Feelin Guilty

59th Street Bridge Song. You know it: bah da da Da da da da, feelin groovy.

So I've totally neglected writing in the past three days--how dare the weather improve and I get busy doing other things. Well guess what. Little colder, not complaining, but less I can get done. So here's a sum up.

1. Got an email from a woman at St. Vincent de Paul who is helping to organize a south side church tour and found St. Pius V's online church tour and asked permission to rip a bunch of information from it. I mean borrow. Whatever--the bottom line is, more people are looking at this than I thought would. Good, scary, makes me want to do well.

2. Went house hunting with Rob & Janet (my mother always sings their names: Rob & Janet Evening, to go with, I think the song is "some enchanted evening." My grandfather used to say goodbye at the door saying "Sam and Janet Evening!"). Looked at a good house in a bad location and a good house with a horrible basement in a better location. So that was fun. I love looking at houses for other people. Which is probably a hint. But I would never make money at it. It's more like a desire to help folks find the best fit and also the selfish desire to get inside all those houses. Perhaps in a second life. Got to get these kids successfully launched, first. I drove around yesterday looking at some other listings--I have a feeling, and I don't mean to talk out of turn, but I have a feeling that R&J have not solidified what they exactly are looking for. Mike and I took a long time--probably 15 houses or more, walking through, narrow eyed, arms crossed, before we realized what we wanted. Our agent clicked with us and then all we saw were the same floor plan as the house we own. I've heard it described as a foursquare but I think that requires bigger porches and more of a solid square presence. I've heard Queen Ann Revival but that sounds too hopeful. I've heard lots of things from folks trying to sell their houses that look just like mine. What I have is front hall, staircase, living, dining, kitchen on the first floor, and originally, four bedrooms and a bath on the second. Back staircase and a large attic. I digress. Having walked through two houses with them and seen Janet's look on her face several times at different points, I think I know better. They have a long time, too, before they want to be settled in. So I'm thinking, hey, take it slow.

3. Started biking again. Forest Park. Umm. That Skinker Hill is even harder than I remembered from last fall. Three months off the bike means the Skinker Hill and the Zoo Hill From the Third Circle of Hell are a tad overwhelming right now.

4. Got a new mah jongg set, it's coming in the mail. I'm excited. Realized that on our big nights, we will potentially need a third set. This one is black. I will post a photo when it arrives. It's funny how my regular group has become enamored with the older bakelite set I found at an antique place as opposed to the newer resin set I've had since learning to play. And the reasons aren't very tangible. Maybe it's age and history. Weight of the tiles. What the white dragon looks like. Don't know. But it's my favorite set right now, too.

5. Planned out what Easter is going to look like at St. Pius. I think this is going to be kind of an intense 4 or 5 days for me, starting with the Wednesday before Easter and ending sometime Easter afternoon. More intense than Christmas. But for different reasons. I'm hopeful that it will go well. I need to order flowers. Like in a minute. The meeting was just Mary, Cathy, and I--pretty out of my league--and there is starting to be an assumption of competence on my part that is, umm, scary. Good. Challenging.

6. We're going to Texas. My mom, the kids, and I are driving down. Stopping in Oklahoma on the way there and back. This could be a very good trip, and if it isn't, I've got a hotel reservation in my back pocket for a couple of the nights in Cypress (my brother Ian lives between Houston and Hempstead, oddly close to the land my family used to own back when they were dairy farmers. Not my immediate family--my grandmother's relatives).

7. Time for coffee. I'm writing this from my mom's house. Now Bevin is ready. Time for coffee and a hunt for a new watch battery.

More on Jesus and his mother soon, perhaps tonight after Parish Council. Depending on how much that meeting makes my head want to explode. They're starting to become hazardous to my mental health and the ability to hold contradictory statements in my head.

Peace.

Turning to the Sun

Not complaining about the weather.

It is almost spring. I can feel it. And tonight's fish fry after a bike ride through Forest Park pretty much put my brain into spring mode. It's like something snapped (in a good way) in my brain on Tuesday and all is well. All matter of things will be well, right? This was our first bike ride since Thanksgiving or so--and I had the trailer. And we went to Forest Park, where up one hill I swear a dead Greek guy is pushing a boulder. It is one heck of a hill. And I ache right now in a way I haven't ached since the first time I swam over a mile in one try. That night I woke up in the middle of the night to my forearms hurting. Tonight it's the calves. But that's ok because it's spring. Or at least we're pretending it is.

The sun is changing. The crocus are here (crocus crocus popping up to catch a sunbeam in its cup). My WPA daffodils are two inches high. We're eating fish on a Friday. Must be spring.

The church with the new banners looks new. Everything there worked out just fine. February has been the Month of Guests, to keep me from turning into an outhouse rat (meaning crazy, you know that simile: crazy as a...). It's been good food and great company and it's not over--I kind of like this. I am no longer nervous about my ability to have people in my house and do everything reasonably ok. Must be spring.

I'm going to Texas with my mom in, yikes, 3 weeks--me and the girls; Mike is staying here to work in the attic. Rock Eddy is coming up too, which will organize my brain even better. Love it in the spring.

Tonight was mah jongg for new people--my mom, her friend Ellen, Elizabeth from up the street, Heidi (who has played other mah jongg, but we play National Mah Jongg League, aka Old Jewish Lady mah jongg), Mary--and then the regular crowd of women from my block. I still have some other new people who want to learn and I want to teach--Sr. Mary, Ann, my sisters, I'm debating my cousin Amanda, oh, who knows? I would like to have mah jongg set/will travel. I'm spreading this like a virus through south city. It's my master plan. Ah, spring.

Spring.

SPV Blogging: Jesus Says Goodbye to his Mother

Many parishioners believe this is Jesus speaking to Mary Magdalene. There are a few, in fact, who sit near this window simply because they believe that to be true. I'm going to spend a few entries looking at this one, because it is my absolute favorite image at St. Pius V. This window demonstrates for me the importance of religious art in church buildings.

It's not Mary Magdalene. That woman is Mary, his mother. The windows thus far are the life of Mary & Jesus together: betrothal to Joseph, annunciation, flight into Egypt--there is no depiction of Jesus walking on the water, of him curing anybody. They are all related to his growing up--and here he is grown, and it's time to go. Furthermore, this is not a portrait of two friends on the road--this is a closer relationship, and this is goodbye. He's leaving--his feet are already turned away. Sr. Mary remarked, "He's pushing off."

Mary's hand is at his heart. He gently holds the edge of her cloak. She knows this is the real goodbye. Yes, she shows up again; she stands at the cross. But this is where he moves from being Jesus, son of Mary, and becomes the man he is destined to be.

What is most striking to me--oh, who am I kidding, there are too many things that strike me to even begin putting them in order that way--but one thing that strikes me are the looks on their faces. That Emil Frei knew how to make a window. In this window, and never before, I see depicted a Jesus who knows what he needs to do but is so torn, and a Mary who is happy and proud of him, but scared, too. You can almost hear her saying, "yes, but..." and he stops her with that look on his face.

