Musings of a Motherless Child

A Photo A Day - January 3, 4 and 8

2012-01-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

January 3 - Something I adore. No, not my beautiful male cat, Kyo, though I do adore his sweet and loving disposition. No, this picture is of SLEEPING! I adore sleeping! Yes, I do! Unfortunately, I don't do a whole lot of it, but I'd like to do more. If you can't sleep well, then sleep often, that's my motto! It seems to be Kyo's motto also. Hm....

January 4 - Letterbox. Folks, this isn't just any old letterbox. This is a primo letterbox which was a gift from two of the nicest people in the world, my dear, dear friends, Billy and Melvin. My letter box was tilting like the Tower of Pisa after someone who shall remain nameless backed her car into it. Every day, it tilted a little more, but that unknown person ignored it until it was ready to topple over completely. One evening after work, she noticed that there was a brand spanking new mailbox! Which is why Billy and Melvin are the BEST. If you don't believe me, you can look at my Facebook photo album entitled, "Why Billy and Melvin are the BEST." No joke.

January 8 - My sky. I just shot the waning sun through the trees on my front lawn. Although I complain about the mountains of leaves to rake from my many, many trees, and threaten to cut every tree down from time to time, I really do love my pine and live oaks and magnolia and walnuts. They are so beautiful, especially against the sky.

A Photo A Day - January 2 and 7

2012-01-07T07:16:00.000-08:00

January 2 - Breakfast. This is my actual breakfast today, January 7th: Puffed rice, almond milk and coffee. Usually I include a banana when I have cereal, but alas, no bananas in the house today!

January 7 - Favorite. FAVORITE? You want me to choose JUST ONE????? AYEEEEEEE! As I have said many times, a lipstick obsession is much more reasonable, cheaper, and smaller than a shoe obsession. My mother's girlfriend, Jess Davis used to say, you are never really dressed without lipstick. Words to live by, my friends. Words to live by! If I absolutely HAD to choose a favorite, though, I think it would be MAC's Plumfill. Maybe. I don't know how many lipsticks I currently own - you count 'em. I'm too busy deciding which one I will wear today!

PS: Here's a hint or two -- this is a 10" dinner plate, and in the center of the plate, the lipsticks are three deep. Just sayin'... I think there are few in my car that are not pictured, and I didn't check the pockets of all my skirts and pants, and there are a few in my desk at work.. Look closely and you will note lipsticks of all price points and manufacturers. The most expensive one I ever bought was Lancome's Fetish because I tried it in a makeover with a friend, and I simply had to have it - it was like rose SILK! - and the cheapest being the 99 cent ones at CVS. I love them both and everything in between, but my favorite manufacturer is MAC because they glide silkily and smell like vanilla. YUM!

A Photo A Day - January 1 and 6

2012-01-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

January 1: A photo of me

January 6: Something that makes me smile

I just love Christmas trees! I don't really care about all the other types of Christmas decorations; for me, it's all about the Christmas tree. I want the biggest tree that will fit, and I want it loaded with lights - so many that I cause a neighborhood brown out every time I turn them on - and I want the boughs positively groaning with so many ornaments. This is a picture of the tree in my office at work, it's only 2 feet tall, but it has two sets of lights and about 4 dozen ornaments on it! Christmas trees make me smile. Today is Theophany, and I will be taking down my tree here at the office and at home, so it's nice to have a picture to remember!

A Photo A Day

2012-01-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

I'm coming to this six days late (what else is new?), but I'd like to try the photo a day for January. I saw it on Jen Woodhouse's blog; it seems like fun, and it will help me to get back in the swing of blogging more often. It may take me a day or two to catch up. Here it is:

Wednesday Words

2012-01-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

Couple of things stand out to me today. The first is from an article about Stephen Colbert, one of my absolute favorites. He is brilliant and hilarious all at the same time. While talking about his father and two brothers deaths when he was ten, he spoke of how his mother kept him from becoming bitter:

"She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that's directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not not pain -- it's that the pain is actually a gift. What's the option? God doesn't really give you another choice."

What most people don't know about Stephen Colbert is that he is a devout Roman Catholic who truly practices his faith. How profound a thought: God's deliverance is not from pain, but that you will come to understand the salvific properties of pain which make it a gift. Gotta think on this some more, but deep inside, I simply know this to be true.

The other thing I read this morning that touched me is this, from Made to Crave: "You were made for more! More than failure... more than this cycle of defeat... more than being ruled by taste buds, body image, rationalizations, guilt, and shame. You were made for victory." Wow. God never intended me to be a slave to my passions, of which food is only one. God intended me to share in His victory over sin and the results of sin which is death. God intended me to become more like Him, to share in His beauty which is victorious over all. As long as I get out of the way, that is. More food for thought.

Cravings

2012-01-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

I've been on Weight Watchers for about 11 or 12 weeks now, and am doing ok with it. I am in this for the long haul, and the goal for me is health rather than weight loss. So, I faithfully record every point I eat and attempt to practice portion control. Altogether, I've lost nearly 20 lbs (it was 20, but I did gain a couple of pounds over the holidays).

However, I am coming to understand that overeating, self-medicating with food, is not only a physical issue. It is an emotional issue, speaking to my mental and emotional health. Most importantly, it is a spiritual issue, because everything has a spiritual component. Here is the scenario as I am coming to understand it:

Little Denise is afraid that her mother will die, so she eats. Her grandmother, aunties, mother and cousins all believe that the best way to show love is to shovel more and more food into little Denise, and little Denise happily complies, setting the stage for self-medicating with food. When bad things happen in Denise's life, and lots of bad things happen, she is strong on the outside, but inside, she is still that little girl, and she turns to food to get her through the bad times. When good things happen in Denise's life, and lots of good things happen, she celebrates with food, because food is the source of good feelings. Over time, Denise goes from being athletic to couch potato, from muscular to fat. This makes Denise feel bad, so.... she eats to feel better.

My question to myself is this: Where is God in all this? I turn to food to assuage my sorrows, when God is right there, holding His hand to me. I refuse to grasp onto Him because my hands are full of chocolate and macaroni and other nummy goodies. I rely on food more than I rely on God. I think I must love food more than I love God - that's what my actions say. Inside my heart of hearts, I think to myself, no no no - I love God! I crave Him! There is a hole in me that is God-shaped, and all the food in the world cannot fill that space that was meant for God. Yet, I keep trying to fill that space with all sorts of things - food mostly - but all sorts of other things, too.

This process of getting healthy is about so much more than weight and food. It's about God, too, and surrendering this life-long crutch of food to rely instead on Him.

Yes.

I'm so weak, though. The scriptures talk about finding strength in weakness. May I find that too.

Goodbye 2011 Meme

2012-01-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before? Hm... can't think of anything.
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Kinda sorta. I did get more serious about my spiritual life, and I did continue decluttering. These are my goals again for this year, along with becoming more fit.
Did anyone close to you give birth? Nope
Did anyone close to you die? For the first time in a long time, I can say no, no one I love died. May it be so for 2012 as well.
What countries did you visit? The depths of despair and depression, but otherwise, I stayed home in the USA
What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011? More health and fitness, more free time to paint and knit, more time with dear daughter and son-in-law. Oh yes, a significant other would be nice.
What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory? March 27 and 29, and April 1.
What was your biggest achievement of the year? Forgiving my daughter.
What was your biggest failure? Not forgiving another person who used to be very close to me. Still working on that.
Did you suffer illness or injury? Um.... yes.
What was the best thing you bought? My wonderful droid phone, the HTC EVO Shift! How I love it!
Where did most of your money go? Money? What's that? Providing a home, utilities, food, insurance, transportation and medical care for myself, one little dog and four cats.
What did you get really, really, really excited about? I guess this means excited in a good way, right? Hard to think of anything that I got excited about in a good way, other than my DROID PHONE.
What song/album will always remind you of 2011? Nebo E Zemla. Go fig.
What do you wish you’d done more of? Praying. Knitting. Walking. Sleeping.
What do you wish you’d done less of? Stressing about things and people I can do nothing about. Worrying about a child that has to make her own way in the world.
How will you be spending/did you spend Christmas? Christmas Eve at my church, and Christmas Day with dear daughter and son-in-law at their adorable apartment for a fantastic meal and presents
Who did you spend the most time on the phone with? It would be a toss up between dear daughter and Xenia - texting. Actual phone conversations, that would be my beautiful cousins Roseanne and Ethel.
Did you fall in love in 2011? Not with a person, but with my DROID! How I love you, Droid!
How many one night stands in this last year? None. I don’t do one night stands.
What was your favorite TV program? Doc Martin. House. Royal Pains. Grey's Anatomy. Do we see a pattern here?
What was the best book(s) you read? Letters to a Beginner - its one of my most favorite books and I read it nearly every year. Other than that, The Way of the Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way which I hadn't read in a long, long time.
What were your favorite films of this year? The Help was the absolute best!
What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? My birthday is on September 14th and I turned 56. I spent it studying iconography with the master iconographer, Xenia Pokrovskaya. They sang Many Years to me at lunch, which was sweet.
What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Dear daughter not eloping. That was horrible, but not as horrible as the way I found out about it. Having someone I trusted not betray my trust. I'm still not 100% over these two things, but I'm doing my best. Otherwise, more money. More free time to paint and knit. Having a special someone to share it with.
What kept you sane? My dear friend and sister of my heart, Xenia. Knitting. Prayer.
What political issue stirred you the most? The polarization between the far right and far left. There is no one in Washington that represents my best interest.
Who did you miss? My mother. She was the only one that never betrayed my trust. How I miss you, Mom. But its not forever. We'll be together again.
Who was the best new person you met? Not a new person, but I've spent more time at St. Martha Mary Monastery, and am forging stronger relationships with the nuns there. That has been the best.
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011. Be careful where you place your trust.

As 2011 fades

2011-12-31T18:15:00.000-08:00

2011 is fading fast, and I am waiting for 2012 to begin. This past year had its ups and downs, its betrayals and disappointments, its tragedies and pain, but it also had its joys. I prefer to think about the good things and leave the bad things behind. My mantra for 2011 was, "forward, not backward" and it is still my mantra as we enter 2012. However, I can't help thinking about the past on New Years Eve, about people and places that are long gone. Memory Eternal! My face is turned resolutely to the future, though. Although I don't have a clue what the future holds for me, I am straining to hear that still, small voice. In the meantime, I am preparing for a large change by decluttering in every possible way, exercising my frugal muscles even more, working on my iconography and other creative pursuits, and becoming more healthy. This little laundry list is actually a list of my resolutions, I guess.

I am a bit lonely. I guess that's to be expected since I live alone and don't date. Perhaps I should change that... Perhaps not.

Welcome, 2012. Welcome.

Still Storming

2011-12-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

Quick update on my previous post, The Perfect Storm.

I am still with Weight Watchers and doing well. The loss of weight is slow, but very steady. I am now at the 9 week mark, and have lost 10% of what I want to lose - that is a victory, for sure. The biggest victory, though, is that I am still tracking my food and counting points. Whenever I've tried Weight Watchers in the past 20 years, by the third meeting, I would dread the meetings and quit. There is something about the meetings that I find off-putting. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but one thing I know is that I never participate in the conversations about what to eat, because no one seems to eat real food. The conversations center around the latest non-food Weight Watcher snacks and how delicious the chemicals are. Yuck. Anyway, I have found my niche with the on-line program. No meetings for me - just the online tools and a weigh in every Saturday morning, which is when the local meeting weighs in.

I notice that my daughter and my beautiful big cousin Roseanne are keeping up with my weight loss and have become my cheerleaders. I love you both so much! And, I thank you for your support. I think they are more excited than I am, and very proud!

What is different? Well, I am keeping track of everything that goes in my mouth. Once I did that for a few days, I understood that I was snacking a lot - grazing, really - and on things that were high in salt and fat. I've replaced that with raw baby carrots (love the crunch and faint sweetness), microwaved plain popcorn dressed with a tsp or two of olive oil and spices of my choice (thank you, Presto microwave Power Pop! 1/4 C popcorn plus 2 tsp of olive oil = 8 points), and lots of fruit. I nosh all morning until lunch time, when I have a main dish, sandwich or soup for 5 - 9 points, plus salad or veggies or fruit. I love grapefruit and have always peeled them and eaten them out of hand; a grapefruit at lunch or in the afternoon has been really great for filling me up until dinner time. For dinner, I cook whatever I want and calculate the points. Then I play with the portions until I get the point value I want. I do try to cut down on oil or butter a bit, but I don't really do a lot of substitutions because I don't want to have to buy a lot of fat free or low calorie foods that don't taste as good. I'd rather have a smaller portion but full flavor. Leftovers become lunch, and I divide my dinners into portions right away, so I'm not tempted to unconsciously eat more. The other thing I'm doing which has been a help is that I write point values on different foods when I unpack my grocery shopping. For example, I really wanted waffles, but was too lazy to make them, so I bought a small box of 10 whole wheat waffles. I used the nutrition info on the box to calculate the points, and then I wrote it right on the box so every time I reach for two little waffles, I know they are 5 points.

What do I still need to do? Well, I don't get any exercise other than walking to Fresh Market once a week. I need to add in some joint-friendly exercise, but that just isn't going to happen right now. I have a yoga video for people who are stiff and sore, and I'll start that soon. Not right now, but soon. Perhaps that will be my New Year resolution. I am not getting two servings of calcium every day, even though I love plain yogurt and have some in the fridge. I'm not sure what's up with that, but I need to do better with that. I'm not weighing and measuring everything that I eat, and to be successful in the long term, every WW article I've read says that you really have to be very careful about portion sizes and not rely on eyeballing everything. I think I should designate one day a week to religiously measure and weigh everything, just to keep my portions true. But not this week. Or next. LOL!

I am 56 years old. I live alone with my cats and dog. My only child is married and has her own life four hours away from me. I come from a very long-lived gene pool, and if I live healthily, I believe I may live to my late 80s or even into my 90s. I have 30+ more years to live, and I wonder what I should do with those years? I need and want to get healthy in all parts of my life, including, but not limited to my weight, so that I can freely pursue the rest of my life, whatever it turns out to be. I think it will take me about two years to lose the weight and grow a strong, healthy body. At the end of those two years, hopefully my finances will be in order, my home will be completed and ready for sale or rent, and I can move forward into the next phase of my life.

I have no idea what the next phase will turn out to be - I have some ideas that keep gnawing at me, but God only knows what lies in store for me. In the meantime, I will keep chugging along, preparing for a big change, so that if it comes, I'll be ready.

And that, friends, is the update on my life!

The Perfect Storm

2011-11-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm not a superstitious person, but I do believe that life doesn't end just because a body dies.

Back at the beginning of October, my coworkers decided that we would all wear pink to support Breast Cancer Awareness, and we took a couple of group pictures. We had a lot of fun with the pictures, and one of them showed us in our Charlie's Angels poses. There was a lot of laughter and good natured ribbing. Later that day, the pictures were emailed to all of us, and I enjoyed looking at them. I thought to myself, "Who is that big job in the middle?" And then, to my great chagrin, I realized that the unknown big job was ME. Nah, it couldn't be.... but it was. I guess I look at my face to wash it and never get past my shoulders. I knew I was big, but I truly didn't realize how big I was. That was Friday.

On Saturday morning, I was still pondering my thunder thighs and belly and decided to weigh myself, something I hadn't done in a very, very long time. I nearly fainted when I saw a horrifying number that I have never seen before. How depressing, but also how liberating, because I understood why my back hurts and my knees hurt and my ankles hurt and my feet hurt. OF COURSE, my joints would hurt at that weight!!! I felt the immediate need for pretzels dipped in chocolate.

On Sunday, dear daughter telephoned me. She is an old, sensitive soul - not really fey, but definitely very sensitive. She told me about the dream that she had the night prior. "Mom, Grandma (my mother) came to me in a dream. We were sitting in the old house (where I'm living now) chatting about nothing important, but I had such a warm feeling being with Grandma again. At some point, I said to her, 'This isn't real, is it, Gram? This is a dream, right?' and she replied 'Yes, it's a dream.' Then she pointed her finger at me and said, 'You tell your mother that enough is enough. She cannot do this on her own. She needs help. Enough is enough. Promise me that you will tell your mother.' So, Mom, obviously you are crazy and you need a shrink. I want you to pay attention to what Gram said and see someone because you really need help. Gram said so."

I kind of laughed, because it was funny, but also, what a kick in the gut! I believe that my mother and my daughter are able, from time to time, pierce that veil that separates the living and the dead. It has happened in the past, and I believe that it happened last month. However, I believe that my mother, who was always very concerned about my weight affecting my health and longevity, was not talking about my emotional health, but my physical health. And if your mother tells you something like that from beyond the grave, then surely it is so, right?

I pondered all the failed diets and exercise schedules in my past. Yes, some worked more or less, but eventually, life would intervene, a catastrophic problem would enter my life, and all my energies would be focused on dealing with life and all its tragedy and joy. I deal with these stressors by eating. I don't eat a lot of food-like substances, processed foods or junk food, but I do eat large amounts. I love salty/crunchy and sweet/creamy foods. Oh, and cheese. Oh yeah., cheese.

Anyway, Mom, I love you and miss you so much, and I got the message. Its true, I cannot become healthy alone. I need help. I need prayer. I need for my family and friends to pray for me, and I need to pray for myself. God made me a body to house that little spark of Him, and I have not loved the beauty of His house, have I? I've neglected and trashed it. I need forgiveness for that, as well as the strength to rebuild this body, this house, so that it once more can become what God intended it to be.

And all of these things happening one on top of another created a health crisis of sorts - a perfect storm.

That was last month. Four weeks later, I'm nearly 10 lbs lighter and my joints don't hurt quite as much. Thanks for the wake up call, Mom. Thank you Weight Watchers. And thank you, my beautiful cousin Roseanne for endlessly praying for me. I love you so much. Pretty soon, I'll have a date with the beginning stretching/yoga dvd.

Henry Van Dyke on Death

2011-07-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a beautiful poem on death:

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails
to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea
and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says:
"There, she is gone!"
"Gone where?"
Gone from my sight.
That is all. She is
just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear the load
of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me,
not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says:
"There, she is gone!"
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
"Here she comes!"
And that is dying.

Henry Van Dyke

Beauty and Music

2011-06-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

This, from Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog, absolutely takes my breath away:

There is a theology of beauty, which harkens back to the language of the Old Testament when Moses desires to see God “face to face.” Such a vision is not granted to Moses, but many other visions which foreshadowed the vision of St. Paul are indeed given to Moses-the-God-seer. This is not the language of abstract religious thought but the language of the whole of art and its inner desire. We long for beauty, regardless of how poorly we often define it. True beauty takes our breath away and confounds our ability to describe it.

Much the same can be said of music. “God has made man to be the singer of His radiance,” St. Gregory the Theologian has said (PG, 38, 1327). We sing and we love to sing because at its very heart, we are singers of the radiance of God. It is certainly true that we sing many things that resemble in no way the radiance of God – and yet the drive towards song has its roots in God’s radiance. Perhaps the most essential writing in all of Scripture is the book of Psalms. At best, we moderns read it like poetry, though it was always meant to be sung. God, rendered as prose, is perhaps the deepest misrepresentation of all.

This itself is the problem found in many modern expressions of Christianity – they are prosaic. This is not to say that they are without music – though they are often without good music (let the arguments begin…). Liturgical expression (particularly of the ever-changing make-it-up-as-you-go-variety) fails to rise to the level of mystery. Sacraments, even where underpinned with relatively sound doctrine, still collapse into the prosaic life of modernity. In very few cases would emissaries from a strange land return from modern Christian worship and declare, “We knew not whether we were on earth or in heaven. But of a truth we know that God is with them” (the report of St. Vladimir’s emissaries to Constantinople in the 10th century).

Far more to the point is the prosaic character of Christian lives. Beauty and poetic wonder are not only missing in our relationship with God – they are missing from our lives. My experience is that Byzantine worship is no guarantee of beauty within its participants. However, it does not underwrite the banality of modern culture.

Several years back I was speaking with a small Russian choir, touring the United States from St. Petersburg. They were all Church singers, but also singers from various opera companies in St. Petersburg as well. Needless to say they were an exceedingly talented group. One of the hymns they had sung that night was a particularly difficult and moving piece by the Russian composer, Chesnokov. In the course of the conversation I noted the great beauty with which it was written and with which it had been sung that night. One of the choral members told that that it required careful spiritual preparation (“that all needed to be without anger and at peace with one another”) before this hymn could be properly sung.

Of course, this is not only true of the exquisite music of Chesnokov or other stellar writers – it is also true of a small four-member choir offering the most simple tunes of Obikhod chant on a Sunday morning. Four average voices will never sound like the trained voices of the Russian opera – but they can find beauty – first within and then as an offering of song. In that offering, other lives are transformed and lifted to realm of beauty that is Christ among us.

I do not wish to be foolish or dishonest: beauty, transcendant beauty is and transforming beauty is not the peculiar property of Orthodox Christianity.. God is indeed everywhere present and filling all things. And he desires that all participate in His life (which is also a participation in Beauty). I do not offer this as an observation of ecumenism – merely as a resurrection that God is free and “does whatsover He pleases.”

I do, however, offer this in order to encourage Christians to consider such things as Beauty and music – and many other aspects of our lives when considering devotion to God and the presentation of the Gospel. The world in which we live (much of it, anyway) is hungry less for a careful presentation of the Christian doctrine of the atonement than for an encounter with the true and living God.

Character, by Albert N. Parlin

2011-04-13T04:35:00.001-07:00

The founder of my junior high, Albert Norton Parlin, wrote a brief treatise on the subject of character, and every student had to memorize it. Recently, the Parlin School became a grammar school for that section of the city, but in my day, every single public school student eventually attended the only junior high in town, the Parlin School. Thus, there are generations and generations of people in Everett who learned this little essay, and I still know it by heart. In fact, it is engraved on the three-story wall of the school that faces the main street in my hometown.

Character

I would have all young persons taught to respect themselves, their citizenship, the rights of others and all sacred things; to be healthy, industrious, persevering, provident, courteous, just and honest; neat in person and in habit, clean in thought and in speech; modest in manner, cheerful in spirit and Masters of themselves, faithful to every trust, loyal to every duty; magnanimous in judgement, generous in service and sympathetic toward the needy and unfortunate; for these are the most mportant things in life and this is not only the way of wisdom, happiness and true success, but the way to make the most of themselves and to be of the greatest service to the world.

A.N.P.

I've been thinking a lot about what constitutes character recently, about what a person of character looks like and how a person of character acts, and how does one develop character over time, there is no way that I could ponder these things and not give a nod to Character, by Albert N. Parlin.

Weakness

2010-08-19T05:27:00.000-07:00

I am sick. Oh, not seriously, I will live, after all, but I have been battling what started out as a summer head cold for about two weeks now. I had to call in sick two days last week, and so far, two days this week. I don't know what tomorrow will bring. Between the coughing jags, the gravelly voice, the lightheadedness and the topsy-turvy GI system (thank you, antibiotics), I've been thinking a lot, mostly because I don't have the energy to do much else.

There is something about bodily weaknesses that bring spiritual weaknesses to the fore, and I find that even in my weakened state, without coming in contact with any other human, I still sin. I am still confronted with sinful thoughts that won't let me go (logismoi) and laziness. Even without having to rush to work, I still couldn't find the time for morning prayers yesterday. What did I do instead? I don't even remember, but probably I caught up on my email and Facebook.

It's profoundly humbling and distressing to find that *I* am my own occasion for sin. I can't point the finger at anyone else but me. Deep within me is a force to sin, to be petty, to be angry, to be lustful, to be greedy, to be lazy, to be prideful. I can't dismiss my baseness because I was rushed, I had no time. I am alone, without distraction, and still, I am distracted. Still I fall. Still, I poke new holes in my baptismal garment.

I am angry with myself, with my weakness. I don't like to think of myself as weak - I think of myself as strong. When operating under my own power, doing all sorts of unimportant, worldly things I am pretty strong. But when it comes to becoming pleasing to God, no matter how much effort I put out, or how little, it just doesn't work. I think *at* God, but I don't really speak to Him. Without speaking to Him, I can't hear His voice. There is a give and take in relationships that does not exist.

Lord, how shall I be saved? I *am* the sin. It's part of my innermost self. I cry from the frustration and pain of it all. Like Paul, I do not do what I want to do and instead, do what I do not want to do. It's not anyone else but me. I am helpless against the desire to sin. Yet, I do recognize, today at least, that under my own power, I am drowning. I just don't know how to stop.

Maybe the secret is in letting myself go under. Maybe it's in the weakness. Maybe life is like quicksand - the more you try to get out, the more you move, the more you operate under your own power, the more you sink, but if you are still and patient, you stop sinking and you can be pulled out and saved. Maybe that's how I could be saved too.

I am again alone with God today. No pretenses, no facades. Just me and Him. Raw, unadulterated. Offering my torn and dirty garment and my sinful soul.

