All posts by GretchenJoanna

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 →

Not Star Trek mythology.

November 22, 2025humanity, quotes, realityAuguste Rodin, consciousness, Fr. Stephen Freeman, materiality, modernity, the body, the soul, thinkingGretchenJoanna

More and more I notice that people, including me, use the words brain and mind interchangeably; but they are not the same thing at all. No scientist has been able to find the mind in the brain. And when we are considering mind vs. heart, where is the heart exactly? As the Scripture says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” The more researchers probe into the intricacies of the human body and its functions, the more complex we are found to be, the more questions emerge.

I am using the photo of the book cover at right only to illustrate one use of the word mind; it’s been a while since I read it, but I think the author may have been thinking of this passage of Scripture:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Father Stephen Freeman draws attention in a recent article to the way we moderns tend to think about minds and our thinking:

“We are material beings. We are not souls that have bodies, or bodies that have souls. The soul is the ‘life’ of the body, but is not, strictly speaking, a thing in itself. Most moderns mistake the soul for consciousness, and they imagine that at death their consciousness migrates somewhere else (to heaven, etc). And, we do not care very much about what then happens to the body, so long as our precious consciousness abides. This, I might add, is the mythology of Star Trek, where in at least several episodes, Spock’s consciousness is deposited in various other places. It is not, however, true Christianity.”

You can read the whole article here: “The Secular Mind Versus the Whole Heart.”

Auguste Rodin, The Thinker; Rodin Museum, Paris

What’s really liquid.

November 20, 2025nature, poetryautumn, Barbara Crooker, investments, money, wealthGretchenJoanna

THE STOCK MARKET LOSES FLUIDITY

I’ll show you what’s really liquid—it’s this sunlight pouring down
from the west, from the great glass jar of the sky. The creek playing
its little tune, running over the stones. The descant of syllables
in the mockingbird’s song. For not a single hickory nut
banked by the squirrels will gain any interest.
Not a grain of wheat in the wallet of a chipmunk’s cheek
will increase in worth. The bear’s fat layer is its IRA.
Here in the woods, it’s autumn’s great investment portfolio; look,
everything’s turned the color of money: copper, brass, gold.

-Barbara Crooker

Fresh crackers and paint.

November 17, 2025family, food and cooking, my garden, workfountain, Sarcococca, Sweet Box, Thanksgiving cactus, zinniasGretchenJoanna

It’s an exciting week for me, because many dinged-up walls and doors in my house are being painted, along with the black metal stair railings. These were set to be done several years ago, before the workers were interrupted by wildfires, then by covid. When normality returned, I didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to get started again. But now my new handyman James, a friend from church, is doing the work. During son Pathfinder’s visit over the weekend I was encouraged just to have him to talk with about colors. Now things will be so lovely and clean.

Pathfinder and I did a satisfying amount of work in 24 hours, including a big tidying-up of my utility yard and all the scraps of wood I keep there, which I turn into kindling. There are always pieces that are too long for my stove and need sawing up, and I don’t want to use a power saw; he took care of those fast. He even cut my old manzanita stump into a few pieces to take home for his own wood stove, because he heard that it burns nice and hot, and wants to find out.

We cleaned the fountain together, and Pathfinder leveled it perfectly afterward. The easy way to drain the green water from it is by siphoning it out with a garden hose, but that takes two people to manage.

It’s has been wanting a good clean-up for months, and I had been hoping for this family assist. We managed to do all the tasks before the rain began, which was the morning that he left.

Today it poured, then the sun came out, then the wind blew rain in again. Between downpours I was able to go out twice and gather fallen pine needles enough to fill the big green bin for trash pickup tomorrow. The zinnias watched me with their bright faces as I walked by, so I came back and picked another bouquet of them. These wet blooms don’t last as long as the sun-washed ones, but they are cheery as long as they do. My fingers were all wrinkly when I finally came indoors again, because everything I’d been handling was sopping.

While picking up blankets of pine needles off my plants, I discovered that the Sweet Box, Sarcococca, has shiny red berries on it. I haven’t been impressed with the scent of that shrub’s flowers — it isn’t very potent. But these berries are lovely.

The flax crackers I was working on last week turned out pretty good. I had to leave them in the dehydrator about 28 hours. They need more salt and fewer pumpkin seeds, in my opinion, but I’m enjoying them, and gave some away. I’ll make a new batch soon, with improvements, and eventually will share the recipe here.

Today I made two kinds of soup with various leftovers in the fridge, and I like them both as well. Soup and crackers are just the thing for rainy November days.