The Joy of Building a Church
April 23, 2024
Woven Together in Love
by Lynn and Cathy Barton
My cousin Belle was a Navajo weaver. In fact, she was such an accomplished artist that museums and galleries contacted her to perform restorations and repairs of rugs in their collections. Belle was the one who got Cathy interested in the fiber arts. Belle's husband, Greg, made Cathy's first weaving tools. In the summer of 1997, Cathy enrolled in a Navajo weaving course at the University of New Mexico in Taos, taught by Sarah Natani.
This Sunday, Cathy will be weaving in worship, and both of us will be speaking about what the weaving means to us. We cannot address all of the harm done to Native Americans or ways to bring about reparations to these brothers and sisters. As a beginning I would suggest reading the book or watching the movie, "Killers of the Flower Moon," or see the PBS series, "American Buffalo."
In Sunday's service, we will include liturgy written by Native Americans. We will make applications from the weaving process to living the Christian faith today. We will focus on Colossians 2:2 from the Message Bible: "I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery."
