![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Thus ends the reading
Today was my very favorite holiday ever - Palm Sunday! We have a parade and a play in church!
Actually, today in church, for the first time ever, I was one of the helpers in the service. (I say 'I was' rather than 'I signed up to be', because Mom signed me up and then didn't tell me 'till a week later.) So, yay! I got to be lay reader, and I got to hand out the wine to people and say "The blood of Christ, given for you" about two dozen times, and be part of a miracle. I'd never helped with communion before - back in the day when I was an acolyte, I always refused to do it on Communion Sundays, because not only was I not communing yet, I wasn't even baptized (and nobody at church ever remembered that I wasn't baptized, so when it came up in conversation - awkward!)
Anyway, I experienced another miracle after church, too, a miracle like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when I sat down at coffee hour and started making my Easter basket out of my processional palms. I started out with nine small palms. I was going to make a square basket, 3x3 on the bottom and then three rows around the sides, but somehowe it ended up being 5x5x5 instead, and then I made eight or nine crosses to put in it. And when I had finished I looked over at my pile of palms and somehow, I still had six left. The pile just never got smaller!
Knock and the door shall be opened unto you, man. Seek and ye shall find.
Actually, making a basket like that is an act of faith on its own - for the first three-quarters of the work, I have what looks a huge tangle of cracked and bent leaves that will never, ever resemble anything and really I ought to just chuck it and give up; but keep going, and suddenly - snap - it transforms into a cute (if somewhat stringy and lopsided) little green-and-yellow basket that's a lot stronger than it looks. (And will last forever once it dries - this one's at least three or four years old and still up to carrying eggs in.) I make a basket once a year on Palm Sunday (when I have the materials and have the time) just so I don't lose the skill - basketweaving is *brilliant*. Someday I'm going to get around to teaching myself how to make a pine-needle basket like the natives around here did, or sweetgrass like the prairie-dwellers in Mom's part of the country, or how to cut and soak and split the invasive bamboo that's taking over our scrublands. But gathering and learning how to work the materials is the *hard* part, alas. (Plus, do I have space for lots of pretty-but-too-lopsided-to-sell baskets? No, I have no space at all.)
Actually, today in church, for the first time ever, I was one of the helpers in the service. (I say 'I was' rather than 'I signed up to be', because Mom signed me up and then didn't tell me 'till a week later.) So, yay! I got to be lay reader, and I got to hand out the wine to people and say "The blood of Christ, given for you" about two dozen times, and be part of a miracle. I'd never helped with communion before - back in the day when I was an acolyte, I always refused to do it on Communion Sundays, because not only was I not communing yet, I wasn't even baptized (and nobody at church ever remembered that I wasn't baptized, so when it came up in conversation - awkward!)
Anyway, I experienced another miracle after church, too, a miracle like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when I sat down at coffee hour and started making my Easter basket out of my processional palms. I started out with nine small palms. I was going to make a square basket, 3x3 on the bottom and then three rows around the sides, but somehowe it ended up being 5x5x5 instead, and then I made eight or nine crosses to put in it. And when I had finished I looked over at my pile of palms and somehow, I still had six left. The pile just never got smaller!
Knock and the door shall be opened unto you, man. Seek and ye shall find.
Actually, making a basket like that is an act of faith on its own - for the first three-quarters of the work, I have what looks a huge tangle of cracked and bent leaves that will never, ever resemble anything and really I ought to just chuck it and give up; but keep going, and suddenly - snap - it transforms into a cute (if somewhat stringy and lopsided) little green-and-yellow basket that's a lot stronger than it looks. (And will last forever once it dries - this one's at least three or four years old and still up to carrying eggs in.) I make a basket once a year on Palm Sunday (when I have the materials and have the time) just so I don't lose the skill - basketweaving is *brilliant*. Someday I'm going to get around to teaching myself how to make a pine-needle basket like the natives around here did, or sweetgrass like the prairie-dwellers in Mom's part of the country, or how to cut and soak and split the invasive bamboo that's taking over our scrublands. But gathering and learning how to work the materials is the *hard* part, alas. (Plus, do I have space for lots of pretty-but-too-lopsided-to-sell baskets? No, I have no space at all.)