Happy Birthday, Dad

2010-04-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

My father was born on April 25, 1916. He would have been 94 today. His full name was Edmour Edgar Edward Joseph Babineau.

How did he get such an usual moniker? Well, his mother allowed her sisters to each contribute a name, and I guess those Babineau girls had pretty similar taste in names! Yes, I said Babineau girls - my grandmother, Judith Babineau, married my grandfather, Edward Babineau - they were distant cousins.

I have some photos of my father as baby and little boy. In one, he is sitting on an ornately carved chair, probably a year old. He is bald, with huge eyes, and is reaching out, trying to grab life. That was my Dad - he grabbed life. He grew up through WWI and the Depression. His father was a plumber, and as the oldest child, he first was his father's helper and learned the trade. He had to leave school in the 7th grade to help his father support the family. By the time my father was a young man, there were three little babies in the family and the depression was in full swing.

Another photo is of my father at about two or so. He has a dutch boy haircut, a mischievous look in his eye, and a sailor suit complete with hat and short pants which show his dimpled knees. He was adorable. He was the first of his generation on his mother's side, and his aunts totally doted on him. Even when they married and had their own families, they still doted on him, and he doted on them. I remember the endless visiting of the aunties, and how they would eat up every word he said. Now, what he actually said to them was usually pretty outrageous - he would tease them and tell them how pretty they looked - and he meant it! When he walked into their homes, it was a party, because Edmour was here!

My Dad loved women. He loved to be around them. He appreciated them and found them interesting. I think that maybe because he was surrounded by them as a baby, he found their company in later life comforting. There are 14 years between my father and his next brother, and in between, there were at least four babies that I know of who died within the first few months of birth. How very sad for my Memiere. I imagine that unspeakable sadness somehow made my father more precious to her, and also to her sisters.

But there is no denying that there was a mutual admiration society going on between my father and his aunts: Dora, Justine, Alexena, Amelie, Julie and Alma. Those are the ones that I knew. In fact, when my own baby was about six months old, I took her to New Bedford to meet my father's baby sister Anita, and together, she and I took her to meet the last of the aunts, Aunt Alma Trembly. By that time, Aunt Alma was blind, so she held Elisabeth on her lap and touched her face all over, and squeezed her thighs, making her laugh. My chest hurt - I was that proud! Aunt Alma's son, Paul, sat next to her, smiling. Now, those Trembly's are one more handsome the next, probably the best looking of their generation of cousins. They all have gorgeous eyes, Paul and Louise have blue eyes like Aunt Alma, and Jeanne has brown like Uncle Walter. Aunt Alma told me in that French Canadian twang of hers, that Elisabeth was a beautiful baby and I should be very proud, but as beautiful as she was, she was not the most beautiful baby ever. At this, Paul began beaming. Paul is a very handsome man and I bet he was an adorable baby. Aunt Alma went on to say that the most beautiful baby she ever saw was... Edmour! Paul almost fell off the sofa! Edmour was so beautiful and so perfect with his ten little toes and ten little fingers, and he was so loving and sweet and so very mischievous! But even when he was bad, he was so adorable and loving and sweet and and and... Aunt Alma's whole demeanor softened when she spoke about my father. She had a faraway look in her eyes and smile on her lips. She was lost in what, to her, were beautiful memories of a beautiful baby boy that she loved very, very much.

And there it was. That was my father. As a child, he was so charming and loving that you forgave him everything; as an adult, he was so charming and loving that you forgave him everything, and as an old man beset with Alzheimers, he was still so very charming and loving that you forgave him everything.

Alzheimer's patients often become mean spirited and angry, but my father didn't. He remained who he had always been - upbeat, mischievous, sweet, kind and loving. He became more childlike. As the disease progressed, I saw glimpses of the little boy that his aunties were besotted with, and I began to understand that mysterious bond between him and them. lHe was quite an unforgettable child and he was quite an unforgettable man.

Today is his 94th birthday. Happy birthday, Dad. You are sorely missed.

Goodbye, Mary Margaret McBride

2010-04-24T11:40:00.001-07:00

I've come to the realization that things are not memories.

I've been decluttering and unpacking boxes which are in my infamous "box room" aka den. I moved back to this house more than a year ago, and since there is no garage, all the boxes have been stored in what used to be my den. I unpacked everything I need to live long ago, yet there are lots of boxes in the room which makes it unusable for anything but box storage and a hiding place for my cats. Mind you, the amount of boxed "stuff" stored here is probably about a quarter of what was stored in the garage of doom in Richmond Hill, so I've made huge strides.

In the last few weeks, I've unpacked about 8 really big boxes and have filled three for the church yard sale. I've thrown away a lot and recycled a lot and kept a little bit. I've started this process from the "other" side of the room, because I'm looking for a couple of specific things and the boxes nearer to the entry have all been opened already. That's part of the problem - the opened and half-empty boxes. If I can put the boxes in some kind of order, I can deal with them better, but right now, its all pretty overwhelming - the mess, the opened boxes, the lack of labels ...

My goal is to open and survey every box, immediately remove the items that I know I do not want any longer, and then repack and re-order the boxes so that I can make some judgements later on. I think if I do this, I will half the amount of crap in my box room, making it a usable den with some boxes again. I'll have to ask my organizational guru, Michele, if she thinks this will work.

Today I opened a box of cookbooks, and at the bottom was the huge, well worn and well loved Encyclopedia of Cooking by Mary Margaret McBride. Immediately after WWII, when my mother was a new bride, she and her mother grocery shopped together every week, and every week, my grandmother would buy another chapter of this tome - one for her and one for my mother. This cookbook was quite the exhaustive reference for its day - it had everything from how to can, pluck a chicken and make an eggroll, to napkin folding and all kinds of ethnic food. With this cookbook, Grammie and Mom cooked many an adventurous ethnic meal - in particular, the chinese meal complete with egg rolls is still talked about in our family.

Mom took her volume of Mary Margaret McBride to the Inn and earned quite a reputation for what we billed as "continental cuisine" in 1950 and 1960 Sunapee, NH - not quite the chic cosmopolitan capital of NH, its true, but still....

Mary Margaret is held together with duct tape. Her pages are worn and stained. The plastic lamination of the cover is dry, brittle and flaking off. It weighs more than 10 lbs. I will never use it, but as I held it in my hands, I hesitated to get rid of it. I tried to remember the last time my mother actually pulled it out and used it, and I can't. She carried that book from Everett to Medford, to Everett, to Sunapee, to California and finally, to Savannah. It has had a home in a bedroom, a couple of apartments, a motor home for 15 years and several houses. Its been in my cookbook bookcase for almost 13 years, and not once in those 13 years has it been used. Yet, I'm struggling with whether to keep it or not.

So, I did what I always do - I got a second opinion. In the end, everything that is mine will one day be my only child's, so I asked her if she wanted me to keep it for sentimental reasons, and she doesn't. She doesn't remember it propped open while my mother cooked. She doesn't remember two heads bent over it, laughing and planning their next culinary adventure, one head under 5 feet and silver and the other thick and black. These are my memories, not hers. Her text to me said, "I don't want it. You can get rid of it. It's ok." And with that "It's ok" I decided to throw it in the trash - but not before taking a quick picture of it so I can remember it.

It feels like another goodbye to my mother, but really, its goodbye Mary Margaret McBride. I guess I'm growing up. Farewell.

Love is born of understanding

2010-03-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

Love is born of understanding. For if we do not comprehend and feel what God has given us and in particular to each one of us, and if we do not realize who we were because of our sins when God did this great deed of mercy--in short, if we do not come to know Him and ourselves--we will not bind our souls to the fear of Him, and we will not rejoice in the beauty of His eros.
The Apostle Paul said to the Christians in order to arouse in them greater love and thanksgiving to God: "What fruit did you have then (in idolatry) in the things of which you are now ashamed...for the wages of sin is death." (Rom.6:21,23)

Selected from Counsels from the Holy Mountain from the Letters and Homilies of Elder Ephraim

2009 Meme

2009-12-31T13:18:00.000-08:00

Stolen from Alana:

What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I can't think of anything

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

My usual resolutions are to get my prayer life in order and to get fit. I worked on the first and ignored the second.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Two of my little cousins had babies this year

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes, it was a terrible year for death: 1/23/09 my father, Edmour Joseph Babineau died; 7/22/09 my dear bff Ellen died; 11/22/09 my dearest best friend and ex-husband, Gerald George Norman died.

5. What countries did you visit?

Does California count as a different country? No, didn't think so.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

Peace of mind and contentment. Also, money.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

See #4

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Being faithful to meeting with my spiritual father

9. What was your biggest failure?

So many failures, day after day.... fall down, get up, fall down, get up....

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Does grief and depression count?

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A few bus tix so that DD could come home for the weekend

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

DD. She has grown and matured so much this year. I'm so proud of her.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

My own behavior, over and over again.

14. Where did most of your money go?

I always buy too many books, and stock up on too much food.... But most of my money has gone into my house and to take care of Jerry's final affairs.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I don't remember getting really, really, really excited about much of anything in 2009, at least not excited in a good way.

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2009?

Come, let us give a last kiss to the dead....

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

* Happier or sadder?

Sadder, definitely

* Thinner or fatter?

- Way Fatter.

* richer or poorer?

- I am the poorest I have ever, ever been.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Laughing and knitting. I had forgotten how therapeutic knitting is

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worry, stress and cry. I also wish I had simply done less.... I need to work on saying no to projects that I really don't want to do because meeting everyone else's needs takes time away from music and iconography and knitting

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent it at DD's church and apartment

21. How many one-night stands?

None. I'm not a one-night stand kind of person

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Royal Pains, House, and.... my guilty pleasure is 18 Kids and Counting - its so wonderful to see a large homeschooling family that truly works!

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No hate.

24. What was the best book you read?

Inside Inside - it was great. Its so rare to find a book that expects you to understand the English language.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Infected Mushroom

26. What did you want and get?

I wanted a better relationship with my daughter and we have that

27. What was your favorite film of this year?

Julie and Julia, definitely.

28. What did you do on your birthday?

Went to work, and then went to dinner

29. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

like a comfortable old shoe...

30. What kept you sane?

Prayer, particularly the Jesus Prayer

31. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Can I confess that Antonio Banderas is slowly losing his grip on my.... heart, yes heart.... ?

32. What political issue stirred you the most?

Middle Eastern politics

33. Who did you miss?

Dead people

34. Who was the best new person you met?

Dan and Liana Condratov

35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:

Keep praying, no matter what.... its the only life line there is

I'm not tagging, but if you want to, feel free. :)

Endings and Beginnings

2009-11-21T05:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, I received word that my ex-husband suffered a massive brain bleed and that there is no hope for any recovery.

I spoke with a dear physician friend who was by Jerry's side, the nurse, and Jerry's priest. I felt rather numb after the initial shock, but then he enormity of this loss for our daughter, and for me as well, hit. I spoke with my spiritual father, and just the sound of his voice is so calming to me. After that, I was ready to telephone dear daughter at college and broke the news to her. It was hard, very hard and we both cried. Then I called Jerry's brother, soon to be the last of the three Norman boys, my cousin/sister Roseanne, and a few others. I asked for prayers from some online women's groups and sent an email asking for prayer to many of the people in my address book.

The next task was to get DD and me to Mountain View, CA, where Jerry is in intensive care. It seemed impossible to gather the funds necessary until a dear friend/sister offered her credit card for the tickets. God Bless You Joan! Next, I needed to make arrangements for the care of my pets, which was shouldered by my friend/sister Cindy. God Bless You Cindy!

The day was spent in prayer, pleas for prayer, phone calls, internet searching, bank visits, laundry and packing. Its a blur, really.

Finally, I got on the road, and in the darkness, I had four hours to unwind, pray and think, punctuated by two long conversations with dear, dear Mat. E and Fr. K. It was so necessary to speak with both of them - Fr. K because he's known Jerry and me for 30 years and that shared history and memories of Jerry at his best cannot be replaced, and Mat. E because she knows me - we are twins in so many ways.

I've been thinking a lot about death the last few years, and I've been feeling my mortality - just read my last post if you want proof. I've been thinking about what it means to be ready, about what kind of change of heart God wants. I've been pondering the meaning of grief and loss and separation.

Jerry is leaving this world for the next very soon, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a couple of days. As I look back on all that we shared over the last 34 years, the fun, the heartbreaks, the joys, the sorrows, I understand that part of me will go with him. Alex told me something very wise yesterday, something someone told him when his wife died a year and a half ago: the day of your death is a joyful day because that's the day that God has chosen for you to be born into Heaven to live with Him, one of two birthdays chosen just for you. So, its a joyful day.

I get it. I believe it.

But still, there is pain at the parting for those of us who remain. Still, there is the pain your child feels at losing her father at such a young age... and when your child hurts, you hurt as well.

I'm the only one awake at DD's apartment, and soon we will get ourselves to the airport and begin a journey that is the end of the journey that Jerry and I began so long ago. Its a new life for him, and in some strange way, for us as well.

Jerry is a good man, an honorable man, who loves his daughter more than anyone, more than anyone. He has much to be proud of, and I pray that he has no regrets. I pray that he is ready with a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ. I pray that he will be counted among the just and take his place in the mansions of the Lord. I pray that I will see him again at the last.

I pray that God and the Most Holy Theotokos will give me the strength to do whatever needs to be done over the next couple of weeks, and that I will be a strong comfort for our daughter. I pray that I will be able to graciously and humbly accept love and assistance when offered.

I pray for our daughter, that she remain strong and faithful, and that she have only good memories of her father, particularly at the last. I pray that, when the enormity of this loss hits her, she will know that its not forever and have the strength to reach out to me and to others to comfort her in her grief.

But mostly, I pray for the servant of God, Gerald George, who goes to meet his maker today. I will pray him into heaven, while I miss him here on earth.

The sting of Death

2009-11-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything since last March, shortly after Dad died. I realize that there was something healing about his death, something that allowed me to close the book of grief over my mother's death that overwhelmed me since she died four years ago. Its a mystery...

But death is everywhere. In just the past couple of months, my cousin T died. Poor T, who made all the wrong choices, always comparing herself to her sister and never thinking she measured up. Poor T who at the core of her felt that she was unlovable. Poor T, who was so afraid of doctors and hospitals and pain, yet died in cancer ridden agony, and so afraid of death, but died anyway. Poor T.

Another piece of my childhood and of my heart gone.

And then there is E. We chatted on the phone just the day before she went into the hospital where she died a couple of days later. E, who never told a soul that she was failing, and that cancer was choking her insides off. Such a shock to hear of her death. I've picked the phone up a dozen times, thinking that I needed to tell her something, and then remembered that she's dead. Its hard to take in. Its hard to believe that there are no more emails and no more phone calls from her.

So, I keep in touch with her husband instead. He is such a mess, but he won't say it. He says he's great, and that things are going swimmingly, but then you hear him tear up on the other end of the phone and he suddenly has to go, so you hang up. This is the most emotional man I have ever met, yet he is trying to remain stoic, living alone in that beautiful house.

We all grieve in different ways.

I've decided to stop grieving. There is so much good in my life, that I'm wasting it with grief and depression. So many good things.... and am I truly grateful for them? I spend so much time looking at the spaces in my heart and my life where people used to be and now there is nothing, that I think I'm missing the goodness that is there instead. I do have so much to be thankful for: my daughter, my family and friends, my health, my pets, my job. Its all a gift really.

Sometimes I wonder why God allows us grief? I think I "get" death.... but I've been wondering about why God allows us to hurt and mourn the one who has gone, the way that we do. That I do. Its so painful. I can truly believe that we will meet again at the resurrection, and I do believe that, but it feels like forever. The forever of the missing seems almost cruel. But we know that God isn't cruel - how could He be? He created us!

Maybe it has to do with us understanding the depths that He went to to save us by sacrificing His only son. I wouldn't do that - I can't conceive of it - my heart stops beating if I even think of sacrificing Elisabeth.... Yet, that is exactly what He did for us. For me.

Its all almost too much to bear.

I keep meeting with my spiritual father, and that has got to be the reason that I don't spend hours writing in this blog any more. He has been wonderfully patient. Its weird, because I really want someone to know me even more than I want to know myself, and he seems to be the chosen one. But sometimes I think to myself, who am I kidding here? Spiritual direction is more than me blubbering all about myself week after week. Somehow it doesn't seem "hard" enough and then there is the odd meeting when it seems too hard to continue. I struggle during these meetings to remain real and honest, and not over dramatize as I am wont to do, or sink into telling a good story which I sometimes do, or whine. I hate whining. But he never complains...

I think I can see a few changes over time. My spiritual father says he can, and I guess I just have to trust his judgement. I know its hard to be objective about yourself, but I think I can see some changes from when we started meeting. For one thing, I am much calmer and I think I'm a little happier and more content. I see more patience and love in my heart for everyone, even people who drive me crazy. This is a definite improvement.

But the more we talk, the more I realize that we are taking the tiniest of baby steps in the spiritual life. I've been thinking about this for a long time and I can see that we are taking baby steps because I really can't handle going any faster. I'm too comfortable in my cocoon of competence to do anything more than stick my baby toe in the water. Pretty sad commentary, really.

Is it wrong to keep thinking about death? Is it pathological? I don't feel like I'm grieving hard anymore, but I understand that death happens all the time, and eventually, it will happen to me. I need to be ready for that day. That's the whole point of the spiritual life, isn't it? To get ready to die? Not that I'm constantly contemplating death and not truly living, because that's not what I'm doing at all, but death seems to have an immediacy to it, a nearness, that really brings me up short. Will I be ready?

Simple Woman's Daybook for March 23rd

2009-03-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

For March 23, 2008

Outside my Window…dusk is falling

I am thinking… that my life is changing, but I don't know if its for the better or not, at least not yet

From the learning rooms… I am reading the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) in preparation for my new work assignment

I am thankful for… my spiritual father

From the kitchen… I am missing cheese in the worst way! Especially brie!

I am wearing… flowered capris that DD says look like pajamas and a white tee shirt

I am creating… a new vision of myself

I am reading… ADA

I am hearing… silence

Around the house... the floors need sweeping

One of my favorite things… sleeping

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week… Tonight: laundry and sweeping; tomorrow: Akathist in the evening; Wednesday: My Feast Day!!!!

A Picture Thought I am Sharing:

"In Church" by Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky

Simple Woman's Daybook for March 9th

2009-03-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

For March 9, 2008

Outside my Window…A beautiful, warm and sunny day

I am thinking… and praying about my parents, and a coworker whose father died today

From the learning rooms… Dear daughter says that she is finally caught up with her schoolwork from the week she took off when my father died

I am thankful for… the free and easy communication between my daughter and me

From the kitchen… tonight I had veggies with olive oil and garlic, with jalapeno corn bread

I am wearing… flowered capris that DD says look like pajamas and a pink tee shirt

I am creating… a new life for myself

I am reading… Orthodox Psychotherapy

I am hearing… my little doggie snoring by my feet

Around the house... the floors need sweeping

One of my favorite things… relaxing with a good book

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week… Tomorrow, DD will take her driving test (I hope, I hope, I hope), then dinner with her two "evil aunties". Wed we will probably go to Fernandina Beach for the day, with Presanctified Liturgy in the evening. Thursday, DD has plans with a friend and I will go to work, then we'll watch a movie in the evening. Friday, after work, I will meet with my spiritual father, followed by Presanctified Liturgy. Don't know what DD is doing yet. Saturday, DD is going to a birthday party, and I will go to Vespers. Sunday, we will go to church, followed by trapeza, followed by choir rehearsal, and then DD will return to college while I go home to my cats and little doggie.

A Picture Thought I am Sharing:

Still Life with Lilacs by Nikolai Petrovich Bogdanov-Belsky. It reminds me of the lilac bush/tree in my back yard on Shute Street.

Memorial Wheat Meditation

2009-03-07T17:18:00.000-08:00

My father, Edmour Joseph Babineau, died January 23, 2009, and tomorrow we will celebrate the traditional 40 day memorial (in greek: parastas, in slavonic: panikhida) for him at church. We Orthodox remember the dead at every service, and on specific "soul" Saturdays in Lent, but tomorrow is special. There are special prayers for the soul as it departs from the body at the moment of death, and we hold what is called a memorial service on the 3rd, 9th, and 40th day, as well as at the 3 month, 6 month, 9 month and one year mark, and every year following. The 40th day is a echo of Christ's Ascension into heaven, and we will pray that Dad will also ascend to Heaven to spend eternity with God

I just finished making the memorial wheat for this service. This is variously known as koliva, hilbee, or kutia, depending on your ethnicity. A plate of this sweet wheat rests on the memorial table throughout Divine Liturgy and during the Memorial itself, after which all the congregation will partake of it. We boil wheat as a remembrance that mankind is placed in the earth like a seed, only to be raised up and blossom forth again through God's plan and power. This is a powerful reminder for Orthodox Christians of the words of St. John 12:24 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The symbolism of death and resurrection, between that which is planted in the ground and that which emerges, is deeply embedded in the making and eating of koliva.

My father really loved memorial wheat and sometimes I would make it for him and mother as a breakfast treat. As I was chopping and toasting the nuts and seeds, I remembered happy times around that very same kitchen table: the four of us laughing and eating, or helping Elisabeth with her school work, or doing the crosswords, or just sipping coffee and deciding where to picnic the next day. Happy times, gone now.

But I'm not sad, I'm really not. My father was trapped in a body and a mind that failed him, and he's free now. I miss him, but that is nothing new - with Alzheimer's, the missing starts very early. And its not forever, you know. We'll meet again at the last. I am thinking a lot of him today, though. Here is the eulogy that I wrote for him and which was read so very beautifully by my dear friend, Carla McCurry:

Edmour Joseph Babineau
April 25, 1916 - January 23, 2009

Here are some remarks that Denise wrote about her father, which she has asked me to read to you today.

How do you measure a man’s life? Is it in the days, months, years? If so, at 92 years old, my father was rich. Is it in his possessions? If so, then I look at my father’s few mementos, the fishing poles, handles worn smooth through many years use, or maybe his trusty camera with all the lenses and filters and tripods, and think that perhaps my father was poor. Is it in the memories that a man leaves behind? Over the last few days, I’ve heard from countless people who knew my father, all of whom had their favorite, funny “Eddie” story. Maybe it was the one about the tomatoes that were so big that he had to cut them in half to get them in the door, or maybe it was the liver Popsicles, or maybe it was a memory of going fishing or golfing with him. Always, the memories were of laughter and fun. If memories measure a man’s life, then my father was rich.

Those of you who met my father when he was an old man missed out on so much. He was a real character - a great storyteller, unfailingly good humored, very smart, funny, loyal, brave, loving, a steadfast champion of the underdog, and could fix anything. He had a gluttonous love of cherry ice cream and Boston baked beans, though not together!

He loved his family more than anything. He passed his love of yardsaleing on to his granddaughter, Elisabeth. Together, they would hit the yardsales early on Saturday mornings, and haggle over prices, bringing home their treasures.

All his life, he loved traveling to new places and meeting new people. His Sunday drives for ice cream – to another state! – were legendary. He always said that someday he was going to buy a trailer and travel around the country. How many people get to live their dream? Well, my father did. He loved traveling in his motor home and did so for 15 years before settling down in Savannah. In that 27 footer, he traveled throughout the US, Canada and Mexico with my mom. He loved fishing and golfing, and was a seeded tennis player and professional boxer in his day. He was a real war hero, decorated in WWII and written up in the newspapers of the time.

My favorite memory of my parents is creeping downstairs early in the morning to the kitchen, and finding them dancing all alone to music only they could hear. He took tender care of my mother for many years, and never once complained.

He was a wonderful, loving, devoted husband, father and grandfather. He was a true gentleman, a charming raconteur and practical joker. He was honorable and true. He was everything a man should be and seldom is. He was one in a million, and we were so very lucky to have had him in our lives for almost 93 years. The world will be a sadder place without him. My daughter and I will miss him very much.

But right now, I think he’s standing just inside the pearly gates, the host extraordinaire, greeting newcomers as St. Peter’s right hand man, saying as he always used to at the Inn: “Welcome! Come on in. I have a special room just for you.”

Here is my recipe for Koliva, enough for home. For my church, I usually double it. I do not like it to be dry, so I leave out the zweiback or graham cracker crumbs.

Koliva

1 C soft wheat (very important - it must be soft, not hard, wheat)
1/2 C chopped nuts, like walnuts, toasted
1/2 C sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 C golden raisins
1/2 C chopped fruit (I like to use craisins)
1 heaping tsp ground cinnamon
1 C powdered sugar
zest of one orange
1 tsp anise seed, crushed a little

Simmer the wheat in 4 cups of water for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until very tender and cooked all the way through. Drain well and place in a large bowl with all the other ingredients. Stir very, very well to make sure that all the ingredients are mixed well. Let cool.

