woven of those who were worthy of being here, a child worthy of being here. Go to them.