Depradations and the Moravian Star
Yesterday afternoon the rector was having dental work, and the part-time secretary's hours were over. I should have been writing. But being alone on the property makes me antsy--people are often knocking on the rectory door looking for help (since it's closer to the 30,000 vehicles a day than the office door is). It's an interruption even when officers or employees of the church are here, and when they're not it's even more problematic--I don't have the authority to sign grocery or motor court vouchers; I can't turn anyone's power back on.
I also know about the three nuns, two pastors, one's pastor's wife, and a priest murdered in or around their housing just in the past few years, in the U.S. (four of them in Virginia alone), so I'm leery of answering the door in the first place. I get freaked out when, as at 2:36 this morning, miscreants ring the bell in the freestanding belltower between the church buildings and drive away. The rector always has to go outside and make sure they haven't set any fires or left a baby (as in that episode of M*A*S*H). They broke into the office a few Decembers ago. So while the rector went to the dentist, I fled to the nearest mall. By the time I got back, it was nearly dark and the Big Wind had split two points off our Moravian star.
The irony of being sad about the star when I was just coming back from being uncharitable does not escape me.
But salvagejob has asked, via Facebook--well, when I posted that the star had lost two points she replied with two question marks; I take it this means, "What's a Moravian star losing two points? Is it like the Dow?"
When I was a child and there were coyotes in Virginia, the posher houses--not our rancher, but the big 1890's houses from W-----'s days as a mountain resort with lithia springs--had Moravian stars at Christmas. W-------'s rectory and all the other houses along the brick sidewalks of Church Street had enormous wraparound porches, their ceilings painted sky-blue. They were porches for Gibson girls to lounge about on while beaux in high collars serenaded them with ukeleles. In winter the porch swings were chained up but the Moravian stars came out. They would replace the usual porch lights hanging over the front doors, and apart from maybe a few candles in the windows and genuine evergreens, the only decoration these houses had were these stars, these singular mysterious luminous polyhedrons.
I thought they were ravishing. They weren't for sale at the drugstore or hardware store, not even at the mall in R-------. "Where do people get those stars?" I would ask, and the answer was always, "A salesman came through some years ago." The implication was, "with Halley's comet." He had come through long ago and we would not see his like again. (Halley's comet did come back, and the college astronomy professor, Dr. Hwu, set a telescope up in the parking lot so anyone who wanted to could see the comet. We waited in a long, long, line in the cold and even through the telescope the comet was a disappointment, a miniscule dust mouse. The Moravian stars, with all their sharp edges and reliable reappearances, had more to do with the music of the spheres.)
The Moravians are an early-rising Protestant denomination, founded in Bohemia, that settled in North Carolina in the eighteenth century. (The town of W------, not far from the Virginia-Carolina border, was also not far from the Moravian schools and museums of Old Salem, a sort of Colonial Williamsburg of Moravianism.) Moravians had a gentling effect on John Wesley, who had a tendency to go off the deep end (in case you think I've strayed too far from the rectory theme, Wesley was priesting it in the colonies and proposed to a woman who turned him down. He got so mad he refused her communion--and as turning down a marriage proposal is not an excommunicable offense in Anglicanism, he got kicked out of wherever he was and was freaking out on the boat ride home, thinking he was about to drown, when some kindly Moravians calmed him.)
Thin, crisp, gingery Moravian cookies are also a big Carolina-border-Christmas thing. When I was a decadent MFA student in Greensboro, lolling about on wraparound porches while guys in hemp hoodies serenaded us with kalimbas, we'd sometimes jaunt over to Old Salem to buy cookies and ogle the colonially-costumed baker hunk who worked the big stone ovens. Moravian stars are all over North Carolina.
The Moravian star was developed in the 1830's as a geometry-teaching tool--it's a bunch of polyhedrons, a big spiny symmetrical hedgehog of a star. It's for Advent as well as Christmas, so I don't feel guilty for putting it up before the 24th. I found one at a Christmas store in Richmond, and when we finally got a rectory with a porch (not wraparound, or even with rocking room, but at least with a roof)I was pround to put it up. The only other one I have seen as far north as we are now belongs to a former Moravian pastor, 14 miles south of here. It may have been the northernmost Moravian star.
