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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Richard Reddie.

Good morning.

According to some historians, the American inventor, Isaac Singer, was granted a patent for his improved sewing machine, on this day 175 years ago.

As a child, I remember my mother having a Singer sewing machine. She would spend many an hour on this appliance, making a variety of items for our house. However, she came into her own when she got hold of a device that motorised the machine: she really went into overdrive with nothing being off limits. She would buy these pattern books which enabled her to turn her attention to clothes making, and she would make lovely skirts and dresses to wear to church on Sundays. Had she been around today, I’m sure she would have been a contestant on the Great British Sewing Bee!

Having said that, her clothes-making became problematic when she turned her attention to making garments for my siblings and I. While the items were well made, the design patterns she used were a decade out-of-date, and as a result, the clothes she stitched made me look like an extra from the film, Saturday Night Fever.

When I mentioned that the clothes were not in style, my mum noted that style comes and goes, and that they would soon be back in fashion. And as always, she was right. Several years later, with the advent of ‘Baggy Music’, flares and long-collared shirts were back in vogue. When I asked my mother as to the whereabouts of those garments, she told me she had given them to charity a few years before. Someone’s gain and my loss!

So much in life revolves around cycles and seasons. I pray that today we find ourselves in the appropriate season for our life.

Amen