Quilting a legacy

New Crisis, The, Jul/Aug 1999 by Freeman, Roland L

And to those people who prefer to buy a quilt, saying they don't have time to make one:

Well, I think that they should restructure their lives because obviously there is a problem and we should stop actually saying that we don't have time. Time is all we do have. And really learn to do the things that matter rather than only the things we think are worth doing. Some people will immediately think that's not possible, but I think if you want to really be here, you have to be committed to being here, and to be here now is to be here at this moment. It is the only moment there is. And there is nothing like quilting to help you appreciate that, because it's very slow. It is very slow. Your life just sort of winds down to a very slow stroll. And it's wonderful because you are really there, and that's why, you know, we talk about all the reasons that people make quilts, but it's really because of that glimpse of eternity that people get. That's one of the greatest gifts-that glimpse of eternitythat fraction of eternity.

Let me try [to clarify] . Because it is easy if you've felt it, but there comes a time when you do grasp that you live in eternity. But the eternity is only in the second that you have. That's the eternity. But once you really live in it, once you really know that you can have it, you will have it forever, and that's why there is no reason to be afraid of dying. And in quilting you have moments of that where you know that this is eternity. This very moment is eternity A bus could fall on my head at this minute and I will have had my eternity. In other words, as Martin Luther King said, "Longevity has its place." But once you really have your life, you have it, whether you have it for ten minutes, or for a hundred years. It's all about whether you are alive in the moment that you have.

And the proess of quilting ves you that. Yes, as well as anything would, I mean, like again sand painting. I don't know if you read the article about the monks who came to the San Francisco Museum. They came to town, and they were making this elaborate mandala out of sand, and they're working and they're working, and they're working and they work for-I don't know how long-weeks to make this mandala, and just as they were about to finish, there was a woman who came, leapt over the little rope, and danced on the mandala and completely destroyed it. And what did the monks do? They stood there and smiled. And when she had completely demolished it, they gathered up the sand and started over. Because that was what was going to happen to it anyway. When they finished with it, they destroyed it. So it's in the doing, you know, it is really in the doing. It's in the creation. That's where your joy is. It's a gift. Because they have gotten the gift. They're not giving anything away. They are giving you what's left. The quilt or the sand painting is what's left. And we look at a quilt, a sand painting, or any genuine work of art and we say, "Oh, how beautiful!" As I do every day. But I know I'm just seeing what's left. What's really amazing is what was going on when she was making this quilt. You know, I mean, boy, when she was just whoever, doing her art, what a state of being!