I would love to be a part of a group like this. I would like to share similar interests with women, quietly, without fanfare, without clubs, or groups or artificial causes...just a group of like minded woman, being comfortable in the presence of each other.
Does everything thing we love need to be reduced to something we join, something we must do, or achieve or organize. I don't have an answer to this.
My mother once brought together a group of women...not the usual group at our Catholic church, not the Ladies Guild of important parishioners...simply a group of kind, quiet women who liked each other.
One summer, she questioned how they might do good for others, while spending time together. Nearby Rosary Hill Cancer Hospital needed linens sewn for their patients. The nuns who ran the hospital gave her the simple details of their needs, and so she began. She gathered supplies, set up tables, and Monday evenings became the setting for the hand sewing of linens for Rosary Hill patients.
The women met in the basement of Our Lady of the Rosary Church, a peaceful space where the evening sun streamed in through wide doors left open.
The women would sit, talk quietly and sew. At the end of the evening, Nana, my maternal grandmother, would step into the kitchen and prepare coffee and simple cakes for the group.
Everything was done slowly, with a great sense of calm, as if the women were doing more than merely sewing "cancer pads" for the patients. Rather it was as if they were placing something of themselves within their sewing, something quiet, something remarkable.
This was my mother at her best. I was fortunate to help on some of those summer evenings. I too felt quiet. The photograph shown above, one of women unknown to me, reminded me of that sense of quiet, that sense of belonging, that sense of women being together in a simple, meaningful moment.
Just my thoughts for the day.