Each panel was completed before the next was started. It was an exercise in contemplative prayer, emotional as well as textual exegesis, and it allowed me to dwell within a word that has always seemed to offer both promise and invitation. Shalom is a word about life being made possible, and about peace as a word so richly and thickly textured that its embrace extends beyond the self-contained horizons of what we think is possible.
In the late 1970's I read a book by a then little known Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann. The title was Living Toward a Vision. Biblical Reflections on Shalom. Reading that book was a mind changing experience. In revised form it is back in print, and it remains one of the most thorough and searching explorations of shalom as God's call to faithful Christian living.
So looking back, it isn't surprising that at a time of deep self-searching and inner sifting I returned to a word that had often before brought reassurance, hopefulness, and a willingness to again take the risks of trusting that "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Julian's words provide the theological and emotional sub-structure of what that Hebrew word shalom seeks to articulate about what God is about in our lives.
So every day for a few minutes, or an hour, I sat stitching - panel 1 and what it means to be a tree planted by a river of water; panel 2 and the puzzled wonder of star gazing and asking "What is a human being that you are mindful of me?"; panel 3 about God setting the earth on its foundations, springs flowing through the mountains and the heavens spread out like a tent, or hanging like the curtains of a theatre for God's glory; Panel 4 with a cup running over, dark valleys and still waters, and somewhere near at hand, the shepherd; and panel 5, looking to the hills and asking where help comes from, and listening for the echoing riposte, "help comes from the Maker of heaven and earth who will keep our going out and coming in from now to whenever."
This particular tapestry is a fragment of autobiography, a story in five images held together by the word SHALOM, a word that promises the lived holding together of life and faith, of love and loss, of peace and growth, or risk and trust - SHALOM. These five psalms became windows for faith to gaze through, a way of seeing beyond the immediate and urgent, and finding the resources and resilience to deal with the immediate and urgent. Because suffused through all our experiences are realities we may never fully discern - rivers of water, the mindful care of the Creator, awareness of foundations beneath our uncertain feet, the determined confession "surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, and being told "henceforth thy going out and in, God keep forever will."
So this tapestry hangs where it can be seen day and daily. Shalom - my prayer for the world, my blessing on those I love, my hope for my neighbourhood, and the longed for disposition of those who know themselves guarded by the peace that passes all understanding. Shalom.
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