253/365 Cool Guy in Shades

254/365 I'm Ready to Talk Advent

That was the title and the only sentence of the email the Presbyterian minister who is the pastor at the nearby church, the one where my girls' school lives, written to me this week.

So I'm going to be making some Advent banners. I am excited--two very different styles are expected. He wants pictorial, not abstract, and my parish pretty much wants the opposite. As Hildegard has said to me, we don't want to hit them over the head with it all. But from a quilting perspective I'm kind of excited about the different approach. Just sayin.

255/365 Just a few more from the mass in the park

256/365 My casserole

The phone rang. It was Sheri, the woman who coordinates funeral meals. She wanted me to bring something Friday. I told her I would. Probably something tomato based, some kind of Italian casserole.

I put it out of my mind until Friday morning. I had to meet with the Presbyterian minister and get kids to school and oh, yeah, the funeral. I glanced in the fridge to see what I could whip together quickly after the meeting, but there really wasn't anything I'd want to serve to strangers. But there was a watermelon.

I cut it open--a yellow watermelon. The last bits of summer on my kitchen counter. I sliced it, thinking of the poem by John Tobias, "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity" and how John Tobias must never have actually eaten watermelon pickle because watermelon pickle is as much like watermelon as pickled beet is like shredded beet. But the title aside, the stanza came to mind:

It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.
The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

I wondered who had died, whose funeral meal I was helping to prepare with each slice of the knife. I arranged them on a plate, a plate that came with a pie I'd bought at the church barbecue last fall, a plate that could go back into the milieu of dishes and odds and ends in the basement cafeteria kitchen. I drove over to church at the prearranged time and rang the doorbell to the basement hall.

Lynn answered and I handed her the plate. She looked at it a bit funny and I explained, or apologized, that it was so simple, but that I hadn't made the casserole I was going to make.

"They'll appreciate this more," she told me in that backhanded way of hers. And I played into it.

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Who wants to eat a casserole I would make?"

"Oh," she said, still with a funny look on her face, "I didn't mean it that way."

"I did," I said as forgiveness.

258/365 Thank You

Fr. Miguel makes the rounds at the stewardship appreciation dinner. I'd spent the whole evening prayer chasing Leo around church, and then most of the dinner as well, since Mike, being on the stewardship commission, was walking around with a bottle of wine filling glasses. Nice evening.

Miguel makes it over to our table towards the end and chats a bit. Thanks me for all I do, which is what I assume he's said at pretty much every table--we have a diverse group of volunteers, and by that I mean lots of people do lots of different things.

"Thank you," he says.

"No problem," I shake my head. "I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it."

"True," he starts, but I interrupt:

"I'm no martyr...."

257/365 Glee

"You will be watching Glee this season, right?" Jack asks me during the stewardship dinner.

"You know," I answer, "I had my wires crossed about that show. The only reason I didn't watch it is because somehow, I thought it was a reality show, and that didn't interest me at all."

"No, no, no," he shakes his head quickly, explaining the show's premise. "But I know you're caught up other things you're watching right now."

"Hotel Babylon," I sigh. "But yeah, I'll probably have to watch Glee this year."

259/365 Mary Morphing Video

My mother-in-law sent this to me. I've seen others like it, other "art through history" morphing videos. Anyway. I wish they'd included more modern versions, but they might have been hard to add.

260/365 Just Sayin'

At the mass in the park last weekend, there was a potluck that followed. All I remember was that my part of the alphabet (you know, A-G bring salad, H-M bring casserole, etc) for a change was not responsible for dessert, but for vegetable or rice or salad or something like that. I don't recall which. I totally cheated and made peanut butter celery sticks because kids go to potlucks too and who wants another scoop of three bean salad?

But I don't think I remember a part of the alphabet being assigned "chips." But man, did we have a lot of chips at this potluck. Enough that I debated taking the whole bag of cheetos there on the right and just putting them in the back of the stroller. One of my vices. But I refrained.

