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.

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.

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.

293/365 Advent Preview

Everything ironed and folded and ready to go.

295/365 Advent Meeting

Once upon a time we had an Advent and Christmas planning meeting. The very first I'd ever attended. Sr. Hildegard and Sr. Kinnera, Bev, two or three others, Lynn, and myself. And it was good. It was a group project: we needed to change what Advent was at our parish. And we did. Good ideas became great ideas became trips to find the right ribbon, the right fabric. It was exciting. We stood around the altar collaborating and making something come to life.

Not every meeting can be that, I know. The next year we basically didn't change anything. The year after that, it was down to Hildegard, Lynn, and myself.

That's what it was tonight, too. Just the three of us. But after Lynn's awkward end to the Worship commission meeting, I didn't know what was going to happen. But it was ok. Good, even. She didn't obsess over some weird detail, I didn't bate her. As we were leaving, after Lynn had already left, Hildegard mentioned that it went well.

"That's because Miguel wasn't here," I noted. "So he wasn't antagonized by her and she wasn't focused on how angry she is that he's a man."

But I hate that that's probably the truth.

312/365 End of the year random thoughts

Today is the last Sunday of the year. Starting next week, it is, liturgically speaking, 2011. Advent begins, a briefest of brief Christmas season, and then we're back to ordinary time looking towards Lent and Easter.

I raked up leaves today and thought about Benedictine values. We didn't go to mass this morning because it would have been a disaster (Mike is deer hunting), but we're also not doing anything else. No errands, no trips out and about. Just here at home on an unseasonably warm November day. I raked leaves and thought about tools: there's a passage in the rule about care of tools and how ordinary tools should be treated with the same dignity and respect as vessels for the altar. How our homes (monastery) should be cleaned with the same care. I don't own a rake at the moment--some alley clean up day it disappeared into someone else's care, but I was using Valerie's and made sure it was litter free before I had Maeve return it. When I was done--I rarely rake, too lazy to be bothered by leaves--I looked at the yard. Our front garden is ramshackle and does not age into autumn well. But with the leaves cleared away, the porch swept up, and everything momentarily tidy, I was glad. The house seemed to sigh. Time for bed, time to sleep away the winter. And I understood what Benedict wanted fir his monks and the place where they lived. They weren't obsessive about neatness. It didn't become an end to itself. But having everything away and clean, they could be ready for the next thing. Ready for pruning back the butterfly bush and pulling up the volunteer weed trees. Ready, too, for Thanksgiving and then Advent just around the next bend. Advent is busy in my life. But at least the yard is raked.

314/365 banners now and forevermore

Banners are done. Except they're not. The fronts are done, and they are backed--I'm not quilting these because they hang so far away from everyone, from the choir loft. But while this cuts out 8+ hours of work, it also means they are kind of loose. They are not stiff rectangles. They are flowy. I've ironed the first to within an inch of its life, but it's still kind of flowy.

I'm think a dowel rod at the bottom is called for. It will provide a stable point and make it more of a rectangle. Pretty sure I don't have any dowels in the basement, though, so that's a trip to home depot and some tweaking at the sewing machine. Still less than 8 hours of work. My fear is that it won't be enough. So I'm still debating (I wouldn't go to Home Depot until this evening anyway because Leo is obnoxious these days).

Hmm.

I like the banners, though. I hope they go over well.

319/365 First Sunday of Advent

Waiting.

It's palpable this year. I have to wait to get home to call Cardinal Glennon to sit on hold for how many minutes to talk to a receptionist who will schedule an appointment some time in the distant future for a doctor who will make us wait in a windowless featureless room for an interminable amount of time and then will tell us, best case scenario, that we must wait.

Nine hundred miles away, a young couple is waiting, too, for news that will devastate them and whirl them around. As if they needed more difficulty. I saw what they were going through as round two in a long road to adulthood and now, tomorrow, they will learn that they have to wait and and then spend probably most of their lives waiting.

It's enough to make you go in haste to the hill country and hide. And wait.

320/365 Choir loft in the early evening

I had to measure the first banner so I could make the other three the same length. No time like the present, I headed out after taking Sophia to practice. I let myself into the dark church and made my way up the steps--Jack said there are 39 but I keep forgetting to count which says something, let me tell you.

My tape measure is cracked and will not lie flat against the banner. I rip off the end and do the math in my head. I measure it: 10 feet from the edge to the hemmed edge below; 17 inches from the edge to the curtain rod.

The church is silent. Dark and deep, Frost would say. It's Advent but in my heart it's still the crappy end of November with drizzle and grayest, impossibly gray skies. The neurology nurse didn't call. The ice water in my veins from Friday has melted into a muddy puddle, waiting for the dry skin-cracking air to evaporate it away. I'm not adjusting to the post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas time very well. It's all going too fast but takes forever.

