A scheme for my springtime.

church, education, nature, time, writing, ,

alphaomegaEarly on in our 21 years of homeschooling I found that my style of learning and teaching was suited to doing unit studies. Someone has explained the concept like this: “Unit studies are collections of learning activities tied to a theme. They are popular with many homeschooling families because they provide a hands-on approach to learning that incorporates subjects such as math, science, language arts, and the social sciences.”

I think the first such curriculum we used was Konos, which centered the lessons on character qualities, starting with the quality of Attentiveness. The reasoning was that in order to learn anything, we must pay attention. One part of the nature/science study for this unit was Birds, because to notice them requires associated powers of patience and concentration. Pathfinder built a bird feeder on a post outside the dining room window and ever aftegl P1030454r, as long as we lived in that house, while we ate our meals we could watch the house finches enjoying theirs at the same time.

I thought of the word attentiveness when I was developing my idea for a series of blog posts to write over the next month or so. I wish I had some simple unifying theme that would tie together the recent myriad events and thoughts that seem to demand my reflective documentation. Ah, but I do – because my theology is also suited to Life as a big unit study, with one theme: Everything is a gift from God.

That still doesn’t help me to separate my material into short blog posts, especially at this season when I have less time to sit around thinking and writing. So I am going to use a kind of easy-reader (easy-writer!) system of The Alphabet. Every day or two I will try to write, going through the 26 letters in sequence. This post is my first, using the letter A, which does stand for Attentiveness.

And also for the Alpha and Omega, which is one of the names of God. He is the Beginning and the End, as those Greek letters are the first and last of that alphabet. He and his creation comprise the totalitygl candle from DH of what there is to study and know. All the rest has no substance.

Just last week we remembered the one-year anniversary of my husband’s falling asleep in the Lord. A dear friend gave me this candle as a memorial present, with the letters Alpha and Omega pressed into it.

I’ve still been thinking about kairos a lot. It is described as that time when everything happens at once, or as eternal time, when God gathers all time together. It’s the kind of time we experience in Divine Liturgy, and I think it is the reason for the idea that “Nothing is ever lost.”

I think that is a good beginning to my springtime storytelling. And with all of that material available, who can tell what each day, or post, might bring?

What to eat during Lent.

church, food and cooking, Lent, quotes, , ,

gl P1030688During the Vespers of Forgiveness last Sunday, the vestments were changed to purple. We began this season of the year — approximately a tithe? — that seems to convey the heart of Orthodoxy, because it calls us back to our First Love and to real Real Life. As someone reminded me this week, Normal Life is what Adam and Eve had in Paradise, when they walked and talked with God in the garden. It can take a lot of effort to put aside the usual cares and concerns for a season, and to do whatever is necessary to reach an awareness of our great need for Christ, and to receive His love and forgiveness, which is the healing of our souls.

My heart has been full-to-bursting, or to weeping, especially in the extra services that we have during Lent, and extra-extra during this first week. I’m learning more about kairos, that time that is timeless, and that gives us a taste of Heaven. This is my view when I look up. I can read, in the circle around the icon of the Savior, “He hath looked out from His holy height. The Lord from Heaven hath looked upon the earth to hear the groaning of them that be in fetters.”gl dome clean week

I’ve never been able to attend the services of the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete as much as this year, and it has been the greatest blessing. On Thursday evening I arrived early enough to get a picture before the service began, and then another toward the end, during Great Compline. I wish you could hear the choir, who sang like angels.gl P1030689gl P1030693

Along with my heart, but in the chronos kind of time that won’t stop ! my to-do list is full-to-bursting as well. The garden is ready for me to plant some spring vegetables, and every day is a new scene out there. I’m behind as usual, and glad that the flowers and sprouts don’t wait for me, but they go on springing.  New miniature Dutch irises emerged in the pouring rain, because they didn’t want to be late in showing their own Lenten vestments.P1030674

Three of the children and their families are coming a various times in the next week, starting this very morning. I can’t wait to see the grandchildren, and I hope they can play in the garden without having to play in the rain.

I made about twelve quarts of satisfying soup yesterday, and next weekend I’ll be preparing an agape meal for 100 as a memorial to my husband. I’ve never done that kind of event before, and I’m glad I’ll have some helpers.gl soup 3-16

So there is much to ponder and write about, but not much time (chronos), it seems, for the writing part.

I will post some links from my files to a few Lenten recipes, at the bottom of the post, but first I want to share something that has been going around for a couple of weeks, but bears repeating, a message from Abbot Tryphon reminding us about the kind of feasting we can enjoy during Lent:

FAST from self-concern and FEAST on compassion for others.
FAST from discouragement and FEAST on hope.
FAST from lethargy and FEAST on enthusiasm.
FAST from suspicion and FEAST on truth.
FAST from thoughts that weaken and FEAST on promises that inspire.
FAST from shadows of sorrow and FEAST on the sunlight of serenity.
FAST from idle gossip and FEAST on purposeful silence.
FAST from problems that overwhelm you and FEAST on prayer that sustains.
FAST from criticism and FEAST on praise.
FAST from self-pity and FEAST on joy.
FAST from ill-temper and FEAST on peace.
FAST from resentment and FEAST on contentment.
FAST from jealousy and FEAST on love.
FAST from pride and FEAST on humility.
FAST from selfishness and FEAST on service.

