She Who Reconciles The Refuse Threads

When we sit outside the wound, the radiation pours down on us, but when we go through the wound, it’s very, very painful, and it feels as if we might die, but as we keep going and going and going, we come to
a point of ultimate freedom. – Eve Ensler

I.
She Who Reconciles the Ill-Matched Threads

From Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
by Rainer Maria Rilke

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth—
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s You she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure You encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold You.

VIDEO: And I Love You So, Emmylou Harris

II.
She Who Reconciles The Ugly Threads

Alisa Ruddell wrote, “A practiced, grateful weaver who has habituated herself to working with ugly threads can say to the deepest of personal pains:

You, yes, even you, I will weave into my life, though you are sharp as a razor and my fingers bleed.  I would be false to try and weave this cloth without you, to ignore you.  Though I hate you and despise you and wish you never were, since you are and I cannot be rid of you, I will weave you in.  With my whole being I repudiate and protest you, yet I will reconcile you. You will not tear apart the fabric I have made of my life.

VIDEO: Rag Rug Weaving featuring the loom and method in the manual, “Rugs From Rags Third Edition” by Country Threads

True grieving is weaving, and it hurts.  You cannot leave that cursed thread out and still honestly call the cloth “my life.”

Someday, God knows when, each of us… will face… our own death… [My hope is] that I am not the only one holding onto the threads of my life. That when my hands drop the threads and my body is cold and my heart stops, another pair of hands— eternal and gentle— will keep weaving me.”

VIDEO: Mother Wove the Morning by Laurie Hope

III.
She Who Reconciles The Devouring Threads

From Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White:

“Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’

‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.'”

VIDEO: Deep In The Dark (Charlotte’s Web) by Debbie Reynolds

“It is not often that someone comes along
who is a true friend and a good writer.
Charlotte was both”.
– E.B. White

IV.
She Who Reconciles The Disconnected Threads

“In simple terms, Grounding is literally putting your bare feet on the ground. When you do that, you’re in contact with the earth, and Mother Earth is endowed with electrons.  And these electrons are literally absorbed through your feet. It’s like taking handfuls of anti-oxidants, but you’re getting it through the feet.

Grounding means connecting to the earth to support the specific function of the organs of your body. It supports the body as a whole but it specifically supports organs down to the tissues.

In 1960 we invented synthetic materials. The first thing we did was we put rubber sole, synthetic soles, on the shoes. We started wearing sneakers.

It’s the most common-sense thing that we are organisms that live and grow and depend entirely on the earth while we’re alive and yet we have completely isolated ourselves from it from it. We’re so disconnected that it becomes this weird thing if we actually slip our shoes off.  95% of people walk insulated on the earth.

This was the single thing that happened that probably caused the proliferation of inflammation-related health disorders, far and above anything else.”

VIDEO: This is EARTHING by PurelyLucy

V.
She Who Reconciles The Estranged Threads

Excerpt from The Alchemy of the Apology, a keynote talk was delivered by Eve Ensler  at the 2019 Bioneers Conference.

“… I realized there was an apology I needed to make, an apology that would force me to confront my deepest sorrow, my guilt and shame, an apology I had been avoiding since I moved out of the city to the woods where I now live with the oaks and the locusts and the weeping willows, Lydia, the snapping turtle, running spring water, foxes, deer, coyotes, bears, cardinals, and my precious dog Pablo. This is my offering to you this morning. It is my apology to the Earth herself.

Dear Mother, It began with the article about the birds, the 2.9 billion missing North American birds. The 2.9 billion birds that disappeared and no one noticed – the sparrows, the blackbirds, and the swallows who didn’t make it, who weren’t even born, who stopped flying or singing, making their most ingenious nests that didn’t perch or peck their gentle beaks into moist black earth. It began with the birds. Hadn’t we even commented in June, James and I, that they were hardly here? A kind of eerie quiet had descended. But later they came back, the swarms of barn swallows and the huge ravens landing on the gravel one by one.

