30 Years Ago Today

Today is the 30th anniversary of my lease here at Casa Piscina. It took almost 7 years after I moved here from Big D to find St. Ignatius, but I had been advised back in Boston by the notorious Robison brothers that I should by all means visit "The Lamps". They had been acolytes under Fr. Weatherby and had a certain mystical insight about St. Ignatius that they often tried to share as we had made our way across the Common from NEC to Church of the Advent. It was at the Advent that I first experienced High Church and the joys of incense, but I was more concerned with making bassoon reeds in those days so it took a long time for me to get around to looking up old St. Ignatius.

It was Good Friday of 1984 when I first walked in and was just in awe at that liturgy and yes, I had a great mystical feeling, as if I had finally found God again after years of being a little dubious about Him. I came back Easter Sunday (I didn't know about the Vigil) and was even more awestruck at the beauty of the music and the ceremony. I still think of my first May festival there a few weeks later, also a new thing for me. I developed a closeness to Mary that I had never felt, saying the Rosary on Saturdays with Fr. Barrow for a few years. Those were the honeymoon years, as Jimmy Dollar used to call them. The wonderful first years at a parish before you get involved in all the politics and internal personality clashes that inevitably occur when you work with people in a community like the Church. It's hard to remember sometimes that one cannot really be a solitary Christian. It is in working together as a community that we most encounter that cutting edge of what it really means to try and be Christlike.

I must admit I was having a moment furthest from Christ last Sunday when I saw there were no flowers at the Shrine of Our Lady. No one had given money for a bouquet (and this should have been in the Parish Notes the week before, but I guess that would have been too much work to actually notice it and email the office to ask it be put in), but there were plants at the Font which could have been moved over to have something there at least. But no, we can't be arsed. I even attempted to put my dried Easter rose bouquet over there and it was removed by the flower guild. So nothing was what we had. I know I shouldn't have gotten so upset about it, but frankly this was the second time an important feast day was celebrated with nary a flower in sight. The Feast of St. Ignatius was the other time and his shrine had no flowers nor did the altar. Can I just suggest, if you don't have the interest to make sure we have flowers on important feast days, perhaps someone else would like to assist you in this ministry?

I also wanted to report that the Zabriskie web pages are done. Last weekend Chris Citron was in town and we had a little exhibit of Zabriskie photos in the Sunday School room. Then Chris and I had lunch with Charles Sachs and discussed trying to get the whole exhibit here to NYSHA as well as finishing the book that had been started about him and left unfinished at the author's death. I look forward to helping with those endeavors. I'm also hoping to take an actual course in Dreamweaver so that I can do a few things with the website.

Blessed Julian, pray for us, amen.