The wind whipped and whistled through the night. Gusts rattled the screens of our bedroom windows in their frames and knocked over the garbage can, sending it rolling and crashing against the siding of the house.
By my morning walk with the dogs, all was calm. I checked for damage and foraged. A fallen tree branch among the granite, engraved stones of the cemetary behind our house. Small branches full of petite pine cones the color of butterscotch had blown down to the pavement from the towering pines lining the alleyway where we walk. I scooped them up and tucked them in among the white pumpkins of fall decorations.
In the backyard, I found a square patch of green cloth with intersecting white lines, a dozen rows of straight stitches in white and black thread and a rusty needle secured to the fabric.
Most people would have thrown it away.
But I wondered about the two-inch square piece of cloth and all the stories it might have been a part of. A practice patch, most likely. Someone old or young? Amish or English? A woman? How many pieces of clothing or quilts had she already sewn?
Perhaps it was from a neighbor nearby — or maybe it had blown on the wind for many miles. So I tucked the square patch under the corner of a heavy lantern, not sure how and when I’d find a use for it.
One Small Thing
A few days ago, it popped into my mind, as a way to explain to my church family what their work means to me. We have a small, but mighty congregation with an active mission group that does good work, like sending shoeboxes full of toys and toiletries to children across the world at Christmastime, collecting food and paper goods for the local homeless shelter, gathering and cleaning pill bottles so that medicine can reach people in poor countries.
In these projects, I do one small thing to help.
Which is exactly the point.
These projects, this community and extended family provide me with a structure for my small piece, to help me focus and do something useful. A way to turn my sadness over the state of the world into something useful.
Sometimes, the news is so heart-breaking that I wonder if I’m too tender for this world. This brutal war in Ukraine, the horrible racism and hatred in our country, the suffering of hungry people, the suffering of victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
I am lucky — I can turn the news off. But I choose not to tune it out. I want to be part of the world that cares and helps, in some small way. Community offers me solace that there is a small piece I can do that together with the contributions of others becomes bigger and matters. So that suffering people know they are not forgotten.
And in that way, this church family — like any caring community, any charitable structure — is a sanity-saver. (A convenient one, admittedly, since we live beside the church.)
Because the flip side of feeling lucky and grateful at least for me is to pile on the weight of the world, to feel a sense of responsibility for the whole of it. That can be crushing and doesn’t help anyone.
Nor is it my place. My place, as one, flawed person, is do my part and show up with my stitch, my piece. I am a stitch, a piece of fabric helping the whole be beautiful and functional.
The Power of Community
So — I brought a small blue patch of fabric to the service, along with a finished quilt made of small pieces of blue, rose, orange, green and yellow fabric. That quilt reminds me of the woman who taught me to quilt and every place I’ve lived over 20 years. Pieces in all those colors make diamond-shaped rings that pop against sky blue. Here’s the story behind the blue-diamond quilt.
On my own, I am that tattered green patch flying around the wind on its own. Or a single blue patch.
But doing what I can as part of a community is so much more powerful. In community, my small piece becomes more useful and beautiful. Something that can warm and delight someone who is hurting.