Once it is cool, place it in a flat serving platter. Smooth the top and decorate with silver dragees, jordan almonds, or other white candies in the shape of a three bar cross. I've used yogurt covered raisins when I couldn't get jordan almonds here in Savannah, and these work very well.

Enjoy. And if you make this, please, say a little prayer for my father as you eat it.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann on the Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian

2009-02-24T03:32:00.000-08:00

The Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian

By Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann

Of all lenten hymns and prayers, one short prayer can be termed the lenten prayer. Tradition ascribes it to one of the great teachers of spiritual life - St. Ephrem the Syrian. Here is its text:

O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen

This prayer is read twice at the end of each lenten service Monday through Friday (not on Saturdays and Sundays for, as we shall see later, the services of these days do not follow the lenten pattern). At the first reading, a prostration follows each petition. Then we all bow twelve times saying: "O God, cleanse me a sinner." The entire prayer is repeated with one final prostration at the end.

Why does this short and simple prayer occupy such an important position in the entire lenten worship? Because it enumerates in a unique way all the "negative" and "positive" elements of repentance and constitutes, so to speak, a "check list" for our individual lenten effort. This effort is aimed first at our liberation from some fundamental spiritual diseases which shape our life and make it virtually impossible for us even to start turning ourselves to God.

The basic disease is sloth. It is that strange laziness and passivity of our entire being which always pushes us "down" rather than "up" -- which constantly convinces us that no change is possible and therefore desirable. It is in fact a deeply rooted cynicism which to every spiritual challenge responds "what for?" and makes our life one tremendous spiritual waste. It is the root of all sin because it poisons the spiritual energy at its very source.

The result of sloth is faint-heartedness. It is the state of despondency which all spiritual Fathers considered the greatest danger for the soul. Despondency is the impossibility for man to see anything good or positive; it is the reduction of everything to negativism and pessimism. It is truly a demonic power in us because the Devil is fundamentally a liar. He lies to man about God and about the world; he fills life with darkness and negation. Despondency is the suicide of the soul because when man is possessed by it he is absolutely unable to see the light and to desire it.

Lust of power! Strange as it may seem, it is precisely sloth and despondency that fill our life with lust of power. By vitiating the entire attitude toward life and making it meaningless and empty, they force us to seek compensation in, a radically wrong attitude toward other persons. If my life is not oriented toward God, not aimed at eternal values, it will inevitably become selfish and selfcentered and this means that all other beings will become means of my own self-satisfaction. If God is not the Lord and Master of my life, then I become my own lord and master -- the absolute center of my own world, and I begin to evaluate everything in terms of my needs, my ideas, my desires, and my judgments. The lust of power is thus a fundamental depravity in my relationship to other beings, a search for their subordination to me. It is not necessarily expressed in the actual urge to command and to dominate "others." It may result as well in indifference, contempt, lack of interest, consideration, and respect. It is indeed sloth and despondency directed this time at others; it completes spiritual suicide with spiritual murder.

Finally, idle talk. Of all created beings, man alone has been endowed with the gift of speech. All Fathers see in it the very "seal" of the Divine Image in man because God Himself is revealed as Word (John, 1:1). But being the supreme gift, it is by the same token the supreme danger. Being the very expression of man, the means of his self-fulfillment, it is for this very reason the means of his fall and self-destruction, of betrayal and sin. The word saves and the word kills; the word inspires and the word poisons. The word is the means of Truth and it is the means of demonic Lie. Having an ultimate positive power, it has therefore a tremendous negative power. It truly creates positively or negatively. When deviated from its divine origin and purpose, the word becomes idle. It "enforces" sloth, despondency, and lust of power, and transforms life into hell. It becomes the very power of sin.

These four are thus the negative "objects" of repentance. They are the obstacles to be removed. But God alone can remove them. Hence, the first part of the lenten prayer; this cry from the bottom of human helplessness. Then the prayer moves to the positive aims of repentance which also are four.

Chastity! If one does not reduce this term, as is so often and erroneously done, only to its sexual connotations, it is understood as the positive counterpart of sloth. The exact and full translation of the Greek sofrosini and the Russian tselomudryie ought to be whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. If we usually mean by chastity the virtue opposed to sexual depravity, it is because the broken character of our existence is nowhere better manifested than in sexual lust -- the alienation of the body from the life and control of the spirit. Christ restores wholeness in us and He does so by restoring in us the true scale of values by leading us back to God.

The first and wonderful fruit of this wholeness or chastity is humility. We already spoke of it. It is above everything else the victory of truth in us, the elimination of all lies in which we usually live. Humility alone is capable of truth, of seeing and accepting things as they are and therefore of seeing God's majesty and goodness and love in everything. This is why we are told that God gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.

Chastity and humility are naturally followed by patience. The "natural" or "fallen" man is impatient, for being blind to himself he is quick to judge and to condemn others. Having but a broken, incomplete, and distorted knowledge of everything, he measures all things by his tastes and his ideas. Being indifferent to everyone except himself, he wants life to be successful right here and now. Patience, however, is truly a divine virtue. God is patient not because He is "indulgent," but because He sees the depth of all that exists, because the inner reality of things, which in our blindness we do not see, is open to Him. The closer we come to God, the more patient we grow and the more we reflect that infinite respect for all beings which is the proper quality of God.

Finally, the crown and fruit of all virtues, of all growth and effort, is love -- that love which, as we have already said, can be given by God alone-the gift which is the goal of all spiritual preparation and practice.

All this is summarized and brought together in the concluding petition of the lenten prayer in which we ask "to see my own errors and not to judge my brother." For ultimately there is but one danger: pride. Pride is the source of evil, and all evil is pride. Yet it is not enough for me to see my own errors, for even this apparent virtue can be turned into pride. Spiritual writings are full of warnings against the subtle forms of pseudo-piety which, in reality, under the cover of humility and self-accusation can lead to a truly demonic pride. But when we "see our own errors" and "do not judge our brothers," when, in other terms, chastity, humility, patience, and love are but one in us, then and only then the ultimate enemy--pride--will be destroyed in us.

After each petition of the prayer we make a prostration. Prostrations are not limited to the Prayer of St. Ephrem but constitute one of the distinctive characteristics of the entire lenten worship. Here, however, their meaning is disclosed best of all. In the long and difficult effort of spiritual recovery, the Church does not separate the soul from the body. The whole man has fallen away from God; the whole man is to be restored, the whole man is to return. The catastrophe of sin lies precisely in the victory of the flesh -- the animal, the irrational, the lust in us -- over the spiritual and the divine. But the body is glorious; the body is holy, so holy that God Himself "became flesh." Salvation and repentance then are not contempt for the body or neglect of it, but restoration of the body to its real function as the expression and the life of spirit, as the temple of the priceless human soul. Christian asceticism is a fight, not against but for the body. For this reason, the whole man - soul and body - repents. The body participates in the prayer of the soul just as the soul prays through and in the body. Prostrations, the "psycho-somatic" sign of repentance and humility, of adoration and obedience, are thus the lenten rite par excellence.

42 Things Italians Grew Up With

2009-02-12T18:41:00.001-08:00

01. You have at least one relative who wore a black dress every day for an entire year after a funeral.

02. You spent your entire childhood thinking what
you ate for lunch was pronounced "sangwich."

03. Your family dog understood Italian.

04. Every Sunday afternoon you eat lunch at nonna's house

05. You've experienced the phenomena of 150 people fitting into 50 square feet of yard during a family cookout.

06. You were surprised to discover the FDA recommends you eat three meals a day, not seven.

07. You thought killing the pig each year and having salami, capacollo, pancetta and prosciutto hanging out to dry from your shed ceiling was absolutely normal.

08. You ate pasta for dinner at least three times a week, and every Sunday, and laughed at the commercial for Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti day.

09. You grew up thinking no fruit or vegetable had a fixed price and that the price of everything was negotiable through haggling.

10. You were as tall as your nonna by the age of seven.

11. You thought everyone's last name ended in a vowel.

12. You thought nylons were supposed to be worn rolled to the ankles.

13. Your mom's main hobby is cleaning.

14. You were surprised to find out that wine was actually sold in stores.

15. You thought that everyone made their own pomodoro sugo

16. You never ate meat on Christmas Eve or any Friday for that matter.

17. You ate your salad after the main course.

18. You thought Catholic was the only religion in the world.

19. You were beaten at least once with a wooden spoon or slipper.

20. You thought every meal had to be eaten with a hunk of bread in your hand.

21. You had pet rabbits and chickens in cages in the backyard that always dissapeard in winter...

22. You have at least one relative who came over on "the boat."

23. All of your uncles fought in a World War.

24. You have at least six male relatives named Tony, Frank, Joe or Luigi

25. You were taught to call people Zio even though they weren't even your REAL zio

26. You can recite all the names of the saints off by heart

27. You drank wine before you were a teenager.

28. You relate on some level, admit it, to the Godfather and the Sopranos.

29. You grew up in a house with a yard that didn't have one patch of dirt that didn't have a flower or a vegetable growing out of it.

30. Your grandparent's furniture was as comfortable as sitting on plastic. Wait!!!! You were sitting on plastic.

31. You thought that talking loud was normal.

32. You thought sugared almonds and the Tarantella were common at all weddings.

33. Your Dad owned 4 houses,10 acres of land and drove a caddie but still drove a 1964 impalllla ( still pimmmmmp)

34. Your mother is overly protective of the males in the family no matter what their age.

35. There was a crucifix AND/OR a picture of Padre Pio in every room of the house.

36. Wakes would be held in someone's living room.

37. You couldn't date a boy without getting approval from your father. (Oh, and he had to be Italian)

38. You called Canadian kids Cakers (Not in MY house, we didn't!!!! We called them relatives!!!)

39. You dreaded taking out your lunch at school.

40. Going out for a cup of coffee usually meant going out for a cup of coffee over Zia's house.

41. Every condition, ailment, misfortune, memory loss and accident was attributed to the fact that you didn't eat something.

42. Those of you who get this...YOU KNOW who to pass it on to!

CIAO!

What's in a Name?

2009-02-11T18:33:00.000-08:00

What's In A Name

1.YOUR REAL NAME
Denise Marie Babineau

2.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME:(mother and fathers middle names)
Elena Joseph

3.NASCAR NAME:(first name of your mother's dad, father's dad)
Vincenzo Edward

4.STAR WARS NAME:(the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name)
Babde

5.DETECTIVE NAME:(favorite color, favorite animal)
Red Dog

6.SOAP OPERA NAME:(middle name, town where you were born
Marie Everett

7.SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd fav color, fav drink, add "THE" to the beginning)
The Black Vodka Shot

8.FLY NAME:(first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name)
Deba

9.ROCK STAR NAME:(current pets name, current street name)
Poochie Montclair

10. PORN NAME: (1st pet, street you grew up on)
Maybelle Shute

11.YOUR GANGSTA NAME:(first 3 letters of real name plus izzle)
Denizzle

12.YOUR IRAQI.. NAME:(2nd letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your last name, first two letters of your middle name, last two letters of your first name then last three letters of your last name)
Ebmaseeau

13.YOUR GOTH NAME:(black, and the name of one of your pets)
Black Kyo

Daybook Journal

2009-02-07T04:57:00.000-08:00

Outside my window the sun is just starting to come up.

I am thinking that I really need to get going on my day, starting with breakfast and a shower

I am thankful for a new day and a new life. I wonder what direction life will take me?

From the learning room was running appeals yesterday. I like to help out other departments.

From the kitchen is breakfast - homemade egg mcmuffins and coffee

I am wearing my jammies that Elisabeth usually makes fun of, and my beloved, ratty old terry cloth bathrobe.

I am creating a new life for myself.

I am going - I have no idea, but God will point the way.

I am reading or rather, last night I finished The Open Door by Frederica Mathewes-Green which was rather disappointing.

I am hoping to see my parents again on the last day.

I am hearing my little doggie snore by my feet.

One of my favorite things is going food shopping, which I will do this morning.

A few plans for the rest of the week: birthday dinner with Cindy and Joan tonight, choir rehearsal tomorrow, Doc and Mari's tomorrow afternoon, I Cantori rehearsal Monday night, working, unpacking, cleaning, laundry.... and I thought that I'd have oodles of free time once dear daughter went off to college! Yaright!

The Simple Woman’s Day Book

Books I read in 2008

2009-02-07T04:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a partial list of books that I read in 2008. I read more, but I was so frazzled that I didn't write most of them down.

Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography - Richard Stirling

Defeating Sin - Fr. Joseph Huneycutt

Living in Christ - Mother Raphaela

My Life In France - Julia Child

Iconography, A Writer's Meditation - Susan Neville

World Vegetarian - Madhur Jaffrey

Edmour Joseph Babineau 1916 - 2009

2009-01-31T13:18:00.000-08:00

Edmour Joseph Babineau, 92, of Savannah passed away peacefully on Friday, January 23^rd at Riverview Nursing Home, after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

He was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts on April 25, 1916 to Judith and Edward “Red” Babineau who preceeded him in death. While still a toddler, he and his parents moved to New Brunswick, Canada and returned to New Bedford several years later where he followed his father into the plumbing and pipefitting trade. During World War II, he first served as bayonet instructor at Ft. Benning, GA before seeing combat action in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany with the 45^th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army. During the amphibious landings at Anzio, he commanded a small group of soldiers, and did not lose a single man. His bravery and flawless French soon secured him a reconnaissance assignment and translation duties where he excelled, eventually earning him two purple hearts and Staff Sargent rank.

After the war, he returned to Massachusetts where he married Beatrice Elena Cieri and settled in Everett, Massachusetts where his only child, Denise Marie Babineau was born. After the war, he worked for Boston Gas Company, where his favorite memory was of building Julia Child’s first demonstration kitchen. His charm and facility with the French language soon made him her favorite technician, and he shared many wonderful meals with her. In 1953, he and his wife purchased Clearwater Inn on the shores of Lake Sunapee, NH, which they operated for 25 years. The role of Innkeeper and Host was tailor-made for Eddie, who was the quintessential “people person.” During his time as Innkeeper, he also was a fishing guide and wrote a regular fishing column for the Boston Globe newspaper which he illustrated with his own photographs. Some of his photographs were used by the State of New Hampshire in their marketing materials.

After his retirement, he and Bea followed their daughter to California in 1980 where the light of his life, his beloved granddaughter Elisabeth was born in 1990. During his 18 years in California, he and Bea traveled via motorhome throughout all 48 continental states, every province of Canada and Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Traveling was one of his passions.

In 1997, he moved to Savannah, Georgia with his wife, daughter and granddaughter where he cherished his time with his family and made new friends and became a communicant at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church. He was an active member of the St. Francis Cabrini’s Primetimers, DAV, VFW, San Jose Grandmothers and Grandfathers Club, Savannah Italian Club and the Knights of Columbus. He was preceeded in death by his beloved wife of 59 years, Beatrice, and his parents. He is survived by his only daughter and granddaughter, Denise and Elisabeth Norman of Savannah, his brothers Gerard and wife Joan Babineau of Rochester, MA, Leonard and wife Francine Babineau of York, PA and Daytona Beach, FL, his sister Anita and husband Conrad Bernier of Rochester, MA, and many loving godchildren, nieces and nephews. His charm, intellect and sense of humor will be sorely missed by all who knew him.

In lieu of flowers, a remembrance may be sent to: Ed and Bea Babineau Memorial Fund, St. Mary Magdalene Church, 1625 Fort Howard Rd., Rincon, GA 31326

Welcome, 2009!

2009-01-10T05:47:00.000-08:00

Last year, 2008, was a very difficult year on many levels; not as bad as 2004 and 2005, but still, it was pretty tough, so I'm happy that its over. I have a standard by which I measure difficult times, and 2008 is probably a 9 out of 10, with 10 being the worst. I've been considering why I thought it was so bad, and I think its because, after all the events of the last 5 or 6 years, I had little physical, emotional, or spiritual strength left in reserve, so everything just knocked me down and I couldn't get back up.

Some difficulties were of my own making, some were the inevitable growing pains and changing relationship between dear daughter and myself, some were thrust upon me by others (the whole trashed rental house saga), some were financial (rental house again), some were intensely personal having to do with my spiritual life and my spiritual father prodding me to rely more on God and less on my own abilities. The positives included my relationships with people - the wonderful people who make up my family (especially dear daughter), my friends, my church family, my I Cantoristas, and even my on-line friends. I'm so thankful for each and every one!

But, this is a new year. In some ways, I've taken a few steps backwards and in some ways, I've taken a few steps forwards. Such is the human condition.

For example, I am now living in my rental house. This is the home that dear daughter and I shared with my parents for many years and which I rented out after my mother died and my father entered a nursing home. This is the home that was totally trashed by the renters from hell. I have spent all my money fixing it, and it still is not rentable, so I have rented my beloved, cheerful little house in a suburb to a lovely military family and have moved back here.

Now that I am living here amidst the boxes and other moving paraphenalia, I realize that my worries about memories good and bad making it impossible to live here were unfounded. I don't see my mother in every shadow, though I do feel her here in an existential sort of way. Its a good thing, though, and not something to be feared - and I was, indeed, fearing it. For dear daughter, though, its another story. She despises living here. The two weeks she spent here over Christmas were horrible for her. Everywhere she looks, she sees another unhappy memory and she can't stand being alone in this house, either. So, it looks like her visits home from college will be short ones. I'm trying to rearrange the house in way that is totally different from the way it used to be. I think that is helping me live here comfortably.

Then there was the moving at the end of the year...... Yikes! When I first moved into my cheerful little suburban house, I had to hire packers to pack everything because my back was out. So everything got moved and placed into my garage. Everything. That includes two households worth of stuff, my stuff and my parents stuff. So, before this move, I decluttered. I estimate that more than half of the contents of that house were either given away, thrown away, or donated. I thought I was doing extremely well with the decluttering until all the boxes needing to be unpacked were put in my den - its FULL OF BOXES!!!! I feel overwhelmed by stuff again, but as I unpack, I am continuing the decluttering process and getting rid of more stuff. I have decided that from 2009 onward, I am never going to be held hostage by stuff again.

In 2008, I had to put my iconography aside because I had no time and no heart for it, but I miss it so. As soon as I get completely unpacked, I'm going to set up the smallest bedroom as my studio and will get back to working hard at it. I have two commissions, a St. Melangell and a St. Thomas, to complete. Both families have been very, very patient, and I need to reward their patience by prayerfully completing these commissions. One of my goals for 2009 is to work harder and more steadily at iconography.

2008 was the year that I finally got my prayer life in order and prayed daily for at least 45 minutes in the morning. This bore such wonderful fruit, but also pointed out how very far from the mark I am. 2008 was the year that I began working seriously and consistently with my spiritual father to grow spiritually, and this has born much fruit, though I find it very, very difficult to be so transparent. He bears with my groanings and moanings, though, and patiently keeps pointing me towards the goal. 2009 is clearly throwing a wrench into my prayer life, though, since my morning routine is different now that I am living in a different place. The challenge for 2009 is to establish a new prayer rule that I can consistently keep, and it is, indeed, turning out to be a challenge. I feel like I'm moving backwards in this regard, but first things first, though, so I'm working at it. Once I get my icons unpacked and get my icon corner set up again, it will help.

One thing I learned in 2008 is that I am very prideful. I find it almost impossible to ask anyone for help, even when I am drowning, and when help is offered, I find it very difficult to accept. Before 2008, I didn't realize how much pride I had in my own competence - and I am very, very competent at many, many things. I didn't realize how much I needed to be considered competent by others. In working with my spiritual father, it became apparent that at some deep emotional level, I feel unloveable, even by God, so the best that my subconscious can hope for is to be considered useful through my competence. What a kick in the pants! I learned that I can't earn God's love - He freely gives it. He gives it because He created me to be His own possession, part of Him, like Him, with Him. He created me because He wanted *me* to exist, to live with Him. He wanted me to exist, so He created me. I get it now. It took me a long time, but I get it now.

2008 was also the year that I finally began letting go. Letting go of foolish pride, of control, of dear daughter, of expectations. This is a good thing. I have a long, long, LONG way to go, but at least the journey has begun. Perhaps in 2009, God will show me the path I am to walk. In His time, not mine. I'm learning that hard lesson called patience, too.

I know that 2009 will bring its own sorrows and difficulties. The nursing home just told me that my beloved father, who suffers from an advanced stage of Alzheimers, qualifies for in-patient hospice care, which basically means that he has a life expectancy of less than six months, and I am grieving already. If I'm honest, I've been grieving him for long time now, because he hasn't been "him" in a very long time, and I miss him. But, I'm determined to leave this to God, and celebrate who he used to be, and celebrate that his body is still here for me to hug and to love, at least for a little while longer.

I don't know what else 2009 will bring, but I pray that it brings peace to everyone. Peace in the world, peace in peoples' hearts. Peace in my heart too.

Have a Blessed New Year, everyone!

And the Worst Blogger Award goes to......

2008-12-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

ME, I'm sorry to say. I've neglected all my blogs this year, but I plan on being back in the saddle, or should I say, back in front of the computer in the new year.

Many of my faithful readers know that I own a rental house. Well, in April, I began eviction proceedings which took a very long time, and when I finally was able to regain possession of the house, the renters had totally trashed it. Every wall needed serious drywall repair, and one entire room (the largest one, of course) could not be repaired, so all the drywall had to come down. That was a blessing in disguise, because we found that the two full stack speakers had drawn so much juice that the wiring in that end of the room was fried. So, the entire room had to be rewired. They also removed every last bit of copper piping and wiring in the house, which ruined the air conditioner, heater and water heater - all of which needed to be replaced. Every light fixture was ripped apart, so they all needed to be replaced. The fridge and the stove had been kicked in, and all the inside shelving etc was missing, so they needed to be replaced. The under-sink plumbing in both bathrooms and the kitchen was missing, so that all needed to be replaced. Two of the three outside doors needed to be replaced, since you could see daylight through one "solid" door, and the sliders were cracked and the frame was bent. The screen room door and all the screens, as well as the light fixture and fascia board all needed to be replaced. All the carpets had major blood, pet and coffee stains and all needed to be replaced. The ceramic tile floor in the entry way, kitchen and dining room had many tiles that had been pried up and needed to be replaced. The wallpaper in the living room had blood stains all over it and needed to be replaced - they had been doing cock fighting in my living room! Argh! blind, shade and curtain was ruined and needed to be replaced.

When I first walked into the house, it looked like the floor was undulating - it was cockroaches. The house looked like something on HGTV - there were piles of clothing, food, garbage, dirty dishes, pots and pans, old mail all mixed together everywhere. There was human feces in the middle of the kitchen floor. The stench was unbelievable. I cried my eyes out when I first walked in.

But that is all a thing of the past! Just this week, my new renters signed a year-long lease and will take possession of my rental house on January 5th! Yay!

So, I will return to the land of the living once again! Thank you, everyone, for your patience, and I hope to "see" you on my blog in 2009!

Denise

I'm Marilyn

2008-12-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Got this from my friend Trudy's excellent blog. Who EVER would have put Marilyn Monroe and me in the same category?????? But.... when I read the description...... Back a ways, I tested as Katharine Hepburn, and I rather liked that. Go fig.

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are a Marilyn!

You are a Marilyn -- "I am affectionate and skeptical."

Marilyns are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me

* Be direct and clear
* Listen to me carefully
* Don't judge me for my anxiety
* Work things through with me
* Reassure me that everything is OK between us
* Laugh and make jokes with me
* Gently push me toward new experiences
* Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

What I Like About Being a Marilyn

* being committed and faithful to family and friends
* being responsible and hardworking
* being compassionate toward others
* having intellect and wit
* being a nonconformist
* confronting danger bravely
* being direct and assertive

What's Hard About Being a Marilyn

* the constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind
* procrastinating because of fear of failure; having little confidence in myself
* fearing being abandoned or taken advantage of
* exhausting myself by worrying and scanning for danger
* wishing I had a rule book at work so I could do everything right
* being too critical of myself when I haven't lived up to my expectations

Marilyns as Children Often

* are friendly, likable, and dependable, and/or sarcastic, bossy, and stubborn
* are anxious and hypervigilant; anticipate danger
* form a team of "us against them" with a best friend or parent
* look to groups or authorities to protect them and/or question authority and rebel
* are neglected or abused, come from unpredictable or alcoholic families, and/or take on the fearfulness of an overly anxious parent

Marilyns as Parents

* are often loving, nurturing, and have a strong sense of duty
* are sometimes reluctant to give their children independence
* worry more than most that their children will get hurt
* sometimes have trouble saying no and setting boundaries

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

What Kind of Musician Should You Marry

2008-10-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

Although I've already been married and have no intention of marrying again, I took this test because I was bored and it was about music. Its fun to take these kind of cute tests!

Your result for What Kind of Musician Should You Marry Test...

