Why I Knit

I knit because I don’t pray very well. At least they way most people are taught to pray.

My childhood church experiences taught me to pray by folding my hands, bowing my head and listening while somebody else (always an adult!) talked to God. Sitting there in my starched dress with shoes that pinched my toes, trying not to wiggle, the preacher’s prayers went on for an eternity. My neck would begin to hurt from so piously bending it. My eyelids would refuse to stay closed and when I dared sneak a look at my Mother, she would always be looking at me – waiting for me to open my eyes. She would give me the hairy eyeball and I would go back to trying to figure out what it was the preacher was talking about.

Prayer just never made any sense to me.

What did make sense to me was that God was easily found in the first snowfall of the season. I could taste God in the coldness of the snow scooped up in my mittened hands. I could hear God in the soft cooing of the mourning doves outside my bedroom window as the sun began to rise. I could smell God as I ran and ran and ran through the huge piles of decomposing leaves underneath the sycamore tree that served as my imaginary space station. I could feel God as I swam in the cool water of our pool.

In a most innocent way, I thought that prayer would be much better if we could make it more physical and less intellectual. Of course, I couldn’t have verbalized this. It was just something I knew.

As the years passed I had less and less use for God or prayer. I didn’t fit the mold of the conservative Christian upbringing I had received. Yet, this physical practice of prayer never left me.

I worked at meditation. The mental and physical acts of concentrating on my breath patterns and God images was interesting.

I tried journaling. I enjoyed the black and white results of prayer on paper. But, it had to be the right place to make journaling work. I needed quiet and space that wasn’t always available.

Then I learned to knit.

The repetitive clicking of the needles and movement of the yarn alleviates any agitation in my mind. The physical sensation of choosing color and touching fiber brings back the memories of praying in my childish understanding of God’s presence being in all kinds of objects.

Knitting is portable. I can pick it up at the oddest moments and find sanctuary.

When I knit, my thoughts are channeled in the same ways that meditation helped me experience. I can pray for hours for our church, for our community, for individuals and for myself.

Like God, prayer doesn’t come in a “one size fits all” arrangement. There are as many ways to pray as there are people who dare to try to connect to God.

I have Book One of a three set “encyclopedia of knitting stitches.” In those volumes I’m quite certain that there are more than a lifetime full of prayers and stitches available.