Category Archives: history

We and the trees change over time.

family, history, home, travel, , ,

I’ve returned from my short road trip, to the land of my childhood. I stayed with my sister two nights, and then switched to my brother’s place for two nights, which is the very house we all lived in for years, years that went by in a flash. I went away to college when I was eighteen and never lived at home again. Even though my brother has changed a lot of things, the “envelope” of the house our father built remains the same, and the giant oak tree still towers over the back yard.

It also has been pruned recently, its canopy made much more compact, and it looks great. I wandered around the property taking in everything, but I forgot to go back with my phone later to take pictures. I was too busy focusing on the people, my people, so I have found some older images of the countryside and people that I visited, to illustrate my musings.

Wall art that has seen better days, and that we “let go.”

The day before I started out on this journey, I was glad to feel the leavinghomesickness depart and be replaced with happy anticipation at the meetings I would soon have. Just being with these dear ones and also talking about the experiences we’ve shared over the decades has filled me to the brim with thoughts and feelings I don’t think I will be able to sort out. 

Nostalgia is a “sentimental longing for the past,” so it’s not that I’m feeling, but just plain wonderment at all the days and years of my life so far. I would not go back in time, and I know those times were not ideal, but looking back I am amazed at how wholesome they were. I was blessed to live through them with several people who remain, and still care about me, which is all a great gift.

The picture and the memory are blurry, but solid.

Over the course of four days, I had long visits and conversations with twenty people, counting the six little children who are my nieces and nephews; four of those children I hadn’t met before. I saw both of my sisters and my brother, and their spouses, and children’s families. Various of us told stories that others of us had never heard, from the distant past or from relatively recently.

I had lunches with three friends, one of whom I’ve known since first grade, and two since about eighth grade; between bites we fell into telling anecdotes about each other’s mothers, may God bless their memory!

The linoleum floor of our childhood has since been replaced.
cousins
We were small Brownies, and the orange trees and rosebushes were small, too.

As I drove back and forth through the orange groves between town and country, I restrained myself from stopping as often as I’d have liked to, to take pictures of the hills and the orange trees. It had just rained, and the mountain peaks were dusted with snow, but the hills are still showing golden and not green. The picture below was taken by my sister Nancy some years ago, later in the season.

When rain clouds are gathering and precipitating and rearranging themselves all over again, it is like watching a huge theater screen from my private box (my car), as I’m driving down the interstate.

This is exactly what was happening on Tuesday, and I did take pictures of that show.

I was thrilled to see cotton on the plants in the wide fields, and I pulled over to look more closely. But I couldn’t get a good view, because mud:

So I went along and along, and saw a rainbow pancake of light on the northern horizon, a very slim break in the clouds way beyond a field of melons.

By the time I got to Nancy’s, the storm was abating,
and the dust had been washed off of all the trees.

So there, I’ve put the beginning at the end of my tale. But don’t you think it’s hard, not to get the times mixed up when one makes a trip to the past? In many ways it is still present –definitely all these people I saw still are present — and may even be future. I feel the need of a pertinent quote… and the one that pops into my mind is:

The past is not what it was.
-G.K. Chesterton

 

The Cross in the heart.

church, feasts, history, quotes, , , , ,

We are celebrating the Feast of the Elevation (or Exaltation) of the Holy Cross. This is a commemoration of historic events in the Orthodox Church, and an opportunity to ask ourselves what these outward expressions of faith have to do with our lives in the current age. The original events are more than a thousand years distant from us, but the human condition is unchanged.

“The Exaltation of the Lord’s Cross has arrived. Then, the Cross was erected on a high place, so that the people could see it and render honor to it. Now, the cross is raised in the churches and monasteries. But this is all external. There is a spiritual exaltation of the cross in the heart. It happens when one firmly resolves to crucify himself, or to mortify his passions—something so essential in Christians that, according to the Apostle, they only are Christ’s who have crucified their flesh with its passions and lusts (cf. Gal. 5:24). Having raised this cross in themselves, Christians hold it exalted all their lives. Let every Christian soul ask himself if this is how it is, and let him hearken to the answer that his conscience gives him in his heart.” 

-St. Theophan the Recluse, Letters on the Spiritual Life

Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem

Pearls of trivia from medieval Iran.

history, poetry, , , ,

EPIGRAM ON SULTAN MAHMOUD

’Tis said our monarch’s liberal mind
Is like the ocean unconfined.
Happy are they who prove it so;
’Tis not for me that fact to know:
I’ve plunged within its waves, ’tis true,
But not a single pearl could view.

-Ferdowsi (Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi) (935 – 1020) Iran

This poem made me curious about the particular sultan Ferdowsi was referring to, so I poked around. The poet lived in Medieval Iran, and from this detailed Wikipedia list of the Monarchs of Iran, it must have been Mahmoud of Ghazni he was writing about. I learned from another site more about the backstory of this cleverly insulting verse, how it is an example of the relationship challenges between artists and their patrons going back centuries:

“In addition to his military prowess, Mahmud was also a patron of learning and the arts, and Ghazni became a cultural center second only to Baghdad. The great Persian poet Ferdowsi presented his epic poem the Shanameh (Book of Kings) to Mahmud in 1010 CE. Although the Shahnameh is recognized as the greatest and most influential work of Persian literature, Mahmud was not so impressed, and instead of paying Ferdowsi the promised one gold dinar per couplet, instead only gave him a silver dirham per couplet. Despite this unfortunate incident, Mahmud is nonetheless considered a great patron of the arts.” 

Below are examples of the bilingual coins used during Mahmud’s reign, with Arabic on one side and Sanskrit on the other: