Uncategorized
Lemko Tapestry – Weaving and Forgiveness
Greetings Weaving Friends!!!
Beads are an essential part of my personal healing. Over the Christmas holiday I created a weaving ritual to work through some trans-generational trauma. As a Jewish person who has never celebrated Christmas, the holiday can be overwhelming for me, and also alienating. In addition, my own family’s history in Europe was traumatic during this holiday, as waves of violence swept small Jewish villages during Christmas.
This year, I decided rather than just “get through it” I would create my own ritual to bring beauty and light to the dark negativity that visits me at this time. So I created a bead weaving on my loom from a textile pattern celebrating the Ukrainian Lemkos people who were neighbors to my mother’s family. Here is a picture of the original cross stitch pattern and the woven bracelet (in progress) that I derived from it.
While researching this pattern, I encountered so much beauty that it exposed another dimension of my people’s history and life. I know that although their clothing was of a more modest tradition, they incorporated the beauty of the Lemkos people into their own world through the embroidered aprons they themselves made and wore. I began to meditate on positive encounters between the two populations. As I, in the US, picked Japanese Delica beads onto my needle I smiled at the peace and trade and sharing of beauty between our modern nations, not so long ago at war. The same war destroyed my ancestors’ villages in Europe and took my family who remained there.
I let forgiveness rush in. I let go of the past.
As the beauty grew on my loom, I let the light grow in my heart.
May all peoples feel their connection and wholeness as strands in the gorgeous human tapestry. May we appreciate the other and share in each other’s beauty, forever and ever.
Amen
(More on the technical aspects of the bracelet in a future post)
Peace and Beads and Weaving,
Julia
Julia L. Hecht, Owner / Designer
Poppyfield Bead Company