An Old Sweater

I'm trying to throw away an old sweater.

It's turning into a problem of theological proportions.

My apartment is small. Much smaller than the townhouse I once lived in, which was much smaller than the house I once owned. So throwing things away has been a serious part of my life the last five years.

Basically, I have this pile of sweaters. And the shelf space I have is so limited I've got to throw some of them out in order for them to fit. This particular sweater is the oldest, most hole-y one I own. It's a big, heavy cable-knit, too, so it takes up a lot of space. Unfortunately, its also the most holy sweater I own.

I think I'd better explain that.

I've discovered that there is a sacramental significance to some of the objects in my life. This sweater was a gift, from my former mother-in-law. For some that might not add up to anything sacramental, but it does for me. My mom-in-law is the only person on earth who has ever succeeded in buying clothes that I didn't pick but would actually wear. In fact, she not only could buy clothes I would wear, I actually (really, really) loved the clothes she picked out. Year after year, for birthdays and Christmas, she went off, with no coaching whatsoever, and found something. There was one year, where I thought she might have blown her perfect record. A shirt she bought didn't quite sit right. I just wasn't so sure about it. But after a few weeks of sitting in my closet, it came off the hanger, and I put it on and looked in the mirror. Wonder of wonders, it looked good on. I still wear it, despite a little snag on one side and the fact that the left breast pocket stitching is starting to unravel.

This sweater was her grand coup, for which there is some history.

When we first met, we didn't quite hit it off. Back in 1976 or 7 somewhere, I went with my then wife-to-be to visit her parents at their home in Kansas. The first night, after dinner, we got into a discussion about Broadway musicals and "The Sound of Music" came up. I had never seen Mary Martin's Broadway version live, of course, but I had seen a film clip of it some of it, after I had viewed the wide-screen technicolor film version with Julie Andrews. So I declared, foot jammed halfway down my throat and oblivious to the look of shock on my fiance's face, that I thought Julie Andrews was, hands down, the best singer of the two. To her eternal credit, my soon to be mom-in-law bit her lip, but I remember the look on her face to this day. If I remember right, my fiance hastily suggested that we take care of some unpacking shores or something. Turns out my future mom-in-law was a big fan of Mary Martin, she explained, a way big fan. Too late to avoid the gaffe, I learned that the name of Mary Martin was revered here, and what I had done was Not the Done Thing.

Somehow I survived the trip. Wish I could say that I quickly got with the program and endeared myself to all, but alas, I was a mouthy, unthinking cuss, and managed to gaffe it up something fierce. Her mom bit her tongue more than a few times in the next months. In spite of that, the wedding took place, and life in our extended family began.

I don't remember which Christmas it was, but somehow she remembered that I had said I loved big, bulky cable-knit sweaters, but I'd never been able to wear them comfortably because they were either wool or acrylic, both of which made me itch. Somehow, she found an all-cotton cable knit, which at that time, were not only outrageously expensive, but very rare. When I put it on, it was soft, big, bulky, warm, exactly the right size, a rich deep almost navy blue and entirely itch free. It was perfect.

I was ecstatic. And the significance of the risk she had taken was not lost on me. Buying clothes for someone else is high risk even when there's no negative history. She ... loved me. As her string of scary accurate clothing picks lengthened throughout he years, I recognized her as the kindred spirit she really was. My ex-wife remarked more than once that we were really a lot alike. So I took a risk and entered into her life, and we became fast friends. I remember during our many conversations that we often had a great deal in common. Our talks were often punctuated by one of us exclaiming, "That's right!" after the other had made some pronouncement. One year, I found out she really didn't like cleaning up the kitchen after a family meal, so I got into the habit thereafter of chasing her out of her own kitchen and doing the dishes for her. It was my gift of love.

After the divorce, she still treated me no differently, and she certainly could have rightly done otherwise. I always enjoyed speaking with her, even when visits declined to just an occasional stop in to pick up my boys when my ex left them there.

Recently, I attended the wedding of my ex-wife and a really great guy. My now ex-mom-in-law cried when she saw me come in and hugged me and said, "I'm so glad you came." I'm so glad I didn't miss that moment. I have it for eternity.

I don't know if having "sacramental" thoughts about an old sweater is "right" or not. But I do confess to having them. It occurs to me that It could, in some way demean the Sacraments that I have celebrated in a number of ways through the years in different expressions of Christian worship. The protestant tradition from which I sprung had stripped the Catholic seven down to two, in hopes of not detracting from the importance of The Lord's Supper and Baptism.

In the process, though, they also tended (my opinion) to strip them of their sacramental quality and their power in the process. I don't think they meant to do that. But in the Presbyterian Church I grew up in, we had Communion once a quarter. I was told that the reasoning behind that was to prevent it becoming commonplace from repetition. Protestants sometimes eschew liturgy (Anglicans and Episcopalians are notable exceptions), in part, for that reason. But I found that the Lord's Supper in the Episcopal church had more meaning for me. (After getting over the discomfort of how different it was, anyway. For instance, it was a bit of a shock to taste actual wine rather than grape juice.) We also, at least in the Episcopal churches I attended, did so at almost every service. Since there were several services each week and two on Sunday, one could potentially have eaten the Lord's Supper four or five times a week. When I questioned one rector about that, he responded that, while he wasn't a transubstantiationist, he wasn't a Memorialist either. Something Happened when you ate the Lord's Supper. He didn't know what that was exactly, so he couldn't explain the mechanism to me, but he believed something did. Something Good. Behind the symbolic activity was a Reality. Since a sacrament was an "outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual reality" (even the Memorialists I knew would agree with that on some level) he asked, why would we want to avoid doing it? Seemed to him you'd want to eat it as much as you could. So he was all for people taking the bread and wine as often as they cared to.

I wonder if having such a great divide between the sacred and the profane (that is, the ordinary things of life) has been part of the problem with our modern American view of life?

Paul says in Romans that the creation itself declares God's majesty, so the world is without excuse if it does not see God there and respond. For Paul, the whole creation spoke to him about its Creator. I often puzzled about that as a child. I was such a literalist, and I didn't hear anything declaring any such thing. If you wanted God, you had to go to Church. Just like if you wanted an ice cream cone, you had to go what was then called a creamery. It occurs to me I had commoditized God at an early age.

As I've journeyed on, however, I've found God in some pretty surprising places, by no means all connected with the institutional church.

I found God in that sweater, the outward and physical sign of my mom-in-law's relentless inward and, if I may say, spiritual love of a son-in-law who did not make a good impression. Given the plethora of mother-in-law jokes, surely God had something to do with it.

So back to my shelf problem. Fact is, I dumped that sweater in the trash the other day, trying to be practical. It's not just snagged and worn. It's unraveling. I'm not sure it'll stand another washing. And it's been in the wastebasket for three days now.

I keep looking at it.

And when I get done posting this blog. I'm going to take it out, and find a place for it, even if I have to toss something new.