Last (late) report on wet spring

family, garden, nature, travel, water, winter


I’m in Maryland as I write, but I just have to post a couple of pictures of the California scened as it was just before my departure day.

It had been so cold that I was able to enjoy a fire in the wood stove on my birthday — a first! and so rainy, that the Iceland poppies and even ranunculus were always drooping their fragile petals under the weight of water.

Maybe this rainbow was a signal of the end of the rainiest season. It’s lucky I was the one driving the car when we saw it so I could make the decision to stop and shoot.


 

Even in the midst of rain the tulips I’d planted at church last fall seemed better able to hold their heads up. I had forgotten that I’d planted them which made them even more of a joy. They probably will be gone by the time I return, because the weather turned balmy.

Maryland weather also changed since last week. I couldn’t take as many neighborhood walks I was hoping for because we had “wintry mix” of rain, hail, sleet and snow. But on The Lord’s Day it turned, and in spite of thunderstorms last night the temps are in the 70’s today and we went for a long walk.

But to finish up my report of last month, I want to tell you about our new coffee press. We had an old black Bodum something like this; we’d had it for at least 15 years, but I banged it against the bottom of my new sink and broke the spout one night. B. ran over to Target and found a new one for about $20, and I didn’t complain about the fact that it was red and didn’t really go with my new kitchen. It would be in the cupboard most of the time anyway. A few days later B. broke the spout of the new red one ! and I steered us to a different Target where they had more colors, including orange, which fits in better. And now we will both treat our coffee press like fine china.

Monday is a school day for all the grandchildren here, which gives me some time to finish this blog post. I haven’t yet figured out if I can upload pictures to this computer, but there’s not much time left now before I go home, so if I make a report of my family visit here it will probably have to wait until then.

This modern phenomenon of being able to be in Blogland no matter what other spot on the globe one might occupy is really fun!



A Thankful of Joys

family, travel,
Pearl’s sunroom

Firstly, I’m thankful for Jody who encouraged me today to think about what I am thankful for. It’s a perspective I need on a day when my prayers are all tending toward the “Lord, help!” sort and my mind is going along the lines of forty tangents. Because tomorrow I’m getting up at 4:00 a.m. to make my way toward the airport and fly to Maryland for a spell.

I’m thankful for
*family who want to have me with them
*resources physical and financial to make the trip
*a husband who is willing to do without me for the ten days

Today I’ll be flitting about trying to decide whether to pack the blue or brown skirt, making a batch of pasta with pesto for B. to comfort himself with in my absence, doing the last load of laundry, trying to get the house a little less pigpenny, and carefully loading my backpack for the travel, with the perfect selection of books, notebooks, snacks — well, maybe it won’t be perfect — and anyway, I might want to just sit in silence and be thankful for my own little private spot, jammed in next to a fellow human who is suffering the squeeze right there.

In my psyche I have been feeling the tearing away from home and church, and the homesickness that I always fall prey to before leaving home. But when I remember that every event has God in it, offering the grace of Himself in whatever work is before us, there is Joy for the taking.

Pearl in her yard 2 years ago

Today is the first day in a long while that I’ve had the whole day to be home and do my work — and so far it’s been mostly a slow labor of the mind and heart.  Maybe that’s one reason I’ve been able to process some of the truths and encouraging words I’ve been hearing, and put it all together so that I see my way clear. And it is clearly joyful!

I’m going to stay at Pearl’s, and spend time with four of the grandchildren, and see Kate and cherry blossoms. I’m taking snowball bush cuttings, books, and embroidery floss, among other gifts. We’ll go for hilly walks when it’s not raining, and I understand that I am to bake cupcakes with Littlest Granddaughter Maggie. Maybe we’ll watch the movie “Babies” that I love.

Once I arrive, it won’t feel like work, but there will be grace and peace. And I won’t be homesick again until the time comes that I have to leave them and come home. Isn’t it wonderful to have people to love?

Annunciation

feasts, icons, quotes, , , , ,

Today is the beginning of our salvation,
And the revelation of
the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes
the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces
the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry
to the Theotokos:
“Rejoice, O Full of Grace,

the Lord is with you!”

The announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would bear the Christ, the Son of God, is one of the twelve Great Feasts of the church year in Orthodoxy, and is celebrated exactly nine months before the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child, on March 25th. The words above are from a hymn that we sing on this feast.

Not long ago I read The Presence of Mary, a booklet by Fr. Alexander Schmemann in the St. Athanasius Study Series, published by Conciliar Press © 1988. In 26 pages the author discusses in depth the role of Christ’s mother in our salvation history, and sets it against “…the fundamental spiritual disease of our time [that] must be termed anthropological heresy.”

That last clause piqued my interest, too! I’ve been wanting to take the time to read the booklet again and write a real review about the truths that Fr. Schmemann helps to clarify, but that time is not now. However, the present moment and celebration does seem to be right for at least posting a quote from the book, as we contemplate her who is “blessed among women”:

“It is clear that an abstract and impersonal study of man posits a self-evident conclusion: man as total dependence. An equally abstract exaltation of man posits its a priori premise: man as total freedom. But both are revealed in the unique personal experience of Mary, an experience given to the Church and made into her experience, as one and the same truth about man.

“In Mary, the very notions of ‘dependence’ and ‘freedom’ cease to be opposed to one another as mutually exclusive. We are inclined to think that where there is dependence there can be no freedom, where there is freedom there can be no dependence. Mary, however, accepts, she obeys, she humbles herself before the living Truth itself, a Presence, a Beauty, a Life, a Call so overwhelmingly evident that it makes the notion of ‘dependence’ an empty one — or rather identical and coextensive with that of freedom. For as long as freedom is nothing but the other side of dependence — a protest, a rebellion against dependence — as long as freedom itself depends on dependence for its meaning, it is also an empty notion. Each time freedom chooses and accepts, it ceases to be freedom. Here, however, in the unique experience of Mary, freedom becomes the very content of dependence, the one eternally fulfilling itself in the other as life, joy, knowledge, communion, and fulness.

“Admittedly these are poor, inadequate, and clumsy human words about an experience, a vision, a reality which transcends all human words. But, having read them, look again at that woman who eternally stands at the very heart of the Church filling our hearts with a mysterious yet ineffable joy, making us repeat eternally that same salutation which she heard in the depth of her heart on the day of Annunciation: Rejoice!”

-Father Alexander Schmemann

(Icon by Mikhail Nesterov)

Birthday Reflection

books, church, quotes, saints, , , , ,
St. Nikolai

Yes, it’s my birthday today! Another day to thank God for all His wonderful gifts.

This spring I’ve been enjoying The Prologue of Ohrid by St.Nikolai Velimirovic. I splurged on this two-volume set of readings for every day of the year when our church bookstore offered it at a discount. I was the one who had to write down information about the book for a list of sale items, and that was the first time I’d actually looked inside. Something about the name along with its size had made me disregard it, but in the Preface I learned that the name Ohrid is “solely to distinguish it from the ancient Slavonic Prologue which — regrettably, because of its language — has become inaccessible to the Slavic people of our time.”

I’d heard and read many of St. Nikolai’s Prayers by the Lake, which are heartfelt and inspiring poems, so it is not surprising that his devotionals of three or four pages are also beneficial. They include stories of two or more saints commemorated that day, a Reflection, a Contemplation, a Homily of a few paragraphs, and often a Hymn of Praise. I’m happy to know that the whole thing is also available online, so I won’t need to carry my book across the continent later this month.

Today’s Reflection is a good one for Lent:

Even in His pain on the Cross, the Lord Jesus did not condemn sinners but offered up pardon for their sins to His Father, saying, They know not what they do (Luke 23:34)! Let us not judge anyone so that we will not be judged. For no one is certain that, before his death, he will not commit the same sin by which he condemns his brother. St. Anastasius of Sinai teaches: “Even if you see someone sinning, do not judge him, for you do not know what the end of his life will be like. The thief who was crucified with Christ was a murderer, while Judas was an apostle of Jesus, but the thief entered into the Kingdom, and the apostle went to perdition. Even if you see someone sinning, bear in mind that you do not know his good works. For many have sinned openly and repented in secret; we see their sins, but we do not know their repentance. Therefore, brethren, let us not judge anyone so that we will not be judged.”

St. Anastasius by Rembrandt