ART: new Advent vestments
A few months back, I started talking to Kaylyn Kilkuskie (@aperennialthread) about liturgical textiles. Kaylyn is a textile artist I had originally met over at the 45th St. Green Space, and I was curious to get her thoughts on the idea of unmaking and remaking some of the vestments that the Episcopal Mission in Sunnyside has gratefully inherited from All Saints Episcopal Church, a parish which closed in early 2020 after 92 years of faithful ministry.
How could these textiles be a visual and tactile symbol of the “mission” of this new Episcopal Mission in Sunnyside? To show that “things which have been cast down are being raised up, and things which have grown old are being made new"?
We had several conversations about adaptive reuse, everyday sacredness, and how God's birth among the oppressed and marginalized disrupts every human hierarchy of power, status, and value. As part of that conversation, Kaylyn in turn pointed me to this amazing episode of the fashion podcast “Articles of Interest,” which focuses on clergy attire and vestments. The host, Avery Trufelman, interviews Dr. Candida Moss, who talks about the subtle theological connotations that vestments can reinforce—like the association of heavenly or holy things with wealth, finery, etc. “We mortals get confused: we conflate what is good, what is beautiful, and what is wealthy.”
Kaylyn and I were looking for ways to trouble that association, and to insist on the holiness of much more everyday elements. That became even more important as we focused on a commission for Advent vestments. In the season of Advent, we wait and prepare for the coming of the Christ-child. And as the story makes almost comically clear—Jesus was born about as far away from wealth as possible. As a newborn he was swaddled in rags and laid in a manger—a feed trough in a foul-smelling stable.
After lots of back and forth, trial and error, we chose a blue poly silk for the primary fabric: blue is one of the liturgical colors of Advent, and we chose this hue for its echo of Mary’s shawl in traditional “Madonna and Child” paintings. For the details we wanted something contrasting: something that signaled the everyday miracle of birth. We decided to use the flannel swaddle cloth in which every baby born in NYC hospitals is wrapped. Because we are expecting Jesus to be born here, among us. O come, O come Emmanuel—here.
(Kaylyn included these beautiful details in which the stripes are wrapped around each other, just as in a swaddle.)
And she incorporated the pink silk from inherited vestments into a reversible inner layer (for the Third "Gaudete" Sunday in Advent for the church nerds). I love the asymmetry in how these recycled silks are stitched together, and how the striped swaddle pattern interrupts them on one side. Kaylyn told me that she just didn’t have enough of the pink silk to make the chasuble and the altar cloth. But to me it also speaks to the way God interrupts us, surprises us.
I’m so grateful to Kaylyn for working on this so collaboratively and so generously. These vestments will be a reminder for years to come, that God comes among us in splendor and in solidarity, offering the surprise of grace in the unlikely places in our lives.
