By request
Welcome back after the long holiday weekend. Hope that your Thanksgiving was a wonderful one and that everyone was safe, happy, and healthy (the three things my P’92 mom always wishes for our family).
We are back to work, though it is all remote now until the end of the semester on December 13th (I’m still working from my home office – my dining room). Program note: our Call Center is operating M-F 10 am-2 pm Eastern. Late today, we got an update on the Presidential Search.
The big news at my staff meeting this morning was the upcoming Lovefeast, which will be Sunday, December 6th (prelude at 5:45, with service to follow). While this is essentially a Christmas service, it is ecumenical and open to all. We livestream the Lovefeast every year – so families and alumni can join in at home – but this will be the first year it is fully virtual. Obviously a full Wait Chapel cannot happen in a pandemic. Still, changes sometimes bring new opportunities: since we cannot do luminaries as we normally would, a pillar of light will illuminate the night sky over the Chapel from 5 – 8 p.m. on Sunday, sharing the light of the Lovefeast with the Winston-Salem community and reminding our alumni, parents and families, and friends that their collective light still shines on campus. I can’t wait to see it.
An intrepid Daily Deac reader asked for the skinny on what the Lovefeast is, and how to prepare their own home version. The main ingredients are music, the communal feast, and the lighting of candles. We have a recipe online for the Lovefeast bun and coffee. For the bun, think hamburger bun in size and shape and color, but it has a hint of sweetness and some nutmeg in it, the coffee is sweetned and has milk; but you can sub for brownies and hot chocolate or whatever you like. The important part is sharing a meal. As for the lighting-of-the-candles portion of the Lovefeast, if your student picked up a Lovefeast candle before they left, great, but you can also improvise at home. The Lovefeast website has a lot of great information as well, so I encourage you to read up if you are interested.
A couple of years ago, I did a Five Senses of the Lovefeast, which I am reprising below. Also adding some pictures from Lovefeasts past.
Leading up to Thanksgiving, my social media feed had a lot of folks feeling a sense of loss that we couldn’t do Thanksgivin the way we always did, or maybe we felt resentment, or sadness, or a sense of isolation; name your emotion. Don’t know if it was this way for you, but on Thanksgiving day itself, our tiny nuclear-family Thanksgiving ended up being pretty great. The anticipation of the difference was worse than the difference itself, and we were still able to find joy. My belief is it will be the same for the Lovefeast. We’ll celebrate it differently, but it will somehow end up feeling right.
Now, here’s your Five Senses of a past Lovefeast.
I see…
Luminaries on the Quad before I even get inside Wait Chapel. And the giant, giant Moravian star over the doors.
Ushers handing out programs and beeswax candles as you enter the chapel.
Beautiful Christmas decorations all over: poinsettias, Christmas trees, Moravian stars, wreaths, pine garlands along the railings and up the stairs to the balcony. Also beautiful candles along the balcony stairs.
Groups of students who have come together. And groups of faculty or staff sitting near one another.
One unity candle at the front of the room.
The choir dressed in beautiful robes.
People dressed in holiday attire – lots of reds and greens.
Friends greeting each other with smiles, hugs, and/or kisses.
Dieners (rhymes with wieners) – or servers. They are the ones who pass out baskets of Moravian buns and cups of coffee. There is a systematic, orderly way they do this, row by row.
The lights go out, save for that one unity candle up front and the Christmas tree lights. Then you see one candle lit, and they light the person next to them, until there are enough dieners to light the ends of each row.
How beautifully the chapel goes from darkness to light as more and more rows of candles are lit.
Peaceful, happy faces as the ceremony ends.
I hear…
Lots of chatter before the service begins. Also the brass band that plays Christmas carols.
Beautiful music, all through the service. Flutes and the choir and bells. And the organ, who is really the star of the show. It is great to hear it booming.
The occasional coughs and sneezes. It is December, after all.
The warm, reverent voices of the people who are doing the readings and offering prayers.
The voices of people around me as we sing carols. There are always some folks nearby who are terrific singers – loud and proud – and also people like me who are not as musical. We tend to sing softer and try to stay in tune.
Chatter during the lighting of the candles. It takes several minutes to get everyone’s candles lit, and people can’t seem to stay quiet. It is a good noise though.
I smell…
Beeswax candles. Both in the sense that there are 2,000+ of them in the chapel, and if you keep the candle in your hands, your fingers will smell of beeswax where you held it between your thumb and forefinger.
Pine from the greenery.
Sweetened coffee.
I taste…
The Lovefeast bun, which reminds me of a slightly sweet hamburger bun that has ginger and nutmeg in it.
Coffee, which has been pre-sweetened and has milk added. I never take my coffee this way, except at the Lovefeast, because this is the how it is supposed to be. [Aside: in recent years, the coffee has gotten remarkably better tasting over the years, and is also a lot hotter than I remember having as a student. The Lovefeast coffee circa ’88-’92 always seemed sort of a ghastly grey, weak, and tepid.]
I feel…
The red crinkly paper at the stem of the beeswax candle, which is there to catch any dripping wax and keep it off your clothes.
The smoothness of the candle stem. It feels sort of soft and malleable, not brittle like other candles.
A rush of joy as we all stand to sing Joy to the World and raise our candles high at the end. It always feels like a special moment.
People who try to keep their candles lit even after leaving Wait Chapel.
A shared sense of peace and love at the end of the service. It always feels like everyone is connected to each other, caring, loving, happy. I wish this feeling could be bottled and opened up on all the other days of the year when we need it.