Orchestra Musician

Intellectual, Polished, Not Glamorous

You're a mature and demanding person but your demands are not those of pretentious teenagers. Not everyone would appreciate an orchestra musician: they're not the kind to be begged for autographs. But you realize that it's not popularity that makes a good husband/wife - it's reliability instead. If you're attracted to the idea of marrying a musician it's not for the superficial charm, it's because you realize that a serious musician is someone intellectual and hard-working, someone you're looking for. Plus, it's nice to have a solo played just for you on an instrument that takes years to master.

Take What Kind of Musician Should You Marry Test at HelloQuizzy

Compared To Other Takers

* 93/100 You scored 88% on Intellect, higher than 93% of your peers.
* 24/100 You scored 41% on Roughness, higher than 24% of your peers.
* 1/100 You scored 18% on Glamor, higher than 1% of your peers.

A Simple Woman's Daybook

2008-09-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Shameless cribbing from Mimi's blog:

A Simple Woman’s Daybook

For Today...

Outside my Window...It is a still, starlit night

I am thinking... about where I've been and where I'm going

From the learning rooms... DD called from college tonight, and talked about how much she is loving her psychology course and how maybe she might go into geriatric counseling, or even hospice care.

I am thankful for... my spiritual father and the conversation we had last night

From the kitchen... leftover vegetable soup with homemade bread

I am wearing...a pair of ratty old capris, a purple tee shirt, and no shoes

I am reading... The Ladder of Divine Ascent, slowly, and The Red Tent, quickly

I am hoping... that my rental house gets finished soon

I am creating... some backdrops and signs for my church's first ever Russian Festival!

I am hearing... my little doggie snoring

Around the house...getting ready to move

One of my favorite things... reading a few select blogs, like Mimi's

A Few Plans For The Rest Of The Week... Workshop tomorrow, birthday dinner with my girlfriends on Friday night, getting ready for vigil on Saturday, direct vigil on Saturday night, church on Sunday morning, work at rental house on Sunday afternoon

Here is a picture thought I am sharing with you...

A beautiful icon of St. Silouan the Athonite

Macrina's Pilgrimage to Greece

2008-07-28T03:39:00.001-07:00

I stayed up late last night reading Macrina's blog about her month-long pilgrimage to Greece. It is wonderful reading, with much food for thought as well as descriptions that made me feel that I was right there with them. Being both a foodie and a baby iconographer, I found her posts about iconography and her descriptions of the cuisine particularly interesting. No surprises there!

Her husband contributed a few posts about his time on Mt. Athos, and contained therein is this quote, which I want to ponder some more:

“So long as the mind holds sway and is active and influential, the will remains constrained and subject to human desire. The will always remains fastened to the mind. But, when the mind begins to calm down and give way, the will is thereupon released and heads straightforwardly to God.” (from Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way, by Matthew the Poor, p.62.)

Spinning Plates

2008-07-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

I know it seems like forever since I blogged, but its really only been two months.

Do you remember the Ed Sullivan show? Remember the man who used to spin plates on sticks? He would start with two, get them going, and then add more and more until the first one was just about ready to drop to the floor. Then he'd dash over and give it a whirl, and then another almost dropped and he'd run to it, and over and over. It was always exciting to see how many he could keep going at once. Could he add just one more? Maybe another? Just one more? If he adds another, will one fall to the ground and shatter?

Well, that's my life. I've got lots and lots of plates spinning and I just don't have much time to do anything other than dash from plate to plate, give one a few minutes of my attention, and then dash off to the next one. In depth blogging has to wait.

Don't have any time to explain more than this, and some things are private, of course, but I wanted to tell you which superhero I am. I found this at Pithless Thoughts which is an excellent read.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		100%
Superman		95%
Green Lantern		70%
Hulk		70%
Catwoman		60%
Robin		57%
Supergirl		57%
Batman		55%
Iron Man		50%
The Flash		40%
Wonder Woman		37%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Mothers and Mothers Day

2008-05-11T17:31:00.001-07:00

This is the third Mother's Day that I've spent without my mother. The first one was terrible; I had waves of sobbing all day. Last year, I was so very sad that I just wanted to sleep until it was Monday, so that's what I tried to do. I stretched out on the couch and napped all afternoon. I had a dream that my Mother was making me my favorite cake - the one that has been my birthday cake since I was about 5 or 6, a blueberry molasses cake - and the aroma was so strong that it woke me up. DD was actually baking the cake! From scratch! Somehow, her kindness and sensitivity had taken the sting of the day, and a new tradition was born.

All this week, I've been praying very hard for my mother. I've been thinking of her so much, and I admit it, I've been crying. Do you ever get over your mother's death? Do you ever get over the loss? The forever of it? The separation? After three years, the pain still cuts like a knife and sometimes I actually double over with the sharpness and suddeness of it, but there are longer periods in between these episodes now. Sometimes I even go a week without that stabbing sorrow of missing her.

Mother's Day is a Hallmark day. Its been invented for purely commercial reasons, and we happily go with the flow. Even so, the idea is a good one - to set aside a day to remember our mothers and grandmothers and aunties and cousins and friends, and every female who has nurtured us. We tend to take people for granted, and think that they'll always be there, always be available, always forgive us our pettiness, but the fact of the matter is that they won't. So, setting aside a day to tell the women in our lives what they mean to us is a good thing, even if they can hear only the yearning of our hearts and not our words in this broken world.

So, to my most beloved mother, who I love and respect and miss so terribly, accept my mute groanings from the bottom of my heart as a tribute to the patience and love that you bestowed on me. If I can become half the woman that you were, I will have done you proud. To my dearest Grammie, the matriarch, and to my dear Memere, how I miss you both! How I wish I could hug you one last time and make you laugh, and eat your food so lovingly prepared. To my dearest aunties, Auntie Anna and my godmother, Auntie Nettie, how your love and pride in me shaped me. How I miss you and your warm embrace!

To all the women in my life who have taught me, and loved me, and supported me, and have told me what I needed to hear whether I wanted to hear it or not (yes, that means you, Ethel and Roseanne), thank you.

But mostly, to my mother. You ornery, fiesty, mystical, opinionated, talented, hardworking, loving, pushy, infuriating, magnificent old broad. How I miss you! There are no words. No words at all.

Just the groanings of my heart.

Anniversary

2008-04-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today is something called Confederate Memorial Day, and as a state employee, I have today off. I'm still tired from the strenous Holy Week and Pascha, and have been spending some time just thinking this morning.

Today, April 28th, would have been my 29th wedding anniversary. It seems just a couple of years ago, but it wasn't. I'm not that young 23 year old any more. The ex and I lived together for more than 14 years before we separated, so we certainly didn't give up too easily.

What makes one marriage work and another fail? I think its the needs and expectations that each partner brings to the table. When expectations aren't met, it causes trouble. When needs aren't met, it causes a marriage to fail, and eventually end.

I certainly would never have dreamed that I would become a statistic. I never wanted to be a single mother, or to be single. Much of the reason that I wanted to marry the Ex is that he was stable and I felt that I could count on him, but in the end, I couldn't, and the marriage ended.

We have now been apart longer than we were married. We get along very well now, mostly because there are no strings, no needs, no expectations. He is who he is and I am who I am. We are accepting (mostly) of each other. He still doesn't take my advice, but I no longer feel responsible to save him, so its ok. Had we remained married, I don't think we would have come to this place, and this place is good. I can see the good in him where I could not before.

29 years ago, I was so hopeful for the future, so in love, so settled. I knew that life would have trials and tribulations, but I knew in my heart that together he and I could get through anything. I know better now, and in some ways, I mourn that innocence.

Our daughter is just about to go to college and be on her own. She is full of the same optimism and hope and sureness that life will be good. She's an innocent. I see the passing of the seasons and rejoice in this season of new beginnings for her.

So, 29 years ago, my beautiful wedding dress was freshly pressed and waiting for me to put it on. I was putting my hair up right about now, and my maid of honor and my mom were helping me get ready. I was excited about the future.

Today, I'm looking at another new beginning - the beginning of my life without any daily responsibilities to parents, spouse or daughter - to anyone other than myself, really. I wonder what I'll make of my new life? I don't have a plan, and I don't know what I want or need, but I do know that God knows all that. I just have to wait to find out what He has in store for me apres motherhood.

Explanation of Yesterday's Four Things Post

2008-04-18T07:40:00.001-07:00

Michelle Melania was curious about the entry under Four Place I would rather be, and my response: Clearwater Inn, Lake Sunapee, NH, August 1962.

This is a reference to my childhood. A few years before I was born, my parents bought a little rustic country inn named Clearwater Inn, on the banks of beautiful Lake Sunapee, NH. Lake Sunapee is an alpine, spring-fed lake, and at the time, it was also a Class A reservoir, meaning the water was fit for drinking straight from the lake. In fact, many summer people had a pipe that went to the lake and that's exactly what they did!

Our inn was open only in the warm weather, from Memorial Day weekend through the autumn leaf tours in October. My mom's health would not permit her to spend the winter there in NH where the ice on the lake gets to be at least six feet thick - so thick that they drive the salt or sand trucks right over the lake! My Dad used to call NH "Lower Slobbovia" because it was so cold and so very snowy (that's a reference to Lil Abner comic strip for those of you younger than 50).

The inn was right on the water - I joke around that if I fell out of bed I went splash, and that is *almost* true. We had large dock which was set on rocks and cement, but even with that, the ice floes would take half the dock away every single year. The lake is ringed with mountains, most notably Mount Sunapee, with its ski runs clearly visible during the summer, and the camelbacked Mount Kearsarge. In the autumn, the mounts are ablaze with bright reds and yellows and oranges - there is nothing, absolutely nothing like a New England fall. Anyway, the water at the end of our boathouse was 12 feet deep, and at the end of our dock was 25 feet deep, but few of our guests believed that it was so deep because the water was so clear that you could see individual grains of sand. There were many, many times, when a guest would lean over the edge expressing surprise at the depth, and would lose his glasses. Guess who had to dive to retreive them? Me, of course!

Growing up in Sunapee, I actually learned to swim before I really walked much. I was a late walker and a very early swimmer. My Dad made me wear a life jacket, which we called a Mae West for ahem.... obvious reasons. I used to sleep in my bathing suit and put my mae west on the minute I woke up, and then jump in the water off the end of the dock. My mom would call me out of the water for all three meals, and eventually for bed. I'd take my mae west off and hang on the special hook outside the back door so that it could dry for the next day, but it never dried completely. I remember when I was four, almost five, I was swimming around and it was hard to make it back to the end of the dock. One of the guests noticed that I was have a little difficulty, and called my Dad, who used one of his extra long fishing poles for me to hold onto and he pulled me to the dock. When he picked me up out of the water, I remember him making an "oooof" sound and he took my mae west off. It weighed about double what I did because it was waterlogged. He muttered something in French which I was sure at the time was very bad. I was right. Then he asked me if I could swim without the life preserver and to show him. I did all kinds of tricks in the water, dove off the end of the dock, swam underwater, and finally he said I didn't have to wear a life preserver anymore. I felt so light!

In 1962, I was six, almost seven. I had completed first grade, which was a wonderful experience and I couldn't wait to go to school in September. My Mother wasn't feeling very well much of the time because of her heart condition, and my cousins were working for us as waitress/chambermaids to take a lot of the load off of her shoulders. Mom ended up having her first open heart surgery that winter. My grandmother worked for us as well, cooking the evening meal and running the giant ironer. And just plain being HER. An earthmother that everyone loved, just as my mom was an earthmother type as well. I didn't understand how sick my mother was at that point in my life.

This was before John Kennedy was shot, before my mother's first open heart surgery, before Viet Nam's body counts were on the evening news at dinner time, before the world became crazy and cynical.

In June of 1962, my grandfather, Vincenzo Cieri, died of a massive heart attack. I saw him a few minutes before he died, but my family shielded me from death and I just didn't understand. In my mind, he had gone on a trip, and one of these days, I'd look out my kitchen window and see him quickly striding so purposefully down the street, with his magical "finds" from the woods or the market in his hands. He'd smile and wave his cane at me and continue down the half-block to B St where the Catalano family mother ship still is. I didn't understand about death then.

That August 15th, in 1962, I remember that after the dinner service, my grandmother (who couldn't swim), together with my Mom, and my cousins Ethel, Roseanne and Kathy, all walked out of the back kitchen door, down the little wooded pathway to the wooden steps leading to the water, and alked right into the water in their white uniforms! Shoes and all! Grammie said that in Italy, you *always* submerse yourself in water on Assumption, and they were all hot and sweaty, and it just seemed like a good thing to do. It was hilarious - the guests were hanging over the railing on the wide verandah and laughing.

Life was good.

I'm 52 years old now. Life has been hard, but no harder than anyone else's life. We all have our difficult times, our tragedies, our losses, our pain. My grandmother, Josephine Catalano Cieri, died in 1970. My mother, Beatrice Elena Cieri Babineau, died in 2005. Kathy (Kathleen Cieri Perry) died in 2006. Ethel and Roseanne are still feisty, but both are long widowed - I talked with both of them last night. My Dad, Edmour Joseph Babineau, suffers from Alzheimers and has been in a nursing home since 2005, he hasn't known me for a long time.

I miss them all, every day, and others besides. Sometimes I think back to that summer, before II truly understood fear of losing people you love. When my Mom had her surgery, I remember my Auntie Anna helping her get changed into her jammies after she came home from the hospital. I was so happy to see my mom and a few weeks in the hospital. Auntie was helping Mom, and my grandmother was there. I saw the huge red scar that went from the middle of her back, around her "wing", under the arm, and under her left breast, ending in the center of her chest. Auntie started counting the stitches. Grammie had tears running down her cheeks, as did Auntie Anna. Auntie Nettie left the room. When she got to around 70, and wasn't even halfway there, Auntie had to stop because she was too upset. Later, I crawled into Grammies lap and asked her why everyone was so upset. We should be happy because Mama was home! Grammie explained to me that my Mama was her little girl, and she had almost lost her, her baby, and being separated from the people you love best is the most awful thing in the world. I got it. From that point forward, I began to understand about separation and loss and death, and I began to be afraid that my Mom would die. Every day, through every cardiac arrest, every hospitalization, every fibrillation episode, every fainting spell, I would think to myself, is this the day that my mother would die? I understood that just as my grandfather had died, my most beloved grandmother would die too, as would my aunties and everyone else that I loved. I wasn't a child anymore.

But in August of 1962, I was carefree, spending the summer in a beautiful place that I loved, with all the people I loved best in the world. I swam like a fish, learned to water ski with Skippy Lyons, played intricate games of make believe (in the water, of course) and chinese checkers with Lore Browner, spent lots of time with my Aunties across the lake at Blodgett's Landing in the old cottage that my Grammie owned.

Life was good. I miss them. I miss that innocence. I miss that place and those people.

So, that's what that entry is all about.

Four Things

2008-04-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

I got this from Orthodox Mother (orthodoxmother@gmail.com)

Four Things about Me

A) FOUR PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER:
1. Church
2. Work
3. Barnes and Noble
4. My computer at home

B) FOUR PEOPLE WHO ENCOURAGED MY FAITH ALONG THE WAY:
1. My cousin Kathy, and may her memory be eternal!
2. Fr. John
3. Not a person, but a place: the Boston Public Library comparative religion section
4. Fr. James

C) FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS:
1. Pasta
2. Lobster
3. Chocolate
4. Anything Thai or Vietnamese or Indian

D) FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1. Sleeping
2. Clearwater Inn, Lake Sunapee, August 1962
3. San Francisco
4. B Street, Everett, MA

E) FOUR MOVIES I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
This should be retitled, Four Movies I *DO* Watch Over and Over
1. Moonstruck
2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
3. The Quiet Man
4. The Sound of Music

F)FOUR THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THE ORTHODOX CHURCH:
1. The way that it calls to all of you - all your talents, all your abilities, all your heart
2. A capella choirs
3. Iconography
4. A way to live that honors and nurtures that little sliver of God that resides in each of us.

G) FOUR OF MY FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. Researching stuff
2. Cooking
3. Music: Singing, directing a choir, composing, playing the piano badly, researching music, scoring
4. Sleeping

I would like to know more about all you other Mothers - Tag! Please be sure to post a link to your blog in the comments, so we can all read about each other.

More quotes

2008-04-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

More quotes that I want to save and ponder:

____________________________________

On Condemnation

Each person must bear the weaknesses of others. Who is perfect? Who can boast that he has kept his heart undefiled? Hence, we are all sick, and whoever condemns his brother does not perceive that he himself is sick, because a sick person does not condemn another sick person.

Love, endure, overlook, do not get angry, do not flare up, forgive one another, so that you resemble our Christ and are counted worthy to be near Him in His Kingdom. My children, avoid condemnation--it is a very great sin. God is greatly saddened when we condemn and loathe people. Let us concernourselves only with our own faults---for these we should feel pain. Let us condemn ourselves and then we shall find mercy and grace from God.

Selected from Counsels from the Holy Mountain from the Letters and Homilies
of Elder Ephraim

____________________________________

Abba Isaiah said, "When someone wishes to render evil for evil, he can injure his brother's soul even by a single nod of the head."

____________________________________

"It is in no way contrary to the principles of true knowledge to eat and drink from all that is set before you, giving thanks to God; for 'everything is very good' (cf. Gen. 1:31). But gladly to abstain from eating too pleasurably or too much shows greater discrimination and understanding. However, we shall not gladly detach ourselves from the pleasures of this life unless we have fully and consciously tasted the sweetness of God."
St. Diadochos of Photiki

From the New York Times today

2008-04-08T03:59:00.001-07:00

I need to consider this article when I have more time, so I am posting it here. My daughter almost died when she was 14 months old and was diagnosed with kidney cancer, so this article caught my attention immediately this morning. I want to read it carefully and consider it, though I don't know if I will blog about it. I do know that the experience changed me and certainly changed the dynamics of my marriage.

Suffice it to say that when I see children who do not receive regular medical care, it cuts to the deepest part of me, of how I know this sinful and broken world to be. When I see children who have the opportunity to receive regular medical care, but their parents choose not to provide it to them, my heart breaks for those children and, I confess, I become angry at such negligence. Had I done the same thing, my daughter would never have seen her second birthday, and once again, I would be a mother with no children as I was for 11 years before her birth.

My Daughters Are Fine, but I’ll Never Be the Same

HARRIET BROWN

Published in the New York Times: April 8, 2008

For a parent, there is no sorrow deeper or more encompassing than the loss of a child. But there is another that approaches it, and that, paradoxically, is grief averted — the grief of the narrow escape when a child comes close to death but survives.

No matter what the cause — illness or accident, cataclysm or slow decline — a child’s close call reverberates through the rest of a parent’s life. Those of us who have experienced it are marked forever by our child’s brush with the unimaginable.

Within the span of 18 months, both my daughters contracted illnesses that might have killed them. My younger daughter, then 8, developed Kawasaki disease, a childhood illness that could fatally damage the heart. She spent five days in the hospital and months convalescing at home.

Four years later, she still gets every virus that comes around; a rough patch in the middle of one cheek flares up when she is tired or upset. But her heart is fine and so, as far as we know, is her prognosis.

Not long afterward, my older daughter, then 14, developed anorexia and landed in the intensive care unit. A long, brutal year followed, but she recovered fully and is now a healthy 17-year-old who shows no signs of relapse.

During both illnesses, I was very calm. In times of crisis, the brain goes into protective mode, a kind of extended present tense intended to get you through danger without wasting energy or emotional resources. After all, there is no evolutionary advantage to worrying about the future when the future may never come.

Once the danger has passed, though, you have all the time in the world to feel — and you do. In the year after my older daughter’s recovery, I developed insomnia and palpitations and a kind of continuous panic attack that kept me from sleep and pretty much every other meaningful activity.

My friends didn’t understand. “Everybody’s healthy!” one exclaimed, a bit impatiently. “Stop worrying and enjoy!”

Frankly, I couldn’t understand what was going on, either. Why was I falling apart now, when everything was going so well, when I had held it together for so long? Talk about cognitive dissonance; my daughters were fine, but I was going down fast.

What saved me was a conversation with another friend, whose son had nearly died several years earlier in a freak accident. His recovery had been astonishing, but also long and rocky. When she asked how I was doing, I told her the truth: I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t shake the image of my daughter, gaunt and anxious in a hospital bed. I could still smell the hospital’s sharp antiseptic, see the precise angle of the sunrise as I would watched it from the window of the I.C.U. Sometimes, I told her, I wondered if I was going mad. “But everything’s really fine,” I added. “I should be happy.”

“But you’re not,” she said quietly.

She had gone through the same thing during her son’s recovery. She had found herself turning inward, going through flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. “Other parents worry about the worst,” she told me, “but they don’t really believe it could happen. We know better.”

We know better. That was it, exactly. We parents throw everything between our kids and danger: bike helmets, seat belts, vaccinations, tooth sealants, self-defense classes. We are creating the illusion of safety as much as anything else, weaving a kind of magic circle of protection. Like all illusions, once broken it can never be made whole again.

I see how my friend’s life is different — how she is different — because of what happened to her son. I can’t yet see how our lives have changed; it is too early. But somehow acknowledging that they have changed makes me feel better.

I still have trouble sleeping; I still flash back to the hospital and to the days that followed. I’m still parenting without the illusion of a safety net. The difference is that now I can also take pleasure in life again. I feel intensely grateful for the way things worked out for both of my children. I’m thankful for the doctors who cared for them (and us), for the friends who stuck around, for the ordinary life we have taken up once more.

But I notice that I still seek out the other parents, the ones like us. We may never talk about what happened to our children, but I’m comforted just knowing that they, too, have skirted the unthinkable and survived. That they have lost the illusion of safety and go on anyway, day by day.

Harriet Brown is a writer in Madison, Wis.

Mid-Lent Wisdom

2008-03-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

I read this on one of my email lists this morning, and it really resonated with me. Being passionate by nature (being Italian helps that along, I think), I need to remember this, so I'm posting it here.

"The objects which the passions look for can’t satisfy them because objects are finite and as such don’t correspond to the unlimited thirst of the passions. Or as St. Maximus puts it, the passionate person finds himself in a continuous preoccupation with nothing; he tries to appease his infinite thirst with the nothingness of his passions, and the objects which it is gobbling up become nothing, by their very nature. In fact, a passion by its very nature searches for objects, and it seeks them only because they can be completely under the control of the ego, and at its mercy. But objects by nature are finite, both as sources of satisfaction and in regard to duration; they pass easily into nonexistence, by consumption. Even then the passion also needs the human person in order to be satisfied, it likewise reduces him or her to an object, or sees and uses only the objective side; the unfathomable depths hidden in the subjective side escape him."

From Dmitru Staniloae’s Orthodox Spirituality

"...However, when the Day of Judgment comes, when the resurrection of the dead comes... when the sinners see the righteous shining like the sun, they will be in dreadful fear, and in anguish they will groan and say, this is the man whom we once held in derision! We thought that His life was madness! We are the fools! We took our fill of the paths of lawlessness and destruction, and we journeyed through trackless deserts. What good has our boasted wealth profited us? We were deceived. We were deceived!

"These two chapters of the Wisdom of Solomon present us with a tremendous picture of the psychology of the ungodly—the mind of the worldly man—who will discover his deception on that day. The Apostle Peter also talks about all these things. These are exceedingly important—let’s look at this:

"'Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire!' (II Peter 3:11-12)

"So why are we wasting ourselves dealing only with earthly matters in a world that is about to be pulverized, to dissolve and collapse, a world that is going to be renovated? How should we spend our lives, knowing all this? Shouldn’t we be characterized by holy conduct? And see what he says, …yearning for and hastening… yearning and hastening with a joyous expectation, and racing towards that day of the coming of the Lord..."

Fr. Athanasios Mitilinaios
Revelation Homilies, translated by Constantine Zalalas

"As sincere, fervent prayer is connected with abstinence, abstinence and fasting are necessary in order to maintain within ourselves the Christian life -- the ardour of faith, hope, and love. Nothing so soon extinquishes the spirit of faith within us as intemperance, indulgence, excessive search for amusement, and an irregular life.

"Those who reject fasting forget from what the fall into sin of the first men proceeded (intemperance) and what means to counter sin and the tempter were indicated to us by our Lord -- when He Himself was tempted in the desert, He fasted forty days and nights. They do not know -- or do not wish to know -- that a man most frequently falls away from God through intemperance.

"Begin to fulfill the commandments relating to small things, and you will come to fulfill the commandments relating to great things; everywhere small things lead to great things. Begin by fulfilling the commandment of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, or the tenth commandment relating to evil thoughts and desires, and you will eventually learn to fulfill all the commandments. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much."

