Faith
About this blog
Thinking the Faith, Praying the Faith, Living the Faith is written by the PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship.
Thinking, praying, and living the faith is at the core of ministry in the Office of Theology and Worship. In the following videos, learn more about what thinking, praying, and living the faith means to the leadership of the Office of Theology and Worship. Discover why it matters and what difference it makes in our lives, work, and worship.
Charles Wiley
Barry Ensign-George
David Gambrell
Christine Hong
Karen Russell
Recent posts
- Our Challenging Way: Faithfulness, Sex, Ordination, and Marriage
- Unity, Confessions, and the Book of Order
- Come and See
- Please and Thank You
- Back to Basics on Ash Wednesday
Categories
- Theology (32)
- Worship (26)
- Faith (23)
- Spirituality (13)
- Leadership (11)
- View all categories →
Archives
Not Whole Cloth, Just Ribbons
Ribbons have been a recurring image in my life lately. This time last year I was gathering ribbons for an All-Saints banner. I had a lovely evening with my husband, mother, and visiting aunt and cousin making a banner for worship here at the Presbyterian Center. We unrolled countless spools of ribbons until they lay in a colorful tangle beneath the dining room table. Then one by one, in a kind of rhythmic frenzy, we pulled out a ribbon and stapled it to a 1 x 2 cross beam overlaying and overlapping various ribbons until somehow all the colors came together in its own emergent beauty. A few days later my husband suddenly died. His name was written on one of the ribbons he stapled to the cross beam.
A few months ago, I found my own ribbon banner that had been rolled up and shoved into the back of a closet when we moved into our current house. On the ribbons of that banner our family had written the names of saints who have been formative for our faith or just those who had died whose lives touched ours in ways we’re thankful for and want to remember. I unfurled our family's All Saints banner, added my husband’s name to the back of a ribbon that reminded me of him, and hung it on a wall.
Now I find myself gathering ribbons again for a piece of public art that’s being done for Prepare New York for the tenth anniversary of September 11. Only this time, instead of writing the names of the dead, we will write prayers and blessings to send to New York City’s tenth anniversary of September 11. Our ribbons will be joined with those from all over the U.S. to form a tapestry of hope and encouragement for healing. Our little colorful shreds of hope, will serve in the larger purpose of God’s repairing of the world (tikkum olam).
I’m rather baffled by the weaving of all these ribbons through my life in this past year. After all, I am not a crafty person. I’m more at home in a hardware store than a craft store. But because of their reappearance in my life, I’m finding my thoughts drawn to ribbons, appreciative of the colorful shreds of fabric that they are. I do sew, working with whole cloth and even scraps for quilting. But ribbons? Nah! They’re not good for much of anything on their own because they’re so small. They’re ornaments, like highlighting praises for something larger--a piece of clothing, children’s hair, a gift, or a household decoration. Practically, ribbons are rather insignificant.
I think about this in connection with the diversity of our denomination with all its multi-colored ribbons of movements and peoples and interpretations of what it means to follow Christ. Some days we look like the mishmash of insignificant tangled shreds of whole cloth that have come unfurled, ornaments in a time when people are struggling for the basic necessities.
Then I think about an All Saints banner, or the art installation that will be woven out of beribboned prayer near where the Twin Towers collapsed. If the church can patiently be assembled and attached to the unifying cross of Christ in overlapping juxtapositions with others whose contrast brings forth our own uniqueness, I am confident that we can stand as a blessing of hope in a world desperate to know if there really is a God whose presence can bring totally disparate people together in love in divine service to the world God so loves with compassion, grace, shalom.
The church is not the whole cloth of Christ's glory; we're just scraps, bits and pieces. Nonetheless, together in tangled tolerance we do, by the grace of God, become a necessary prayerful beauty.
- Posted at 2:50 p.m.
-
- Tweet