Tacos!: St. Anne's Catholic Church, Sunday July 13th, 8:30am

St. Anne's Church, Santa Monica, CA

I usually don’t go to the early masses. For one, I like to sleep in. For another, most of the people seem like they’re still half asleep. But I had places to be on this Sunday and I had no other choice. 

I was excited to go to this church because I had heard about it several times. So I followed my GPS and I pulled into the parking lot. From here though I didn’t know where to go. None of the buildings were distinctly church-like. Luckily, someone else pulled into the parking lot behind me and I was able to follow them where I needed to go.

The fountain with the outdoor
church in the background

I walked through this large courtyard, past an outdoor church area (where I almost wished Mass would be held instead of inside), a fountain, and a school. Most Catholic churches in LA have a school attached so I knew I was headed in the right direction. Side note: the school had a really beautiful painting of the California Missions on the side of the building. It’s customary for every grade school kid in California to write a report about one of the missions at some point in their education, so it was nice to see a great painting of all of them on the wall. 

The California Missions painting on
the side of the school

I continued through the courtyard and eventually came to the end. It was a large open area. To my left was a cafeteria/food stand area where women were chatting and preparing food. Obviously the church wasn’t that way. To my right was a building that looked like a large party hall with an open door. It didn’t look like the entrance to the church, but it was really my only option so I walked over. Lo and behold, it was the church.

The inside looked as nondescript as the outside. It literally looked like someone took a large party hall, put some pews and an altar inside and called it a church. (Turns out there was a front door and I came through the back. Though the front door was pretty tucked away and if you weren’t looking for it you might pass right by it.) 

The interior of St. Anne's

Along one of the walls was a shrine and piled around it were flowers and candles of all kinds. This was an interesting and welcome addition to the church; it felt as if this church held some special significance because of the shrine’s presence. 

The church was very quiet but quite full. It almost seemed as if everyone was still trying to wake up, but of course, maybe that was just me projecting. In any case, it was a chill crowd. No one was too loud ever during the Mass and not many people sang when it came time to do so. As far as the music went, it was pretty simple: a couple cantors, a piano, an acoustic guitar, and a violin playing mostly traditional songs.

The wall where the shrine sat, piled with flowers.

The priest was African and had a strong accent but you could still understand him. You might have missed a word here and there, but it wasn’t a problem for the most part. For his homily, he talked about the history of the book of Isaiah and how it was believed that there were actually three authors that wrote the book of Isaiah. The Isaiah writing this particular Sunday’s reading (read all the readings from this Sunday HERE) was written from captivity. The entirety of the Jewish people were living under the captivity of…Babylon? The Greeks? I can’t remember. The Jewish people were held captive a lot. ANYWAY, this Isaiah author, the priest said, was writing words of comfort to the Jewish people and urging them to be strong and trust in God. 

The mass unfolded pretty normally. Nothing too exciting to report. It was still Mass, and it was still beautiful, but a Mass at St. Anne’s felt like the Masses I’ve been to a million times before. There WAS an announcement that there would be a taco bar after Mass, but I had to head to a meeting so I was sadly unable to indulge.

All in all, St. Anne’s was pretty standard. It had some unique things to look at and experience, but the experience as a whole didn’t make too much of an impact. I do think that if I return and attend a Mass that’s not so early there might be a little more energy, but I can’t say for sure. I definitely hope they make use of their outdoor church space; I would most certainly return for that as I would love to have Mass outside amongst God’s creation. 

In any case, I think I’d only go back to St. Anne’s if they did have an outdoor Mass. Not to say that the church wasn’t lovely, the people weren’t kind and welcoming, or the worship was bad. It just wasn’t quite my cup of tea. Though I am glad I went. And I might be back to visit and learn more about the shrine.

Learn more about St. Anne’s at their website: http://www.stanneshrine.org

We Pretend We're Artists Sometimes: The Untamable Beast

Awhile back my boyfriend, Tyler, my roommate and I went to the beach. We had plans to just hang out on the sand, read, and take in the sunset. But before settling in, I wanted to dip my head in the ocean, get a little water on me. Well, a dip turned into about half an hour of playing in the waves. It was fantastic feeling the power of the ocean sweep me up and carry me to shore time after time.

Tyler and our roommate at the beach.

The truly fantastic part, however, was that this random, pretty normal trip to the beach inspired some artistry in Tyler. And then Tyler’s artistry inspired some artistry in me. 

When I returned to my beach chair after the ocean, Tyler had said that he had left me a couple of voice memos I should listen to. I found them, held the phone up to my ear and pressed play. Immediately I recognized the fact that these voice memos were poetry Tyler had “written” on the spot. And the poetry was about me. I was floored and flattered. No one had ever been inspired to create art about me before.