261/365 Stewardship Appreciation

I think it was pretty well done, all said. I like evening prayer, even though I spent most of it in the back with Leo running around like a freak. Sometimes I don't get it, these kids. How two of them could turn out to be such little heathens and the other is so reflective. But anyway, I like evening prayer. I like that we started with prayer, too, instead of just having the get together downstairs.

Good food and those little Italian cookies I love that I didn't even know existed until I lived in South City. Goodness. They make me happy. Wine and chat and more of my crazy kids. Good turnout, too.

262/365 Advent Banners

"So I'm thinking about Advent banners," I tell Miguel as we chat a moment at the stewardship appreciation night.

"I saw that on Facebook."

"Yeah, the Presbyterian church where my girls go to school, I mean, in the basement, the pastor there, Jim, has asked me to make banners for them. And so I'm thinking about both."

"Are you going to make two of the same?"

"Actually, they want two, but no, they won't be the same. Jim wants something a little more pictorial."

He wrinkles his nose in mild disapproval.

But there's this set of 4 I've seen online, I want to say. But he's right. They are for inspiration only. I can make them fit but they would have to change. A lot. And so I must do that thinking I keep talking about.

263/365 A few barbecue shots

264/365 Irish Dancers

265/365 Water and Wine

"Did you notice the new deacon getting things prepared at the altar?" I ask Mike as we set the table for dinner. He looks at me, not sure what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is mixing water and wine. Why I'm thinking about it is because we're almost out of chocolate milk, so I'm mixing it with white.

"Yeah, he poured wine in all the cups, but only dripped water into the one." Our last deacon used to drip water into each cup; Fr. Miguel puts it in the pitcher before he pours out into different cups.

I never noticed this until Sr. Hildegard pointed it out. She would sigh and talk about good practice and bad practice and liturgy and say, "It's a ritual, not a recipe."

It stuck in my head. Now I watch every time. What is this or that priest going to do? And what is the correlation between good preaching and ritual vs. recipe.

I bet you can guess.

266/365 Ideas go in and out of my head

Moons. It's a month. It's a month of moon. Tree, Jesse tree where once was tree of life. What the heck is a Jesse Tree anyway? The people in darkness have seen a great light. Cop out? Too easy? The Christmas banner is a star. Labyrinth. Going deep inside, hibernation, quiet, solitude. Purple, no, navy, no, yes, navy and purples and a bright light blue like snow at sunset. Desert in bloom? It wouldn't be purple, there would be green. Too much picture, not enough evocative idea? Winnowing fan, streams, voice crying out in the wilderness. Moons.

267/365 Feast of the Archangels

Gabriel lives in our church. He's in the staircase going up to the choir loft, and of course he's in the Annunciation window. Always with a lily, the symbol of purity.

I had studied the depiction in the choir loft staircase before, when I taught at the school, and didn't pick out that it was Gabriel. I wrote about it over on South City Musings and Sr. Kinnera let me know OF COURSE it's Gabriel.

Why? I asked. I just didn't get it. Choirs? Why would Gabriel specifically be there.

She pointed out the bell tower. Proclaim the good news. That's Gabriel's job. Ok then.

We don't have a Raphael, and I don't think we have a Michael. But I like Gabriel in the staircase, picking up the scroll, practicing his lines, put the lily down to concentrate...

268/365 Autumn Days

These autumn days are warning us
Of winter sure to be,
When all the leaves have fallen off
From every branch and tree.

These earthly friends are leaving us
Their autumns being past,
And thus the winters of our lives
Will come to us at last.
--Shaker poem

It is this time of year that brings me face to face with aging. In the mirror every morning, in the red bud tree in the backyard turning unceremoniously brown. The hard green tomatoes left on the vine, never to ripen, might as well pick them and make salsa verde. Again. The air is unforgivingly dry and Maeve's eczema returns with her asthmatic cough.

