Knit Together

how knitting expands my view of the divine

Iʼm a new knitter. My neighbor generously taught me the basics a few months ago, and still kindly responds to my texts about dropped stitches, tight knitting, needle types, and every other quandary that plagues newbies. Iʼve managed several scarfs, a cowl, and Iʼm now working on my first blanket. And let me tell you—itʼs hard.

My blanket has a deadline so Iʼve been totting my knitting around with me and stealing away moments to work on it. Itʼs been the backdrop to my days as of late, including when I wrote a review of Thomas Jay Oordʼs new book, A Systematic Theology of Love (coming soon from Baptist News Global). Part of Oordʼs impressive book deals with creation theology, and he takes down creation ex nihilo—the belief that God created the world from nothing—rather spectacularly. Oord proposes instead that God is ever-creating from existing raw material and in collaboration with humanity.

And it hit me today while I was working on my double moss stitch blanket. Knit knit, purl purl, knit knit, purl purl…For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Photo by Kate McLean on Unsplash

The Hebrew word sakak (סָכַךְ) that gets translated as knit in Psalm 139 can mean to hedge or fence in, to cover or screen, or—yes—to weave together.

[As an aside for my fellow theology nerds, there are multiple roots of this Hebrew word and thereʼs some debate about whether or not the “weave“ root actually exists—perhaps Psalm 139:13 should be translated you covered me in my motherʼs womb instead—but that would really step on the point Iʼm trying to make in this Substack article.]

I never thought about it before beginning to knit myself, but the metaphor of God knitting us together—not assembling us like IKEA furniture or borrowing the fairy godmotherʼs wand—has profound implications.

Knitting is precise. Knitting is technical. Knitting is slow, thoughtful work. And it is absolutely creation that is born from raw materials. And that is so much better than a presto-chango blanket. How much love goes into something that can be fashioned in a nanosecond? The idea of God knitting us together says something deeply intentional and maternal about Godʼs love.

Photo by Rebecca Grant on Unsplash

Fine, some men knit. Great. But itʼs mostly women. And knitting lends itsełf to generosity—you knit things for others, especially babies and children. Who takes care of babies and children, for the most part, now and throughout human history? Women. And itʼs not only that knitting is coded feminine because itʼs mostly done by women and entails emotional labor, but also because knitting is a long game. Itʼs a commitment. A gestation. It takes practice and a whole lot of patience. It can be therapeutic and fun, but itʼs not quick.

Friedrich Nietzsche said that faithfulness is a long obedience in the same direction, and the same is true of knitting. (And pregnancy! And parenting!)

Photo by Margarida Afonso on Unsplash

If God our Mother knit us together, that means that process matters just as much as results. It means that God cast on quadrillions of stitches, each one a mitochondria. It means that God put up with tendons snagging like yarn, that God had to “frog” our intestines and reknit them, that Godʼs hands cramped and She had to take breaks. It means that God had to untangle a big ball of neurons and figure out how on earth She added a stitch to the row that would become our teeth. It means that God noticed an imperfection six rows down, and instead of making it “right,” She left it to become our freckles and birth marks and dimples.

Great is Her faithfulness that She did not instantaneously create us from nothing a la sorcery or ChatGPT. Great is Her faithfulness that She knit us together from a yarn of cells and needles of bone. And great is Her faithfulness that She did not—could not—create us alone, but only with womenʼs cooperation.

Photo by Nadezhda Moryak from Pexels