58/365 Banners

I make banners for church.

My first was an Advent ambo frontal, purple, of course, with ribbons down the left side as you face it. The ribbons intertwined and looked a bit like a bookmark. It was simple but new after an era of bad fabric art in our church.

For Christmas there was the same pattern, but in white and gold. We used it for Easter as well.

For Pentecost, I took the same idea but played around with it. It was my favorite. But now with our new ambo, we'll probably never use it again. That's ok, though--these are done in a specific time and place. They aren't like quilts for my daughters' beds or something I make as a gift. I don't know--I'm just a little more separated.

I made a Christmas banner that we used this year as well as three years prior (or maybe this was the 3rd year total, I can't recall). But it's starting to feel a little tired. Then one for ordinary time that was interesting, but a little odd. This past Easter I made what is probably my favorite of all the ones I'm made, but it just seems wrong for the church. I have it, though, in the guest room/sewing room of my house. If the church doesn't want it anymore, it will have a home.

It is John 20:2. The Christmas banner is Numbers 24:17. I call the ordinary time one "Tree of Life" from the song that goes The tree of life my soul has seen laden with fruit and always green.

I see these as a beginning of a life's meditation on scripture, frankly. Another kind of lectio. I don't care what Lynn thinks about my use of green. I don't care if they're just not right for our space (I think that about the Easter banner myself). I'm working on the design for a new Advent banner and it's come to the point that the creation has become its own prayer.

But I do try to make them right--I don't want to impose bad art on the parish. We're meeting Tuesday to discuss the art & environment for Easter and Pentecost. I have ideas. We'll see if they seem right. And I'm hoping other people have something to bring, to add. Hildegard will be there, but so will Lynn. Hildegard's roommate, though, counterbalances Lynn, and she's supposed to come as well.

It used to be I'd stand there and nod, ask questions for clarification, and go home to make their banner. Now I like collaboration and ideas, but sometimes, it's like I try that and it doesn't happen--the idea won't be forced into cloth. But something else is begging to be brought to the light.

I hope it's good.

69/365 Checklist Stream of Consciousness

Rose is the color of this Sunday. I have to put up something rose to accent the purple. But after the reconciliation service, which I need to attend. Sophia? I don't know if I can swing that. But I'll be there. And I figure something out with the pink stuff.

Then almost immediately I have to do red banners for Palm Sunday. so much red in back, that should be no problem at all. I'd love to add something to that. I have this compulsion to create these days, something that was gone for a long time is back. The house is almost all the way clean, everything but my room. My room is always last. That says something.

Easter flowers. Have to call Fiona....done. "Does Lynn ever get on your nerves?" she asked.

Banner. I know what I want to do. I don't have enough interesting whites to do it. I have the blue and red and some other things. Now is the time. Do it. No. First, finish up the red for Palm Sunday. Eee.

Purple down, red up, red down, white. Easter is exhausting. I hope Leo is feeling better by then or this will do me in. That whole week of hurry up and wait. And the stones. There are no stones for the font. I don't want to use concrete. But I can't spend my life driving through North St. Louis stealing cut stone. Lynn. She isn't going to come through on this and then is going to complain about the result we'll have come up with because she couldn't come through on it. At least that morning Jack, Miguel, Hildegard, and I can put it together and have enough emotional distance from it to laugh.

Easter season is so dang long to keep flowers alive.

Banners will have to be semi-reversible because they hang. Thinking. I love thinking about this. I hate thinking about finding cut stone to build a temporary font.

Glow in the dark strips for the side steps. I wonder if stars will do. I have those in abundance. They really glow. I'll have to try it out. Hmm.

74/365 Banner over me is love

Do you remember that song? Was it from Hi God? Peter built the church on the rock of our faith, his banner over me is love.

I have some work to do. Palm Sunday is take down the purple, put up the red. That's only a few moments away from now. Then for Holy Week, the red comes down and nothing goes up until Easter Vigil, when the color is white.

We're not using my banner from last year, which is fine with me. I've hung it in my guest room/sewing room over a vinyl cling on the wall that says "No rest for the talented." Ha. But we're using a banner, or rather a series of banners, for Easter.