More to come. I need to get better close ups of this window. Tomorrow if not today.

SPV Blogging: Pillar

Our pillars, from a distance, look like stone and marble. Not any marble you've ever seen elsewhere, mind you, but they do look like marble. Sit in church long enough, though, and you begin to realize, wait, the reflection of light is all wrong. It took me several masses to realize this; Mike swears he knew the first time we walked in. We'd gotten married at St. Cecilia's, another breathtaking church of the same era. They have marble everywhere. So I just assumed these were orange and burgundy marble. Never seen it before...but who knows?

As I got involved with the art & environment committee, I started to detest this faux marble. Orange. The church is painted in peach and light blue. Why orange?

I can't answer why orange. I will say that the church, when it was consecrated, did not look as it does today. The clerestory windows were clear, there was no mosaic, and the pillars were plain. I have to believe the intention was to do something with them, just as the windows were replaced and the mosaics were installed.

St. Pius V is a visually busy place. It takes a long time before one stops counting the flowers in the mosaic and deciphering the windows during mass. These pillars were part of that busy-ness for me, but now, they're almost background noise.

40 Days for Others: Scarves

Ann started it last year. Instead of giving up something like chocolate or coffee or whatever(note that I am giving stuff up, too, this isn't a message about superior Lenten practice or something), she thought, hey, what if I made a conscious effort to do something extra--and something I am good at already. So she made this little online pitch to the readers of her blog: take the 40 days of Lent and knit. For other people--newborn babies, refugees, the local homeless--whomever. Don't send her a bunch of stuff to deliver, just do it and give it to whatever group you like to support.

Now, of course, it's spring, and so it may not be such a great idea to make a bunch of heavy winter scarves and donate them to local homeless shelters at Easter, for them to store and trip over until November rolls around again. So I debated between doing a NICU/preemie project that would take a lot of reading and pattern following, and just going ahead and knitting up a bunch of scarves out of leftover yarn here at the house that would totally go to waste--and then saving them until November, when they'd be needed. I obviously chose the latter.

But then I saw in my parents' bulletin from SFX--College Church at SLU, where Mike and I used to go when we were students there--that they are having their Hot Stuff Weekend this Saturday. They want this stuff now. Lent isn't far along--oh, about 12 hours if you start counting at midnight. But of course, I was avoiding banner making and started early on this project. I have allocated the yarn I'm going to use--all acrylic and cotton, machine washable, a ton of colors and textures--so I'm not going to go totally crazy obsessive here. Just enough to get the old yarn out (since Ann gave me all tha new yarn earlier this year).

Here are my first 5. Rolled up, so you can't tell the scale or length, but they're done on size 19 needles with 5 or 6 strands of yarn, depending on the weight. They are dense and warm and I'm actually quite enamored with them. So I'm going to drop them off before they sneak their way into my cold weather clothing drawer.

SPV Blogging: Be Penitent

Ash Wednesday. Not a holy day of obligation, but I know I've been to Ash Wednesday mass every year since I can recall. And how many times did I conveniently forget the Assumption. Hmm.

Maybe it's a Catholic thing--the tangible signs, the earthiness. Especially when combined with ritual. Very nice. Someone puts a cross made of ash--or toner, if they so desire (supposedly, that's what our parish used to make our ashes out of--copy toner and a couple other mystery ingredients. Sort of a symbol of "old Pius" to me...), and says something along the lines of "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Not a happy image.

But tonight, I went to church. I needed to put the clean altar cloth back on, I needed to fuss around, make sure all was ready for Lent--the purple banners, I must say, look just fine. The church is nicely themed. Not rag-tag at all. And since I wasn't quite ready to step back out onto Grand, get in my van, and come home to mommymommymommymommy, I straightened a few pews, and then went to sit where I usually sit, over on the north side of church, about 4 pews back from the choir. I was looking to see what the altar would look like from that distance and angle. It was good. I sat there awhile. Quiet. It's a heavy place--it's a church that lets you know it's a church. I've said that before. There is weight there, elegance, age, importance. And I don't know if it was change of season (in more ways than one--it is finally above freezing) or tiredness or just constant contact with this place, but sitting there just made me breathe more slowly, deeply. Made me stop the internal dialogue for just a moment. Silence. Made me sort of blank.

And then after the blankness, which lasted longer than I think I noted, the next words that came to my mind were the Jewish pairing of phrases: I am a worm. For me, the world was created. Don't they know how to sum it all up. Sitting there in the pew we've chosen for ourselves--mostly so that people will know where to expect Maeve--there was just this glimpse of smallness. It was like a wave spilled over me. All this cleaning and photography and thinking and writing and sewing and seeing. I don't want to make too much of it. But I realized right then, it's a dialogue. I say something, and then something gets said back to me. One way or another. Sometimes it's Sophia. Sometimes it's a heart shaped rock in the middle of the hiking trail. Or a key on the floor at Borders, right in front of the books about Benedictines. This time it was a kind of creepy still moment all by myself at St. Pius.

I got up on my feet, rearranged some song books so there would be the right number in each pew, and walked back out into South St. Louis.

SPV Blogging: The Eleventh Station

Moving backwards through the stations of the cross. I've done 14, 13, and 12. Here's the first part of 11. I think I'll do a couple from here because I'm behind in this by a couple of days and, you know, Lent is tomorrow and all. Just feels kind of appropriate.

The interesting thing about the stations at Pius is that the characters are consistent. The Jewish men throughout are the same--you can point out who's who. The Roman soldiers are distinct as well. This one; the one with the sharp nose; the one with the panicked pointing in the direction of Golgotha. There are different characters and the artist, who is unknown to me as of yet, or artists, kept the storyline intact.

They are exhausting to contemplate sometimes. Sometimes I think we as Americans, or westerners, or whatever we are, lose the tangible details of crucifixion. By the time crucifixions were depicted in art, none of the artists would have ever seen one, according to a book Sr. Mary loaned me. For a long time, the cross with corpus (body of Jesus) was not something you showed in art. I think the terror and shame involved with Jesus, a Jew, being crucified as a slave on a Roman cross, was just too much for the early Church. Sometimes I think it's too much for me.

Farewell to the Flesh

I talked about Carnival, carne vale, way back in July when we had to cook everything that was going to spoil after the black out. that was a farewell to the flesh, raising up of the flesh--a true stone soup pot luck with really good results.

Here we are again, but instead of being at the end of an emergency, we're at the beginning of Lent. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, so tomorrow is Fat Tuesday. Some denominations are going to have the traditional pancake dinners, originally designed along the lines of Jewish passover--get rid of the eggs before Lent. Nowadays we eat eggs during Lent, but we still do pancake dinners on Shrove Tuesday.

Here in St. Louis, we have Soulard Mardi Gras, which Ann discusses quite well here. I have never been. I never went to Galveston's Mardi Gras when I lived down there. I think the idea of "eat it all up before we have to fast" has been taken to creepy limits down at those parades and drunken grope-fests.