I am, most likely, God willing and the creek don't rise, far from the winter of my life. But it struck me that Sophia is 9, and if she is a typical child, we're half-done with having her live in our house full time. This created a sort of panic in me akin to having a baby reach up and touch a hot burner. Hurry, fast, before it's all over.

All over. It's all over in a hurry, yes. I need to be sure to hurry up and take things slow.

269/365 Not at the Monastery

I'm not at the monastery. I don't even know if this was the oblate weekend or not.

I haven't been for two years. We have three retreats a year, and Leo was just too new to drag out to Clyde. And it would have been a burden to leave him here or take him with. We're just at that stage right now.

I know Sr. Hildegard is going to say something to me, something specific about a retreat, and yes, I know. Just tell me when that could happen. I looked at the calendar and EVERY WEEKEND from here until Christmas is now officially booked. Not each day, but at least one of the days of the weekend is scheduled. It will fly by, and I'll love it, but I'll be spiritually exhausted by the end.

So I'm going to make a plan. February 19-20 I'm just going to block out. I don't know yet where I'll go but I'm going to go somewhere. Maybe down to Pevely. It isn't far away. I want to go to Clyde--I could stay at Conception--maybe. I've got a few days to consider.

270/365 Dregs

From Joan Chittister's reflection on today's reading from the Rule:

God does not come on hoofbeats of mercury through streets of gold. God is in the dregs of our lives. That's why it takes humility to find God where God is not expected to be.

My best daily spiritual time? Washing the endless dishes. Rinsing, stacking, loading the dishwasher, washing the pots by hand, trying to figure out how to get the burned on butternut squash residue out of my crockpot. Sometimes I have the radio on and Tavis Smiley or Tom Ashbrook tells me things. But most of the time I work with the running water and the distant sounds of my family getting on with their evening in the rest of the house.

There is a stillness in my heart when I do dishes, like when I watch a fire on a camping trip. A meditation to the work and the same scene again and again. The windowsill with my oak leaf bowl. The milk glass vases. The marble. The glass from the Buena Vista. It's kind of an altar. Old things, precious things, depictions of creation, and things that have no meaning except to me. Below them, the jar of cooking utensils, the vitamins, the dish soap. Sugar jar. The Mexican tiles I use under my big pans to keep them balanced on my lovely, but sometimes impractical, stove. I know these images by heart the way I know the rosary. I stand in the corner, the window giving the rhythm of seasons to set off the static pieces of the counter and windowsill. It's just a sink. It's just the kitchen. But God sits there and spills coffee on the table while the water runs over my hands.

271/365 Why am I here?

Fr. Miguel did an open mic coffee and donuts today after mass. The theme was "why are you at this parish?" because, while we are geographical, not everyone is here because of geography. I wasn't going to get up and say anything, but Maeve and Sophia both wanted to, so I went with them. And this is just about what I said:

"We moved into, well, just north of the parish 12 years ago but my grandmother told me to come down here because Fr. Bill was the pastor and I should go here. So I called and Bill answered the phone and I told him where we lived. Turned out, we actually lived in St. Frank's parish, and I said, oh, ok, I'll give them a call. But wait, he said. Do you have kids? No, I answered, we've been married about 2 years. Well, do you plan to have kids? And I replied that yes, we were. And he said, well, then, why don't you give us a try. And we've been here ever since."

Afterward, Miguel walked up to me and told me he was glad Bill had pushed for us to join our parish. Colleen O'Toole was standing there next to me. "Oh, sure, because you would have fit in there so well," she rolled her eyes.

"I would have made it here eventually," I point out, since parishes merged 5 years ago and now we actually do live in the geographical boundaries. And then I thought again. "No, I wouldn't," I admitted. "I'd be a Quaker."

Geography, again, is destiny.

272/365 Christmas Greens

So I called the wholesaler. It was time, if we wanted to reserve the things we want. We get our trees from a different wholesaler, and I can call him later (it's kind of a grungy outfit, office reeks of cigarette smoke, men who look like my uncles in carhartts standing by 50 gallon drum fire pits...). But the wreath wholesaler sells to florists, and so you know it's a nice place.

