284/365 Cleaning Out

Sometime in the first year Fr. Miguel was our pastor, we cleaned out the sacristies. Some of the trouble back there was just years of not noticing mess. I have a feeling Fr. Bill just didn't see mess. And didn't care. So there was decent stuff in some corners, but covered up by mess. Especially in the servers' sacristy.

But other things were just wrong. Lots and lots of clingy polyester vestments that were too short for Fr. Bill but he wore them anyway. Banners that were just, well, too much burlap and felt. Fabric that was kept "just in case." Bad bad satin. Poles that didn't go to anything. Half-empty cans of pledge--like, 4 half empty cans of pledge.

And don't get me started on the crap we were storing in the choir loft. A creche that was supposed to go on the roof of the rectory porch (Sal is still asking me if we're putting it up on the porch roof this year--we threw the whole dang thing away). Fake Christmas trees. Items that were impossible to identify until we envisioned them as the base of an advent wreath, for instance (I remember Hazel and her husband describing in detail how to take off each piece of fake greenery and wash it with mild soap and water before reattaching it each advent).

Junky junk and ticky-tacky kitsch. A box of Christmas ornaments--not like, you know, gold and silver glass balls that would maybe have a place in a Christmas church environment, but stuff that you wish your grandmother would throw away, like coffee filter angels and clothespin reindeer and plastic nativity scenes. A fake dove that came off some floral arrangement (which Miguel placed atop the John the Baptist statue on the baptismal font like a perch, umm, we were pretty slap-happy by that point). Just stuff.

We threw it away.

We don't miss it.