Wisdom of the Knitters

My spouse is into knitting. Lots of Zen people are. (And lots of Unitarian Universalists, as well. Sort of in the air, I suspect.)

For instance, among the up front spiritual practice types, I’m quite fond of the extremely weird and talented Zen knitter Robyn Love, who, incidentally, also maintains a blog that I visit regularly…

And by most accounts the Queen of knitters, Zen or otherwise, is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who blogs as the Yarn Harlot.

Many tidbits of guidance along the ancient way from these people, Robyn and Stephanie and others. I’m not sure why, perhaps because you have to bring a certain level of attention to the matter at hand. In this case the hand has needles and yarn, but somehow it doesn’t prevent people from being present to the whole thing. Instead, actually, knitting seems to bring people to the whole thing.

So interesting…

For instance, Jan and I are sitting together on the couch in the family room, not ten minutes ago. I’m struggling away with my sermon for Sunday (I think that’s tomorrow), when from the other end of the couch is a rumble of snarfs and guffaws and general all around merriment. So, I have to ask, “What’s up?”

And Jan launches into a narrative snippet that is the perfect recounting of the human mind doing its Monkey thing…

Here’s the part Jan read to me.

I “…barely managed to control myself long enough to mumble “It’s okay” and to jam my knitting and laptop in my bag and make it onto the street before pulling out my phone and calling Joe to tell him that NOT ONLY are they touching my stuff but now they are breaking it and that the whole house is trashed and that all of our things have been moved – all of them and that the wardrobe in the back room has to be on the other side of the room FOREVER and that it’s the wrong side, all wrong, and that I just don’t think that is going to work but I have no choice, and there are BIG HOLES in the floor and you can see the rooms below through them and that they are big enough for the cat to fall through, and isn’t anybody worried about that? That the cat might fall through? Is anyone concerned? And how about those big saws. Do they need to be that loud? Are they thinking about the wiring? Does he know that shelf by the front door? The one that we keep bike helmets on… it’s gone. Now we have nowhere to keep helmets and also we have one less hook by the front door and some of the coats won’t fit and really, this means we can never have company again because we’re short coathooks and also, that wall was plaster and lathe and now it’s all rubble and that made a huge mess and I would vaccuum it up except they’re still making more mess and did I mention that the energy guy sealed up the house with a strange fan thing and that .. well, it was weird and the world is weird enough without our home getting weird and did I tell you that they’re not just touching all of my stuff but they’re touching yours too – and they saw the bulk of the stash and I don’t think they were okay with it because the guy just kept pointing and saying “Is that wool? .. Is that wool?” Is that…. more wool?” and you know what? People think I’m crazy enough when I tell them I write “knitting humour”. I don’t need them coming into my own home and thinking I’m crazy and those people do think I’m crazy and that’s making me crazy. It’s a circle of crazy. That I just don’t know what to say when people are touching and breaking my stuff and I do know it’s crazy, I know it is, but they even went in our bedroom, and they need to move not just the downstairs wool but the upstairs wool too, and that I just can’t stand it.”

For the whole thing, go here…

So, if there has to be a take away, I guess it is: you want to know your mind? You want to know how to be present? You want Zen?

Well, for teachers the guys and gals in the robes are okay. But if you want to really get to the bottom of it, listen to the knitters…

A full presentation of the whole.