I know it was after hearing about the birds that afternoon I crashed my bike, suddenly falling and falling, unable to prevent the catastrophe ahead, unable to find the brakes or make them work, unable to stop the falling. I fell and spun and realized I had already been falling, that we had been falling, all of us, and crows, and conifers, and icecaps, and expectations falling and falling, and I wanted to keep falling. I didn’t want to be here anymore, to witness everything falling and missing and bleaching and burning and drying, and disappearing and choking and never blooming. I wanted—I didn’t want to live without the birds or bees, or sparkling flies that light the summer nights. I didn’t want to live with hunger that turns us feral and desperation that gives us claws. I wanted to fall and fall into the deepest, darkest ground and be still finally, and buried there.

But Mother, you had other plans. The bike landed in grass and dirt, and bang, I was 10 years old, fallen in the road, my knees scraped and bloody, and I realized even then that earth was something foreign and cruel that could and would hurt me because everything I had ever known or loved that was grand and powerful and beautiful became foreign and cruel and eventually hurt me. Even then, I had already been exiled, or so I felt, forever cast out of the garden. I belonged with the broken, the contaminated, the dead. Maybe it was the sharp pain in my knee or elbow, or the dirt embedded in my new jacket, maybe it was the shock or the realization that death was preferable to the thick tar of grief coagulated in my chest, or maybe it was just the lonely rattling of the spokes of the bicycle wheel still spinning without me. Whatever it was, it broke, it broke inside me. I heard the howling.

Mother, I am the reason the birds are missing. I am the cause of salmon who cannot spawn, and the butterflies unable to take their journey home. I am the coral reef bleached death white and the sea boiling with methane poison. I am the millions running from lands that have dried, forests that are burning, or islands drowned in water. I didn’t see you, Mother. You were nothing to me. My trauma made arrogance, and ambition drove me to that cracking, pulsing city, chasing a dream, chasing the prize, the achievement that would finally prove I wasn’t bad or stupid or nothing or wrong.

My Mother, I had so much contempt for you. What did you have to offer that would give me status in the marketplace of ideas in achieving? What could your bare trees offer but the staggering aloneness of winter or a greenness I could not receive or bear. I reduced you to weather, an inconvenience, something that got in my way, dirty slush that ruined my overpriced city boots with salt. I refused your invitations, scorned your generosity, held suspicion for your love. I ignored all the ways we used and abused you. I pretended to believe the stories of the fathers who said you had to be tamed and controlled, that you were out to get us.

I press my bruised body down on your grassy belly, breathing me in and out, and I inhale your moisty scent. I have missed you, Mother. I have been away so long. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I know now that I am made of dirt and grit and stars and river, skin, bone, leaf, whiskers and claws. I am part of you, of this, nothing more or less. I am mycelium, petal, pistol, and stamen. I am branch, and hive, and trunk, and stone. I am what has been here and what is coming. I am energy and I am dust. I am wave and I am wonder. I am impulse and order. I am perfumed peonies and a single Parasol tree in the African savannah. I am lavender, dandelion, daisy, dahlia, cosmos, chrysanthemum, pansy, bleeding heart, and rose. I am all that has been named and unnamed, all that has been gathered, and all that has been left alone. I am all your missing creatures, all the sweet birds never born. I am daughter. I am caretaker. I am fierce defender. I am griever. I am bandit. I am baby. I am supplicant. I am here now, Mother, in your belly, on your uterus. I am yours. I am yours. I am yours.”

VI.
She Who Reconciles The Erased Threads

ASHERAH from Wikipedia

“Between the 10th century BC and the beginning of their exile in 586 BC, polytheism was normal throughout Israel;^[24] it was only after the exile that worship of Yahweh alone became established, and possibly only as late as the time of the Maccabees (2nd century BC) that monotheism became universal among the Jews.^[25][26] Some biblical scholars believe that Asherah at one time was worshipped as the consort of Yahweh, the national God of Israel…

William Dever’s book Did God Have a Wife? adduces further archaeological evidence—for instance, the many female figurines unearthed in ancient Israel, (known as Pillar-Base Figurines)—as supporting the view that in Israelite folk religion of the monarchical period, Asherah functioned as a goddess and consort of Yahweh and was worshiped as the queen of heaven, for whose festival the Hebrews baked small cakes. [Uhh… widow of Zarephath?] Dever also points to the discovery of multiple shrines and temples within ancient Israel and Judah…

