Sermons and Reflections from an Episcopal Priest
I didn’t make it home for Christmas this year, but I came pretty close. We spent Christmas day at a family friend’s childhood home in tiny Woodstock, Virginia.
It was a proper country Christmas. We fed the hens, chased the guineafowl (that was mostly me), ate pot roast with mashed potatoes, and opened gifts by the fireplace. It was just how Christmas should be. I missed my family, but I’m thankful that another one welcomed us in as two of their own.
Hope you had a lovely Christmas day!
Tiptoeing around the backyard squishing muddy earth into the ridges of my boots seemed like the best thing to do on this quiet Christmas Eve Eve afternoon.
The town is bustling with holiday vacationers, but no one thought to plan any last minute events. I’m going to try to convince Daniel to eat popcorn and watch a few movies with me.
I worked as a picture framer at a craft store the year after I graduated. It was exciting, hands-on work, and if it weren’t for the corporate environment and poor hours, I may have kept it up a bit longer.
This post was a long time coming. It’s my reply to the hundreds of Pinterest tutorials that suggest I hot glue twine to the back of my frame, use poster board as matting, or just ModPodge the heck out of everything. There is a tested and approved process for picture framing and it’s not too difficult to master the basics.
What you’ll need:
1. Remove paper backing from frame if it has one. Use needle-nose pliers to remove staples or pegs from back of frame. Remove any previous hardware.
2. Take the glass out of the frame, spray a small amount of glass cleaner, and carefully wipe both sides. Taking the glass out of the frame ensures that particle buildup from the frame is removed before art is placed inside.
3. Remove packaging/backing from art, flip it, and place a line of painter’s tape along the top edge.
4. Extend the tape a little beyond the art to ensure that it doesn’t roll at the corners from humidity over time.
5. Turn the artwork right side up and carefully align the matting over it. Once it’s in place, press down over the tape edge to secure it.
6. Check for any lint and loose particles, then flip the matted artwork over and place it in the frame. Holding it secure, face the frame toward you and double check for debris and dust that may be stuck under the glass. Turn the frame back around.
7. Hold your staple gun at a slight angle 1/8″ to 1/4″ away from the lip of the frame and insert staples. They can be spaced 2-3″ apart depending on how secure the backing feels. Stapling at an angle ensures that the artwork and backing fit snugly against the glass.
8. Place a line of scrapbooking tape or double-sided tape along the edges of the back of the frame.
9. Roll out your craft paper over the back of the frame. Feel for the edges of the frame with your hands and press the paper securely over your tape lines. To keep it taut, secure the paper at the top, pull it down tightly and secure it to the bottom, then smooth it out and secure it on either side.
10. Once the paper feels secure, use a razor blade or small, sharp knife to remove excess paper from around the frame. Slide blade down edge at a 45 degree angle for the cleanest line.
11. Find the top of the frame where you’d like to place your picture hanger. Measure the width of the frame and mark the center top of the frame, making sure the hard frame surface is directly beneath it (you wouldn’t want to hammer into your cardboard backing).
12. Hammer in your picture hanger. It’s sometimes useful to prepare a guide hole with an awl if you have one on hand.
Done!
Admittedly, framing at home requires quite a few tools and a little bit of patience, but once you have everything you need, you can save yourself money and stress by framing things the right way all by yourself.
Let me know if you have any questions! I’d love to see your projects if you end up using my tutorial.
We finally got a Christmas tree! It’s rather small, several feet shorter than last year’s, but it’ll do. Ah, the smell of evergreens. Daniel found a hand-carved nativity scene on ebay last month, so we placed it on our side table next to the tree. I love that St. Raphael the giant archangel watches over the scene.
This past weekend was full of Christmas cheer. We sang carols around the piano at a cocktail party Saturday night, watched the church children’s pageant yesterday morning, and attended our church’s Lessons and Carols service in the evening. Since I’m in the church choir now, I got to participate in all the special music and help lead the congregation in song. I love Christmas when it’s celebrated with intention, ritual, and care. Christmas without the observance of Advent isn’t nearly as lovely (I say this coming from a non-liturgical background)!
“Go and tell John what you hear and see:
the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.
And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”– Matthew 11:4-6
Reading Lolita in Tehran is the best memoir I’ve ever read. It’s intelligent, creative, intimate, and intricately and artfully narrated. I paused several times throughout my reading so that I could participate in author Azar Nafisi’s classroom just a little bit longer.
Her firm grasp of English Literature and Literary Criticism serve as a surprising, but really quite fitting, foundation to a discussion on revolutionary Iran. The memoir is about politics and fundamentalism, but it’s ultimately about the human condition, about how our proclivity for self narration informs the way we see and form ourselves and our societies. Stories can obstruct as much as they reveal, destroy as much as they create. The book, then, can be understood as a literary critique of the story Iran tells about itself at the start of the Iranian Revolution and of the thousands of personal narratives spilled out to counter it. Perhaps in peeling off these wordy layers – narratives piled on top of narratives – we can begin to arrive at something closer to the truth. But the truth we discover is less tangible, though just as moral in its aim as the black and white ethics imposed upon the Iranian people. It is seeing, really seeing, the multifaceted nature of humanity; we are strong, dishonest, cowardly, loving, kind, hateful, and oblivious all at once. We are all capable of evil. We all lean toward apathy.
I can only assume that those who say they “couldn’t really get into it” were expecting the light stuff of Eat, Pray, Love and its equals. But Reading Lolita in Tehran is the pinnacle of what memoir can be. It’s what memoir should be. You should leave with more than a feeling. As Nafisi explains within the book, literature exists to provide context for the individual, to explore the nuances of human interaction and behavior. Reading Lolita in Tehran bridges the gap between literature and autobiography; you should leave it with a better understanding of the other and yourself, and with a great deal more empathy.
Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. – Romans 13: 11-14
Leah Wise 