Peggy Rosenthal - Knit One, Purl a Prayer: A Spirituality of Knitting

Knit One, Purl a Prayer: A Spirituality of Knitting

Copyright 2011 by Peggy Rosenthal

ISBN 978-1-55725-806-9

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV, copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Further permissions information appears on the acknowledgments page, , and constitutes a continuation of this copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosenthal, Peggy.

Knit one, purl a prayer : a spirituality of knitting / Peggy Rosenthal.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN 978-1-55725-806-9 (p)

1. Knitters (Persons)Religious life. 2. PrayerChristianity I. Title.

BV4596.N44R67 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

To Amelia Templar,

owner of Yarn Boutique in Rochester, New York,

and Lynn Davis,

owner of Kiwi Knitting Company in Tucson, Arizona:

Creators of Community

When I decided to learn to knit a few years ago, I thought I was learning so that I could teach the craft to my granddaughters, then ages six and eight. Little did I know what an enrichment knitting would become for my own life: how it would help me in sickness and in health, in times of tranquility and times of stresshow knitting would become a means of prayer.

I wont pretend that knitting was prayerful at first. Quite the contrary. Learning any new craft takes an attention that is all-absorbing; teaching ones brain to adapt to new movements of the body doesnt leave much space for the spirit to breathe freely. But over the months, as my hands began to move more comfortably through the stitches, my mind began to experience a spirit-filled presence. I didnt think of this as prayer until one day when I bumped into a friend at a lecture where Id brought my knitting.

The story of how her offhand comment about knitting in prayerful silence utterly transformed my activity of knitting into one of prayer is told in chapter 1. For now, Ill just say that her comment moved me to experience the formation of each new stitch as something like praying with prayer beads.

Like praying with beads, yes; but also more. Because something tangible was being created as the yarn passed through my fingers: I was knitting the yarn into a visibly pleasing pattern as I prayed. This creativity, I came to realize as I pondered it over the months that followed, added a special dimension to my sense of Divine Presence as I knit. In the Bible, we first meet God as the Creator. In the beginning, the Bible opens, God created the heavens and the earth. God goes on to create the light, the water, the land, all trees and plants, all animals and birds. Then God creates humankindin his image (Gen. 1:2627). Humankind is created in the image of the Creator.

Since we are created in the image of our Creator, it follows that we humans are created to create! Creativity is our calling. We can enact this creativity through any of the arts or crafts, as well as through what we might name the art of living: engaging creatively in our world to join in the divine work to make it good. Knitting partakes of this divinely ordained creativity.

So do all the creative arts. I come to the writing of this book after years of writing about how poetry can enhance our relationship to the Divine. Among my previous books are a study of how the figure of Jesus has been treated by contemporary poets of various cultures; an anthology of worldwide poems inspired by particular passages of the Gospels; and some reflection guides on how poetry can be a vehicle for prayer.

What has excited me in writing this current book on the spirituality of knitting is that, while both poetry and knitting are creative endeavors, knittingunlike poetryengages the mind and spirit through the work of our hands. Other crafts of course do this as well, but knitting is the work that my own hands love to do.

And Im far from alone in this love. Knitting has entered a boom in popularity all around the world (an Indonesian Internet knitting site, for instance, is visited by people from Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, the Middle East, Holland, Germany, and the United States). South American countries such as Uruguay and Peru have been growing their economies through global exports of fine wool and yarn produced by local sheep and alpaca farmers, often working through cooperatives. Current knitters, mostly but not all women, range in age from grade school to grandmothers and cover every occupation. There are many sociological and psychological reasons for the current knitting craze. But one reason, I propose, is that knitting engages our creative spirits in a world where technology and corporate consumerism seem to have everything already done for us. Computers, cell phones, shopping malls, worldwide chain stores, and brand-name products can all be immensely useful; but they dont engage our spirit and can even stifle it. Knitters everywhere are discovering gratefully that knitting nurtures the spirit.

One doesnt have to be a knitter to read this book. I expect that it will be of most interest to knitters, but anyone who does handcrafts or has even considered doing them will find food for thoughtand nourishment for the spirit, I hope, as well. For knitters, a pattern is offered at the end of each chapter of the book, fitted to the chapters theme.

Only through inner peace can the spirit thrive. Be still, and know that I am God, Psalm 46 quietly exhorts us. After a quarter-century of daily contemplative prayer practiceduring which jumpy distractions and mental dartings here and there have been my main experienceI find that nothing brings me to inner stillness as knitting does. In our stillness, through our stillness, the Transcendent can become known to us.

This is a spiritual truth echoed in all major religious traditions as Ive come to learn gradually in the course of my life. I grew up in a household of Jewish ancestry, and although my parents did not belong to a synagogue and had relinquished most Jewish practices, I loved going to the synagogue with friends on the High Holy Days. Then, as a teenager, I wandered into a Cokesbury bookstore. I had no idea that this was a Christian store, but somehow I was moved to buy a red-letter Bible: one with all of Jesus words printed in red. Id browse in this Biblethe only one in my homeon Sundays, a day that had come to feel restless to me. I sensed I should be doing something special on Sundays but didnt know what. My neighborhood and high school were almost entirely Jewish, and I had no friends who went to church.