St. John of Kronstadt

Annunciation, my chosen nameday

2008-03-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

Great Feast of the Church - Celebrated on March 25 / April 7

According to Bishop Nikolai Velimirovch in The Prologue from Ohrid:

"When the most holy Virgin had lived and served in the Temple at Jerusalem for eleven years, and was by then fourteen years old when, that is, she was entering on her fifteenth year - the priests informed her that, according to the Law, she could no longer remain in the Temple but must be betrothed and marry. But, to the great surprise of all the priests, the most holy Virgin replied that she had dedicated herself to God and wished to remain a maiden till death and enter into wedlock with no-one. Then, by God's providence and under His inspiration, Zacharias, the high priest and father of the Forerunner, in consultation with the other priests, chose twelve unmarried men from the tribe of David so that they might entrust the Virgin Mary to one of them to preserve her virginity and care for her. She was thus entrusted to Joseph, an old man from Nazareth and a kinsman of hers. In his house, the most holy Virgin continued to live in the same manner as in the Temple of Solomon, passing her time in the reading of the sacred Scriptures, in prayer, in pondering on the works of God, in fasting and in handwork. She scarcely ever left the house, nor took an interest in worldly matters or events. She generally conversed very little with anyone, and never without a particular need. She was intimate only with the two daughters of Joseph. But when the time prophesied by the Prophet Daniel had come and when God was pleased to fulfill the promise made to Adam when He drove him out of Paradise, and to the prophets, the mighty Archangel Gabriel appeared in the chamber of the most holy Virgin, at the precise moment (as some priestly writers have related) that she was holding open on her lap the book of the Prophet Isaiah and pondering on his great prophecy: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son'. Gabriel appeared to her in angelic light and said to her: 'Rejoice, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee!', and so forth, just as is related in the Gospel of the divine Luke. With this angelic greeting and the descent of the Holy Spirit, the salvation of mankind and the renewal of creation were set in motion. The Archangel turned the first page of the story of the New Testament with the word 'Rejoice!', to show by this the joy that the New Testament signifies for mankind and for all things created. And therefore the Annunciation is looked upon as a joyous, as well as a great, feast."

We Orthodox are named after saints in the hope that we will learn holiness from them and have them as fervent intercessors on our behalf. My mother of blessed memory (I miss you so much, Mom!) named me after the Theotokos, the Mother of God, Mary. Marie is my middle name. When I became Orthodox, I didn't want to pick another saint as my patron, since I had already formed an attachment to the Mother of God. Whenever your patron saint has more than one feast day, it is the custom to celebrate your nameday on the feast closest to your birthday. For me, the feast of the Theotokos closest to my birthday is the Nativity of the Theotokos on September 8th, and for the first year or two that I was Orthodox, I sort of half-heartedly thought of her nativity as my nameday. Then I had a compelling reason to choose the Annunciation instead.

Tonight, as DD and I were celebrating my nameday at a local Japanese restaurant, she asked me why I chose the Annunciation when its ALWAYS in LENT and as such precludes much celebration. This is what I told her:

When I got married in 1979, like most people, I wanted the basics out of life: a loving husband, children, a dog and a cat, a little house with a picket fence -- a good life. That's not what happened. God had other plans for me which rubbed me raw. It started with infertility. In 1980, doctors told me that I would never have children. It just was not going to happen. I yearned for children, for family life, but it was not to be. Went to another doctor who said the same thing. I couldn't accept it. I just couldn't come to terms with a life with no children. I just couldn't make my peace with it. I tried, but I just couldn't. I tried to fill my time with all sorts of things: reading and painting and cooking and singing in the choir and my friends. I met a lovely lady, Olga Myellenbeck, who said she'd teach me painting and iconography. I didn't learn much about iconography, but I learned a lot about life and how to be an Orthodox woman. But I still yearned for children. In retrospect, I realize that I was deeply mourning a child that had never even been conceived - children that I never even had. I struggled with God over it and used to beg Him to take this yearning away. Then it was Annunciation, and Fr. John talked about Mary's perfect submission to God's will for her. She questioned it, but still obeyed and submitted her will to His in perfect peace. How that resonated with me! That's what I needed - perfect, peaceful submission to God's will. If I could just have one drop of the confidence that God's way is the best way, like my patroness, I knew that I would have peace. She said "Yes!" and all this time I had been saying "No! No! NO!" So, I picked Annunciation to be my nameday, out of all the feasts of the Theotokos.

That year, 1981, I started a 9 x 12 acrylic icon of the Annunciation as a Lenten spiritual exercise. In my heart, I was still saying NO NO NO, but I prayed that my no would turn to yes as I painted. I worked hard at it, but I didn't get it finished, so I put it away till the next Lent. In 1982, I saw how sloppy my work was, and started parts of it over. And so it went in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1989. Still struggling with that yes..... In 1990, I gave birth to DD, a miracle child in so many ways, and I couldn't find the icon to finish it.

Last year, I found it, and saw that it was still an unfinished and raw work. The struggle is clearly seen in the icon. I don't struggle with God about infertility anymore, but I still struggle with Him about so many other things. As one of my goddaughters told me when she was annoyed with me, I always think I have better ideas. Its true, I do. Even better than God sometimes. I struggle and fight with God, and like Jacob who fought with the angel, I am wounded. Perhaps I'll work on it again this year. But, it occurs to me that maybe I'm not meant to finish this particular icon. Maybe its a metaphor for my spiritual life, and when it is done, I will be done too.

I've been Orthodox a long time now - its in my bones. I still fail miserably. My pride in my own competence trips me up. I am like St. Paul in that I act the way I do not want to act, and find myself doing things I do not want to do. I realize now that I struggle needlessly against the path that God has laid for me. I need a good dose of obedience and submission. I look to my patroness, the Mother of God, as my example, my protectress, my leader in this battle, my intercessor. When the battle is won, I will know peace, too.

The kontakion for the Annunciation, in the old Antiochian translation, is one of my favorites:

ToThee, our Queen, Leader in battle and Defender! I thy City, delivered from all peril, offer hymns of victory and thanksgiving. Since thou possess invincible power, set us free from every calamity, that we may cry to Thee: Hail, O Bride without Bridegroom!

The kontakion of the Akathist is another favorite (another old Antiochian translation that is dear to my heart):

Unto the Mother of God, let us sinners and humble ones now diligently have recourse, and let us bow down in penitence exclaiming from the depths of our souls: O Sovereign Lady! Help us, having compassion on us! Show zeal for perish with the multitude of our sins. Turn not thy servants away empty, for we have Thee as our only hope!

Then there is my favorite Akathist troparion:

Awed by the beauty of Thy virginity, and the exceeding radiance of they purity, Gabriel stood amazed, and cried to Thee, O Giver of Life: What grace can I offer Thee that is worthy of Thy beauty? By what name shall I call Thee? I am lost and bewildered, but I shall greet Thee as I was commanded. Hail! Thou who art full of grace!

A Prayer of St. Nicholas of Zhicha

2008-03-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into Thy embrace more than friends have.
Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earch and
have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an
extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds
safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by
enemies, found the safest sactuary, having ensconced myself beneath
Thy tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.

They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish
myself.

They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.

They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.

They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with
arrogance.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as
though I were a dwarf.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into
the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me
with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully they have
wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil
life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have
stretched out my hands to the hem of Thy garment.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even
more bitterly against me:

So that my feeing to Thee may have no return;

So that all hope in men may begin to reign in my soul;

So that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins:
arrogance and anger;

So that I might amass all my treasure in heaven;

Ah, so that I may for once be freed from self deception, which
has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a
person has no enemies in the world except himself.

One hates enemies only when he fails to realize that they are
not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good
and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.

Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies.

A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son
blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.
Therefore, he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Bless my enemies, O Lord, Even I bless them and do not curse them.

St. Nicholas of Zhicha

2008-03-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

St. Nicholas of Zhicha is one of my favorite saints. His writings, particularly Prayers by the Lake, never cease to teach me and move me. Today is his feast day.

From oca.org:

Saint Nicholas of Zhicha, "the Serbian Chrysostom," was born in Lelich in western Serbia on January 4, 1881 (December 23, 1880 O.S.). His parents were Dragomir and Katherine Velimirovich, who lived on a farm where they raised a large family. His pious mother was a major influence on his spiritual development, teaching him by word and especially by example. As a small child, Nicholas often walked three miles to the Chelije Monastery with his mother to attend services there.

Sickly as a child, Nicholas was not physically strong as an adult. He failed his physical requirements when he applied to the military academy, but his excellent academic qualifications allowed him to enter the St Sava Seminary in Belgrade, even before he finished preparatory school.

After graduating from the seminary in 1905, he earned doctoral degrees from the University of Berne in 1908, and from King's College, Oxford in 1909. When he returned home, he fell ill with dysentery. Vowing to serve God for the rest of his life if he recovered, he was tonsured at the Rakovica Monastery on December 20, 1909 and was also ordained to the holy priesthood.

In 1910 he went to study in Russia to prepare himself for a teaching position at the seminary in Belgrade. At the Theological Academy in St Petersburg, the Provost asked him why he had come. He replied, "I wanted to be a shepherd. As a child, I tended my father's sheep. Now that I am a man, I wish to tend the rational flock of my heavenly Father. I believe that is the way that has been shown to me." The Provost smiled, pleased by this response, then showed the young man to his quarters.

After completing his studies, he returned to Belgrade and taught philosophy, logic, history, and foreign languages at the seminary. He spoke seven languages, and this ability proved very useful to him throughout his life.

St Nicholas was renowned for his sermons, which never lasted more than twenty minutes, and focused on just three main points. He taught people the theology of the Church in a language they could understand, and inspired them to repentance.

At the start of World War I, Archimandrite Nicholas was sent to England on a diplomatic mission to seek help in the struggle of the Serbs against Austria. His doctorate from Oxford gained him an invitation to speak at Westminster Abbey. He remained in England for three short months, but St Nicholas left a lasting impression on those who heard him. His writings "The Lord's Commandments," and "Meditations on the Lord's Prayer" impressed many in the Church of England.

Archimandrite Nicholas left England and went to America, where he proved to be a good ambassador for his nation and his Church.

The future saint returned to Serbia in 1919, where he was consecrated as Bishop of Zhicha, and was later transferred to Ochrid. The new hierarch assisted those who were suffering from the ravages of war by establishing orphanages and helping the poor.

Bishop Nicholas took over as leader of Bogomljcki Pokret, a popular movement for spiritual revival which encouraged people to pray and read the Bible. Under the bishop's direction, it also contributed to a renewal of monasticism. Monasteries were restored and reopened, and this in turn revitalized the spiritual life of the Serbian people.

In 1921, Bishop Nicholas was invited to visit America again and spent two years as a missionary bishop. He gave more than a hundred talks in less than six months, raising funds for his orphanages. Over the next twenty years, he lectured in various churches and universities.

When Germany invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, Bishop Nicholas, a fearless critic of the Nazis, was arrested and confined in Ljubostir Vojlovici Monastery. In 1944, he and Patriarch Gavrilo were sent to the death camp at Dachau. There he witnessed many atrocities and was tortured himself. When American troops liberated the prisoners in May 1945, the patriarch returned to Yugoslavia, but Bishop Nicholas went to England.

The Communist leader Tito was just coming to power in Yugoslavia, where he persecuted the Church and crushed those who opposed him. Therefore, Bishop Nicholas believed he could serve the Serbian people more effectively by remaining abroad. He went to America in 1946, following a hectic schedule in spite of his health problems which were exacerbated by his time in Dachau. He taught for three years at St Sava's Seminary in Libertyville, IL before he settled at St Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan, PA in 1951.

He taught at St Tikhon's and also served as the seminary's Dean and Rector. He was also a guest lecturer at St Vladimir's Seminary in NY, and at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

On Saturday March 17, 1956 Bishop Nicholas served his last Liturgy. After the service he went to the trapeza and gave a short talk. As he was leaving, he bowed low and said, "Forgive me, brothers." This was something unusual which he had not done before.

On March 18, 1956 St Nicholas fell asleep in the Lord Whom he had served throughout his life. He was found in his room kneeling in an attitude of prayer. Though he was buried at St Sava's Monastery in Libertyville, IL, he had always expressed a desire to be buried in his homeland. In April of 1991 his relics were transferred to the Chetinje Monastery in Lelich. There he was buried next to his friend and disciple Fr Justin Popovich (+ 1979).

English readers are familiar with St Nicholas's PROLOGUE FROM OCHRID, THE LIFE OF ST SAVA, A TREASURY OF SERBIAN SPIRITUALITY, and other writings which are of great benefit for the whole Church. He thought of his writings as silent sermons addressed to people who would never hear him preach. In his life and writings, the grace of the Holy Spirit shone forth for all to see, but in his humility he considered himself the least of men.

Though he was a native of Serbia, St Nicholas has a universal significance for Orthodox Christians in all countries. He was like a candle set upon a candlestick giving light to all (MT 5:15). A spiritual guide and teacher with a magnetic personality, he attracted many people to himself. He also loved them, seeing the image of God in each person he met. He had a special love for children, who hastened to receive his blessing whenever they saw him in the street.

He was a man of compunctionate prayer, and possessed the gift of tears which purify the soul (St John Climacus, LADDER, Step 7). He was a true pastor to his flock protecting them from spiritual wolves, and guiding them on the path to salvation. He has left behind many soul-profiting writings which proclaim the truth of Christ to modern man. In them he exhorts people to love God, and to live a life of virtue and holiness. May we also be found worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven through the prayers of St Nicholas, and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory forever. Amen.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2008-03-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

In Savannah, there is a large St. Patrick's celebration which borders on the obscene. The hallmarks of this celebration are the descent of revelers from all over the country, with the express intention of drinking until they vomit on the sidewalk . Its not pretty. I thought that perhaps it would be good to remember the man and Saint, Patrick today.

The following Confession can be found here.

The Confession of St. Patrick

1. I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all
the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the
eacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement
[vicus] of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I
was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I
did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in
Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for
quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we
obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And
the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us
among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my
smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

2. And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief,
in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and
turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my
insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over
me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even
distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and
consoled me as a father would his son.

3. Therefore, indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper,
so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in
the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God, and
recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his
wonders before every nation under heaven.

4. For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be
hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in
whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught;
and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the
Father, before the beginning of time in the spirit with the Father,
indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and
invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was
received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every
name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we
look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the
dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured
out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of
immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of
God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in
the Trinity of holy name.

5. He himself said through the prophet: `Call upon me in the day of'
trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.' And
again: `It is right to reveal and publish abroad the works of God.'

6. I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and
kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my
soul's desire.

7. I am not ignorant of what is said of my Lord in the Psalm: `You
destroy those who speak a lie.' And again: `A lying mouth deals death
to the soul.' And likewise the Lord says in the Gospel: `On the day
of judgment men shall render account for every idle word they utter.'

8. So it is that I should mightily fear, with terror and trembling,
this judgment on the day when no one shall be able to steal away or
hide, but each and all shall render account for even our smallest
sins before the judgment seat of Christ the Lord.

9. And therefore for some time I have thought of writing, but I have
hesitated until now, for truly, I feared to expose myself to the
criticism of men, because I have not studied like others, who have
assimilated both Law and the Holy Scriptures equally and have never
changed their idiom since their infancy, but instead were always
learning it increasingly, to perfection, while my idiom and language
have been translated into a foreign tongue. So it is easy to prove
from a sample of my writing, my ability in rhetoric and the extent of
my preparation and knowledge, for as it is said, `wisdom shall be
recognized in speech, and in understanding, and in knowledge and in
the learning of truth.'

10. But why make excuses close to the truth, especially when now I am
presuming to try to grasp in my old age what I did not gain in my
youth because my sins prevented me from making what I had read my
own? But who will believe me, even though I should say it again? A
young man, almost a beardless boy, I was taken captive before I knew
what I should desire and what I should shun. So, consequently, today
I feel ashamed and I am mightily afraid to expose my ignorance,
because, [not] eloquent, with a small vocabulary, I am unable to
explain as the spirit is eager to do and as the soul and the mind
indicate.

11. But had it been given to me as to others, in gratitude I should
not have kept silent, and if it should appear that I put myself
before others, with my ignorance and my slower speech, in truth, it
is written: `The tongue of the stammerers shall speak rapidly and
distinctly.' How much harder must we try to attain it, we of whom it
is said: `You are an epistle of Christ in greeting to the ends of the
earth . . . written on your hearts, not with ink but with the Spirit
of the living God.' And again, the Spirit witnessed that the rustic
life was created by the Most High.

12. I am, then, first of all, countryfied, an exile, evidently
unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for
certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep
mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and,
indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from
there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great
favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot
measure.

13. Therefore be amazed, you great and small who fear God, and you
men of God, eloquent speakers, listen and contemplate. Who was it
summoned me, a fool, from the midst of those who appear wise and
learned in the law and powerful in rhetoric and in all things? Me,
truly wretched in this world, he inspired before others that I could
be—if I would—such a one who, with fear and reverence, and
faithfully, without complaint, would come to the people to whom the
love of Christ brought me and gave me in my lifetime, if I should be
worthy, to serve them truly and with humility.

14. According, therefore, to the measure of one's faith in the
Trinity, one should proceed without holding back from danger to make
known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God's
name everywhere with confidence and without fear, in order to leave
behind, after my death, foundations for my brethren and sons whom I
baptized in the Lord in so many thousands.

15. And I was not worthy, nor was I such that the Lord should grant
his humble servant this, that after hardships and such great trials,
after captivity, after many years, he should give me so much favour
in these people, a thing which in the time of my youth I neither
hoped for nor imagined.

16. But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day
and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of
God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved
so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in
the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests
and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in
the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill
nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning
in me at that time.

17. And it was there of course that one night in my sleep I heard a
voice saying to me: `You do well to fast: soon you will depart for
your home country.' And again, a very short time later, there was a
voice prophesying: `Behold, your ship is ready.' And it was not close
by, but, as it happened, two hundred miles away, where I had never
been nor knew any person. And shortly thereafter I turned about and
fled from the man with whom I had been for six years, and I came, by
the power of God who directed my route to advantage (and I was afraid
of nothing), until I reached that ship.

18. And on the same day that I arrived, the ship was setting out from
the place, and I said that I had the wherewithal to sail with them;
and the steersman was displeased and replied in anger, sharply: `By
no means attempt to go with us.' Hearing this I left them to go to
the hut where I was staying, and on the way I began to pray, and
before the prayer was finished I heard one of them shouting loudly
after me: `Come quickly because the men are calling you.' And
immediately I went back to them and they started to say to me: `Come,
because we are admitting you out of good faith; make friendship with
us in any way you wish.' (And so, on that day, I refused to suck the
breasts of these men from fear of God, but nevertheless I had hopes
that they would come to faith in Jesus Christ, because they were
barbarians.) And for this I continued with them, and forthwith we put
to sea.

19. And after three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days
journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and
hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: `Why is
it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why
can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely
indeed that we shall ever see another human being.' In fact, I said
to them, confidently: `Be converted by faith with all your heart to
my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he
will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because
everywhere he abounds.' And with God's help this came to pass; and
behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and
they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the
men were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had
fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside.
And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed
in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly. They
discovered wild honey, besides, and they offered a share to me, and
one of them said: `It is a sacrifice.' Thanks be to God, I tasted
none of it.

20. The very same night while I was sleeping Satan attacked me
violently, as I will remember as long as I shall be in this body; and
there fell on top of me as it were, a huge rock, and not one of my
members had any force. But from whence did it come to me, ignorant in
the spirit, to call upon `Helias'? And meanwhile I saw the sun rising
in the sky, and while I was crying out `Helias, Helias' with all my
might, lo, the brilliance of that sun fell upon me and immediately
shook me free of all the weight; and I believe that I was aided by
Christ my Lord, and that his Spirit then was crying out for me, and I
hope that it will be so in the day of my affliction, just as it says
in the Gospel: `In that hour', the Lord declares, `it is not you who
speaks but the Spirit of your Father speaking in you.'

21. And a second time, after many years, I was taken captive. On the
first night I accordingly remained with my captors, but I heard a
divine prophecy, saying to me: `You shall be with them for two
months.' So it happened. On the sixtieth night the Lord delivered me
from their hands.

22. On the journey he provided us with food and fire and dry weather
every day, until on the tenth day we came upon people. As I mentioned
above, we had journeyed through an unpopulated country for twenty-
eight days, and in fact the night that we came upon people we had no
food.

23. And after a few years I was again in Britain with my parents
[kinsfolk], and they welcomed me as a son, and asked me, in faith,
that after the great tribulations I had endured I should not go
anywhere else away from them. And, of course, there, in a vision of
the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as if from
Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I
read the beginning of the letter: `The Voice of the Irish'; and as I
was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to
hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is
near the western sea, and they were crying as if with one voice: `We
beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among
us.' And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no
more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many years
the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

24. And another night—God knows, I do not, whether within me or
beside me— . . . most words + . . . + which I heard and could not
understand, except at the end of the speech it was represented
thus: `He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.'
And thus I awoke, joyful.

25. And on a second occasion I saw Him praying within me, and I was
as it were, inside my own body , and I heard Him above me—that is,
above my inner self. He was praying powerfully with sighs. And in the
course of this I was astonished and wondering, and I pondered who it
could be who was praying within me. But at the end of the prayer it
was revealed to me that it was the Spirit. And so I awoke and
remembered the Apostle's words: `Likewise the Spirit helps us in our
weakness; for we know not how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit
Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for utterance.' And
again: 'The Lord our advocate intercedes for us.'

26. And then I was attacked by a goodly number of my elders, who
[brought up] my sins against my arduous episcopate. That day in
particular I was mightily upset, and might have fallen here and for
ever; but the Lord generously spared me, a convert, and an alien, for
his name's sake, and he came powerfully to my assistance in that
state of being trampled down. I pray God that it shall not be held
against them as a sin that I fell truly into disgrace and scandal.

27. They brought up against me after thirty years an occurrence I had
confessed before becoming a deacon. On account of the anxiety in my
sorrowful mind, I laid before my close friend what I had perpetrated
on a day—nay, rather in one hour—in my boyhood because I was not yet
proof against sin. God knows—I do not—whether I was fifteen years old
at the time, and I did not then believe in the living God, nor had I
believed, since my infancy; but I remained in death and unbelief
until I was severely rebuked, and in truth I was humbled every day by
hunger and nakedness.

28. On the other hand, I did not proceed to Ireland of my own accord
until I was almost giving up, but through this I was corrected by the
Lord, and he prepared me so that today I should be what was once far
from me, in order that I should have the care of—or rather, I should
be concerned for—the salvation of others, when at that time, still, I
was only concerned for myself.

29. Therefore, on that day when I was rebuked, as I have just
mentioned, I saw in a vision of the night a document before my face,
without honour, and meanwhile I heard a divine prophecy, saying to
me: `We have seen with displeasure the face of the chosen one
divested of [his good] name.' And he did not say `You have seen with
displeasure', but `We have seen with displeasure' (as if He included
Himself) . He said then: `He who touches you, touches the apple of my
eye.'

30. For that reason, I give thanks to him who strengthened me in all
things, so that I should not be hindered in my setting out and also
in my work which I was taught by Christ my Lord; but more, from that
state of affairs I felt, within me, no little courage, and vindicated
my faith before God and man.

31. Hence, therefore, I say boldly that my conscience is clear now
and hereafter. God is my witness that I have not lied in these words
to you.

32. But rather, I am grieved for my very close friend, that because
of him we deserved to hear such a prophecy. The one to whom I
entrusted my soul! And I found out from a goodly number of brethren,
before the case was made in my defence (in which I did not take part,
nor was I in Britain, nor was it pleaded by me), that in my absence
he would fight in my behalf. Besides, he told me himself: `See, the
rank of bishop goes to you'—of which I was not worthy. But how did it
come to him, shortly afterwards, to disgrace me publicly, in the
presence of all, good and bad, because previously, gladly and of is
own free will, he pardoned me, as did the Lord, who is greater than
all?

33. I have said enough. But all the same, I ought not to conceal
God's gift which he lavished on us in the land of my captivity, for
then I sought him resolutely, and I found him there, and he preserved
me from all evils (as I believe) through the in-dwelling of his
Spirit, which works in me to this day. Again, boldly, but God knows,
if this had been made known to me by man, I might, perhaps, have kept
silent for the love of Christ.

34. Thus I give untiring thanks to God who kept me faithful in the
day of my temptation, so that today I may confidently offer my soul
as a living sacrifice for Christ my Lord; who am I, Lord? or, rather,
what is my calling? that you appeared to me in so great a divine
quality, so that today among the barbarians I might constantly exalt
and magnify your name in whatever place I should be, and not only in
good fortune, but even in affliction? So that whatever befalls me, be
it good or bad, I should accept it equally, and give thanks always to
God who revealed to me that I might trust in him, implicitly and
forever, and who will encourage me so that, ignorant, and in the last
days, I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so
that I might imitate one of those whom, once, long ago, the Lord
already pre-ordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all
peoples to the ends of the earth. So are we seeing, and so it is
fulfilled; behold, we are witnesses because the Gospel has been
preached as far as the places beyond which no man lives.

