Making Beads

On the macro and on the micro levels, I have been making beads lately. I recently watched some videos online about crafting fabric beads. Since a lot of my resistance work is textile oriented, I was immediately enthralled. I am a person who sometimes can attend better when my hands are busy. So, in addition to making mini kawandi (African Indian quilts) as symbols of the full-size kawandi I make to give to folks in crisis, I am now using tiny scraps to make fabric beads. Such fun!

But the fabric beads, like the gemstone and seed beads I wear around my neck, are symbolic of the Mother's Beads project, which is my main focus. The four locations, in each of which I am able to initiate and realize my versions of all four aspects of the bead project, beatitude (mutual aid), education (free progress), arts (textile, literary, performing) and divinity (Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and non-dogmatic Catholic Christianity), are all in various stages of becoming. Mother's Beads is a project inclusive of infinite interpretations of beatitude, education, arts, and divinity. I'm doing my versions. I invite you to do yours!

The house in Springfield, ME is in the most challenging condition of the four locations. Monthly trips to secure the property from human and elemental intrusion, to create order where weather and vandals have wreaked havoc, and to begin a slow and steady progress toward the goal of a place of beauty and welcome have begun. Mary's Store at marysward.net is under construction as a fundraising site to provide support for needed structural amendments such as a new roof, window replacements, reinforced foundation for the annex. Slow and steady wins the race, and as the vision of what can be is bright and appealing, progress continues with a small, stalwart team.

The Lowell property is in better shape, but equally far from inviting guests. Walking path and driveway are being readied and as soon as personal effects and archival music and dance items are returned to Gorham, work will begin on finishing the interior of the house.

Mary's Wood, the ninety-acre property also in Springfield, will begin to take shape after the above-mentioned properties are restored.

In Gorham work is underway to create a small bead location for textile arts, mutual aid, dance, musical theater, film, a small library, yoga and a small chapel.

For more about the high priority I am placing on establishing free libraries everywhere, please see the next post!