But down in Houston, where I went to high school for the last two years, I took French from an old Cajun woman with false teeth that clicked when she talked. I don't remember enough French now to really count for much, but when I was in French III, I realized I didn't know enough French to go anywhere but Lafayette, Louisiana: Helen was teaching us Cajun French, which was like French with an annoying southern accent and too many objective phrases and R's. Some of that sticks around in eastern Texas, and in my speech too, even though I realize now when I do it and try to catch myself. Things like: Mike and Sophia, they're going to the store. Or, even less correctly, Maeve and me, we are tired.

At Mardi Gras season down in Helen Baker's class, with classmates with last names like Lacamu, Mallet, and Roubidoux, we didn't bare our breasts and throw beads at classmates. We made king cake and tried not to choke on the baby Jesus. We learned the cajun two-step and danced. We made masks. We had a "French" food festival, which didn't have anything Julia Child would ever recognize, not even any brie or lovely white bread, but blood and rice sausages and gumbo made with a whole chicken stuffed down at the bottom of the pot. Mmm. It's good stuff if you keep your eyes closed.

I miss that kind of stuff sometimes. Creepy food and zydeco music and real celebrations.

Our pastor, whom I am really coming to like, wrote in the bulletin this Sunday that we should go out and eat red meat and double dessert. And then let's get down to the business of Lent. I'm embracing that this year: Mike buys his new bike tomorrow after work and we're back in the saddle, so to speak, this week. I totally see why this happens this time of year. Winter is exhausting, we finally see light at the end of the tunnel, and we just want to eat and loll around. So do it. And then rein it back in and keep to the trail.

Been Busy

Quite.

1. Banners for church are done. I have deep misgivings about how they've turned out. I cannot yet let it go. Somehow with ironing and using woven fabric and being pretty decent at straight line sewing, they are not completely true. Teensy mistakes taken over 15 feet of fabric show up more than teensy mistakes over 8 inches of fabric. Everything multiplies. I'm taking them up tomorrow afternoon to try them out. And then, oh, I guess I'll hide. Ok, I won't hide. I'll just rationalize, justify, and jimmy the whole project until it's workable. Perhaps it will be ok. Hmm.

2. Girl scout field trip on Saturday was cancelled but instead of yet again devestating 8 little girls, I switched it to an indoor party at my house. Get this: we made tiaras out of beads and pipe cleaners, and then I suggested movie. We started one...and they got bored with it. Isn't that awesome. So we did more "crafts" at the dining room table, which amounted to construction paper, glitter, glue, and stamps. My co-leader is a head start teacher with a head full of songs and fingerplays and the time flew by. Probably the most successful meeting we've had. I'm hoping Co-Leader wants to step up next year. I'll take cookie manager. I'll come to every meeting--I just want to share the planning. I get nervous.

3. We had more snow. "Blowing Snow" was the official warning on the national weather service. I started to notice that weather is actually becoming a large topic for me now. Not only here--everywhere. Ever since the black out in July, frankly. Kind of obsessed. I'm giving up weather for lent. The complaining about. Yes, it's cold/rainy/windy/hot/stormy/humid/snowy/dry. Everybody already knows. So be quiet.

4. We had Clayton and Kerri over so Sophia could "interview" Clayton (he's a county officer) since our curriculum has her learn about a different profession each week. Very cute.

5. Mopped the church with Sue. Meditative. Fun. Had wine afterwards with Cathy and Mary. One of those moments when I realize how I really am a part of things at Pius--that whole evening was one of those moments. Pius has become the center of my life, in so many good ways. Amazing.

6. Taming down the seasonal affective disorder. Keeping busy so I don't crawl into bed. The light seemed different today, more like "end of the tunnel" instead of "dim gray light of limbo."

SPV Blogging: Cherub Window

This is one of the tiny stained glass windows that sit above the Jesus Teaching in the Temple story window. Each of the large windows has a set of three of these, blue and red. These are the sort of details that take my breath away at Pius. These are tiny little add-ons. This is not the main event. But the details--the facial features, halo, wings, the slight little smile, curls in the hair.

I think I've mentioned it before, but in case I haven't, Pius is a consecrated church. I still am not sure why it is but so many are not (the monastery chapel at Clyde is, I'm pretty sure--they have the same candles along the outside walls). It's more than a blessing--it consecrates this space to God. It is a holy place, not just some classroom chapel or makeshift gymnasium worship space. The hitch is that once the parish closes and it isn't a church anymore, it is supposed to be torn down. It can't be a restaurant or condos--and I'm not sure if it can become another denomination's home like what happened to Holy Innocents across the park. I do believe that a consecrated church must be torn down. Removed. Obliterated. Perhaps it can be deconsecrated, but from what I have read and from the tone of older documents, I don't think that was the plan when it was consecrated. It is here for one purpose only: to be St. Pius V Parish in South St. Louis.

They nearly closed our parish the year Maeve was born.

Forget for a moment how devastating that would have been to the neighborhood, to the parish, to the community. Forget about the immigrants and the poor we serve. Forget about the baptisms and marriages and confirmations and funerals and class graduations and basketball tournaments and spaghetti dinners and all that, which, after a time of mourning and readjustment, could happen somewhere else. Would happen somewhere else--the Church goes on, life goes on, time marches on. Forget all that and look at that window again. I know it sounds like I'm putting cart before the horse--that the Church is people, the church is a building. But look at that window. They were going to tear this down. Keep all those soulless super parishes out in the county and dismantle this one, auction off its parts or store them in some repository no one can visit or use.

I have a biased view, of course. But what the hell were they thinking?

SPV Blogging: St. Thomas Clerestory Window

So I read something recently that stated that Thomas was called this in the gospels because Thomas means twin, but that his real name was also Judas. Since Judas carried with it such a stigma, the gospel writers couldn't bear to give Thomas the same name (as opposed to James the Greater and Less, who had to share). Wish I could remember where I read it--in one of the books Mary loaned me? Online? Uncertain.

What I'm gathering here is that Tom was killed with a spear. But before that, he was a carpenter. Those poor apostles.

Snowfall Indeed

So my van hates winter as much as I do. The sliding door that usually moves automatically keeps getting stuck on that black foam insulation waterproofing thing, you know what I mean, I can't think of the word (because winter has also made me stupid). Weatherstripping? Whatever. It keeps getting halfway open or closed and then changing its mind. And I broke the windshield wipers again. Every winter. Just on this van.

I had put Maeve in her seat, figured out how to cajole the door into closing, and walked around to the driver's side. Opened my door, and failing to notice that I was standing on solid ice, I began to slip.

And slip I did. The force from opening the door in one direction pushed me in another. Luckily I still had hold of the door, so I fell kind of in slow motion, but still managed to scrape my leg across the underside of the van. Yummy. That part of my shin is hard and puffy now. No bruise yet. This reminds me of the week last August with the maggots and the falling down the stairs and the stomach flu/food poisoning episode. Except take those 5 days and stretch them over the course of a month.

