fabrication (of spirituality)

The life cycle of garments, of fabric, is not spiritually irrelevant. Our garments are witnesses to, testimonies of, destructive waste and injustice. I won’t deny that there’s something sensible, something inspiring, about the antimatter of a spiritual veil that turns against the rich seductions of glamour. I have a penchant to flitter toward anything shiny and pretty, like a moth around a bald light bulb. It is helpful, I suppose, to tell myself that these attractions are all meaningless, transient, unnecessary… all just passing away. But the life cycle of a garment is not meaningless. It is, rather, a site where meanings—which tailor our spiritual lives—are produced. The era in which we simply fabricated spirituality is, I think, over. We look now, in moments of contemplation, into the folds of the fabric that hides us.

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