I called the guy we worked with last year. It's different now. Astrid used to run a wreath fundraiser and order the church wreaths at the same time. They arrived the first week of Advent and while that's great for your front door, it's not so good for a Catholic church that decorates for ADVENT before it decorates for Christmas.

Astrid doesn't do it anymore, and, surprise surprise, nobody has picked up the standard and marched on. So last year I did the order and this year I'm doing it again.

"When would you like delivery?" he asks me.

"Well, we will decorate on the 19th, so could we do the 18th, or maybe the Thursday or Friday before?"

There's silence on the other end. "You mean the Friday before Thanksgiving?" he asks.

"No, I mean the week before Christmas."

"You don't want your greens until the end of December?" he asks, like it's a ridiculous idea.

"Yeah, we decorate for Advent first, you know, all purple and blue and stuff--then we decorate for Christmas on the 19th this year."

"Ok then, well, I'd recommend the 16th if that's ok--everybody wants delivery on Friday for all sorts of things."

"That would be great."

I can see him hanging up the phone in his office, shaking his head at how bizarre we are.

273/365 I have a plan

I have two plans, in fact.

1. The Presbyterian Plan: I'm doing two banners, 36" wide by 58" long, to flank their sanctuary, basically. When I sat down with the pastor, Jim, we talked about what Advent meant to him, what it means to me, what it means in his church. We decided on a more pictorial theme than my church probably would want, but it gives me a chance to play with some different themes. The first banner is a depiction of the Visitation as an example of pure belief and faith, done in an abstract-ish way, the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary strongly implied but not, you know, titled or anything. Fields behind them, full moon in the sky.

The other banner is based on Jim's idea that Advent is about watching and waiting. You do not know the hour, that sort of thing. So I'm working with the idea of a watchman. I have the drawing done. Another moon on the horizon, seen through a window where a person sits with his back to the viewer, watching out across the vista. I'm excited.

2. The Catholic Plan. I usually just need a nudge in the right direction. We have so many places in our church where banners can go: in the sanctuary they can flank the crucifix (an unpopular choice lately because that was the same-as-it-ever-was option for many years of bad burlap and felt and lining fabric banners). They have often stood behind the ambo as a focal point, sort of to one side. They could stand on either side by the Mary and Joseph altars. They could technically hang from pillars, although it wouldn't be the same effect as in a more gothic style of church. Or they can go in the back of church, either in what has become the seasonal corner (in Ordinary Time, there is information about various opportunities or themes; in Advent the Giving Tree goes there, during Christmas, the creche, and so forth). Or they can hang from the choir loft. Jack installed curtain rods up there on the underside of the loft railing so that banners could be easily attached (I used to balance them with heavy objects here and there). That's where Easter's banners were hung.

And I sent a message to Fr. Miguel and Sr. Hildegard asking for opinions. Hildegard is on retreat or some sort of visit to her motherhouse, but Miguel wrote me back and probably thought he gave me no direction (he basically said that anything was fine, but nothing obvious like Mary and John the Baptist and--well, what I'm doing for the Presbyterians, although he didn't say that (I did). They can go where I want and say what I want.

Well, there are 4 Sundays of Advent, so there will be 4 banners, hung from the choir loft one at a time. I won't give too much away just yet but I drew as much as I could from the Sunday readings for Year A (I can't believe it's going to be Year A again already). I find I do best when I pull from scripture: my Christmas banner is Numbers 24:17; my first Easter banner was John 20:2; my current Easter banner doesn't pull from a specific passage but from creation and incarnation and resurrection and leading to Pentecost. But I already knew what I wanted from that one--the others required more thought and, well, lectio, frankly.