Ones I have to make. And not just solid fabric hemmed on the side and dropped down from the choir loft. I'm quilting again. I'm excited--I have the plan drawn up and I am confident that I have the skill and patience and dexterity to pull it off--and the materials since I've been to the fabric store.

Now I have to find the time. Come on Leo. Give me the time.

85/365 Banner thoughts

They will be white, right? Easter is white. But the ones I saw that I liked had lots of color. Lynn didn't like the green in the last one. I guess there was a lot of green. I saw it as dawn. Reminded me of the Art Museum short film with the woman who broke glass with a flower stem. This shattering of natural things, this crash, this change. But that's ok because it looks nice in my guest room.

Six banners in a row, 10 inches wide each. How long? Did I bother to measure the red ones? Dang it. I guess I'll go up there next week. I would have loved to have started from those white banners from last year. I brought them home. I wonder if that will work.

Pippolotti. That was her name. The woman who made the movie at the Art Museum.

Water and fire. Fire from water. The water, round like the earth. Fire, wild, above, unpredictable. How much red? How much yellow and white? The water--blue? I think I'll start with whatever batiks I have and think about it.

Panic hasn't set in yet. It will soon. Triduum, though. It's designed to make you crazy.

88/365 Banner thoughts

Sewing for church has made me a better seamstress in a similar way that deciding that church was important made me a more focused person. Working on the Easter banner set, I am reminded of my printmaking teacher, Rina, who was always urging us to "go large." Of course, she was also handing us power tools and acidic compounds: "If you a power tool junkie like me..." is her most famous quote in my head. But she didn't like work with frames. She didn't like work that ended before the edge of the paper. Wasn't a fan of borders or finished looking sides. She liked torn edges to the paper and the design too large for the canvas.

That's these banners in a nutshell. Coconut shell. The longest two are 11 x 144. The next two are 11 x 120, and the ones on the outside are 11 x 96. Not all of that is visible to those on the ground--the curtain rod hanging mechanisms are on the inside of the choir loft, so part of the banner has to stretch from there to where it will actually hang down. The visible part of the longest banner is probably a little less than 10 feet instead of the full 12. But these are still, all added up, the biggest project I've ever worked on.

I lucked out and found a canvas. The Easter banners from a couple of years ago were the right length. I cut off the bottoms (they came to a point) and lay everything out on my floor. The project is too big to fit in my living room, even extending into the dining room. The length isn't the problem, but there's no way they all can lie next to each other at the same time. I am working in sets of the 4 center banners, and then on each side, dividing the 6 into two groups of 3. Everything gets pinned down and evaluated and rejected and cut again and reassembled.

It's a far cry from the first Advent ambo frontal I made. My only worry is that the way I want to sew for church now, the way that feels right in a meditative way, isn't going to mesh with our architecture or tastes of those who make decisions about things like ambo frontals and banners. And while last year's Easter banner fits nicely in a corner of the guest room/sewing room, these? These don't have another place. Here's hoping they like it.

91/365 To Do

Holy Thursday, 2010

*Finish banners, at least get everything sewn down--tomorrow finish edges and sleeves

*Make something for the potluck. S-Z is vegetables this time. Asparagus?

*Schnucks for egg dyeing materials

*Get lesson 1 done in dylexia book 4

*8:40? I have a note that says set up for Holy Thursday but is that done?

*Make a plan for Saturday's decorating: font, stones, PLANTS (when to buy? Friday? Today? TODAY) Crap. Flowers, banners, who is coming?

*Find lemon cake recipe

*Mail package to Erin

*Try not to fail

92/365 To done

All over but the banners. Still have those to finish. I'm about 2/3 the way done with the pinning--the water part at the bottom is ready for sewing, and the left side as I face it. The thing is, I can't see the whole banner set laid out at the same time. I can only get a partial view. There is nowhere in my house large enough to lay out something that is 12 feet long and 7 feet wide. The attic, maybe, but that would involve a large amount of house cleaning, which would probably make me break my Lenten promises to not yell at my children.

