The Dyer and The Weaver: Journeys of Letting Go and Becoming
The Dyer
Natural dyeing is the art of extracting colour from plants, minerals and insects. It is an ancient practice that until 1856 was our primary source of colouring textiles globally. The discovery of synthetic dye instigated a huge shift in how we relate to our clothing, it helped facilitate the exponential growth of the fashion industry and the throw-away consumerist culture that feeds it. The process of dyeing textiles with plants is an act of defiance in the face of capitalism. It is a process that evokes patience as you witness – the Dyer become Grower, become Artist, become Maker.
Avocado Skin and Onion Dye
Letting Go
The Dyer is a person at peace with the unseen. When I harvest a plant I do so with the understanding that I am playing with mystery, for the plant rarely releases the colour in which they bloom. When the landscape gives a palette of green, yellow and blue, the Dyer knows of the unseen landscape that is available to all, a hidden solitude resting in the heart of each plant. When I handle inky black seaweed, I see a spectrum of pink; on glancing the skins of ruby red pomegranate, I see yellow and green; and when arranging a few stems of lilac buddleja, olive and gold. A secret soul content with remaining hidden, for “their worth is not dependent on our knowing about them.” 1
Dyeing invites us to let go of our understanding of how things seem to be and it asks us to enter into the structural beauty ever present in the hidden places. The greatest beauty seems to dwell where you least expect it – hovering on the margins, shining brighter for the darkness that surrounds it. Awe-provoking beauty is experienced in the hardest to reach places: the mountain tops, edges of the world and true love. Beauty is intimacy, like a baby growing inside a mother’s womb – a reminder of the life that is within us; beauty is closeness, it never leaves us, guiding us from the solitude of our soul, hidden but known.
Perhaps beauty is found in these environments because landscapes and wombs are not afraid of entering into loneliness, they take delight in their uniqueness and hiddenness. Thomas Merton writes about the quality of personhood being the individual’s need for a ‘secret’, and it’s this secret that is “the very essence of personality”2. This is what we love, when we love someone – love is the ark and protection of our greatest intimacy. Merton also writes of a compassion and respect that comes from knowing our own solitude and how this allows us to approach others with equilibrium and unity instead of ‘consuming indiscretion’ 2. When you are not afraid to enter into your own solitude, you are like the Plant – content with simply being, knowing the beauty you hold within, a gift you can choose to give when the warmth of love invites it.
Poet, theologian and philosopher – John O’Donohue, defines beauty as “a more rounded, substantial becoming” 3. This is why I see beauty as an outcome of letting Go. Letting Go evokes a gentleness; in this way letting Go is difficult for the human ego – it is a shattering of the hard shell that we’ve built around us. It’s the challenge of admiting our brokenness to ourselves. I find it much harder to forgive myself than to forgive others; bitterness feels like aches and an unsettled mind; it reveals itself as an inability to complete little tasks without frustration, all of which builds up to feeling like the everyday closeness of God has drifted away.
“Yet to forgive is an act that gives gentleness to the one who can bestow it as well as the one who receives it.” 4
Gentleness is found when your act of letting go is received – the Plant doesn’t release its colour into dryness, it releases when it’s encouraged by the warmth of the water that surrounds it. The quality of water draws out, holds and carefully moves what the Plant offers. Warmth is the love of the Maker – the one whose waters we swim in. The Maker’s love is always calling us into a greater freedom; a freedom found in unity with the Maker, with nature, and with others.
Perhaps the responsibility of the Dyer is in discerning when to make the invisible – visible? For we all need fellowship to encourage our unveiling. As the Dyer honours the secrecy of the Plant, the Dyer is welcomed into a sacred space – a witness of the Plant’s wilting into colour. In the Plant’s most vulnerable moment, on the threshold of death it releases its hidden beauty – a gift that will live on embodied in the textile it beholds.
Making offers an invitation for a material to become, in unity with another, that which it can’t become alone. Every fault, mark, damage to the material is embraced in all its uniqueness, honoured because it is life itself – inherently dignified, worthy simply because it exists.
As we let go of all that holds us captive, the Dyer teaches us of the beauty that emerges from the heart of our being; a beauty that isn’t reliant on the affirmation of others, what we do, or limited by our failures. Deep in the solitude of our being is a colour the clarity of sureness.
The Weaver
Weaving in its simplest form is the crossing of horizontal weft threads and vertical warp threads whilst held under tension to produce fabric. The frame used to hold tension is known as the loom, with the characteristics of the loom varying from culture to culture. The majority of our fabrics and clothing today are woven on electronic machine looms which require less human energy and produce much larger quantities. However, the craft of hand weaving lives on – the clackety clack of the shuttle passing between the threads can still be heard across the globe, tucked up in a garden shed in the Outer Hebrides, or under the heat of the South Asian sun in Sri Lanka. Weaving is a methodical, rhythmic meditation – a practice central to our human existence and one that we all interact with through the clothing we wear.
