For those of us with a few miles on our tires Tapestry means either the material we covered our dorm room walls with or the title of a Carol King album. You remember albums. Big pieces of oval vinyl. Played on a record machine with a needle that scratched out the song lyrics. Was a time when Best Album Cover earned a Grammy Award. Not so much anymore. We download music. We no longer carefully remove an album from its cover- holding only edge and middle-gingerly placing on a record player, moving the needle onto vinyl...scratch, scratch, then music.
My first album was Boston's self titled Boston. I put it on layaway at the beginning of one summer along with a kicking stereo complete with 8 track player. Once a week we would go to K-Mart where I would add $2 or $3 dollars onto my layaway. Then one day it was all mine. Very cool!
In life we create tapestries. Subscribing to the belief our lives move in 20 year circles (you can tell how old a tree is by its rings; similarly you can how old a person is by the number of tapestries life has helped they create)
Approximately every 20 years events in our life will dramatically change. These events signifying completion of a tapestry. Though there are threads from which our next tapestry is sewn.
Those of us so blessed have some threads which are visible in all of our tapestries. Beautiful people who have held us in their love from one 20 year circle to the next. The hue and texture of their thread is constant. It adds color and depth to our tapestries. The more threads woven into each tapestry, the more blessings bestowed on us.
Conclusion of any 20 year period typically brings a time of reflection. We evaluate and assess where we are. Where we want to go. It is not always an easy transition. Having sewn a beautiful, colorful, rich, deep tapestry we are want to leave it. Though we don't leave it. We merely take it off our life's wall. Wash and iron it. Then place our tapestry in a safe place. The future may dictate need for that tapestry. Time may come when only a certain tapestry is warm enough to see us through the cold winds of change.
They are magnificent. Each tapestry sewn from love we have received, love we have given, our careers, our dreams, our faith, our bumps and bruises, our failures, our hopes - each tapestry is a complete picture of who we were during that 20 year period. Our tapestries will have those common threads - threads representing unfulfilled dreams, unresolved issues, unfinished business - more importantly those common threads help keep us connected. They help keep us grounded.
We, as a people, are more alike than different. We have similar needs...to be loved and to know love. To dream, know fulfillment of our dreams. To need and be needed. To succeed, move beyond our failures, taste victory.
Too often we forget how alike we are. Too often it takes tragedy to remind us how much we need one another. We forget how much we can do for one another. Life is so hectic. People are so busy. Many folks live from day to day - food and shelter are their priorities - dreams are for others. Reckon we fail each other when we don't reach out - safe in our boxes, wrapped in our tapestry we can forget the spools of thread God has given us - we forget to stitch a hole in someone else's tapestry.
If you start with the year you were born, count off 20 years - probably arrive around end of HS into college, or into job world. Perhaps marriage and children -We finish our first tapestry, bring some threads with us, and begin our next.
Shel Silverstein wrote "There are no happy endings; only happy middles and gentle starts." (I may have messed up the last part of that) Nope, endings are not happy; beginnings on the other hand are exciting, invigorating - starting a new tapestry gives us opportunity to change our mistakes, grant forgiveness to others, forgive ourselves, rewrite our story, change threads in our tapestry - beginnings give us hope. And y'all know with hope any ole' thing is possible.
So, sometime over (how appropriate, coincidence actually) this Memorial Day weekend take a look in your tapestry drawer. Touch textures, look at colors, find threads from those tapestries which seamlessly helped begin your current tapestry; then close the drawer. Hug someone you love, offer a prayer for those who are already home, thank someone who may not know how much their contribution means to your life's tapestry, then open a cold one(soda, beer, wine, malt neat) toast yourself for you are a beautiful thread I see woven in so many of my life tapestries'(if you read my blog reckon I know for certain you love me or are at least amused by me - it's all good.)
Yes, hold true your memories - then set your sights on your future, on your "gentle beginnings and happy middles." If you keep reading I will keep writing, offer you some of this thread God has blessed me with. Humbled and honored to have a place in your Tapestry. Thank you for reading.
1 comment:
you are woven into my tapestries...each and every one! there are long sections of it that have but a thin thread of you but no part is lacking your color, your texture, your love! How lucky we are to be blessed with a friendship that has withstood the test of time. I "reckon" we are made up of some sturdy thread! we're a little frayed in places but sturdy none the less. ..and our proverbial threads have snapped a few times from the stress and strain of life but there are people who have picked up both ends and tied us back together. how lucky we are!
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