Reweaving the Tapestry with the Threads of Relationship

A very long time ago, there was a giant tapestry.  It was all over the Earth and maybe even larger.  No one knew how large it was and at that time, it wasn’t the size that mattered.  What did matter was how strong it was and how it held everything in life.

Some of the threads were thick and some so thin that a human eye might not be able to see it, although a fly’s eye probably would.  The pattern was so intricate and complex that it was hard to see it all.  Seeing it all didn’t matter then as much as how it felt; how it felt to be held in that strong tapestry with everything else.

There were the usual ups and downs, comings and goings of life and some life forms disappeared from the tapestry while others appeared.  The tapestry needed constant attention from weavers.  Some say that the weavers were young women and some say old women.  Some say that the tapestry was woven by a spider.  I don’t know for sure.  But weavers were always creating new designs whenever the threads were damaged.  They were always repairing the tapestry so that it was strong and so that it held everything.  The life in the tapestry learned to weave as well.  Even the tiny helix threads that held the codes learned to weave new life. 

There was no higher or lower.  That came later.  There was no inside or outside of the tapestry.  That came later as well when some of the humans decided to use their imaginations to imagine that they were outside of the tapestry looking down on it.  The tapestry was so complex and intricate and captivating that they began to pull it apart to look at each strand.  As they pulled thread after thread out of the tapestry and then pulled each thread apart from itself, they learned many mysterious things and so they kept going.  The holes they left in the tapestry were repaired by the weavers and life went on.

But after hundreds of years of more and more humans pulling the tapestry apart, the weavers were no longer able to keep up with them.  Holes began to show in certain parts of the tapestry.  Still curious, those humans travelled to other places on the tapestry and pulled those areas apart as well.  The weavers were kept very busy repairing the damage.  More and more pieces of the tapestry were left lying about, unconnected.  More and more humans were left unconnected as well.   When they were no longer connected to the tapestry, they began to feel sick.  They tried to weave small tapestries of their own to fill the holes, but they couldn’t connect their small tapestries with the larger one and so they were not held when the ups and downs and comings and goings of life occurred.

The weavers could see that the curious ones were in trouble.  They could see that the holes could get larger and larger.  They remembered that the thing that mattered was the strength of the tapestry when it held all of life.  The curious ones had forgotten what mattered as they only followed the apparently insatiable curiosity in their heads. 

The weavers had many meetings.  They made sure to listen to all of life in order to reweave the tapestry.  Some of the weavers had forgotten what the tapestry used to look like.  They had to consult with the very tiniest threads in their cells that held the codes, the maps, the remembering.  They decided to work in the areas of the tapestry where they found themselves.  They took the strands of the threads that were lying about and patiently rewove them into thicker strands.  They patiently reconnected those threads to each other and to all of life.  What they found was that after some repair, other weavers appeared, weavers that remembered, weavers that listened to the coding in their tiniest strands. 

The weaving didn’t always look perfect.  Sometimes the colours didn’t complement each other.  Sometimes, knots stuck out.  But the weavers knew that they could keep on repairing and weaving as time went on.  They concentrated on putting the strongest threads in place first, like the threads between the humans and the trees.  The trees were expert weavers and once in place, they filled in the tapestry around them.

More humans learned how to weave as well.  They learned much from the trees and the spiders who had never stopped weaving.  They patiently found the strands and pieces of thread lying about.  They listened to the humans who still remembered what the tapestry looked like.  They listened to the coding in their cells.  They listened to the tapestry which amazingly began to weave itself as well. 

As more humans learned to weave, they remembered how to weave themselves back into the tapestry.  They loved the feeling of being held.  They loved the pull of the tapestry that told them of the ups and downs, the comings and goings happening everywhere.  They loved following the threads to parts of life that they were curious about.  But instead of pulling the tapestry apart to understand it, they were now able to understand the connections and how that affected all of life.  The humans began to feel healthy again.  They told stories from within the tapestry where they had been all of this time.

