What We Piece Together: Reflections on “Pocket of Peace”
It’s the end of December, and I’m sitting down to write my final reflection for this inaugural year of Music in Conversation. I’ve loved this practice—each month spending time thinking about how a documentary song can be the spark for a bigger conversation.
Many of you may not know that I live in central Washington, and this past week, we have been caught in an atmospheric river. The town where my daughter goes to school is flooded, and many of the ponderosa pines scattered around town have fallen, crushing cars and toppling power lines. And yet, today, the sun is out, and the rain has turned to snow, and people are smiling as they clear debris from their neighbor’s yards.
It can be easy to look at the world and feel overwhelmed, but I recently reread a poem by Nikita Gill that I’ve seen shared widely these past few weeks.
“Everything is on fire,” she writes, “but everyone I love is doing beautiful things and trying to make life worth living, and I know I don’t have to believe in everything, but I believe in that.”
And I think that’s what today’s song is about, at least in part—living in a world on fire, and still finding a way to make beauty.
I have listened to “Pocket of Peace” over and over since I first heard it. The song feels like a comfort to me, and a reminder, and also, if you listen until the end, a celebration, as you hear the overwhelming joy of Natalie and Clara as they sing this lullaby. (anthem?) (prayer?)
“Pocket of Peace” is Laudan’s story about the birth of her son. In the midst of chaos, she describes finding a pocket of peace, but as you’ll see, the peace she finds is not accidental, but created. The song’s refrain repeats four times: “Within the chaos / I found that pocket of peace.” And listening closely, you can hear the sound of something being made.
Stitching It All Together
Sometimes what we’re all doing, the often quiet work of trying to make our corners of the world better, seems a lot like quilting.
I have this beautiful scrap, someone says. I have thread, says another. I know a pattern, offers a third. And then, piecing all of our gifts and resources together, we make something warm and colorful and incredible.
The warmth of a quilt (and the beauty) is created by the stitching itself—by the way layers and pieces are joined together. The batting provides insulation, but only because the quilting stitches hold it in place, creating small spaces where heat can be stored.
Laudan’s song is also about a stitched together kind of beauty.
Laudan woke up one morning, two weeks before her due date, and simply knew today was the day and began preparing. This is the first stitch: trusting yourself enough to act on what you know, gathering your materials and saying, we’re making something here.
But she wasn’t alone: “Biggest blessing / The tribe of women / Wisdom a beautiful thing / Thank god my mom was there.”
Quilting has rarely been solitary work. Women gathered—sharing patterns, passing along techniques handed down through generations. In Laudan’s story, her mother drove her to the hospital. Her aunt shared knowledge that helped her understand what was happening. Her sister sent messages of affirmation. Each woman bringing what she had (presence, knowledge, encouragement) and piecing it together for Laudan.
The poet Marge Piercy writes about this kind of work:
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
“The tribe of women / Wisdom a beautiful thing”—these are the people who do what needs to be done, using accumulated knowledge from women who have done this work before—rarely alone, almost always together.
Rewriting Space
After her son was born, Laudan walked him through the house, room by room, introducing him to the space where he would live. And something extraordinary happened: “walked room to room / negative memories gone / A house became a home.” The same physical space—the same walls, the same rooms—where Laudan had been abused, being rewritten as she carried her newborn son through them.
Quilters sometimes practice what’s called redwork—embroidering new patterns over existing fabric with red thread. When Laudan walked room to room with her newborn son, she was doing her own redwork. Stitching new meaning over spaces that had held pain.
“Here’s the kitchen,” she might have said. “Here’s the room where we’ll play.” The negative memories weren’t there anymore—not because the past had changed, but because the present was so much more powerful.
What a powerful form of creation, not seeking new material, but creating something wonderful from what is already there.
What We Carry
In my flooded town this week, I watched people help and rebuild. A neighbor helping another build a berm, or opening up their home to those who lost electricity.
“Everything is on fire,” Nikita Gill writes, “but everyone I love is doing beautiful things and trying to make life worth living.” Laudan’s song is one of those beautiful things. A story about trusting your own knowing. About the tribe of women who show up. About walking through spaces and restitching their meaning. About the willingness to do hard things for love.
There is much that feels chaotic in the world, right now, but we find pockets of peace. Or rather we make them. The tribe who gathers. The room we ready. The fierce certainty that we are gonna be okay as long as we look out for each other.
Maybe that’s what we’re all doing—gathering our scraps, sharing our patterns, stitching together. Creating something greater and more beautiful than we could make alone.
What are you creating right now? Where do you find peace? We’d love to hear from you. Share your experiences through this link or email Caroline at [email protected].