Knit One

When I first learned to knit several years ago something interesting happened.
No, I'm not referring to the dropped stitches, the cowl that somehow became a lop sided shrug, nor that first scarf that still needs the ends woven in.
This something was kind of amazing.
I found that knitting could, for me, be a meditative experience.

Thinking I had stumbled onto something amazing, I quickly googled "knitting meditation" and found oodles of books on the topic.
Like, wow, man.

Now, I'm not what you'd call a particularly spiritual person and used to scorn the very idea. So imagine my surprise as I discovered with each row I knitted I became a little more centered. I could sit down to knit for a while and find that time would sometimes just disappear. I can sit down to knit, kind of frazzled and stressed, and a half hour later, I feel calm, centered, refreshed.

This only works when I'm knitting something simple; anything too complicated still takes too much effort and concentrated thought on the project itself.

I'm in a group right now at my Unitarian Universalist church for which I am supposed to find a spiritual practice. I was delighted to discover that knitting and other arts, including cooking, baking bread, etc., were included as possible avenues for meditative reflection.

As I continue to practice my knitting meditation, I'm gradually finding the idea of myself as a spiritual being may not be quite so kooky as I always imagined.
Go figure.