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.

Floods I have known.

history, nature, , ,
Three days ago.

More than one of my readers has asked if I live near the potential flooding from the Oroville Dam spillway failure here in Northern California. [Update: Here is a place you can see videos of the scary action http://kron4.com/] I do not. But when I was a babe-in-arms my family lived in the county just south, and I started this post thinking I would paste in a photo — which I can’t find after all — of my mother cradling her swaddled first child as she stands in front of our house in water up to her hips.

It wasn’t the last time my poor parents had to deal with floodwaters and babies at the same time, living as they did in farmland fed by various rivers that had not yet been dammed or hedged out with levees. I’m thankful to say that as an adult, the floods I have known have not caused any personal property damage or even much inconvenience.

May the Lord have mercy!

I just roam.

church, poetry,

gl-prodigal-son-paintingWe Orthodox have come to the Sunday of The Prodigal Son, one of the weeks preparing us for Great Lent. Pascha, the Resurrection of our Lord, is so central to the faith that we not only have the 40 days of preparation for the feast which constitute Lent, but we have a month of Sundays preparing us for the preparation. It’s all good.

I loved this poem on the subject by Romanian Fr. Dumitru Ichim. The phrase I took from it for the title of this post, “I just roam,” reminds me of words in an Orthodox prayer: “Always I am fleeing and no consolation have I….”

Lent is our opportunity to repent of running to and fro, “always fleeing” and distracted from our purpose. Sometimes the beginning of the journey back home is made in the pain of darkness and hunger, but “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

THE PRODIGAL SON

“The fog slowly is rising around here:
Father, it’s dark, I’m taken by fear!”
“Why? Can you no longer see the road home?”
“My light and my heart are worn; I just roam;
All bridges are broken, impossible,
Because I love myself… the prodigal.
The fog slowly descends from the mountain
Cunningly, to the mill, to the fountain…
Do I just seem to hear the cranes singing?”
“The clouds deceive you: fog they are bringing…”
“Where are you Father? You are a rock beyond choice
And closer to me than my very own voice.
The silence is painful, but I still shout to you!
I am hungry of you, and I’m very cold, too!”

-Fr. Dumitru Ichim, translated by Octavian Gabor

Jacobs on Scruton and platforms.

politics, quotes, ,
Alan Jacobs

Alan Jacobs thinks and writes on every topic imaginable. Not long ago he published The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography, which I think would be fascinating.  Before that, it was The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. I’ve mostly been listening to him on Mars Hill audio interviews for a couple of decades, but more recently I like to read his blog Text Patterns [paused in 2018] on The New Atlantis.

This morning his brief article quoting and responding to Roger Scruton’s new book provided a refreshing take, by each of them in different ways, on an old and wearying phenomenon. Here are a couple of paragraphs:

“In the new edition of his book on the modern Left, which I review here, Roger Scruton writes,

‘Occasional lip service is paid to a future state of ‘emancipation’, ‘equality’ or ‘social justice’. But those terms are seldom lifted out of the realm of abstractions, or subjected to serious examination. They are not, as a rule, used to describe an imagined social order that their advocates are prepared to justify. Instead they are given a purely negative application. They are used to condemn every mediating institution, every imperfect association, every flawed attempt that human beings might have made, to live together without violence and with due respect for law.’

“Like Scruton and most other old-school conservatives, I believe that healthy mediating institutions are essential to a healthy society. And I think he is right in noting how relentlessly the Left attacks such institutions. But international capitalism does too, because every healthy mediating institution, by providing security and fellowship and belonging to its members, reduces its members’ dependence for their flourishing on what can be bought and sold. Neither the Left nor the Market want to see such institutions flourish, though their hostility sometimes stems from different agendas.

“I’m usually allergic to generalizations in these matters, but let me risk a big generalization: I think what we have seen and will continue to see in our social order is the fragmentation of institutions and their effective replacement by platforms.”

When I saw the word platforms I thought of the abstraction of a political platform, but that’s not what Jacobs is referring to. His meaning surprised me, but shouldn’t have. Read the rest of the article here.

Roger Scruton

What streams and shines.

my garden, nature, poetry, , , , , , , , ,
gl-hellebore-2-8-17
hellebore

 
The abundant rain made January of 2017 less depressing than average for that dark and cold month of the year. It looks likely that my town will have received 40 inches for the season-to-date before the end of the week. Usually we get 20+ inches. When it rains the air is cleared of pollutants and the burn restrictions are lifted – so we had lots of wood fires which are always cheering!

gl-front-in-rain-crp-2-8-17

Christmas joy and lightness always carry me through Theophany on January 6th, but then I have the reality of a Christmas tree that needs taking down eventually. I strained my shoulder slightly a few weeks ago, which slowed me down, but it gave me time to read five books in just the first month of the year, often sitting in front of that woodstove. I started drinking coffee, which is a mood-elevator for sure… and now suddenly, it’s February, and the weather has been 20 degrees milder.

gl-manzanita-2-8-16-in-rain
manzanita

Flocks of goldfinches and juncos have returned to the garden, swooping down from the bare branches of the snowball bush. The juncos peck around on the ground, and the finches hang all over the nyger seed feeder, even in the rain.

And flowersgl-asparagus-2-8-17-standing-water are coming on dear Margarita Manzanita, buds on the currant bushes and calla lilies. I went out and took pictures just now under the umbrella, so everything is too wet to be optimal, revealing how one of my asparagus beds is less than optimal – we didn’t dig down deep enough into the adobe clay, and now there is standing water. That may not portend good for the future of that planting.

I made several gallons total of various soups in January, including Barley Buttermilk Soup, which I decided to try incorporating into bread yesterday. Here you have it, Barley Buttermilk Bread. It was enough dough that I ought to have made three loaves of it, but what I did was bake one oval loaf on my pizza stone, with butter brushed on top toward the end, and a round one in the Dutch oven. I added some oat flour which made it soft, but by this morning its crumb is very nice, and I like it very much… even too much.

gl-barley-buttermilk-bread-2-7-17

It’s been a long time since I had eggs from hens who ate lots of greens. My fellow communion bread-baker James brought some pale blue-green eggs from his Americaunas to our last baking session, and I was the lucky one to take them home, just as he had brought them, in the bottom of a paper shopping bag. They are so wonderfully orange-yolked, I had to take their picture, too. They go well with Barley-Buttermilk Bread. 🙂

gl-p1060609

Every week the peas and the poppies have been beaten down by the rain…

gl-poppies-p1060639But they keep growing and blooming. Overall, they appear to thrive in it. I am reminded of this verse from the hymn “O Worship the King,” which likens God’s provision for us generally to the moisture that falls.

Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Sometimes, it is not only a metaphor.