Thursday, October 27, 2016

10-27-16

Sashiko and Inner Space

Sashiko is an old mending technique for recycling cloth. Its ancient traditions were meant to patch worn clothing, usually with material died with indigo. Its evolution from Japan has brought it to our present time as a craft with some prescribed stitches and patterns of revealed white thread. The equipment consists of stronger twisted thread and needles milled to slip easily through heavier material. While there is often an emphasis on precise regularity of patterns and stitch distances, its appeal to me is its imperfect possibilities. It is an example of a wabi-sabi aesthetic in its simplicity, impermanence, roughness, economy, asymmetry, and its implied personal care. At a time when there appears to be a resurgence of interest in textile crafts and design, sashiko offers a wonderful metaphor for perfect imperfection.

Sashiko and other rough crafts circumscribe a new vision of beauty. So often we think of something as beautiful because it fits our ideas of perfection. Beautiful connotes flawlessness, symmetrical contours, rigid spacing, and precise engineering or, in human terms, someone with features defined by the social lottery.  Something or someone beautiful may have some or all of these characteristics, but re-thinking beauty encompasses the less-than-perfect. Perfection is an ideal in all circumstances and what is left behind must then be imperfect. But, if we think of imperfect as less-than, then what have we said about the world in which we live? What have we said about ourselves?

The beautiful ideal seems permanent and immutable. In fact, our ideas about what or who is beautiful are subject to changes we often don't appreciate because of their subtlety. If something we think of as beautiful changes, then are we still so certain that it is beautiful? And doesn't that insight change what beautiful means? If we think of the imperfection of beauty, then we have a way of seeing the world that doesn't lock us into a rigid mindset and imprison us in some concept of what is desirable. If we think of ourselves as beautifully imperfect, then we are open to infinite possibilities of self expression. We can begin to love ourselves in our many dimensions. We can move through our lives with greater ease and freedom. We can age without the stigmas of what it means to be old or sick or dying.

When we talk about sashiko and its metaphorical possibilities, we are talking about being "cut from the same cloth." We are talking about patching our lives together in individual ways that make us stronger for the mending. If we are all imperfect and torn in one way or another, then mending with patches is how we are healed. Even if we think of ourselves as torn, we don't often think of how we might be repaired or mended. We accept the idea that we will always be torn and frayed. When we find patches that make us stronger and whole, we discover that we can wear our mending on the outside or on the inside. When we wear it on the outside, we show others the patches and the stitching. We are free to say how we have been wounded and then restored. We are saying that we are vulnerable and we are exposing our damaged selves. We are inviting others to show their patches and encouraging them to see their imperfect beauty.

When we wear our patches on the inside, we are free to own our woundedness and to begin the process of growth that healing entails. In the quiet of inner space we find our sacred ground.

When I was studying for chaplaincy at a Zen Buddhist center, we sewed our own rakusus. A rakusu is an apron-like vestment worn by those who commit to the precepts established by the Buddha centuries ago. Buddhist monks sewed their robes from cloth used to tend to the sick, washed of the blood and pus that soaked them. The cloth was intended to be washed, patched, and recycled as a symbol of the care, commitment, and compassion towards those aging, sick, and dying.  Because of the blindness of societal prejudice and oppression, the full robes of the committed shrank into a form that could be worn underneath common garments. This is the form of the rakusu today. Our rakusus were sewn from pieces of fabric donated by family members and friends as a way of celebrating our personal lineages and a way of symbolizing that our common apron could assume a sacred identity. We made every stitch with the determination to make the apron strong and durable. Every stitch was a silent prayer for peace. When we entered the inner space, we joined the inner and outer spaces of our lives. Most of us students were novices at sewing and so our aprons were imperfect in most dimensions. The stitches weren't even and the patches were sometimes akimbo. Yet, because we had imbued them with a sacred meaning that dwelt within us, they were imperfectly perfect.

When I think about my life, I think about how it resembles sashiko stitching and I think that what I present to the world through my life is something resembling a sacred commitment. I had always thought that it was important to achieve a seamless joining of inner and outer spaces, integrating who I am with what I do. I think all of us achieve just such an integration of self, but I am more inclined now to think it is a product of many overlying patches and it is hardly seamless. It is no longer important to hide the stitches or the frayed edges. There is freedom and creativity in thinking that our lives evolve not in spite of the patches but because of them. We are imperfectly perfect and beautiful. We grow and outgrow. We tear and wear out parts. We mend and we heal. We are in a process of being and becoming.

Once we recognize ourselves in our mended state, we can better appreciate the imperfect beauty of those around us. We can look closely at the mendedness of our neighbors and see that the cloth from which we are cut is the same as theirs. Their stitched patches are also sacred. May all of us be covered with sacred cloth. May all of us be protected and comforted by the stitching in our inner and outer spaces.




No comments:

Post a Comment