When the churches on the prairies were established, the first furnishings brought in were reflective of doctrine, including the baptistries, the altars, the pulpits, the essential candle ware and communion ware. They also reflected history and heritage from other places half way around the world.
The societies that were basic to community function came with the Scandinavians who populated the prairie states and The Ladies Aid was central to all of that.
The same family lines would populate the offices of The Ladies Aid for decades and decades: the secretary, the treasurer, the president, the vice president – all knew by rote the activities, the responsibilities, the tolerated variables in process and the expectations that were passed down from mother to daughter to grand-daughter.
The fathers, husbands and uncles were on The Church Boards and they took care of the church yard, the cemetery, the roof, the bell tower, the parsonage and paying the bills. The Choir Director and The Organist occupied positions of talent and service with life long tenure, working from small libraries of music that dated back to the pouring of the foundations of the church.
It was understood and appreciated that every Palm Sunday, the choir would sing Open the Gates of the Temple, Strew Palms on the Conqueror’s Way…..
It was a given that fifty-two Sundays out of a year, the organist would play Largo for the offertory (as would the occasional substitutes).
The flowers that graced the altar during the summer months came from the same gardens every year – actually the same two or three gardens. Unless a person’s relatives had gotten into the rotation somewhere in the 1930s or so, it probably wasn’t going to happen in the 1950s, so by the time I was old enough to understand the business of putting flowers on the altar – who got to do it and who didn’t – it was long set in cement.
I remember one remarkable Sunday when some unfortunate and giving soul brought pretty flowers from her garden and, seeing none on the altar, placed them there. How could she have known that The Flowers From The Person Who Brings The Gladiolas During July were en route, and were not in place only because of a slight delay in leaving the farm that morning with the two huge bouquets?
So The Person Who Always Brings The Gladiolas walked down the center aisle, up around the communion rail, and set The Gladiolas on the floor so that she could remove from the altar The Flowers That Did Not Belong, place them on top of the organ and replace them with The Gladiolas. It was a remarkable adjustment made in broad daylight, right there in front of God and everybody, and easily understood by everyone present, and by that time, just before the service, everyone was present.
There are immovable imponderables in those communities where new people never move in and old people never move out. Those who grow up there and reside there are expected to know where and what and who the immovable imponderables are. Anyone who runs afoul of them is assisted out of their predicament as quietly as possible. The lesson is learned and it doesn’t happen again.
Cleaning the church and polishing the altar ware were pretty much done exactly as Hyacinth Bouquet would have done it. The energy and focus given to the task constituted a statement of context and reference points, values and heritage, past and present and future, time and eternity, including both the simple and complex of the thing. 

Having watched how Hyacinth Bouquet does it, however, there is an appropriate clarification I would like to make. In spite of the bumps and bruises, the expectations and the oopsies when the expectations were not met – the underlying affection and firm reliance on one another was, after all was said and done, more apparent than the surface distresses. The reality consisted more of the depth than it did of the five foot seas.
When these ladies sat over the long tables in the basement through summer afternoons, cutting, piecing and sewing quilts for Lutheran World Relief, there was a camaraderie that flowed with genuine shoulder-to-shoulder, let’s-see-if-we-can-get-more-done-than-we-did-last-year that easily overcame any wound that may have been inflicted on The Day The Gladiolas Were Late.
I always marveled at the apparent need for numberless amounts of heavy quilts – in Africa. Apparently the winters are really something in deepest Africa. Box car loads of quilts made from the dresses and shirts and pants and skirts that the young people had grown out of or which their parents had worn clean through went east on the Great Northern Railroad every year.
The food that was part of the quilting was the same spread that appeared in the homes at the regular meeting of The Ladies Aid which rotated between homes, each lady knowing months ahead of time when her home would be The Context. Her daughter(s) would help her prepare the sandwiches, clean the house, dust the furniture, sweep the porch and prepare the tea and coffee. Her husband would know that on that day, once breakfast was done, he wouldn’t be back in the house for anything until late afternoon when the event was successfully concluded.
Since the daughters of the community all played the piano, that instrument would be open and dusted and ready for the hymn singing that would be part of the regular program which varied little from month to month. (Creativity was neither expected nor encouraged. Lots of trouble can come, you know, from too much random creativity.) Both the content and the intent of last month’s program would be fed through this month’s program. A good time was always had by all.

There was the occasional excitement when one of the ladies’ cars wouldn’t start when she came out to go home. If that happened, a runner was dispatched to the field to bring the farmer home to remedy the situation. While The Farmer was working on the recalcitrant vehicle, the distressed driver would be having one more cup of coffee with her hostess,  being deeply distressed that her husband’s apparent failure to maintain their vehicle was causing delay in the hostess’s ability to begin supper for her family.
Such faux pas were keenly felt. They were never held against the unfortunate person whose machinery was at fault, never mentioned, never repeated…and never forgotten.

It was gracious living in its brittle way.