I stand here ironing

Noon today, and I am standing in my kitchen with an ironing board, three chairs, a large cardboard tube, and a very, very long white linen cloth, warm out of the dryer and rumpled like the surface of a lamb's soft fleece.  This cloth, my sweet nemesis, is an altar cloth (or "fair linen") I just borrowed for the morning from the neighborhood Episcopal church along with several other small linens--4 napkins ("purificators"), a miniature tablecloth ("corporal"), and a towel ("towel") for the lavabo (handwashing of the priest).  It was my turn as an ordained member of our seminary community to celebrate the Eucharist, and since I am still relatively new here (just beginning my second year), I wanted to share some of the special things we would use in a typical Episcopal liturgy.

The day before, I picked up these well loved linens.  They were pristine, carefully folded and pressed, embroidered with white-on-white crosses and "IHS" symbols in tiny, eyesight straining stitches.  The small items were sweet and friendly, but the fair linen was another matter!  Yards and yards of bleached, crisply starched fabric were rolled around the large cardboard tube, taped down to keep from slipping, and swathed in heavy plastic wrap.  I lifted the package from its perch on a high sacristy shelf, and cradled it in my arms to take back to the seminary.  "I'll take good care of you," I promised.  The plastic wrap crackled a protective reply: "You'd better!"

Got the beast to the chapel.  Unwrapped the plastic.  Peeled off three tapes.  Found three more and peeled again.  Laid the tube on the altar, and realized that it was too wide.  Maybe it could hang over the front and back a bit?

Unfurled the cloth across the simple wooden altar, and centered it.  With about 6 inches hanging over the front, it looked like a hospital gurney.  Both ends rolled out and puddled on the floor - more than twice the length of the altar and quickly proving to be incorrigible.

The cloth slipped twice as I tried to adjust the front hem to sit neatly at the edge of the altar, skewing first left and then right, leaving creases in the starched landscape across the altar.  Dreading more creases, I folded the cloth in half lengthwise, then rolled one end back to the center of the altar, leaving a neat rounded fold on one end of the altar.  Before any more sliding could occur, I anchored both ends with hurricane candles.  (I know, candles should be beside the altar, not on it... but compromises must be made!)  Placing the corporal in the middle of the table hid the loose end, and we were more or less in business.  The view from the pews wasn't half bad.

The service itself was beautiful.  We had a wonderful, unusual instrumental ensemble comprised of flute, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and cello, playing a Eucharistic setting based on American agricultural folk tunes ("Of the Land and Seasons," written by my Gettysburg, PA friends and colleagues Steve and Beth Folkemer).  The candles shed a soft light on the snowy altar cloth, and the liturgy went seamlessly and gracefully.  I knew, though, that I  might be in big trouble with the neighboring church's altar guild as the pouring of wine and grape juice proceeded, and inevitably, red and purple stains began to bloom on the linens.  At the end of the service, I surveyed the wreckage.  It looked like a great, jolly picnic had happened, with the remnants of a rowdy family spilling droplets of wine from merrily tilted glasses, and napkins receiving kisses of grapes and berries.

So home I went, with the napkins, the altar cloth, the tube, and the plastic.  The plastic rustled ominously as I stuffed it in the back seat.  It was clearly displeased.  I crunched it into a place on a kitchen chair.  "Just watch," I said.  I'd never been on an altar guild, but I had certainly been trained over many years by a number of those holy women (and a few men), learning everything from getting wax off a tablecloth, to mending a patch in an embroidered cushion, to understanding how the handling of chalices, cloths, and other holy things can be a profound discipline of prayer.  I had been taught to fold, fluff, press, and most important, de-stain, from the best teachers!

Out came the "Wine-Out" stain remover, a toothbrush, a hairdryer, and the ironing board with a row of chairs upon which to stretch out the cloth.  As I sprayed on the Wine-Out, I watched in horror and fascination as the stains turned from watery purple to bright turquoise.  Oh, words-that-should-not-come-out-of-a-priest's-mouth!!  Visions of furious altar guild ladies danced in my head.  I had planned to simply wash the spots and blow dry them, but clearly that plan was no good.  So crossing my fingers, I put everything in the washer, and then the dryer.  Lo and behold, all the spots were gone, except for one faint circle of palest blue, like a contact lens resting on the white linen.  I decided to live with it.  The plastic shifted on its seat and merely sighed.


So I stand here ironing.  Balancing the cardboard tube between kitchen counter and chair back, I iron the first three feet.  Tape to the tube in three places.  Start to roll.  Move the ironing board under one side, and then the other until all the fleecy surface is flattened.  Gradually, there is more acreage on the tube.  The far end slips off the farthest chair, and then the next, and finally with more passes of the iron, more shifting of the ironing board, and more twists of the tube, the fair linen is rolled back up, a little more pillowy than the way I received it, but respectable.  It's no longer stiff with starch, but the old cloth is soft and smooth as silk.  The plastic opens its mouth and meekly receives the roll, ready for transport back to the church.

It's a humble task, ironing.  Meditative, even, if you're in the right mood.  Ironing took the essayist Tillie Olsen deep into reverie ("I Stand Here Ironing") about her life as a woman, a mother, struggling to make ends meet, dead tired on her feet, yet ministering to her daughter's dress with patience and grace.  I, too, am a mother, with a daughter, 19 years old, recently back at college.  I, too, worry sometimes about the kind of parent I've been, and want now to be.  As her college community grapples this week with the pain and fear of a murder of a young woman in a campus science lab, and colleges across the country cope with a growing flu epidemic, I yearn to wrap my daughter up in some kind of protective sheeting.  To hold her close, wrap her tight, and keep her from any fall of rain, of fear, of harm.  As I iron the fair linen, I am loving it, and, I realize, I am making good, and making reparation.  Making good, by gently caring for this cloth that received the body and blood of  Christ this morning in community; making good on my promise to the local church that I would return its precious linens in the same good condition I received them; making reparation for the stains our joyful feast left on the cloth; and perhaps even making symbolic reparation for whatever stains I have left elsewhere, with those I love, with the world.  I know we cannot perfectly protect anything - not linens, and certainly not our children.  The iron moving back and forth sends up chuffs of steam like prayers: Thank you, God, for the gift of your presence in bread and wine, in community and song, in mothers and daughters, and in the love we have together in this life.  Wrap us in your care, even as we do our best to care for one another.  Amen.