Social Connections Maintained at Church – the Programme

... an apple tree in need of pruning ...

I am in the cohort of people who should not attend large gatherings until COVID-19 is safely under control.

Until that time comes, here is one thing I will miss about not going to church: I will miss the programme being handed to me at the door.

I like that piece of paper for many reasons.

I scan it to see if there is a Primary Party to which I can bring my grandchildren.

I look for announcements about the English as a Second Language Programme, since my friend, Sumindra Rana, likes to attend that class.

I look to see if the addictions programmes are running. I think about the brave people who attend addiction classes.

I notice which Primary children are giving talks.

I look at the names of people are assigned to give the opening and closing prayers.  I think it is nice to know ahead if I am going to give a communal prayer.  And I wonder what has gone through the minds of the people who have that assignment.  I wonder if they have thoughts similar to what I might have had.

.. a lazy wasp on a daisy ...

Once I get settled into my pew, I write on that programme: notes about the time of a funeral I want to attend; the phonetic spelling of someone’s name I want to remember; a stat I want to check or an idea I wanted to carry home with me.

I look at the party announcements: Young Adults, Adults from Aged 30 to 45, Older People, the monthly Thursday lunch, ward parties, stake parties, regional parties, all somewhere in fine print on the announcement sheet.

There is not that much room on the programme. I use spaces between the names of people giving talks and and those performing musical mnumbers for some of my notes.

... daisies in the meadow ...

Then I write up and down and around the margins of the programme, and finally use any white space on the cover.

I look for the name of the person who physically gathered all of that announcement material onto one 8 ½” x 11” space, finding their email address hidden in small print, inviting suggestions for next week’s programme. 

A nod of silent thanks always goes from me to the person who owns that email address – a lot of work.

Yes. I am going to miss holding that piece of paper in my hand in the coming months.

Arta

Can Adults Use Crayons

In the 1990’s, I took classes with Barbara Crow, an amazing University of Calgary Women’s Studies Professor. She had a profound effect on my life, not so much by the academic material she presented, but by sharing vignettes about her life, even when  she was marking exams and papers.

Once I wrote an essay that had to do with the radical feminists who agitated for universal child care during the 1960’s. I started the essay by saying that I have always loved children, letting them take me in directions I might not always want to go, many times into a pet shop, as my Mary did with me. When I got the essay back, in the margins this paragraph had a side bracket beside it and written there were the words and punctuation, "Me too!  I like to hold a child's hand".  I was pleased to see that my experience with a child was fine to use as an entry point into an academic essay.

Another class I took with her was "Images of Men and Women in Popular Culture".  One of the assignments was looking at these images in magazines along with the rest of the class, and I could see that images are a whole other language. We had to take the same image and tell what someone might say about the image who was a marxist, a communist, a liberal, a conservative, a feminist – just about any ideology.  She made us think about how to see  the same images through different lenses.

She had a child whose dad was an artist. In class, when we were talking about fluency in different languages, French and English, for example, she said that from her partner she had learned that there was another language, the language of colour and brush stroke. Just as important.  I have been thinking about that language ever since, and especially since going to zoomChurch with the Jarvis family – the day that there was paper and many kinds of felts, pens and pencils on the table.

my scissors, ruler and felts
.... heaven forbid that I should use them ...
I believe these are intended to be saved for good.

Some writing could be done in a thought bubble on that page, but nothing was a given.

People sketched, doodled, wrote down lists, added to images already there, and when the zoomChurch was finished Catherine gathered up all of the papers to put them in a large scrapbook – one started long before Covid lock-down started.  I emailed her my contribution.

I had purchased that book the year before when the Come Follow Me manual had a plethora of ideas for families – inviting them to try non-traditional forms of learning.

So now, a year later, the 18” x 24 “ Dollar Store book was still in periodic use in Montreal, just a scrapbook keeping ideas in one places – lots of ideas, different ideas, traditional ideas, non-traditional ideas, colourful ideas, some glue, tape and scissors.

 Is it OK to take some felts and use them on a piece of paper, rather than use that space for traditional script? I mean, really OK. Having the same value as a fountain pen on vellum paper? And if so, who is doing this language, and how is it turning out? I don't know what to name it.  Does anyone call it journaling? Call it going to zoomChurch? Call it art for the kitchen wall? Call it academic?  Call it pure religion?