Numbers in my head, I walk back down. I toss the broken tape measure. I walk outside, past the dark rectory and the busy street. My car is still warm. I need to go to the grocery store. I note the boy scout tree lot with silent contempt and pull out onto the street in the darkness.

I know I will eventually exhale. It's the getting there that takes so long.

321/365 Flurry

The flurries are here. I need to go downstairs with my cell phone in one pocket and the cordless in the other, waiting, still waiting for someone to tell me to wait some more. The advent calendar needs to be set up, and we don't have a wreath on the table yet for the first time since Sophia was a baby. Rituals help and I need to get busy and get them ready.

I think about Professor Elemental, who is a terribly amusing "chap hop" rapper. He sings a rap song about tea, for instance, called the Cup of Brown Joy. I'm not a tea drinker most of the time, preferring the dirtier cousin, coffee, but this line sums it up for me:

when times are hard and life is rough
you can stick the kettle on and find me a cup

Ritual. I need ritual and a flurry of activity. I need to start decorating for Christmas and drink some coffee in the kitchen and finish the last three banners and a few more quilts and pet my cats and open day one day two day three of the advent altoid tin calendar and I KNOW, I KNOW that if I fake it till I make it I will find myself content.

322/365 Settling into the season

So I got my little Thomas Merton Advent book out, and a new one I picked last year but haven't read, called From Holidays to Holy Days by Albert Holtz, OSB. I'm excited about this one--the blurb on the back says it is based upon his walks through Newark, NJ. A city dweller, not out on the windswept plains of western Missouri. Today's reflection is about Christmas wreaths, which I will read later when the coffee wears off and I'm a little less, well, frenetic. But reading the title reminded me of last night.

I took Sophia to her play practice and had let Mike know that I was then going to leave for a moment to be alone. I could go get the tires rotated for all I cared, I just needed to be away for a few moments.  I dropped off the late library books (always late) and then drove out to the fabric store I frequent when I can't make it to Hancock's of Paducah (which means usually). I needed a Christmas fabric to back one of the quilts I've made; I needed to get some tapers for the advent wreath (I was going to just use white this year and put ribbons at the base--I made it this morning and it makes me happy). I wandered around the bolts of fabric and didn't think about anything except weight, hand, drape--fabric things. Successful, I then drove home and parked the car. Janet up the street was starting a business selling catalog jewelry and I figured I might be able to find a birthday present for my niece. So I walked in the BITTER COLD WIND up a block and a half.

It was warm and cozy in her house. She had a nice crowd. Astrid was there and we talked about things, all sorts of things, for a moment (I can see Astrid on Monday and then see her again on Tuesday and still have plenty to talk about). I found a few things that I thought I could fit into the Christmas-Birthday lists. Then Janet handed me the Christmas wreath I'd bought from her boy scout troop. I've done this every year, and I hang it in my kitchen to make the place smell like Christmas.

She was worried about my walking home--there's been a bit of a crime spree--but my theory was it was too cold for crime that night and I'd be fine. It is all downhill from her house to mine, anyway, and I walk fast.

I had on my German army coat (bundesrepublik, not something sinister) which I believe will cut any weather. One arm had my purse, which is huge and overfull. The other one, I carried the wreath over my forearm. I walked down and felt the bits of snow flurries hit my nose and eyelashes, just like Julie Andrews' favorite things. Under the streetlight at Arkansas, I looked up to catch the glimpse of the snow.

I crossed on the diagonal to my side of the street, my block, and looked up at the giant sycamore on our corner. I thought about how beautiful it all was, how lovely the city was when you saw it in this light, how humble and graceful my place in the world was.

Suddenly it was Advent and I was back where I belonged.

327/365 Advent Concert

The Advent concert was last night. I usually like the Advent concert. This one, however, seemed jumbled up, like we were trying to do too many things with it. Is it a concert, or is it a prayer service, or is it O Antiphons or is it Our Lady of Guadalupe. I left glad for the break from other things but really, my mind never engaged.

There is too much right now.

And to tell you the truth, I could just sit and listen to shape note singing for an hour and feel lifted up in a way that just didn't happen.

328/365 To-Do

*Trees: check, borrow truck, Saturday
*Wreaths etc: delivered Thursday to garage: is there even room? Ask.
*Poinsettias: delivered next week all by themselves.
*Lights, bows, ornaments, creche, etc: all ready for the most part. Bows, though. Damn.
*Delivery of Christmas boxes Saturday. I guess trees after that.
*Deliver of meals next Friday. Cook in the morning with Sr. Vanda.
*Ian gets to town Sunday.
*Wait for EEG results do not bite nails to the quick
*Wrap gifts
*Teachers?
*Sturm und Drang. Always Sturm und Drang.