The name Asherah appears forty times in the Hebrew Bible, but it is much reduced in English translations…  The KJV Bible uses grove or groves with the consequent loss of Asherah’s name and knowledge of her existence to English language readers of the Bible over some 400 years.^[41] The association of Asherah with trees in the Hebrew Bible is very strong. For example, she is found under trees (1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10) and is made of wood by human beings (1 Kings 14:15, 2 Kings 16:3–4). Trees described as being an asherah or part of an asherah include grapevines, pomegranates, walnuts, myrtles, and willows.^[42] …

Asherah was worshiped within the household, and her offerings were performed by family matriarchs. As the women of Jerusalem attested, “When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes impressed with her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?” (Jeremiah 44:19). This passage corroborates a number of archaeological excavations showing altar spaces in Hebrew homes. The “household idols” variously referred to in the Bible may also be linked to the hundreds of female Pillar-Base Figurines which have been discovered. ..

Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in particular blame the goddess religions for making Yahweh “jealous,” and cite his jealousy as the reason Yahweh allowed the destruction of Jerusalem… The Hebrew term qadishtu, usually translated as “temple prostitutes” or “shrine prostitutes,” literally means priestesses or priests… [I annoint you to become a queen and a priest unto your husband – LDS Initiatory]…

Some scholars have found an early link between Asherah and Eve, based upon the coincidence of their common title as “the mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20^[44] through the identification with the Hurrian mother goddess Hebat.^[45][46] There is further speculation that the Shekhinah as a feminine aspect of Yahweh may be a cultural memory or devolution of Asherah. In Christian scripture, the Shekhinah, or Holy Spirit, is represented by a dove—a ubiquitous symbol of goddess religions, also found on Hebrew naos shrines.^[31] This speculation is not widely accepted. In the non-canon Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is depicted saying, “Whoever knows the Father and the Mother will be called the child of a whore.”…

Ugaritic amulets show a miniature “tree of life” growing out of Asherah’s belly. ^[31]  [In Hebrew symbolism the tree represents humankind, the olive tree being the Isrealite.] Accordingly, Asherah poles, which were sacred trees or poles, are mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible, rendered as palus sacer (sacred poles) in the Latin Vulgate. Asherah poles were prohibited by the Deuteronomic Code which commanded “You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God”.^[48] The prohibition, as Dever notes, is also a testament that some people were putting up Asherah poles beside Yahweh’s altars (cf. 2 Kings 21:7). Another significant biblical reference occurs in the legend of Deborah, a female ruler of Israel who held court under a sacred tree (Judges 4:5), which was preserved for many generations.

For much more information, please read House of Wisdom, Queen of Heaven

VIDEO: The Bibles Buried Secrets (BBC) – The Real Garden of Eden
with Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou

VII.
She Who Reconciles The Coiling Threads

When we sit outside the wound, the radiation pours down on us,
but when we go through the wound, it’s very, very painful, and it feels as if we might die,  but as we keep going and going and going, we come to a point of ultimate freedom. – Eve Ensler

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth—
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s You she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure You encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold You.

VIDEO: Light of A Clear Blue Morning by The Wailin’ Jennys

THE CRIMSON CORD

I found an interesting blog post by Christen Forster. I learned a few things I didn’t know. However, I didn’t like all of his conclusions. Therefore, after copying over what I found useful, I added my own interpretations and commentary.

“Over the years I remember hearing people make reference to “The Scarlet Thread” or  “The Crimson Cord” and I picked up that the image was used as a motif for a string of images through the Old Testament that included blood and in some way pre-figured the Cross. The image was drawn from the incident in the book of Joshua where Rahab, the prostitute who helped the Hebrew spies in Jericho,  is told to hang a scarlet thread from her window so that she would marked out and saved in the ensuing attack, she joined the people of YHWH and it seems became part of the Messianic line.”

Is there an echo of the divine feminine here? Could the scarlet thread symbolize the umbilical cord and the window represent the womb? 

“In Joshua 2:18 the word scarlet is shaniy  or שני is almost always translated as “scarlet” though can also mean the crimson dye that makes things scarlet and even the worm that the dye comes from. In the ancient world, scarlet dye was made from the crushed bodies of pregnant Kermes biblicus crimson worms. Something had to die to make things scarlet.”