Well, I can hardly wait to see what zoomChurch is like tomorrow and how far people are allowing themselves to think outside of our traditional forms, at least into the house where I zoom in.  So far I judge them at 100% for pushing back traditional boundaries.  Everywhere I shake my head and think, I wouldn't have gone this far!

Can adults use line and colour and feel as though they have practised a religious ritual?

I know the answer for me.

I can't do it yet.

Hoping .... hoping ....

Arta

What Good is a Helmet on Handle Bars

Otter
... water colour by Wyona Bates ...

Our ward has a Facebook page that I check day to day.

Les Stehmeier commented that since church has been cancelled, (pandemic restrictions on having meetings with more than 50 people occurred), he has been noticing that one day blends into another and it is hard to tell which day is Sunday.

I agree with him, though I don’t know if it is for the same reason.

Every day I have the feeling that somehow Sunday has just past.

Twice in this week I received a Newsletter from my ward.

I received another message from the Stake, inviting me to join a Regional fireside with Fiona Givens and her husband.

Once there was an email telling me about 3 Friday Forums, one of which has Yogi Schultz talking about Mormons in cartoons. I shall surely attend, having read Mormon cartoon books in the past. If Yogi doesn’t point to any new ones, I will still enjoy the same cartoons again.

I had a message telling me about the lockdown at the church building – no more basketball there, or meetings, or parties, no funerals, no weddings.

I had two messages from Colin Steele, our Stake President. A message from him sent and then re-sent. I have written a few of those myself. I am helping Natalie Woodruff Berg as she gathers material for the ward newsletter. I can tell you that every day seems like Sunday to me.

So when the real Sunday came, I decided to see what it was that I really did on Sunday. Here is that list.

I emailed Catherine Jarvis to see what time their family was having church. The time is flexible. It depends on what time her 3 teen-agers to wake up. Yesterday the time was extended by the wait for the last one to get out of the shower.

1235 Red Train
... water colour by Wyona Bates ...

My son came over to plant my sweet peas.

This may have been his Sunday act that pointed to the scripture “this is religion pure and undefiled, to help the widow”.

Or maybe he just did it because he wanted to.

I had done what I could to prepare the earth.

I can’t bend down to put those little seeds in one by one. He spread his arms out wide, signaling to me to stand back.

No hovering.

I watched this  6 foot 7 inch man kneel on the ground and plant each one of those seeds, 6 inches apart. I watched his large work-worn hands working carefully, even tenderly placing each seed in the earth, as if he had been breaking bread for the sacrament. He gently gave them another drink of water, then covered them with rich black earth before starting with the nasturtium seeds in a row just in front of them.

I had picked up a rake by now.

 A three-point landing.

 Usually it is my two feet and a crutch. But I can get mobility with a rake as well. He took his broom to the front of the house and to the middle of the road. He swept the loose gravel to the curb so that in the near future, when the street cleaning machine rolls by my house, it will pick up that gravel. I shouted out to him as he swept. Talking felt good and social distancing feels good as well, even at 30 feet.

“Why did you do that,” I queried. “You have never seen me swept the road in front of my house.”

“Oh neighbour shaming,” he called back to me from the road, still sweeping.

He didn’t need to say anything more.

I got it.

The neighbour to the other side of him does this to the road that goes by our house.

Yes.

Neighbour Dave. As well, when it is winter, Dave clears his sidewalk with a shovel first, and then he takes a broom and sweeps the sidewalk. There is never a day that I might walk by his house and slip on the sidewalk. He is the ultimate caretaker of the hundreds who will walk down our street in normal times. We live on one of the feeder streets to the university which could have 20,000 people driving or walking into it on any week day, given ordinary times.

As Richard was sweeping with that big industrial broom, a young boy on an iridescent blue bike rode by, his helmet swinging from one of the handle bars. “Better put on that helmet,” Richard shouted out at him.

“Yah, OK,” said the boy as he swung around Richard and to the curb, now one foot of the boy with thick black hair resting on the cement, the other still on his bike, putting on his helmet, then shoving off and riding down the middle of our deserted street again.

I hadn’t heard the yell out. I had only seen the boy stop and put on his helmet.

“Did you yell out at him.”

“Yah,” said Richard, laughing. “What good is a helmet on handle bars.

We stopped working outside. Richard closed it down telling me, that was enough work for an old woman to do. I might have worked two or three more hours out there, but I went back inside.

Back inside to Zoom Church.

