Mae Runions
3 Advent Hangings
St. Andrew’s- Wesley United Church, Vancouver, B.C., 1998
The Advent hangings were commissioned by the church and lovingly designated to remember those saints of this church no longer on earth. In special recognition of this, I mounted them here using my 24 K gold plated pins! Royal blue is the liturgical color for the church season of Advent, just before Christmas.
Advent is the season of waiting and preparation for the comings of Christ: His Incarnation, His second coming, and His coming now, into our lives. ‘Come Lord Jesus!’ The hangings seek to reflect these themes.
Left:
Pulpit Antependium: Righteous Branch
The image is of a shoot of Christ, Messiah coming out of the stump of David’s lineage.
Top:
Lectern Antependium: Fetus in the Cross
The cross is at the heart of Advent. Who would have know that to bring salvation to all people, the ‘Creator of the Stars of Night’(6th Century hymn) would become a human baby. As George Herbert so tenderly expressed it: ‘Immensitie cloystered in thy deare wombe.’
Bottom:
Communion Table Frontal: The Glory of the Lord Has Risen Upon You (Is. 60: 1-3)
I reflected on many Biblical images in working this design, particularly some well known ones from Isaiah ‘...prepare the way of the Lord…..darkness shall cover the earth but…..the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.'
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