By Amanda Cleary Eastep

A few days ago, I joined about 100 other women at Wilson Abbey in Chicago for Deeply Rooted: A Gathering. My 20-year-old daughter was with me, and aside from a few friends, I didn’t know anyone.

I didn’t know their credentials, their triumphs, or their sins. I didn’t know if they were longtime residents of the communal Jesus People USA or of the city’s Gold Coast.

Yet we began the morning standing together in the sanctuary space and singing about Jesus. We proclaimed how amazing he is and how much he loves us…just the way we are. (Very Mark Darcy of him.)

All of us did this one thing, despite our different…

Opinions

Backgrounds

Colors

Experiences

Perspectives

Levels of education

Political stances

Orientations

[Fill in the blank]

Then we did more things. We listened to inspiring speakers. We ate together, prayed together, and created together.

We learned how to weave together.

The irony of that sentence is not lost on me today, especially following Tuesday’s presidential election and yesterday’s chaotic mix of despair and joy, shock and hope.

At the weaving workshop table, I wrapped the notched board in twine like some pre-schooler making a stringed instrument. I contemplated the whole idea of being “deeply rooted” and what that means to me, a follower of Christ.

I thought of my love of the woods, and the way the trees that grow along the edges of the stream send their roots out wild and deep and hanging on for dear life.

I recalled Bible verses about trees and noted God’s obvious obsession with analogies.

Then I started crafting the raw material of yarn and dried botanicals into a fuzzy collage that expressed my understanding of being deeply rooted. Of being lashed by rain and bent low by howling winds but not toppled.

There is a song a TV evangelist used to sing that has stuck in my head since the year I turned 12 and my father turned to Jesus.

“Jesus is my savior, I will not be moved. …Just like a tree, planted by the wa-aw-ter, I will not be moved.”

I realized I was humming it as I weaved.

When you weave, you work the yarn, or weft, over and under the lengthwise yarn, or warp, that is held in tension on the wooden frame.

The tension from the warp makes it possible for the individual threads to run in the opposite direction and begin to build the design.

Just as the ground allows a tree to take root and that frame provided the support for the weaving, so did our shared faith in Christ bring us women together, haphazardly and beautifully.

Our differences didn’t matter that day, and neither should they today.

Not if we are deeply rooted in our love for God, not if we daily rely on him to hold together the loose strands.