​Process and Weaving

Learning from the Women of East Timor

@ Emily Lush: https://thekindcraft.com/tais-weaving-in-east-timor/

"In post-conflict Timor, weaving is also vital to healing past traumas and as a creative outlet. It can provide stable employment for women who face an uncertain future, including those widowed, orphaned or estranged from their families during wartime. Those who are able to earn a living through tais are venerated; living proof that a woman can assume a position of independence and leadership in lifting her family out of poverty."

- Emily Lush, The Kindcraft

@ Emily Lush

​The idea of weaving plays a very important role in process theology. It might also be called "weaving" theology.

We believe that every moment of experience is an act of weaving materials from the past actual world into a new whole, such that, in Whitehead’s words, "the many become one." The new whole is itself "new.” Thus, as we say, "the many become one and are increased by one." The increase is the textile that comes from the weaving. It is, in our language, the "actual entity." Our lives are made of such entities. The past actual world is a panoply of textiles. And in the present we are making a new textile, namely our lives in the moment at hand.

And we believe that even the Soul of the universe, God, is a weaver, perpetually weaving the events of the world into new and inclusive wholes: new “textiles” that form the content of the divine life. God is not different from the weaving, God is the weaving. We call it the "consequent nature of God."

Here's the point. Heaven is not static. It is an ongoing process of weaving together what is given by the world, trying to create something beautiful. It is, as it were, the living textile of the universe, always in the making.

And yet few of us in the world of process philosophy and theology can actually weave with our hands. We have lost or never had the art. And even as we champion the idea of ecological civilizations, and just and sustainable communities, we may forget how important actual weaving, with the hands, can be to the development of those civilizations.

This is why we need examples and inspirations from the real world. The women of East Timor, for example. They become our models and mentors, our teachers and examples. It is from them, and people like them, that we might learn to weave our lives in new ways, for the common good of the world and of the kinds of local communities they are trying to help build.

As we learn from them, a new and different kind of process theology emerges: hand-crafted and on the ground, with weavers as our guides.

And one of the practices of this new kind of theology is financial. It is to help them by purchasing their goods in a spirit of fair trade.

​- Jay McDaniel

Weaving Textiles by Hand:
The Women of East Timor

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East Timor, known locally as Timor-Leste, lies among the isles of the Malay Archipelago, north of Australia. It is one of the poorest nations in Asia economically, but one of the richest in culture, especially weaving culture.

​Approximately 10,000 women in Timor-Leste (East Timor) rely on weaving textiles as their source of income. Only 18% of girls attend high school and 3% in rural villages. 45% of Timor-Leste's people are under 15.

ETWA is an organization aimed at helping them enjoy the fruits of fair trade. The five principles of ETWA are: fair trade standards, education and training, preserving culture, poverty alleviation, and sustainable agriculture. 

The products of their weaving - Tais - are beautiful to behold and to wear. You can purchase Tais by going to the ETWA website. All the images are from the ETWA website.

Weaving Fair Futures: The ETWA Initiative

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​Fulidai-dai and Tais

​"Cooperation, honesty, openness, and equality – in East Timor, there’s a single word that captures it all. Fulidai-dai.

​In a country still struggling to assert its independence, fulidai-dai is crucial to all aspects of life – including the quest to preserve traditional tais backstrap loom weaving."

​- Emily Lush, journalist and photographer, in Kindcraft

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​"Tais​, the traditional cloth of East Timor, is the central thread that weaves the friendship between ETWA and East Timorese women. 
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Through the medium of Tais, women have the chance to improve their quality of life and uphold the customs and traditions that shape East Timorese identity.

By applying skills that are steeped in the old ways, women weave new opportunities and culture and commerce merge for development.

​Unlike in the west where generally little importance is placed on women’s work with textiles, in East Timorese culture, cloth plays a key role in social and ritual life and also in assigning women’s standing in communities."

- ETWA: https://www.etwa.org.au/about/loud-cooperative/

Weaving Our Lives Together
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​Heru Ini Lafu: Weaving Life

"This film journeys into rural East Timor to show a side of life rarely seen on the big screen. The film reveals how women in three remote villages are reclaiming their culture and reducing poverty through their woven arts. Most importantly, Heru Ini Lafu: Weaving Life reveals the beauty of East Timorese tradition and the processes of weaving customary cloth known as Tais."

​
Fo-Ba-Malu means
‘means giving to each other’
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​This beautiful footage, edited by Sarah Grace, captures the collaboration between weavers of Timor-Leste; the LO'UD Cooperative, and Australian volunteers, designer Kat Ashworth and Deb Salvagno. Footage and photos from March to June 2012. 

UNESCO honors handwoven
textiles in East Timor
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"Tais, the handwoven traditional textile in Timor-Leste, plays an important role in the life of Timorese people. The textile is used for decoration and to create traditional clothing with specific styles for men and women. People use Tais to welcome new-borns as well as for traditional ceremonies and festivals. Tais is also a means of expressing cultural identity and social class, as the colours and motifs used vary from one group to the next. Finally, the textile is used as an object of value, such as for dowries or to strengthen ties between families. Made from cotton dyed with natural plants, Tais is traditionally handwoven using simple equipment. The production process, however, is quite complex and time-consuming and entails preparing and dyeing the cotton and weaving the material. Although men may participate in the process by gathering plants to dye the cotton and making the equipment, the production of Tais is a role reserved for women, who are also responsible for passing the knowledge and skills on to the next generation. The practice is threatened by several factors, including a preference for modern clothing among younger generations, the replacement of local, handmade materials with industrial alternatives, inadequate income generation and an ever-decreasing number of weavers."

​- UNESCO

Process and Weaving
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Human, Natural, Divine

In process philosophy and theology, "weaving" plays an extremely important role. On the one hand, it is an activity found everywhere in the universe: in distant stars no less than moments of human experience. Process philosophers call it concrescence: the experiential activity of weaving a multitude of materials from the past actual world into new and sometimes quite beautiful wholes, lured by a desire to create meaningful contrasts. Quantum events weave, living cells weave, other animals weave, and human beings weave.

Weaving is especially important in human life. We are always trying to weave our lives into narratives that make sense to us and to others, and to help others weave. Indeed, at our best, we can co-weave.

A just and sustainable community is a community of mutual weavers, all working to create textiles from the materials of life, for the common good. Not all are making fabrics, but all are making goodness, which has its own distinctive colors and textures: wonder, love, forgiveness, gratitude, kindness, playfulness, and laughter, for example.

In a just and sustainable community, weavers rightly recognize that the more than human world (the natural world) is likewise a process of weaving. All is in process, all is weaving, A just and sustainable community, then, is co-woven, and always in the making. The textile is never complete, but it can be beautiful as it unfolds, if the weavers live with a spirit of cooperation, honesty, openness and quality. A spirit of what people in East Timor call fulidai-dai.

On the other hand, weaving is also an activity essential to the Soul of the universe, to God. Process philosophers envision God as the ongoing concrescence of the universe, weaving what is given by the universe - its joys and sorrows, its achievements and failures, its terror and beauty - into whatever whole is possible, making a tapestry of the universe in the moment at hand. In God's case, and also in our case, the tapestry is always in process. It is a tapestry in the making. 

​- Jay McDaniel