How do we overcome the cleaving forces of geography and time — of death itself — to feel a sense of connection to our loved ones? Baking our family’s Slovak Easter bread helps me find strength and comfort in connection to loved ones.
My palms push the sweet, yeasty dough away from me, against the kitchen counter, then fold it back over and pull it toward me. Pushing and pulling, pressing and gathering. Over and over. With every motion, tension leaves my body for the mixture — making both better.
This rhythmic kneading of the bread dough with plump gold raisins for Slovak Easter bread comforts me. I rock through the motions, feeling the powerful transformation underway in my hands as a sloppy, shaggy mixture becomes an elastic, unified dough ready to rise.
Longing for connection led me to this ritual and hooked me. Baking bread is too time-consuming — until Easter, when this particular longing for connection tugs again, insisting I make time. My grandmother made this bread before Easter until she died in 1995.
My mom makes it every Good Friday and Christmas Eve. My uncle makes it. My cousin recalled it from childhood and asked for the recipe. Spread over multiple states, we sometimes trade pictures of the finished loaves.
How do we overcome the cleaving forces of geography and time — of death itself — to feel a sense of connection to our loved ones?
Tradition. Ritual. Connection.
My husband and stepsons hunt for deer, turkey and squirrels, walking the same narrow and twisted trails through the forest, climbing and descending ridges. They cook meals on the same patch of ground where my husband’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather gathered with the men in their hunting club. Camp time is sacred.
Me? I bake “pascha,” our family’s recipe for Slovak Easter bread.
In those five minutes of kneading, alchemy transforms the flour’s gluten into a structure for those lovely pockets and bubbles produced by the yeast. That’s the chemistry.
Through the movements, I feel better. Stronger and nourished. That’s the powerful magic of connection.
The bronzed, plump loaves speckled with gold raisins emerge from the oven hours later. A warm slice slathered with butter is heaven, a delight to share.
A few minutes of kneading soothes the soul, and transforms a shaggy mess of ingredients into a smooth dough, ready to rise.
Spring 2020: Isolation and Anger
Truth be told, when I first made this bread in the spring of 2020, I was angry.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, that bread-baking trend swept past me like a parade. Charming and sweet — just not something I jumped into.
But then, a few days before Easter, I thought making it might help me feel better. I felt isolated and angry, sad, weary. I was overwhelmed with empathy for our kids. My younger stepson’s lost baseball season. My older stepson and daughter-in-law’s meticulous wedding planning thrown into shambles.
When families should have come together, they could not. We could not have our typical big family dinner for Easter. My mom was buttoned up in her house, and I in mine. Church was closed and so many of us struggled without our typical connections. Without hugs.
As Good Friday approached, I remembered how my mom made pascha when I was a kid in the little kitchen of the half-duplex we rented, listening to songs from Jesus Christ Superstar as she baked and cleaned before the holiday. When she visits me for Easter in Central Pennsylvania, she makes the bread in the little kitchen of the B&B where she and my stepdad stay.
My grandmother “Sweetie” was kind and tough, a badass who served as an Army nurse in World War II. Sweetie died 25 years ago. Many years have passed since sweet dreams of visiting and talking over life with her. But she is a powerful, nurturing force, still in my thoughts and heart. I especially think of her when I need to muster strength, like in those early weeks of the pandemic, when the world was upside-down, scary and I could not see or hug my mom.
Instead, I pounded the hell out of that bread dough and sent baked loaves out in Easter baskets to my in-laws and local family who would normally be at our holiday table.
“Scrumptious,” was my niece’s review and that pleased me.
When you are separated from loved ones, perhaps the best way to cope is to make a cherished family recipe. Even better: One with the power to turn anguish into comfort and connection.
My pascha loaves, fresh from the oven.
A Proper Paska
A year later, 2021, we had the medical miracle of vaccines. But we held off from our typical big family gathering for Easter. Again, I made the pascha and shared the baked loaves.