I wanted to paint something that could partner with his words. And I somehow wanted to display his words with the painting. I’ve always wanted to try the Pinterest mirror thing where you put stickers on a mirror, spray paint the mirror, then peel off the stickers so the mirror shows through where the stickers are. So I decided I would try that with this project. 

I started by painting. I gathered some reference photos (which is really easy to do on Pinterest. You just search what you're looking for then create a board to save them all) so I could visualize what I wanted to do and I spent a Saturday putting paint to canvas. Originally, the woman was going to be clothed, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that none of the clothes I would put on her felt right. So she ended up naked. It wasn’t anything too fancy when it was finished, but I was happy with the result:

The plethora of reference photos for this painting

The final painting

I then started working on the mirror. I wrote out Tyler’s spoken poem and, with his help, picked out a stanza that we both liked and thought would look good next to the painting.

My first mirror, all broken and stuff :(

I luckily found a mirror the exact same size as my canvas at the dollar store. How fortunate that I only had to spend $1 on this mirror! (Well, $2. I tried to take the frame off my first mirror and it broke into tiny pieces. I was much more careful taking the frame off my second mirror.) I bought letter stickers from Michael’s (two packs so I knew I had enough of each letter I needed…but now I have extra letter stickers up the wazoo, haha) and went to work.

The mirror once all the stickers were put on.

I measured each line to make sure everything was centered. I counted the number of letters in a line and made sure to put the letter half way down the amount of letters in a line right in the middle of the mirror. So for example: the mirror was 11x14in and I knew the middle of the mirror was 7in in. If I had 16 letters in a line, the 8th letter in the line would go 7in into the frame and I would put the other letters down around the middle letter. Does that make sense?

Anyway, this took a LONG time. Definitely a whole days work. And at the end of the sticking I was worried because some stickers weren’t holding to the mirror well. I knew that if they didn’t stick they wouldn’t prevent the spray paint from covering that area. So I put the mirror on the floor and put some heavy books on top of it in an attempt to get all the letters to stick well. I left the mirror that way for 24 hours. 

The mirror right after spray painting.

Then came the fun part! I took the mirror outside and started spray painting! I put about 3 to 4 coats on and left the mirror outside in the sun to dry for several hours. It was probably longer than it needed to be out there, I didn’t want to risk messing up the paint. 

The second hardest part was getting all the stickers off. I anxiously pulled the the first sticker off and to my surprise it came off cleanly AND succeeded in leaving beautiful crisp lines between where the sticker was and the spray paint. I was so happy that none of the paint seemed to run under the sticker! The rest of the letters were a little harder to get off. A LOT of the stickers were stubborn and wouldn’t come off just by peeling. I ended up using a combination of a pencil eraser, Q-Tip, and GooGone to get all the sticker residue off The GooGone worked great! It loosened the sticker adhesive without really affecting the spray paint!

After peeling off the first sticker. It looked so good!

Finally my mirror was done and it was wonderful! I couldn’t wait to hang it next to my painting! But here in lied another problem. When I took the frame off the mirror at the beginning of this project, I took with it any means of hanging. The back of the mirror was naked: no hooks, no holes, nothing. I didn’t want to use traditional mirror hangings because I knew this would scratch the spray paint. I tried to super glue a hook, and then some wire to the back of the mirror but the super glue was just not sticking to the mirror back.

I eventually ended up getting a frame of it and sticking it in that. It’s not ideal, but I wanted to get the project hung and done. I can always revisit it if I want to but I’m just happy it’s all finally up on my wall. It looks beautiful and I am so proud of the fact that it’s a combination of both Tyler and my artistic talents. I’m also happy that something I’ve always wanted to try from Pinterest worked out! 

The poetry and painting together at last!

Here’s the entirety of Tyler’s spoken poem from the beach:

Even through a moments hesitation

She walked down the sand wall

As a heroine, she stood in front of it

It roared at her

She jumped back a little

The sand sifted under her feet

She did not move

She immerses herself in it

With wooshes it rushes at her

She finds herself

Torn asunder

But revived

Rejuvenated

She resurfaces

Triumphantly

She feels as if she has tamed the beast

Even if for a moment

It congratulates her

With little taps on her legs

It pats her gently

As she victoriously leaves the darkness

And the lightness

The only place where blue can be white

Through friction

It is our ocean

Ending’s flubbed

As she walks away from the crashing waves

Victorious

She welcomes the full light of the sun

And decides to try and tame another untamable beast

Even though it made her weaker

More tired

She kept going because she knew it would make her stronger

Wiser

And be able to endure the harsh times that were ahead