(Howell Creek Radio address for February 21, 2012 -- ) # Veins of Grey and Gold I didn't leave myself much time to write this last weekend. Saturday was spent building shelves in the basement. Would you believe that nine months into our marriage Trixie is still living out of a suitcase? Well, we do have a closet or two for hanging clothes in, so that's something she has to live out of besides just a suitcase, but she certainly has no dresser to put clothes into. She also has several bins, and several dresser _drawers_ stacked on top of each other, but in form and in the great scheme of convenience these are little other than variations on the suitcase. I have a dresser, a holdover from my bachelor days, but hers was unfortunately damaged in transit from Niagara Falls, and the money to replace it has so far not bubbled to the top of our budget. This is the eternal difference between the house being 'finished' as in 'construction complete' and 'finished' as in 'fully furnished.' Trixie has not complained, or even mentioned, not having a dresser; in fact, so far from complaining, I do believe she may not even think of looking for a dresser until after some indeterminate point in the future when we have secured a coffee table and an area rug for the living room, and a nice couch-bed and a nightstand for the spare room. Which brings me back to the basement shelving. Four shelves and six and a half feet high, twelve feet long, these are the latest opening in our own newly-begun, perpetual chessgame of shifting _stuff._ With shelving in the basement, all the stuff down there can be neatly stacked rather than arranged in sectors on the concrete floor. This will in turn free up more space for the boxes now stored in the spare room, leaving the spare room ready to receive my writing desk, now in the dining room, and at some point, a couch-bed. You can about double the time required for any carpentry project, it seems to me, by stipulating that the work be performed in a ship's hold, or in a basement. Though it was beautiful and sunny outside, my experience of the sun that day was of a simple square ray of golden light angling through the high, small basement windows, tracing a short arc on the leaden concrete before dissipating into the afternoon. Trixie called to say we'd been invited to Brandon and Talitha's place for dinner with Ben and Gwen. When I was finished with the shelves, it was just time for Trixie and I to make the 45-minute drive north to their house. The sun had set, and one of those long winter twilights had begun, where you can watch the last copper orange and cyan of day fade smoothly into deep dark navy across the entire sky, from one horizon to the next, and throughout this spectrum of colour, the odd airplane with its blinking lights sailing on through the first, brightest stars of the evening. _O Quam Gloriosum Est Regnum in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes sancti_ The next day, Sunday, was even brighter than the day before, and colder. Trixie and I slept in a bit, and drove, for the first time, to mass at the Basilica of St. Mary's, probably the most beautiful and prepossessing structure in downtown Minneapolis. Trying a Sunday of worship at a Roman catholic church was one of those experiments that neither Trixie nor I would have seen ourselves making perhaps five years ago; but since we have begun to be more aware of the rites, liturgies, and sacraments which our fellow Baptists live by and practise, the ostensible ritualism of the Catholic has ceased to hold any very great concern for us. The sun was so bright that without shades, we should hardly have been able to find our way down the walk from the parking lot to the huge front steps and massive doors of the Basilica. I was entranced by the music, as I had expected to be: simple calls and responses, as variously coloured as the stained-glass windows, woven a few bars at a time between the spoken parts of the service, and book-ended by two hymns accompanied by piano and guitar. I was reminded jarringly of still-unavoidable differences in perspective between myself and the catholic, such as the dualistic divide between the priest, who dispenses grace, and everyone else, the "ordinary" lay people. But then too, every week in the Eucharist, rather than everyone remaining comfortable seated and separate and letting the ushers serve them on silver platters as happens in a Baptist service, everyone leaves their seat and gathers at the front to receive the bread and the cup together, which we found refreshing, though we declined to participate out of courtesy. Just as the sermon is often the least-engaging part of the Protestant service, the blandest part of the mass was the homily, which centered around the history and operations of some guest mission organization. The low midday winter sun streaming in behind us through the giant rose window lit up a thousand mysterious details in the sanctuary, in both grey stone carvings and in gilded glass; and it lit up this little man explaining how many staff were in his group back in New York. Even though the Gospel was just as obscured in the mysteries of Rome as it is in the rites of the Independent Baptists, there was at least in the soaring stone columns and jewel-coloured windows an element of general revelation that might help to draw the soul home by attraction, as does a light-house a ship making for harbour. This is the true function of every church organization, to serve not only as a prizm for the light that lighteth all mankind, but also as a mere front for the network or foundation of disciples that is hidden in plain sight, to lend the simple and the good a thin veil (or sometimes an heavy, thick coat) of banal formality. * * * Synopsis -------------- An afternoon spent in the basement, a morning spent in the Basilica. Music cues are, in order: [_O Quam Gloriosum Est Regnum_][1] by Victoria, and [_Here Comes The Sun_][2] covered by Yo Yo Ma and James Taylor. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00160ZJMM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00160ZJMM [2]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001HDX0YC/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001HDX0YC