My first teacher for weaving a bag in the tradition of the tribes of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta was Saga Maria in Rio Ancho, Guajira. Maria was a native women from the Kogui people, i stayed with her for few nights every week for a year in 2012. We cooked together and i helped her family in whatever they needed, i shared beautiful moments with her community. She taught me with her smile and presence, the language was not a barrier or a limitation for our connection. She showed me how to weave without words, just by showing me and let me do it by myself, then when i was doing something wrong, she laugh at me and then she used to take my bag and weave on it to show me how to do it, until i finally i started to learn...
In the communities of the sierra the woman learn to weave since they are little girls and they weave all day long, they are constantly doing bags to carry the harvest of their fields. They weave big bags called gamankala made of fique, a natural fibre that grows in the leave of the “furcraea andina” plant. These big bags are used to carry wood or to carry potatoes, yuca, plantains among other foods. The medium size bag is called gama, in this bag they put sometimes the coca leaves that they harvest and they put a hot rock inside the bag to help the leaves to get dry, these bags are also used to carry cotton, or to classified the string of "fique", wool or cotton with the materials needed to do more bags.
The girls weave bags for their brothers when they are little and the women weave bags for their husband when they are married. There are different kinds of bags that men used, there is a special cotton bag to carry the coca leaves and another one to carry sacred objects for the offerings, there is also a big cotton bag that the woman gives to the man as a symbol of love and respect.
From my understanding and by listening the stories of our elders, the bag represents the womb metaphorically speaking. This makes a lot of sense for me because the bag its in the daily day what sustains food which is life just like the womb, besides the shape and the common sense of this metaphor of the womb and the bag, the act of weaving is an act of creation just like the conception. We can say then, (by following this idea of the bag as the womb), that the needle is the representation of the penus, that the act of weaving is the sexual act of penetration that gives space for creation and that every new knot is the manifestation of this creative power that we hold. In other words, weaving a bag can be compare in a simple way to the gestation of a baby, where every knot is a cell that multiplies in beautiful harmony...
"with fertilization the mother's and father's genetic code bound
and this union carries the baby's genetic code,
genes are arrange in chains in the form of a spiral that we call DNA.
Every time the cell splits during the fetus development,
DNA creates an identical copy of it self in each cell,
each cell carries the genetic code of the fetus
and the DNA as a chain multiples with the multiplication of the cells,
DNA is influenced by the parents
and the information is past to the children as genetic heritage
this information defines their hair and eye color
and perhaps some of the characteristics of the personality"
Are you following me? please stay with me... because it is so beautiful to observe that just like the DNA gives particular information to the baby for its development, in these communities the color of the string and the design of the bag identifies the members of the tribe and their lineage. This is how the people from the each tribe creates identity, like this you can recognize the origin of every person, and you can say to which tribe the person belongs just by observing the color and form patterns of the bag.
I find this really interesting, because the women is the person that literally is giving color and form to the culture thru the bag, she is silently reproducing and honoring the legacy of her ancestors, just by weaving. In this action she is taking care of her people, she is weaving the thought of her mother, and her grandmother and all the people before her, she weaves to remember every day who she is and where she comes from. The natives say that this is how they write, and they record, the bag becomes the path of life.
This wonderful metaphor help us to understand why weaving is such a profound act of self love. When i weave i feel i start to create a moment of union with myself, it is a unique moment where i am witnessing my ability to create knot by knot. When i weave i can choose to be really present with every dot, feel my breath and contain my awareness in the amazing instant where one knot takes me to the next one. Off course sometimes my thought goes to other places, sometimes i start to think too much and then for some reason all the string is tangle or i have to go back in the bag because i made something wrong, and it's fine, because this is the beauty of the practice, that you are actually in front of a white canvas that is inviting you to listen what is going on in your mind field.
Weaving a bag will give you access to the mystery of the spiral, according to the muisca people, weaving it's a way to capture silence, its a way to do the inner walk. These practice will help you to have a daily active meditation, and to bring awareness to your thoughts.
Now that we already have this context i will like to go to the Storytelling, where i hope we can get a better understanding of how weaving a bag can help usto:
- bring harmony to our relations
- develop emotional intelligence
- cultivate mindfulness and awareness
- develop our firm sweet word
- have natural appreciation of the beloved
- practice psychological honesty
- feel safety and self confidence
- speak our truth with kindness
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this is the story of a really special bag
this bag was going to be a gift for Michael
i weave with a lot of love and intention for our relationship
we were living together and sharing a lot of time and space
i started to realize that weaving the bag while we were together was creating this beautiful space of presence between us, Michael is really independent, i can say that he likes to have his own space where he can be focus in his work and in his vision, he is a really talented musician with big dreams that appreciates silence or the beauty of nature sounds or good music, he has been travelling alone for a lot of years... weaving during our relationship allow me to contemplate his presence without any expectations, i was just there sometimes next to him weaving and that open the space for us to just be. I learn a lot with him how we can be focus in our own worlds however be there for one another in the simple things.
Holding presence together is a wonderful experience, we can do it in different ways, when we dance, when we breath, when we make love, when we watch a movie or read a book, when we do eye gazing, however i think that weaving creates a beautiful container for that presence to happen in a really special way. I feel sometimes that weaving fills the space, is like something is happening without making any noise, you know, sometimes in the world we live people experience this anxiety that something has to happen or someone has to say something, however when we tune into presence everything is happening. When i weave next to a person and more when i weave something that is for that person, i feel that i am loving and caring that person with every knot because every knot is a portion of my existence, of my breath and thought and energy.
Our relationship went through a lot of experiences, i knitted this bag in a slow rhythm, i was weaving casually when i was feeling in the mood to do it. Sometimes, when i felt my head was going through something about our relation i started to weave and then i was able to listen better what was going on inside me, and i was able to come to him after and talk with more awareness about my feelings, because i already had the moment for introspection with the bag, that in certain way i felt it was like being in communion with him. Just like taking a walk, or writing a letter, or meditate, or making a drawing or praying.. My feeling was that weaving was something practical that was helping me to find the words to speak my truth to him.
The time keep passing and the bag was almost finished, i took my time to appreciate everything that we were going thru while i was weaving, and when the time to give this bag to him arrived a lot of things happen that make me feel that this bag was not for him, i just couldn't do it... the bag was finished and ready to be a gift, however i was not feeling sure about it, so, i talked this with him and that really open a space for a lot of honesty between us and our conversation make me realize that this bag was actually for me!
This make a big shift for me, this bag was a gift from my feminine to my masculine. I realize that i was looking in Michael and perhaps demanding unconsciously from him something that actually i had to develop within myself. After this talk i decided to move forward and we are now friends ;)
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Song
Grandmother Cotton
Written in Sierra Nevada during the Madre Sierra Gathering in 2016
Translated in Israel in 2017
Let me tell you the story of the cotton,
because the purity of your nature inspires it
we can learn by contemplating your beauty
you are soft, you are strong. you are receptive to our heart.
We breath with the sun to nourish our soul.
we weave the seed of life to unify.
We bring back our thought love with intention
we bring back our moon to remember
The cotton seeds first are in separation
with patience while we weave, we can see the reflection.
Then its body becomes one string,
a string that connects, links and growths in spiral
You are aware, you contemplate and observe life moving forward,
From your womb we can listen a profound advice,
by capturing silence we experience wonderful peace
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