Weaving a Thing of Beauty

 
I don’t know how much you know about the ancient art of tapestry. I’ve been to Bayeux and seen its famous example and I own Carole King’s masterpiece on vinyl. Last year, I wrote a blog for MTW about one of my favourite novels, Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth” and the scene where the heroine realises that her slow slide down the social scale has brought her to a place where she can see all the hanging threads and loose tufts behind the assiduously woven picture of polite society. 

You could say I’m a big tapestry fan, and that wouldn’t be too far from the truth. It’s an art form, difficult to do, but which produces a beautiful picture when done right. It’s weft-faced weaving, and all the warp threads are hidden when the whole thing is complete, unlike your standard woven textile where you can see both warp and weft. That takes some skill. 

Since lock down began, I’ve been to an awful lot of book launches. They’ve all been online, and they’ve all been awesome. As if it wasn’t difficult enough to find the right wool and then weave your tapestry, now we writing folk must also wrestle with technology in order to share our beautiful creations. A few months ago, I received an invitation from Tracy Williamson to attend her book launch of the memoir she co-wrote with Marilyn Baker, ‘A Beautiful Tapestry – Two Ordinary Women, One Amazing God, Many Lives Transformed.’ 

“A tapestry?” I thought. “Two ordinary women? Sign me up!”

 
I went and it was great. I bought the book. One of my favourite things about being a member of ACW is that you see a name on the page, you start to interact, then one day you chat and find you have things in common and suddenly, you’ve got a new friend. This is how it was with Tracy and me. I started reading the book and realised that many of her warps and wefts are the same as mine. We had shared experiences. Reading some parts of the book were painful. Some of it made me laugh. I could see that a very skilled writer had applied her art to weaving a tapestry which illuminated some dark corners while being uplifting and encouraging at the same time. I was intrigued at the way she’d done it, so I decided to ask her some questions. 

What was the starting point for the book?

 In 2019, Authentic Media wrote to ask Marilyn if she would be interested in writing her memoir. At this point I’d been working with Marilyn for 33 years and ironically, we’d often said that we should write a book of all that had happened over the years and the hair-raising situations we sometimes found ourselves in with Marilyn being blind and me deaf and partially sighted! But Marilyn didn’t feel she could write it herself. I then wondered if it would work as a combined memoir looking at both our childhood stories, how we’d come together as friends and then some of the things that had happened since. I would be the principal writer with Marilyn contributing her memories. We put the idea to Authentic, they liked it and we were off! 

How did you find co- writing it with Marilyn?

 I must say it wasn’t the easiest! Marilyn had had a book ghost written called Another Way of Seeing which went through her childhood years and shared how she’d trained in music before stepping out in faith to become a full-time singer/songwriter. The problem was that was a full book (now out of print) and I needed to get her story condensed into about five short chapters. Marilyn would email me blocks of text with the parts of her story that she wanted to include, and I’d have to combine them with some of the stories from Another Way of Seeing to get flow and depth to the story. I’d then read it to her for her opinion, but my deafness complicated the process because she’d then have to type her responses otherwise, I wouldn’t hear them. We emailed our supporters and asked for their memories of things that had happened when we’d visited their churches or when they’d been part of our events. It took a lot of deliberate sitting down and going through things together which took time quite apart from the time spent writing and then editing!

 What was the hardest thing about the process?

I found it was hard to revisit my childhood years and share them on paper. My early experiences were tough, but I knew that while I couldn’t go into them in depth, I still needed to show what had happened in my life to make me the person I am today. I had to really pray for the Lord’s help and wisdom every step of the way and sometimes make time to receive his comfort and healing when hard memories came to the fore.

 What have been your favourite comments so far?

 I was delighted that one of the most frequent comments was, ‘It really made me laugh.’ Non-Christians have said how much they love it which is awesome. Our prayer that it would be a book to bring hope and joy seems to be happening and we are so thankful for that.

 It’s easy to read a book, then put it down and forget about it. This one stayed with me, and I was fascinated by the writerly know-how that had gone towards weaving two disparate stories together to make one beautiful, harmonious whole. Often, I would have to put the book down and take a moment to regroup, as reading a particular anecdote transported me back to painful times of my own. The warps, if you like. And yet in this book, Tracy managed to show the warps but in the context of the wefts, which in turn wove one beautiful tapestry.

I learned a lot. Each stitch, even when made with difficulty (perhaps especially so), went towards producing something which touched me. God’s love and grace shone through it and when I laid it down, finished, I was a better writer than when I first picked it up.

And without ACW, I might never have “met” Tracy or read the book. Nothing is wasted. It reminded me, yet again, that all experiences, good and bad, can be used by our wonderful God to heal and encourage. Warp, weft and all.