331/365 Novena Night One

Rachel's voice echoed through the barrel vaulted ceiling of our beautiful church in semi-darkness.

I couldn't help but engage.

332/365 Wreaths and Trees

It's that time of year.

The time of year when I mention Christmas decorating and the wreaths in the garage and Miguel says, "there are wreaths in the garage?"

"Didn't you leave at all yesterday, in your car?"

Sure he did. He just didn't notice any wreaths.

So I went over to the garage and found he was right. No wreaths. Nothing had been delivered.

The phone call to the wholesaler was practiced in my head and in my dreams all Friday night. When I called Saturday morning, the salesman had the audacity to ask me why it had taken until Saturday morning for me to call. Because I don't live at the church. Because I assumed they'd been delivered. I oh so wanted to get mad. I wanted a confrontation--I've had my fists balled up ready for a fight for 3 weeks with nothing coming and maybe, maybe the salesman at the florist wholesaler was going to take it.

But no. I represent the parish, not just myself.

We were written down as a pick-up, not a delivery. Which is a huge chunk of bull because I never ever would have said pick-up. And I made this order in October, when life was normal, so I didn't make the mistake.

He was unwilling to budge.

So I sighed. "How can we make this work?"

The wreaths will be delivered Monday. Thank God Christmas is on a Saturday.

In comparison, I drove out to the tree lot where we get our trees ever since the boy scout fiasco (why am I in charge of anything? I am not good with people. I should be a hermit. A hermit with a crossbow. Maybe just an assassin). I told the men standing around the drum fire (like hobos in a movie) that I was here from the church. They pointed to the office. The office had my paperwork. They had my trees. One of the hobo impersonators loaded them into the truck. We took them back to the church. All was well. The End.

334/365 More Christmas Past

On my birthday, 1983, the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed. My uncle, and godfather, Patrick, was supposed to be there--sort of the story of his life, actually--but drew the short straw and was sent to Honduras instead, out of contact for months. My family had no idea whether he was in Beirut or sitting pretty in San Diego, or what. After it was sifted out that he was alive, not in Beirut, and not somewhere he could talk about, everyone halfway relaxed.

That Christmas, I remember hovering around the big oak kitchen table at my grandmother's house, hearing but not understanding most of the stressed conversation. When it was time for dinner, my grandmother said grace. My grandmother, Penny, is a liturgically liberal charismatic Catholic, and she held her arms open and palms raised like a priest in the Eucharistic Prayer. She thanked God for those gathered--seven of her eight children, all her grandchildren but two, her siblings, their families--and prayed for "those who could not be with us here tonight." Meaning Patrick and his daughters. She then promptly burst into tears and ran from the room.

This was upsetting when I was 9. But looking around the tight little kitchen, nobody was much impressed by her performance. Patrick had always been her favorite. The siblings exchanged annoyed glances, the in-laws passed the plates around. When my grandmother came back in, calmer after the traditional Christmas phone call from officers overseas, she had me sit on her lap and held me too close while I alternated between resistance and resignation.

338/365 Banners I and II

Already gone, of course.

It's been a crappy advent for me.

Here are the first two.

Week one: you know not the day nor the hour. Sort of a sun rise sun set kind of thing. Note the dot theme. It continues.

Week two: make straight the highway for God.

I suppose these will have to be Advent Year A, now that I consider it. I don't know if the readings match very well next year...

Clark said to me, at his house when I was sitting there with Astrid on the Thursday before Christmas, that he was watching me take pictures of something on Sunday. And then he turned and saw the banners for the first time. I don't get how people could miss them. But I was glad he saw them before they were gone.

339/365 Banners III and IV

The third is from the letter of James from that Sunday, something about how the farmer waits patiently for the plants to grow. It is my favorite of the four. I think that's because it's the only one I came up with entirely out of my head--no flipping through webpages or books for that one. It's all mine.

The fourth is something to do with Joseph's dream. I don't know if that's the Holy Family in a trio and the fourth dot is? Or if that's a trinitarian symbol and the fourth dot is Joseph. I guess it can be what you want.

Sr. Patrice was very very impressed. I said to Hildegarde before we went upstairs to take them down that if I can make things that nuns like, I'm doing something right.

340/365 One last before they go

I liked these a lot.

I think I know what I want to do for next Christmas, mostly because Rachel and I hate the pathetic pine roping that replaces these Advent banners. But I'm going to let it percolate a while. I have other things on my plate.

Like a set of dish protectors for Fr. Miguel.