The tapestry now looked different than it had before the holes appeared.  And it kept on changing as it was repaired and renewed and it was always beautiful.  I still don’t know how big the tapestry is.  But I do know that its size doesn’t matter.  What matters is its strength and how it holds all of life with the threads of relationship.

How Empowering Women and Girls Can Help Stop Global Warming

In this TED talk by Katharine Wilkinson from Project Drawdown, Wilkinson makes the link between creating gender equity and changing global warming.  Project Drawdown has looked for the best ways to draw down heat-trapping, climate changing emissions. Wilkinson mentions the obvious ones such as renewable energy, sustainable diets as well as the less obvious ones such as the education and empowerment of women.  She outlines three key areas in which we could secure the rights of women and girls, shore up resilience and divert emissions as well, all at the same time.

These three areas are agriculture, education and family planning.  These are connections you may not have thought of before but this is part of the new story that is emerging.

Check it out:

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Walking on Wet Ice

My eyes followed the black trunk and branches of the Maple tree outside of my window on Saturday morning.  The January rain made the wood black and the foggy light behind the tree created a striking silhouette of connected lines. Everything was simplified into black and white.  This made the pattern more obvious and beautiful.  The only movement I detected were two Grey Squirrels that despite their name, were black.  They ran along the network of tree branches and trunks like highways, like nerve impulses along the dendrites of the brain.  Ideas ran along the dendrites of my brain as I gazed at the simple scene outside.

The day would be all about temperature and precipitation.  In the morning it was raining but, as the temperature was predicted to fall, that rain might turn into ice pellets, freezing rain and eventually snow.  So, we went out for our usual Saturday morning breakfast and then a wet hike through the woods of our usual hiking area.  We wore waterproof boots, pants, coats and hats and set off into the woods.  But the deep snow was transforming into deep pools of water on top of ice, so we stuck to the berms and boardwalks around the marsh instead.  Where there are usually dozens of Trumpeter Swans, only three remained.  The flock of ducks flew off as we approached.  Perhaps the other swans are nestled under Cedar trees, or perhaps there is lots of open water for them to feed from somewhere else.

As I carefully watched the ground ahead of me for ice I placed my feet on solid ground, or carefully on wet ice.  I wondered what the land had to teach me that day.  We were the only ones out there on the trails and some might think us foolhardy.  But, it is important for us to renew our relationship with the land by walking on it, by listening, by paying attention so out there we were.

I thought about how we dislike and fear transitions.  Talk of freezing rain makes people think of car accidents, power outages and broken bones.  We don’t like having to pay attention to the weather changing in order to navigate our days.  We prefer to plan from inside our heads with no negotiating with the land, with the elements.

As I picked my way carefully along the trail, I had to negotiate with ice, wet snow, pools of water, my boots, my walking sticks, the speed of my gait, and, the way I put each foot down on the land.  It reminded me of a mindfulness walk in which you are present in your own body and conscious of what is going on inside of you and around you.  I had to walk carefully, thoughtfully on the land to keep myself safe.  In “good” weather, I can walk mindlessly on the land, deep in my own thoughts about things far away.

I wonder if transitions demand more mindfulness and since we are addicted to being fairly unconscious, this demand on our attention is seen as an irritant.  Our world is in transition at the moment as well.  Does that demand more attention, more consciousness as well?  It would seem so.

When I was younger, I used to fall a lot.  Now that I am older, I try not to, but am not always successful.  I use hiking poles to walk in slippery conditions.  I use the information that I get from the feel of the pole as I plant it in front of me, to understand the nature of the surface I am on.  Even in the dark, I can detect ice or concrete under a thin layer of snow.  This helps me to know when to slow down and be more careful.  Without them, I am trying to feel the surface through the thick soles of my boots.  I end up bending over slightly, unconsciously lowering my centre of gravity.  With the poles I stand upright and listen to what I feel through my hands.  If I start to slip, the poles give me more stability as well.

