The Rev. Laura Everett delivers her sermon “A God Who Repairs” during the morning worship service Sunday in the Amphitheater.
“There was a disciple, a disciple, a disciple, and her, yes her, her name was Tabitha. Her other name was Dorcas. She was so well known that her name was known in multiple languages. And she did good works and charity, particularly caring for widows,” said the Rev. Laura Everett.
Scripture, Everett said, is consistent, both in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, that failure to care for widows is something that will bring down God’s judgment. Treatment of widows is an indicator of the health of a nation.
Everett preached at the 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “Repaired by Community,” and the scripture reading was Acts 9: 36-42. She used slides in her sermon. The first slide was of a prayer to St. Tabitha in the Greek Orthodox liturgy and the second was the text of Acts 9: 36.
The third slide was of Virginia Lee Burton. She was going to be part of a ballet company in New York when her father broke his leg and she had to stay in Boston to care for him. She married George Demetrios, a sculptor, and in the 1930s they moved from Boston to Gloucester, Massachusetts. She had one year of art school and had worked as an illustrator for The Boston Herald. She wrote a few children’s books under her maiden name, like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. (There was a murmur of recognition in the congregation.)
To make extra money during the Great Depression, she gave design courses. She started with her neighbor, Aino Clarke, and other neighbors soon followed. Martha Oaks, chief curator of the Cape Ann Museum said that “you didn’t have to be an artist, you didn’t have to have gone to art school. If you came under Virginia Lee Burton’s wing, she would teach you how to design.”
A community formed, mostly of women, and Ginny — as Virginia was called — would teach them. They practiced drawing, repeating patterns, moving shapes and images. Slide four showed the group at work. They made designs in linoblocks, plywood covered with battleship linoleum on top. They carved the linoleum with an Exacto knife, transferring their designs from paper to blocks. Slide five showed a linoblock. They had no printing press, so in the beginning they transferred the print by jumping on the block. Slide six showed Aino Clarke jumping on one of those blocks. After World War II they got an antique press to replace jumping. The fee was $2 annual membership. The designs were sold under the label “Folly Cove Designer,” and 5% of each person’s sale was shared with the group.
“This was a community of wives and widows, teachers and tutors, to wedge into their lives some more beauty and community when the world was harsh and hurting,” Everett said. “This happens in every generation. Artists are closest to the creator when they are creating. So the widows gathered around Peter to show him the clothing Tabitha made.” Slide seven was verse Acts 9: 39.
Peter was surrounded by a bunch of elderly church mothers, crying and showing the stitches of a woman who cared for them when no one else would, said Everett. “Remember, Church, that it took 119 days to spin thread for a Roman tunic. How long did Tabitha work for each woman? Years of labor, devotion, investment and care.”
She continued, “I love the image of Peter being bullied by a bunch of church mothers into resurrecting the dead. It is an alternate vision of another upper room. The women are saying ‘We’re not leaving this upper room until you raise our sister.’ In a society that has devalued these women, the textiles are telling a story.”
Everett showed slides from a group of African American quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and from the Folly Cove Designers at their annual show. She showed a slide of a carving by Demetrios of women leaning over the mailboxes, “bodies moving like a corps de ballet.” There was a slide of cotton fabric with bright yellow braided onions printed on it by Dorothy Norton, and one by Lee Kingman Natti of the seagulls hovering over Gloucester.
Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios died in 1968 and the Folly Cove Designers disbanded. But for Tabitha and her community of women, something else continued beyond death.
“When the wider world would not care for them, Tabitha did,” said Everett. “When other wealthy people hoarded their wealth, Tabitha shared it. These widowed women, clothed in the love that Tabitha gave them, now gave that love back to her.”
She continued, “When we feel well-clothed, we feel like we can say brave things and do more than we think we can do. We ‘put on our big-girl pants’ or our ‘power suit’. But the widows were clothed with love and devotion for their sister Dorcas.”
Everett shared a quote from philosopher Elizabeth V. Spelman: “Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness.”
“Tabitha repaired the relationship of her community, she knit together women who had been left aside,” Everett said. “She did this as a disciple of a devout Jew from Nazareth who died under the thumb of Rome.”
She said, “As disciples of Jesus Christ, we get to hold onto this wild idea that the way of the world is not force or might, but tenderness, love and the creative destruction of brokenness. God is a mender and we are repaired in community by community.”
In the Greek Orthodox liturgical calendar, Oct. 25 is the day to remember St. Tabitha the Merciful, who is often portrayed with balls of yarn and thread.
After her death, Burton Demetrios’ family donated her archives to the Cape Ann Museum. She left six drafts of an unpublished manuscript for her design course. In the introduction she wrote: “It is simple but not easy. It is a beginning with no end. And the more you learn, the harder it is. You’ll get as much out of this book as you put in. Because this is a way that works if you work, too.”
Fr. Jim Daprile, president of the Chautauqua Catholic Community, presided. Zach Stahlsmith, minister of technology for Hurlbut Memorial Community United Methodist Church, read the scripture. The prelude was “Andante semplice,” by Madeleine Dring, played by Motet Consort members Barbara Hois, flute, Rebecca Scarbati, oboe and Willie La Favor, piano. The Motet Choir sang a capella “The Road Home,” by Stephen Paulus, under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist. Stafford played the postlude, “Psalm 33,” by Emma Lou Diemer, on the Massey Memorial Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and services is provided by the Randell-Hall Memorial Chaplaincy and the J. Everett Hall Memorial Chaplaincy.