The bread is sweet and braided. Its origins are in Eastern Europe, and it’s likely a relative of challah or brioche.
“Pascha,” as our family calls it, is the Greek word for Easter. “Paska” is the word for Slovak Easter bread. Our family spelling is a mystery. Just one of those things.
I dove into my stash of cookbooks and the web, searching for the recipe’s origins and found a lot of similar recipes — but not yet one that exactly matches our family recipe. You’re likely to find versions of this bread wherever Eastern European immigrants settled in the US.
Perhaps that is part of our life’s mission, to find what helps us turn life’s darkness and raw ingredients into something that is beautiful and useful.
Symbolism and Ritual
This baker makes her “Paska,” Slovak Easter bread, in a round pan with the braids on top. The braids are said to symbolize the holy Trinity. In the “New York Times Heritage Cookbook” by Jean Hewitt (Random House, 1972) the recipe for Ukrainian Easter bread is a pretty close match, but adds lemon, cherries and walnuts.
This one, called “Vánocka”from the Czech Republic is for a braided brioche flavored with rum and lemon zest, raisins and almonds.
Vánocka is the Czech word for Christmas. The braids are said to symbolize baby Jesus snugly wrapped in cloth strips.
When you’re making Vanocka, according to Taste Atlas, it’s customary to jump up and down and think of dear friends and family while the dough is rising.
Maybe I’ll add that to my ritual. For me, the bread is more closely related to working through the darkness of Good Friday, and the coming transformation into the joy of Easter.
I pour my heartache, my losses, my sadness over all the cruelty and hatred remaining in this world into the bread dough and am rewarded by sweet, share-able loaves and the satisfaction of making order out of the mess of real life. Perhaps that is part of our life’s mission, to find what helps us turn life’s darkness and raw ingredients into something that is beautiful and useful.
This life will never be free from loss and heartbreak. We work through our grief, carry on, heal as best we can — and celebrate a source of connection wherever we find it.
Pascha dough rising in a warm spot.
Does your family have a cherished recipe? I’d love to hear about it. Please leave a comment below.
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Pascha
(Christmas and Easter Raisin Bread)
Mix 1 quart whole milk and 6T sugar and microwave for about 3 minutes.
Check temperature. At <120o add 1 large cake yeast.
Let sit for 10 minutes, allowing yeast to work.
Mix the following like a pie:
1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)
1 T salt
6 cups flour
Add yeast mixture to flour mixture.
Add 1 T vanilla
Add 3 egg yolks (save whites)
Add 1 box white raisins
Mix well. Add additional flour until soft dough forms that can be turned out on floured surface. (In all, recipe may take almost a bag of flour!)
Knead dough until smooth. Raise in a warm place until doubled. Punch down and let rise again until doubled.
Divide dough into five parts. Divide each part into three. Roll each piece into long shape and braid. Put in greased loaf pan.
Cover with towel and allow dough to rise again.
Beat reserved egg whites and brush on top of each loaf.
One summer afternoon early in my self-employed writing life, the sweet sounds of a Red Sox game streamed through my home office speakers in central Pennsylvania. The blend of the crowd’s hum, announcers’ chatter, Fenway Park organ and even the radio jingles for me all faded into a rhythmic, lulling background.
Then the play-by-play guys’ tone signaled a tense situation.
I listened up.
The Red Sox pitcher was in a jam. The pitching coach slowly walked to the mound for a chat. What DO they talk about? I’ve always wondered, guessing it’s probably NOT candlesticks, wedding gifts and voodoo curses — like that scene in “Bull Durham,” my favorite baseball movie.
First announcer:What’s he going to say out there to help his pitcher?
Second announcer:He’ll just calm him down, help him focus and tell him to trust his stuff.
Those three words resonated for me, a helpful reminder for baseball pitchers — and writers, creators and makers — to lean into your experience and skill to find confidence to conquer the next moment.
I jotted “Trust Your Stuff” onto a sticky note for when I would need a confidence boost.
