Monthly Archives: February 2022

Being alone with ourselves.

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“Settle down in your room at a moment when you have nothing else to do. Say ‘I am now with myself,’ and just sit with yourself. After an amazingly short time you will most likely feel bored. This teaches us one very useful thing. It gives us insight into the fact that if after ten minutes of being alone with ourselves we feel like that, it is no wonder that others should feel equally bored! Why is this so? It is so because we have so little to offer to our own selves as food for thought, for emotion and for life.

“If you watch your life carefully you will discover quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, we live by reflection, by reaction… We are completely empty, we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life which is actually fed from the outside; we are used to things happening which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply by means of the depth and the richness we assume that there is within ourselves.”

~ Metropolitan Anthony Bloom
from Beginning to Pray

[Update: The day after this I tried to make amends for this post that was not really worthy of the subject, with a second attempt including more paragraphs from Metropolitan Anthony and a video of him lecturing on prayer: Find the Door of Your Heart.]

A garden chant of constancy.

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Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous;
praise is meet for the upright.
Give praise to the Lord with the harp,
chant unto Him with the ten-stringed psaltery.
Sing unto Him a new song,
chant well unto Him with jubilation.
For the word of the Lord is true,
and all His works are in faithfulness.
The Lord loveth mercy and judgment;
the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord.

-From Psalm 32

When I saw these plum buds this morning, I thought of how the earth is full of predictability, spring following winter, summer following spring, leaves falling off the trees every autumn without fail.

It’s just one way, consisting of uncountable events, that He demonstrates His constancy.

For the word of the Lord is true,
and all His works are in faithfulness.

Mixing and pressing the spirit of man.

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“The purpose of the Church is a constant battle; this is why it is called the ‘militant Church,’ battling with the prince of this world – that is, with all those who by all possible means and ways press the spirit of man, bind it, as it were mix it with matter, gradually suppress in it the call from heaven, deprive it of the opportunity even to feel its own true nature, the true purpose of its life in this world, and even harden it against eternal Life. For the spirit that has become attached to earth, this Light even now becomes painfully tormenting, which is why there is occurring a rebellion against the Light, an effort to put out its remaining rays in this world.”

Saint Damascene of Glukhov, 20th century Russian martyr

You who have stood at the bedposts.

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We have a new baby in my parish, over whom we are rejoicing, though we haven’t met him yet; he has a few weeks to go before being brought to church on the traditional 40th day after birth. It’s a good time to post this poem that I only recently discovered. 

Every baby coming into the world is a unique event, and my own feelings about births I’ve been present for have also been various. The group of people who have been appointed, as it were, to participate, each in her own way, bring all their personalities and prayers, and God is always present. 

I’m sure that many of my readers also retain impressions and images from standing by the bedposts (or lying in the bed), during or just after childbirth. None of the photos I might put here (the one above is from the internet) are much good by comparison with the golden moments that remain our personal possessions, even if with time they lose their crispness in the mind.

“Nothing else was ever so important.”

BEING BORN IS IMPORTANT

Being born is important.
You who have stood at the bedposts
and seen a mother on her high harvest day,
the day of the most golden of harvest moons for her.

You who have seen the new wet child
dried behind the ears,
swaddled in soft fresh garments,
pursing its lips and sending a groping mouth
toward the nipples where white milk is ready —

You who have seen this love’s payday
of wild toil and sweet agonizing —

You know being born is important.
You know nothing else was ever so important to you.
You understand the payday of love is so old,
So involved, so traced with circles of the moon,
So cunning with the secrets of the salts of the blood —
It must be older than the moon, older than salt.

~ Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Here’s a little something about Carl Sandburg’s own children.