Cat's Cradle

To be known is perhaps the deepest need we have, but when it comes to vulnerability, we develop ways to prevent ourselves from being open and allowing ourselves to be known. Each person has constructed a personal battalion of self-protecting mechanisms like keeping up a certain image or maintaining surface-level friendships only. Unfortunately, many of these methods end up being self-destructive, rather than achieving their intent of personal safety.

The thread represents the things inside ourselves that keep us tangled up and held back. All at the same time, we are unraveling and tied up by self-created constructs. The old trunk in the background is filled up with rusty tools and saws; though they never made it into the picture, they were intended to represent those weapons we have formed to keep ourselves free from being seen.

I often use birds or feathers in my work to show freedom and potential for growth. Just below the thread-wrapped hands of the model is the dangling silhouette of a bird in flight. This is intended to show that the potential for freedom is looming, but not yet attained.

We must learn to grow in vulnerability as individuals and as a community, to move out of isolation, to get over the fear of wanting. I think that sometimes we are afraid to “want” because it leaves room for disappointment. Sometimes it seems better to stay numb and dead because to prevent failure or additional hurt.

We need to allow the knowledge of God’s love to penetrate our hearts, to actually believe it and find safety in it. Out of that safety and freedom, then, we can move into a place of acknowledging our frailty and our need for others. Learning to depend on others and to allow them in is an act of trust and obedience. Through the seeming display of weakness we would not find broken trust or further disappointment, but rather be surprised by the community and relationships that arise as we carry each other’s burdens. True freedom is found in love as it casts out fear and allows us to live as we were meant to be.

~Rebecca Blevins