Abide With Me

I stumbled across this today and the music in it touched a note in me so I thought I'd share it.

This kind of music always reminds me of my childhood. When I was small we attended a tiny little county church, Beldor Mennonite. It was tucked away in a very rural hollar of Virginia near Skyline Drive. My parents drove the hour each Sunday with my brother and I, and most of the time my grandmother came with us until her health prevented it. She sat in the back seat of the car, always on the right side. I was in the middle next to her and my brother on the left. She usually had candy in her purse and a tissue or handkerchief tucked in her sleeve or her dress. My parents helped the little church with some leadership and support. I remember the little white chapel building, and the sound of the voices, there were never any instruments. I remember a framed reproduction of a painting of Jesus kneeling at a rock with a light shining on his face on the front wall of the chapel. I remember the man who preached there for years, he was a gentle man. He had a round Charley Brown shaped head with laugh lines and wire rim glasses. I doubt he ever had a microphone in front of him, he didn’t need one. He always seemed gentle and loving to me, and my memories of hearing him speak are good ones. I learned to read music as a child by watching the hymnal, noticing that when the notes went up the staff, so did the voices. It was a place where I absorbed simple music and a simple genuine faith.

I remember one night when the adults were inside and I was allowed to sit outside on the steps. That night remains vivid in my memory as the evening was beautiful and a whippoorwill filled the area with song. I don’t know why that evening stays with me, but I have thought of it often over the years. It was a beautiful night out under the stars, in a place where I felt absolutely no fear. The tall trees reached up to heaven, the stars shone with a special brilliance. I was surrounded by beauty and the haunting sound of the bird’s call. Even as a little bitty child, I could sense that God was in that place. It was a little bit of heaven, and it remains a precious memory.

Later, we would attend “Weaver’s Mennonite” church where there were more voices and more harmonies in the music. My parents were relatively devout people. My Dad’s father was a Mennonite Pastor, my Mother wore the covering, cape dress and black stockings in her youth. We were in church each Sunday, sometimes during the week as well. There was always lots of music, sometimes with instruments, sometimes without. It’s from this season of my childhood that I would have learned this hymn: “Abide with me.”

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

Tonight the moon is nearly full, the stars are out and I am remembering the sounds of my youth and finding comfort in these memories. This evening we sent a final email to our adoption Social Worker officially ending the process of an adoption we’ve worked at since November of 2007. The timing feels significant, this is indeed a milestone. Tomorrow I’ll be at UVA for a hysterectomy. This season of my life is concluding, I’m not going to be a mother in the literal sense. There is some sadness surfacing, these milestones are not without their grief. But I am not afraid. He will abide with me, sometimes I may even manage to sense Him nearby. There is a big opal moon, some bright stars and the stillness and beauty of the night. I may be alone, but He abides with me.

Some Photos From Shenandoah Moon.

I made the rag doll this little girl is holding. The Brown family was thrown out of their home by the CCC to make way for the Skyline Drive.

I don't have many on stage photos. They were taken, they just aren't available yet. So I'm still hoping to get ahold of some.
That's me about to "bust a baby any day now." (before we changed the costume a little bit, this photo is from final dress.)
This is an intense scene. The guy standing over me is really a charming man but this scene is full of his character's rage. He says something horrible and I go to this guy for comfort:

They fight some more and then this is the last moment before the lights go out on us:

I think this must be a shot of our closing song but it's before the bows so I'm not really sure when it was taken. I'm the forth little bitty face dot from the right. It was a huge cast, some thirty people or so.

All the info you could possibly want and then some: here.

Update

Well I’m playing “catch up” here today. I’ve been out of the studio the last ten days with a whirlwind of activity and adventure. We had a demanding rehearsal and show schedule for Shenandoah Moon with double tech the Saturday before Easter and then dress rehearsals, the show and a series of cast parties plus the final strike. It was an amazing experience and I am now hooked on community theater. I want to do this again!

This Saturday I hosted my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration. It was a beautiful event and I made the wedding cake. I left a little early after the party in order to go perform but there were others who stayed to help clean up. It was fun to connect with friends of my family who have known me from when I was a wee little girl.

I hope to be posting photos and telling the tales soon, but for now I think a nap is very much in order.

Shenandoah Moon Quilt

Yesterday I started a project that has been running around in my head quite a bit. I’ve done some research into the people who were displaced by the building of the Skyline Drive here in Virginia back in the day. (All brought on by the production of Shenandoah Moon that I’m in.) And I’ve struggled with it some because I am not crazy about some of these old colors but I wanted to keep a kind of old fashioned feel to the elements. I used two of my fabrics dyed with fabric paints for the sky and moon - that ended up being kind of an interesting combination. I found some photographs on the Library of Congress site of the actual folks and a photo of a cabin as well. I printed them out on fabric and gave them some quality time with my iron to set the ink. The woman is as close as I could come to a photo of someone that would look like my character should look. The little cabin kind of looks like a tombstone, which I didn't intend but I don't mind.

So I started by fusing up some fabric and starting to play around with the options. It came together fairly easily and before long I was digging around in my box of vintage lace for something that looked really old that I could use to suggest fog. It’s been foggy here in the mornings for the last few days and I remember that when we lived on the mountain many mornings would find the valley below us fogged in nicely with the folds of the mountains showing above the blanket of fog. I happened to find an ancient bit of ultra fine cotton, very worn and stained in places with freyed edges. It was a nice addition.

I got everything fused down and started with some machine quilting. I toyed with the idea of adding an apple tree, since the people who left had to leave their orchards as well, the government took their homes and their profession away from them. I debated and considered… and then took the iron to that tree and that was that.

A bunch more quilting and then I started into some hand quilting and I’ve been adding some buttons to suggest the apples and I don’t know what else I’ll add. I have a small bag of vintage buttons that I’m using, there are some really cool ones in here!

I’m babysitting a gallery today so it is unlikely that I’ll get much more done. Who knows. I would love to finish the binding today but I don't know when I'd fit it in with everything else. We'll see.