So these four are thus:
1. Romans 13:12
2. Isaiah 11:5-9
3. James 5:7-8
4. Isaiah 7:11 and Psalm 24 and Matthew 1:20-24

The only other thing I'll say right now is the color scheme: navy, blue violet, gray, rose, black, and lightest blue (like shadow on snow).

Next up: full sized mock ups and then off to the fabric store once I gather up my fragments here and see what I need. My favorite part.

RCIA This Sunday

I'm the RCIA catechist this Sunday, for the first time since, oh, Lent? As I've said before, RCIA is something I want to be a part of but even starting my third year of it, I still feel like I'm not qualified. Children's Liturgy of the Word (CLOTW) might annoy me sometimes because I have to miss a homily, but even if I forget and am unprepared, I can make something happen downstairs that will work. And Sadie O'Toole will stand up at coffee and donuts open mic afternoon and say that Children's Liturgy is her favorite part of church.

Or banners, or helping with holiday meals, or whatever. I'm good at things and feel like my work is competent and on par with those around me. This is not true with RCIA but I stay.

We'll have two new folks who are participating in the rite of acceptance this Sunday (the official start to their catechism experience). One baptized, who could come in any time during the year when it seems like she's ready, and one unbaptized. This brings our total to 3, which is nice. One person is a little intimidating for everyone concerned.

Now to plan.

275/365 Ordinary Time is Waning

I have something planned every weekend from here until mid-December (and those will fill up, I know). When I focused long enough to rattle it off to a neighbor today, I got this doomed feeling. Ordinary time is slipping away from me.

In the atrium, we call it "Growing Season", and it is. It's the time to grow in God's word and love, but also in the rest of our lives, all our mundane tasks and gardens and houses and families. This is the time for vacations when you reconnect with your kids, and the time to finally get cucumbers to grow in your garden. We spend our summers lazing about, but really we don't. We work at being and becoming the people we are. Early fall greets us with harvest and back to school, back to encouraging routines and new beginnings. It's a beautiful time of year.

And before I know it, it will be gone. So far gone. The little green plants on either side of the ambo will be gone and an Advent wreath will hang in the back, at the entrance to church. It'll be cold and negotiating last minute present wrapping with school and church and family obligations and traditions. Traditions. I think that's why I like the easy breath of Ordinary Time: there aren't so many traditions. Just good Gospel stories and a plain church and no big worries. Sure, some local traditions, but there's room to move around in Ordinary Time.

Until now.

276/365 It's hard to plan...

It's hard to plan when you can't find the outline.

Searching...

277/365 The 10 Lepers

Thoughts on the story of the one thankful leper/story of the 10 lepers. You know the story: Jesus heals ten lepers. Tells them to go see the priests (go to the Temple) and show themselves to prove their cleanliness. They run off, but one, upon realizing he's been healed, returns to Jesus and thanks him. Jesus asks him, a Samaritan, why only one returned? But, having no answer, Jesus simply tells him his faith has saved him.

It's paired with the almost identical story of a healing of a Syrian named Naaman by Elisha. Naaman begs to give Elisha a sign of his thankfulness--but Elisha says no. He won't grow rich from the work of God. So, thwarted, Naaman instead asks Elisha for two mule-loads of earth so he can take it back home and worship God, the one true God, he realizes now.

Huh. He takes home dirt.

In the ancient world, gods were still tied to place (in fact, it's sometimes still true, with centers of religion in different parts of the world). Naaman felt that if he was to worship God the right way, he would need to do it in that place--and if he can't be in that place, he will take that place home with him. Which I guess is kind of like water from Lourdes or pieces of the "true cross." Pilgrimages. Those sorts of activities and desires to be in a certain place to be closer to God. So Naaman goes home with some of the place that belongs to God, and I don't know anything else about Naaman.

So then in the Gospel, there are some more lepers. Jesus sends them, again, to a specific place to be readmitted into the community. One, however, returns, and gives thanks to God at Jesus' feet. The word in Greek is the same as the word for Eucharist. Thanks reserved only for God. Jesus does not correct him as Elisha did for Naaman. And the Samaritan has come to realize that place doesn't matter: the person of Christ does.

