Easter reconsidered

The Sanctuary overlooking Seven Hills Park

We've lived at the Sanctuary for six months now. Last December I hadn't thought much about the idea of the Christmas holiday in our home, once a church. Christmas can have such a non-denominational feel to it, and our home became a place for celebrating with family and friends, not for religious worship. Even when I sat quietly, the solitary connection that I sometimes felt in nature--or in church--was never present. However, Easter felt the opposite.

Spring came early to Seattle. In a matter of days it seemed like every flower had bloomed. A daffodil planted outside my door blossomed so quickly that I suspect it was relocated from the hospital room across the street rather than thrown in the trash. The road out-front is lined with cherry trees, the tissue-paper pink flowers floating on the breeze like snow.

Someone knocked on my front door last week to inquire about services, wanting to look around the church. I'm surprised that that still happens. Our building is starting to look like a residence as spring temperatures in the 60s lead to BBQs at Seven Hills Park next door. A Key Lime umbrella tops off my neighbor's roof patio on the southeast corner of the church. The community garden below can barely contain the frenzy of activity as the winter hay is removed and the heirloom tomato stakes go up. Families spread blankets and scattered colored eggs in the park for local kids to collect. My pugs and I sat quietly and took it all in (OK, you're right. Pugs don't ever sit quietly unless they're asleep-- but they dozed off and on in the sun with me).

My studio loft

And, I was filled with the mood that Easter brings, the Easter of my Catholic childhood, the Easter promises of life and hope. The idea of a new start, in a new place, and that little jump your heart makes when its happy and at peace. I find that peace inside our home now, mostly when I'm working or painting in our loft space. The thirty-foot ceiling overhead, and the indirect light from the stained glass window, lends a serenity to the space and makes me feel creative. I've been working on a painting that captures the feeling of spring, if just a little. Both the church space and my personal space seem to belong here, together.

The Christening

What kind of housewarming party is appropriate when you move into a church? The church's groundbreaking began in 1909 and, according to a 2012 article on church conversions in TheSeattle Times, it needed three services to celebrate the completion of its sanctuary on June 7, 1914. The Seattle Times reported, "Following the unostentatious custom of the Scientists, there will be no joy-making." There would, however, be music from the church's new organ, but it would not, the Times assured, be "blaring music" nor would there be any "speechmaking."

We closed on our townhome in early August of 2012. God bless our moving company because they’d stuck with me as the closing date shifted three times. One of the movers paused in our main living room and remarked to me how odd it felt to be back in the very church he had attended as a child. His parents had been members of First Church, Christ Scientist. He mentioned he liked it better as a home than a church. I’m sure there’s a story behind that.

Our home’s christening needed to be much more lively than the original 1914 snoozer, which was said to have featured two readings, a Biblical passage, along with a scientific passage written by the church’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy. So then, what better to honor the era of enlightenment, from the 1900s to the 1920s, than a Speakeasy Housewarming!

A red carpet lined the main steps up to the double doors of The Sanctuary. We hired a 1920s-style jazz band and a couple of dance instructors to teach our guests the Lindy Hop and Charleston. Roaming characters (Amelia Earhart and a gangster with his moll) mingled with our costumed friends. We played silent movies in the media room on a loop and set up a 1920s Paper Moon photo backdrop.

I’m including the steps to build the same backdrop below. Early in my career I worked in the promotions department of a South Florida television station. Back when career path meant less to me than having fun on the job, I was lucky enough to occasionally build fake movie sets on a dime (Styrofoam headstones for Horror Week and a little city for Godzilla Theater).

On a whim, one evening when my husband and I were awake at 3am from jetlag, we decided we should build the 1920s Paper Moon photo backdrop. For an IT VP, he is a surprisingly gifted carpenter! Here are the steps and some photos:

1.     Measure your space. (We used the entrance hall downstairs and draped the room in black cloth)

2.     Create the art. Find a paper moon sketch on the Internet (line art works best). Use any drawing program to add the outline of the face. Google for some 1920 postcards to use as a reference art.

3.     Copy line art outline to plywood. We used a projector, but you might also sketch a grid a recreate the design on the larger board. We lined up two plywood boards that were about 6’ x 10’ and traced the moon outline onto them- we’d connect them later. Working with the moon image projected on its side, the majority of the moon shape was cut out, with the tips cut from the second sheet of plywood. We then attached the ends and braced the moon together on the reverse side.

4.     Inset any bracing screws and putty over them.

5.     Paint the moon a pale yellow.

6.     Paint the darker brown shadows for the face, eyes nose and mouth  (it may help to know someone artistic for this part).