So I'm reminded of the reading I want at my funeral, which is usually read at weddings (but not at mine). The Corinthians one. You know it. Love is patient, love is kind, and so forth. But the part I want is later--Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. I can't know what this will look like until I hang it over the choir loft.

And I'm over myself. I pulled a spectacular April Fool's joke on many people and while that might not be really in the spirit of anything Lenten, it was fun, after a long string of life not being very light for me. I don't know. But that, plus simply backing off and reflecting on what I do at church, and more importantly, why, put things into a better perspective for me.

Last night's Holy Thursday service was good. We're getting better and better at stripping the altar. I need to convince Sal that he really, really should stay in the sacristy and not wander off mid-ritual, but it isn't easy to convince him of things when he has his heart set on something.

After going home and frantically working on banners, I paused and went to night prayer. God's work, my work. It may have been more productive to stay at home for the 20 minutes and pin pin pin but I would have regretted missing prayer. I got there a few minutes early and sat next to Sal...and listened to him breathe and swallow for an eternity. I thought about community and why we, as humans, choose to join them. What is it about being with other people--especially other people who irritate us--that gives us so much life? It isn't just sharing in a task like a work committee or political campaign. Church communities have people like Sal and people like Wilma and people like Dolores.

I drove home down Grand thinking these things, missing the monastery, and knowing there was no possible way I was going to get any more work done on the banners that night. Quilting is a liquid--it fills the container given. They would be done by Saturday whether I worked on them or not. And they wouldn't be done until then, whether I worked on them or not.

93/365 My morning, my triduum

Friday night, Good Friday, I got to bed at 2:30. But they were done. Hidden in those stitches are scenes from the DVD I was playing while I worked, which always happens to me (my Christmas banner is Law & Order Season 5, for instance). I look at quilts or knitting later and remember the music or movie or TV that was on in the background. I should probably plan better and watch/listen to meditative things. But I don't--I keep part of my brain amused and offline while I work with other parts. This banner was done with Sports Night on in the background--an Aaron Sorkin show about people who make a nightly sports show on a cable network. It doesn't sound like something I would like, but two out of three episodes find me in tears even though I've seen them a half dozen times already.

So I crawled into bed at 2:30 and slept like a rock until my alarm went off at 8. I help prepare meals for the homebound three times a year--Thanksgiving morning, Christmas Eve, and Holy Saturday. The events officially begin at 8, and run until the folks who are delivering the meals show up about 11. Then there's clean up afterward. On Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, I get out of there at noon. But Holy Saturday is the day to decorate for Easter so I split my time between meals and the church.

I took Sophia with me because she wanted to help. We counted containers and cupcakes. I chatted with friends and people I know only through this ministry. I like doing this because I'm not in charge. I ladle sweet potatoes into foil containers and enjoy the banter. I commiserate with Sr. Vanda when she rolls her eyes at a participant who will not stop talking. "All the time, she always has something to say. And look at me, it's Holy Saturday and I'm saying that." But nothing is mean-spirited.

Sal the janitor pops in and out to have his conversations with us. He talks to Astrid about being a server. He talks to me about church decorating. Sal is developmentally disabled and lives across from church with his family--I think he's probably about 60, and our church is his life. My relationship with him has changed over time--my part of it has, I mean. He comes to every church decorating moment and fusses around ("hedgehogging" is a term I might use, looking busy without really being busy). This day, Sr. Hildegard has him doing dirty work with candles and candlestands. Soot and wax and who knows how many years of neglect. "I bet he regrets ever saying he'd come up to help," she says to me. But after the vigil mass, downstairs, all he can talk about is how dirty the candles are and how nice everything looks now. "We done good!"

Fiona arrives midway through the morning to deliver flowers for church--she works for the florist we order from. She has me come with her with a rectory key to drop off flowers for Fr. Miguel. "He got you flowers, too," she tells me, and I think she means the several dozen flowering plants for church. Then she hands me a vase with my name on it. Sometimes. I show the card to Astrid, who sighs and says, "I guess we can keep him!"

I have some time--the cooks are standing around drinking wine at 10 in the morning and I tell Sr. Vanda I'm heading up to iron some. I'll be back. I iron the banners, worried that the red isn't balanced enough ("But that's nature," Hildegard points out). I take them upstairs to unfurl (I like that word). Hildegard helps me straighten them out--for whatever infuriating reason, I cannot maintain a straight line over 12 feet of fabric. I pin here and there at the top, and get them to the point that they seem about right.

