89/365 Holy Thursday Set Up

Everyone else got there at 7:00. I breezed in at 7:30--Mike had just arrived home from Indianapolis and we'd put a quick dinner on the table first. Most everything was done, frankly. The altar of repose was set up in the Utah Vestibule. The place was clean. The red was down from Palm Sunday.

And my head was so fuzzy from whatever--a long weekend, single parenting, too much wine, whatever--that I was nearly useless. So it was good that we were almost finished.

I polished brass and wished I had a thought in my head.

I watched as other people busied themselves washing up the bowls and pitchers for the mandatum (the foot washing) and thought about how much better I am on paper than in person.

I took wreaths off the doors and disassembled the Palm Sunday adornments, to ready them for Easter (red and palms off, to be replaced later with....something...) and found myself yearning for ordinary time.

It hasn't been a good week.

90/365 It's not about me

If one more person--especially Lynn--cracked a stale joke about stripping the altar, I was going to have to do something. I guess write about it here. But that's not the point.

I spent this evening again at church, this time practicing for Triduum. I had a vague sense that I wasn't living up to expectations. This has happened to me a lot over the years. I'm not the student Mr. Sweeney wants me to be. I don't have the magnanimous heart Fr. Bell is looking for. I'm not the obedient RA that Housing wants me to be. I fail to meet Taylor's expectations of friendship. Or Lillian's. Hilda gives me that tight-lipped disappointed smile when I tell the board I'm resigning. "Not living up to potential" is the phrase most likely to be seen on any review of my behavior or work.

I have a nagging sense this is also becoming true at church. And while I was happy to say goodbye to being a dormitory police officer or the unappreciated role as secretary of my neighborhood board, I don't want it to be true at church.

Part of it is having a 3rd child. When I got back involved at church, Maeve was already 2 and sleeping through the night. Leo, as happy as he is, is not like getting a 3rd cat. It takes time and energy to have another person living in the house. Part of it is having older children--back then, Sophia didn't go to Irish dance twice a week. She was barely going to kindergarten. Mike travels now--a lot. I'm not good at single parenting. Life is different now that it is different. Duh.

But I think part of it, the largest part, is that I have again failed to understand and live up to expectations. And the most frustrating part is that (besides the Leo Factor) I didn't know I was failing. But tonight gave me this vague sense that, yeah, I am. I can't even put my finger on it. No one said anything to me about it. Nothing was implied. It was just this feeling in the air. This sense of...heaviness. I can't describe it well.

Or maybe, now that I've written this down, I can take Astrid's advice. She and I often find ourselves in moments when it seems like we've done something wrong. Something is screwed up and it's our fault. And it's taken each of us some time and reflection to realize that most of the time, if we're bewildered by someone else's reaction to us or behavior, it's not about us. Who knows? Maybe it was just Holy Week. Maybe it's not about me.

Or if it is, maybe it will be clear later.

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.

99/365 Spiritual Needs

Right before Easter, Hildegard asked me if I had a spiritual director. I do, of sorts, in Sr. Jean Frances. We email back and forth regularly and she is so centered and peaceful and good. I love getting her emails because there is always something I can ruminate on, live on, for time to come. Which is good because I'm separated from the monastery for quite some time--the sisters have moved into the guest quarters while the main building is reconstructed, so there is no room for oblates. We could go stay at Conception and commute, but they strongly hinted that guests would be a burden. I can accept that, in fact, I'm glad they are honest about their own needs.

Because I should be too. This Lent was in many ways so good for me. But in other ways it got lost like a breeze in a whirlwind. I made it to Sunday mass at our parish twice before Triduum. I was here and there and everywhere and it sucked a lot of life out of me. This is good to see, in hindsight. It is, in the end, important for me to have a regular spiritual schedule. Another thing I learned this Lent.

Hildegard and I, though, were standing in the parking lot. "Have you considered going down to Pevely, even just for a night and staying the next day? What about down on Ripa?" I knew what Ripa meant--the SSND compound--but Pevely only meant a defunct Benedictine monastery to me. I mean in a Catholic sense. Pevely is also the location of one of the Girl Scout camps, but I figured that's not what Hildegard meant. I queried and she explained. Hermitages.

And I heard all those familiar nagging voices in my head. I have a baby who doesn't sleep through the night yet (yes, that's right, he's 15 months old). I have, oh, not a single weekend between now and the 5th of Never that I can easily claim for myself. I just can't trot off...but why could I just trot off to the monastery? Because they put out the weekend schedule for the year every January? They got on my calendar early?

Eh.

So she told me she'd be asking me later about it. I drove home and got things in order. Went back that evening for a Holy Thursday potluck and she handed me a one-free-night coupon to this place in Pevely. She found it by accident as she unloaded a basket to take to church for the collection that evening. There it was. Lo.

One time in Borders Books, before I was an oblate, I was searching through garbage Christian fluff, things like "The Idiot's Guide to Mary Magdalene" and crap centered around the idea that Jesus wants you to be rich--trying to find something worth my time. Maeve was wriggling in the stroller and I was about to walk away when Sophia said, "Look, Mama, a key." There on a low shelf was a key, an ordinary house key. Sitting in front of Joan Chittister's In Search of Belief. Look Mama indeed. A key.

I do not believe in coincidences. So I suppose I'm going to have to find my way to Pevely.