May the Lord Bless You and Keep You*

One year ago my friend Claire and I met at our favorite breakfast place in Atlanta. Since Claire lives in North Carolina now, and I’m up here in DC, holiday trips to the Flying Biscuit are our primary way of staying up to date on the others’ life. On this trip, Claire brought me a garbage bag full of t-shirts. T-shirts from our youth group days that I had volunteered to turn into a quilt.

When I sat down to look at my new toys, I was immediately struck by two things: 1)There were not a lot, maybe 10 in total, definitely not enough to make the full size bed quilt we had discussed and 2) oh sweet Jesus were they ugly.

Whoever was in charge of t-shirt design for the Glenn Memorial UMC Youth Group** from 2000-2006 was not thinking in terms of future t-shirt quilts. The clash of bold colors, the jumble of different fonts, including comic sans, and the clip art. Oh the clip art. It was just not pretty. And it hurt my brain to think of how to put them together. It was going to take time and wine to make this quilt happen.

I had plenty of wine, but not so much time: the t-shirts went on a tall shelf and sat there for a good long while. When I finally brought them down I was struck again by how ugly they are, but I was also struck by a lot of feelings.

The Strange Fire t-shirt? With the Indigo Girls lyrics? I still have that shirt. In fact, I’m wearing it right now. It’s old and stained and torn and it’s my very favorite piece of clothing.

This shirt, the Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord Fall Retreat 2002? I wore that in college and all of my friends called it my pole dancing shirt. It wasn’t as awesome as the Strange Fire one so I gave it to a friend who still proudly wears it.

DSL for Faith Journey? Ahhh, 2001. A simpler time. A time when everyone wanted to capitalize on this new hip thing called the internet. No more dial-up required!

In two weeks, Claire and I will meet up at our favorite breakfast place to catch up: She just got accepted to an MFA program that I can’t wait to hear about, there are some exciting things happening in my life too, and of course, there will be the quilt to remind us both of how far we’ve come together.

*May the Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace
Amen

**I’m pretty sure a large part of the problem is that there were multiple people designing the shirts and our fabulous Youth Minister gave us, the kids, the autonomy to design the shirts ourselves and with the exception of the Indigo Girls shirt, 15 year olds are idiots.