jakorte's blog

This morning, on what I am so looking forward to as my soon to be nearly non-existent commute, it occurred to me that I am running out of patience.

Lack of patience on my part can usually be correlated to a lack of strength within me. Gauging my ultimate tensile strength, I doubt my ability to resist the extreme opposite forces threatening to tear me apart.

Everyone and everything has a tensile strength. Strength is determined by the composure of materials used, the processing methods, treatment, and life-time exposure. A cabinet made of steel is harder to crush than a cabinet of aluminum… in most circumstances. But suppose the steels in just mils deep, and the aluminum is a foot thick? When you think of it that way, it’s not so much what we are made of which matters. It is how many layers our lives have.

Just one piece of GOD’s immense fabric of life, I have been resisting with all my might.
Reluctant to tear away from the garment I’ve over and over re-fashioned from former pieces of myself.
Pieces of the plain bolted cloth from which I was made, pieces I have desperately held onto, now torn-away again.
Diminished until I am but a patch, usable only as part of a larger plan.

A plan I sincerely hope includes recycling my newly reduced sense of self into a brighter quilt-work: attaching me to other smaller weaker pieces, building a more colorful comforting world than any of us could ever achieve alone.

On the surface, held together by common threads.
Strengthened by GOD’s backing.
This is my current fervent prayer, and will be my continual prayer for life.

In this issue: Tensile Strength, Connecting with the World Around You, Power of Choice, Brief History of Quilting
Now posted: New Orleans, October 2009, Welcome Back