Years later, these three words have endured for me. It’s good advice for any of us who are trying new things and must overcome fears of failure.
Dig a little deeper and remember all you’ve done before, all of the preparation and experience that has led to this moment. Trust that to face this next batter, this next pitch or play — your next pitch, project or day.
At that time, I was no longer on a magazine staff with a steady stream of assignments and a steady paycheck. Instead, I pitched stories to editors and was coming to terms with just how hard it is to face the fear of rejection.
Trust Your Stuff
That fear of failure roars and rumbles when I’m run-down and weary or when another part of life demands extra time, energy and “mental bandwidth.” So I was not surprised when those fears crept in and kept me awake one recent night, in the midst of a string of important family commitments and in the doldrums of March, when I’m often winter-weary, craving sunshine, spring and baseball.
At about 1 a.m., I woke to the clanging metal tags of our shaking, big red-brown dog, who sleeps on the floor by my side of our bed. I lay awake as my fear of failure triggered the familiar sense “not good enough,” and “am I actually getting anywhere?”
When that happens, I tend to give in for a while and can allow my own writing to slide to the back burner.
But now, defeat is not an option. I’m committed to posting a solid piece here every Thursday, so must conquer those fears one by one. I’ve prepared for them. I’m writing through them. Here we are.
Unchecked Fear: Creativity Killer
Because fear of failure is a threat to the creativity and productivity required to be the writer I aim to be, I need every bit of wisdom and all the tricks I can gather.
To keep myself going, I’ve collected little sayings on sticky notes, like “Trust Your Stuff” from that Red Sox announcer or “Shut up & Write” from my badass friend, Sandi. And nice messages from readers on social media posts. (Every comment matters.)
We often turn to sports not just for entertainment, but for inspiration and lessons in motivation, leadership and excellence. The start of a new baseball season reminds me of this favorite from my favorite sport: Trust your stuff.
I grew up in a family of Cleveland baseball fans, attended college in the shadow of Fenway Park and became a devout Red Sox fan. Ten years ago, I married into a family of baseball players and coaches here in Central Pennsylvania. As the stepmom of an award-winning, home run slugging Division III NCAA player, I’ve learned just how much hard work, practice and commitment it takes to excel at baseball — at anything worth doing.
While the game may look peaceful and slow on TV, it demands incredible confidence and mental toughness of its players. Just imagine: A hitter stands in a box four feet by six feet, right in the path of a rock-hard object heading his way at 90 to 100 mph.
And the pitcher? His whole, unprotected body works to deliver power, accuracy and speed to a ball that may shoot back to wallop him at more than 90 mph.
Seems crazy to me. Talk about facing fears and believing in yourself. You’ve got to love it.
It’s the same for a successful writer, or artist, maker or entrepreneur. Putting yourself out there despite the fear, takes focus, confidence and mental toughness.
I want more of THAT.
Finding Peace in the Chase
In the last few years, I’ve pivoted away from writing journalistic analysis and magazine feature stories and toward personal essay and memoir. My dream is to write books. I’ll either get there or die trying and am at peace with that.
This whole site with stories about making peace is one way I’m making peace in my own life.
So when those fears of failure rise up, “Trust My Stuff” reminds me of all I’ve learned, experienced and accomplished over decades as a writer, and to keep working to get where I want to go. My “coaches” these days are authors Linda Sivertsen, author of the “Beautiful Writers” book and Seth Godin, marketing guru and author of 20 best-selling books about trust, respect, art and marketing. By 2 a.m., I’d hit the books for inspiration to dig deeper.
The bottom line: Work harder. Practice more. Get better.
Cowboy Up!
Still, I wanted to know more about how baseball players prepare their mental game during spring training. I found four insights in this Inc. magazine piece by Jason Selk, author of “Executive Toughness.”
Major League pitchers, I learned, can be just as afraid of failure as the rest of us. We are all afraid of failing from time to time. I’m working hard at three of Selk’s tips gleaned from baseball coaches: like practice, focus on what you can control, and make small improvements.
