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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. View all posts by GretchenJoanna →

This is becoming the norm.

January 29, 2026humanity, quotesattention, Christine Rosen, etiquette, manners, public spacesGretchenJoanna

“People have always found ways to carve out moments of privacy in public space; this is part of what makes public space tolerable for everyone. Civil attention’s twin is civil inattention, ‘whereby one treats the other as if he has been seen but is not an object of undue curiosity,’ as Goffman described. We nod at the stranger stepping into the elevator and then return to staring at the ceiling or look up briefly from reading when other commuters get on the bus.

“Civil inattention is still a kind of acknowledgment, qualitatively different from being ‘looked at as through air.’ When we focus our attention on the glowing screens of our smartphones rather than on the people around us, never granting them even brief acknowledgment, we are not practicing civil inattention but civil disengagement. This is becoming the norm in public space.”

— Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World

The saint’s last words.

January 27, 2026death, quotes, saintsSt. John Chrysostom, trialsGretchenJoanna

We Orthodox commemorate St. John Chrysostom on three separate dates, none of which is the day that he died, September 14, 407, in modern day Turkey. While in exile he was being moved to modern day Georgia when his health finally gave out. That date in September is the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross, so to avoid conflict his feast day was changed. One of the dates on which he is remembered is today, the date in 438 on which his relics were transferred from the site of his death in Comana to the city of Constantinople.

In the 19th century Archbishop Dmitry preached a homily on this occasion, from which I clipped this portion:

“The virtuous life thanks to which St. John won respect even in exile again aroused his adversaries’ hatred. They petitioned the empress for a decree by which the exiled Chrysostom was sent to a new exile—to the Pitiunt Fortress near Colchis, on the coast of the Black Sea.

“The officials received a special order to treat their prisoner more strictly and to bring him to his destination in a certain number of days despite the difficult roads. The famous pastor of Constantinople had to walk for three months, now in the unbearable heat of the sun, now in pouring rain, without rest or change of clothes.

“Such a journey completely exhausted St. John Chrysostom’s already weak health. Feeling approaching death on the way, he begged his escorts to stop, changed his wet and soiled clothes to white, communed the Holy Mysteries and departed from this world, which was unworthy of him, with the words: “Glory to God for all things!” With the words he loved and often repeated in his life and spoke about during his sufferings: “These words are a deadly blow for satan, but for the one who utters them in every trouble and misfortune they serve as an abundant source of hope and consolation. Once you pronounce them, every cloud of sorrow dissipates.”

-Archbishop Dimitry (Muretov), from a book of his sermons published in 1889

Translation of the relics of St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom is also celebrated on November 13 and January 30.
You can read more of his story here: oca

The birches in deathless marble.

January 26, 2026beauty, poetry, summer, winterNadezhda Bogomolova, Willa CatherGretchenJoanna

I SOUGHT THE WOOD IN WINTER

I sought the wood in summer
When every twig was green;
The rudest boughs were tender,
            And buds were pink between.
Light-fingered aspens trembled
            In fitful sun and shade,
And daffodils were golden
            In every starry glade.
The brook sang like a robin—
            My hand could check him where
The lissome maiden willows
            Shook out their yellow hair.

“How frail a thing is Beauty,”
            I said, “when every breath
She gives the vagrant summer
            But swifter woos her death.
For this the star dust troubles,
            For this have ages rolled:
To deck the wood for bridal
            And slay her with the cold.”

I sought the wood in winter
            When every leaf was dead;
Behind the wind-whipped branches
            The winter sun set red.
The coldest star was rising
            To greet that bitter air,
The oaks were writhen giants;
            Nor bud nor bloom was there.
The birches, white and slender,
            In deathless marble stood,
The brook, a white immortal,
            Slept silent in the wood.

“How sure a thing is Beauty,”
            I cried. “No bolt can slay,
No wave nor shock despoil her,
            No ravishers dismay.
Her warriors are the angels
            That cherish from afar,
Her warders people Heaven
            And watch from every star.
The granite hills are slighter,
            The sea more like to fail;
Behind the rose the planet,
            The Law behind the veil.”