"Oración del Vía Crucis, San Juan 1763"

Stations 1 & 2: A Beginning   Aschbacher reports in her book, Seventy Years in the Kingdom , that when they sold the original Westminster Presbyterian Church building at the corner of Garden and King William in 1927, they retained possession of some of the fixtures, including "all art glass windows." The church had been built in 1891 and added on to in 1899. It was the first English speaking Protestant church on the south side of San Antonio. In 1927 the church decided to move a little further out, purchasing property at the present location of the San Antonio Mennonite Church. The education building was built in 1928. The recession and the war prevented the building of the sanctuary until 1948. The sanctuary was consecrated on January 30, 1949 in a snowstorm. The original red brick church was demolished in 1933. Presumably at that time the windows were reclaimed to be used in the new sanctuary upon its construction. The details are not precise, but...

  The next step in making the papercut banner is drawing the design out on the paper. I try to get most of the design drawn on the paper before I begin cutting. Tyvek is a little slick, so I have to use a very soft-leaded pencil to draw the line, but it erases very easily.A lot of erasing that goes on before I settle on a design.  The main element of the banner is a cross. The logo of the San Antonio Mennonite Church is at the intersection of the pieces of the cross. The logo was created by Hilary Comer, a member of the church. The design is a simplified version of the round stained glass window at the front of the church on the west end.   A matching round stained glass window overlooks the balcony at the back of the church, on the east end.   According to a booklet entitled Seventy Years in His Kingdom: Westminster of San Antonio , by Frances B. Aschbacher, the sanctuary of the church building, which previously housed The Westminster Pres...

  I thought I would tell you a little bit about the process of making papercut banners. I was first introduced to the process by reading a book called Spaces for Spirit: Adorning the Church , by Nancy Chinn.    She describes herself as a liturgical artist and begins her book with a quotation from Exodus 35: 30-35—   Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the Lord has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah.  He has filled him with the Spirit of God—with skill, with understanding, with knowledge, and in all kinds of work— to design artistic designs, to work in gold, in silver, and in bronze,  and in cutting stones for their setting, and in cutting wood, to do work in every artistic craft.   And he has put it in his heart to teach, he and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.  He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, as designers, as embroiderers in blue, purple...

“Oración del Vía Crucis, San Juan 1763” A Quarantine Papercut Banner Project for Lent for San Antonio Mennonite Church   A few years ago, I wrote a poem called “Oración del Vía Crucis, San Juan 1763.” The poem tries to represents the encounter between two cultures—the Spanish Franciscan monks at the San Juan Mission in the eighteenth century and the indigenous people of Texas living around the mission at that time. Although the missions only flourished for a few decades, most of them still provide a place for the community to gather and worship.   They hold the heartbeat of their small community made up of the descendants of the people who once inhabited the missions of San Antonio. I feel distanced from the native peoples and the Franciscan fathers, although they lived very close to where the San Antonio Mennonite Church building stands today. The native people lived a life in tune with the land and its provisions. The priests were committed to the spiritual formation...