And now every time I open my mouth I sound like vintage Woody Allen (before he started dating his adopted daughter--back when he was funny and whiny, not creepy and whiny). Everything is wrong and there isn't enough of it.

I have church sewing to do and in the elaborate avoidance strategy process I now have a tidy house. Not clean, since that would have to involve a mop in the front hall. But if you don't look down, it's a clean house. And here I come to the end of yet another avoidance tactic: my blog. The email is clear today...I guess I should bake cookies next. I already worked out a knitting bargain: for every hour of sewing I get 20 minutes of knitting. I'm going to take a full hour tonight while I watch a movie. That of course means I need to sew for 3 hours...I still have time...plus Sr. Mary gave me more time by finding the vases on her own last night--that saves me, oh, probably a good two hours, don't you think?

If I rationalize this enough, the banners will finish themselves, I'm confident. The really stupid part of all this? They are mind-numbingly easy to make. Ha! I need to go get some done.

Heart Rocks

For Valentine's Day. There's snow on the ground, my kids have cabin fever and some peculiar personality disorder seen only in little children who spend too much time together inside (oh, wait, that's cabin fever), but Happy Valentine's Day.

This has never been a holiday I cared very much about one way or another--not like I hate it with the burning hot hatred of a thousand suns like some people I know, but I also, well, it may come as a surprise, but I'm not much of a romantic. In fact, I'm not a romantic at all. I like flowers, I like cute things, but I don't miss them when they're not here. I've never really gotten into Mother's Day either, for similar reasons. I like being a mother (most of the time: not today), but I don't have some weird need to mark it on my calendar. And as opposed to Christmas, 4th of July, and Halloween, which have gotten better since I had kids, Valentine's Day really hasn't changed much.

As a teacher, I hated Valentine's Day, and Halloween, and the day before Christmas Break, oh, and several other candy-filled days. Candy hearts are nasty. I detested first grade valentine pass around nonsense that always left some kid crying. As a student I found the day bizarre as well--I think I understood this was a day for lovers, and as an 8 year old, I really didn't fit into that category. I remember the art teacher when I was in 5th grade tried to get us to make doily and construction paper hearts and then complete the phrase, "Love is..." in the center of them. Like some hippie poster with big-eyed children on it. She got really really angry when Craig Wisnewski wrote "a battlefield" on his heart. I think there was paper ripping involved.

Anyway, I started collecting the heart shaped rocks this past fall. I like them, regardless of how I feel about today.

SPV Blogging: Mater Dolorosa

I thought it was an obvious Christ symbol. Crown of thorns, three nails. But taken with all the other larger clerestory windows, which are symbols of Mary, it becomes Our Lady of Sorrows. It's kind of like a sudoku puzzle, or a logic problem. I've had to make guesses for the part based upon the whole. A fleur de lis surrounded by drops of blood, a crown on a cloud, a pomegranate, a crown of thorns. Mother of Martyrs, Queen of Heaven, Our Lady of Sorrows (still don't know how to title the pomegranate image, but I at least know why it's there).

Sr. Mary has asked me to take photographs of each of the stations for her to use this Lent. I went up on Saturday and did so, and it felt like I'd been to a prayer service. I know why (besides my rigid OCD reasons of moving clockwise from Anthony's statue) I'm doing these backwards for the blog--otherwise it would just be too much. Of course, I got home and looked at the pictures and they were too grainy--not that liquid marble look I wanted. So I'm going back up this morning, assuming the river don't rise and Sophia goes to City Garden and the snow hasn't drifted up against our door and all those other things, to retake them, this time with the church lights on instead of just in daylight.

I suddenly have a lot to do before Lent begins next week. It's coming fast and I'm faithfully playing the role of grasshopper (as opposed to ant: I believe that would be an Aesop fable). But the house is clean and all my other obligations for the week are done so I can get on that.

But all I want to do is knit. This would be Ann's fault, I'm pretty sure.

Snowfall

This morning Mike brought me a glass of water and told me, "Nothing yet, but they say it's going to start." Well, this has been the winter of fizzled fronts, and I told him, "Yeah, nothing's going to happen. Whatever." I rolled back over and went back to sleep. Until 10:00. Yup. Good job.

So by the time I got up, took a shower, barked orders at the girls (oops, I mean "gently suggested they get dressed and make their beds"), and looked out the window, I thought, "oh, so I guess it will do something." There was about a quarter inch of sleet piling up. Sleet does not scare me--it doesn't glaze anything, it's crunchy, as long as it doesn't melt and refreeze, I don't mind it. I got the girls ready to come over to my mom's for piano, and we trotted out to the car amidst big fluffy snowflakes falling.

The car, though, was glazed with ice. I scraped and defrosted, made it over to my mom's, and realized her marble steps were still covered. So I scraped those while the girls thawed inside. Sanja, our piano teacher, from Serbia, cursed the weather here yet again (it's been 2 1/2 months of Sanja dismayed by winter).

Since we'd gotten up and come on over, I told the girls I'd walk to Bread Company and pick up bagels and cream cheese. My mom kept Maeve and I walked. I also had to hit the pharmacy, one way or another, so it was better to go alone than with whiny girls. The walk there: no big deal. Grand was awful, a slushy pile of dirty snow, and the intersection at Arsenal was piling up. Cars were being cautious, and this is the only time that ever happens on South Grand. Got my prescription, got the bagels, and stepped back out onto the sidewalk, heading north.

North wind ("winds are like people. You identify them by where they are from. Russians are from Russia, the north wind comes from the north."). Took my breath away. Knocked my hood off--I wear a German army surplus coat I got in Texas, and the wind doesn't cut through it a bit, but the hood wasn't tied. I pulled my scarf up, put the hood back on, and slanted into the wind. Thank God those Germans know how to make a coat. They must know the north wind.

Looking out the window (I'm at my mom's still) at Grand, it is white. People drive on Pestalozzi and the snow doesn't change color. Tower Grove Park has sawhorses up at the entrance--probably worries about tree branches falling.

Last night I found myself daydreaming about Utah and hot, hot red rocks.

SPV Blogging: Hidden Window

I didn't see this window for the first 8 years I attended St. Pius. I'll have been at St. Pius for 9 years come this June. This window is inside the confessional on the south side, the one above which is the bible quote about whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.

It's a gloomy little room, I'll go ahead and say that right now. Not one of the more glorious spots at Pius, or at any church I've been to. To say I didn't see it for the first 8 years doesn't mean I didn't go to confession, experience spiritual guidance or reconciliation that whole time. I just didn't sit in a room with carpeted walls and talk through a screen.

Reconciliation gets a bad rap. All Catholics are baptized, obviously, and receive communion, tend to get themselves confirmed (eventually...), and, looking around church on Marriage Sunday this past week, some, perhaps most married Catholics, get married in the church. Then they turn around and baptize their own babies. Sacraments permeate their existence. But reconciliation, if they're going to skip over any of those sacraments, is the one they skip. Myself included. There is a certain amount of dread involved with making a list of how one has sinned, against whom, for what reason. Where does the list begin and end? How can we possibly be comprehensive?

