197/365 Altar Guild: History

I used to be a part of art and environment. I was one of three people on the committee. We met in the daylight, probably before dinner, in the rectory dining room. I sat on one side of the table with Dolores, and Roxanne sat across from us. Sometimes Fr. Bill with be there, antsy and already thinking about the next thing on his agenda. I can't for the life of me tell you how I came to be there.

We'd sit. I would say very little. Dolores would tell us what to do. Roxanne would wax philosophical about stupid things. Fr. Bill would get into annoying tense discussions of dead plants. And I'd wait to see if I was handed a job. I never was.

A newcomer joined our meeting a few times, a woman named Kimberly who had a passion for stained glass. She found out that Dolores was cleaning it with windex and sort of freaked out. She called the stained glass company that had installed our windows so many decades before. On the side, without consulting the committee, she had them come out and inspect the windows. Got their word, on paper, that windex was the wrong thing to use. Warm water was all. Kimberly and Dolores had a seething bubbling tense argument about this. Kimberly with her evidence and Dolores with her "that's the way we've always done it." It lasted far too long, a ridiculous length of time. Kimberly got up and left and never came back.

When I say "never came back" I mean it. She left the parish and I never saw her again. Dolores continued to hold meetings, but I only attended one more. That was it. She was going to do it her way and I didn't even know why I was there. I had some choice words with myself and stopped going.

Roxanne and her family left the parish a few months later, and Dolores stood alone as the art and environment committee. Even though Roxanne's family drifted back in later, she didn't join A&E. There wasn't anything to join. It was just Dolores, doing all of it or none of it, whatever.