Re-member
I love working with vintage fabric.
It isn’t about repurposing;
it is about where it came from and where it has been.
When I smooth out a piece of vintage cloth on my worktable and run my hands over it,
I think,
who else touched it,
stitched it,
cared for it?
I find the cloth doesn’t become beautiful once again because its history is erased.
It becomes beautiful because its history continues into the present.
To re-member is to gather the members back together.
Not merely to recall the past.
To restore belonging.
To continue history.
What if remembering has been misunderstood?
Like a piece of cloth that is so worn and the edges are frayed, but it still holds life.
“The wounds of the spirit heal, and they leave no scars.”
-Hegel
The psyche remembers injury.
The spirit remembers wholeness.
The spirit doesn’t erase what happened.
It simply refuses to let the wound become its identity.
Maybe the deepest scars are not left by our wounds.
Maybe they are left by our resistance to them.
When we have to prove we are damaged, or pretend we were never hurt.
The spirit tightens.
But when a wound is fully lived, grieved, blessed, and woven into the fabric of a life,
something extraordinary happens.
There is a beauty that can emerge.
A tenderness.
Like a well-loved tablecloth.
It bears mends and stains, yet it holds treasured and uncomfortable memories.
It is still useful.
Still whole.
Still alive.
Most of us spend our lives believing we are traveling toward wholeness.
But what if our wholeness has been the traveler?
What if the soul has never been trying to become itself?
What if it has been faithfully expressing itself through every season—even when we couldn’t yet recognize it?
And if we can take cloth and companion with it to continue its history, isn’t it possible to do that with our lives?
Yes, we may have had to be mended and carry stains, but there is such beauty in that.
But we are not traveling toward wholeness.
Our wholeness is what travels through our lives.
If you wish to continue reading, here is a related post!