4/365 Lectors

"Bridgett, why aren't you a lector?" Joanna asks me point-blank in the middle of Christmas decorating.

Christmas decorating. It's one of the things I do at my parish. I do many things, and I have done many things. Over the years, I have taught at the school, helped out with the picnic, helped plan a garden, and rebuilt a school library. I started but did not finish a wall mosaic project. I was secretary of parish council. I arranged flowers. I mopped the church floor and polished the brass. I've bought ribbon and flowers and wreaths. I talk to florists on the phone now, and I sit in excruciating meetings on occasion. Sometimes I sit in really good meetings. I serve on the RCIA team (helping people come into the Church), I have run an Atrium (helping children come into a fuller participation in the liturgy through catechesis of the Good Shepherd), I sort of run Children's Liturgy of the Word, I make banners, I take pictures, I make meals for the homebound, I deliver Christmas and Thanksgiving boxes to the poor.

But there's one thing I'm absolutely in charge of when it all comes down to it. I mean, yeah, I'm the one making the banners but nobody would look around and get overheated if the banner didn't happen this Easter and had to wait until next. But there's one thing I do that rests sort of completely on my shoulders when it's all said and done. Christmas decorating. I've done it 4 years now and it has changed here and there from what it once was to what it is right now. It will change more with time, I am sure.

Each year, after the 4th Sunday of Advent's 10 a.m. mass, I get a queasy feeling and a sense that everyone is looking at me. They aren't, but still. The first year, I stood my ground against an awful boy scout leader and started dragging stuff in all by myself while my predecessor told people I'd ordered too many poinsettias. This year there wasn't anything like that--Bev arranged the flowers like she once did; Rachel and Keith and Fr. Anthony and my husband and Sr. Joanna and Sr. Christine and new people whose names escape me before I can even change them here stepped up to the plate and got all the bows on all the wreaths and all the trees where they belong and Sal the janitor didn't knock down any trees and everything went just fine.

Joanna says this to me as I am clutching a large piece of gold cloth--like 12 or 15 yards of shiny gold cloth--that we thought we'd lost and it was, in my mind at least, my fault. I wasn't putting the cloth down until it was time to place it under the nativity figures. I'd just made the call to cut one of the big trees down, bring up one of the smaller trees that was frankly too big for the nativity scene, and to somehow place the other large tree to one side...sort of an asymmetrical altar design that I was totally not sure would work. But the afternoon was starting to wear on me and I knew I couldn't be the only one. I didn't want to be that person.

But I turned and looked at Joanna. Sometimes when she says things, she doesn't mean them. Sometimes when she says things, I take them the wrong way. And sometimes when she says things it's because it's high time they were said to me.

"I just don't think I'm very good," I say honestly. Or maybe that's what I've been saying to myself because I just don't want to. I'm unsure. Even now a few weeks away I'm still not sure if this was just one of those lines I throw out to avoid engaging...or if it's true. I fear it may be true. I also fear it may not be.

"It's just that we're looking for folks who will really pray the readings," she starts explaining. I know what she means. I know the difference--this past Easter, Paul stood up there and read a reading from Genesis that was like listening to a bedtime story. I told him after that I loved listening to it, and he started talking to me about stars and birds and how he had these stuck in his head as he was about to read and he just tried to let the words flow that way. I hadn't understood completely what he meant, but it stayed with me. In comparison, there are a few lectors that I need to read along with or else I just don't hear the words. Even when I know the readings beforehand. I don't know how I feel about this--the choir doesn't tend to employ bad soloists but allows anyone, including my 8 year old, to sing the melody. Is it right to tell bad lectors they can't proclaim readings anymore? Is there another way to let them participate? I don't know.

And that isn't my job.

Thank God.

I stood there holding the gold cloth and someone--it might have been my 8 year old, in fact--came up to ask me a question. And I figured I was being asked another question as well and so I turned back to Joanna.

"If you need lectors, I'll do it."

And I will. I have my fingers in many pies (sometimes literally down in the kitchen on Christmas Eve morning) but that's ok. I've always been a sort of jill of all trades.

Christmas undecorating is next Sunday after the 10. I need volunteers too.