All posts by GretchenJoanna

Unknown's avatar

About GretchenJoanna

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

She was planted in the stillness.

church, saints, women, ,

“In the wide stillness of the Alaskan tundra—
where the sky stretches open like a prayer
and the rivers flow between worlds—
God planted a soul full of hidden beauty.”

So the life of St. Olga of Alaska began in 1916, in the village of Kwethluk. The story of her life and how she became a saint is well worth reading here: “Righteous Mother Olga.” 

Services for her glorification this week will be livestreamed: Livestream services

We are having services in celebration at our parish in California as well, joyfully adding her to the company of Orthodox Saints of North America for whom we are so thankful.

Guided by the heavenly light
and touched by Christ’s rich mercy,
thy loving hands heal the wounds
of those hurt in the past.
Thy soft voice encourages all
to remain faithful to God,
for the eternal Lord will give the steadfast
a crown of life.

O holy Mother Olga,
visit us with love and reassure us,
that we may accept whatever cross we must bear
as chosen by the merciful God,
and that, through thy prayers,
we do the will of God
for the salvation of our souls.

-Hymn for the Feast

On the edge of a forest.

poetry, , ,

LAY BACK THE DARKNESS

My father in the night shuffling from room to room
on an obscure mission through the hallway.

Help me, spirits, to penetrate his dream
and ease his restless passage.

Lay back the darkness for a salesman
who could charm everything but the shadows,

an immigrant who stands on the threshold
of a vast night

without his walker or his cane
and cannot remember what he meant to say,

though his right arm is raised, as if in prophecy,
while his left shakes uselessly in warning.

My father in the night shuffling from room to room
is no longer a father or a husband or a son,

but a boy standing on the edge of a forest
listening to the distant cry of wolves,

to wild dogs,
to primitive wingbeats shuddering in the treetops.

-Edward Hirsch

Isaac Levitan – Birches, Forest Edge

 

June flowers make me feel at home.

home, my garden, , , , , , , ,

My front garden had turned into a jungle by the time I returned after nearly three weeks away; I expected that, but didn’t anticipate all of the species that would get tangled together. Some of them, like the nigella and poppies, were way past their prime and I could simply pull them out.

Black Medick

There was a certain weed that had flourished under the asparagus fronds and was climbing by means of its yard-long stems up behind and over the germander, which is just starting to bloom. It also was growing in the cracks in the walkway. I knew I had seen it before somewhere, but never in this quantity, so I looked it up: Black Medick. I pulled at least most of it out, and added that to the green bin.

I bought cosmos and some shorter flowers to replace all the things that I removed; and a few basil, summer squash and zinnia plants to put in the planter boxes. Because spring was cool here, the Iceland poppies are still blooming, and welcomed me home.

The Showy Milkweed is blooming and the bees are on it.

In Greece, in addition to the live, rustic and thorny version of acanthus I’d seen on Paros, I saw plenty of carved acanthus leaf designs in the ancient Byzantine architecture in Thessaloniki. I came home to see my own plants looking more majestic than ever.

The lavender has come out, and the Mock Orange, and the little campanula that hides under the Mock Orange. The Golden Marguerite that I’d pulled out of the front garden last year — it returned, and was  aggressively invading my new landscape, so I cut it back, and stuck the clippings in a vase. After all that, and a few days recovery from jet lag, I’m beginning to feel myself again ❤

A silver tear, a tiny flame.

poetry,

THE GIFT

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

-Li-Young Lee