Five Indigenous-designed liturgical stoles will be unveiled on Sunday, June 23 as the St. Hildegard’s Sanctuary community celebrates the results of a year-long collaborative arts-based reconciliation project.
The Feather Dance Liturgical Textile Arts Project was launched in July 2018, thanks in large part to a grant from the Sacred Arts Trust of the Anglican Foundation of Canada. The project included full-day gatherings centered on storytelling, wisdom sharing, relationship building, and community handwork.
Every element of the project was designed under the direction of Indigenous designer Rikki Kooy. The resulting stoles are her original art, with the community assisting in the creative process under her guidance. As an artist with decades of experience in fashion design in her Indigenous cultural tradition, and a volunteer Residential School Survivor counsellor, Kooy brought both artistic and technical expertise and emotional depth to the experience. Gatherings were infused with prayer-bound tenderness as participants were invited into contemplation as they stitched—contemplating the challenges of holding together both grief and hope, the call to repentance and the vision of restored relationship. Rikki described the project as “a work of hands extended in friendship, reaching out to each other as we walk the journey of faith together.”
The project itself was born of friendship. Rikki Kooy and St. Hildegard’s Sanctuary gathering priest, the Reverend Melanie Calabrigo met over twenty years ago and were delighted when the idea of a collaborative project presented itself in 2017. Melanie gave this recap of the story at the latest gathering: “With Rikki’s vision of feathers and their meaning in the context of friendship and relationship, Hildegard’s vision of being ‘a feather on the breath of God,’ our imaginations were ignited.”
For St. Hildegard’s Sanctuary, as an arts-based, contemplative, Christian community, it was clear that the project needed to be a tactile, meaning-making endeavour, something that would embody the community’s commitment to the essential, transformative work of reconciliation. When they hit upon the idea of designing and creating liturgical stoles in a collaborative process, the plans started taking shape.
The project has landed true to the vision. Feather Dance has been an embodied act of reconciliation, of relationship and connection. In the words of one participant, “There’s an intimacy to working with cloth, and thread, and needle. It’s literally about making connections, quietly and deliberately. Stitching memorial crosses into the stoles is literally stitching remembrance into the very fabric of our worship. And what a gift to be invited to contemplate designs that call to mind the Spirit Helper, Healer, and Protector as we embellish the stoles with stitch and stone and abalone and feathers. The intimacy of the experience has been very moving. Unforgettable.”
The community of St. Hildegard’s Sanctuary is sending out a broad invitation to bear witness to the fruits of this remarkable project. The stoles will be unveiled on Sunday June 23, 3pm, at St. Faith’s Anglican Church (7284 Cypress Street, Vancouver). Those who wish to stay for St. Hildegard’s Sanctuary’s 6pm service will see one of the stoles worn for the first time.
Although this portion of the project will be completed in June, the friendships nurtured in the process will, no doubt, continue. The St. Hildegard’s community also hopes to raise further funds to continue this creative collaboration and to broaden its reach.
St. Hildegard’s Sanctuary is an inclusive, arts-based contemplative Christian Community that gathers on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples. www.sthildegards.com -- sthildegards@icloud.com
The preceding article and the photographs by Sandra Vander Schaaf, Artist-in-Residence at St. Hildegard's Sanctuary.
IMAGES
- Speaking from the heart, Feather Dance project lead Rikki Kooy reminds those gathered that, “This place has been prepared with purpose and it is covered with love.”
- Rikki Kooy invites participants to choose abalone buttons to embellish the eyes of the hummingbirds on the JOURNEY stole
- Receiving the gift of painted jasper feathers hand-carved by Indigenous artist Myles Haase for the Feather Dance project
- Each stole bears a set of three appliquéd feathers, hand-embroidered with what Rikki calls the action words of reconciliation: LOVE, PURPOSE, RECONCILE
- Each stole bears a name calling back to the work of reconciliation. This green stole, for Ordinary Time, is called LOVE’S WAITING ROOM.
- In her gentle storyteller way, Rikki explains the Indigenous symbols and stories behind the design of each stole.
Photo Credits: Sandra Vander Schaaf