Knitting and Communities

Thanks to Denver Knits and Joanne Conklin, I was able to read this article:
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_5725613, and visit Betsy's blog, Craftivism
and read her dissertion: TAKING BACK THE KNIT: CREATING COMMUNITIES VIA NEEDLECRAFT

Betsy has inspired me to write about this issue soon after reading her dissertation. I was priviledged to study cultural diversity and interpesonal communications in marketing. Betsy has presented a writing which rings many bells for me about individuals, groups and societies. I quote from my own research,"there is more dissention within groups than between groups."

We do not desire dissention, but should we leave people to their own devices? This question I ponder. It may be the same within knitting groups or with any, people judge people based on hear-say or loose information without really getting to know persons and qualifying them for who they are. I think, we need to help build communities. Building communities may take us out of our comfort zone. We live in such a fast age, giving fast-food judgements; sizing up persons without taking the time and patience to care for and about others not only inside. but outside of the community. Individuals desiring all the credit for doing something, when it takes knowledge and inspirations from others for things to manifest or come full circle. I personally believe we are messengers, built to serve God and God is the beginning and ending of all good things.

I look to the "new" knitting craze and have to reflect upon the sanity of it. It calms us, it sheepishly gives us the sense we are fixing something(especially when it comes to the war issue and 9/11 or sickness), though it may not be exactly what we would like to fix, it is a pacifier to some.... Are we really building communities, fellowship and a love for one another, or for the medium involved, what the person is using, the different types of knitters, such a plethora of things to get in the way of persons caring for persons, not just what they are making or using? I am taken back:

Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I think, "If he created my inmost being, then, to God is the one who I owe my inspiration and desire agape." I pray that knitters and all groups meet to love, grow, care and inspire each other.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)