The Silent Ministry of Knitting
THE SILENT MINISTRY OF KNITTING
By Jim Taylor
> A few years ago, my wife Joan took up her ministry. She knits prayer shawls.
> With the onset of chronic leukemia, Joan didn’t have the energy to
> continue some of her previous volunteer activities. She hadn’t done
> much knitting for years. But shortly after her diagnosis, her friend
> Bev Milton knitted Joan a blue prayer shawl.
> I soon learned to recognize when Joan was feeling low — she wrapped
> herself into that blue shawl.
> Joan set herself a goal, to knit one prayer shawl a month. Sometimes
> she gets ahead of herself — she’s currently knitting October’s shawl.
> The skeptical side of me has doubts about the value of a prayer
> shawl. Granted, wool is warm and cuddly all by itself. But it is
> inanimate. It is nothing more than the hair cells of a sheep — or,
> sometimes, of their camel-cousin llamas and alpacas in the Andes —
> twisted together into a knittable yarn. The cells have no more life
> than my fingernail clippings. They do not, they cannot, carry
> information with them.
> And yet there is something warmer, more comforting, about a shawl
> that has been knitted with love and compassion than there is in, say,
> a synthetic microfiber blanket.
> LAYING ON HANDS
> In our congregation, the shawls that Joan and others knit receive a
> blessing before they’re given out. A dozen or more shawls are laid
> out, draped over the seat backs in the rows. Worshippers lay their
> hands on the nearest shawl while reciting words that speak of hope,
> consolation, caring. Those who can’t reach a shawl rest a hand on
> someone who has. Thus everyone is connected, a transmission line of
> goodwill.
> Dead sheep cells don’t know that. But people who receive those shawls
> say that they can feel the caring when they drape the shawl around
> their shoulders.
> I was given one myself, when I smashed my elbow a few years ago. It
> wasn’t one of Joan’s. But I know I felt something.
> I have doubts — misgivings, perhaps — about intercessory prayer.
> You know, the kind where you ask an old man in the sky to do something
> you can’t do yourself. Cure that cancer. Heal that heart. Mend that
> mental illness. Send down that cloud with the silver lining…
> I no longer believe in a fairy godmother with a magic wand that goes
> “Poof!” Nor do I believe in the power of the human mind to bend spoons
> or shrink tumours. I don’t deny occasional miracles; I simply deny
> that we humans can call up miracles on demand.
> Yet increasingly I believe that there is more to us than chemical
> elements and DNA. When I open up my heart to let others into it,
> something sometimes happens. Something good.
> So when a number of us raise the same thing to the top of our
> thoughts — even if only for the length of a liturgy — why shouldn’t
> something happen there too?
> Maybe someday we’ll have the forensic skills to identify subtle
> changes in the chemistry of wool, of a warm drink, of a get-well note,
> that are brought about by being handled with love.
> Until then, I have to accept that Joan’s prayer shawls consist of
> more than just wool.
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> Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and
> study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights
> reserved.
> To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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