For one, my office speakers these days stream word-free classical piano music for better focus during writing time. One step in the right direction.
But I was missing one of Selk’s tips: the Rallying Cry. I need a new, motivating message, a “call to arms” that reflects the big goal of say, winning the World Series — or successfully selling the book.
Can any baseball fan forget Red Sox player Kevin Millar’s rallying cry to “Cowboy Up!” ahead of the team’s historic 2004 World Series win?
I began to visualize signing my book at events. Maybe my new rallying cry is “Sell the book!”
Or perhaps “Cowgirl Up!” says it all, reflecting my chosen life in the country.
I spread a blanket on thick, green lawn and sit down on the hill at City of Palms Park, then the spring training home of the Boston Red Sox in Fort Myers, Florida. Slathered in sunblock, my pale, pearly white legs stretch out on the grass before me. Once I’m settled, my bare feet will sink into the gentle tickle of the soft grass.
Ahhh …
Florida sun — that refreshing respite from winter — drenches the day, field and sky in light and warmth. Unwilling to wait for spring’s arrival in Pennsylvania, I’ve flown south to greet it. To see the sculpted, muscled players in their crisp uniforms chasing the dream. To hear their spikes crunch into the packed, clay gravel of the diamond, the satisfying THWAP of a baseball hitting a player’s leather glove, a favorite sound of springtime.
I’ve come to recharge with sunshine, baseball and beaches.
Fantasy Baseball Trip
That first trip to baseball spring training to watch the Red Sox was about 16 years ago, and it’s fun to remember for its warmth and comfort. A reminder that summer is not that far away.
The real time is actually between 1:30 and 3 a.m., March, 2023, my second consecutive night lying awake in the wee hours. Spring has arrived on the calendar, and here in central Pennsylvania the robins and birdsong are plentiful. But it’s still rather chilly, damp and grey out.
Our big, red-brown dog woke me up to go outside. This has never happened over the last few hundred nights, but happened in the middle of this one. To be sure he’s securely on his leash, I’ve woken all the way up, talked him out of a walk through the neighborhood, returned to bed and now can’t fall back to sleep.
Lying wide awake, I’m remembering earlier trips to escape the doldrums of winter in northern states by visiting baseball spring training in Florida. That first trip to Fort Myers was with my college bestie, Karen. Another was with my mom. We were at the field when a tropical rain shower soaked the red-brown earth of the infield and baselines, the turf of the outfield. The next morning, we watched from the porch of the condo as the wind whipped and bent the palm trees in another powerful rain storm. When the sun returned, we drove out to explore a nature preserve on Sanibel Island and later visited the winter home and workshop of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, which was fascinating. Pretty fun trip and escape from winter.
A Baseball Family
Baseball for me is all about connection to the family of fans I grew up with and the family of players and coaches I married into. Connection to sweet, balmy summer nights and to a classic, timeless game. Connection to all the baseball-loving places I’ve lived and, as baseball is a distinctly American game, connection to my country.
The longer I live, the more I believe life is about connection, magic and following your heart.
Those trips were before I met my husband. The night we met, we talked about baseball. On one of our first dates, he quizzed me on scenes from a favorite baseball movie: “For Love of the Game,” one of a few classic baseball movies that get us through winter.
Ten years ago, I joined his baseball-playing family and soon — after three baseball seasons of watching my stepsons play — married in. Over three springs, my husband and I traveled with other family members to watch my younger stepson compete in college tournaments, playing for Juniata College, NCAA Division III. My younger stepson became a fierce, powerful slugger, an outstanding, accomplished, award-winning player.
Those trips to spring training for college ball were literally a combination of planes, trains and automobiles.
And a lot of fun — a splash-down smack into summertime.
In March 2020, my husband and I, his parents and his aunt and uncle took the Amtrak Auto Train, riding the rails through the night from Virginia to Florida. We watched a few blissful, warm days of baseball as our team played beautifully and our favorite player — my younger stepson — smashed home runs.
