Meditation, Mirth, Mistakes, and Mohair

Can't believe it's been two weeks since I last blogged! I'd love to be able to say, "Time flies..." and all that implies, but I've actually been sick and somewhat lazy. Jane brought us the United Airlines Christmas Cold and I've been sneezing, coughing, and finally wheezing for more hours each day than I'm usually awake. That doesn't mean I have been spinning and knitted--au contraire--but my inclination to write about it has waned in direct proportion to how many times I 've swallowed and said, "Ow!" out loud or in my head.

The grandkidlets have their hats. Leo laughed out loud at his, and Marian wore hers to bed the night the boxes got there. Sophie apparently likes hers as well. Thank God for easily pleased little kids! I'm still finishing Whitney's gorgeous blue merino scarf, in a mini-cable pattern, and wish I could keep it for myself. I may knit myself a gray one just like it...when? During Lent maybe?

This pattern is simple; it's just a three-stitch cable without cable needle with one purl stitch in between cables every sixth row. However, I seem to have lost my ability to multi-task in a big way. I can't be involved in a conversation without messing up my simple knitting pattern, and it seems I've become highly distractable by nearly everything as well--the dogs barking, a small hangnail, TV, music--name it. This from the person who, for thirty-two years, went into such a deep meditative state that the house could be bombed and she wouldn't be distracted.

I was sitting at my kitchen table this morning knitting and chanting, "Om mani padme hum," and it was suddenly as though I could hear little monkish or elfy laughter echoing through the universe, bouncing off the gases in our atmosphere, as they heard--not quite in unison with their own chants--"Om mani padme hum. Om oh dammit mani padme hum. Om uh om mani get back on that needle you stupid little stitch padme hum. Om om hum oh crap wait a minute I can't believe I did that again om mani padme hum..." and on and on. Some days you're just licked before you start.

Somehow, however, through the very act of making little linked loops with pointy sticks, my mind quieted itself and my heart warmed. My hands remembered what they were doing and for whom they were doing it--my Whit--and the love in the yarn spread throughout the room, the universe really, and touched the ears of God.

At times, the very notion of God is an abstraction for me, not exactly an intellectual construct or a logical or illogical concept, but impersonal, unaware or at least unattached to humankind. At other times, though, the presence of a cogent, personal deity becomes almost palpable. Divine justice is frequently played out on too large a scale for me to fathom, locked, as we are, in a reality limited by linear time and finite space. Things are painful, unfair, distant, but in a big picture (that we can't see, of course) all is played out according to who it is we are becoming, Jung's Cosmic Christ much more real than the historical Jesus.

However, on those rare occasions when pride of mind and spirit are left behind, pride of intellect and reason, attachment to logic and common sense, there occasionally comes a peace, a comfort, an assurance that defies reason and logic.

I call it the Peace of God.

Call it what you will, but search for it always, especially when you're spinning, weaving, knitting, crocheting, tatting, painting, writing, drawing, arranging flowers, designing clothes or buildings or gardens, sculpting, making pots--anything creative.

Seek the Peace of God.

Nothing much about mohair after all, but I needed a fourth alliterative "m" word. I did explain how to make a three-step mohair boucle to Jacque yesterday, though.