Thank you, Father Tryphon! Now, as to earthly food, some recipes I have posted in the past that are suitable for Orthodox fasts are these:

Italian Flag Soup

Indian Chickpea and Spinach Stew

Vegetable Bean Soup

Turkish Green Beans

Korean Kale Salad

Yams Roasted with Coconut and Curry

Gingerbread Pear Bundt Cake

Pat-in Pie Crust

God bless you all, my Dear Readers. And to those of you who may be celebrating Western Easter soon, may you have much grace during Holy Week.

The Kairos in my week.

church, time, , ,

While it is still this week in chronos, I must tell about the several ways kairos has made its impression on my heart and mind.

Last Sunday when I was zooming with my friends up the Nevada highway to church, we passed a car whose license plate read “Kairos.” We knew that Greek word from its use at the beginning of Orthodox Divine Liturgy, when the Deacon proclaims, “It is time (kairos) for the Lord to act,” so it seemed to us a fundamentally theological word, and with the aid of my phone we researched and discussed the concept as we rolled along, and wondered if the vehicle belonged to someone we would be worshiping with in a few minutes.

gl iconostas crp P1110337

It was the Sunday of the Last Judgment, and in the homily our attention was directed to the icons on either side of the doors to the altar. On one side is the icon of The Incarnation, and on the other, of The Pantocrator, or Judge. Everything in between happens right here, Fr. Stephen said, in the Church, from the altar and in the Holy Mysteries, bringing heaven to earth and joining all who partake or have died in Christ. We had just an hour earlier read on Wikipedia that kairos refers to “a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens.”

The meaning and reality of Time is a deep well into which I love to dip, with my mind, but it is a heady beverage and makes me dizzy. I didn’t do any further reading this week, as I plodded on through chronos — chronological time — and tried not to get behinder in it and in my housework and tax preparation and garden planning….

I plodded, because after my joyous interlude of a kind of kairos, about which I wrote in my last post, I returned to my house that still seems empty without my husband, to my responsibilities that continue to overwhelm me, to a future whose unknowns appear daunting, now that I have to meet them without my life’s companion. And in less than two weeks we will come to the one-year mark, of his death. Is there another kind of time that reflects what I feel, that it was only last month? Or that it is a perverse, somehow false, fact? I guess that would be called grief.Minarets Wild. 81

Yesterday I spent most of the day updating my screensaver, which right now is scrolling through a folder of photos named “Mr. Glad.” I had decided it didn’t have enough files in it, so I combed through all the other folders to find more images of him, and I was very nurtured by reviewing his life, and my life with him, in this visual way. We had over the last years scanned hundreds of pre-digital photos into the computer, so there he was as a little boy laughing on his father’s lap, bursting with the energy and zeal of youth at our wedding, cradling our newborn babies or reading to our little children; singing with his strong and beautiful voice in church, backpacking with his kids, giving me a kiss on the cheek while I was standing over the stove.

My housemate Kit had never met my husband, and she was glad to look through many of the pictures with me and hear some stories. It made me happy to collect my pictures, and even happier to have her to share them with. I went contentedly to bed and sleep last night.

Bill and Gretchen at lake, on dome

I hadn’t planned to attend Liturgy this morning, for the Commemoration of the Holy Monastic Saints. But I woke at 4:30, and after an hour passed and I couldn’t go back to sleep, I turned on the light and got up, and it seemed at the time that God had awakened me so that it would be easy and sensible to go to church. And there is nothing that makes me feel so needy for the Holy Mysteries as missing sleep!

(Which reminds me of how we moderns are so far removed from the sacredness of even chronos that we have to try to control it with our silly clock changes.)clock antique look

I went back to my rest and dreams after all, not before a good session of musing on how this month is likely to be harder than I expected. I woke at last in time to get to church, where I was surprised that in addition to the Holy Ascetics, we were remembering a beloved priest from San Francisco, who reposed ten years ago this day.

In his homily and other remarks, our rector brought up the reality of kairos, speaking of how in the church, in the Liturgy, we are joined together with everyone who has ever died in Christ. He said, “It is common to hear, ‘I have Christ in my heart,’ but we also can have a little of each other in our hearts, because we are brought into the Kingdom, in that moment of kairos.” It was what I needed to be reminded of this morning: not my loss, but the enduring nearness of my dear husband.

Now I want also to read more about this truth, this kairos that I experience. I imagine that Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s book The Eucharist will speak a good deal to the subject, and just this afternoon I ran across a pertinent article, on The Chalice of Eternity. It will be a good place for me to start. Here is a quote from what appears to be a thorough treatment of time in all its facets and forms:

In Christ, as the Lord of Time, is realized the ingathering of all moments in one moment of what we might call an ‘eternal temporality’ and which Schmemann calls temps immobile, that is, the co-inherence or co-presence of each part of time to each other in the present in Jesus Christ. Christ is Himself the Lord of Chronos or time proper because He is the Kyrios Kairou, Lord of the appointed time of our salvation. In Him, our broken mode of temporality, chronos, is renewed and sanctified, ascending with Him to the Father and becoming a spiritual mode of time through its marriage with creaturely eternity (aeon). But when He returns to us in His Body and Blood in the liturgy, which is both our ascent to God and His descent to us, we see that our new mode of time, eternal temporality, is something radically new to creation, sensible and spiritual at once, as it has partaken of the very mode of God Himself as everlasting Trinity (aidiotes), God before the ages.    -Dr. Brandon Gallaher

Tomorrow is the Sunday of Forgiveness, and The Casting out of Adam and Eve from Paradise. And then (for us Orthodox) Lent begins! May the everlasting Trinity use this blessed season to reveal to us Himself and all of His Truth, including the reality and fullness of kairos. Amen.

pantocrator dome in church