Nana Knits and Jams: Prayerful Knitting

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Prayerful Knitting

I have two friends currently battling cancer; daily they remain close to my heart and constantly in my prayers. Knitting for them really helps me create physicality to that care. For Carolyn, a fellow breast cancer survivor facing a sentinel node biopsy and radiation, I extended Christmas knitting by creating a pink Fair Isle headband with left over skeins of Lambs Pride wool. For Debra who has thyroid cancer and who also faces more surgery and radiation treatment, I decided upon a prayer shawl from a skein of Duo, a soft, Swedish yarn I bought at Gate City Yarns in Greensboro North Carolina. My knitting focuses my thoughts and my prayers, all the while creating something of warmth and comfort. Tonight I fastened the tassels on Deb’s shawl and tomorrow I will write out a prayer to include in each tissue-wrapped package…gifts from my hands and my heart.

3 comments:

Barbara Campbell ThomasJanuary 4, 2009 at 10:48 AM
Wow, you completed this very quickly--it is beautiful!!
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Ellen CampbellJanuary 4, 2009 at 1:41 PM
It is just one skein of yarn..I made two from those two skeins. I love that yarn...don't you?
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Barbara Campbell ThomasJanuary 7, 2009 at 12:20 PM
Yes, I do love it--so soft and nice to knit with I think.
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Quotes that resonate

"From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein." -Frederick Buechner

" If you do not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it." -John Ruskin

"All my scattering moments are taken up with my needle."-Ellen Birdseye Wheaton, 1851

"Prayer is sitting in silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we are a constant act of praise." -Fr. Richard Rohr

"Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know . . . if one is honest."  -May Sarton

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." -Rumi

"Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking." -Antonio Machado

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I have often maintained that the best poet is ... the baker who ... does [the] majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship."- Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and 1971 Nobel Laureate in Literature (1904-1973)

"Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy." -Proverbs 31: 8-9

"Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth." –Rumi

"The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labor for. "–Sir Thomas More, 16th century martyr

"To be useful was the best thing the old men ever hoped for themselves, and to be aimless was their worst fear." -Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead."