Christmas Eve Day

Following the theme of my mossicle wreath, this is a wreath at the ceiling of Grace Cathedral. The ceiling of the cathedral is skeletal (which I like the feel of) because, although the arches themselves are stable, it was never finished for fear of stones falling on the congregants during an earthquake. Grace Cathedral is the third largest Cathedral in the United States, the National Cathedral in DC being the first, Saint John the Divine in New York being second.


This is the wreath at the Interfaith AIDS Memorial Chapel at Grace Cathedral - You can take a virtual tour of the chapel at this link. I'm about to, but these are my pictures Christmas Eve yesterday, anyway. While I was taking pictures during the chaos of a postlude to a Christmas pageant of hundreds of children, a little girl removing her wings asked her mother what the Quilt was for. Her mother said, "Well when there was an AIDS crisis...."

There is always one panel of the Quilt displayed in this chapel. One I wrote about in my post "World AIDS Day(s) Memorial: The Quilt Over Time", was still there, maybe because of the Christmas trees in it. The white smearing "snow" at the top reads

THROUGH THE YEARS

WE ALL

WILL BE TOGETHER

The red ribbon is upside down in the snow if you didn't notice. His name Is Christopher Essex.

Turning under the wreath...


This is the Keith Haring Altar Piece. Keith Haring died of AIDS in 1990, the year before my boyfriend died. I was told a long time ago that this was Kieth Herring's last piece, but I don't know if that's true or not.

The triptych is entitled the Life of Christ, the radiating baby held in the many arms of the creature with the radiating heart (top center of center panel) is supposed to be Jesus raining drops of hope down onto the crowd of people.

But this is what it means to me;

On the center panel there are many arms of love (the heart), Two arms are cradling innocence (the baby). One of the ones, of Love's right arms is holding a circle( for union). The drops and line (energy, spirit), raining down onto the tangled crowd of people are ofall the fluids of life: cum, blood, tears. This is an AIDS memorial.

You'll have to click on the picture for close-up detail for the rest of this (I'm working on getting a more illustrative shot, without breaking it up): On the left panel (left to to us facing it), adult innocence (the angel) is kicked down out of Heaven (happiness) and the people are trying in confusion (squigly lines) to catch him. I don't know why he's "fallen" - but he was kicked.

On the right panel, the energy and spirit (the lines) of the all people's effort together is raising the adult innocence (angel) back up to happiness (Heaven) which is reaching down for him (redemption). I don't know why. He's a "him" to me (the angel), (and multi-armed Love), (and the baby), to me. I don't know why.


Below the wreath: