Did you ever wonder where our Sunday altars come from? They are created each month by our dedicated altar team. In this post, Maggie Ober explains their creative process.

The altar team, Cindy Mick, Michelle Goodrich, Patty Wallens and Maggie Ober, with liberal support from Leia Durland-Jones and Nik Skaggs, start with the church’s Monthly Theme which is used in many of the church’s programs. The theme for December is Stillness.

We let that marinate for a while, then one of us will prime the pump with a random comment. This month, Cindy said that Stillness made her think of bare branches and dark nights.  Once that was on the table, each of us had a secondary inspiration: Patty had great branches, Michelle had a lovely vase, Nik suggested the starry banner, and while I was dressing one day, I noticed a decorative plate that I see every day, and realized that its colors went with dark nights and bare branches. We have long understood that when something “asks to come”, we should listen.

Once we are all at the church, we plop our stuff on the altar and get busy.  We fetch cloths from the altar closet, run to the Parlor for an extra vase, drape, arrange, prod, edit, and generally make a mess until miraculously things start to come together. We stand back and look, then “we need something taller on the right” or “do you think it would look better a bit less spread out?”  We arrange and edit a bit more until we reach…the frisson point, that goose-bump-y place where you know it’s right and it’s time to stop.

Each of us could make an acceptable altar, but it takes all of us to make THIS altar.  It’s our trust in one another, our willingness to experiment and our understanding that if we just let this flow through us, it will be frisson-worthy.

Michelle has a good way of expressing what it’s like ”… it’s the fun of staying curious, open, playful and receptive that allows the theme of the month to express through each of us as we come together and offer our insights.”

A note: Our community follows strict rules to protect each of us during this pandemic. The altar team keeps in touch with Sean Skally and our ministers to arrange permission to enter our building and to ensure they follow our current social distancing rules.