Sharing Security – a poem

Quilt by Sarah Witherby

by Jill Anderson

written on April 5th 2013 at Pendle Hill

Two women, wives on their way to a quilting weekend
where together with strangers they will sew a mystery quilt,
a mystery that will not hang on the wall,
but will cover benches, and beds, and bodies.

As the couple left, we sat again in our ample circle,
holding each other’s partialness in the gentle trust of Friendship,
prophetic voices mingling with Experience and Expertise,
and the Tower of Babel leaning closer to earth
as if kneeling down to listen.

Floods and drought,
economic exigencies, a distant drone of fear,
also, the now-not yet, tested assumptions,
the fresh breath of springtime flowers, a leap of love.

It was all there,
calling us to name an old birthright
and a renewed responsibility:

Share it.

Join our pieces of the quilt
to the pieces that strangers have already cut,
stitching and unstitching and stitching again,
until this mysterious quilt warms the world.

About the author: Jill Anderson was born in Utah, raised in Texas, and lives in Mexico City. She is one of the 213.9 million international immigrants in the world today. Since 2005, she has collaborated with immigrants and refugees in the United States and in Mexico. Her postdoctoral research and writing focus on immigration, globalization, and culture via the stories we tell each other. From 2007 to 2011, she lived and worked at the Casa de los Amigos, a Quaker Center for Peace and International Understanding, and she is a member of the Mexico City Friends Meeting. http://www.jillanderson.org

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