A Brief and Beautiful Life – Br. Keith Nelson
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Feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary
Tobit 12:6b-9
Luke 6:35-38
The spinning wheel is, for us, a cultural artifact from a time before the Industrial Revolution. But for much of history in many parts of the world, spinning wheels were not only necessary household tools but carried significant symbolic meaning. In Grimm’s Fairy Tales, heroines are commanded to spin straw into gold or unwittingly prick their fingers on enchanted spindles. In India, Gandhi mobilized the already rich cultural associations between the spinning wheel and the manufacture of homespun cloth, transforming spinning into a spiritual practice and an act of Indian resistance to British rule. And in Byzantine icons of the Annunciation, the blessed Virgin Mary is often depicted holding a spindle and distaff – the ancient equivalent of the spinning wheel. Legend holds that she was one of the young women privileged with the task of spinning the yarn that would be woven into the great veil of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The solitary act of spinning was a small but crucial component in an interdependent, pre-Industrial economy, linking the inner room, the domestic sphere, with the public marketplace. Raw sheep’s wool or flax fiber cannot be woven, dyed, tailored or worn as clothing without the slow and steady hand of the spinner at her wheel. It was lowly, tedious work, overwhelmingly relegated to the female poor.
Princess Elizabeth of Hungary is known to have spent considerable time at a spinning wheel – not at the command of a wicked king or evil stepmother, but out of humble solidarity with the poor and a passion for that characterized her brief, beautiful life. She died on this day in 1231, at the age of 24.
A moment in that brief life is imagined by the Austrian painter Marianne Stokes.In Stokes’painting we see a very young Elizabeth, probably not yet fourteen, the age at which she was married to her betrothed Prince Ludwig of Thuringia. She is seated in a room in his family castle at Wartburg, where she has lived since the age of four. Before her three children were born, before she came into contact with Franciscan missionaries, or became a widow by the age of 20, before she gave away her dowry building hospitals in which she personally cared for the sick, before she died of exhaustion at the age of 24, there was this simple girl – seated humbly at a spinning wheel. To my eye, the painting seems to depict a moment of personal decision and resolve. Elizabeth’s vibrant red and green dress, embroidered with gold, stands in stark contrast to the large heap of black wool she has loaded onto her wheel. Her head is bent in quiet, prayerful concentration and perhaps contrition, perhaps a recognition of the great wealth and opportunity she has been given, and a burning desire to make a small difference rather than succumb to the cynical materialism of her social milieu. She slowly draws out the first thread: the thread of a life, spun on the wheel of Christ’s self-spending love.
A collect from our Prayer Book reminds us that “our common life depends upon each other’s toil.” That toil is distributed and mechanized in such a way that we rarely know or even come into contact with the individuals who grow our food, build our housing, assemble our tools, or spin the threads from which our coats are made. Even charitable giving is often subject to this mechanization, as our generous impulses lead us to input our credit card information on a screen.
That kind of generosity is noble, necessary, and often makes a significant impact. But equally necessary is the kind of giving which led Elizabeth to give her life away putting home-spun yarn into the hands of the naked, or home-baked bread into the hands of the hungry. The gift itself is a labor of love filled with the energy of prayer, and the interaction between the one who gives and the one who receives has the potential to change both. So I ask: What’s your spinning wheel? What’s your spool of thread? What painstaking work of your hands and heart does someone need? How can you make that work itself a prayer, and how can you humbly spend yourself in giving it?
Below: St. Elizabeth of Hungary Spinning for The Poor, by Marianne Stokes. c.1895, oil on canvas.
Dear Beverly,
May I try to answer your question with a brief story? My father was a typical 50s dad. He left to house at 6 am to commute to his job, got home 12 hours later, expected his dinner to be ready and his house in order. Our mother also worked, as a teacher, but about 98% of the housework and all the nurturing, fell to her. My father spent his leisure hours handling family finances or doing solitary home improvement projects. I never felt the love for him that I felt for our mother.
Now, 28 years after his death, my father visits me quite often at night. He never says anything, just looks at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to tell him what I now know: that those early morning commutes, the mortgage payments, the carpentry work and the unwavering financial support for his family, those were his ways of loving us. He cared for us in the only way he really knew, and–though I’ve tried to play a different role in my children’s lives– I’m learning, so many years later, to recognize and reciprocate my father’s love.
Thank you for bringing me an awareness that, as I put many meals on the table, the work of my hands is needed.
Lovely sermon.
At an advanced age, where I’m not good for much beyond providing jobs for others, I knit. This sermon is enormously reassuring.
You wrote of the work that women do to serve others. What do men do to serve others?
Dear Beverly, I know men who have been or are standing behind and caring for their sick and dying wives or children. Some of these women and children were or have been sick for a long time and will probably live and need extensive care for years to come. And some of these men are still responsible for financially supporting their family. Their very lives are their spinning wheels and they are the wool, the thread and the power to spin the wheel. For others of us at different times in our lives there are so many needs and opportunities to help others. I believe Brother Keith spoke of women because this is the day that St. Elizabeth of Hungary is recognized. We all carry the gift and burden of service.
Thank you, Br. Keith, for these beautiful words: A Brief and Beautiful Life. Nowadays, the challenges of spinning and weaving have become seen with different eyes. Where I live, there is a spinners and weavers group who create beautiful works of art that are far removed from those necessities of life in the time of Elizabeth.
They are a joy to behold – a dual gift. The gift of the spinner ad weaver, and a gift to those who see and perhaps receive their creation.
Blessings. Christina