278/365 Lectio Divina

Tonight was the beginning of our parish mission. We've brought in a Redemptorist, a brother of one of our parishioners, which hearkens back to my own baptism down at the Redemptorist parish. I'm on the first page. Tonight's theme, though, was the Bible. God's word. As Catholics, I hear we have an uneasy relationship with the Bible. I think that's because so many of us are Baby Boomers, and they grew up during a period when Catholics didn't read the bible. Too bad. I was taught Old Testament by a fabulous Benedictine monk and I was hooked. I'm sorry if that's not your experience as a Catholic or an ex-Catholic, but I find the bible very comfortable. I'm no scholar, but I don't fear it. I don't worry that my interpretation is wrong. I know my faith and I know what it means to me. I use my bible all the time.

He brought up lectio divina during his talk tonight, which is a monastic practice of reading the bible. It isn't bible study and it isn't a marathon. It's taking a passage and reading it until something strikes you. And then dwelling in that word or phrase. Meditating upon it. And then opening up to God's response for you.

It's an easy way to re-introduce, or, for that matter, introduce, the bible into your life. It's not memorization or deep intellectual study. It's a word. Or two. And you, and God.

279/365 Mission

Jan asked me what a mission meant for our parish. I was not on the mission planning team, so I am probably not the person to ask, but this is how I saw it:

4 nights of good preaching, each with a theme, brought to us by the Redemptorist mission team (the Redemptorists are an order of priests--I was baptized by them, actually, and my parents were married in Liguori, where they are based here in Missouri (I don't know how big that province might be)).

The themes for the nights are: bible, cross, candle, altar. The last night is a mass, the second-last night is reconciliation.

The overall idea is to reawaken us and replenish us spiritually, and to move us to action.

The priest who came to talk to us and spend the week is Fr. Jonah, and he is completely engaging as a preacher. Reminds me in some ways of Fr. Lucien back at the Benedictine abbey where I went to middle school. I like him. I couldn't go tonight, and I can't go tomorrow, but I'll be there Wednesday for the mass.

It's not like a tent revival do I hear amen kind of thing. It is definitely Catholic thus far.

280/365 Being Catholic Means Knowing What to Expect

On Sunday night at the mission, there was an opportunity to file up to the front of church and demonstrate publicly our own adoration of the bible, of God's word.

A mission, like a retreat, is out of the usual Catholic practices. Things tend to be a little different. Prayer services, too. This one at least had a purpose, and was connected to other things we do, like adoration of the cross on Good Friday. Out of the ordinary and just outside my comfort level, but not cheesy or forced symbolism or anything tiresome. I went up and did this with everyone else, returning to my pew and thinking about a women's prayer service I was invited to a few years back by Lynn. Back before I knew to just say no.

A circle of folding chairs. Hand-poured candles in a variety of jars situated, but not lit, in a odd centerpiece on the floor inside the circle. Fabric folds, seashells, a bit of driftwood, a fern leaf. These objects would have made sense if the participants had placed them there after a walk in the woods to find a symbol of what life meant to them right now or something like that. But there, just placed already, it just looked forced and hokey. Little flattened marbles like the ones you put in the bottom of vases, scattered about probably to catch the light or look like water or tears or who knows what.

There was forced movement. The tiredest little dance in a circle with these middle-aged women in broomstick skirts or polyester pants earnestly making these moves, their hands in the air, making a wide circle above them--again, if they'd been, say, Native American interpretive dancers out in the prairie, this would have been good. In a church vestibule with the AC noise and the unlit candles: not good.

There was bad poetry. The bad poetry was read with Wiccan voices. Forceful "I Am Woman" voices.

There was bad music, on a portable CD player. We were supposed to sing along, but no music was included on our pamphlet.