35. But it is tedious to describe in detail all my labours one by
one. I will tell briefly how most holy God frequently delivered me,
from slavery, and from the twelve trials with which my soul was
threatened, from man traps as well, and from things I am not able to
put into words. I would not cause offence to readers, but I have God
as witness who knew all things even before they happened, that,
though I was a poor, ignorant waif, still he gave me abundant
warnings through divine prophecy.

36. Whence came to me this wisdom which was not my own, I who neither
knew the number of days nor had knowledge of God? Whence came the so
great and so healthful gift of knowing or rather loving God, though I
should lose homeland and family?

37. And many gifts were offered to me with weeping and tears, and I
offended them [the donors], and also went against the wishes of a
good number of my elders; but guided by God, I neither agreed with
them nor deferred to them, not by my own grace but by God who is
victorious in me and withstands them all, so that I might come to the
Irish people to preach the Gospel and endure insults from
unbelievers; that I might hear scandal of my travels, and endure many
persecutions to the extent of prison; and so that I might give up my
free birthright for the advantage of others, and if I should be
worthy, I am ready [to give] even my life without hesitation; and
most willingly for His name. And I choose to devote it to him even
unto death, if God grant it to me.

38. I am greatly God's debtor, because he granted me so much grace,
that through me many people would be reborn in God, and soon a after
confirmed, and that clergy would be ordained everywhere for them, the
masses lately come to belief, whom the Lord drew from the ends of the
earth, just as he once promised through his prophets: `To you shall
the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, "Our
fathers have inherited naught but lies, worthless things in which
there is no profit."' And again: `I have set you to be a light for
the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the uttermost ends of
the earth.'

39. And I wish to wait then for his promise which is never
unfulfilled, just as it is promised in the Gospel: `Many shall come
from east and west and shall sit at table with Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob.' Just as we believe that believers will come from all the
world,

40. So for that reason one should, in fact, fish well and diligently,
just as the Lord foretells and teaches, saying, `Follow me, and I
will make you fishers of men,' and, again, through the
prophets: `"Behold, I am sending forth many fishers and hunters,"
says the Lord,' et cetera. So it behoved us to spread our nets, that
a vast multitude and throng might be caught for God, and so there
might be clergy everywhere who baptized and exhorted a needy and
desirous people. Just as the Lord says in the Gospel, admonishing and
instructing: `Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always to the end of time.' And again he
says: `Go forth into the world and preach the Gospel to all creation.
He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not
believe shall be condemned.' And again: `This Gospel of the Kingdom
shall be preached throughout the whole world as a witness to all
nations; and then the end of the world shall come.' And likewise the
Lord foretells through the prophet: `And it shall come to pass in the
last days (sayeth the Lord) that I will pour out my spirit upon all
flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men
shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams; yea, and on my
menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my
Spirit and they shall prophesy.' And in Hosea he says: `Those who are
not my people I will call my people, and those not beloved I will
call my beloved, and in the very place where it was said to
them, "You are not my people," they will be called 'Sons of the
living God."'

41. So, how is it that in Ireland, where they never had any knowledge
of God but, always, until now, cherished idols and unclean things,
they are lately become a people of the Lord, and are called children
of God; the sons of the Irish [Scotti] and the daughters of the
chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ.

42. And there was, besides, a most beautiful, blessed, native-born
noble Irish [Scotta] woman of adult age whom I baptized; and a few
days later she had reason to come to us to intimate that she had
received a prophecy from a divine messenger [who] advised her that
she should become a virgin of Christ and she would draw nearer to
God. Thanks be to God, six days from then, opportunely and most
eagerly, she took the course that all virgins of God take, not with
their fathers' consent but enduring the persecutions and deceitful
hindrances of their parents. Notwithstanding that, their number
increases, (we do not know the number of them that are so reborn)
besides the widows, and those who practise self-denial. Those who are
kept in slavery suffer the most. They endure terrors and constant
threats, but the Lord has given grace to many of his handmaidens, for
even though they are forbidden to do so, still they resolutely follow
his example.

43. So it is that even if I should wish to separate from them in
order to go to Britain, and most willingly was I prepared to go to my
homeland and kinsfolk—and not only there, but as far as Gaul to visit
the brethren there, so that I might see the faces of the holy ones of
my Lord, God knows how strongly I desired this—I am bound by the
Spirit, who witnessed to me that if I did so he would mark me out as
guilty, and I fear to waste the labour that I began, and not I, but
Christ the Lord, who commanded me to come to be with them for the
rest of my life, if the Lord shall will it and shield me from every
evil, so that I may not sin before him.

44. So I hope that I did as I ought, but I do not trust myself as
long as I am in this mortal body, for he is strong who strives daily
to turn me away from the faith and true holiness to which I aspire
until the end of my life for Christ my Lord, but the hostile flesh is
always dragging one down to death, that is, to unlawful attractions.
And I know in part why I did not lead a perfect life like other
believers, but I confess to my Lord and do not blush in his sight,
because I am not lying; from the time when I came to know him in my
youth, the love of God and fear of him increased in me, and right up
until now, by God's favour, I have kept the faith.

45. What is more, let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am
not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were
shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, [he] who
knew everything, even before the beginning of time.

46. Thus, I should give thanks unceasingly to God, who frequently
forgave my folly and my negligence, in more than one instance so as
not to be violently angry with me, who am placed as his helper, and I
did not easily assent to what had been revealed to me, as the Spirit
was urging; and the Lord took pity on me thousands upon thousands of
times, because he saw within me that I was prepared, but that I was
ignorant of what to do in view of my situation; because many were
trying to prevent this mission. They were talking among themselves
behind my back, and saying: `Why is this fellow throwing himself into
danger among enemies who know not God?' Not from malice, but having
no liking for it; likewise, as I myself can testify, they perceived
my rusticity. And I was not quick to recognize the grace that was
then in me; I now know that I should have done so earlier.

47. Now I have put it frankly to my brethren and co-workers, who have
believed me because of what I have foretold and still foretell to
strengthen and reinforce your faith. I wish only that you, too, would
make greater and better efforts. This will be my pride, for `a wise
son makes a proud father'.

48. You know, as God does, how I went about among you from my youth
in the faith of truth and in sincerity of heart. As well as to the
heathen among whom I live, I have shown them trust and always show
them trust. God knows I did not cheat any one of them, nor consider
it, for the sake of God and his Church, lest I arouse them and [bring
about] persecution for them and for all of us, and lest the Lord's
name be blasphemed because of me, for it is written: `Woe to the men
through whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed.'

49. For even though I am ignorant in all things, nevertheless I
attempted to safeguard some and myself also. And I gave back again to
my Christian brethren and the virgins of Christ and the holy women
the small unasked for gifts that they used to give me or some of
their ornaments which they used to throw on the altar. And they would
be offended with me because I did this. But in the hope of eternity,
I safeguarded myself carefully in all things, so that they might not
cheat me of my office of service on any pretext of dishonesty, and so
that I should not in the smallest way provide any occasion for
defamation or disparagement on the part of unbelievers.

50. What is more, when I baptized so many thousands of people, did I
hope for even half a jot from any of them? [If so] Tell me, and I
will give it back to you. And when the Lord ordained clergy
everywhere by my humble means, and I freely conferred office on them,
if I asked any of them anywhere even for the price of one shoe, say
so to my face and I will give it back.

51. More, I spent for you so that they would receive me. And I went
about among you, and everywhere for your sake, in danger, and as far
as the outermost regions beyond which no one lived, and where no one
had ever penetrated before, to baptize or to ordain clergy or to
confirm people. Conscientiously and gladly I did all this work by
God's gift for your salvation.

52. From time to time I gave rewards to the kings, as well as making
payments to their sons who travel with me; notwithstanding which,
they seized me with my companions, and that day most avidly desired
to kill me. But my time had not yet come. They plundered everything
they found on us anyway, and fettered me in irons; and on the
fourteenth day the Lord freed me from their power, and whatever they
had of ours was given back to us for the sake of God on account of
the indispensable friends whom we had made before.

53. Also you know from experience how much I was paying to those who
were administering justice in all the regions, which I visited often.
I estimate truly that I distributed to them not less than the price
of fifteen men, in order that you should enjoy my company and I enjoy
yours, always, in God. I do not regret this nor do I regard it as
enough. I am paying out still and I shall pay out more. The Lord has
the power to grant me that I may soon spend my own self, for your
souls.

54. Behold, I call on God as my witness upon my soul that I am not
lying; nor would I write to you for it to be an occasion for flattery
or selfishness, nor hoping for honour from any one of you. Sufficient
is the honour which is not yet seen, but in which the heart has
confidence. He who made the promise is faithful; he never lies.

55. But I see that even here and now, I have been exalted beyond
measure by the Lord, and I was not worthy that he should grant me
this, while I know most certainly that poverty and failure suit me
better than wealth and delight (but Christ the Lord was poor for our
sakes; I certainly am wretched and unfortunate; even if I wanted
wealth I have no resources, nor is it my own estimation of myself,
for daily I expect to be murdered or betrayed or reduced to slavery
if the occasion arises. But I fear nothing, because of the promises
of Heaven; for I have cast myself into the hands of Almighty God, who
reigns everywhere. As the prophet says: `Cast your burden on the Lord
and he will sustain you.'

56. Behold now I commend my soul to God who is most faithful and for
whom I perform my mission in obscurity, but he is no respecter of
persons and he chose me for this service that I might be one of the
least of his ministers.

57. For which reason I should make return for all that he returns me.
But what should I say, or what should I promise to my Lord, for I,
alone, can do nothing unless he himself vouchsafe it to me. But let
him search my heart and [my] nature, for I crave enough for it, even
too much, and I am ready for him to grant me that I drink of his
chalice, as he has granted to others who love him.

58. Therefore may it never befall me to be separated by my God from
his people whom he has won in this most remote land. I pray God that
he gives me perseverance, and that he will deign that I should be a
faithful witness for his sake right up to the time of my passing.

59. And if at any time I managed anything of good for the sake of my
God whom I love, I beg of him that he grant it to me to shed my blood
for his name with proselytes and captives, even should I be left
unburied, or even were my wretched body to be torn limb from limb by
dogs or savage beasts, or were it to be devoured by the birds of the
air, I think, most surely, were this to have happened to me, I had
saved both my soul and my body. For beyond any doubt on that day we
shall rise again in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory
of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-
heirs of Christ, made in his image; for we shall reign through him
and for him and in him.

60. For the sun we see rises each day for us at [his] command, but it
will never reign, neither will its splendour last, but all who
worship it will come wretchedly to punishment. We, on the other hand,
shall not die, who believe in and worship the true sun, Christ, who
will never die, no more shall he die who has done Christ's will, but
will abide for ever just as Christ abides for ever, who reigns with
God the Father Almighty and with the Holy Spirit before the beginning
of time and now and for ever and ever. Amen.

61. Behold over and over again I would briefly set out the words of
my confession. I testify in truthfulness and gladness of heart before
God and his holy angels that I never had any reason, except the
Gospel and his promises, ever to have returned to that nation from
which I had previously escaped with difficulty.

62. But I entreat those who believe in and fear God, whoever deigns
to examine or receive this document composed by the obviously
unlearned sinner Patrick in Ireland, that nobody shall ever ascribe
to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have
expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that
it would have been the gift of God. And this is my confession before
I die.

Crazy World

2008-02-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was switching channels and came upon a reality show called "Surprise Wedding." The premise of this show is that half a dozen women who have been in long term relationships and want to marry their significant other are brought to Las Vegas for a week of makeovers, wedding shopping and all-around fun. They somehow get their SOs to meet them in Las Vegas - most of them told the hapless men that they were receiving an award of some sort. One by one, the men are brought out onto the stage, where the women are standing in wedding dresses, and in front of the screaming audience and many cameras, the women propose. The men are given a few minutes alone to consider the proposal, then they are brought out again and to give their answer. If they answer yes, a JP marries them immediately. If they say now, they are hustled off the stage while the wanna-be bride tearfully is escorted offstage to a kiss and cry area and is interviewed.

This was horrible. It was like watching someone pick their nose - its disgusting, but you can't take your eyes off it. What does it say about our American culture, that women would feel so desperate because they aren't married, that they would lie to the men they supposedly love, would humiliate and debase themselves?

What does it say about the state of America's spiritual underpinnings that women are so intent on marrying, that they would be willing to forego any mention of God and would get married without their loved ones around them?

What does it say about how we raise girls into women in our culture, that to be without a husband is so heinous that women prefer lying and the risk of public humiliation to remaining single?

What does it say about the self-worth of women who would do this? Who would beg on national TV to have a man marry her?

What does it say about the men in America today - that they spend an abnormally long adolescence, all the way to their mid 40s for many - and don't step up to the plate of male adulthood, thus forcing women to take over?

What does it say about the men who said no to the women they supposedly love, who wore their hearts on their sleeves and risked everything to marry them? Do these men understand the shame involved for these women - if they truly loved and valued them, they would never have put them in a position where the women felt they had to take matters into their own hands.

What does it say about the men who said yes and married on the spot - if you were wanting to marry this women, why didn't you do the right thing and spare both of you the humiliation?

On every level, I found this show horrific and deeply disturbing. It was like watching a train wreck. Its a sad commentary on life in America - that we would tune in to such a thing, that we would participate in such a thing.

This makes me so much prouder of my dear daughter, who recently ended a relationship with her first real boyfriend. She realized at 17, that TBF had planned out their lives in minute detail, and when he was unable to loosen up, she decided that she was too young to have no surprises left. She'd rather be single. Props to her! At almost 18 (her birtday in next week), she has learned that happiness and contentment come from within, that no one can own another, that sometimes (especially when young) the unknown future can be an exciting place, and the journey there a reward in and of itself. And most of all, that her happiness and worth as a human being has to do with her relationship with God, and does not require being part of a couple.

Props to her!

A Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian

2008-02-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

“No one can heal my disease except He
Who knows the depths of my heart.
How many times have I set boundaries for myself
and built walls between myself and sin!
But my thoughts transgressed the boundaries
and my will tore down the walls,
for the boundaries were not secured by fear of God,
and the walls were not founded on sincere repentance.

And again I knock at the door, that it may open for me.
I do not cease to ask that I may receive what I request.
and I know no shame in seeking Thy mercy, O Lord.

O Lord, my Savior! Why hast Thou forsaken me?
Have mercy on me, O only Lover of mankind.
Save me, a sinner, Thou only Sinless One.

Wrench me from the mire of my iniquities,
that I may not be forever sullied by them.
Deliver me from the jaws of the enemy,
who roars as a lion and desires to swallow me up.

Rouse Thy strength and come, that Thou mightest save me.
Beam Thy lightening and disperse his power,
that he may be struck with fear and flee from Thy face,
for he has not the strength to stand before Thee
and before the face of those who love Thee.
As soon as he perceives a sign of Thy grace,
he is taken with fear of Thee and withdraws from such with shame.

And now, O Master, save me, for I flee to Thee!”

Iconography - A Writer's Meditation

2008-01-21T04:56:00.000-08:00

I just finished this book by writer Susan Neville. In the middle of her Midwestern life, she realizes that there is something missing, there is a hole in her heart that only God can fill, and she decides to spend some time writing about her spiritual life every day during lent as an exercise. She brackets her meditations with vignettes from an iconography class that she took where she completed an icon of the Theotokos.

Susan is not Orthodox, and I found her reflections on Orthodox liturgy and iconography incredibly moving. Here are her final words:

On a Sunday, two weeks later, I head to the Joy of All Who Sorrow. Walking back into the holy gloom, running a little late, I realize right away that I've done something terribly wrong. My icon lies up on a table waiting to be blessed, and I don't belong here. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do.

I have no head-covering. I-I-I. Couldn't I for one second have let go of the fact that my presence here was important because it was my icon waiting to blessed and thought about the fact that this church was Orthodox?

I stand at the doorway, late, remembering back to the days before Vatican II when I would go with a friend to a Catholic church and there would be handkerchiefs or scarves on a table by the door.

I look around for something to put over my hair, and there's nothing. I don't know whether I should leave or stay.

A woman in a blue denim skirt comes up to welcome me. She has a beautiful smile. I point to my head, and she removes her scarf. I'll go hatless too, she says, it's all right. It doesn't matter. Really. Come in, she says. Sit down.

And so I do.

Running late, moving from the bright October daylight to the medieval gloom, sitting down next to the smiling woman with no head-covering, I wasn't prepared for my reaction, and it took me surprise. Everything was extraordinarily beautiful, including the woman's kindness, that I started to cry.

But it was more than simply the act of kindness; it was something about the ritual, which contained a motion that stretched back through time, like a golden-hued intricate machine, a Victorian toy. I can't explain it. It was a time capsule, all movement, and I only know that I'd never seen anything like it, the way these beautiful children, miniature adults, circled with their parents and their grandparents so sweetly from icon to icon, the deep bows of veneration, the prayers and candles, the theater of it all -- the way the curtains closed on the bread and wine when they were just that, bread and wine, and the chanting of the priests and the way the curtains opened on the transformation into flesh, the look on the congregants' faces as they took the mystery into their own very real bodies.

And all the time the new icons sitting on a table at the front, waiting to be blessed, and one of them was the one I'd struggled over.

Mother Catherine came back to sit by me when it was time for the blessing. She pointed out the other iconographers in the room. "Iconographer," she called me. The priest dropped holy water on my Mary's face and chanted a prayer, and Mother Catherine took me to the front of the line as everyone in the church stood to venerate the thing that I had made. I was, I knew, a fraud.

It's a tradition, Mother Catherine said, for the iconographer to be the first one to venerate the icon. How do I do that? I asked her. I was a fraud. Like this, she said, and I remembered that "like this" was one translation of the untranslatable word for God.

She showed me how to hold my hand and how to cross myself, head to navel, right shoulder to the left. And when I got to the icon, I made the sign, and it was one of the most unnatural things I've ever done.

But I was moved, and still am, by the way the congregants then made the sign and kissed the icon, and I realized that the Mary I'd struggled over for so long had sailed away, that she had her own life now beyond me, like my children, like this book, that for me she contained all the grief I'd felt for those who had passed or would continue to pass through my life and my children's lives, for those who had died and for those who were yet to be born. That she would stay in my house above my desk, unvenerated probably as long as she stayed on my wall, a bit frightening at times, at times comforting. That through the years the light of the gold leaf behind her head will sometimes take me by surprise, that someday, maybe a hundred years from now, when I'm long gone, her light will shine as brightly as does the sunlight glazing the needles of the white pine tree outside my window on this particular sharp November day as I sit one last morning with thismeditation, writing this one last line.

When I read the above last night, I wept. Like Susan, I also yearn for God, my heart mutely crying out for Him. I was also fascinated by iconography when I was newly Orthodox and dabbled in it, finally spending a year learning about life and Orthodoxy and how to be an Orthodox woman, and occasionally, about iconography from an old Russian woman, Olga, who was a fabulously talented artist, but not really an iconographer. Like Susan, icons somehow got ahold of me and wouldn't let me go until I found a teacher and spent a week writing St. Michael the Archangel in egg tempera. Like Susan, I struggle with my art, my iconography.

Iconography is a prayer. It is an acquiescence, a submission, to someone and something. It is a yearning and a receiving. It is a beginning and a completion. It is one moment encapsulated in time, in earth and minerals and egg mixed with vinegar, and it is also all of eternity stretching forwards and backwards. Its humility, because each icon that leaves my hands falls far short of prototype, and is absolutely unworthy of either the saint depicted for the recipient of the finished work. Its a discipline and a way of life that I am incapable of following.

But I try. I keep slugging away at it. I keep asking God to help me rise to the occasion, to complete what is lacking in me. I keep looking for that little pinpoint of heaven peeking out at me in the midst of that expanse of smooth white board.

Last spring, my bishop reviewed my work and told me that it was time to get serious about iconography, to study seriously with a master iconographer and become a real iconographer, myself. He asked me to consider whether God wanted me to continue as an amateur (a lover of the work) or a dilettante (one whose efforts are only superficial), or whether God wanted me to offer my artistic gifts back to Him in the form of iconography. He told me that it was time to stop flirting with iconography and to become an iconographer. Each time I recall that brief conversation, with photos of my icons in Vladyka's hands, and his eyes boring holes through mine, and his voice so soft but so sharp... I weep again. "What are you going to do" he asked. "I can see that your iconography has promise, but what are you going to do with this gift that God has given you?" "Its time to get serious."

Yes, its time to get serious.

INTP

2008-01-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

I read Mimi's blog almost daily, and her last post was about her scores on the Meyers Briggs Personality Inventory. The first time I took the Meyers Briggs, I was in college, providing practice for a friend in the counseling program. I was an INTJ then, and continued to test as an INTJ until about five years ago when, inexplicably, I became an INTP (though once I tested as an ENTJ.) Crazy huh?

The differences between a J and a P are subtle but very clear.

Judging (J)
Judging does not mean "judgmental". Judging people like order, organization and think sequentially. They like to have things planned and settled. Judging people seek closure.

Judging Characteristics
Decisive
Controlled
Good at finishing
Organized
Structured
Scheduled
Quick at tasks
Responsible
Likes closure
Makes plans

Perceiving (P)
Perceiving people are flexible, like to keep their options open and think randomly. They like to act spontaneously and are adaptable. Perceivers like to keep things open ended.

Perceiving Characteristics
Adaptable
Relaxed
Disorganized
Care-free
Spontaneous
Changes tracks midway
Keeps options open
Procrastinates
Dislikes routine
Flexible

As I get older, and as life "tenderizes" me, I can see that I most definitely am becoming more flexible, more adaptable, more relaxed. Unfortunately, I am also becoming more disorganized, though I see the beauty in organization and crave it - I'm just not the person to make it happen. I did change tracks midway through my life. I certainly do procrastinate a lot; I have struggled with punctuality all my life, though I am doing better in general nowadays. I certainly get bored with routine in many ways - work especially - which is why I prefer working with people because there are new situations to deal with every day. On the other hand, the sameness of the church year, the changing of the church seasons, the rich liturgical life of the Orthodox Church, the eternal sameness of it, is far removed from routine - it is incredibly beautiful and comforting.

I certainly do not think sequentially. I usually have a dozen different things going on in my head at any time. I find it impossible to attend fully to any one thought, which makes prayer difficult. My daughter says that I'm what happens when an ADD kid grows up. The funny thing is, when I was a kid, I would concentrate so hard on things that I was interested in, that the real world would drop away and my Mom had to physically shake me to come to dinner, for example. But now, I'm always listening to a number of internal conversations with myself. Perhaps that is the key to whether I am a J or a P.

So, I guess that I have, indeed, morphed into a P.

My 2007 Reading List

2008-01-04T19:05:00.001-08:00

Its a new year and thus, its time to start a new reading list! I've joined a couple of reading challenges which do, indeed, promise to challenge me.

In 2007, I read the following books:

The Jesus Prayer - A Monk
Mr. Darcy's Daughters - Elizabeth Aston
The Monastic Life - Met. Cyprian of Oropos
Letters to a Beginner - Abbess Thaisia
Cloud of Witnesses - Fr. Arseny
A Tiny Step Away from Deepest Faith - Corbman
A Year of Russian Feasts - Jones
Coming Home to Myself - Wynonna
Endless Chain - Richards
The Practice of the Presence of God
Living Prayer - Met. Anthony Bloom
The Icon - Michel Quenot
Praying with Icons - Jim Forest
Making Life a Prayer - St. John Cassian
Courage to Pray - Met. Anthony Bloom
Diary of a Russian Priest
This Holy Man: Impressions of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
Mountain of Silence

From Mother Gavrilia

2008-01-04T19:02:00.000-08:00

"First of all, we need to humbly ask God's blessing upon our work, and if there is any doubt whether we should do something we need to pray about it or seek counsel. St. Silouan said, 'A soul that is troubled about anything should inquire of the Lord, and the Lord will give him understanding. But this is primarily in times of calamity and real bewilderment. As a general rule, we should be advised by our spiritual father, for this is a humbler way.'"

"When you wish deeply to act always according to the Will of God, He will reveal It to you. This is what He asks. He wants us to reach out our hand for His Grace, so that His Grace may guide us and His Holy Spirit may shine on us. And then, it is Paradise on Earth! Have no doubts whether it is or it isn't the Will of God. Because when you doubt about what is to be done, it will not be done properly. Don't forget that when it is not the Will of God, He makes it quite clear, for then He shuts all the doors. When you go here and there and find obstacles everywhere, change course, don't insist on your own will. Make your Prayer and change your mind. But don't forget to pray! Talk with God's Spirit as you would with someone dear to you. Yet, you know, the acceptance of God's Will also depends in some way on man himself... God calls man to follow Him. Man replies "Yes" or "No"...God besses a Marriage for the begetting of children. Man replies"Yes" or "No"... In any case, the effort to live in accordance with God's Will is absolutely necessary. For this is our purpose on this Earth." - Mother Gavrilia

Two from St. Nikolaj Velimirovic

2008-01-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

Blessed is he who knows his function and gift received from the Spirit, and who serves according to his designation to the end. Just as the Holy Spirit now apportions His gifts, so the Lord, in His time, will apportion rewards. O Lord, Holy Spirit, true God, help us to use Thy gifts to the end of our lives in humility, for the well-being of Christ's Church and for our eternal salvation.

