In the gaze of hope

In the gaze of hope
I am gazing at a photograph in a Smithsonian magazine of Annie Mae, a quilter from Gee’s Bend Alabama. The woman in the photograph is now 78, and the moment captures her pulling a threaded needle through a piece of fabric as she is making a quilt.

I stare into the moment this photograph captures, of Annie Mae stitching together pieces of worn blue jeans and cotton shirts, thin and faded from years of wear by her husband and son. Stitch by stitch, she is pulling the thread through the fabric, with her steady hand. The thread taut but not tight, completing one square and starting another, creating a  pattern out of the details of her life.

Can I attend to my days, to the comings and goings, with such steady and surrendered attention – to working, preparing meals, caring for my home, my husband and myself. There’s a discipline to daily life, held steady in the hand, as it threads together the divine and everyday, in the creation and expression that is met in the moments of living, as one lives in the flesh and the soil of time.

How am I transforming the worn fabric of my life?  Am I creating something new from the pieces of my days?