It's not uniquely Catholic--the orthodox churches and several protestant denominations have similar sacraments. But it has always felt like one of the things that truly separates me from non-Catholic friends. Admitting how one has sinned, to another person, not just to God, is a daunting task. But it sure does give you some perspective. However perfect you think you are, you can make a long list if you're honest. And when you receive the sacrament often enough, especially with the same priest, you start to see the patterns in what you do. It helps you reflect. It maybe helps you turn closer to God.

There's nothing like the feeling of relief and lightness after absolution, either. Of course, it doesn't end there--you need to make amends for what you've done and not done. That's where Catholics get a bad reputation, too--say 3 Hail Marys and go to the Stations of the Cross on Friday, and all is well. But what about the brother you're still not speaking to or the grocery clerk you were just terrible to, or the spiritual laziness you're still in the habit of? Penance should be the true reconciliation--perhaps you've made amends with God, but there's still the rest of humankind to work with.

That all said, I haven't been in a while, longer than I should be away. But Lent is coming. Fast.

February Homeschool Update

Our third and final section of the school year started today. The book calls it "quarter" but I'm a stickler for these things: it's a trimester. There are three of them. The biggest changes are dictation, narration, vetical math processes, and character study (for instance, we meet a police officer and learn about courage, a banker and learn about honesty (stop laughing about that one), and so on). At this rate, with spring break in there and complete honesty about what Holy Week will do to her teacher's attention span, Sophia's school year will end mid-May. I think we've both decided to continue next year, even though the last 3 weeks has made us desperate for other surroundings and social contacts. It's been a tad isolating.

Tonight is Daisy Scouts, which I am the leader of, the lousy leader. But we trudge onward. Tonight we're going to celebrate Tet, which for half the troop, they've probably talked to death at Cabrini Academy. But the other three, including Sophia, will be fresh for it. Origami, coloring pages, and moon cookies. It's only an hour. Why does it make me so nervous??

Shaking My Fist at the Sky

Yesterday, we went to Powder Valley, took a walk. Saw a deer. Slid on the ice in the creek. It was about 40 degrees outside and that's balmy these days. The sun was out, it was a beautiful sunset, and last night, I didn't have that panicky winter feeling I've been experiencing. The feeling of doom. The house wasn't so cold my fingers couldn't type. The girls' room didn't have a breeze moving the curtains. Ah.

Of course, then I woke up this morning to the bank of clouds and the promise of freezing rain and snow. Come on. Give me just one more day in a row like yesterday. What is the problem? And after the freezing rain/"wintry mix" is over, Thursday's little icon is simply "cold" with a picture of a blue outline of a person in front of a blue city skyline...far out in the forecast I see some light, but not until a week from now, at least. And things that far out tend to be lies. Outright lies.

Texas, which I usually sum up with "is a good place to be from," is truly the problem here. If I'd spent more formative years in, say, Wyoming, this would be no big deal. Once again, location is destiny.

Wintry mix. Sounds like a potpourri flavor.

SPV Blogging: Forgive

Above each confessional at St. Pius V, there is a biblical phrase about sin and forgiveness. This is the middle of one of the passages, about whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them (and those you hold bound are held bound--but that wouldn't be appropriate across the confessional doorframe, I wouldn't think).

Forgive. According the the Online Etymology Dictionary, forgive comes from the Old English forgiefan: for- meaning "completely," and -giefan, "give."

Completely give.

I like that almost as much as the one Sr. Jean told me last weekend: repent, from the Latin rependare--to rethink, to reweigh. [Note: I've found a lot of conflict on this one! I am no Latin student--just repeating what I was told].

I like that idea though: stop focusing on what deeds you've done, and turn to the Light that has illuminated it for you. Think again and return to God.

And give of yourself, give up your grudge and your anger and completely give to someone the one thing they cannot take or fashion out of wholecloth or debate into existence: forgiveness.

Left Behind

Steve just told me he's really going to sell the house.

Steve & Jerry are our neighbors, have been as long as we've been here. I remember them saying they wouldn't leave unless the house burned to the ground. But times change and Amsterdam looks better and better all the time, I guess, and now they're getting everything ready to sell.

It should sell. It's a beautiful house. I told him I'd try to keep the yard in order so prospective buyers don't glance over the fence and think, ok, hoosiers!

I'm kind of afraid. S&J are a known quantity. When they go--who will replace them? On the other side, I was so glad, so so so so glad, to see the owner leave, it didn't really matter who moved in. Plus I was pregnant with Maeve and that made me weird as pregnancy always does. I was obsessed with the drug dealers on the corner and couldn't care less about who bought the house next door. I'm glad Dave did; he seems very shy and very nice. His new wife, too. Their upstairs renter with the big dog just moved out and I know they'll pick somebody good to move in.

But right now I'm not weird and pregnant and obsessed with drug dealers, so I'm looking over at the next door neighbor's yard and wondering what might come into our lives. Who.

It's strange because last night I had this dream that Mary & Brent had a for sale sign in their yard. I asked them why, and they said they had to leave because the dead tree in front (on the city's tree lawn) was going to fall on the house and they couldn't live this way anymore. I went inside and called my uncle to come out and please take down their tree so they wouldn't move. When I went back out to meet Glennon and show him the tree, there were 5 tree companies cooperating to take the tree down for my neighbors. Everybody was happy and they decided they could stay.

I wish it were all that simple.

It's kind of scary when you decide "ok, this is where I live. End of story." Because other people who live here don't necessarily make that decision for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of valid good reasons, and you want to orchestrate it so that they can or will. Who will leave, who will take their places, what will that mean?

I have left so many times. But barring personal tragedy of the highest order, I'm not leaving again. I'm beginning to see what Marita must have felt like. Misdy. Lillian. Danielle. Cathy. John. Tom. Gerdine. Leslie. I wonder if they tried to grasp onto me as my family packed up that moving van yet again, the way I can envision doing--or Sophia doing--when inevitable moves come the way of this block. I wonder if they felt left behind, and how they rebuilt around that hole.

What ties people together when place slips away? Is there enough to buoy friendships beyond common happenstance of address? There was for my college friends--but not all of them. There never was for any of my work friends. I guess all I can do is enjoy the now and hope for the best.

SPV Blogging: Pew Cross

We have democratic pews. Some churches of our era, or perhaps a little older, have a little metal slot where you could put a "reserved" card--which would be convenient, of course, but what they were originally for was for a family name. At St. Joseph's down in Macon, Georgia, where I unfortunately spent a year and a half, some pews were still assigned to specific families. Some of the pews had gates at the end, too, like a tame roller coaster might, to keep folks in and organized.

