Dollhouse

This is the part of my job I enjoy the most. It's four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and no one is here but me. That's not quite true; the organist is in the church practicing her Christmas Eve music and I am on the other side of the wall, sitting at a computer and processing digital files of past Sundays' worship services. Luckily I don't have to listen to them, and I can listen to her play, instead.

It's starting to get dark out and it looks like winter out there: clear and calm and cold. It looks cold, colder than it really is, but it's the season for cold-looking days. I have set up all of the candles and put Harry's sculptures in front of the communion table, warm wood carvings of the Virgin and child, Joseph, the shepherds, and the three kings. Who, of course, weren't there at the birth; for years the magi were on the window ledge by the front doors on their way to Bethlehem, now they're on the floor with the rest of the gang

Harry, the sculptor, died a few days before Christmas last year, and his wife followed earlier this year. It used to be that the high point of my Christmas season was to hop into Harry's convertible and drive over to their house to pick up the art. Harry was over eighty, and the house was pushing two fifty. The house was knocked down and replaced with some lumpish megahomes.

I like his sculptures. They're not masterpieces, but they have their own integrity, they're brave, and strong, and true. They strive, they yearn, they seek. I wish the Christians I saw around here were more like them. So, me and the art and the music: peace on earth. For a little while.