Oreos and lemonade were on the back table for after it was over. I didn't stay. Lynn forced a handmade candle into my hand and asked how I liked it.

"Well," I tried. "Not really my kind of thing."

"Bridgett!" she said, mocking me with her tone. "You should make it your kind of thing!"

But I can't.

I like ritual. It's why I stay Catholic--other churches' rituals always look like reflections of ours and I judge them too much to seriously consider joining them. The Quakers are the only ones who drew me in further than the front door, and that's because they don't have ritual like we do. And I admit I'm too ingrained as a trinitarian Christian to consider moving beyond that concept to other religious traditions. While I appreciate them, their creeds don't course through my veins the way Christianity does. I cannot help being who I am.

And while retreats draw me out of my usual routine, they are filled with faith sharing and reflections as well as different takes on ritual. I feel like I know those folks before I take part in things that are out of the ordinary. But otherwise, give me a well sung compline. Have the things that keep me here. Ritual, reflection, and silence. I don't need anything else. And I certainly don't want it.

281/365 Dressing the Altar

I've dressed the altar...4 or 5 times? The first times were like any first attempts at new public activities. I was nervous and was still in the "knowingly unknowing" stage of learning. You know--first you don't know what you don't know; next you know what you don't know and you're shaky about anything you're learning; after that you knowingly know--which is when you should teach (or the stage you should force yourself back into in order to effectively teach). Lastly, you unknowingly know. You just do. When I sew, for instance, I can't even teach someone how to do it unless I step outside myself and remember how I hold my body, my hands, how I control pressure on the machine, or design something and include seam allowances, and so forth. I so unknowingly know how to sew that it's like reading or breathing. It just happens.

On the other hand, I will always be in the stage of knowingly knowing when it comes to math. I love math, now, and I love to teach it. But I keep myself as a non-expert because it makes me a better teacher.

It's become a natural thing to dress the altar now. Somewhere in that knowing stage. I know what I'm doing, my partner tonight knew what she was doing (or had enough presence in public to fake it well), and when we went down to the aisle to receive the gifts from Mike and my girls, I was just smiling. Not nervous. It was good.

282/365 The Cage

Sr. Hildegard took me to the cage today. In the basement of the church behind the raised section that's kind of like a stage, there's a door. Again with the doors I don't notice. Inside that door is a heap of stuff--not literally for the most part--for picnics and barbecues and raffles and janitor supplies and all sorts of things. And then, past the first door, is an iron grate. A cage door.

Yikes? Not really. She unlocked the padlock and we stepped inside. The sound equipment was behind the locked cage. A sort of workroom. Kneeler parts, extension cords, old boxes of doodads that used to go to something. And a box of hammers, which made me laugh because I have often used the phrase "dumb as a box of hammers". I know the usual is a bag of hammers, but I always have preferred the /ks/ sound with box in that phrase. Sounds more intentional or something.

She showed me the speakers. The cords. The cart. Everything we'd need to project sound throughout a sea of 200 people on Saturday night.

283/365 Something you like

I knocked on the rectory door and Tom answered. It's Friday and the secretary doesn't work Fridays. He invited me in. "I'm here to pay for the hall rental," I explained.

"Did you just say car rental?" Fr. Miguel says, stepping into the foyer.

"Yeah," I go along with it. "I'm renting your car. I promise not to let the kids eat in the back seat."

"Oh, go get some milkshakes," Tom says with a laugh. "You know, Father, since we can't sell the school building, we've had to resort to other fundraising options."

I explain: my kids' school's trivia night is Saturday and we're using the church basement hall. Tom gets me the keys and takes the check. Miguel comes up beside me and hands me a vestment catalog.

"Look through, pick out something you like," he tells me, which makes me laugh again. But he explains that he needs some matched sets now that we have regular deacons and such--purple and white at least. So we flip through: too old, too fussy, too involved or festive for Lent and Advent, oh, I like that one.

And then I note the prices. I'm in the wrong business, my goodness.