Red threads and beads for a rare pearl ...

On Friday July 3rd a group of us gathered invited by a friend who will soon leave Geneva. We talked and shared stories and we threaded beads. The threading helped us to focus on our feelings, our hands had something to do and we could more easily listen to one another.
We were sad and emotions were high ...
What follows is a reflection I prepared before the evening.

Red threads and beads for a rare pearl …

In French the phrase une perle rare meaning a precious pearl, a rare jewel or stone, and it’s also a way of referring to a person. Calling someone une perle rare is a way of honouring their uniqueness, their beauty, their contribution – it’s a way too of saying they are brilliant and fabulous! ;-)

So N … this evening we celebrate your brilliance and fabulousness, how precious you have been to us in this place. To do that we have brought beads with us and some red thread.
We are going to thread our rare pearls onto le fil rouge. This phrase le fil rouge makes me smile because there’s a lot of biblical, feminist, mythical and birthing imagery in the red thread. However, it’s also very difficult to translate – “common thread” maybe the best we can do for now.

You’ll maybe remember the story from Greek mythology of Ariadne who helped Theseus escape the minotaur’s underground labyrinth by giving him a thread to follow – perhaps that thread was a red thread, or maybe a golden thread, or perhaps a prehistoric fluorescent thread that could be seen in the dark. The fearful threatening mythical beast in the labyrinth of life can be escaped by following a thread, a golden thread, a red thread, a common thread – given to the hero by a woman …

The Bible also has a red thread, Rahab, a woman said to be of dubious morals, supposedly hung a red thread at her window for Joshua and the Hebrew people to be able to enter Jericho. The subsequent story as it is told in the Bible is of a bloody battle, noisy shofar calls and walls falling down. But stories are not always history, today no archaeological traces of a battle can be found around Jericho. I like to think perhaps Rahab’s saving, liberating red thread was actually the work of convincing the leading men who visited her bed from both inside and outside the walls that they could live together in constructive and just peace. And we all know the need for a strong common red thread of peace with justice in that part of the world today.
Rahab the prostitute is one of the few women mentioned in the genealogy of Mary’s child, called Jesus.

The red thread is also the umbilical chord, the common thread that transmits DNA but which has to be cut if child and mother are to have a chance to live.

Today we are going to string pearls onto a red thread for you, some of our pearls may not really be beads but each comes with prayers, hopes and good wishes. As each person puts something onto your fil rouge they may want to say something, dance something or sing something. In the end we hope that this thread will be a bit like a rosary or prayers beads, fragile vulnerable pearls of remembrance, meaning, laughter and tears. Something for you to take with you if there is still room in your shipment home.

But then we thought that you might like to thread something onto a common thread for each of the people you have invited today. A way of affirming that each of us is a rare and precious pearl.
All of this threading, praying, remembering and celebrating, is also a way of saying that even when we think that we have lost the plot completely or cannot sense the common thread, there really is a way through the crazy, sometimes dangerous labyrinth of life and there are many pearls to be found on the way, if only we take time to notice.

So thanks N … to you for giving us this time to notice how beautiful you are, how beautiful each of us is, for honouring us with this invitation and for encouraging us to pick up the common thread of life.