It seemed like the beginning of a magical season.
The next day, COVID-19 began to shut the world down. Pro games and seasons evaporated. Our team played one more game, then we packed up and drove through the night to get home. That memory, of course, is a sad one. We’ve not been back to spring training since. My younger stepson lost most of a season, played two more, and won several awards including conference “Player of the Year.”
Our Love of the Game
Nothing can change our love of this beautiful game of baseball, rich in ritual, tradition and connection. The soundscape is like a lullaby to me, a comforting blend of humming crowd, calm voices of radio announcers describing the moments — until the crack of the bat breaks the spell and louder, excited voices call out the action.
I’m old-school about the game, too. I love the timeless, classic nature of it. The fluidity, the poetry-in-motion, the perfectly turned double-play. Decades of work, countless hours of practice and game time to make it look that easy, that smooth.
I’m a romantic, who loves hand-crafted anything and enjoyed learning that Major League Baseballs are still hand-stitched.
Apparently, no one has yet invented a machine up to the task of making a proper baseball for professional games. The precision is paramount since a bit of weight difference can affect how the ball travels, and thus the game.
A New Season
A new season will soon begin with a few new rules to quicken the pace of the game, so it can keep up with modern times and stop the erosion of its popularity. Pitchers face a pitch clock, a ban on shifting infielders a whole position over to field left-handed batters, and limits on throw to pickoff a runner before he steals a base.
We’ll see.
I’m not sure who won that Red Sox spring training game all those years ago. That one I revisited to help lull myself back to sleep. I know I loved being there, watching players throw a baseball around the infield below a clear, bright powder-blue sky, soaking up all that sunshine. Just remembering it warmed a still, chilly early spring night.
We hope and work to control our hours and days and weeks. Yet, we never know all that is in store for us, or our loved ones. Life is life — anything can happen on any given day. God is in control, many of us believe. Or fate. Or destiny.
The bed of my pickup swings sideways on the icy, four-lane highway. The truck and I spin. A blur of white snowbanks and grey sky fly by. Here come the headlights of the approaching cars. Seconds ago, they were behind me. Now they are ahead of me.
Spinning southbound down Route 1, on the coast of Maine. Nothing to do but hold onto the steering wheel, try not to make it worse by over-correcting — and hope.
One full rotation. Maybe two. This feels like a long time, but must have been only seconds. Maybe 5. Maybe 10.
Then it is over. I’m stopped. No slam. No crash. No pain. Exhale.
I regain control of my red Toyota truck, and slowly drive the rest of the way to work.
A Dangerous Spin
This memory, this fear of spinning out-of-control on the ice and crashing has been on my mind lately— and very much this week, as I work on this post from a loved one’s hospital room overlooking Lake Erie.
I’ve been writing the story these last few weeks of what happened on an intense, February weekend more than a decade ago while I was going through a divorce. That weekend marked “bottom” in my grief over the marriage, an emotional crash and sense of a turnaround point.
But when I dug deeper — following the smart advice of brilliant novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro to write not what actually happened but about what I was afraid would happen — I recalled that powerless sensation of spinning out on the ice on the highway, facing a head-on collision with the oncoming traffic.
Life felt like that. Then I took back control over my life.
That February weekend during my “divorce year”, the forecast called for freezing rain. I was staying alone at a friend’s house on a twisty-turny mountain road in central Pennsylvania and feared I would be trapped by the ice on impassable roads — just like the few days in Maine during the Ice Storm of 1998 when I was stuck in a cold, dark house at the top of a steep driveway.
I knew I could not risk being trapped alone in my friend’s house.
That January in Maine, sheets of freezing rain fell for days, encasing the trees, roads, cars and power lines inside ice. Tree limbs and power lines buckled and snapped under the weight, trapping my roommate and I in our rented cape house at the top of a steep and twisty driveway, with no power or water. We were safe. Just cold and hungry.
