Mother and child portrait heralds season of Advent

I am a retired priest and so, I’m not in charge of anything very much any more (although I am allowed by my wife to have some say about the outside of our house). We live at the end of a long street in the Brighton area of Charlottetown, and from our front door we look down the length of the street. Cars coming down the street must slow down and turn left if they are not to come in our front door. What I have done is paint a very large portrait of our Lady and Child loosely based on the earliest such portrait, usually dating to the 2nd century A.D., in the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem and traditionally attributed to St. Luke. I put it up in front of my house with a floodlight at the beginning of Advent.

I have no Christmas lights or baubles of any kind such as those that adorn the houses of my neighbours. It remains up until the end of the octave of the Epiphany. I have offered to make similar panels for others, charging a little more than the cost of materials (exterior plastic signboard, acrylic paint, shellac, four pieces of L-shaped metal framing with nuts and bolts) to have something to put in the church collection, and so far have had several requests.

Canon Robert Tuck
Charlottetown
Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island