I have only ever knit two things.
One hat was too small and one hat was too big.
For this reason I have rarely worn either of them. But hear me when I tell you that my efforts were not wasted because I learned something truly valuable in the process. What I learned is that if you make a mistake you have two choices. You can leave the mistake or you can unravel what you’ve done and correct it.
Years ago now I began to notice some flaws in my understanding of my own identity, the history I have been taught and the theology I had been told to trust. Uncomfortable moving forward as if I hadn’t seen the mistakes, I began to unravel things. Some days I unraveled just a few stitches of white supremacy, sometimes I pulled out entire rows of God’s omnipotence or scriptures inerrancy. And nearly every time I would sit down to stitch things back together I would see another error a few rows back. And I would began to unravel things again.
One day, I just began to question everything and everything begin to unravel. I pulled and pulled and soon all I was left with was a pile of yarn at my feet.
I wept. There was nothing left.
It was then that I had a vision.
In the periphery of my sight sitting next to me to my left was a small sturdy woman with caramel colored skin and black braided hair. She wore a plain dress that had made colorful by rows and rows of hand embroidery. She seemed entirely unalarmed by my total unraveling. She was just calmly re-skeining all the threads that had previously made up my life. She said, in a voice that sounded like something between oboe and wind,
“The yarn was never the problem. The substance of everything necessary is still present. Now we begin to weave things back together.”
I tell you this because I know some of your worlds are unraveling. Some of you have only now pulled a few hooks and loops apart. Others of you have unraveled entire rows of your understanding of yourself, your history or your faith. Some of you, right now as you listen to my voice, sit with a tangle of yarn at your feet, having just watched things unravel before your eyes.
I won’t tell you it isn’t frightening. And it is in fact worthy of your weeping. But I will tell you what I now know.
Nothing essential to the reweaving has been lost.
Now is the time to start weaving something new. Death of whatever or whomever we have loved unravels us. It is worthy of our weeping. And in the lectionary reading, not the end of the story. John 11:1-45
