[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Shawls

I don't really know why I decided to wear the shawl to church this morning. 
I bought it last summer, at a farm in western Massachusetts; aside from 
fibre animals (everything from angora rabbits to camels), the farm's owners 
concentrate on supporting the Tibetan people however they can, and one of 
the ways they do so is to sell handwoven shawls. This one was a real 
beauty, although I didn't entire realize exactly how special it is until I 
became a novice weaver. I'm not sure what the fibre is (pashmina? silk? 
cotton? viscose?), but the fabric itself is lustrous and soft. What gets me 
is the weaving, which is astonishing. Whoever wove it is clearly an expert, 
going by the fine paisley patterning. I'm not the only one who feels this 
way; I showed the shawl to some of my master weaver friends and they almost 
fell off their loom benches.

But wore it to church I did, loving the beauty of it and the soft warmth. 
In church, I looked for my friend William, with whom I usually sit; I 
didn't recognize him at first because he too was wearing a shawl -- a 
_tallis_, a Jewish prayer shawl in white and silver. I'd forgotten that he 
has a special affinity for Jewish spirituality. He had his _tallis_ drawn 
over his head as he sat in a back pew, quietly rocking. At a guess, half of 
the rocking was William _davening_; the other half was William grieving. 
His husband* Keith is dying of bone cancer. As I slipped in beside William, 
he whispered to me that he'd taken Keith to our local hospice-care hospital 
on Tuesday and the end was close. I put my shawled arm around him and 
passed the kleenex.

We got through the service together; we were lucky in the hymns and 
lessons, which William found comforting. Sometimes I had my arm around him; 
sometimes he put his arm around me. We kept accidentally sitting on each 
other's shawl ends and having to extricate ourselves. During the Prayers of 
the People, Irene, the prayer leader, asked prayers for the two of them, 
and William suddenly sang out the hymn "The Lord's my shepherd," the whole 
thing, moving me and some others to tears. Irene improvised a beautiful 
extempore prayer, and the service went on. William wept softly off and 
on.  His shawl gave his grief a different dignity, an appropriateness. The 
Jews are right to sit _shiva_; we're the ones who err by saying "we don't 
air our dirty linen, and grief is dirty linen."

I know all about that. In my family, we don't "do" grief; it's considered 
indisciplined, impolite, a sign of weakness, an imposition on those who 
have to witness it. That's the dynamic I inherited, but it's not the 
dynamic my soul and body feel; I cry a lot in church, however little I like 
it. So I knew how William felt on his way back down from the communion rail 
with a face blotched with tears. His shawl sheltered him without concealing 
him.  I wrapped my own shawl close around me as I followed him.

Later this afternoon, I took myself to the spinners' and handweavers' guild 
room, where the looms stand sentinel around the big shabby space, 
everything from the tiny table looms to the 128-inch behemoth that takes 
two weavers sitting side-by-side to operate. With the exceeding great 
patience, kindness, and infinite tolerance of my elders and betters 
(several of whom rescued me from catastrophe), I'd managed to warp a loom 
and start work on a shawl -- the simplest of weaves, as far from my Tibetan 
shawl as a barn is from the Taj Mahal. But I've learned of late that barns 
have their beauty too, and this shawl is beautiful in its way. Humbly I 
wrapped my shoulders with a modest by fine Indian shawl, handwoven in 
cotton sewing thread -- 1500 threads across, 2500 to 3000 threads long, 
each exquisitely set, reminding me how much the "third world" knows that 
we've forgotten and how far I have to go. .

I wove steadily: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, carefully 
placing each weft strand. Weaving is far more mindless than knitting, I 
find, because of the counting mantra. I find I vanish into some other state 
when I'm weaving, one in which I'm keeping company with the Indian and 
Tibetan weavers who made my two exquisite shawls. It's a peaceful place. As 
I wove, I thought of swaddling clothes and shrouds and the tents that 
Moses' people carried through 40 years of exile. I thought of prayer 
shawls, knit and woven. Maybe every church should have a shawl or three, to 
wrap around those in need of comfort.

By the time I cut this shawl from the loom, Keith's soul will likely be 
nestled safe in the palm of God's hand -- although you never know; souls 
and bodies have their own decisions to make at the end, often independent 
of what the mind decided. I've got enough warp on this loom for a second 
shawl. I think I'll pray through weaving it for William.
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Note: Whatever readers' feelings about same-sex marriage may be, it is 
legal in Ontario, and William prefers the term "husband" to "partner".