St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

If we are not humbled by virtues, then sin will humble us.

St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Christmas Meditation by Metropolitan Philip Saliba

2007-12-24T06:52:00.000-08:00

Lord,

What shall I offer you on your birthday in return for your infinite love?

I have neither gold nor silver, neither myrrh nor frankincense.

My house is without a roof. I have no room for you; not even a manger.

My soul is even darker than the clouds of my passion.

My eyes are too dim to look beyond the horizon of myself.

Help me behold your bright star; "For in thy light we shall see light."

Lord,

You have been knocking on my door for thirty-nine years, but I never dared let you in because my garment is not white as snow.

Forgive me if I do not invite you to my table, for my table is full of everything you despise. I have denied you more than Peter.

I have doubted you more than Thomas.

I have betrayed you more than Judas.

My hands are empty. My lips are not clean to sing your praise.

And my heart is wrinkled with sorrow like a withered leaf under autumn's wind.

Lord,

The only thing I can offer you on your birthday is myself.

Drown me in the ocean of your love.

Feed me with your heavenly bread, for the bread of this world will never satisfy my hunger.

Quench my thirst with your divine fountain, for the water of this earth will never satisfy my thirst.

Give me your eyes to see what you see, your ears to hear what you hear and your heart to love what you love.

Take me with you to Mount Tabor and let me bathe in your eternal light.

Lord,

"Create a clean heart in me. Cast me not away from Thy face. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit."

Teach me how to pray in simple words, for only through prayers I may overcome my loneliness.
Help me to care for the needy, the oppressed, the orphans, the sinners and the despised whom you love.

As I kneel before your manger with love and humility I beseech you to listen to my prayers.

Christmas Edition of Getting to Know Your Friends

2007-12-22T12:29:00.001-08:00

Okay, here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be aSCROOGE!!! Just copy (not forward) this entire email and paste into anew e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that theyapply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know,INCLUDING the person that sent it to you......Tis the Season to be NICE!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags??? brown paper lunch bags, stapled shut

2. Real tree or Artificial??? Artificial, alas. Real ones make me congested.

3. When do you put up the tree? The last few years since my mother died, its been later and later. I used to put it up on Thanksgiving weekend, but now it doesn't get done until mid-December.

4. When do you take the tree down? after January 7th.

5. Do you like egg nog?? Yes, I love it, even though I got a wicked hangover from Melvin's "special homemade" eggnog a couple of years ago. I think he "made" it in the bathtub.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? My annual box of 64 Crayola crayons

7. Do you have a nativity scene? Multiple ones!

8. Hardest person to buy for? My ex husband. Every year, including this one, I get him a DVD. DD just told me yesterday that he doesn't have a dvd player. Damn luddite.

9. Easiest person to buy for? DD - barnes and noble gift card does it for her

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?? I don't do cards of any type - never have. I will send email cards on occasion. friends and family who don't have an email address are out of luck.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I don't remember any, truthfully

12. Favorite Christmas movie? Hm.... I think its probably A Christmas Story or Miracle on 34th St. I almost wet my pants the first time I saw A Christmas Story.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?? When I can't avoid it anymore

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present??? Yes

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas??? Panettone and pizzelle

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree??? Clear lights that don't blink. The more the better. When I turn my tree on, there should be a brown out in my neighborhood, or I haven't don't it right.

17. Favorite Christmas song?? Most favorite is Lo, How A Rose Ere Blooming, and second favorite is O Holy Night in French

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home, but sometimes I think it would be fun to go somewhere unexpected, like Aruba or Lake Sunapee NH

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeers? No, but I can name all the Von Trapp children. There are seven of them. I can also name all the B Street children. Does that count?

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? I always have both. The tree is on the tippy top with an angel immediately below it

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?? When I was a kid, we always opened them at night after midnight mass, but once I was a mother, I saw the wisdom of Christmas morning gift opening.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year??? Office gift exchanges. Nuff said. Actually, I kinda think the whole gift giving thing is out of hand in our culture. I'm happy with just our Christmas stockings full of little things and candy.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color??? I've got enough ornaments to fill half a dozen trees, but I always start with red balls; sometimes they are red apples, sometimes they are two red balls, one dark red and shiny and the other bright red and satin, hung together. My favorite ornaments, though, are the ones that I've collected over the years to commemorate different places I' ve been, or events, or stages of DD's life, or pets. These ornaments tell the story of our life. I love the several grandmother and grandfather ornaments that I got for my parents. Now that my mother is gone, for the third year, I've gotten a pig with angel wings ornament. This year's pig is sparkly, with red lipstick! Mom collected little pigs because she was so grateful to have a porcine heart valve keeping her alive for many years.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner??? My favorite Christmas dinner exists in my memory: chicken in wine, stuffed artichokes, ravioli, bracciola, salad, chocolate chestnut pizza. Nowadays, I prefer to keep things much more simple, esp since the ex visits over Christmas and I don't like to inflict him on guests

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? college tuition for DD

26. Person most likely to respond to this email? everyone responds to MOI

27. Who is least likely to respond to this? see number 26

Ok, tag! You're it!

Would you do it again?

2007-11-29T20:40:00.001-08:00

Today I got an email from my "little" cousin Joe (his stage name is J. Maxx). That was a cause for rejoicing in itself because we don't really correspond much. Joe must be about 38 or so now, a grown up - imagine that! He married last December, so he's coming up on his first wedding anniversary, and he obviously was reflecting on that event, because here is what he sent me. He also sent it to his sister (Goddaughter #2), his female cousins that he grew up with and one of my first cousins. The photo above is of my seven sweethearts - my seven "little" cousins, and he sent the email to them and me and one of my other cousins that we are all very close with.

"Okay, ladies-Got a question for you (looking for honest answers here): if you could do it all over again, knowing what you know now, would you have kids? J. Max"

This is the reply that he got from his sister, Goddaughter #2, the lawyer - but I promise you, she's a NICE lawyer!:

"absolutely, no questions asked. My kids are the very, very best that has ever happened in my life. They bring me the most joy I've felt in my life. Of course there are days that you want to rip the hair out of your head, but that in no way even comes close to the love you feel.

It is the hardest and I mean the hardest job you will ever undertake and you have no idea how hard it is until you do it, but the rewards always outweigh the turmoil. LikeDina said, the first few months are so hard and because the baby can't tell you what's wrong it's very hard, but that time literally flies away and in no time it is a distant memory. Those first smiles, those hugs around your neck and the head that rests on your shoulder for comfort and support, you can't beat!!!"

Then I got this one from him:

Denise- I had your wrong e-mail address. Care to weigh in?

J. Max

I thought about it. Would I do it again? Would I be willing to do it again now, knowing all that went before? Here is my reply:

"Dear Joe,

I've been through a lot. When Jerry and I got married, I had dreams of the little house with the white picket fence, 2.2 children, a cat, a dog and a rosebush. Nothing special, just an ordinary, normal life. After the first year of marriage, we decided to try to have a baby. A year after that, I was 25 years old with a diagnosis of infertility. I was devastated. I mourned children I had never even had until I had Elisabeth in the 11th year of my marriage. By that time, I was 34 years old and felt my biological clock ticking... and remember, Jerry is 9 years older than me, so he was already in his mid 40s. I felt like the window for having a child was closing.

Then, miraculously, I was pregnant! Happy happy joy joy! But at 12 weeks, I was having a miscarriage. I'll spare you the gory details, but we really thought we had lost her. I remember sitting in the ER waiting for the infertilitiy specialist to show up to tell me that I was having a miscarriage, and I thought to myself.... at least I had the opportunity to be pregnant for a little while. At least I had the opportunity to have a doctor tell me I was pregnant, and I had the joy of telling my husband, and my mother, and my Auntie Anna. At least I had these experiences and it will have to be enough.

DD had other plans, though, and was born healthy. But you know the rest of the story - a 14 month old with cancer is pretty ugly. I really thought she would die during the surgery. I remember thinking, throughout that whole awful time, that at least I had the opportunity to know her and love her and nurse her and change her diapers, and nibble her toes for a little while, and a little while was a whole lot better than nothing. Then came the divorce and being a single mother which is pretty difficult. Add in two sick and elderly parents, death, nursing homes, never enough money, lost jobs..... life has been very hard. But the one consistent bright spot has been DD.

Now she is almost 18 and getting ready to fly the coop. She is a wonderful, wonderful young woman: kind, generous, understanding, sentimental, thoughtful, smart, funny, talented, beautiful inside and out. I couldn't ask for a more wonderful child. I'm so proud of her.

Was all that sorrow and pain and anguish worth it? Were the years that I spent on my knees begging God to let me be a mother worth it? Was the fear of screwing her life up worth it? The fear of her dying (I still have nightmares once in a while) worth it?

You bet it was worth it, Joe. Every second, every minute of every day was worth it, even the bad stuff. I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat, even at 52, even knowing all I know now that I sure didn't know then --- yes, I'd do it again. I'd have a whole houseful.

I have never felt such intense joy. I have never been so fulfilled. I have never been so challenged to mature and develop. My life has been so enriched. Watching your child grow and leading her in the way she should go has provided me with the most intense joy and fulfillment--- more than I could ever have dreamed of. I have grown so much. My faith has been strengthened - I *know* that God exits - I see the pattern of His love and care for me and for DD every day.

Go for it, Joe! You would make a fantastic father. I just know it!

Love,

Denise"

You know, Joe was the most beautiful baby I think I've ever seen. He almost didn't make it - his mother was in a car accident and had him about two months early. He had a few problems, but he was the sweetest, most loving child. And brave! He was/is an actor/casting director in NY - I'm always amazed that he has the guts to get up in front of people like that. He was the only boy in the house - there were six girls. He learned to deal. All in all, he was an amazing kid, and now he's a wonderful man. His wife got very lucky when she met him.

And he would be a wonderful father. He would be patient and fun as a father, but he wouldn't be afraid to be strong enough to train his children the way they should go. He's got a lot of depth and a lot of class.

I don't know whether he and his new wife will have any children. I guess he doesn't know that yet himself. But, he'd be a great father. I just know it. And it would be worth it. Every minute of every day would be worth it. I really wanted him to know that.

Here is his reply, which just shows you how tenderhearted and loving he is:

Dear Denise- I am at work right now, and trying not to cry, as that was the most beautiful endorsement for parenthood I have ever read. If I am blessed with children, if I can be half the parent you are my children will be very lucky indeed. I love you and miss you. -Joe
J. Max

Oh ya, and he loves his big cousin Denise! The reason he loves me so much is because I gave him drums for Christmas when he was four. His mother still isn't talking to me! Grin.... that was BEFORE I was a mother of course!

Guess which one in the photo is Joe! And guess which one is Goddaughter #2 that I love so much and talk about all the time!

Autumn Reading Challenge: The Jesus Prayer - A Monk

2007-11-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

This thin little book took forever to read - not because it was so difficult, but because I kept falling asleep. Now, don't think that the book bored me until I was comatose, because it was very interesting, but it was totally different from what I expected. I expected lots of how-tos regarding the Jesus Prayer and lots of mysticism. I would say the last 15 pages or so tackle the nitty gritty how-to of the Jesus Prayer. The rest of the book is an exposition of the history of the veneration of the name of Jesus. The monk author (Lev Gillett) starts with the names of God in the Old Testament, moves on to Jesus in the New Testament, and continues throughout history, showing the development of the prayer into its present form: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

I don't think I'll be rereading this one, as interesting as it was. I need something on the more practical aspects of prayer, rather than the historical development of this prayer through time.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

What am I truly thankful for? On this day of national Thanksgiving, I wonder.... what am I thankful for?

1. That my daughter's cancer is still in remission and she is healthy
2. That she has grown into a thoughtful, intelligent, principled, kind young woman
3. That my father is still "himself" in a strange way, even though the Alzheimers has taken its terrible toll
4. My sister/cousins Rosanne and Ethel who I love and admire so very, very much, without whom I would have no one left to remember what it was like for us growing up
5. My family - my wonderful, crazy, loving, loud, raucous, opinionated, bossy family - which can be summed up in one word: B Street Kids. That includes Lisa with Olivia and Vanessa, Goddaughter #2 with Jeff, Jeffrey and Isabella, Andrea and Julia, Dina with Todd and baby George Anthony, Georgene and Erin, Joe and Sheilagh, Jen and Steve.
6. A long life with my mother, though I miss her so much
7. My church family who have become truly my family and who have brought so much in DD's and my lives, especially Uncle Ken and Auntie Janice, Baba and Papa, Joan, Cindy and FJ
8. In a weird way, I'm thankful for the last five years -- so much has happened, so much tragedy and angst, so much pain -- but still, I've learned so much that I wouldn't trade this terrible time
9. Noa perfume. I'm thankful for Noa.
10. That I had the opportunity to carry a child, to feel that child move within me, to give birth, to breastfeed that child - everything I wished for and dreamed of and prayed for came true.
11. That God made lobsters
12. That I've had so many opportunities to travel, to be exposed to great art and literature and music, to different cuisines, to meet new people. What a wonderful life I've had!
13. That God finally allowed me to be a mother, and to mother this particular child, who has been through so much but has emerged as a beautiful, deep, trustworthy young woman
14. That my ex and I have remained friendly for our daughter's sake
15. That here in the US, I have the freedom to express my opinion, worship God as I choose, vote as I see fit, pursue an education as I choose, and work as I choose. So far, my civil liberties are mostly intact. I pray that they remain so.
16. Gardenias, my favorite flower, and my grandmother's favorite flower as well. Whenever I see a gardenia, or smell its fragrance, so many memories are triggered. I'm thank for those memories of life and love with so many family members, all gone now...
17. My little house in RH. I love my little house, and I'm thankful that I was able to purchase it.
18. That I have had the opportunity to love a man deeply
19. Email. I'm thankful for email, without which I would have lost contact with so many friends and extended family members
20. Most of all, I am thankful for God's faithfulness to me, even when I was not faithful to Him, even when I railed against Him, even when I ignored Him, even when I blamed Him, even when I was utterly unloveable. How amazing His constant love for me is!

On True Fasting

2007-11-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

It is necessary, most of all, for one who is fasting to curb anger, to accustom himself to meekness and condescension, to have a contrite heart, to repulse impure thoughts and desires, to examine his conscience, to put his mind to the test and to verify what good has been done by us in this or any other week, and which deficiency we have corrected in ourselves in the present week. This is true fasting.

St. John Chrysostom

New Meme

2007-11-16T03:25:00.000-08:00

On another note, Mimi at http://mimisbooks.blogspot.com/ had an interesting Meme for bloggers that I’ll do. Here's how it works: I will answer some questions about you, if you want to play along.

1. Tell you why I friended you or put you on my Bloglines
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic photo of yours (or something about your avatar I like)
7. In return, you must post this in your blog.

That's it! So, if you want to play along, just leave a comment to this post and I will respond.

Three Quizzez

2007-11-13T18:51:00.000-08:00

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to good manners and elegance.
In love, you feel the most alive when your lover is creative and never lets you feel bored.
You'd like to your lover to think you are loyal and faithful... that you'll never change.
You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please.
Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything... no secrets.
Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.
You think of marriage as something that will confine you. You are afraid of marriage.
In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

You Have A Type A- Personality

You are one of the most balanced people around. Motivated and focused, you are good at getting what you want. You rule at success, but success doesn't rule you.
When it's playtime, you really know how to kick back. Whether it's hanging out with friends or doing something you love! You live life to the fullest - incorporating the best of both worlds

http://www.blogthings.com/doyouhaveatypeapersonalityquiz/">Do You Have a Type A Personality?

What Color Is Your Personality?

Your Results:
Blue Violet
Blue colors your world with emotion. You seldom jump right in, preferring to stand back and watch people and situations closely. Blue people are calm, but can also spiral into sadness. With so much emotion, tears of happiness, sadness, anger, or frustration are quite common.
View all LifeScript quizzes.
See how you rate against everyone else.
Email this quiz to a friend

Uncle Ken

2007-11-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, dear daughter and I were talking about her boyfriend. For the record, I like The Boy Friend very much - I think he is a fine young man from a wonderful family, and I said so. We both remarked how much he reminds us of Uncle Ken, and then DD stated that if TBF turns into half the man that Uncle Ken is, he will be a fine man and she will have done very well. Then she got teary eyed and decided to tell Uncle Ken what she really thinks of him. She dialed and asked for Uncle Ken and she told him exactly that. He was touched, and little embarassed. He didn't know quite what to say. They chatted a little bit, he gave her advice about life and boys, they said they loved each other and they hung up.

What is unusual here is that Uncle Ken is not her uncle at all. He is a family friend. In fact, we haven't known him all that long - we met him our first Sunday at St. Mary's on November 16th, 1997 - just ten years ago. I clearly remember driving home from that first liturgy with my then 7-year-old DD, talking about our new parish and the nice people we met that day, and she kept talking about Uncle Ken and Auntie Janice. I didn't have a clue who she was talking about, and had to wait for Wednesday night vespers to find out. It was the subdeacon and his wife, and they seemed like really nice people, but Uncle and Aunt???? It was obvious, though, that DD and they instantly hit it off and felt sympatico. The next week they invited my family, including my elderly parents, to their home for Thanksgiving, where we met Uncle Ken's father and mother and youngest sister, and were instantly adopted by the whole family.

But this is not the main point of this story. A year or two later, DD was acting up a little bit, and I was having a hard time figuring out how best to handle her. I was getting advice from all sides and my head was spinning. One Saturday evening after vespers, Uncle Ken came to me and said that he knew I have having a hard time with DD, and that if I didn't mind, he would like to give me his opinion. I told him go ahead, because by that time I already knew that he was going to give his opinion one way or the other - one of the things I so love about him! He said that since the ex lived a continent away, he felt that DD needed a strong man in her life beyond her elderly grandfather who was more like a playmate than a father figure. He felt that need was part of what she was going through, and that he loved her as if she was his own, as did his wife, and he volunteered to be that man. In fact, he said that it was a life-long committment for him, one which he and his wife had discussed, and that they would be honored if I would accept this offer. Wow. I bawled my head off to think that somewhere in the world there are people who are so kind and so generous. I accepted. From that point forward, Uncle Ken has been wonderful, as have all of his family.

Now, what is amazing to me is that DD recognizes how rare it is to find a man and a family like that, and she is grateful, as am I. In the intervening years, Uncle Ken and Auntie Janice have added K to their family, who is DD's little sister and my niece. K hasn't quite noticed that although they are sisters, they don't have the same parents, though they do share Uncle Ken's parents as grandparents. Its hilarious sometimes, the way that K mimics DD.

So, the other night, DD recognized that Uncle Ken is a rare, rare man, and if her future husband is half the man that he is, she will have done well for herself, indeed.

Which Movie Star Are You?

2007-10-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Which Movie Star Are You?

Don't miss this if you need some fun!

Ever wonder which movie star you are most like? Well ~ A team of researchers got together and analyzed the personalities of movie stars. The gathered info has been incorporated into this quiz. There are only 10 questions so it doesn't take long. Number your paper from 1 to 10, then answer each question with the choice that most describes you *at this point in your life*, and then add up the points that correspond with your answers. Send this to all of your friends (including person who sent it to you ) with your star's name in the subject line.... And don't be a butt and ruin the fun by not responding ... Now, don't look ahead or you will ruin the fun!

1. Which describes your perfect date? a) Candlelight dinner for two b) Amusement Park c) Roller blading in the park d) Rock Concert e) Have dinner & see a movie f) Dinner at home with a loved one

2. What is your favorite type of music? a) Rock and Roll b) Alternative c) Soft Rock d) Classical e) Christian f) Jazz

3. What is your favorite type of movie? a) Comedy b) Horror c) Musical d) Romance e) Documentary f) Mystery

4. Which of the following jobs would you choose if you were given only these choices? a) Waiter/Waitress b) Sports Player c) Teacher d) Policeman e) Bartender f) Business person

5. Which would you rather do if you had an hour to waste? a) Work out b) Make out c) Watch TV d) Listen to the radio e) Sleep f) Read

6. Of the following colors, which do you like best? a) Yellow b) White c) Sky blue d) Teal e) Gold f) Red

7. Which one of the following would you like to eat right now? a) Ice cream b) Pizza c) Sushi d) Pasta e) Salad f) Lobster Tail

8. Which is your favorite holiday? a) Halloween b) Christmas c) New Year's d) Valentine's Day e) Thanksgiving f) Fourth of July

9 If you could go to any of the following places, which would it be? a) Reno b) Spain c) Las Vegas d) Hawaii e) Hollywood f) British Columbia

10. Of the following, who would you rather spend time with? a) Someone who is smart b) Someone with good looks c) Someone who is a party animal d) Someone who has fun all the time e) Someone who is very emotional f) Someone who is fun to be with

Now total up your points on each question:

1 a-4 b-2 c-5 d-1 e-3 f-6

2. a-2 b-1 c-4 d-5 e-3 f-6

3. a-2 b-1 c-3 d-4 e-5 f-6

4. a-4 b-5 c-3 d-2 e-1 f-6

5. a-5 b-4 c-2 d-1 e-3 f-6

6. a-1 b-5 c-3 d-2 e-4 f-6

7. a-3 b-2 c-1 d-4 e-5 f-6

8. a-1 b-3 c-2 d-4 e-5 f-6

9. a-4 b-5 c-1 d-4 e-3 f-6

10. a-5 b-2 c-1 d-3 e-4 f-6

NOW, take your total and find out which Movie Star you are:

(10-17 points) You are MADONNA: You are wild and crazy and you know it. You know how to have fun, but you may take it to extremes. You know what you are doing though, and are much in control of your own life. People don't always see things your way, but that doesn't mean that you should do away with your beliefs. Try to remember that your wild spirit can lead to hurting yourself and others.

(18-26 points) You are DORIS DAY:You are fun, friendly, and popular! You are a real crowd pleaser. You have probably been out on the town your share of times,yet you come home with the values that your mother taught you. Marriage and children are very important to you, but only after you have fun. Don't let the people you please influence you to stray.

(27-34 points) You are DEBBIE REYNOLDS: You are cute, and everyone loves you. You are a best friend that no one takes the chance of losing. You never hurt feelings and seldom have your own feelings hurt. Life is a breeze. You are witty, and calm most of the time. Just keep clear of back stabbers, and you are worry-free.

(35-42 points) You are GRACE KELLY: You are a lover. Romance, flowers, and wine are all you need to enjoy yourself You are serious about all commitments and are a family person. You call your Mom every Sunday, and never forget a Birthday. Don't let your passion for romance get confused with the real thing.

(43-50 points) You are KATHARINE HEPBURN: You are smart, a real thinker. Every situation is approached with a plan. You are very healthy in mind and body. You don't take crap from anyone. You have only a couple of individuals that you consider "real friends". You teach strong family values. Keep your feet planted in them, but don't overlook a bad situation when it does happen.

(51-60 points) You are ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Everyone is in awe of you. You know what you want and how to get it. You have more friends than you know what to do with. Your word is your bond. Everyone knows when you say something it is money in the bank.You attract the opposite sex. Your intelligence overwhelms most. Your memory is the next thing to photographic. Everyone admires you because you are so considerate and lovable. You know how to enjoy life and treat people right.

Now put your Movie Star in the subject line, then forward and share with your friends, including the person who sent it to you - PLEASE! I want to know who you are!!

So..... I got this from DD's godmother, Matushka Elizabeth Sylvia - she is Grace Kelly, as is Xenia, one of my best buds and DD's evil auntie. Diane is Doris Day. Mimi is Katharine Hepburn... Lyne is Grace Kelly. Paula is Grace Kelly. And *I* am Katharine Hepburn.

Let me know who you are!

Autumn Reading Challenge: Mr. Darcy's Daughters by Elizabeth Aston

2007-10-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

This book was a good, but not great, read. I guess I expected the same richness of character found in the original by Jane Austen, but alas, it was not to be. The plot line was again a convoluted seriocomedy of manners and commentary on the social mores of the day - a la Austen - with overtones of modernity. Don't get me wrong; I did enjoy reading it, but its not a must-read and certainly not a re-read. There are another couple in the series, but I think I'll pass on them for now. Maybe next summer when I need some light summer reading.....

Dear daughter is reading it now; after that, Edie will read it. I'll post their comments soon.

Update to Autumn Reading Challenge

2007-09-30T04:27:00.000-07:00

I really want to read We Shall See Him as He Is, but its way too expensive to buy right now, and I don't know anyone I can borrow it from, so regretfully, I am replacing that selection with something else.....

