How our minister made her point

Memorial Day, which we all too often tend to forget is not about barbecues and the banks and post office being closed on Monday, was brought home to our congregation this morning by a very moving service at our church.

Our pastor read the Gettysburg Address, then had various members of the congregation read Memorial Day proclamations from Presidents Truman, Johnson, Reagan, and Obama. Then she read the names of the soldiers killed this year. There were about 40 of them. She gave their name, rank, home town and place of duty. As she read each name, a member of the congregation rose and exited. One less person. And then one less. And one less, until all the names were read.

I have at times thought in moments of disaster how many people would be gone from our town. With the last Nepal earthquake pf 8000 dead, that would be 80% of our town. That's shocking. But to see them disappear one by one… point taken.

A moving service with a powerful message, listened to by one less person at a time.

24 Days of Ornaments: Dec the 22nd

In 1994 two friends and I decided to make and sell Christmas ornaments of landmarks around town. We highlighted the depot, a hospital (now demolished), a historical home, the public library, the Methodist Church, and this one, the Presbyterian. I think we had the wood screen-printed with the basic design and then we added the embellishments.

The experiment and the experience did not last past three years. Maybe just two. But it was fun to do, and I have number three of twenty-five of the collection.

24 Days of Ornaments: Dec the 12th

I loved this ornament the minute friend Carol gave it to me. It glows from within because you place it on a tree light. Quite conveniently, there's a hole in the bottom.

It reminds me of Sunday School as a child. There was a small white church which lit up in one of the classrooms. It also looks vaguely like the church across the street and when its beautiful, antique stained glass windows are lit at night, I have the best view in town.

It's warm and inviting, just as church should be. And there's not really anything else to say on the matter.

Aunt Grace

At church this morning, we had a guest minister. His wife was related to members of the congregation so the day turned into a mini-family reunion for them, including the celebration of Aunt Grace's 101st birthday.

Not that I could have looked around the congregation and chosen who was 101. We have an older group of regulars and a few are nearing their centennial, but Aunt Grace didn't appear to be someone who was over it. She had come from out of town, even! Sitting on the front row, she wore wrist-length pink gloves which matched her floral dress. From my perch in the choir rows, I was charmed even before services started.

And then I was totally in awe. A younger relative (younger being relative when one is 101), maybe younger than me by a decade but no more, arrived. She, too, was a stranger to me. Aunt Grace was overjoyed to see her and the feeling was obviously mutual. She knelt in front of Aunt Grace, became eye to eye, hand to hand with her, and they talked and laughed. I thought how lucky they both were, this young niece or granddaughter to have known this woman and revered her for so long, and this centenarian, to be so honored.

And I missed all the older women in my life who've died and who I won't have a chance to wish happy birthday any more.

Where's my pew?

As any long-time church-goer can tell you, everyone has their own pew where they regularly sit during services. We're not so anal as to count how many rows from the front (well, not any more), but we've always been comfortable sitting on the north side of our sanctuary, hence, we are northside Methodists. That's as opposed to those wrong-thinking southside Methodists across the aisle. I think our side of choice was predicated on nearness to the door to the hall which led to the bathrooms. Since the sons were young when we began with this church, that was a fact of most importance. Never mind that I encouraged "going" between Sunday School and church, sometimes "go now" were the optimal words.

But sadness has struck our church. The air conditioning system, long held together by baling wire and prayer, is now kaput. As a congregation we have moved across the street to the gym in our Family Life Center while a new system is being installed. We are very glad to have the facility.

That said, where do we now sit? Our pew, indeed our very north-sided-ness, is gone! We have the choice between west and east. There are long rows of folding chairs. We are lost.

So, standing at the back this morning, we contemplated where to put ourselves. Finally I spotted a familiar face (not that the entire congregation isn't familiar) from where we always sat. She had opted for the center aisle of the east-siders.

Ah, a new home at last!

Memory Monday: Hands covered in prayer

I'm going to try something new, to make each Monday a memory post. Since I'm concerned with my dad right now, I'll make this one about him. Maybe the next ones also. I don't know.

But I've been encountering an enduring memory of him from my childhood. There's no photo of it, just the way it looks in my mind, just the feel of it on my hands.

We went to church every Sunday. There was Fellowship, a brief service for everyone and a few hymns which began our day, then Sunday School, then church service. We had a family pew, a preferred seating spot that no other regulars would bother and Daddy wouldn't let us say a word about if a visitor did. As best I recall, the pews were very long anyway, the sanctuary of the pre-1900 building being wide and curved, but not deep. So if someone was already seated on our end of our pew, we could scoot elsewhere.

I don't remember much about the sermons or the choir until I was old enough to join it, but I do remember prayer. Standing to say The Lord's Prayer, my sister and I on either side of Daddy, we'd put our hands on the back of the pew in front of us and Daddy would cover our hands with his own. His were so big and ours so small. Even as our hands grew (and mine are quite large for a woman), he would still cover them.

I look at his hands now as he twists them in his lap or reaches to tap me on the leg or as they shake as he sips coffee from a plastic mug. His fingers are still straight, his nails tough, his hands incredibly strong. And I want him to cover my hands once more in prayer, but I feel it is now the other way around.

The true everlasting flower

Last Sunday was Mother's Day and it seemed that the desire to share carnations with the world's mothers was overwhelming. First of all, the local big box was handing out the long-stemmed pink flower to any woman who walked through the door. I side-stepped this intrusion on my shopping. I was not so fortunate at church, where I didn't know what to do with said flower while I sang the anthem. Upon leaving, I foisted it off on a friend to give to her grandchild who could then add it (no doubt) to her mother's collections of carnations.

Thinking I was safe, I sailed into Starbucks, only to be presented with another. We were on our way to a musical and then dinner out, so I tossed it in the back seat of the car and didn't give it another thought. Forgot about it actually, until Tuesday morning when I opened the rear door and found my carnation. It had been without water for 36+ hours and looked quite well for the experience. Guiltily, I took it into the house and put it in a bud vase where it now dominates the kitchen counter. It looks forlorn and a bit lonely and I hope that's a touch a brown I'm seeing so I can toss it guilt-free.

Carnations not my favorite flower, you say? Probably not. Their very ubiquity and stubborn refusal to crater when a saner flower would do so, rub me the wrong way.

And then there's the carnation which refused to die.

When I was growing up, and probably until about 15 years ago here, on Mother's Day Sunday everyone wore a flower. If your mother was alive, you wore a red one, if dead, a white one. Absent supplying it yourself, there was always someone at church handing out the appropriate hue. My mother had red roses and made sure we were outfitted correctly. However, my dad's mother had died many years beforehand and Mother had no white ones.

Enter the white carnation. Kept in a plastic see-through box in our refrigerator, this boutonniere lasted from year to year. To year. I don't remember the refrigerator being without it, nor do I know what eventually became of it. But each year, Mother pinned it to Daddy and that was that.

I grow white roses in my garden and red ones. If the tradition were still alive, I'd pin a white one on myself and a red one on my husband. By the end of the service, they would look haggard and tired and be discarded, as they should be, not sagging in my kitchen because I can't throw it away just yet.