Be Not Idle

I was an insomniac last night, so I saw the snow accumulating outside. The flakes were too fine to see in the dark, but they had a faint luster when gathered together on the ground. I flicked on the porch light at about 2 am.  The snow melted on the residual heat of the yard, but it had transformed the walk, drive and road into gleaming white paths.

A few inches covered everything when I rose. (Late in the morning, I must add.) I pulled on my gloves and grabbed shovel and broom. While working, I finally saw a few black squirrels.  Something must have gotten a taste for squirrelmeat, because over the course of a few weeks this fall, the neighborhood and the nearby town seemed deserted.  A young, skinny Eastern Gray squirrel began frequenting my yard a few weeks ago, but he was a regular gray, not the black variation that usually dominates. 

Note to regular readers: I recognize the irony of missing the very squirrels that pillaged birdfeeders and reduced suet blocks to claw-scraped nuggets last winter.  It just proves the old adage (and Hair Metal song chorus): You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. 

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Catholic, Reluctantlyby Christian M. Frank is the first book in a series called John Paul 2 High.  Seven teens form a brand-new Catholic high school in a decrepit building. In some respects, it’s a simple story: boy meets girl, boy and girl embrace their faith (and perhaps each other – but this is NOT a kissing book). 

There are also subplots involving a sabateur out to destroy the fledging school, a sinister classmate who is brilliant yet cruel, a gun-toting masked man, and wrestling team rivalry.  And that’s not counting the crickets… which I wouldn’t even attempt with a calculator.

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On St. Stephen’s Day, I tend toward introspection. It’s natural; nearly everyone has gone home, and there’s a relaxed (some might say exhausted) atmosphere. I imagine that between Christmas and December 30th, many people write their New Year’s resolutions.

And then the end-of-year bank statements and tax documents come… There’s some miserable introspection, right there.

But the one thing that can be counted on, at least in my family, is that people are civil enough not to write each other’s resolutions. So Uncle Luigi won’t be handing a copy of The Midwestern Beach Eating Regimen  to Aunt Vanna. And Cousin Vita won’t be giving her daughter Lucia the phone number of a very good divorce attorney.

So I understand the bee in the Anchoress’s bonnet over a column by Jamie Lee Curtis. The American actress writes that the current financial crisis will “bring us into financial alignment. Families may have to live together again! What a concept. (…) Neighbors are going to meal share and carpool and child care for each other and maybe even rent out parts of homes to other families. Less meat, more beans. Might be better for you anyway.”

I don’t know what is worse: that Ms. Curtis wrote a column with three references to fiction and very little about economic reality, or that 30% of the piece was written by John Steinbeck. (What a hard-working dead man!)

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Although its the middle of Advent, this week is the first time it’s felt like Christmas is approaching. It’s not because I unpacked the Christmas tree. I haven’t. And the Nativity is still in its box until this coming weekend, when a few friends are coming for nog-chugging and tree-trimming.

Partly it’s because this workweek is book-ended by Marian feast days: the Immaculate Conception and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The latter drives certain Christians up the wall, especially when they see the “worship” of Mary by Mexican immigrants. (Funny how Shakespeare used “pray” as “ask/petition”, but nowadays it’s a synonym for “worship”.)  

But the feeling of Advent also came over me when I took my students to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The big draw was the “From Monet to Dalí” exhibit on loan from Cleveland (including many works by Picasso and Van Gogh’s gorgeous The Plane Trees).

As usual, a couple of my students fell in love with Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals. But the universal crowd-pleaser was a temporary installation. In the courtyard before Rivera Court, long strands of small mirrors had been hung from the ceiling for the holidays. They sparkled in the sunlight from the windows, casting circles of light that drifted over the walls. A couple of my students were so enchanted that they lay down on the floor in order to take photos from below.

It was certainly pretty, but it didn’t strike me as particularly Christmassy (to use a teenager’s adjective). No, what put me in the Advent mood was when a chaperone and I were walking through the European wing and came upon Fra Angelico’s Annunciatory Angel and The Virgin Annunciate. Two Muslim women were studying the paintings, and the bright images made a sharp contrast to their dark clothing and the dull colors of stone and metal artwork in the room.

I’ve seen this image every Advent, mostly on Christmas cards. This year it also appears in Christianity Today’s Advent calendar.  But reproductions don’t do it justice. The gold leaf sparkles so that the Gabriel shines and Mary’s hair is a golden mass of light. She is looking down, thinking. In person, you realize why this image is a great work of art and not a seasonal cliché.

That’s why it reminded me of Advent.

That’s what Advent does: It makes you pay attention to real Beauty. Christmas is not a story that you dust off once a year and display, like timeworn ornaments and the bent metal star. God in all His infinite power came to live among us, so we could know Him. 

Anunciatory Angel is one of ”The Director’s Dozen”, as chosen by Graham W. J. Beal. For the complete list, click on http://www.dia.org/the_collection/directors_picks/index.asp

For more about Fra Angelico in general, and Annunciatory Angel and The Virgin Annunciate in particular (including a photo), please see The Christian Science Monitor’s article on a 2005 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1221/p18s02-hfes.html