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.

Maui Diary 2 – Freezing at the Rim

Maui, nature, travel

The rim of the now-quiet Haleakala Volcano is at 10,000 ft. elevation, and if you factor in the fierce wind that blows up there, the temperature can easily drop below freezing, especially before sunrise, which is when we felt it.

We had packed our fleece jackets so as to be ready, and I wore gloves, hat, wool scarf. (I know, some of you are thinking, What? In Hawaii?) I instinctively stiffened up to withstand the buffeting, which made it hard to hold the camera or even smile for a picture. I could see with my eyes that the sunrise was lovely, but I couldn’t enjoy it; I just wanted to go somewhere safe and warm.

Eventually we did sit in the car to eat a snack, while I wondered if I would feel old and decrepit like this from now on. We took pictures of the Silversword plant, which grows on Mt. Haleakala and nowhere else in the world.

My blood was moving about as fast as the atoms in the volcanic rock, but Mr. Glad wanted to drive further up the rim for more views. I stayed in the car.

A feeling of well-being did not return for quite some time, and it was flowers and trees that brought full restoration. That story includes lots of photos and requires all of the next installment of this journal, coming soon!

Silversword

Maui Diary 1 – Enchanted

Maui, travel, trees, , ,
View from our back door

My first view of Maui was of slender palm trees bending and blowing wildly in the strong wind, as our plane dropped down over the airport. Getting off, we didn’t walk through the usual airtight and musty corridors, but into an open-air terminal with the smell of flowers wafting through.

Field of lava

Almost all the palm trees I saw over the next few hours were nice to look at, lacking the many dead fronds I’m used to seeing on those at home, and a great many of a variety of trees we saw during our stay appeared to have been trimmed carefully and maintained in such a way to highlight the natural and graceful curves of the trunks and branches.

 

Red Ginger

Mr. Glad and I had come to live in the soft air of Maui for eleven whole days in March, to celebrate our wedding anniversary and God’s love to us and in us. What better place, where the Creation itself seems so gently embracing and kind.

We flew straight from San Francisco to Maui and didn’t wander from that island, and we stayed all but one night in one condo in Kihei, on the South Shore. (The red ginger bloomed a few steps from our patio — or as they say in Hawaii, lanai.) I loved having that home base to return to from our daily adventures. I will be writing a series of posts to scrapbook many of my impressions and our Glad doings on this island holiday.

April Has Nearly Blown Through

Maui, Pascha, travel, writing

April is almost past, but we are still in the Paschal season, thank God, and I say, CHRIST is RISEN! Indeed He is risen!

Since Pascha I have been able to spend time debriefing myself on our trip to Maui that was completed a month ago today, and I’m ready to start sharing with the world some of the highlights of that exalted holiday excursion. The posts will be labeled with “Maui Diary,” so that anyone not interested the topic can know to pass on by and wait a couple of weeks for something different.

Yes, I’m afraid I do have about two weeks’ worth of posts on this one trip!

So…here we go….

You can leave Hell now.

church, Pascha, quotes, ,

What does The Resurrection mean? So much, so much.

 …you must know what Jesus Christ, the Saviour, has delivered you from. He has delivered you from a Hell whose Reception Room is on this world right now, in this time and generation, and its atmosphere is stinking up the place. Sin is nothing more that getting addicted to Hell and staying in its environment … and when it comes time to pass on, the sin-addicted soul is so used to the darkness that it doesn’t want to leave.
….

“I have thrown open your prison doors.
“Do not remain in this present darkness. Come out into the Light. Come with Me into the Springtime of your soul. Come back into the Eden where you belong.
“Wake up to My light and grace. Breathe the air of true liberty.
“This is the Day I, the Lord, have made for you. Rejoice and be glad in it.”

Read the rest of this short sermon here.
(Thanks to Anastasia)