For the Love of Quilting!

Dear Quilting Companions,

Happy February! This is a month traditionally focused on celebrating love. Unfortunately the current hateful language, images, and ideas that infiltrates our lives, it is easy to forget the good stuff – the incredible counterbalancing powerful force in the world, a four-letter word called LOVE. I believe we need to very intentionally surround ourselves with love because it serves as an important anecdote to hate.

I am not talking about “just” romantic love, celebrated with diamonds, chocolates, and flowers. Instead I am thinking about love more broadly, to include our love of our friends, colleagues, and family. We can even apply a merciful love to humans we don’t know, particularly those that are different than us. Love allows us to broaden our perspective, to respect those identified of the “others”, and to choose to treat everyone with love and compassion, rather than fear and hatred, which appears to be a default response for some.

Love is a deep, unselfish commitment to serve/ promote/nurture another person’s well-being. To truly love another one may need to put their interests before your own. Love has three components, it is a confluence of emotion, cognition, and behaviors – i.e. how we care for, support, or express our feelings for another. A large body of scientific evidence suggests that love boosts those feel-good chemicals (endogenous endorphins) and can positively impact nearly every cellular function in humans, from immunity to longevity.

We are privileged to be surrounded by the love in the NLQG in many ways, including the Mary Hardy’s who organize Sew Mondays where members stitch and experience the shared joy of shared lives. And we are grateful for Karen Sluzenski, who organizes the wintertime sew Saturdays. Indeed the NLQG Compassion Quilts projects are driven by not just an excess of fabric, but more importantly by love, altruism, and compassion for others. This work brings great joy to not only to the stitchers but also to the recipients.

Compassion quilting is a unique phenomenon, a love of strangers, defined as a “universal form of love that transcends personal ties, embodying care for all – even those we have never met.” It is a form of empathy that connects us to our shared humanity and can inspire us to act selflessly, to ease suffering, to advocate for this with no voice and protect the rights of all.

My life has been touched by a few very special individuals who personify agape, an unconditional love without bounds. A love that builds bridges instead of walls, and loves others despite race, culture, gender orientation, creed or circumstance. This love is characterized by courage, compassion and altruism and when necessary it speaks truth to power. And living WITH love and IN LOVE is the life I aspire to create.

I close with an homage to our love of quilting, which is a powerful manifestation of true love! Love is indeed the not-so-secret ingredient in many of your quilts and is the gift that keeps on giving. As I struggled through a dark and politically stormy January, I found myself drawn to a message of love. Indeed I drafted and crafted 3 small quilts to share the love with my sister, my BFF and yes, I kept one for myself (see pic). Indeed a tremendous dose of love will be needed to survive and thrive in the future, and I know that you will share the love and counteract hate wherever your quilting journey takes you.

Grateful Always,

Madge Buus-Frank

President NLQG