Margaret's Bench -- February 2007
Making the Center
The proposal to build a courtyard at my home parish of St.
Paul’s called for sand-set pavers to be laid in the area between
the church building and the parish hall, and for the pattern of
a labyrinth to be inlaid in the paved floor, offering a place of
meditation for both parish and town.
The labyrinth paths would
be made of cobblestone-type pavers. Diane, a parish artist, took
charge of designing and making the rosette center. She
envisioned a mosaic made out of beach stones embedded in mortar.
The colors chosen for the mosaic – black, gray, white, pink, and
red – are common in the tumble of basalt, quartz, granite, and
brick on the beaches of our peninsula, so the stones could be
collected by parishioners on our beach walks. As soon as the
courtyard proposal was approved, Diane placed color-coded bins
outside the Parish Hall. Over the weeks and months it took to
hammer out just exactly how the ideas in the proposal could be
made real, those bins gradually filled with smooth colored
stones.
And it just so happened that over those same weeks and months,
my parish fell into one of the fiery pits of internal
political turmoil that church families do fall into from time to
time. During the course of “The Troubles” (as the period came to
be known by those of us who lived through it) the rector
resigned, the vestry turned over and over in waves of
resignations, and at times the rest of us seemed to lose our
capacity to walk together on any path.
Yet as a new vestry’s spring turned toward summer without any
new resignations, and themes of forgiveness and reconciliation
poured down on us from soup suppers to Sunday sermons, and
Pentecost Sunday opened the door into ordinary time, and the
June week scheduled for installing the courtyard approached, it
seemed to me that the eye of the storm might have passed, and
that we might be staggering back into civilization at last.
While we missed
those who had dropped away, we’d even managed to welcome a few
newcomers who seemed willing to stick with us.
Finally, installation week for the courtyard arrived. Site
preparation took a day and a half. Then our army of parish
volunteers began to lay pavers, starting with the labyrinth’s
inmost circular path and working out.
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St. Paul’s
Episcopal Church of Port Townsend/Keith Fleming
photographer |
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At the same time, off to one side under the Parish Hall porch
roof, Diane and her team began to make the pieces for the
rosette center, creating the mosaic upside-down on a big piece
of plywood.
First, they built forms out of flexible plastic weed barrier,
fastening the forms to the plywood with screws. Then they poured
and leveled sand inside the forms, measuring the depth of the
exposed form to exactly the depth of the labyrinth’s empty
center.
Next, they created the mosaic design by placing the colored
beach stones in the form, turning each stone face-down, so that
the side they wanted to show lay hidden in the sand.
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Photo by Pamela Armstrong |
When all the stones were placed, they mixed cement and poured it
on top.
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St.
Paul’s Episcopal Church of Port Townsend
Keith Fleming
photographer |
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My job was with the pavers and the labyrinth paths. Still, I
kept sneaking peeks at the work on the center, thrilled and
delighted at each step in the artistic process, right up to the
moment they smoothed off the poured cement, and the completed,
upside-down mosaic lay hidden under hardening gray slabs. That’s
when I started to feel a little sick. Because that’s when I
started to think about everything that could go wrong.
What if pouring the heavy cement had moved the stones around and
messed up the design? No way of knowing until the pieces were
strong enough to be turned over, at which point the stones would
be fixed in place.
What if the cement had completely enclosed the stones, so that
when the pieces were turned over, we’d be looking at a gray slab
just like the gray slab we were looking at right now? Again, no
way of knowing until it was too late to fix.
What if the cement cured unevenly and the
pieces broke apart when they were turned over? Or what if, in
the move from the porch to the labyrinth, a piece was dropped
and broken?
What if the center didn’t fit in its empty
circle, a circle even now confined by hundreds of manually laid
pavers? Retrofitting would be a nightmare.
When I let some of those fears spill out to
Diane, she shrugged and said, “If it doesn’t work, we can just
do it over.” I nodded. Of course that was true. Thanks to weeks
of nagging at announcement time during services, the parish had
gathered and donated heaps and heaps of beach stones. There were
plenty left over for a second try, or a third, or even a fourth.
And bags of cement were cheap.
So why didn’t I feel any better? As long as I could see the
beautiful stones, somehow, I had faith in the process. It was
only when the stones were hidden, and we had to wait, that all
the What if’s began to roll and rattle around inside my skull.
We went back to laying pavers for the labyrinth, circle by
circle, filling in the space. Some parishioners hauled pavers
from the delivery flats to the courtyard space. Others laid them
in ever-widening circles. A few experts cut and laid pavers to
fit in the labyrinth turns. Compared to even just a few months
ago, relations within the parish were greatly improved. Still,
even now, I sensed how I picked my way through the twists and
turns of working together as a team, testing which relationships
were strong, which in need of repair. I remembered back to the
height of the firestorm, when I’d feared that this historic
family parish might truly break apart, with big chunks of
spirit, talent, and energy spinning away in the whirlwind,
leaving behind a small, exhausted, and mortally-wounded remnant.
It hadn’t happened. Still, I found myself
obsessing about the moment when the labyrinth center would be
turned over. Again and again in my mind’s eye, I saw the pieces
made with such care and love to fit together in beauty, instead,
fall apart in stress. The image filled me with dismay.
More pavers. More circles. More turns. Though
firm to the touch after only a few hours, the cement in the
center wouldn’t be strong enough to turn over until it had cured
at least a full day. Diane and I didn’t talk anymore about what
might go wrong, or even what might go right. I figured she had
plenty of artist-type stress going on without my heavy political
symbolism piled on top of it.
Finally, the next afternoon, Diane and her
team removed the weed-barrier forms and turned over the pieces.
Each one made its revolution whole. Then they washed off the
sand, and a beautiful flower surfaced in the clinging cement. We
laughed and clapped. Diane hugged me and everyone else. Tears
were shed.
Each heavy piece was carried down to the
labyrinth and carefully placed it in its allotted spot in the
empty center. All the pieces fit perfectly.
Then we got back to work, filling in the
spaces between the center pieces, hauling and laying the last of
the pavers, embedding beach stones at the labyrinth turns.
Completing the courtyard.
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Photo by Greg
Frederick
Center and turns of the Courtyard of All Souls.
Center created
by
Diane Roberts, Arlene Nesbitt, and John Liczwinko,
with
the help of many others at St. Paul’s.
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I started writing this piece thinking, What a
strange kind of faith it took to make that center! Faith that
allowed for the design to be fully formed, then hidden, and
finally revealed in a way that held considerable risk for the
outcome.
During the writing, my perspective changed.
Remembering how my fears about the center were linked to our
parish troubles reminded me in turn of how
uncertain we’d been throughout that time, right to the end and
beyond. How blind we felt to the future. How even now, three
years later, we still find pieces to turn over, revealing a pattern laid down long ago.
So maybe it isn’t such a strange kind of
faith that makes the center as the very last piece to fit into
the labyrinth puzzle. And that makes it upside-down, with risk
built right in the process — and with the beautiful design hidden
right to the end. The way a fetus lies hidden in the womb. The
way a body lies hidden in the grave. The way tomorrow lies
hidden in today.
-- Margaret
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