A pregnant female human’s body is also crushed during the process of childbirth. It is a fitting parallel symbol to the olive press in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the suffering of the male body of Jesus Christ. The carefree woman that she was before dies to make a mother: she who makes the life and continuing survival of a child possible 

“Now there is a second Hebrew word with the same set of meanings as shaniy,  it is towla  or תולע  (translated crimson or worm in the King James Bible). Both words shaniy and towla can be used for all three states, the source, the substance and the consequence of the red dye, you have to work out from context which is intended: the worm, the dye or the colour .”

Blood is the source of life, the substance of life and the consequence of both the creation and destruction of life…

[Here are three important aspects of this dye.] First, it was antiseptic and used for cleansing. Second, something had to die to make it. Third it was used as a symbol of [life]

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet (shaniy), they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson (towla), they shall be as wool. – Isaiah 1:18″

The prophet Isaiah is speaking Messianically here. He is extending God’s invitation to look to him and live. Unlike everyone else in Jericho, Rahab deliberately chose life. “So when Rahab hangs out her scarlet thread she is saved by cord that symbolizes a [death, a cleansing, and a new life]. Straight away we can see it as an image of the Cross, but there is more…

The spies and Rahab also double up the word for a thread or cord or tape… The second word, thquth חוט has two very different meanings, it can mean cord or tape as translated here or it can mean hope (see Strong’s Concordance 08615 “Tiqvah”).

So Rahab when hangs out a Scarlet Thread or Crimson Cord from her window, it is quite literally a Thread of Hope.”

What was Rahab’s hope? It was the hope for a clean, brand-new life.
She was able to gain this hope by the blood of another’s life. 

My goodness! I think I see a three-way symbol here.

1.) INDIVIDUAL HOPE: Rahab wanted to live and not die. We can assume that she obtained that hope, a clean new life with the Isrealites. This was all because of the rope soaked in the dead-red dye from the little worms. We can also credit the Isrealite men for keeping their word to repay her for her loyalty.

2.) PARENT-TO-CHILD When a man and woman choose to become pregnant, it is because they is hoping to add the joy of a clean, brand-new life to their own. Along with her husband, a woman gains that hope when she first holds that little red-blooded infant in her arms. We must recall that Rahab’s first opportunity to live was given her through the blood-shedding sacrifice of her mother; not in Jericho.

3.) CHILD-TO-PARENT. The arrival of the next human generation literally is mankind’s hope for clean, brand new lives. Through the blood of two other lives, a child is conceived. Through the body and blood of a mother, a child gestates and is born.

After birth, an infant’s source of all hope remains rooted in and by the blood of their mother’s life. After the red corpuscles within her capillaries are removed by the mammary gland, human blood becomes human milk. Her breasts are the source of all life to the infant, addressing thirst with foremilk, hunger with hindmilk and cold with their warmth. When mother’s arms join her breasts, baby also obtains comfort, protect, security, reassurance and rest.

THE SCARLET THREAD

(Excerpted and edited from an article by Shari Abbott)

“On the cross, Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1 when He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mat 27:46, Mark 15:34).  For those standing at the foot of the cross, His words should have evoked the all the words Psalm 22 in their minds…

Psalm 22:6 reads, ‘But I am a worm, and no man; A reproach of men, and despised of the people”  Jesus was certainly a man on the cross (v.1), but if the Lord was alluding to the entire psalm to describe his circumstance, how could verse six apply?

In  Psalm 22:6, the word used for worm is  towla’ or tola’ath…  [This] denotes not only [the general term for] a worm but also a [specific] crimson or scarlet worm, Kermes biblicus. The Kermes biblicus is common to the Middle East, predominantly in Israel.  It should be noted that crimson and scarlet are the colors of blood – a very deep, blackish red…

THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE KERMES BIBLICUS

The female Kermes biblicus lays her eggs only once in her life. When she is ready to lay them, she climbs up a tree or fence and attaches herself to it.  With her body is attached to the wood, a hard crimson shell forms. The shell is so hard and so secured to the wood that it can only be removed by tearing apart the body, which would , of course, kill the worm.

Remaining under the protective shell, the female worm lays her eggs under her body. The larvae hatch and they also remain under the mother’s protective shell. The baby worms feed on the living body of the mother worm for three days. The mother worm then dies and her body excretes a crimson or scarlet dye that stains the wood to which she is attached, as well as her baby worms. The larvae remain crimson colored for their entire lives.