I go downstairs to look at them for the first time. Rina Yoon would be proud. They're so dang big. I sat up in the sanctuary surrounded by all the disparate parts that will become Easter at our church, staring up at the choir loft.

And everybody loved them. That is important to me, of course, but more than that, I think I finally got a handle on Easter. The fire, the water, the circle, the earth, change, transformation, surprise. Jack said he thought it was the best thing I'd done. I think I agree. Miguel said he knew what he saw in it...but didn't elaborate. After the vigil mass, Paul told me he was glad he had 50 days of Easter to ruminate on them. Bev couldn't stop telling me how astonishing they were. It was a good moment.

The vigil was long and dark and just right. The church was set, as Hildegard had told me, and we got out of the way so Christ could step in. It was Easter, after Triduum. In many ways.

94/365 Easter Morning

95/365 Green

"The green is for Lynn," I explain to Hildegard as we stand in the church for a moment admiring the banners.

"What?" she looks puzzled.

"I guess you didn't notice--the last Worship meeting? She said that the thing she didn't like about my Easter banner from last year was the green. Couldn't understand why I used green." I think about that banner, about why I used green. About dawn and life and the shattering of the natural progression from life to death. But then again, I've seen Lynn's banners and they're lame (la-may, I mean, the shiny fabric) and velour and too representative.

"Bridgett!" Hildegard giggles at me.

"Yeah, when I started pinning that down around the red, I thought, 'take that, Lynn.'"

"You know Bridgett, last year's Easter banner? I want you to will it to me, in the unlikely event that I would outlive you." She says this lightly but I know she means it. We've talked about last year's banner before.

"Ok," I agree.

"And if we still know each other," she makes a vague gesture with her hands, "when I die, I want you to come down to San Antonio with that banner and process all around with it. Place it up in front with," she pauses, considering, "the urn or whatever they have."

I can just imagine.

230/365 New Year

Girls go off to school today. Maeve's in kindergarten with friends from the preschool and newcomers grateful to have a spot. Sophia's in 4th grade with the same teacher and the same friends, a genealogy she can trace all the way back to kindergarten when it was just Jude, Jurni, Charu, and herself. They're 19 strong now, that oldest class (which is 4th-5th with one 6th grader). A new year but within the context of everything being familiar.

This is why I stay put. I had brand new in kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th. Ridiculous. I'd rather have them not have those worries. Ever, if I can help it.

It's a new year at church, too--well, a new season, well, a new ordinary time section. Ok, it's not new at all. But September is coming, quickly followed by October. Time to think about November ahead of time--harvest and death--and Advent. A new banner? Not sure. Thinking probably so.

With girls back in school, I can think about those things.

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.

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.

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.

289/365 Worship Commission October Ramblings

As Miguel put it afterward, it was going so well...

It was a catch-up meeting. Lots of dates. Lots of things coming up, with Advent and Christmas and all that. November alone is a meeting's worth. We went through things bit by bit and made decisions and set up meetings for specific needs. Decided on a Christmas novena this year instead of weekly prayer services, which I totally went for, and the only moment I flinched was when Hildegard turned to Lynn and asked if she was ok with that. I thought to myself, please don't stir the anthill. But even that was fine.

We were almost home free and clear. Sr. Vanda had details about November and the mass of remembrance (and other details from last year we, ironically, couldn't remember). I love decorating for November more than any other month of the liturgical year, with December right behind (but December takes more work). But then, we were almost done and had a light laugh about the tradition of the monthly prayer focus--something that was started a few years ago for one reason, but now is just something that goes in the bulletin. But now we do it and it's a tradition! And the last thing on the list was the changes to the languages at mass.

