The Social Porcupine

Last weekend I taught hand sewing and embroidery at Turtle Island , an off-grid thousand-acre nature preserve in North Carolina. I also participated in blacksmithing and netmaking classes and went on a long quiet walk... discovering I shared a birthday with one of the founders. It was a beautiful weekend to unplug and pick up skills. The students were a delight. I watched them fall in love with sewing, some of them claiming they'd never thought such a thing possible. The truth is matters of femininity are far from despicable once we move past the lie that we're incompetent. The word empowerment gets thrown around a lot, but it's simply capability and joy.  Some call it domestic servitude... because they want more corporate slaves and fewer competent women guiding communities. A skilled, capable woman isn't a doormat. She's a queen with a broom in hand ready to beat the pulp out of that doormat so you'll feel welcomed in her domain. ,, ...

What's it like driving twenty hours in a day? First let's squelch the misconception that traveling is exciting. Instead of sitting on your cozy couch staring out your sparkling windows with curtains you sewed you're cramped in a driver's seat staring out a bug-smeared window. Simple as that.  This morning I woke up at some rest stop in South Dakota. It had a ridiculous sign posted "encouraging" people to stay only three hours. I slept six.  Lost the sheet of metal I'd skillfully duct taped to the top of my car to cover a busted skylight. Dear God, pour the rain on my enemies. (Please don't let my enemy's car be parked next to mine tonight). I listened to the rest of the audio book "Body Keeps the Score". Excellent material. Sustenance: half a bag of chips, a sourdough peanut butter sandwich, a square of chocolate, water, one coffee, vitamin d capsule (forgot to take other vitamins).  Many friends called.  When driving through ...

Women are leaders in grace, conversation, and reconciliation. You know what odd combinations I love to see most in evangelical home churches? A woman fully living in her femininity, and yet quite not silent in church. It isn't that I wish to defy 1 Timothy 2:12, but that I understand sobriety isn't the absence of speech or the presence of silence. It's that I understand that the works of the Proverbs 31 women are so perfectly aimed the attention lands where she intends --her fine work, her husband, her community.  Several years ago, I attended a dance that demonstrated traditional femininity and masculinity through honor, sacrifice, respect, and romance. The oddest of statements was issued: women traditionally were the leaders of conversation in society. They hosted spaces for men to converse, and certain women were sought after for invitations  because the spaces they held invoked the best discourses. Arguably, these women weren't brazen or given to much de...

An era of my life is finished.  Last night I tied the last knot on this quilt, a project for my hope chest that's been with me since February 2018. A friend said it must feel like a child after all this time. Not really, it is more like an unanswered thesis. But it is written, and for that I am thankful.  This quilt is something I began to dream at twelve years old when I found the embroidery pattern, a bunch of baskets of flowers, at a quilting shop. When I "won" a Janome sewing machine (pretty sure the woman just liked me and drew my name and called it a "second winner". She also copied out the pattern for me, because I'd admired it for so long, and told me to someday use it.  Years passed, and then one day, a little over five years ago, I needed something to lift me out of a mindset. The s ong based on Psalm 42 by the Sing Team was my current favorite song. It felt like I was eating a lot of tears and would be for the rest of my l...