On the fourth day, the tail of the mother worm pulls up into her head, forming a heart-shaped body. The body is no longer crimson but has turned into a snow-white wax that looks like a patch of wool on the tree or fence. The wool-like substance then begins to flake off and eventually drops to the ground, looking like snow. That sounds a lot like manna, doesn’t it?

”Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet(shaniy), they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson(towla), they shall be as wool.” – Isaiah 1:18

In biblical times, the red dye obtained from the Kermes biblicus (Ps 22:6, Isa 1:18, Isa 66:24) was used in the High Priest’s robe and probably also for the ram’s skins dyed red in the covering of the Tabernacle in the wilderness.  Use of this red dye continues today:

• The worm’s body and shell, while still red and attached to the tree, are scraped off and used to make what is called “Royal Red Dye.”
• The waxy material is used to make high-quality shellac that is used in the Middle East as a wood preserver.
• The remains of the crimson worm are also used in medicine that helps to regulating the human heart.

THE KERMES BIBLICUS AS A TYPE OF CHRIST

1. Just as the mother worm attaches herself to the tree or fence, Jesus put himself on a wooden cross, a type of “tree,” and He willingly allowed the nails to be driven into His hands. (1 John 3:16) It was His own desire to fulfill the purpose and plan of God the Father to redeem man from sin (Gal 1:4) that held him to the cross. Not the nails.

When the circumstance is ideal, and irregardless of the suffering involved a mother chooses to conceive and bear a child. Her desire to deliver a healthy baby is what keeps her intent focused during the labor. Nothing else.

2. Just as the mother worm attaching itself to a tree occurs by intelligent design, could it also have been God’s plan to send His son to die on the cross? (2 Tim 1:9, 1 Pet 1:20).

During labor and birth, the physiological changes that take place simultaneously and synchronistically within the bodies of the Mother-Baby pair are incredible. When everything is unfolding as it should during delivery, I am always amazed by the beauty and simplicity; by how cleverly every step in the birthing process runs like the cogs, wheels and springs in a clockwork made of flesh and blood. As with the lowly worm, as with mankind: I believe there is an Intelligent Designer who planned it all.

3. Just as the mother worm, when crushed, excretes a crimson/scarlet dye that covers and marks them, Jesus was bruised and crushed to bring forth the hope: the good fruit that is us (Isa 53:5). His scourging and death brought forth His crimson blood. That scarlet thread of blood flowed to mark us as His own (Eph 2:13) and wash away our sin (Rev 1:5).

While the Kermes biblicus has its red color to serve as a memorial to it’s mother, the Homo sapien has his navel. The worm could not be red save a mother had woven a cocoon, and a baby could not have a belly button were it not for the cord, placenta and womb. When life sprang from life, she left her reminder. My love, while your safe, secure place within and ever-with me is irrecoverable, look and see. My love is with you still.

You must always remember, as you grow, change, and make mistakes, that this mother love is of the most fervent kind (1 Peter 4:8). It is that warm, adapting kindness that covers over and completely enwraps, just like the amniotic fluid you once lived in. It is the charity that flows to offer you healing, nourishment and defense, just like my blood always did past the shores of your placenta. I gave you life that you might have it, and have life more abundantly (John 10:10).

4. Just as the larvae trusted, nothing doubting, that mother Kermes biblicus had sufficient power and wisdom to be able to accomplish all that was required for his growth, protection and ultimate survival, those who believe in Jesus the Christ can rely on his promises… and live!

That’s the most beautiful thing about the very little ones. They hold no fear of love. Why should they? It hasn’t yet failed them.

As the tutor of our reproductive system slowly fades into the background, the balance on the fulcrum shifts. Increasingly, the responsibility to love and care for the child shifts over to Mother and to the conscious choices that she makes. May she tread with care.

VIII.
SHE WHO HOLDS LOOSE ENDS IN BOTH HER HANDS

In his book, From The Corner of His Eye, Dean Koontz wrote,
“Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child.

Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away.

Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will.

All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.”

VIDEO: Noble Maiden Fair (with English subtitles) from Disney’s Brave

This post is dedicated to the scarlet thread of my maternal lineage
and to the crimson cord of my female posterity.

As written at the dimming of the day on May 10, Mother’s Day 2020.

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