Weaving our Worlds

Each of us are weaving cloth with our lives, with our actions, and with our thoughts. We receive gifts from everyone as material for weaving the fabric. Sometimes, we receive sharp razor blades from our fellow humans; sometimes it’s poison; other times it’s sweet grass, sometimes it’s cotton, sometimes it’s a root, or gold. Occasionally you get some beads. Nowadays, maybe some LEDs, conductive thread, battery pack, and a tinyduino! We can choose between what we get and leave some of the bad things behind. We probably wouldn’t want to weave a blanket leaving poisonous residue and razor blades instead of beads for anyone would we?

The good thing is that we don’t have to be what we’ve become, what we’ve made ourselves to be. We are more than what we’ve made ourselves to be. We can pray and grow and learn to become more than we’ve made ourselves to be. Let us remember that.

If we’ve become used to giving and receiving bad things to and from others, we can always change. We can learn to step back and discern what we have been given and what we want to pass on to others. We can learn to see through deceit. We can learn to not weave the insults, belittlement, and doubt into our cloth pattern.

Eventually, all the old patterns and weaves with razor blades, poisons, doubts, and insults will break down and decompose into rust and dirt — fertilizer for new life. What will remain is the beauty we have focused on becoming — the new patterns of behavior and woven words of kindness and respect. The first step is discernment.

May we rise each day to the gift of life, and not the fear of dying. May we work each day to learn from and benefit all of the beings we come across that we are in relation to in one way or another, instead of taking from or exploiting one another. May we grow old in wisdom, strength, and comfort of the relationships we’ve nourished, instead of growing into frail, lonely, painful points on a chart of casualties of capitalist greed. May we die an inspiration to others, and not as a warning to those who come after us.

Let us be more discerning in how we conduct ourselves. Let us understand what it means to be more than we’ve made ourselves out to be. Let us grow to be stronger together.