I'm going to choose between these two:

Abbess Thaisia, An Autobiography

or

The Ascetic of Love by Nun Gavrilia

I'm worth $5775.00

2007-09-29T05:25:00.000-07:00

I got this from a blog that I read regularly, Papa Herman's blog, which you can see a.

$5775.00

100% Free Personals from JustSayHi

Autumn Reading Challenge

2007-09-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Kathleen over at Rock Creek Rumblings has an Autumn Reading Challenge which I've decided to join. The point is to be more intentional in reading. I've been trying to do that for the past year or so, and perhaps joining this challenge for the months of September, October and November help.

I'm keeping my list very short since I'm a whole month late starting, this is the first time I've done the Reading Challenge, and because I don't have much time to read anymore. I'll do my best, though.

Here's my list:

Mr. Darcy's Daughters - a birthday gift from dear daughter. I have to finish this one quick because she wants to read it, then Edie wants to read it, then Carla wants to read it.... It picks up the Pride and Prejudice story 20 years later. So far, its a good read.

The Jesus Prayer - a Monk. "To pronounce the name of Jesus in a holy way is an all-sufficient and surpassing aim for any human life...We are to call to mind Jesus Christ until the name of the Lord penetrates our heart, descends to its very depths...The Name of Jesus, once it hs become the center of our life, brings everything together."

We Shall See Him as He Is, a spiritual autobiography of Fr. Sophrony. I got this suggestion from Deb's blog, Deb on the Run. Here is what Amazon says of this book - who could resist reading it: Book Description¿Now at the close of my life I have decided to talk to my brethren of things I would not have ventured to utter earlier, counting it unseemly.¿¿ Thus wrote Archimandrite Sophrony, then ninety-two years old, in We Shall See Him as He Is, his spiritual autobiography. In this book Fr. Sophrony, one of the most beloved orthodox Christian elders of our times, revealed to the world his own experience of union with God, and the path to that union. drawing near to God with intense love and longing accompanied by struggle, self-emptying and searing repentance, Fr. Sophrony was granted to participate in the life of God Himself through His uncreated Energies. Like orthodox saints throughout the centuries, he experienced God¿s grace as an ineffable, uncreated Light. It was in this Light that Christ was transfigured on Mount Tabor before His Apostles, and it is in this Light that we shall see Him as He is (I John 3:2). Born into a russian orthodox family in Moscow in 1896, Archimandrite Sophrony embarked on a successful career as a painter in Paris. There he delved into Eastern religions for a time, before repenting bitterly of this and returning to the faith of his childhood. After a brief period of theological study in Paris, he left for the ancient orthodox monastic republic of Mount Athos in Greece, where he spent fifteen years in a monastery and a further seven as a hermit ¿in the desert.¿ on Mount Athos he became the spiritual son of a simple monk of holy life, Elder Silouan. It was under the guidance of Saint Silouan that Fr. Sophrony experienced divine illumination, knowing God intimately as Personal Absolute¿as the one Who revealed Himself to the Prophet Moses as ¿I AM¿ and Who became incarnate as man in Jesus Christ. In 1959, Fr. Sophrony founded the Monastic Community of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England, which has since become a major orthodox spiritual center for all of Western Europe. Elder Sophrony reposed in 1993, at the age of 97.

Julia's Survey

2007-09-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

Best Survey
Name:: Denise
Birthday:: September 14, long before you!
Birthplace:: Everett, MA
Where you live now:: Georgia
Hair color:: salt and pepper, but it used to be very dark reddish brown
Eye color:: Brown.
Height:: 5'2.
Your biggest pet peeve:: People with a victim mentality
Your biggest flaw:: How much time you have?
Pepsi or coke:: Pepsi.
Water or Gatorade:: Water.
Do you smoke:: No. Not since 1976
Do you drink:: Very occasionally
Do you club:: No
Do you swear:: Too much.
Do you do drugs:: Only the kind the doctor gives me
Do you want to go to the military:: Never. No matter what.
Do you want to go to college:: I did and I did.
Do you want to get married:: BTDT
Do you want to have kids:: I did and I did have just one
Do you know how to dress:: Sometimes I need help with my zipper in the back
Do you think that you are attractive:: No, not any more
Are you moody:: Moi? Is the Pope Catholic?
Do you like rainy days:: Yes, I love them.
Can you cook a decent meal:: I'm a great cook

Ever been......
Beat up:: yes. Those Izzicupos were AWFUL. If you got in a fight with one of them, they all took a turn, even RICHARD! So of course, yes, I've been beat up. I mean, 1 against 4. What do you think?
Fired:: Nope.
Dumped:: Oh yeah. By Joe Wathen.
Hired:: Yup.
Lied to:: Bill Thompson
Cheated on:: Bill Thompson
Shot:: No, but I do know how to shoot!
High:: Oh geez.. on what?
Deathly sick:: Yes.
Depressed:: Am I breathing?
Homesick:: See Depressed
Locked up:: NO! But I do spend most of my time with felons nowadays
On a real date:: Yes

In the past month have you....
Been shopping:: Food shopping? Ya!
Been on a date:: Does Cindy count?
Been to the movies:: Yes.
Been to a party:: No
Written a song:: No
Been cheated on:: Only by Cindy now that she's back at school.
Are you a virgin:: Oh geez.
Gay/Straight/Bi:: Straight, except for Julie Andrews
Single or taken:: Single.

Your favorite...
Food:: Thai, Indian, Vietnamese
Drink:: Ice water
Car:: One with McDreamy AND McSteamy nekkid in the back seat
Place:: San Francisco
Color:: Unknown - no favorite
Show:: Hell's Kitchen
Store:: Point me towards a big bookstore, preferably used, like Powell's or Bell's
Movie:: Toss up between My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Moonstruck
Artist:: John Singer Sargent
Feature on a guy/girl:: honor, integrity, strength --- guys, give me something that I can actually respect!
Number of piercings:: four
Number of tatoos:: I'll let you see me naked and you count, ok? Didn't think so.
glasses/contacts/neither:: Glasses.
Love or money:: Love
Quiet or loud:: Quiet most of the time
Country or city:: Country, but near a very artsy fartsy cosmopolitan city

**RANDOM**
Ever been on the toilet and on the phone:: Can you say, "Ethel?"
Ever accidently peed in your sleep:: Hm.... I don't think so.
Ever get up in the middle of the night for a snack:: Ya
Ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed:: Figuratively or literally?
Do you wish you were a different gender:: Only in my work life
Do you believe in God:: Yes
Ever split a nail:: Yes

Did you like this survey:: Yes. I love these things.

Take this survey Find more surveys Bzoink - The Original Survey Site

What Color Crayon Am I?

2007-08-19T11:31:00.001-07:00

Stolen from Meg's blog which I faithfully read here: http://www.nepsis.blogspot.com/

You Are a Red Crayon

Your world is colored with bright, vivid, wild colors.
You have a deep, complex personality - and you are always expressing something about yourself.
Bold and dominant, you are a natural leader. You have an energy that is intense... and sometimes overwhelming.
Your reaction to everything tends to be strong. You are the master of love-hate relationships.

Your color wheel opposite is green. Green people are way too mellow to understand what drives your energy.

What Color Crayon Are You?

Another one.....

2007-08-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

001. Name? Denise Babineau Norman
002. DOB? I'd have to kill you. Suffice it to say that I could be your mother. But I'm a Virgo.
003. Eye color? Brown
004. Hair color? used to be dark reddish brown, but now its salt and pepper
005. Height? 5'2"

Favorites:
006. Country? I'd like to eat my way through the Mediterranean countries
007. Food? Um.... Thai
008. Movie? Moonstruck, The Quiet Man, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Drink? Ice water
010. Animal? Puppies and kittens
011. Color? This is the most annoying question! For the record, every color has its beauty
012. Song? Psalm 134 by Ippolitov-Ivanov; Rejoice O Virgin - Rachmaninoff; Lord's Prayer - Kedrov Sr (in Slavonic); Annunciation Kontakion (To Thee our Champion) old Antiochian melody; Unto the Mother of God - Arkhangelsky......
013. Sport? Figure skating
014. Jewel? Pearls, sapphire
015. Subject? Liturature
016. Best thing that happened to you in the last few years? My church family
017. Do you want to get married? BTDT and once is enough for anyone
018. Kids? Got one already - too old in every possible way for another
019. Best place to go on a date? Stay home, eat dinner, listen to music, talk, cuddle
020. What is your dream? To be debt-free
021. What do you want to do when you grow up? I'm still not sure.... an iconographer
022. Play an instrument? used to play all brass instruments, particularly french horn, but its been a long time. Can play guitar some and piano a little. Sing a lot.
023. Ever danced barefoot in the rain? Oh, yes!
024. Friend you have known the longest? Hm.... well Keith is dead, so other than the exhusband, I'm going with Ellen.
025. Best friend(s)? Ellen, Joan, Cindy and Fudgie
026. Friend that makes you laugh the most? My cousin/sister Ethel!
027. Friend who you can talk to anything about? See #25, but mostly Fudgie
028. Friend with the best personality? Life is not a contest, as I used to tell goddaughter number five

Best? Opinions/ Thoughts
029. Abortion? Wrong
030. Gay rights? Right
031. Violence in the media? Wrong
032. Michael Jackson? REALLY wrong
033. Aids? We need to find a cure, and fast, before someone I love dies

Travels
034. Ever travelled anywhere? Across America, to Canada, to Mexico and to the Caribbean
035. What country do you want to visit? Anywhere in the Mediterranean, Russia, Japan
036. What state do you want to visit? California. I miss it. I'm homesick.
037. Do you want to live in a foriegn country? Maybe
038. Where do you want to live when you're older? In a male monastery muahahahahaha

Final Questions.....
039. Do you remember your dreams? Sometimes
040. Do you believe that there is such a thing as soulmates? Not in the usual romance novel definition, but yes, there are people with whom you are utterly attuned. So, yes
041. Do you believe in love at first sight? I believe in like and lust at first sight, but not love. Love is a verb - you have to give it time
042. What was your favorite childhood toy? My kewpie doll named Guadalupe
043. Thoughts on life??? Pollyanna and I both say that there is good in every situation if you look for it
044. If you were stuck on an island who would you want with you? A fairy godmother with a lot of books

Three by Frost and a Fourth

2007-08-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

Reparations

The day's coming
when I will no longer consider
my mere presence inexpiable.
I will place my hand in that flame
and feel nothing.
I will ask nobody's forgiveness again.
Or I will just go
among people no more --
I may writhe with
remorse in the night, but
the operation must be
undertaken by
me, anesthesialess.
No one must be asked to relinquish
a grievance that can't be removed
without further destruction,
it may be
it is lodged in who he is now
like a bullet in a brain
whose removal might only worsen its change.
The forgiveness! I know it
will be freely offered
or it won't, and that is all --
and no one may bestow it
on himself.
If it is to come
it will come of itself like a separate
being,
a mystery, working
unseen as a wind causes still
leaves or water to move once again.
And hide me in the shadow of Your wings.
Let the heart be moved again.

by Franz Wright

Bereft

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and the day was past.
Sombre clouds in the west were massed.
Out on the porch's sagging floor,
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly striking at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret may be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

by Robert Frost

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

by Robert Frost

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

by Robert Frost

St. Anna, Grandmothers and the Cloud of Witnesses

2007-08-08T04:16:00.000-07:00

I was listening this morning to a podcast of Khouriye Frederica Mathewes-Green talking with Ihumen Athanasiy, the pastor of the ROCOR church which has a miraculously weeping icon of St. Anna. Their brief conversation brought me to tears. To listen to the podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, look for the podcast of July 19th here.

The icon began to exude myrrh three years ago on American Mother's Day. Within three days, the entire back of the icon was totally soaked with sweet smelling myrrh. St. Anna had always been active in Fr. Athanasiy's life, beginning with when his broken arm was annointed with oil blessed in honor of St. Anna in a RC parish by his own mother, named Anna. He always had a special devotion to St. Anna since a child because of this. Eventually, he asked the nuns at the Mt. of Olives paint the icon of St. Anna about 12 years ago.

Many women were cured from the myrrh from the icon. Eventually, the icon began to cry, in addition to streaming myrrh. Many miracles: Russian boy cured from cancer; a baby dead in utero came back to life after annointing with the myrrh; many barren women have conceived; whereever she goes, she brings peace and love.

Fr. Athanasiy said: "She *is* the grandmother of Christ, and when we Russians say Babushka, Baba, you know with Baba, what Mom and Dad won't give you, Baba gives you... This is the grandmother of Christ. This is our grandmother. " I was immediately filled with the image of my own grandmother, and then, quickly, of Dorothy, who has given so much to my daughter. Without her unconditional love for my daughter, there would be no grandmother in her life to love and teach her. How blessed we are to have Dorothy - both of us - but especially Elisabeth. I had been thinking recently that as soon as I'm done with my commissions, I would paint an icon of St. Dorothy of Kashin, her patron saint, for her, but now I'm thinking that maybe an icon of St. Anna, the grandmother of Christ, might be a better choice....

We should ask her to intercede for us and not be afraid to ask her to. About saints interceding for us, Fr. Athanasiy said: "It says, 'The Lord is wonderful in His saints" doesn't it? The saints are God's holy people. WE are called to be saints... We have become part of God's holy people, and there are people that we identify with because sometimes they've fought the good fight and have gone through the things that we've suffered and we identify with the Church Triumphant. Those are the saints..... and they are not nobodies, they're somebodies and part of the human race...We say to these people that we know.... that have gone before us: I pray thee, speak a good word to Jesus for me, and they do. " I think I've been neglecting the saints... not only my own patroness, but all of them. Not neglecting, really, but not incorporating the reality of their existence on earth and in heaven into my own prayer life. Hm.... that's not really what I mean..... Maybe this is more accurate: not truly understanding or believing in their desire and ability to assist me in my own little portion of the world, in my own struggles, and instead, blindly trudging ahead on my own because, after all, I do know best, don't I? Sigh.

He went on to talk about the Theotokos: "We say in the service when we read the Gospel to the Mother of God, '....Yea, blessed are they that hear the Word of God and keep it.' Who, amongst all of humanity has kept the Word of God better than the Mother of God? She is humanities 'YES!' to God. She is the new Eve. She is 'Eva' spelled backwards: Ave... she is our Yes... She leads us - God chose her. He could have said, 'Here I Am" but he chose one of us. She is not to be put aside, either.... I've put her aside in my life, ignoring her example and her love for me, just as I've done the same thing with Christ. Spiritual laziness is what it is. Or maybe, just not wanting to give up my fascination with me long enough to look at where I'm going.... WHO I'm walking towards.... Selfishness. On my name day, Annunciation, every year I say YES again in my heart and rededicate myself, and this year was no different, but then as the days pass, I forget that and get caught up in the minutinae of everyday life with me me me me me. That's who I really worship. Me. That's who I spend time with every day - Me. That's who I love most - Me. That's where my treasure is - Me. Sigh. All my prayers have to do with ME, MY wants, MY needs, MY complaints, MY emotions. No wonder I can't hear anything He says - I'm always the one doing the talking, and I'm talking about my favorite subject: Me. Where is the gratitude? Where is the love? Where is the submission to His plan for me?

Near the end of the podcast, Fredericka said: "When we speak to the Lord, we are never speaking to Him in isolation. All the saints and everyone is standing around and we can be speaking and pleading with Him and we can say, 'Mary, help me out here....'" and Fr. Athanaisy responded: "In the scripture, we are surrounded by a choir of witnesses. We are rich, because everyone who has fought the good fight is part of us. We have a claim to their friendship, if we want it. All of heaven is ours because we are baptized in the church. I hadn't thought in these terms before. No matter how isolated I may feel, no matter how my groanings are prompted by my feelings of solitariness.... I am never alone, am I? I believe this intellectually, but somehow I'm not comforted by it. I must not truly 'get it'. Not internally. In a way, that's what practising iconography does for me - that's what the pull is for me - I connect with the person that I'm painting and the person I'm painting it for. I feel at peace and loving and loved. Sometimes I talk to the saint.... I guess that's praying. Maybe. Its so... grounding is the best word, I guess. Connected. I'd hate to give it up.

Who knew that when I clicked on a podcast about a weeping icon today, that I'd find all of this?

In the Month of the Theotokos

2007-08-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Theotokos is my patroness, my mother. Dormition Fast is when I'm reminded of that. I realize that I don't call on her enough, and don't rely on her to intercede for me and mine.

Sometimes I wonder about her.... she was a woman, after all. A normal human woman, who found herself in extraordinary circumstances, and responded wholeheartedly, and without looking back, to God. But sometimes I wonder what her life was like, what she truly felt. Did she miss a normal family life? From the age of three, she lived in the temple, so even as a toddler, she didnt' have a normal family life. Did she ever wonder about having a normal marriage? I guess miraculously giving birth to your own creator must be so mindboggling and humbling that everything else is burnt out of your mind and heart. Every passion, every desire.

A long time ago, I read that she was very quiet, seldom laughed or smiled, and seldom spoke, yet she was filled with love for everyone, and everyone was filled with love for her as well. I have a hard time hearing myself over the cacophony of my own thoughts.

Sometimes I think that maybe I should adopt another Mary as a second patroness, or another female saint. Or even a male saint. Sometimes I think that maybe I need someone I can understand better, like Mary of Egypt, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary, the sister of Lazarus, or Maria Skobtsova. Or how about St. John Maximovitch?

No, I'll stay with Mary the Theotokos, who chose me herself. My mother said that she used to pray all the time to her because she wanted a baby so much, and when she was finally pregnant with me, picked only a boy's name. But when they showed me to her, she was inspired and said my name was Denise Marie after the Virgin Mary. Mom believed that the Theotokos chose me, and I do too.

I'm nothing like her. But she is mine and I am hers just the same. Its always been that way. I need to do better. I'm going to try harder.

TO THE THEOTOKOS ABOUT GOOD INTENTIONS AND HOW TO BE CLEANSED FROM THE PASSIONS

O most holy Theotokos, O only Lady who art utterly pure in both soul and body, look upon me, abominable and unclean as I am, who have blackened my soul and body with the stains of my passionate and gluttonous life.

Cleanse my passionate mind; set aright my blind and wandering thoughts and make them incorrupt; bring my senses to order and guide them; free me from my evil and repulsive addiction to unclean prejudices and passions which torment me; stop every sin that works in me.

Grant my clouded and wretched mind the sobriety and discernment to correct my intentions and failings that, freed from the darkness of sin, I might be worthy to boldly glorify and praise thee, O only true Mother of the true Light, Christ our God; for all creation, visible and invisible, blesses and glorifies thee, both with Him and in Him.

Amen

(From the SPIRITUAL PSALTER of St. Ephraim the Syrian; publ. by The St. John of Kronstadt Press)

I fear 9 out of 70 common fears

2007-06-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

If you get more than 30 you're
paranoid.

If you get 10 or less you're fearless.

People who don't have any
are dummies who want people
to think they are tough stuff.

I Fear...

[] the dark
[] staying single forever
[] being a parent (or a bad one when it happens)
[] giving birth
[] being myself in front of others
[] open spaces
[] closed spaces
[] heights
[] cats
[] dogs
[x] birds
[] fish
[] spiders
[] driving or being in cars
[] flying
[] flowers or other plants
[] being touched
[] fire
[] deep water
[] the ocean
[X] failure
[x] success
[] thunder/lightning
[] frogs/toads
[] my boyfriends/girlfriends dad
[] my boyfriends/girlfriends mom
[x] mice/rats
[x] jumping from high places
[] snow
[] rain
[] wind
[] crossing hanging bridges
[] death
[] Heaven
[X] being robbed
[] cotton balls
[] cemeteries at night
[] clowns
[] large crowds
[] men
[] women
[] having great responsibility
[] doctors
[] tornadoes/hurricanes
[] diseases
[] snakes
[x] sharks
[] Friday the 13th
[] ghosts
[] poverty
[] Halloween
[] school
[] trains or railroads
[] odd numbers
[] even numbers
[] being alone at night
[] being blind
[] being deaf
[] growing up
[] monsters under my bed
[x] creepy noises in the night
[] bee stings
[] bees
[] not accomplishing my dreams/goals
[] needles
[] blood ( not my own)
[] dinosaurs
[] the welcome mat
[] feet!
[] having your heart broken
[] being rejected
[] whales
[] your mom
[] your dad
[X] rapists
[] gay people

post it with the subject:
i fear __ out of 70 common fears

A Book Meme! My two favorites in one!

2007-05-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

Got this from Elizabeth over at The Garden Window. Loving books and memes the way I do, how could I resist?

Look at the list of books below:

* Bold the ones you’ve read,
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) unabridged, thank you very much!
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) in French and in English!
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) completely unintelligible, but I read it

Standing Women

2007-05-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Ones,

I have decided that I am going to do this. I am going to stand for five minutes in silence to save the world at 1 pm on May 13th. I invite you to do the same.

Go here for more information.

What kind of nerd am I?

2007-04-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Musician Doo doo de doo waaaa doo de doo! (<-- That's you playing something.) Everyone appreciates the band/orchestra geeks and the pretty voices. Whether you sing in the choir, participate in a school/local band, or sit at home writing music, you contribute a joy to society that everyone can agree on. Yay! Welcome to actually doing something for poor, pathetic human souls. (Just kidding.)
Literature Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Drama Nerd
Social Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Orthodox Saints Meme

2007-04-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

From Elizabeth:

1. Name four of your favourite Saints.
2. Name one who was well on the way to sanctity, is widely venerated already and very likely to be made a Saint in due course.
3. Name one who isn't yet publicly declared a saint but probably should be made a Saint.

Here we go!

1a. the Theotokos, my patroness
b. St. John of San Francisco
c. St. Sophia
d. I have about 10 more and I can't whittle it down.... its like cutting off one of my arms: St. Joseph the Betrothed, Mother Maria Skobtsova, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Egypt, St. John of Damascus, St. Elizabeth, St. Nina of Georgia....

2. Blessed Olga of Alaska

3. Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich, Aristidi Chacho

Fathers

2007-04-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 25th, was my father's 91st birthday. Last month, I made arrangements to take that day off so that I could bring him a birthday party at the nursing home, like I did last year. Last week, Uncle Len said that he was going to drive up from Florida on the 25th to visit Dad.

When we got there, Dad was sitting in a jerry chair, though not strapped in. He was sitting with one foot on the seat and resting his head on one hand. He looked forlorn. He had no clue who we were, and he spoke mostly gibberish, though it sounded like he was really saying something. He was freshly showered and shaved, and even his nails were clean and neatly trimmed. They take good care of him there.

When I hugged him and kissed him and told him that I loved him, he said, "That's nice." I don't know if he understood what I was saying, but he knew I was there for him and that I was saying something nice and that I said it with a lot of feeling.

Then we pushed him around some and eventually went into the activity room where we had a little party. He loved the cake and ate two pieces. I fed it to him and he absolutely loved it. He was like a baby bird with his mouth open for more.

It was hard to get him to look at any of us, but eventually I got him to look into my eyes and I told him again that I loved him and made gestures to show him what I meant, and for a split second, he understood, and he knew me. He said "You are the head one that came from me!" And that made him happy for a minute. Me too. Francine and Uncle Len were kind of weepy, as was I.

Uncle Len tried to get him talking, using different languages, and Dad did respond, using some words, but all in all, his speech was random. It seemed that he thought he was saying stuff, though.

When we left, Uncle Len and I hugged, and I got into my car. Life does seem to be series of goodbyes. I felt sad and weepy as I always do when I visit my father. And as I always do, I pray specifically for him when I drive home. This time, though, I remembered something I had read in the Diary of a Russian Priest about shortening a prayer rule to just the three main prayers, prayed three times. So, I started with that.... I had a hard time attending and focussing on the Lord's Prayer the first time through, but on the second time, I realized something that I should have known all along -- its a corporate prayer, not a private one! "OUR" Father, not MY father. OUR Father. The Father of us all. The one who created mankind is Our Father. The Author of life itself is Our Father. I don't have an earthly father anymore, not really, but I do have a father don't I?

Since then, I've been turning over the Lord's Prayer in mind every spare minute. Its fascinating, really. Why was it translated exactly the way it was?

Try rewriting it in more colloquial language, or with more amplification:

Father, Creator of everyone and everything, who is in Heaven, that unknowable place, your name itself is holy...

Our Father implies not only sonship, but brotherhood with the people who make up the "our", so you could say, Creator of everyone and everything, through whom we humans are all connected, the source of community and brotherhood.....

And when Jesus was asked how we should pray, this is what he said. He told us to pray corporately, not privately, not for ourselves alone, but for and with everyone.

Its fascinating, really.

I've been thinking a lot about fathers this week. For a minute, I had mine back. It was good. But I really miss him. I wish I could visit him more often. Maybe the new Alzheimers care facility just 7 miles away from my home will work out for him, and then he'll be nearby so I could drop by a few times a week for a few minutes. And bring him ice cream.
He LOVES ice cream.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you.