State of the Writer in March

I’ve been working on some serious sewing, since the Arlington Diocese seminarian class of 2025 is successfully steering through the last days before ordination as deacons. Next year, priests! God willing.

Until I had close contact with a seminarian, I didn’t really understand deacons at all. We had a lovely guy, Deacon Embley, when my parish was just beginning, but I thought he was a great helper, as a personality, not as his vowed condition. Frankly, I didn’t realize that deacons take permanent vows. All the big things priests promise, they promised first as deacons. Now I know.

Anyway, deacons wear stoles across their chest as a sign of their ministry of service. The original deacons, like Saint Stephen, were chosen to help distribute food to the hungry so they carried bread around in a sideways ‘messenger bag’. The sideways stole is reminiscent. Someone headed for the priesthood will wear stoles sideways for a year and then change to wearing stoles that hang down the front. Think yoke, instead of crossbody messenger bag.

I’m making a stole, following a pattern I mentioned several weeks ago, the one where it takes 38 pages to reach the point where the author of the pattern thinks you are ready to, you know, actually cut and sew the stole. The pattern creates a lovely object, almost eight feet long. One of its edges is done with a machine and the other is done with hand stitching. The effect is quite elegant, and the stitching is quite time-consuming. If I stop thinking about every stitch I take, I make mistakes. I’ve been practicing, in part on a red/rose stole that I made, and by now, I can do a bit more than 30 inches (2 1/2 feet) in an hour. But only for an hour at a time. Then I have to stop for a few minutes; practice has definitely increased my speed.

Yesterday, I finally cut the actual white brocade that was bought for this project. I had a lot of help from someone who knew how to line everything up. Today, at some point, I will temporarily adhere the inner lining to the face fabric. This involves precise placement of an eight foot long, four inch wide, piece of very sticky canvas onto the expensive white brocade. This is the most crucial step. If I get it right everything else is workmanship, which I can do.

So the writer is hanging out while the seamstress labors!

Here’s the Arlington Diocese channel on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvVVW22dci_D4ZIb5RiKtdw
At the moment I assume it is where the ordination Mass on April 6th can be watched. Mass is scheduled to start at 11:00. Helpful information about Bishop Burbidge is this. If Mass is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. he thinks he should be kissing the altar at 11:01. Therefore, if a procession consisting of two hundred people including priests of the diocese, seminarians, invited other priests, and other bishops, must get into the church first, why, then the procession will start at 10:40. This causes a lot of surprise the first time it happens to people who didn’t understand what Mass at 11:00 meant.

Also, in the Arlington Diocese, when you are ordained as a deacon, you are sent back to your home parish the next day, to give your first sermon as a deacon. For my favorite deacon, that will be on April 7, 2024 at the 10:30 Mass at Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church. Hopefully this is where the livestream will show up.
https://ourladyofhope.net/activity/live-stream#tab_1/

Rabbit hole… Tints are colors with white added. Shades are colors with black added. Tones are colors with grey added (both black and white). Generally, tints and shades don’t mix with tones. Rose ought to be red with a little grey added… but the ‘rose’ stole I made, looks distressingly red.