All posts by GretchenJoanna

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About GretchenJoanna

Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.

Bird tracks on the sand.

birds, nature, , , ,

The coastal skies were either foggy or smoky or both, my last few outings to the beach. Today the sun shone bright and early on the shore, and during my entire drive over there.

Fishermen were wearing their scarves and layers against the usual morning fog, but they didn’t need that sort of attire.

Yesterday morning I’d wakened with body and mind rested in such fullness, that before I even got out of bed the idea of a beach trip proposed itself. When I saw the weather forecast, I knew in peace that I would go.

Trails of big and little bird tracks ran back and forth, and other mysterious patterns.

Many of the footprints surely were made by more than a dozen turkey vultures that I encountered by the shore, tearing at a dead seal. I ran up to provoke them into flying, so I could film them, and they obliged by flapping over to a driftwood structure nearby. Some of their group hung out in and around the lagoon.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fall season, and October, the dying of the year, and how my garden has looked more depressing than I ever remember. It could just be because I am home and in the garden more than usual for October….

Other ideas swirl around in my head, stimulated by the books I’ve been reading, the high school church school class I help teach, and national and personal current events. Every thing is so connected to every other thing… Do I really need to write to process it, as I normally feel the need to do — or just to pray?

It was splendid to get the fresh but warm air at the coast. The year is on its way out for good, but the earth is merely settling down to rest, and to be renewed. I want to make my outing to the ocean more regularly in the future, God willing, and see the waves still crashing on the sand, and the various birds — though I’d prefer they not be buzzards — and the driftwood architecture humans are always creating. My feet will sink into the sand and feel earthy. I will be renewed, too.

 

King Alfred’s Day

history, poetry, ,

I didn’t know until just now that October 26 is the traditional day to remember King Alfred. Fr. Malcolm Guite has done us the wonderful favor of reading the whole of G.K. Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse on his site.

Once I obtained cassette tapes of Chesterton reading his poem. I thought that would be the most marvelous thing. My history of such recordings and with the White Horse you can read here, but I must hurry and post the important link in case it might please you to be able to listen to the story on the day.

See how the sower goes on.

quotes, , , ,

“When the times are fulfilled and the end is at hand, when the world’s autumn comes and God sends His angels to reap the harvest — what will they find in the barren fields of our hearts? And yet, the time is nearly accomplished and the end close by for each of us, the time which we shall each face even before the common harvest.

“But let us not be downhearted. See how the sower goes on sowing among the rocks and thorns and by the roadside. This means that he places some hope even in such fields as these.

“And we know from the lives of the saints how often a soul which had seemed irreclaimably stifled by sin, blinded by passion, hardened in evil, became good ground, fertile and productive, purified of poisonous mixtures and alien seeds.”

-Fr. Alexander Elchaninov,  Diary of a Russian Priest

 

A bean. A life.

poetry, quotes, work, , , , , , ,

It’s been a long time since my first posting of the poem below. I thought of it this morning when I was sorting my Painted Lady beans. October is the month to clean up all the leftovers of summer plants and visitors. It probably won’t surprise you to know that little boys left dishes in the playhouse sink!

Last week four helpers came for a long session of work, and the youngest of them washed up those dishes; now I can put them where the winter wind won’t drop leaves and dust and rain on them, when it blows through the paneless windows.

They also finished up tasks relating to those runner beans, removing the last of the vines from the trellis, and shelling the beans into a big bowl.

Then it was my turn, to take out the biggest pieces of stem and pod so that the beans could simply be washed when I’m ready to cook them. But no sifter or screen that I could find had the right size holes.

When I was dusting this morning I hit upon the idea of using a microfiber cloth to spread the beans on, thinking it might reach out and grab all of that litter. It worked beautifully. I spread a layer of dirty beans on the cloth, and then moved the beans off, leaving all the detritus behind. The shriveled or undeveloped beans were left with the inedibles.

 

A WOMAN CLEANING LENTILS

A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a lentil, a stone.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black. A stone.
A lentil, a lentil, a stone, a lentil, a lentil, a word.
Suddenly a word. A lentil.
A lentil, a word, a word next to another word. A sentence.
A word, a word, a word, a nonsense speech.
Then an old song.
Then an old dream.
A life, another life, a hard life. A lentil. A life.
An easy life. A hard life, Why easy? Why hard?
Lives next to each other. A life. A word. A lentil.
A green one, a black one, a green one, a black one, pain.
A green song, a green lentil, a black one, a stone.
A lentil, a stone, a stone, a lentil.

— Zahrad

There is a book we’ve had for years in our parish bookstore, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives. I might even have it in my house by now, but I haven’t read much of it. One might think its message is similar to “The Power of Positive Thinking,” but it’s not. It’s more like what the Apostle Paul said:

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

That book is a collection of teachings from Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, such as:

“Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.”

“We need repentance. You see, repentance is not only going to a priest and confessing. We must free ourselves from the obsession of thoughts.”

“Freedom belongs to God. When a person is free from the tyranny of thoughts, that is freedom. When he lives in peace, that is freedom. He is always in prayer, he is always expecting help from the Lord—he listens to his conscience and does his best. We must pray with our whole being, work with our whole being, do everything with our whole being. We must also not be at war with anyone and never take any offense to heart.”

Quietly thinking, letting words come to one’s mind, sorting them out — it sounds like a wholesome and meditative activity. But how many pieces worthy only of the garbage might we find in the bowl of a lifetime — or merely a certain calendar year — stones and shriveled things, and who knows what words and whole tirades and laments that might pop into one’s mind?

When they do, it’s better to grab them, to be like a microfiber cloth. Keep only the beautiful, smooth and thankful legumes on which your soul can feast and grow strong. Every lentil can be like a knot on a prayer rope, bringing the sorter closer to her Lord, Who is her Life.