This is not a typical essay from me about spirituality or hiking. It’s just fun. It is a story about journey, for sure, but not mine (though I was very involved). This is a story about a black velvet matador painting and its multi-year journey throughout the Southeast. It’s a long story, but well worth the trip. If I were to rate it as a hike, I would rate it “easy,” “fun,” with “rewarding views.”
A note: clergy sometimes are stereotyped as being stuffy and wary of fun. Not true (at least not mostly). We like to have fun and we can even be a little benignly wicked at times. We all need humor and I strongly believe that humor can be holy. Humor can serve to provide connection between people through positive shared experiences. This story serves as one such example.
First a bit of context: I was in my first year of ordained ministry, serving as a school chaplain in suburban New Orleans, Louisiana. The Big Easy. Because my school duties did not include Sundays, I assisted the rector in a very part-time capacity at a nearby Episcopal Church.
It was the smallest church I’ve ever attended, which meant there was an intimacy that other congregations didn’t embody in the same way. Everyone knew each other. The rector had a wild, wry sense of humor which was a perfect fit for the New Orleans cultural stereotype of quirkiness. My wife and I were some of the few young adults in the congregation, but there were a couple of other married couples our age that we befriended quickly. The three couples got in the habit of going out to lunch together after church on Sundays.
One Sunday, the topic of the rector’s upcoming 60th birthday was raised. Brainstorming quickly took on Category Five proportions as the six of us formulated a plan to sneak into his office and redecorated it for his birthday, using the gaudiest items we could purchases cheaply at rummage sales in the next few weeks (not a difficult feat in New Orleans). This was a particularly appropriate way to mark his big birthday, given how meticulous (fussy) he was about his things.
The shopping alone was fun. Most memorable were a western-style lamp with a frilly pleated shade with gold and orange highlights, a large ashtray with the local fire department’s name on it (double irony here: the rector was himself a chain smoker), but the crowning achievement was the finding of not one, but a set of three paintings of matadors on black velvet in matching frames. They were as awful as one might care to imagine (go ahead and try). One in particular—painted from the perspective of the “rear” of the matador as he flung his cape in the air—was quickly dubbed “Buns of Steel.”
The big day came, happily coinciding on a Sunday. Since one of the six of us happened to be the Junior Warden of the congregation, he had keys, so we did our work on Saturday evening, tickled as punch with our purchases and successful ruse. And, indeed, it was a huge success. He laughed until he coughed. His wife was pleased he had been gotten. Birthday gift complete.
Fast forward six months. I had just taken a new call in Birmingham, Alabama. We had settled into a new home, a new position, a new congregation. A few months in, a box arrived for me at the church office. Inside were most of the items from the birthday surprise, including a note from my former rector indicating (with tongue clearly in cheek) that he had “discovered” a few items of mine that he wanted to make sure made it to my new home.
Now it so happens that this new congregation was in the midst of some major capital improvements, including the creation of new offices for many of the staff. I was now one of four fulltime priests on the staff of this large church and was blessed to be working with a former seminary classmate of mine who grew up in this congregation, knew the rector (our boss) quite well, and was a bit of a practical joker himself.
The renovations were almost complete. The rector’s new office was close to ready to move into. New furniture had arrived and was in place. All it needed was some art work on the walls.
One Sunday after church, the rector was showing a small group of older ladies his new office space (they were undoubtedly donors to the campaign). He unlocked the door and stepped into the room after ushering them in first. As he reported it afterward, he spotted three black velvet matador paintings hanging above the shiny new credenza behind his desk. Instinctively, he knew he had to react carefully, lest he discover too late that this fine art had been donated by one of his current guests. In a moment of pastoral deftness, he managed to say only, “Oh my. Those weren’t there earlier.”
We had such a good laugh about that. Victim Number Two was not quite as tickled as Victim Number One, but it brought joy and humor to the whole staff.
Fast forward three more years. I had now taken a call in Washington, D.C. Similarly-sized congregation. Large staff.
About a month in, a box arrived from Birmingham, not addressed to me this time, but to the rector, my new boss. Inside was a note to him, noting that I had “forgotten” the enclosed piece of artwork from my office and would the new rector please discreetly sneak it into my office for me to discover as a surprise (wink wink). Inside the box was just the one surviving matador painting (“Buns of Steel”). This plan might have worked if my new boss hadn’t started reading the note aloud (loudly sotto voce) from his office within earshot of mine. In any case, I filled in the rest of the story’s itinerary, we all had a good laugh and the painting found its way into a corner of my office next to a file cabinet.
At this point in this particular black velvet odyssey, this lonely matador, permanently separated from his peers, kidnapped from his native Louisiana (we presume), tucked in a corner, now had time to ponder his future and his fate. Would the journey end in this generic church office, only to be discovered years later? Could he travel again? Might he ever see home? Of course, there’s more to the story.
About a year later (this is now Year Four or Five), my former clergy colleague and partner-in-crime from Birmingham had accepted a new call as the rector of a church in--wait for it--Louisiana! Not New Orleans, unfortunately, but close enough. I had an idea.
I learned of his news a few weeks before he and his family were actually set to relocate to their new home. I had to act quickly. Buns of Steel was dusted off from behind the file cabinet and packaged in a new box, ready to return south. Taped to the back of the painting was an annotated timeline of his pilgrimage and a request that he be placed prominently on the wall of my former colleague’s new office prior to his arrival so that he would see an old friend when he walked in for the first time.
Not only did the matador make it in time, but he was introduced to the whole congregation the Sunday before my colleague arrived and his story was shared aloud before my colleague had any idea who would be waiting for him when he set up shop in Louisiana.
So, after a multistate, multiyear journey, our protagonist finally returned to his homeland. His whereabouts from there remain unknown. But if you’re passing through Louisiana and happen into a rundown antique shop or perhaps even a church rummage sale and espy a matador painting on black velvet, look closely. If his derriere appears extra firm, you may have found our pilgrim. If so, please purchase and send to me. I’ll make sure it gets hung on the office wall of our new bishop after our current bishop retires. Or perhaps I will learn that one of you, my ordained colleagues, has accepted a new call in Louisiana and thus it would only be appropriate that I forward a memorable office-warming gift.