Mercy Quilt, Part Two

About a month ago, I posted some thoughts about charity quilts and since that time have given more thought to the subject.  The gist of my initial post was that there are times that I see quilts that people have made that are not particularly pretty, not made with particular care, and the makers will say, sort of dismissively, "Oh, this is a charity quilt."  As though if a quilt is being made for someone we don't know, someone who is down on their luck, homeless, a disaster victim, then it really doesn't matter what it looks like, or how carefully it is made.  As though a person in difficult or reduced circumstances would not appreciate something beautiful.

Not long after that, I worked on a quilt for my guild, a "charity" quilt where others had pieced the blocks and my task was to make them into a top.  I did what I had volunteered to do.  But it isn't a quilt that I would have  given to one of my grandchildren.  And I felt a little bit uneasy that it was going to a child who had lost a parent.  I guess I didn't think it was good enough.

My friend Mary was in a similar situation last week and she wrote eloquently about the perceived worthiness of the charity quilt recipients.

I've just finished a quilt that I will give to the hospice unit of our hospital.  It will go to a very sick man, someone I don't know and won't know.  I loved making this quilt, and love how it turned out. Sometimes when I was working on it, I thought about the potential recipient, whether he would like the colors, be interested in the pattern.  I wondered if he would know that it was a churn dash block.  Sometimes I prayed for him.

As I said, I've thought a lot about this in the past month or so and have come to understand what is at the root of my discomfort.  Some of us serve One who says, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters, you did for me."  It makes me uncomfortable to think of anyone as "the least," but I know that the homeless, the very sick, the tornado sufferers, all may live on the margins of our society.   And as such, are worthy of our very best effort.