We don't have any of that. We have hat clips, but we don't even have book holders on the backs of pews anymore. Two books get stacked at each end of the pew. Pass 'em down. Our pews aren't ornately carved with symbols of the church or beautiful columns and curlicues. Just this simple Latin cross.

Each pew is distinctive in its woodgrain, and sits at a slight angle for comfort. About half the pews have been refinished, and I think it's my job to do that, now. I haven't gotten started--I still have a cabinet in my dining room that needs varnishing. Not a woodwork gal. But I check for rough spots and nails when I can, and hammer the nails in and consider what I might do about splinters. More considering than anything else at this stage. But perhaps come ordinary time this summer, when I don't have 5000 yards of purple to sew, I'll look at solutions for that.

They're no cloister choir stalls, but they'll do.

Quiet Friday

Amanda was nice enough this morning to take Maeve while I drove Sophia over to meet her Friday Field Trip group in Shaw; then I came home and had some time to clean up the kitchen and dining room, start some bread, some laundry, some knitting. Sophia got home 10 minutes after Amanda brought Maeve home ("They're done," she said, and I knew exactly what she meant). Lunch in the oven (yes, again, hot lunch for cold girls--it is just overwhelmingly cold right now), Paul Simon on the stereo, and everything is subdued.

Messages and phone calls received in the last few days:
*Just to let me know that Elliott Miller, who was injured in Iraq in multiple ways: burns, fractures, head injury, was doing better with time and surgeries. He got to San Antonio Thanksgiving week and will be leaving for California for more rehab about the head injury, but his memory is better and the physical injuries sound like they're amazingly better. Elliott is one of the kids my mother-in-law had in CYO. First instance of knowing someone personally who has been wounded in Iraq.

*A phone call that starts, "Bridgett, the people who are getting arrested tomorrow would like to make a banner." Anti-war group. The daughter of the woman who is responsible for Sophia's depth of Catholic knowledge at the Atrium. Of course I'll go up to Pius and cut 4 yards of red fabric for you. We have 105 yards of it, after all.

*A neighbor whose car window was bashed in with a brick while she was driving (everybody's fine), calling me to remark that the glass place that fixed her window mentioned they had 3 similar claims on the same day--Honda Civics with a window shattered. Strange. Also noted that even though the event occurred down in Soulard (the city), the man with the brick was from the county. That made me laugh.

*An invitation to go to Springfield Illinois tomorrow to see Barak Obama announce his run for the presidency. Not sure yet, what, with the cold and the girls and the whatnot.

*Mike telling me that when Mr. Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer, he set zero arbitrarily as the coldest he'd ever seen England get. Remembering what 1 degree felt like up at Clyde.


It's kind of a sleepy Friday. My cats think so, at least. I need to go finish that mitten and get Maeve some milk. Putter around the house, since I'm not leaving again while I would have to bundle up girls.

SPV Blogging: James the Lesser Clerestory Window

We already know the story of St. James the Less. Traditionally shorter than St. James the Greater, his symbols are usually a fuller's bat or a saw. He was pushed off the top of the temple into thin air when he did not deny Jesus. The fall didn't kill him, so the crowd stoned him. Not dying fast enough, he had his brains dashed with a fuller's bat, which was used to fluff wool to make into clothing or felt.

So he's he patron saint of fullers (and pharmacists, who use mortar and pestle, of course). It's so interesting how the martyrs become patrons of the people who use the same instruments that killed them. St. Apollonia (a deaconess), whose feast day is today, February 9, was burned to death--but before that, she had her teeth broken and extracted with pincers. She's the patron saint of dentists. And toothaches.

Don't know why St. James the Less has a windmill. Resurrection Church in New York City had some windows commissioned and this same symbol came back for James and they were worried it was a mistake until I wrote and let them know we had one too.

It seems like I'm posting a lot of clerestory windows--that's due to the fact that there are three of them for every large story window. And also because it took me a long time to figure them out while I stalled and did other stuff. I'm hoping to mix it up again, see what else I see. I was at church today cutting fabric for banners but did not have the energy to take photos. My kids were demons.

On a side note, I am sick and tired of winter. Spring will be hard won for me this year. It is so hard not to just stay in bed and ignore it. Ignore it all. So I need to keep busy--this helps, actually, even if it seems like an insane thing to spend one's time on. And you would not believe how much it is making me learn.

SPV Blogging: St. Bartholomew Clerestory Window

As opposed to Philip, we have some information about Bartholomew after the gospels conclude. According to Catholic Forum, which has a wonderful online database of saints, St. Bartholomew was probably a good friend of Philip's, and maybe wrote his own gospel (it is lost, but referred to in other writings). Some early disciple went to Armenia, India, and Asia Minor, leaving writings behind, and tradition holds that it was Bartholomew. Often he is equated with the apostle in John's Gospel called Nathaniel--since he fills a similar role there (friend of Philip, no other reference to Bartholomew) as he fills in the synoptics.

But what we remember best about Bartholomew, or at least I do from my days in Catholic school with Butler's Lives of the Saints, is that Bartholomew was flayed alive. Not dead afterwards, he was then beheaded. Because of this, most depictions of St. Bartholomew involve a tanner's knife, and sometimes more graphic depictions of a man with his skin draped over one arm.

Here, he is a fig branch. Bartholomew, known as Nathaniel in John's Gospel, was brought to Jesus by his friend Philip. He doubted that anything good come from Nazareth, but came with Philip to meet Jesus. Upon meeting him, Jesus told him that he knew who he was--he had seen him under the fig tree. Nathaniel immediately believed in him, but Jesus told him to wait--there would be so much more he would come to see. (I paraphrase from John 1:45-50).

I think I prefer the fig branch.

SPV Blogging: Philip Clerestory Window

Philip is often represented by two loaves of bread, indicative of his comments at the feeding of the 5,000. At St. Pius, he is represented by the patriarchal cross with a spear laid atop. We don't know much about St. Philip outside of the gospel accounts, but his feast day is May 3 on the Roman calendar, and he is the patron of pastry chefs. This last bit is interesting in case you choose to take that day and make "symbols of the apostles" cookies. I think their interpretation of Philip is a little loose--I would go for a patriarchal cross since it is more distinctive.

I just discovered, thanks to Sr. Mary Henry, that the clerestory windows at St. Pius were clear when the church was completed, due to a lack of funds. The new cathedral in town was being built at the same time (timing is everything) and so donors were sapped dry. These were completed later in the parish's history. There are still several I have not deciphered, but I am hopeful that as we make it around the church their meanings will come.

Broadway Pitch

Remember Muppets Take Manhatten? When Kermit is pitching his new broadway show: singing, dancing, falling in love, etc? That just happened in my living room.

Sophia: Mom, come watch my show.
Me: What show?
Sophia: the show I just made up.
Me: Ok. [We go upstairs to her room. She's dressed as an Egyptian princess and there are dolls and wooden food all over the red carpet on little scarves.]
Sophia: It's called the Grand Feast with the Two Princess Sisters.
Me: What's it about?
Sophia: It's about toasting and feasting, then singing and dancing.