Zoom Church at the Jarvis’s home in Montreal. George and Kathy Jarvis had zoomed in from Edmonton as well. Another family came via telephone. Norman gave the lesson. Norman is Thomas’s friend from university and is staying over there during the pandemic. It was Norman’s day to give the lesson. Norman talked about only 2 verses from Mosiah, saying because he is of a different faith he doesn’t know the back story to these verses, nor what comes after, but as he tried to parse out Mosiah 5: 1-2.

As Norman talked about a political leader who changed the hearts of people, I thought about what it would mean to believe in the words of a political leaders, so much so that I would have a change of heart and participate  in words that promised the saving of lives.

I thought about how hard it is to believed political leaders. I thought about washing my hands for 20 seconds, every time (maybe all 40 times I get my hands in water), not just a few times a day. I thought about how hard it is to stay separated from my loved ones whom I like to eat meals with, to stay separated from those at the grocery store when I shop. I am social. I do stop and talk to someone who is pulling an item off the shelves that I would like to use, but don’t know what to do with. I really miss all of that. I miss meeting with my writers group. I miss going to the theatre at night – not that I don’t watch Metopera, National Theatre, Stratford Theatre, and Broadway non stop. I haven’t had time to go out to Netflicks or Primevideo, I have been so busy with watching other outlets. Now that I think of it, if I were younger someone would be telling me, “less screen time for you”.

Tamsin Greig as Malvolia
in Twelfth Night

Well, to come around full circle,

I can’t tell which of the above events was really Sunday.

I did close out the evening watching Simon Godwin’s joyous production of 12th Night, which is on National Theatre for a few more days.

Last night was my fourth viewing– yes with subtitles, since there is no other way to watch Shakespeare if I want to “get” what is going on.

Having gone out to the internet through my electronic magic, and listen to Tamsin Geig talk about the character of Malvolia (formerly Malvolio) I have been thinking a lot about what it is that happens when gaslighting is done to someone. Maybe there is a better set of words – what happens when people with power give wrong information to others and cast then into a dark room. I haven’t quite captured this set of ideas – those who have watched the show will know by the words making someone “yellow stockinged and cross-garterd”. At the end when Malvolia climbs the stairs and the gift of cleansing water falls on her, I feel water trickling down my cheeks.

Well, as I said at the beginning – Les said, it is hard to tell which day of the week it is on any given day.

Arta

The Whirlwind of Sunday Morning

... shoes without the genii costume ...

Getting the Brooks family to church is a whirlwind.

Easier for me when I was raising kids, for the Johnsons didn't have to get into a car.  We lived right across the street from the church.  Well, across the street and around one corner.

Here, there is breakfast everywhere (in the kitchen, in the dining room), Xavier getting ready for work, and Rhiannon putting the last touches on her birthday card.  She is trying to eat and do the birthday card and wake up -- all at the same time.

For her eating is hard work.  The waffle is toasted and there is a nice warm peanut-butter / honey dip beside her, melted and in a 1/8th cup decorative bowl, which I think will help her appetite, but probably which is not true.

This morning she tried out Naomi's shoes.  I heard Leo saying to her, "Not a good idea."  I thought the same thing to myself when I heard how wobbly each step sounded. In fact when I heard the footsteps I thought, this is what makes an orthopaedic practise lucrative.

Naomi is wearing the shoes to church.  I told her this is why Mormon's don't let women pass the sacrament.  "Don't reinforce gender roles," her mother said to me.

"No. This is not about that.  I maintain those shoes would be too distracting."

I am busy since it is time to put in cinnamon buns.  Mary is making everyone's exit a little smoother.

Leo has tried to warm up the car.  It doesn't start, so it has to be pushed out a bit so that some jumper cables can come to the rescue.

A good thing church is still 3 hours.  The family is going to get there before church lets out.

Arta

Church in Texas

Calvary Cowboy Fellowship
"Boots, Blue Jeans and Bibles"
Every Sunday at 10:30 am

From Moiya

This cowboy church is close to Curtis's house.

Curtis's neighbour goes to this church.

You can see the church in the background  and it is architecturally like a barn. (editors note: Moiya sent two pictures, but one was embedded in the email, not carried as an insert, and I couldn't get it up on the blog.)

Over to the right  of the church are quite a few acres of land.

When we tried to drive in, there was a lock on the gate, so we went back out to the country road. The minister saw us drive in and back out. When we were taking picrtures he came out to see us and we chatted for a while. We told them that Curtis's neighbour is one of their congregation members.

We were invited to join next week.  We had to leave and come back to Canada.  Maybe next time.  I do love the picture.

Moiya