Not too ordinary...

Nothing happened in the end, with the storm. A few flurries today, the temperature is definitely down, but otherwise, no big deal. It’s actually kind of nice to have a little winter. You know how I worry about all that. Thanks for the nice comments about hoping we made it through—we did, not even a flicker. And after this summer, you know, it didn’t even sound exciting. You know how it is—storm coming, will we lose power, sleep on the living room floor with the windows open (summertime, of course), it’s got a charge to it. But not now. I just kind of want to know what to expect, these days.

Last week we took down Christmas at St. Pius. Did it all in one evening, left the place looking very bare. Which, according to Sr. Mary, meant we'd done our job with Christmas decorating. But I hate that--the blandness of January, the stale winter feeling, just wanting the cold to be over and spring to come. Always hurrying to the next big thing. There's nothing really to look forward to in January. I take that back--for our family, Mike's birthday's at the end of it. But in general, like when I taught school, I just hung snowflakes on the bulletin boards. And prayed for snow days.

At Pius these days, since Fr. John came to us, we've had an anonymous donor who gives money for flowers on occasion. On these occasions, I do not freak out and spend 6 hours at church putting flowers together. I call Sue Clavin at Leshers and she does it for me. Everybody's happy. Well, Fr. John's birthday is the 13th of January, and this anonymous donor (his family? Magic Wayne of the table-finishing fame? Someone from Dominic Savio we have yet to meet (his former parish)? Don't know) gave money for flowers for the altar. And we still had white poinsettias that, when removed from their red pals, didn't look overly Christmas-y. So we merged into Ordinary time this way:

FYI, I just learned this myself: ordinary time is not ordinary in the everyday sense of the word. It comes from the Latin (DUH) for counting. Like ordinal numbers. It is ordinary time because we count the Sundays. I love the new things I learn doing this stuff.

Because I am beginning to be convinced that besides our orangey faux marble pillars and the very blank wall behind the altar, we have one of the most beautiful churches in St. Louis, I'm going to try (gasp) to post a daily photo of something in the church for a while. I'm starting way over on the southeast corner, with the shrine of St. Anthony of Padua (and here, and here). This is the base of the statue. Our recently retired deacon, Walter Christ (to rhyme with mist), just gave me a write up of the history of the church proper, the building, the windows, the statues. That alone is worth the price of admission to those meetings ;^)


And lastly (pictures can only be uploaded on the computer I often refer to as "Mike's" or "the blue computer"--and he got a new game for Christmas, so it's often occupied even when he's gone to bed--so that's why 3 pix in a row, I don't know when I'll get the chance again!), my backyard yesterday morning:

That would be nine goldfinches and a mourning dove. Ah.