Becoming
For eighteen months I walked the path between the ocean and my loom – the ocean to let go and my loom to rebuild, the journey in between was prayer. Despite everything that was going on around me, my daily walk became a sacred few hours in my day. I protected the time, and slowly, day after day, it reset me.
I had found myself living back in my family home. An initial brief visit became one that felt never ending – the result of border closures and disrupted travel plans due to the Covid-19. I was aiming for New Zealand but barely broke free of a local 10km radius. As the days turned into months, I began to soften toward the characteristics of home. I noticed how I’d missed experiencing the changing seasons. I watched as the blackberries ripened in late summer, and how the bracken changed from green to brown in autumn, and found joy in the blanket of yellow gorse that coated the cliffs in spring. The rhythm of my day started to sync with the tides. I timed my walk for when the sea was out, enabling me to climb the rocks at the end of the beach to reach my ‘sit’ spot – a perfectly chair shaped rock that was never occupied. I spent hours observing, wondering, and waiting. In so many ways I felt held captive by the outside powers at play defining my movements, but inside I was encountering an unfamiliar freedom that I hadn't experienced since I was a child. During the hours that I walked, I was alone and in that loneliness, I met the calming hand of Providence.
The ocean became a container, a body vast and wild enough to coax out the grief that had built up after some painful years. I realised I’d lacked the safety and space to process the hurt fully until now. As I swam, the deep of the ocean called to the deep within me, the waves, unapologetic in their acceptance of me. The ocean taught me that I’m held in something so much greater than myself – a love that freely takes my brokenness and slowly makes me whole.
Secretly, in a place distant from the responsibilities of work, on the beach where I grew up, I let myself unravel. As I learnt to trust again, resting in the arms of the ocean, I was weightless and it felt beautiful.
If the love I encounter in the ocean is wild and free, then the love of my loom, in contrast, is disciplined and structured. She pulls in my weightless limbs, reminding my hands of their intricate creative function, my eyes of detailed difference, the soft variations in colour and the inevitable humble flaws. The love I encounter at my loom is an empowered one, calling out the wisdom brimming in each fingertip – the memory of knowledge etched into my hands.
As I climbed the steep hill from the beach back to my house, my loom sat patient, solid and assured in the corner of my room. I believe she never questioned my becoming – despite never rushing me or demanding ‘progress’, she just confidently waited knowing one day I would find my way back.
For me, becoming means movement towards our truest nature as humans. Becoming is a posture of being that is authentically aligned to our inner solitude. My experience is that becoming is intimately linked with knowing Divine Love, and from my little daily encounters in the ocean and at my loom, I believe that Divine Love is present in all things.
A woman who knows much about this kind of love, is Julian of Norwich (1342–1416). Julian was an anchoress who lived in a prayer cell beside a church in Norwich. She is known to be the first woman ever to author a book in English, and that book is called ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. In her book she writes about a beautiful vision in which she beholds an object the size of a hazelnut. Looking at the hazelnut, she asks, “What can this be?” and the answer comes to her, “It is all that is made.” She proceeds to question how this little hazelnut could last and why it simply doesn’t disappear. And then the answer comes to her, “It lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God.” She then continues to name the attributes she sees in the hazelnut: that God loves it, God made it, and God cares for it. On applying this insight to herself she asks, ‘But what does that mean to me?’ To which she answers:
“Truly, the maker, the lover, the carer; for until I become one substance with him, I can never have love, rest or true bliss.” 5
What I find beautiful about Julian’s encounter is the idea that the little hazelnut contains “all that is made”. Divine Love can be experienced through everything. God is not separate from us – he/she is present in and through all of creation, for the Maker loves and cares for all that they have made. There is also an inquisitive spirit to Julian’s encounter – she keeps exploring, she keeps conversing with the Divine – and in doing so, she uncovers the learning to apply to her own life. Julian reminds us to ask ourselves what we can learn from beholding the small things in our everyday.
Gower beach
1 Rohr, R., 2016. The Divine Dance. Pennsylvania: Whitaker House, pp. 225.
2 Merton, T. 1955. No Man Is An Island. London: BURNS & OATES, pp 215, 216
3 On Being, (2008). John O’Donohue: The Inner Landscape of Beauty [Online]. February
28th 2008. Available From: hLps://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-
landscape-of-beauty/
4 Dufourmantelle, A., 2018. Power of Gentleness. 1st ed. New York: Fordham University
Press, p.52
5 Julian of Norwich. 1998. Revelations of Divine Love. London: Penguin Books, p.7.