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.

298/365 Chili Supper

I had a halloween thing I had to go to. But my dad entered a pot of chili into the chili cook-off this evening. Borrowed my crock pot. Cooked the stuff all day. Three times, I think he said. And he won--the people's choice award. Everyone who voted got 18 little cups of chili and a ballot. Good for him. And it put him in a good enough mood that when I approached him on Sunday about cutting some spare pews down to short 2-person sizes to put in the sanctuary for the altar servers to sit on, he wasn't hard to persuade. He had an apron and two free meals at next year's fish fry in his hand, after all.

I don't know if they'll ever feel like it's their parish, but I do keep trying.

313/365 Bread of Life at Starbucks

Sounds like an advertisement.

I had to go to the girl scout shop this morning to keep ahead of things for a change. On the way home, I stopped for, probably, the last iced coffee until April. We went inside for a change and Leo and I split a cookie. We were sitting in a corner, and at the next table over sat two 40-something men, both with mild southern accents. I'd guess probably Tennessee.

The first word I overheard was "stewardship" and I knew they were somehow affiliated with church. Considering the short-sleeved plaid shirt on one and the more corporate look to the other, I went further and guessed protestant. And I tuned my ears more carefully. Mostly because I'm nosy.

Something about a wedding...and then about a music director who is disappointing. "Transitions are terrible. They're just terrible," said the man in plaid. I started to make him into the preacher or pastor, the other man some sort of adviser or elder in the community. I got involved with Leo picking food off the ground (his food, but still) and the next thing I heard were plans for the new year. How he was going to tie manna in the desert to Jesus as the Bread of Life.

I know bible-based Christians who have converted to Catholicism simple because they read John 6 to themselves one night and had a revelation about Eucharist. So I fine tuned those ears one more time to hear what they were talking about.

"The wonderful thing about Jesus as the bread of life," the corporate looking guy started, obviously interested in this topic, leaning forward over his coffee and notes, "is that every culture has bread. Everywhere, all over the world, everyone has some kind of bread. Tortillas, rice paper wontons, yogurt bread, yeast white bread, all kinds. And none of them are exactly alike. Everyone has different experiences of bread, but we all have it."

I looked over at them, pointedly, in a "I hear you talking" glance, and the plaid shirt guy looked at me. I smiled, just a bit. Knowing I'd heard, he smiled back. And then they went back to talking.

After we left, getting Leo into the car and heading back to the city, I ruminated on this. Everyone has different experiences of bread. I like it.

316/365 Thanks

Thirty people in the house. No green bean casserole, but the best gravy. I could just drink it out of a glass. Dry stuffing and gravy on my plate and the sweet potato puree with the nuts on top. My favorite. I sit with Mike and his brothers and their wives. We're all shadows of each other. I see a lot of myself in them, different pieces of the mirror thirteen years behind me. Leo sits between me and Mike and his dad comes over with his plate, well, I can't even describe his plate, it's so obscenely full of Thanksgiving.

I think about his ridiculous luck, about when Pete and Steve were 11 and he broke his neck. I think about the layers of experience that happen and how they make a family out of individuals. If I knew what was coming tomorrow, I'd be thinking more about Maeve and what we'll lose and what we'll gain and what will happen. But I don't have a spyglass into the future and all I can see is the moment, the good red wine and John made an apple pie and I have nothing I have to do.

And I think about my brother and his wife and what their Thanksgiving must be like. My siblings and I have entangled emotional lives, Mike always likes to say. And there I do think about the future. Worried and useless, I think about things I'm thankful for. For our cats and our car that makes me feel smart. For getting into the next size down in jeans last month. For my kids and for oak trees and snowflakes and temporal lobe anomalies and tums and my wedding ring and girl scouts and our school and the BBC and how folks change over time and blogging and stained glass windows and neosporin and Pixar movies and the Ozarks and all the things that happen that make fabulous stories later on. And gravy.