Few Lutheran Christians or other Protestants use beads in worship or in private prayer and meditation. So, knitting needles may be our first experience of the rhythmic movement that leads to quiet, to awareness, to observance.
Linda Skolnik, co-author of The Knitting Way, is drawn to the wisdom of Thomas Moore, who wrote in Care of the Soul: “Observance is a word from ritual and religion. It means to watch out for, but also to keep and honor, as in the observance of a holiday. The “serv” in observance originally referred to tending sheep. Observing the soul, we keep an eye on its sheep, on whatever is wandering and grazing—the latest addiction, a striking dream, or a troubling mood…. Observance of the soul can be deceptively simple. You take back what has been disowned.” Skolnik believes that sitting with needles and yarn, knitting row-after-row, day-in and day-out is a way to make observance part of our spiritual lives.
Call it meditating or observing or simply knitting alone, the experience of a daily meeting with yarn and needles can, indeed, ready us for glimpses of the Divine.
This message is excerpted from “Knitting as spiritual practice” by Kathleen Kastilahn, a 2011 resource of the Women of the ELCA.
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