“Her hands knew how…”
Memories of Childhood Contemplations
by guest author, Victoria Capon
This is the first of seven pieces meant to introduce our readers to participants in our ordination preparation course at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These students now stand before the last threshold in the priest-training, with ordinations planned for May of 2021. Each one will contemplate a work or works of art that speak to their path and Christ’s working in the world in some way.
Standing in my grandmother’s dining room, studying her original crewel embroidery artwork hanging on the wall, I remember wondering why the flowers in the bottom third of the image were so indistinct and undefined. My grandmother had beautiful flower gardens outside her front door that met the woodland just beyond gracefully – the tiny bluets growing in the delicate native grass naturally blended the cultivated areas with the wild. I remember gathering mushrooms with her and then watching her cook them in butter and eating the delicacy together. She taught me to identify the birds that came to their feeder that hung just on the other side of the long wall of windows, giving a view to the land that rolled down to the Nubanusit River.
It seemed to me that she knew her flowers the way she knew her mushrooms and birds. But she chose to design the flowers that led the way into the trees in the embroidery almost as plain as grass. The snail in the front always felt static to me and a little troubling, but the varied patterns in the trunks of the trees fascinated me and brought my eye upward to the variety of leaf patterns. The image then burst into song, the birds never seeming to be still or quiet. It was the garden of Grace where the birds sang songs of heaven on earth in my heart.
This is the art work that was always part of my experience of my grandparents house.
The second one came later, and I visited often enough to watch her creation unfold. I cherished the times I could watch her work with needle and delicate wool, her hands knew how to create such beauty out of tiny intricate stitches. I will never forget watching the first outlines of the buildings and windows come, then the walls, towers and domes appeared. The windows and doors that let the blue of the heavens shine through and became eyes to the soul of the painting, letting me in to explore possibilities.
The domes that adorn and turn the towers into temples looked like onion or garlic bulbs to me, organic shapes that pointed to the blue heavens. Here and there a bulb reverts back to a leaf dancing atop a tower, threatening to fly away.
My grandparents were central figures in their small New England town. My grandfather had his law practice, the only one in town for many years, and my grandmother ran the bloodmobile for the Red Cross. She could be seen reading the large unabridged dictionary that always lay open on a stand in their living room. She played piano and re-covered the upholstered furniture when it needed it. She had grown up watching and probably helping her mother, make wool rugs, large and small. She dyed and spun the wool, designed and created beautiful rugs that were passed down to us.
As my great grandmother’s artistic work covers my floors, my grandmother’s artwork now adorns the walls of my study where I am preparing for the ordination semester. They are filled with memories of childhood, but now they point to a possible future. There is a somber yet celebratory mood. The doors have become a threshold where I imagine I might stand and perhaps go through as an eye of a needle this May. The cacophony of birds as joyous as angels singing in God’s choir celebrate this possibility and my grandparents are not far off supporting me from beyond the veil.
Victoria Capon, Ordination Preparation Group Student
Victoria Capon grew up canoeing on Nubanusit Lake in this canoe. My dad taught me how to do the J-Stroke and from then on I was in the stern, lining the tip of the bow up with a tree in my sights right in the direction that we wanted to go. Paddling, rowing, crewing on lakes were some of my favorite out-door passions until I ran a river in a kayak and then, that was it. Spontaneously maneuvering through the rocks, watching the way the water flowed and sighting my way through rapids, even paddling up stream against the current became my challenge. Now, instead of maneuvering rocks in the river I’m maneuvering the adversarial voices that would keep me from the calling to serve at Christ’s altar and in His community. Only by the grace of God go I.
This is the ‘Arts Wednesday Blog’ of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. To learn more about what we are doing at the Seminary of The Christian Community, visit our Patreon site for more content: The Light in Every Thing.