7.     Paint the details of the face. Add highlights to lips and eyes

8.     Purchase a large black photo backdrop—ours was 10’ x 20’ for the wall and a second 6’x10’ for the bench

9.     Add stars and clouds using an ivory paint and sponges. I used one shaped like a star and added the clouds by blotting the sponge, heavily loaded with paint.

10. Build the bench. We used some 2 x 4s to build a seat. Spray paint the bench black.

11. Drape the smaller black backdrop (unpainted) over the bench and attach it (with screws) to the moon. You’ll need to add some cross braces to the back to hold the moon upright. Putty over any visible screws and touch up the front side of the moon.

12.  Set up a camera with a self-timer and let the fun begin! Post the photos online so your guests can download after the party.

Don't know much about history: The story of the pew

The Pew & the Pug

“Don't know much about history”, but I've always loved the song ((What A) Wonderful World--the version by Art Garfunkel with James Taylor and Paul Simon). It pops into my mind whenever I spy an unusual architectural element in our restored church townhome.

There's a “BELIEVETH” sign, high above the reclaimed oak stairs that lead out of our common lobby to the streets of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Underneath that same staircase is what I like to call the 'door-to-nowhere'. It's the original interior door for the classical revival style architecture of the First Church, Christ Scientist-- back in the days when our home was still a church. For the Sanctuary Townhome project, the main lobby entrance stairs were built from the church pews, with open risers, so it's possible to look through those stairs to what lies beyond. And, what lies beyond, is an ornately carved wood door, but no way to access it. Just a blocked off space, kind of cool, kind of creepy, and a big collector of dust bunnies.

I pretty sure that what is actually behind the door-to-nowhere is actually a somewhere-- our media room. But, I'll have to find the original architectural drawings to be sure. Inside our media room you'd find the most interesting element for me, the end cap of one of the original church pews. The most costly part of the pew is the end cap and side panel. Our builders re-used this portion of golden-stained oak to create a divider at the top of a small set of stairs leading into our media room.

Sadly, it is also a favorite spot for my rescue pug, Flynn. To mark, that is. Both the pew, and the pee-u, has a history that I often wonder about. We adopted Flynn from Seattle Pug Rescue about a year-and-a-half back. He seemed friendly, if shy. And, he comes with some very odd behavior, mostly involving spinning and barking. I hired a trainer to help, and she did, a little. She says that you never know the history of rescues. You get what you get. We got a barker and a marker.

But sometimes I let my mind wander, to wonder about where the pug lived for his first eight years, and what he experienced.  I have similar thoughts when I run my fingers over the scrolls of the pew end cap. Who else might have done the same? What were they thinking, or praying, or hoping, in the early 1900s; in a church emphasizing divine healing over modern medicine. The pug has eight years and the pew has one hundred. And, I wonder a great many things about them both.

Why live in a Church?

Not many people are aware that before my mother married and had six children, she was a nun. She'd correct me on this, as technically, she was a "novice". Now, if you've met my mother, you'd understand she's not a novice at anything. Either she does, or she doesn't. Period.

Mom entered the convent directly after high school. She had lost her own mom at an early age, and with no siblings, the sisters were the closest thing she had to family-- apart from a mostly-angry Irish father. Apparently, the convent is the best training ground for learning how to clean anything thoroughly, and to cook for any group of twenty or more. I'm pretty sure both these skills meshed perfectly with being the mother of six.

I once took apart an old picture frame while helping her sort out Goodwill donations. Behind the cardboard backing was the only photo that I've ever seen of mom in the nun's habit. It's one thing to know the story of your mother and the convent, but quite the shock to see the white veil and dark cloak of a then twenty-year-old mom, posed alongside her stern-faced father.

I've spent thirteen years in Catholic school in order to call myself a non-denominational believer in a greater power. My feelings about religion are complex. Churches, however, inspire a great sense of awe in me. Always have, always will. They are special places--filled with hopes and sorrows of generations of the faithful. They are architectural treasures of stained glass windows, soaring ceilings, reflective arches, scrolled woodworking, and cool marble.

When I first saw The Sanctuary Project, it was still being called The First Church Townhome Project. It was 2008, and I'd read an article in the local Seattle paper about a church conversion project that was to be sold as residences. The original architect took me through the empty building for a hard-hat tour. The interior had no natural light and was stripped to the shell. Cold and dark, aside from the vast volume of space, the inside was hard to imagine as the future homes of 12 families.

The original 20-foot high stained glass windows remained from the early 1900s, designed with geometrical patterns of leaded rectangles filled with bright blues and amber colors. And here's the thing--no religious icons at all. No Jesus, no Mary, no disciples. The images that I connect strongly with the experience of Catholic mass were not a part of the stained glass of this structure. I was intrigued with the idea of being in such a space.

I'd go on to see the property four additional times before deciding it was the perfect place to live.