Preparing for a lesson

 

Hebe was getting ready for church today, and getting her dolls ready as well. 

Both she and her doll got fishtail braids: the doll got her braids from Hebe, and Hebe got her braids from Catherine.

I was getting ready at the same time and in the same way, trying to put my hair in braids to keep it back from my face.

The task is necessary.  

No one likes to lean over and see their hair swishing through their plate of foo, or find it twisting around their head while tossing and turning at night, or laying on it and getting trapped while turning over.

... two fishtails, two bows, too cute ...

So I have turned to braiding my own hair -- not in those intricate braids that can go around or down the back of one's head -- no my skill is pretty much ponytails brought forward, since my broken shoulder has healed well enough that I can do that.  

And then I hide whatever I have completed behind a hair band.

Function, not beauty.

Today was my day to teach the lesson in Zoom Sunday School again.  

I have no idea how to
get the bend out of that braid.

Mary called me just before we were to begin.  "If I were to go to church, it would be if you were giving the lesson, Arta.  But that 'if' isn't going to happen today."

Of course that made me laugh.  So many ifs.

I have been thinking about religion in a different way, lately, since Catherine asked me to do the lesson a couple of weeks ago.  We pretty well rotate through many of the jobs during this meeting, so with 8 of us, my turn is only going to come up every other month. 

Still, thinking about my religion in particular and religion in general, I was curious when I read an article in The New Yorker called "The Saint in the Closet: a one man musical about Mother Teresa".  The article began, 

"If the words 'Expressionist musical portrait of Mother Teresa performed in drag from East Village closet' make your heart beat faster -- and how could they not? -- you're in luck  Get yourself to YouTube, where you can find Heather Christian's "I am Sending You the Sacred Face," the latest offering from Theatre in Quarantine, a "pandemic performance laboratory" created by the writer, director, and actor Joshua William Gelb.

I just had to do that.  I watched three times, all the time with the captions on.  Sometimes I was paying attention to the music, sometimes to the text, sometimes to the enactment of drag.   Sometimes I was holding the pages out of the article in my hand, underling them, learning more about Mother Teresa in particular, and in general thinking about how our artists are doing their work during COVID times.  

So much to learn about religion from our writers, musicians, dancers and artists.

Arta