"Feeding the people I love is a hands-on way of loving them. When you nourish and sustain someone, essentially, you're saying that you want them to thrive, to be happy and healthy and able to live well."
Author Shauna Niequist writes about her love of food, and how she has found that cooking for others is a tangible way of loving them. And though I don't often feel that way about food, that's exactly what sewing means to me. Sewing for the people I love is a hands-on way of loving them -- of keeping them warm and comforted, and perhaps brightening their day with a bit of colour. Emotion often stays concealed in the remote world of the heart and mind, but we can bring it out into the physical realm of the senses. Love is a warm bowl of minestone soup on a cold day. Love is a soft blanket to wrap around your shoulders when you wake before dawn. It's hands-on, it's communicated.
This quilt is a bit of tangible love for Art and Lylabeth -- a couple we met a week after we moved to Texas and were feeling very distant in that new-start, new-place sort of way. They showed us love with homemade cinnamon lemonade. Love was a physical space around the dining table, or room on the big leather sofa. Love was well-thumbed pages in borrowed books.
Next week, then, this quilt goes up for auction at the Salvation Army Banquet in honour of Art. You can find more details on the event here.
1 comments:
A lovely post. I love the look on a person's face when they receive something practical that I've made...and I think it makes me feel even better than they do to give it.
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