thing and spirit both

These past few weeks I have added more stitch and some velvet to this red cloth.

I thought the cloth was finished.  I put it in my show at the Homer Watson last spring. 

But this autumn, I felt that it needed more. 

More weight.  More time.  More definition.  Some darkness.

I began by adding brown silk thread. 

I also added a layer of dark grey velvet to the second side.

This cloth is for our eyes and it is for our hands.  

This cloth has given me a space for my heart to beat in.  

In pre-Columbian South America all liturgical ceremonies involved large quantities of textiles.  

Textiles were the major form of art, the conveyers of religious ideas.

Textiles were considered to be sacred objects.  (William J Conkin, archeologist)

I've started to call this thin, red, linen quilt:  Holy Holy.  

Through this past week, all I've wanted to do is stitch it.

I wanted to stitch by my window and listen to audio books all the time.  

I forced myself to do other things.  

I put the timer on so that I knew when I could stop doing those other things

and get back to my stitching.

I'm ready to break open.  I'd do it with my own hands.  

Maybe tomorrow if we're lucky and strong, 

Tonight I will learn to live in the inches,

As we spin the wind of this terrible age,  a place to sing

My voice, still raw and golden.   

       David Lerner

Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame.

Touch the earth. 

Love the earth. 

Honour the earth. 

Rest your spirit in her solitary places. 

Henry Beston

It is a power cloth.

It is like a cloth from another world.

It is like a ritual cloth.  

A cloth full of holiness and spirit and touch and me.

My fingers swirling through it, or it through me.

I saw it.  

It was thing and spirit both: 

the real world: evident, invisible.  

Marie Howe