Note: "toasting" is not reference to spoken odes to friends and loved ones. "Toasting" means using a toaster and then spreading wooden butter slices on wooden bread slices.

Me: That sounds like a great show.

And so opening night went off without a hitch.

Oh Charlotte

When the latest movie version of Charlotte's Web came out Mike asked if we should take Sophia. "NO," I replied, "Charlotte dies, you know. I don't think Sophia needs that sort of visual hit right now--let's read the book when she's 7 or something first."

So we didn't see it.

Today on the way home from City Garden, she mentions that Terri is reading Charlotte's Web to the class. This is ok--kids handle read-aloud far better than they handle TV and movies, which is why reading about the wolf eating Little Red Riding Hood's grandma isn't traumatic the way having that portrayed in a movie would be. Kids negotiate that sort of thing in their head--they've never seen a wolf eat a person, so they can bring it to mind however they need to. And sometimes darkness is good for kids, for balance and such. Not all of life is sweet--sometimes your grandma gets eaten by a wolf. Or the spider dies.

So Sophia asks, "When Terri is finished, can we rent the movie and watch it?"

"I don't know," I said after just a moment. "It's kind of sad in the end and I didn't know if you'd like to see it."

"Some kids have already seen it," she counters, in a non-whiny way for a change.

"Yes, but I know you can be sensitive about movies sometimes."

"What's sad about the end?"

"I'm not going to tell you--I want you to hear it in the story with Terri." As soon as I say it, I kind of regret it. I probably should be the one to share this bit with her. I hate to spoil endings, though. But she presses:

"Do they run out of things to write in the web?" Implying Wilbur's death, I suppose.

"No. Wilbur is fine. It's sad because, well, spiders don't live very long."

"So Charlotte dies?"

"Yes. Because she's old. But she has babies, you know. And a couple of them stay around with Wilbur in the barn."

"Kind of like how old people die?"

"Yes." By now I"m saying yes while trying not to start sobbing. Charlotte's Web was a little, umm, traumatic for me as a kid. And my sister's first grade class read it, and their classmate Marie died of leukemia the same day Charlotte died in the out-loud reading. So it's a little bit bigger for me than it is for Sophia seeing it with fresh eyes.

"But then the babies are there, you know, because life goes on," she tells me. Where does she get this stuff? Really. I've kind of avoided the death talk except in abstract for now, simply because there hasn't been a real tangible reason to talk about it--great-grandparents she sees once a year are the extent of the death in her life so far, we have been very lucky. But somehow--maybe because the wolf eats grandma or because she's always playing orphanage with the girl down the street (and that game makes me crazy since, of course, it implies that I've died or been so negligent that she's living at an orphanage). Whatever it is, you know how it goes--out of the mouths of babes.

So I was done crying by the time we turned onto Grand and she asked, "why didn't you pack any dessert with my lunch?"

SPV Blogging: Jesus Teaches in the Temple

I can just imagine the conversation afterwards to the rabbi who had been out of town or otherwise disposed, missing Jesus teaching in the temple at the age of twelve. I see these old men trying to explain what it was like--being drawn to what he said, but puzzled and having a hard time seeing past his age. Yeah, but...What you say is true, except...That's fascinating, however, I can't...just like when we find ourselves facing a truth we cannot deny, but feel as though we must with every bit of ourselves because that truth will force us to change. It's happened to me. It's probably happened to you. I think it's called conversion.

They pose their questions and check their scrolls. Then the one in the back starts to ponder the words--the Word. Could this really be happening? He looks so worried. I've seen people at important meetings with this look. They withdraw into themselves and really ponder. Half listen to the rest of the conversation. They are troubled.

Please ignore Jesus' green feet. I don't think they're that green in person--I think this was a trick of the lighting that afternoon. I hope so.

And just to put this window into proper perspective on our south wall, here is the same window taken from a distance. Love that tile floor.

Life-Giving and Cold

There wasn't a single moment this weekend that wasn't both of those: life-giving and cold. That prairie wind scoots you across the grounds and makes the walk to chapel excruciating. But we made it--4 times a day (plus daily mass, although we didn't leave the main house between lauds and mass. Just too cold. Better to sit in silence in the chapel).

I spent the weekend in Clyde, Missouri, which isn't anywhere you've ever been. Not "which isn't like anywhere you've ever been." It is a place where you have never been. You have never heard of Clyde because it is minuscule, in northwest Missouri, closer to Iowa and Kansas than to Kansas City itself. It is a few miles down the road from Conception Abbey, which you may have heard of. They have a press.

It wasn't a retreat, really, but a weekend meeting of oblates. Sr. Jean is the oblate director, but she also just had knee surgery and runs the nursing home (27 sisters live at the most well-appointed nursing facility I have ever visited), so we only saw her twice the whole weekend. The rest of the time was praying with the other sisters, or talking with each other.

There were 10 of us. Briefly, in the order I met them: two 60 year old women, retired, looking for more contemplative prayer in their lives; a rural Catholic worker who sells rugs and tends her farm and reports on the grim depressing life of prairie farmers; a former director of religious education with a sharp perspective on the hierarchy; her friend, more relaxed in her judgment but of the same mind; a middle-aged couple from Overland Park, well-read and well-spoken; two outspoken lovely dietetics professors from Kansas State, both converts to Catholicism from the Southern Baptists. And me.

Sharon, one of the converts, and I were looking into the oblate program. All the others were oblates already, some for several years. This isn't the total number of oblates at Clyde--the February meeting, for some reason, isn't as well attended as May or October. Imagine that. It was ONE DEGREE on Friday night. ONE. My room was below 60. I could not stay warm for anything.

On Friday night I heard Sharon's conversion process. She's taking apologetics and reading books like "Biblical Defense of the Catholic Church" because she feels called to cast her net out into the deep water of the Evangelical world and bring home converts. Listening to her talk about the Eucharist was eye-opening. What you don't see as a cradle Catholic.

On Saturday we met Sr. Jean and she had each of the oblates talk about what brought them to Clyde--for her own purposes because she's been asked to write an article about what brings people to the Benedictine oblates. But also for me and Sharon. Good stories, and then Sharon shared her hopes for the process--she'd looked into the 3rd order Carmelites and her friend Deb (the other convert in the room) told her to check out the Benedictines first. Then it was my turn. I talked about the Jesuits and the Quakers and that I was looking for a middle way between them. There was this pause after I said that (that was the end of what I was going to say, after I'd told about the women's retreat in 2005 and reading book after book). At first, I was worried that I sounded flaky, like someone who had just "discovered" Buddhism and thought, wow, man, how groovy. I had this split second fear that Sr. Jean was going to tell me I needed to go home and think for a couple more years. I don't know what I was expecting.

