8 - Threads of Hope

Susanna Suchak (May 2006)

Spinning our Stories -- Weaving Community
The Dine Spider Woman Story

Spider Woman chose the top of Spider Rock for her home. It was Spider Woman who taught Dine ancestors of long ago the art of weaving upon a loom. She told them, "My husband, Spider Man, constructed the weaving loom making the cross poles of sky and earth cords to support the structure; the warp sticks of sun rays, lengthwise to cross the woof; the healds of rock crystal and sheet lightning, to maintain original condition of fibres. For the batten, he chose a sun halo to seal joints, and for the comb he chose a white shell to clean strands in a combing manner." Through many generations, the Dine have always been accomplished weavers. This is their story.

One day, a peaceful cave-dwelling Dine youth was hunting in Dead Man's Canyon, a branch of Canyon de Chelly. Suddenly, he saw an enemy tribesman who chased him deeper into the canyon. As the peaceful Dine ran, he looked quickly from side to side, searching for a place to hide or to escape.

Directly in front of him stood the giant obelisk-like Spider Rock. What could he do? He knew it was too difficult for him to climb. He was near exhaustion. Suddenly, before his eyes he saw a silken cord hanging down from the top of the rock tower.

The Dine youth grasped the magic cord, which seemed strong enough, and quickly tied it around his waist. With its help he climbed the tall tower, escaping from his enemy who then gave up the chase.

When the peaceful Dine reached the top, he stretched out to rest. Imagine his surprise when he learned that his rescuer was Spider Woman! She told him how she had seen him and his predicament. She showed him how she made her strong web-cord and anchored one end of it to a point of rock. She showed him how she let down the rest of her web-cord to help him to climb the rugged Spider Rock.

Later, when the peaceful Dine youth felt assured his enemy was gone, he thanked Spider Woman warmly and he safely descended to the canyon floor by using her magic cord. He ran home as fast as he could run, reporting to his community how his life was saved by Spider Woman!

The stories we tell are ways of explaining the invisible, the unexplainable. By spinning our stories we remind ourselves that we are human, that we are a part of a purposeful universe that perhaps we cannot explain, perhaps doesn't need explaining. We, however, need those stories. We need to hear them over and over because it weaves us together into a community. As the Dine explained their skill at weaving, their most intricate and unique loom design, their ability to master this art and share it so generously. In the language of the Dine, process and movement are emphasized. The Universe is a place of motion and process; no state of being is permanently fixed. Beauty, balance, and orderliness are conditions that must be continuously re-created and maintained. (M'Closkey 236)

This order of the Universe from the Dine perspective can be seen in the "balance, rhythm, and harmony" of their weaving. As any weaver (or spinner for that matter) knows the preparation is 75�f the process. All the shearing, cleaning, dyeing, and carding of the fleece, the spinning of the threads, the dressing of the loom must first be addressed. This is work ? the weaving is a meditation, a prayer and requires intense concentration and thought to produce a weaving of quality.

Spinners, weavers and knitters have their own language which is as mystifying as that of the "Navaho Code Talkers" who helped the allies win the Second World War. But it isn't code any more than the Dine language was a code. It is just a way of creating community. Look at the piece of paper inserted into your hymnal. All those words might have a very different meaning to a non-spinner, a novice to the world of fibre arts, but they are not code, they are a communal sharing of words that weave a diverse community together. Every spinner knows that the only place by which to lift your wheel is the maiden head, that a Swift helps you to quickly and evenly wind off skeins into soft bouncy balls of yarn and a Niddy Noddy produces a skein with forty turns. We aren't trying to keep anything secret, but the language can be mystifying to a newcomer. So we create verses and other mnemonic devices to help novices to remember.

Linda Ligon, a spinner and publisher at Interweave Knits Press, talks of "the inner peace, the mental calm that comes" when we spin those yarns and likens it to twirling prayer wheels. It is a practical art as old as humankind. A practical art and a spiritual practice as well.

When we spin we must be mindful. Spinning is mindful meditation. We must leave "emptiness" within the core of each single and between each ply there needs to be a little "emptiness". Later, when we knit or weave up the plied yarn into a garment, there must be "emptiness" again. The emptiness of air, of breath, of prayer and story is what makes the garment durable but soft, warm, comforting. This emptiness allows the fibre to become a visible hug to the wearer from the creator.

I have stolen my inspiration for this segment from an article entitled, Soul of My Souls by Deborah Bergman ? a spinner and the author of The Knitting Goddess.

Join me as I treadle the pedal of my Joy spinning wheel, put your hands on mine as we draw the cloud of roving through our fingers. Delight as you watch it wind around the bobbin, until it becomes a soft, squooshy single strand. Later we will ply 2 or 3 or more of these strands together to make a strong, resilient but very soft yarn.

