Tag Archives: now

Here was at home.

church, home, homemaking, quotes, , , , , , ,

Today was most wonderful, as it was a fully At Home Day, after a long period of being away every day, always for good things, of course. It could be called a catch-up day, as I’ve had the time to concentrate on tasks that have been getting shoved aside and neglected for too long. Cooking and tidying up took quite a bit of time; because I’ve been cooking more lately, I end up washing dishes more often, but that’s okay, because I enjoy cleaning up the kitchen if I can really give it proper attention. I watered a wilting/dying house plant, and while I ate my lunch I watched the birds outside on the patio, as they finished up the last of the suet feeder.

I took some papaya peelings and Brussels sprouts trimmings out to add to the worm bucket. And it occurred to me, since worm farming is called vermiculture or vermicomposting, etc., maybe I could call my worms “vermi’s” — what do you think? It sounds cuter than worms. This is what my worms typically look like when I take off the lid of their 5-gallon bucket. I’m always relieved if they are looking alive. When the weather drops to freezing, they are unhappy, and disappear into the center of their habitat to huddle together.

It’s been raining steadily all day — until now, when just before the sun went down, it came out and made everything sparkle — and I knew last night that I would want to have a fire in the stove so that I wouldn’t be distracted by being cold, on this day of opportunity. So I brought quite a few logs into the garage in advance of the rain, before I left for a General Unction service at a sister parish.

At this Orthodox service we pray and sing, and hear seven epistle readings and seven Gospel readings by, ideally, seven priests. Last night we only had one bishop and four priests, which meant that when we got to the anointings “for the healing of soul and body,” we had just five of those. Surely they were more than adequate to convey this special grace during Lent. One of the epistle readings included this passage from the book of James:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

(I didn’t take pictures at the service, but I found online these images that are typical.)

Since I opened my sleepy eyes I’ve been blissful knowing that I didn’t have to watch the clock, or change my clothes and get in the car to go anywhere. Much of my morning could be contemplative. Though my supply is very low, there were plenty of logs still, to keep the fire going and the house cozy. It seemed the most blessed day. Once, for a brief moment, a thought came to mind, comparing my life to the “old times” of a few years or decades ago — but I regained my focus pretty fast.

After dinner I was reading in a church calendar that has quotes for every day. This one from St. Luke the Blessed Surgeon was just on point:

It is not right to speak of the former years and to bless them and to curse our own age. We must know that in every age and in every place, people who actually seek their salvation find it.

-St. Luke of Simferopol and Crimea

St. Luke might well have reason to bless his former life, that is: before his wife died leaving their four children motherless, before Lenin came to power, and before his three imprisonments and torture. He had his priorities right, as you can see by reading his life here.

It’s likely that sometime in the future I will fall into longing backward for days like today; I hope the example of St. Luke will help me to cut it short and be fully present in whatever kind of days lie ahead. But for today, his exhortation made me glad that I had been able to be here and now, and that the here was at home.

The supreme moment of hospitality.

church, history, time, , , , , , , , ,

Because when I recently rediscovered this post from three years ago, I was nourished by it again, I am re-posting it for my new readers and for all of us. It concerns the most enduring things, never outdated. One of those always-new things, which I’ve only this year begun to read and think about in the context of the Annunciation, is hospitality of the sort that the Virgin demonstrated toward the very Son of God. She is an example for us all.

Today is the beginning of our salvation;
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!”

I had wanted to continue my ruminations on The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air by further considering The Moment that Søren Kierkegaard refers to when, after waiting in silence, “…the silent lily understands that now is the moment, and makes use of it.”

I don’t know what that moment consists of for you, for me, for us as a world community, or in our cities or church communities or families. No doubt there are overlapping times and seasons containing infinite instants, and only by quiet listening can we make any sense of them. But this passage in particular I wanted to pass on, in which the writer discusses what is missed when we fail to make the proper, standing-before-God kind of preparation:

“Even though it is pregnant with rich significance, the moment does not send forth any herald in advance to announce its arrival; it comes too swiftly for that; indeed, there is not a moment’s time beforehand…. But of course everything depends upon “the moment.” And this is surely the misfortune in the lives of many, of far the greater part of humanity: that they never perceived ‘the moment,’ that in their lives the eternal and the temporal were exclusively separated.”

So many thoughts swirl in my own noisy mind and heart that I could not imagine how I might find a way to share even these few gleanings with you. Then, in God’s providence and the church calendar, appeared someone who is the supreme example for us of being ready for the moment, that time in history and that time in her life, in a particular moment of a day, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to her. Today we remember that event, when Mary listened, and responded, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

The Word became flesh and came to live with us, taking on all our human experience, its weakness and suffering and  death. He defeated death, and opened the gates of Paradise. The Incarnation, the beginning of our salvation, is The Moment of history; our own “Yes” to God, echoing Mary’s willingness, can be the essence of our every prayer as well, as we wait on Him.

Kierkegaard exhorts us, in words that seem especially fitting for this time of uncertainty and change: “Would that in the silence you might forget yourself, forget what you yourself are called, your own name, the famous name, the lowly name, the insignificant name, in order in silence to pray to God, ‘Hallowed be your name!’ Would that in silence you might forget yourself, your plans, the great, all-encompassing plans, or the limited plans concerning your life and its future, in order in silence to pray to God, ‘Your kingdom come!’ Would that you might in silence forget your will, your willfulness, in order in silence to pray to God, ‘Your will be done.’“

We know that God’s will for us is good, now as ever. Our inability to see or understand that is due to our weakness or sin, or His hiding of His works. May He give us grace to wait and to pray, and eventually we will see the full salvation of the LORD.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen.

Romans 11

Apples sweeten in the dark.

nature, poetry, , ,

THE MOMENT

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

-Eavan Boland

By Lois Dodd

How many burning bushes today?

bees, my garden, poetry, , , , , ,

I stepped just beyond my front door only to put a letter out for the mailman, but I immediately forgot myself and stepped farther, to gaze upon that small part of my kingdom…

Carpenter bees were working at the white salvia that has filled out so well and become a definite feature of the landscape. Only carpenter bees were there. What about the other flowers? On the wallflower, grown to a prominent bulwark of purple in that area that is squeezed between the street and the driveway, buzzed a half dozen different sorts of pollinators, among them honeybees (I hope), stripey little bumblebees, and a species new to me, with bright yellow abdomens underneath.

And what a quietly “burning” bush — to follow the metaphor of the poem below — this creature is. I’m amazed that I saw him at all:

I spent a half hour studying them and collecting blurry pictures to help me see them better. I pulled out the orange California poppies that I am trying to keep from taking over my pale yellow plantation of them. After peering into the asparagus beds that are becoming a forest, I spied a few spears that could be cut, and managed to remember them long enough to bring out a knife with which to do that.

The rest of today promises to hold encounters with several bright and human epiphanies. My world is illuminated and shining full of these transitory and eternal treasures. Christ is risen!

THE BRIGHT FIELD

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the burning bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

~ R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet