Monday, Day Nine: Shroud

The shroud in which Jesus’ body was wrapped mirrors the swaddling clothes his mother used to hold him close to her after his birth. In Byzantine iconography, the manger in the icon of the Nativity is purposely made to look like a tomb, and the baby’s bedclothes like a shroud.

We don’t shroud the bodies of our dead anymore, at least not in the U.S.—but we carefully dress our dead in their best clothes, tuck gifts into their caskets for the journey. We want to accompany those we love through any transition, but the truth is we all walk alone, except for the Spirit embodied in us, our soul-selves who are so much bigger than the selves we or others will ever know.

The church I attend now in small town Minnesota gifts college graduates with prayer shawls made by mission knitters. We wrap these shawls across the students’ shoulders and wish them well on the next phase of their journey, praying over them in a long chain of interconnected hands. Shawls are also gifted to those struggling through sorrowful transitions, as well as joyful ones.

My daughter has taken up knitting these shawls. She’s still learning. She can create something resembling a shawl, but there are gaps in the stitches, and the ends are uneven. Still, sometimes I will wrap one of these practice shawls across my shoulders and sit, feeling the warmth of her hands on the yarn, understanding that our prayers are what connect our child-selves to the selves we are now.

Understanding, too, that these connections—hand upon hand, stitch upon stitch—are not linear narratives. Neither should our prayers be. Uneven, full of holes—that’s who we are, that’s what we bring to God. That’s what we offer the world.  That’s the living sacrifice God will take on, work with, make beautiful. That’s the living sacrifice that will transform the world.