During a normal fall, by mid-October I would be near my wit’s end getting several ensembles prepared for one of our biggest feast days of the year. Reformation is one of the days I can always get a lot of people involved – handbell ringers, instrumentalists, adult singers, children, etc., and I don’t have to compete with holiday or spring break travel plans like I normally would for Christmas or Easter. And I love the opportunity to show off the massive amount of talent we have at Lord of Life!
Of course this fall, I haven’t been able to rehearse with any ensembles at all, and I wanted to find other ways to help make worship special. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I taught myself to sew so I could make myself some masks to wear. Since I had a new skill to work with, I thought I’d try my hand at making some new worship adornments for worship.
Every Sunday, one of the things our volunteers do to set up for communion is to make sure that the paraments – the fabric decorations that hang in front of the altar and lectern – match the Sunday and Season we are celebrating. During the long summer months, they are green. During Advent, they are blue, during Lent, they are purple. On Christ the King Sunday, Christmas, Easter and the following Sundays of Easter, they are White. There are a handful of Sundays and feast days throughout the church year in which the appropriate color is red. These include Palm Sunday, Pentecost, Saint days, and, for Lutherans, Reformation Sunday.
Red is the color we associate with the fire of Pentecost and the blood of Martyrs. As I thought about what that meant for a parament we would use throughout the year, I wanted to create an area focused on God – the white circle. You could think of it as a meditation or a contemplation point, and I tried to draw the eye into it with the spirals of rope. The inner white circle is surrounded by several interlocking circles of God’s incarnation in the world – the fire of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ. The resulting pattern is busy and complicated, just like the world, but I still wanted to add more.
As I thought of ways to add to the design and stay true to my theme, I thought of some of the artistic talent we have at Lord of Life – glass artist Rick Ponton and ceramic artist Maria Hupp. Both made beads in their respective mediums, which I thought beautifully represented the way we continue to be stewards of God’s creation and reform the world.
As our Share the Light campaign continues to reform our space, there will be more opportunities to bring our talents together to make our worship more meaningful. If you have talents you’d like to share, we’d love to know about them!
Yours in Christ,
John Johns, Music Director