We are navigating through difficult, confusing times.  Perhaps we need tools other than our thickly clad feet to find our way.  Perhaps, we need support systems and communities in place in case we start to slip.  Perhaps we need to be in closer relationship with our world to keep us safe.  Sliding into unconsciousness probably won’t do the trick.

Well, the freezing rain did pass through, then ice pellets and then a kind of sugary snow.  The next morning, we had to melt the ice off of the car windows, scrape, move snow and then off we went again.  This time we took our cross country skis to the same forest.  We had to set trail on the ungroomed forest trail and we took turns doing this.  Now, I had to read the amount of glide that my skis had on the snow to judge the amount of power to use.  My ski poles told me about the depth of the snow and if ice lay underneath.  My face told me that it was close to -20 degrees Celcius with the wind chill as my face burned. 

The same forest looked totally different with the snow covering it.  We stayed on the higher trails in case the puddles of the day before were still not quite frozen.  Squirrels, rabbits and deer had already been moving about that morning.  Their foot and hoof prints told their story.  We had to pay attention to which trails to take.  As we climbed a few small hills, we had to pay attention on the angle to put our skis so we wouldn’t slide backwards.  It was easy going as the snow wasn’t very slippery.

I marveled at how different the two days were due to a change in temperature.  Different skills were required to navigate the trails.  Our attention was fully on being where we were.  And so, we didn’t get lost out there, we didn’t get wet, and we arrived back at the main building a while later.  We were able to give a report of the trail to the front desk person to share with subsequent skiers.  The trail was “broken” and others would find it easier to navigate.

Perhaps, in being conscious of what is going on around us, we can find ways to navigate changing conditions.  Perhaps, we can share that information with other people.  Perhaps, we can take turns, like Canada Geese do, in breaking trail, making the trip easier for those following.

That is the story that the land shared with me.  I will see how it applies to life when I am not in the woods.  I will let the story work inside of me and change me and it will create new stories.

The Witness Blanket

Carey Newman

Vancouver Island artist Carey Newman has created a large installation called The Witness Blanket.  Newman created this piece in response to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2010.  His father was a Residential School survivor.  Newman decided to gather artifacts from Residential Schools and then find a way to string them together.  He worked with a team that asked survivors to share pieces and their stories.  They visited 75 -80 communities and spoke with over 10,000 people.

Drawing on his Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish heritage in which people are wrapped in blankets for ceremony and for support as well as his Settler heritage in which women made quilts, Newman chose the idea of a blanket to display and tie together over 600 objects and belongings.

Bricks, wood, braids of hair, Bibles, shoes, moccasins, hockey skates and other artifacts  are brought into one piece that is 12 meters long.  From a distance, it looks like a giant quilt but as one gets closer, the details become obvious.

The Witness Blanket

The original Witness Blanket is going through preservation procedures at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg after touring for several years.  However, a true-to-scale reproduction has begun touring again along with an in-gallery film, interpretive panels and a digital interactive capacity.

You can hear an interview that Rosanna Deerchild did with Newman here on CBC's Unreserved. 

In the interview, Newman explains that “…this collection [The Witness Blanket] of memories and those memories have the potential to unlock the memories of non-Indigenous people and draw them into this story and learning more about the colonial history of Canada.”  He feels that once you have had a personal experience of something, then you can begin to care about that subject.

On the CBC website linked above, it says that “Newman hopes that the belongings that make up The Witness Blanket will give people ‘a sense of that tangibility of residential schools’.  ‘All of those objects were in schools.  All of them are witnesses,’ he said.”

The replica is continuing its tour across Canada.  It will be at:  Mount Royal University, AB March 9 – April 30, 2020; Winnipeg Airport, MB  June 1 – Aug. 31, 2020; Simcoe County Museum, Minesing, ON Sept. 28 – Nov. 10, 2020; Woodland Cultural Centre, Brantford, ON Dec. 21, 2020 – Feb. 26, 2021 and other places across Canada. More dates can be found here. e