Monthly Archives: May 2009

Death and Love and Prayer

church, death, family

The day following my last post, my father became very ill, went into the hospital, and departed this life all in the course of that one day. I had just quoted the Church’s hymn about Christ’s victory over death, and immediately I was clinging to the broadest possible meaning of that fact. In the morning I was tending the rosebushes and remembering my mother, who had passed over to “the other side” nine years ago that day, when I got the call from my sister that Daddy was going to the ER. The whole day then was infused with a heightened awareness of death and the grave that kept me turning to the One in Whom we are not ultimately separated by death. Before the day was over my remaining parent was gone from this world.

I am not about to consider either of them absolutely cut off from me and their fate finalized. Many would say that the dead are beyond help–they had their chance while they were on earth. How do they know? God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. He is beyond systems and protocols, beyond time, a Trinity of persons full of love and mercy, and we humans are all connected in our need for Him and for His forgiveness. So let’s stand together and pray for one another.

Father Alexander Schmemann in Great Lent writes, “Praying for the dead is an essential expression of the Church as love. We ask God to remember those whom we remember and we remember them because we love them. Praying for them we meet them in Christ who is Love, and who, because He is Love, overcomes death which is the ultimate victory of separation and lovelessness.”

I prayed today for my father–and for many other dead–with the Akathist (Hymn) for the Departed, a prayer that accumulates metaphors and phrases attesting to the ocean of forgiveness that is in our Lord. “…behold, Thy cry from the Cross for Thine enemies is heard: ‘Father, forgive them.’ In the name of Thine all-forgiving love we make bold to pray to our Heavenly Father for the eternal repose of Thine enemies and ours.'”

Besides enemies, the prayer lifts up to God for his mercy those who died in various ways, who had no Christian burial, the young, the hardened sinners, the innocent who suffered, those who made the innocent suffer, and on and on. Not one of us is righteous before Him, after all.

Are we not encouraged by Christ’s parables to be persevering in asking for what we want? And if we love people, we want very much for them to be forgiven and to live eternally in God. We would hate to give up easily, to write them off, if there is one more thing we can do. Christ has trampled down death by death. Let’s show love to our fellow humans by carrying their pallet down through the roof tiles, so to speak, to Christ, to the Holy Trinity.

The Akathist continues: “May the Divine Lamb be their perpetual light. Grant, O Lord, that we too may celebrate with them in a deathless Passover. Unite the dead and the living in unending joy.”

Christ is risen!

Deathless Life

church, death, Pascha

“When Thou, the Deathless Life, didst go down to death, then didst Thou slay hell by the lightning flash of Thy Divinity. And when Thou didst raise the dead from the lower world, all the powers of Heaven cried aloud: Christ our God, Giver of Life, glory to Thee.”

-From the Troparion, Sunday of the Myrrhbearers

May God slay all vestiges of death and hell in us, by the same power that raised Christ from the dead. Christ is risen!

Joanna and the Beanstalk

crafts, my garden, other gardens, , , ,

About this time in the last couple of years I was planting seeds of these large pole beans called Painted Lady. It all started one springtime when my friend L. asked me to come to her house and see the puzzling beans that had been growing there after having arrived from she-knew-not-where.

When I saw them, there was new spring growth of runner beans with large leaves and gorgeous flowers, and there were a few pods left on the vines from the previous fall. Inside the pods were large speckled dry beans. I had never seen anything quite like them.

I went home with a few of the beans for seeds, and searched online garden sites for plants that matched the description.

It didn’t take long before I found identifying pictures and information stating that these are the only pole beans with a bi-color flower. They are called Painted Lady after Queen Elizabeth I, who earned that nickname for wearing a lot of makeup. There were sites where one could buy seeds. One woman was selling a packet of five beans for a tidy sum. But I got mine for free! I planted them pretty soon, but it was too late in the season for them to do anything but make a few flowers before they were cut down by the frost.

L. had more beans again that summer, though, and she gave me more, which I planted earlier and more successfully, as you can see by the photos.

Not only did my second planting grow well, but the plants I had started too late the previous year sprouted again–they are perennials! These beans are too good to believe. Who ever heard of a perennial runner bean?

Everything about Painted Ladies is large. The flowers, the leaves, the pods, and the beans. The vines want to grow to the sky. I strung jute twine vertically along the fence, tied loosely at the base of each plant, for them to hang on to as they twisted upwards.

We never solved the mystery of how they got started. The seeds seem a bit large for a bird to drop in, and L.’s neighbors don’t garden. In any case, It felt magic. The fairy-tale seeds grew vigorously and rewarded me with the harvest in the top photo. I wanted to share the bounty and the adventure with my gardening friends, so before I cooked any of my pile I measured a bit more than five beans into packets to give away. I saw too late that I had accidentally named Queen Victoria instead of Queen Elizabeth on the packet. 😦

The beans when cooked have a typically mealy texture, and not a strong flavor. The skins are somewhat chewy. I’ve only used them in soup.

This week the rain or drizzle has been constant, and forcing us to put off planting the garden. I’ve been thinking a lot about how much work there will be when the ground dries out just a bit. But just writing about this happy gift makes me remember the surprises that make me glad to be out there doing my part to be ready for heavenly blessings.

New Old Hutch

family, history, home


This hutch is a treasure I recently inherited from my grandparents. The sticker on the back says it came from Bernhardt Furniture in Lenoir, North Carolina. http://www.bernhardt.com/history.php It was sold through Bullocks in Los Angeles, so I’m guessing it was bought in the middle of the 20th century, when Grandmother and Grandfather lived for a time in southern California.

It’s not in a style we have anywhere else in our house–and we have several “styles”!–but I think it will do very nicely as a storage for my tea party supplies, and it looks much prettier than the hodgepodge of storage units that were stacked in that spot previously.