On the second night of freezing rain, a hot pizza seemed like a good idea. I called the takeout place two miles away. No problem, they said. They had power — or a generator.
But I could not get there. I walked down the path to the home of the kind couple who were our neighbors and landlords and borrowed their Volvo station wagon.
Skiing in Control
Ski in control, my dad would say, when I was a little kid learning to ski. I learned to tune into how my feet feel as my skis glide over packed snow within the control of their sharp edges to turn or stop — and what it feels like to be too fast or slipping on the ice, at or beyond the the edge of my control.
The idea, of course, when you feel yourself slipping is to regain control as quickly as possible and before a crash.
Later, when I learned to drive, I learned to tune into the feel of whether my tires were gripping the pavement — or not.
So when the heavy, borrowed Volvo began to slip and slide across the icy road during the ice storm in Maine, I decided a pizza was not worth the risk after all, and turned around.
Safely parked back in their driveway, relieved to have avoided disaster, I returned the keys to my neighbor-landlords and trudged back up the hill, content with warming another cold can of beans over the fireplace. We would not starve.
The clouds receded a day or so later, letting the sun’s warmth melt the ice in the driveway enough for our safe passage to the home of a friend who had power and hot water. We warmed up with hot showers and soup and returned home with groceries.
The story I’m compelled to tell from a later time, that February weekend during my divorce, is about the sense of already spinning, already feeling out of control and re-taking control, literally re-taking the wheel. This unfolded with a lot of tears, breaking a promise to a friend, and receiving a hairdresser’s kind touch, encouraging words and spirit-lifting haircut.
It also took the help of friends to break free of someone else’s big, ugly couch over-powering my living space.
Pretty full weekend. (I’m still working on that piece, which I think will be part of the prologue for an upcoming book.)
A Fragile Sense of Control
Control is a funny thing, isn’t it?
I don’t know about you, but I need to feel a certain sense of control over my life. A certain calm, quiet, order and predictability. That sensation of spinning out of control is maddening, unsafe, dangerous.
And yet, control is a necessary illusion.
Every January, I chuckle over that New Year craving to plan out the year and make resolutions. We pretend to know what the year will bring. Those fresh, blank calendar pages of the months or year might seem like ours alone to fill.
Kind of — but not really. We hope and work to control our hours and days and weeks. Yet, we never know all that is in store for us, or our loved ones. Life is life — anything can happen on any given day. God is in control, many of us believe. Or fate. Or destiny. Perhaps the Universe.
Now, when I look back on the intense emotional pain of that February weekend during my divorce year, I believe there was a purpose: I had to quickly move through that grief to get ready for a new life with the right guy, full of family, stepmom responsibilities, new adventures.
The hairdresser told me it would all get better. I believed her. Had she told me the details, and that by Christmas I would meet the love of my life and feel part of a new family, I would not have believed her.
The more people we love, the more we discover work we love to do, responsibilities we are meant to take on, places we love to be — the more complicated those calendar pages become.
We need to plan as if we are in complete control, and adjust for the realities of lives unfolding outside of our control.
One Finite Life
My mom has been and continues to be my best teacher for how to plan, organize, manage — and generally live in a state of control, or at least controlling what you can.
We move through an unpredictable life, adjusting to stay in control, dancing with an illusion of control.
And still, despite her guidance, I must constantly remind myself: Just one of me. Just 24 hours in a day. Seven days a week. Fifty-two a year. One finite life.
This week, I’ve spent many hours at the hospital with a beloved family member, doing what I can to help. Any time spent in a hospital reminds me of how fragile, finite and remarkable life is. Simultaneously, this time challenges my schedule and inspires me to double down to get my work done.
This has been a week that reminds me: Life is life. Anything can happen on any given day.
If you are reading this, it means I found a quiet spot to finish and post this, to keep up with my work before my schedule spins out of control, to catch and keep up before I’m spinning out on the ice, frustrated and fearful of a crash of some sort.
I only know for sure what is in the past, what I envision for the future — and a few tricks to control what I can.
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.
