lei is me

Upon a visit to The Great Tapestry of Scotland in Galashiels, I was overcome by the immense beauty and presence of women in every single panel that caught my eye, even if they were doing the most mundane things. Embroidering, washing, waulking, healing, smiling, mourning. History isn’t history without all of that. Life givers, life sustainers, women are present through it all. When a baby is born, who nurses and holds the child to protect it? When the old and frail are close to death, who have so often been at the bedside nursing them into the beyond?

Women are so beautiful. Their passion, their hands, their work and their love.

In particular, I was struck by panel 39, titled “Waulking”, threaded in Gairloch by the Wester Ross Waulkers. Waulking, for those who don’t know, is the process of preparing cloth for use by cleaning and thickening it by way of repetitive beating- and urine. The ammonia in the urine helped to remove oil and impurities in the wool, which allowed for the next steps of thickening the cloth using friction and pressure. This sounds like a dirty task to anyone. Getting your hands all up in your neighbor’s piss? And it has traditionally been a women’s job throughout Scottish history, and a source of pride! Why?

Because of the music that came from this process! When the women of a village would sit around a table with their woolen cloth, a precise and steady pace needed to be maintained, and thus a rhythmic song was born. Waulking was not just a stinky, urine-soaked, arm-tiring chore. It was a musical event, community bonding, and the sacrifice of women coming together to make something possible. The smell of piss is nothing compared to the fun and rhythm felt among friends.

And that’s what I think is so beautiful about women in history. They have been gifted such an irreplaceable role by the Divine. Though cultures have devalued, decentralized, and demonized women throughout the centuries of life on this planet, their love and handiwork freaking persist.

God knitted in women the innate desire to love. To create. To nurture. For some women, that meant having children. For others, that meant healing soldiers on the battlefield. For others, that meant providing for a family, blood kin or not. But women have almost always been creators. The Creator shared a sliver of his Divine role when he formed woman from the rib of man. In her, he imbued the ability to create and sustain life, even outside the womb. The touch of a woman’s fingers as she brushes the hair off the forehead of her friend, or the gentle way she holds the hand of a child. All are indicative of God’s intention for Her. And that cannot be erased!

Women were made to love. And god, have they loved. Throughout every age and myth and legend, women have loved. Clytemnestra, Penelope, Nefertiti, Hua Mulan, Chang’e, the Trung sisters, Boudica, Saint Olga, Catherine of Aragon. All loved in different, but eternal ways. They worked, and their work was love.

And it persists in women outside of legend. The women whose names have been lost to history. The women we don’t know anything about, other than they existed. Wives, mothers, sisters, grandmothers. Every single woman and their work is a beautiful, irreplaceable stitch in the giant Tapestry that is Creation.

I think we undervalue that.

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Anyway, I didn’t proofread any of this so forgive the word vomit. Just had to get it out there.