Making something with your hands can be a kind of Sabbath

I’m avoiding sermon writing. Instead, I am hand sewing a half-apron to hold my tools: scissors, thread, a book of needles. Forcing the needle through cotton canvas to make the apron takes more strength than you’d suspect.

Earlier in the week, I had lowered the fabric into a bucket of indigo dye in my backyard. The fabric swirled in green liquid, submerged for less than a minute before I drew it carefully out. Quickly, the fabric oxidized, changing from green to blue in my gloved hands.

The sermons I am avoiding are for “candidating Sunday,” when I will lead worship in my potential new congregation before members vote on extending a call.

Fellow clergy say this is the time to rest, these days on the cusp of a new call. And yet I sit and stitch. My fabric is now dry, cut and aligned, and I am pushing blue thread through blue fabric. The weave runs through my fingers. The blue feels miraculous; the needle, hard on my skin.

This isn’t resting the way a nap is resting, but it isn’t quite work either. Working with my hands provides comfort and healing. I teach others to knit and sew and carve, and I know it to be ministry. For me, handwork is a way of rest finding and Sabbath keeping.

In his book “Sabbath as Resistance,” Walter Brueggemann describes Sabbath as anti-acquisitive. To rest, he explains, we must turn from a capitalist model of production and consumption. We must turn from anxiety to ease. Brueggemann describes the Israelite people turning away from Pharaoh’s drive for production and toward a God who values, commands us to, and revels in, rest.

For me, creating with my hands helps me shift from the cultural expectations to produce and achieve to a different mode of being — handwork calls me to rest. Craft may look outcome oriented: the goal, you might say, is to make something. But this work only masquerades as achievement.

I could begin a project by saying, “I’m going to knit a sweater” or, “I’m going to carve a spoon.” But in the world of production and achievement, these statements sound a little foolish. Knitting a sweater is far less efficient than purchasing one. A hand-knitted sweater is often more expensive. And knitting a sweater that truly fits often means (at least for me) knitting a number of frumpy, ill-fitting garments before gaining the skills and know-how to make the one I intended. This is not the fastest route to a warm torso.

But as I pick up my knitting needles (or sewing needle or carving knife), I become a learner. As I enter into the practice of making, I must shift modes. I can’t rush, or the work will reveal my state. By the end, I create something tangible (and sometimes useful and sometimes beautiful).

In this creating, I connect with my divinity. In making, I don’t need to be perfect, but I do need to be curious. I slide a gauge over the surface of a soup spoon. The sharp, curved edge of the tool makes a curl of wood. Each pass deepens the spoon’s bowl, and there’s no turning back — how deep to hold the perfect mouthful of soup? I wonder. I problem-solve. I pay deep, sustained attention to my tools and materials, and I spend a great deal of time focusing on one item.

It’s no coincidence that I dove into knitting as a mother of small children. The consequences of failure in parenting seem devastating. But in knitting, I can try and fail and try again. It reminds me of the learning I can do.

The spoons I carve help me appreciate the design of other spoons — the tilt of a bowl, the thickness of a handle, the depth of the hollow that holds a sip of broth. I value my spoon because I made it. It’s not perfect, but I shaped it with my hands. It’s mine in a way that helps me understand God’s love for all God has made, shaped and crafted.

I now buy fewer spoons. I know what I like, and I tend to wonder if I can make one before I make a purchase. In this process, capitalism loosens its grip. Buying becomes less urgent; the urge to consume feels shortsighted. Making slows down my consuming.

In her book “Rest Is Resistance,” Tricia Hersey describes rest as a countercultural turning from capitalism and opening to imagination and wonder. Such rest has long been denied — grind culture keeps us too busy to dream, too busy to honor our bodies, too busy to resist a society that ties people’s worth to their production.

Handwork can be a gateway to both deeper rest and a greater capacity to imagine. When a nap feels indulgent, I fool myself by picking up a needle. My slow blue stitches creating a dashed line across the cotton are a mark of action.

When I knit and carve, I do produce something — a specific, tangible something. But after years of making, I realize that I craft with my hands for the pleasure of the doing and the way in which it calls my being into a creative, dreaming, resting state.

Working with my hands helps me appreciate the physical world around me. It pulls me from technology. It draws my focus to the very tangible right under my fingers. The wood is rough, the stitches uneven. It calls me to be present.

I find relief in making. I await candidating Sunday caught in a swirl of blues and tiny stitches in a neat line, the rhythm of pulling thread through sturdy canvas. This small bit of sewing helps me find my spiritual center. Working with my hands helps me ground myself in the now and pay attention to what’s in front of me. It helps me know God as Creator and remember that I also have the capacity to create, to dream, to rest, to make whole.