I think it's reparable, but am waiting till the cold breaks and the wind dies down.
I also know about the three nuns, two pastors, one's pastor's wife, and a priest murdered in or around their housing just in the past few years, in the U.S. (four of them in Virginia alone), so I'm leery of answering the door in the first place. I get freaked out when, as at 2:36 this morning, miscreants ring the bell in the freestanding belltower between the church buildings and drive away. The rector always has to go outside and make sure they haven't set any fires or left a baby (as in that episode of M*A*S*H). They broke into the office a few Decembers ago. So while the rector went to the dentist, I fled to the nearest mall. By the time I got back, it was nearly dark and the Big Wind had split two points off our Moravian star.
The irony of being sad about the star when I was just coming back from being uncharitable does not escape me.
But salvagejob has asked, via Facebook--well, when I posted that the star had lost two points she replied with two question marks; I take it this means, "What's a Moravian star losing two points? Is it like the Dow?"
When I was a child and there were coyotes in Virginia, the posher houses--not our rancher, but the big 1890's houses from W-----'s days as a mountain resort with lithia springs--had Moravian stars at Christmas. W-------'s rectory and all the other houses along the brick sidewalks of Church Street had enormous wraparound porches, their ceilings painted sky-blue. They were porches for Gibson girls to lounge about on while beaux in high collars serenaded them with ukeleles. In winter the porch swings were chained up but the Moravian stars came out. They would replace the usual porch lights hanging over the front doors, and apart from maybe a few candles in the windows and genuine evergreens, the only decoration these houses had were these stars, these singular mysterious luminous polyhedrons.
I thought they were ravishing. They weren't for sale at the drugstore or hardware store, not even at the mall in R-------. "Where do people get those stars?" I would ask, and the answer was always, "A salesman came through some years ago." The implication was, "with Halley's comet." He had come through long ago and we would not see his like again. (Halley's comet did come back, and the college astronomy professor, Dr. Hwu, set a telescope up in the parking lot so anyone who wanted to could see the comet. We waited in a long, long, line in the cold and even through the telescope the comet was a disappointment, a miniscule dust mouse. The Moravian stars, with all their sharp edges and reliable reappearances, had more to do with the music of the spheres.)
The Moravians are an early-rising Protestant denomination, founded in Bohemia, that settled in North Carolina in the eighteenth century. (The town of W------, not far from the Virginia-Carolina border, was also not far from the Moravian schools and museums of Old Salem, a sort of Colonial Williamsburg of Moravianism.) Moravians had a gentling effect on John Wesley, who had a tendency to go off the deep end (in case you think I've strayed too far from the rectory theme, Wesley was priesting it in the colonies and proposed to a woman who turned him down. He got so mad he refused her communion--and as turning down a marriage proposal is not an excommunicable offense in Anglicanism, he got kicked out of wherever he was and was freaking out on the boat ride home, thinking he was about to drown, when some kindly Moravians calmed him.)
Thin, crisp, gingery Moravian cookies are also a big Carolina-border-Christmas thing. When I was a decadent MFA student in Greensboro, lolling about on wraparound porches while guys in hemp hoodies serenaded us with kalimbas, we'd sometimes jaunt over to Old Salem to buy cookies and ogle the colonially-costumed baker hunk who worked the big stone ovens. Moravian stars are all over North Carolina.
The Moravian star was developed in the 1830's as a geometry-teaching tool--it's a bunch of polyhedrons, a big spiny symmetrical hedgehog of a star. It's for Advent as well as Christmas, so I don't feel guilty for putting it up before the 24th. I found one at a Christmas store in Richmond, and when we finally got a rectory with a porch (not wraparound, or even with rocking room, but at least with a roof)I was pround to put it up. The only other one I have seen as far north as we are now belongs to a former Moravian pastor, 14 miles south of here. It may have been the northernmost Moravian star.
I think it's reparable, but am waiting till the cold breaks and the wind dies down.