For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139: 13- 14
I remembered this Psalm last Sunday when the Ukrainian folk tale, The Mitten, was told at Pilgrim Church. In the folk tale, Nicki longs for snow white mittens. His grandmother, Baba, eventually makes them for him. But she warns him that when he returns each day, she will first make sure he is alright and then she will make sure that he has his mittens. Of course, he almost immediately loses one mitten in the snow while he is busy climbing a tree.
Soon a mole finds the lost mitten, and tired from a long day of tunneling in the snow, he makes his home in it. Next, a snowshoe hare notices the mitten and wiggles in feet first. On and on, different animals see the mitten and find there is room for them too. The mole and hare are joined by a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, a fox and even a bear. The mitten which is stretched far beyond its size holds due to Baba’s fine knitting.
The last animal in the mitten is a tiny mouse who finds space on the bear’s nose. The mouses’ whiskers make the bear sneeze. The sneeze causes the animals to fly out in all directions. Just then Nicki sees his mitten fly up into the blue Ukrainian sky. He catches it and heads home. True to her word, Baba first makes sure that Nicki is alright and then checks to see that he has both his mittens.
She is puzzled by one mitten’s enormous size, but there are no tears in her stitches. Her knitting has held. Yes, how we wish the knitting still held with room enough for us all. Our hope lies in that God is still our Baba spinster creating a world with room enough for all. She invites us to be part of that creating. We too are called to be spinsters, to knit communities with threads of connection strong enough to hold. And we too are supposed to first check that the children are alright.
Last Friday night I helped to chaperone a lock in at Lincoln Park Middle School. As one of the school counselors told me it was the first really fun thing that they had been able to do for the kids in over two years because of the pandemic. As I walked around there was pure joy in just watching the kids. They could have their face painted, swim in the pool, play dodge ball, have their hair done or be part of a pie eating contest with the principal and other teachers. One of my favorite kids loved the karaoke room. There he could sing as loud as he wanted into the microphone. And so he did, over and over. He sang, “Light ‘Em Up”, “No, No Bruno” and “Let it Go”.
Let it go. For a moment I could let it go while knowing that the storm still raged on. For that night there was room enough for joy in the halls of a middle school. Everyone was knit together by our spinster, Baba God, each child fearfully and truly wonderfully made.
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