As I pedal, I am using both hands to alternately separate the bits of fleecy cloud to let them go and allow them to twist together before they roll around the bobbin creating a glowing cloud singles yarn. A piece of yarn, yes. But that yarn is also the story of me. It speaks of all the diversity that runs through me, including my emptiness, and blends into something that is at once texture, colour and silent prayer. What I am able to produce is far more than the useful wool singles that I will later ply together and knit into warm mitts and hats for the hiking trail or the homeless. This yarn is a contemplative prayer. As was those warm blankets woven by the Dine, those shawls knit up on the Faroese Isles, as are those wonderful sweaters created by the Coast Salish artists of the Cowichan Bay on our Western coast.

Now, here's the interesting thing. The thread itself, occurs not while I touch the roving, but each time I briefly let go of the separated fibres with my fingerss and let the bobbin pull them in. When I pick up the fibre again the spun bit feeds up through the channel in the whirling spindle and onto the bobbin, presenting a new piece of fluff to let go of so it will spin itself. Yarn must be full of air if it is to be a soft caress rather than a wiry strand that binds and chafes. If I am tense, if I refuse to let go, the yarn will become tense and wiry ? good for nothing.

Spinning teaches me to let go, to be in the present, to be lightly here on this earth, to hold the reigns loosely. It shows me that I achieve my best art when I let the medium inform me, when I let go and gently allow myself and the fleece to flow in a syncopative rhythm.

I am a woman with a big brain, a wild heart and a streak of stubbornness ? whether from my Native blood or my Celtic, I choose not to explore. My roots draw on the groundwater of the melting pot. My soul is as wide as the word community can conjure.

Once I longed for a singular lineage. A pure, a straight, an easily pronounced heritage. A simple one-word definition of who I am, where I come from. I have entered and pursued some threads of my heritage more deeply. But I am a liar. Even as I drum and sing, I know that my Celtic ancestors (in particular my most recent ancestors) would shake their heads and call me an impostor, and worse yet a heathen. And as I sit very still, spinning and knitting like my Celtic ancestors, my hips are dancing tribally. I can never entirely forget the seed of the strong Iroquois women who formed me and informs me about what it is to be both creative woman and compassionate human. Nor can I forget the strong European ancestors who braved rough and icy seas to come to this land where they believed they would be free to pursue a better life ? and they were.

To practice each tradition fully is not possible in this one lifetime. Yet to fast from any one would be to succumb to spiritual anorexia. My heart tells me that I am here to open myself wide enough to fully receive all of my traditions. In the activity of spinning, and also of knitting, I find that central place, from which all the parts of my complex soul are nourished. Along with different fibres, and colours, and textures, all my souls spin together into a seamless cord that offers infinite possibilities.

Working with fibre is one of the most ancient human skills, and also one of the most ancient metaphors for connecting with the cosmos. It is like a kind of umbilical cord to Source. Weaving together worlds, if you will ? until you have a complex and beautiful design that is at once unique and unified. If you decide to explore this path, you will have a lot of help weaving your soul together whether or not you are a man or woman, and whether or not you simply take up the metaphor, or fleece and a spindle, roving and a wheel, or needles and yarn.

Speaking of which, are you still spinning in your imagination? Are you still pulling colourful clouds apart with your fingers, then letting them go and watching them relax into yarn? Are you letting go of all you know and letting the soul of your souls nourish you?

Because, the neat thing is, we're not the only ones with this experience. By taking part in the rhythmic, meditative and ancient fibre arts, I have discovered I am part of a great circle I did not even know was there. And now you are too. I belong to a worldwide community, a connected and hip technologically savvy community, but also an ancient community that stretches back to antiquity, a human community that remembers how to spin, to knit, to weave. And so do you.

To spin yarns (as in to tell stories that remind us who we are, where we come from, how purposeful is our life), to knit (as in to heal) and to weave (as in to crisscross our path with those of many others until we have created a rich tapestry of diversity).

It seems my talks pivot around two themes, community and ritual. I didn't plan it that way, so it must be something deep within me that is crying out to be told. We often tell the stories that we need most to hear.

And so I share with you the ritual that is spinning, knitting, weaving, and I ask you to love all of who you are, motley mutt that each of us might be.

Healthy communities too are built on foundations that are diverse, rooted in the past, reaching out and upward to connect, pondering the future. Healthy communities are built of people who have healed the hurts of the past, those who are not so easily bruised and discouraged because they have found a way to love and let go with compassion those past hurts. They have let go of hoping for a different outcome, a purer history, a prettier past.

And so too I ask you to let go of hope. I tell you now not to hope but instead to trust. For there is a hole in hope, but at the centre of trust, within the emptiness, lies US. Together we can wind ourselves with love and gentleness into a yarn that is soft and buoyant, but resilient, and rich. Let our stories shape us into a tapestry of true community, where diversity gives us an advantage and many plies give us strength.

May it be so, Amen.