Jean turned to Shannon and Barb, the married couple, and said, "Ah, Thomas R. Kelly. We read him last year." And then she quoted Kelly to me. Kelly is a prominent Quaker mystic. I realized at that moment I had nothing to fear about this place or my search. In fact, later, in Sr. Jean's office alone, browsing her shelves for "three books to take home and read before May," I found about 15 books on Quaker thought. This is interesting because there were no books on, say, Methodist thought. Buddist. Jewish. There was Benedictine Catholicism. And Quakers. Fabulous.

We prayed with the nuns and ate two meals a day with them. This is a new development with the new prioress. Oblates used to be considered retreatants and were confined to the retreat house and the chapel. Now they are considered Benedictines and have modest free run of the house and grounds. You respect privacy, but you eat with them and can visit the cemetery, use the shortcuts in the building to avoid the cold outside as much as possible, and so on. It was obvious that this was a welcome change to oblates and sisters--each table, when we walked in, would have one empty spot at it and 4 or 5 nuns eagerly beckoning to us to come sit with them. It wasn't just hospitality, I don't think. Conversation ranged from Mark McGwire to St. Louis City crime statistics to animal midwifery.

Standing outside for just a moment on the front steps, looking around me, I realized there is nothing else there. Sr. Jean explained that the order owns the land to the horizon, and that was planned precisely for the effect of cloister--you are totally alone in the world here. Now, the sisters were getting ready to sit down and watch the Superbowl, and they knew all about Maryville, Missouri politics. But if you wanted to, and obviously when it was founded, it was a spot completely in isolation.

In freezing isolation.

They're not the sisters I would have thought I'd affiliate with--cloistered nuns who pray all day and make some soap, some altar bread. Come on. The sisters I know here in St. Louis are workers, teachers, scholars, and activists--not at all to imply that they aren't holy women, because they are. And they are fascinating. But it struck me that I'm leaning towards worker, teacher, scholar, activist myself. That's why I like them. But Clyde I think will be a place to let my roots sink into 3 times a year, soak it up, and continue all that working, teaching, learning, changing the rest of the year.

So I'm done searching. It was an awkward feeling on Saturday, one I know all too well, the one when I realize I'm not leaving. Sort of a panic. I'm alway leaving. It's easier to leave and continue to search--try on Conception Abbey's hospitality. Beech Grove Indiana. St. Meinrad's. But no. You go where you're fed, and I think I could sit at this table. It makes me gasp even to write that in this blog. Cause it means it's time to change focus from searching to formation.

SPV Blogging: Twelfth Station

Out of town this weekend: here are three close ups:

The twelfth station: Jesus dies on the cross. The first photo is of the number 12, which, like all the stations at Pius, is at the bottom, below the title. Next, an overview of the station itself. Jesus on the cross at center, one of the women kneeling at the foot of the cross. Other women to the left, one hopeful, one despairing.


Thirdly, a close-up of the right-hand side of the station, which is the one I like best of this trio. The Roman guard holding onto some bearded man's wrist--Joseph of Arimathea? Nicodemus? One of the disciples or apostles? Somebody he wants to restrain. It reminds me of the power of the state compared to the power of the individual. And what is the bearded man holding in his hand--is this a high priest with the death sentence in his hand? Is this Joseph of Arimathea with some sort of legal document--a claim to the body?

SPV Blogging: Our Tile Floor

The aisles of Pius are all this pattern: white hexagon tile like in your bathroom, if you live in a house the era of mine, with the gray hexagons in the pattern of the cross. The floor was recently sealed and looks much nicer than it did, say, when I arrived at Pius. It has a bit of a shine to it, and now our big problem isn't how to keep it clean, but how to keep the servers from dripping wax on it. The person who sealed it for us, when we called him for tips for wax removal, told us that, yes, when he was an altar server, he spent many a Saturday scraping wax off the floor. I think that's a brilliant answer, but we haven't implemented it yet. So for now, we have a flat razor blade-style knife, like what I took my wallpaper in my dining room off with.

What impresses me about this floor isn't its cleanliness or dirt, but the idea that we as a parish went to the trouble of even making our floors symbolic. Where Mike and I got married, it's checkerboard, not crosses in hexagon tiles. Same era. And of course, later churches opted for rust colored carpeting or marble or sheet vinyl. Hex tile is pretty humble--we busted it out of our bathroom when we remodeled--but here it is something more.

Total denial about upcoming travel: Gardening

Yeah. So I'm sitting up here writing this and emailing a friend in Chicago and totally ignoring everything that needs to be done. For instance, I need to get the girls packed for the weekend. I need to get myself packed for the weekend. It would be nice to leave Mike a decently clean house. Perhaps fill out the rest of this application for art classes for Sophia and somehow will it over to the Tower Grove art studio. Get the girl scout stuff in order and take it over to Susan (but I have no car and she is in Benton Park so that will have to wait, at least). It's one of those Classic Bridgett moments of mounds and mounds of things I must do and so I'm spending all my time playing computer solitaire. Just as an example. But Sophia has had a big homeschool day including a "theme" written about snow. And lunch is in the oven, so that's better than it could be, I suppose.

So what am I going to plant in the garden this spring? I've flipped through all the seed catalogs and haven't decided for sure yet, but I'm thinking that I'm not going to order anything. I have a couple packs of tomato seeds leftover from last year, and the seeds I saved from my tomatoes as well. I grow heirlooms so the seeds run "true" and do not un-hybridize. The garlic is on order already, although I could plant the flowers from last year. But I like to eat them, so I'll plant them new in the earliest spring. It's Osage Garlic and has a short season. Good stuff. So the garlic planted out in the yard, since the squirrels don't care, and the tomatoes in the cage. And...some hot peppers. The usual overplanting of basil. But this year I'm not experimenting and I'm not wasting space like some years I have. Because I know what that will look like if I overplant and then ignore it during the hot hot months of July and August.

As hard as it is to imagine hot hot right now.

Oh, and I guess I'll try cucumbers one. more. time. So that will be my nod to experimentation. I never remember my parents having a hard time with them. Here or anywhere. I don't know what my problem is. But I will say that I can grow a mean black tomato and that's what I'm going to concentrate on.

Now to figure out when I can get that old mulberry tree down to give me more light back there.

Did I mention that I'm leaving town tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning and nothing is ready yet? ;^) Ta.

Let it Schnee

It's snowing!

I'm not leaving the house tomorrow!

Ok, maybe I will in the afternoon once it all melts. But I'm not driving Mike to work in his little stick shift car with two cold kids sleepy and miserable at 7 in the morning in the back seat. I'm waking them up to fresh baked bread and hot chocolate, like some fantasy childhood moment. We're hitting the books tomorrow and wearing our pajamas.

I will say it was worth the 9 degree weather to drink coffee and talk with Ann and Janet this morning. We could have talked about the intricacies of the tax code and it would have been worth it, but even more so because we talked church and I always leave those conversations with insights I hadn't considered. I think Janet is almost done with her soft soft sweater and it inspired me. I think I've picked my pattern for my yummy pink yarn; now I just need to get moving on it. A gauge swatch in the pattern. I hate gauge swatches. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow while Sophia writes about snow.

Let it schnee.