They've been in a process of creation for several months. The process is often very long 'behind the scenes' and musing and allowing what wants to come into being, to arrive. Then the actual making can be quite short. I spent around a day on the first one, a morning on the second, a couple of days on the third, and a couple of weeks on the fourth. However, the space in between the making sessions was all kinds of time. And some didn't get finished for weeks after the first phase of them began.
I like this organic aspect of making special things; it seems to affirm that we are part of Nature, and that Nature moves when She moves, not before - and not by our force of Will. Of course that is a generalisation, but it sits well for me, as I explore the sacred masculine and contemplate how a (particular) lingam will fit inside these wee robes.
It is always really beautiful to settle down into the non-front-lobal thinking-feeling-knowing that is sewing intuitively for ceremony. Both thrilling and calming. And I feel into these aspects as I let the shape form, letting them in-form.
The completion of these robes feels like it can never come. It feels like a mountain to climb, and I am too small - too selfish to serve or too weak to channel the Right-ness into the garments. I let these goading voices express and then leave, as no-one responds to them. It is good to know that any 'triggering' around this important task is my own; I and only I have power of any voices churning - I decide whether or not to respond, get entangled, create drama within... or just let them be. As I stitch on, or even sit and think on, the garments lead me by their interconnection.
The interconnectedness between myself and my sacred friendship, his support of me and my lifework, and my returning Gift through my witnessing, my needlework, my feminine perspective. We meld our experiences and this feeds this co-creative project of lingam robes for ceremony. Ceremony as in sacred play, full-spectrum-expression, returning to sentience that which has been numbed or shamed, the Gift of The Present - the robes acting as vessel and gateway - the feminine aspect even - of the play, of the exploration, of the tactile interplay of my hands, shared gift and this man's quiet adventures...
Trying to do this within a convention relationship can be hard - or at least, I have found it too difficult, so far. My partners have always seen any offering of healing or solution to a tension, as intrusion: as my masculine trespassing on theirs, and competition being activated. This is an exhausting aspect of modern conditioned 'life': the presumption of combat in all things, and the inability to drop down into the flow of the underlying Nature of us all. Settling down into Flow is the most rewarding aspect of our human existence, in my experience! And resistance to it is hugely effort-full. And being in relationship with men who do not want to do the work, and want to simply hold the reality as is: the patriarchal status quo.
The best kinds of co-creative collaboration, for me, are when we can dance between the feminine and the masculine; when both aspects become actually inseparable - and we can embrace and enjoy even the pro-active female and the soft male.
So these robes embody both and even more, for myself: they are four seasons, and they express a fourfold complexity of yin-yang. Each piece is fully formed, and yet a part of the other. Like seasons unfolding, but being different every year. Like the plant and tree life evolved in symbiosis, our relationships between men and women should be deeply complex-ly interweaving and expansive.
At least, I hold space for this. And continue to sew these kinds of garments - a sort of non-underwear, natural-fabric container for a temporal concentration of celebration, which will allow something magical and as yet unknown, to come into presence - into the recipient perhaps. A new Flow, and a new integration of sentience. Everything leading back to Wholeness and to us all being One.