Now, me personally? I think that changes here or there are a symptom, not a problem. The problem is that the hierarchy has decided that a specific English translation of a Latin version of a ritual is better than another--for God's sake, what is wrong with us that we're so caught up in this? But, on the other hand, it's happening and this is not where I'm staking my excommunication claim. If I'm forced out of the Church, it's not going to be over "and with your spirit" instead of "and also with you." I can rattle off a dozen things that would come before this. Well, maybe not a dozen, I mean, I do still belong to the Catholic Church. But there are things I disagree with. There are things I wish we did better. There are things my local church does so well and other places just don't and I wish that weren't true. But the changes in the mass? That's not why I'm Catholic.

But Lynn got her panties in a big wad over it and said it was a great loss for the Church. That people were going to be angry. That she was angry. Miguel told her she could choose to be angry, or not be angry, and then she said that anger was an emotion, not a choice.

Upon reflection, I think they're both right. I think visceral emotion is something that happens, it's like the fight or flight response or maternal instinct. We get angry. We get sad or shocked or joyful--if I witness a decapitation accident on Grand on my way home from church, there is a reaction I don't control. But on the other hand, if I'm still seething 18 years later about something that happened that really didn't matter in the end, then that's a choice. Or maybe she was confusing "emotions are a choice" with the talk about emotions not being necessarily bad or good, that anger in and of itself isn't a sin, it's what you do about it that matters. Or maybe she's just Lynn. Either way, I flipped through that book quickly looking for what I could possibly be angry about, and I decided right then that this wasn't where I was going to be angry. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at most of it. Not at the big words they used in place of small words, but most of it was just fine. Whatever.

Whatever.

Lynn left in a bit of a huff. I wonder if she'll be back.

Oh, but the best part (besides the after meeting drinking and chatting) was right after Lynn left. I took out my drawings of the Advent banners and showed them to Miguel (I waited until Lynn left because I'm tired of flinching). I'd shown him, sort of, badly, on a napkin after the mass last week during the mission, and he'd been skeptical. But when I showed them to him in color, drawn for real, he said, "oh, these are so much better!" and liked them. Hildegard too.

So now I'm ready to put them together. And the Presbyterian ones. They'll be nice too.

293/365 Advent Preview

Everything ironed and folded and ready to go.

296/365 It's not small, but it's a small tihng

The Presbyterian banners are 3 feet by 6 feet. Two of them.

The parish banners, once Sr. Hildegard showed me with a tape measure, are kinda bigger than that. Like 3 feet by 9 feet, each. Four of them. Thank goodness they are simple. 108 square feet. Time to get a move on.

But Lynn, in her one act of defiance or whatever, said, "That's not really long enough."

I looked at her.

"I'd say 15 feet at least."

Hildegard was heading down from the choir loft. I shook my head at Lynn. "Nah, there's the advent wreath there, too, and it'll run into it."

"I hope they're paying you for these."

I just shrug. I'm sure I could make demands. But that just wouldn't seem right to me. I mean, it's my parish. I don't want to become simply a contractor. It would change it for me. It would make it an obligation.

307/365 Playing Catch Up is Impossible

Things have gotten so busy here lately, mostly because of church-related activities (meaning, if I were a lazy non-church-goer, I'd have plenty of time...). For instance:

Because I'm a member of my parish, I am also a girl scout leader for my parish. And girl scouts are busy this time of year with meetings and hayrides and all that.

Because I'm a member of my parish, I can't keep my hand down when asked to volunteer, so I had RCIA and Children's Liturgy and church decorating on my schedule.

Because I'm a member of my parish, I know Jessica, who is assisting a family from Africa whose daughter is in her daughter's class. And because I once was the math teacher and known to be a tutor, Jessica has asked me to start tutoring this young girl, starting this afternoon. Without the connection of the parish, this never would have happened. I'm hoping to be helpful.

Because I'm a member of my parish, and I like to sew, I've made some banners. So now I have more to make. And my neighbor and friend Gretchen saw some of my work at Leo's baptism and reported it to her pastor, whose church houses my daughters' school, and now I'm making banners for him, too. For Advent as well.

So instead of filling in the last 8 days with teeny little throw-away posts, I'm just going to start from here. I'm on 308/365 starting tomorrow. It just doesn't make sense to go back and put more pictures of banners up, one at a time. That said, tomorrow's entry is pictures of banners.

308/365 Presbyterian Work