MYSORE: THE SILK FACTORY

The analogy of a weaver’s loom has often been applied to life itself. It is the idea that while living life you don’t see the beautiful patterned product of both the pleasant and unpleasant things in life you trod though. This analogy has always made sense to me, but after a self-guided tour of the Mysore Silk Factory I have a new appreciation for the analogy.

By self-guided I mean just that. The gate is opened for you and it is up to you to find your way back. There is no time limit. There is no way-finding signage. There is no tour guide, or even someone to look after the onlookers. I suppose a tour guide wouldn’t help much as the noise level is so high that you couldn’t make out what they were saying anyway. You are allowed to wander pretty much anywhere: through hall where they spin the thread, where the double it, and then spool it, and unspool it and then spool it again. I actually have no idea what all they do to silk, but there are web-like threads of silk whirring and spinning though a number of different machines.

On my self-guided tour, I eventually wandered into the weaving hall. The loud cadence of shuttles, looms, and gears grabbed my attention and soon had me mesmerized. Hundreds of large, weaving machines stood back to back in long rows and marched in place. Each machine was carefully threaded with thousands of hair-thin silk strands. The nearly-nothing, wispy strands entered at one end of the large, dirty, loud machine as solitary pieces of silk and exited on the other side as a united piece of expensive cloth adorned with intricate designs (often with gold threads laced throughout).

Life can be loud and dirty-- filled with “too much to do” and covered in all the little messes we make for ourselves. Not enough quiet time and peaceful relaxation. For me, I often feel like I’m throwing handfuls of wispy nothingness into my life’s loom, praying that I haven’t knotted the threads too badly. My “wispy nothingness” is my actions, thoughts, and deeds some which I deem inconsequential, others I silently (or not so silently) boast about. Through the loom they go. From my perspective it is messy. Unattractive. Pathetic, even. But as I look through the marching shuttles and gears, I am confident that the One who threaded my life’s loom is the One who knows exactly what beautiful and intricate design would come from all my nothingness. To Him it is not pathetic or unattractive, and that’s all that really matters. It is not my “wispy nothingness” that should take credit for my life’s cloth, but my Lord and Savior. To Him be all the glory.