Purple: Because Advent

12/20

advent

Purple:  Because Advent

Throughout the first three Wednesdays of Advent, for my Hats Off (On) adventures with my group, I featured purple….the traditional liturgical color for Advent. Noting that in my Presbyterian tradition, Advent with its “papist” overtones was a late arriver…only when I was in high school, mid-1960’s did we begin to explore its possibilities.

My hat and shirt for the first week were both from the Uni Watch annual Purple Amnesty collection which took a lot of explaining. First, Uni Watch itself and how I got into a blog dedicated to the obsessive study of athletic aesthetics. 

I explained how as a kid, I drew and colored every uniform I ever saw in a game I saw. How I continued to do this through high school. There was of course a corollary interest in logos and fonts. I suspect this played a role in my passion for liturgical vestments and their seasonal colors. Almost enough to get me to convert to the Episcopal church. Ultimately, the Anglophilism was too much for me and I stuck to importing liturgical beauty into my dour Calvinist Presbyterian practice. That much I could explain. 

But Uni Watch founder Paul Lukas’ antipathy for purple and his annual amnesty day was a bridge too far.

So I stuck with repping purple, the color of reflection and penitence for our season of preparation for  Christmas and also the color of royalty as we prepare to celebrate the birth of a “king.”  I always cherish Advent as a refuge, respite,  from the busyness, sometimes madness, of the secular Christmas season seemingly beginning the day after Halloween.

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from lament to hope

The second week I went with a t-shirt proclaiming from Lament to Hope.  It was the official t-shirt of the 224th Presbyterian General Assembly that was to have been held in Baltimore, Maryland in the summer of 2020.  And due to covid became the first virtual assembly. I was a commissioner participant in that Assembly. I suspect the local committee chose purple because it is the base color of the NFL Baltimore Ravens. Orioles black and orange would have been tougher to use. And these days, the Ravens are more successful.  Then there’s the liturgical angle…

The theme was also important. The relentless presence of Covid in a wildly infectious Omicron(?!) variant continues to pursue us disrupting, even threatening  our lives.  And that resolute anti-vax crowd only doubles down. An unlikely coalition of right wing and even left wing folks who mistrust anything the government does. 

And of course the ongoing assault on democracy evident in the string of new state laws intending to suppress votes and keep Republicans in power no matter what. The hard fact that some 40% of Americans no longer truly believe in democracy.  Yes, lament indeed.

But this is a season of hope. Not optimism, but hope.  Believing, despite the evidence, that the arc of history does bend  towards justice.  And that we have a responsibility to work to bend that arc. 

So purple…from lament to hope.

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tequila sunrise purple and a dash of blue

And so for the third week, another Uniwatch faux jersey, this one with a touch of blue in the purple. Blue being a recently emerging alternate to purple in liturgical colors.  Blue for hope.

And maybe a little pink for Mary and Gaudite Sunday,...joy...

I explain that the jersey is in what we call tequila sunrise style, created by the 1980’s Houston Astros in red, yellow and orange. That template has spread far and wide and still  gets called tequila sunrise even with no sunrise colors. 

So my penitential purple is tinged with a touch of the blue of hope…..and maybe a little pink for joy...