On Knitting and Receiving

Dear Ones,

Sunday afternoon a friend stopped by with a wonderful gift. While Jane is certainly the ringleader on such things, she was only a part of the creation of my new treasure.

Prayer Shawl

This is the beautiful prayer shawl that was gifted to me. In the tradition of the St. Margaret's Church Prayer Shawl Ministry, when they are able, many hands will join in the knitting. This shawl is filled with love and prayers, it is warm and loving and is a delight to touch. It is green, soft and deep, yet it is also a rainbow of colors I adore. I can feel all the hands and hearts that have contributed to this gift and I am so grateful.

Years ago, I knit a shawl for myself during a wonderful workshop, the kind of workshop where you find you love everyone in the room and share deeply with one-another. At the end of the workshop I passed the shawl around and asked for everyone's blessing on it, as it had been a subject of interest for our days together. One deeply intuitive gentleman, a Reiki Master actually, was not in the room at the time. When he returned, he had no idea why the shawl was handed to him. I was nearby and was awed by his response to it. "Everyone in the circle is in this shawl, I can feel their love and presence." While unaware of the process, he clearly felt the result.

That is how my prayer shawl feels to me. Filled with love, caring and compassion. It was created by a group that I love at a church that I love. And I can feel their faith as well as all our deeper faiths and trusts.

I have knit a number of prayer shawls myself, knitting love and prayers into each stitch, it is a lovely meditative task that I know brings untold peace and comfort to the recipient. I am now a recipient, that fact in itself still strikes me with shock and wonder at times. How, huh, what happened, where did life as I knew it go?

And I am the blessed recipient of this shawl, because my journey has taken me into one of those dark spaces of life. I have faced and continue to face unexpected and unbidden challenges to my health, as well as heart and psyche. I am part of a community that cares about such things and responds, and for that I am deeply blessed. Not that I always know how to receive these blessings! And I will again sit back and let it in, knowing that I am loved and cared for in ways I need not imagine or understand.

Yet here is another actual soft, yet solid real object of this middle world to touch and to hold that reminds me of such love and Spirit's love which transcends it all.

Thank you to all of St. Margaret's Church, I am blessed to be a part of this community of God.

Amelia

The Accompanying Prayer:

We pray that God's grace be upon this shawl
Warming, comforting, enfolding and embracing.

May it be a safe haven-
A sacred place of security and well-being
sustaining and embracing.

May you be cradled in hope,
kept in joy,
graced with peace,
and wrapped in love,
Amen