Ele's Music Notes
by Ele Nash

November 2007

"How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept. So is it in the music of men's lives.."
Wm. Shakespeare, from King Richard II, V.v.42.

Saints, Quilts and Music

In September we had table discussions on Progressive Christianity, listened as 1 Corinthians 12 was read, and then heard Walter John's sermon tying the scriptural passage with quilts and with blind mice feeling elephants, all representing diversity of gifts and perceptions. On All Saints' Day we hang heirloom quilts in the sanctuary to capture and present spirits of quilt-maker saints in our lives, living art representing enduring relationships. Then we sing "For All the Saints." Wrapped in the harmony of quilts and music is a memory in itself that lives beyond the first Sunday of November.

Quilt Music

by Wendy K. Ulmer, LadyBug Magazine, January 1997

My mother is a composer. She writes music.
My father is a quilter. He sews quilts.
My mother writes music with notes. Long
notes and short notes. Slow notes and fast notes.
My father sews quilts with cloth thread.
Long pieces and short pieces. Big pieces
and little pieces.
My mother writes music for different instruments.
Blaring trumpets and booming drums.
Whispering flutes and laughing clarinets.
Rumbling tubas and clanging cymbals.
My father sews with different colors and
shapes. Red squares and blue circles.
Green triangles, purple stars and yellow moons.
My mother connects the notes with a steady,
even beat. She taps her foot and nods her
head as she writes up-down up-down up-down.
My father connects the circles, squares and
triangles with steady, even stitches. He nods
his head as his needle moves up-down
up-down up-down.
My mother writes different kinds of music.
Sometimes the music tells a story or
describes a place. Other times the music
sounds funny, even strange. And sometimes
the music is a sandwich, with the same
melody at the beginning and end and
different music in the middle.
My father sews quilts with many different
designs. Some quilts tell a story or show a
picture of a place. Other quilts have crazy
shapes, colors, and stitches. And sometimes
a quilt looks like a sandwich, with the same
color at the top and bottom and a different
color in the middle.

When my mother finishes a new piece of music, my father and I sit on the sofa to listen. We snuggle together in one of father's quilts and listen to mother play her new piece on the piano. The quilt warms us from the outside, as the music warms us from the inside. We are all together, wrapped up in our quilt music.

May the saints in your life inspire and guide you. May you be wrapped in warm memories and love.

Ele Nash, Music Director

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