I’d love to share photos from yesterday’s volunteer sewing day. But there aren’t any. We were too busy sewing. And talking. And laughing. And sharing ideas. We were too busy getting to know each other better and what better way than by laughing together, sewing and helping one another, realizing we loved the same books, we’d traveled to the same places. We sewed small bags today, bags to sell to raise money for the Sewing Machine Project. We were a small, but mighty crew, some with their own machines, some with machines from our inventory. We were learning about the machines we were sewing on. We were learning new patterns and techniques. We were learning about each other.

Ahhhh, the community! People coming together with a common purpose, coming together to simply be together. Building community in our effort to build community!  No tension in the room (other than a few machine adjustments :-)), just a sweet air of kindness. Each time we come together, whether to work on machines, sort bobbins, stuff mailers, or SEW, it’s always a different mix of people. And something magical happens.

One by one, people enter the room and they’re absorbed into this community. The sheer beauty of it brings me to tears each time I feel it. We come to help the Sewing Machine Project, we come to help one another, but we also come as individuals enjoying the warmth of community and letting it fill and enrich us. And together, we lean back into this sheer beauty as new acquaintances become friends, as one by one the bags get done.

And one by one we leave, just a easily as we entered, with hugs and goodbyes, forever changed by our desire to come together to sew and even more, to build community.