THE SWEATER

Back around 2010, we went on an educational trip with our Faculty. We visited many monuments, mostly Christian and Byzantine, and enjoyed each other’s company and conversations.

One day, and it was springtime, the weather suddenly turned cold. The wind started blowing hard. We got chilly and tried to hide wherever we could find shelter. I walked into a small shop. Bought a sweater. It had a beautiful color, like ripe sour cherry, with a faint shimmer of tender, almost imperceptible decay.

I wore it and warmed myself. I wore it for several years. I loved its color and the memories it brought back each time I wrapped myself inside it.

Years passed. It became worn out, fell out of fashion, and ended up forgotten on some shelf in the wardrobe.

I found it again later and decided to wear it at work, where I constantly need spare clothes and quick changes.

So it found a role in life once more. It found a way to remain useful and to continue serving life, in its own quiet manner.

If the sweater had a mouth, I think it would have expressed gratitude. Because clothes are not like people, who so often insist on having the leading role, dominant and decisive. Clothes are content even with secondary roles, even with the very last role, as long as they are there, inside the sacred mystery of life, contributing to the beauty of the journey toward the light.

Clothes are simple, perhaps a little like saints, who passionately and lovingly seek the lowest places in life so that they may bear, like Atlas, everyone and everything with love. Or perhaps like small children, who care nothing for positions and oppositions, for victories and defeats, but only for the marvelous endlessness of the shared game.