Tag Archives: Vespers

We are closing this day.

poetry, prayer, ,

EVENING PRAYER

Great Source of being,
Father all-seeing!
We bow before thee;
Our souls adore thee;
Help us obey thee;
Guide us aright;
Keep us, we pray thee,
Through the long night.

Thou kind, forgiving
God of all living,
Thy power defend us,
Thy peace attend us,
While we are closing
This day in prayer,
Ever reposing
Under thy care.

-Eliza Lee Follen (1787 – 1860)

This prayer poem reminds me of our Great Vespers or Compline services that are held in the evening, when we are already subdued a bit from the work of the day, spiritual and physical. At this time of year darkness comes early, which helps us further to quiet down. We submit to the prayers and hymns that invoke the Holy Spirit, Who lays a balm on our hearts and on the day’s end.

Weekday Vespers

church, smells,

Vespers was in our little old church this evening, and very beautiful in every way. Beforehand a few of us read an akathist prayer to Mother Olga of Alaska by candlelight. I think the wood paneled walls of this church are infused with 80 years’ worth of incense; something makes it smell good even when no services have been held recently. But tonight we had fresh incense, as well as warm singing and earnest supplications.

The face of the earth ever renewed.

poetry, summer, wildflowers, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
common yarrow

This sunny morning my neighbor Kim and I drove separately to the coast and met for a walk. On my winding way through the hills, I noticed Queen Anne’s Lace swaying in the breeze along the roadway. Trees, grasses and shrubs were painted in the gentlest pastel colors of lavender, green, and yellow-orange. The Psalter played through my speakers, and one of the Psalms I heard was 104, which is part of every Orthodox Saturday Vespers. It begins:

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

O Lord my God, You are very great:
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment,
Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain.

He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters,
Who makes the clouds His chariot,
Who walks on the wings of the wind,
Who makes His angels spirits,
His ministers a flame of fire.

beach suncup

Once we set out at our brisk pace, I was distracted somewhat from my surroundings, except through my bare feet, which kept me tuned to the cool and firm sand under them, or the waves that splashed over. Though lots of people walked close to the surf, the beach in general wasn’t crowded. I had the feeling it must be the healthiest place around, with the quantities of sea air flowing freshly in and around us all.

I lost track of time. Eventually we parted in the parking lot, and then I wandered by myself in the dunes for a while looking at flowering plants known and unknown to me. I’ve managed to identify most of them — I think.

Ribwort Plantain
Silver Beachweed
non-native sand spurry
what we call ice plant – native of South Africa
Buck’s-horn Plantain

O Lord, how manifold are Your works!
In wisdom You have made them all.
The earth is full of Your possessions—
This great and wide sea,
In which are innumerable teeming things,
Living things both small and great.
There the ships sail about;
There is that Leviathan
Which You have made to play there.

These all wait for You,
That You may give them their food in due season.
What You give them they gather in;
You open Your hand, they are filled with good.
You hide Your face, they are troubled;
You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
You send forth Your Spirit, they are created;
And You renew the face of the earth.

Yellow Bush Lupine

If I hadn’t had another obligation in the afternoon, I think I would have meandered up and down the coast till dusk. I’ve never been more thankful that I live close enough to be in the domain of the sand and the sea and the flowers, on a warm and sweet June day.

 

A thousand lesser lights.

church, writing,

Last time I posted an article on my blog, WordPress exclaimed, “You’ve published your 999th blog post!” or something like that, so I know that today will be my 1,000th post. I did some calculating, and that works out to an average of 2-3 per week over almost seven years. Sounds about right.

The milestone calls for some recognition, so I am hearkening back to the beginning, or actually to my first commentary on the beginning, when I marked one year of blogging and explained the name “Gladsome Lights.” At every Vespers we Orthodox sing a hymn that is more often translated, “O Joyous Light,” but when I first came into the Church our choir was using the word “gladsome.” I am putting that blog post up again, after this little intro.

If no one were reading my posts, would they be as satisfying? I think not. So I thank you all again for being an audience and sounding board and for cheering me on. I know that some of you read rarely or never tell me that you do, and I invite you at this historic moment to write me a line. If you don’t want to go through the bother of leaving a comment, I always welcome e-mails and my address is on the About page.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? It’s hard to believe I’ve composed a thousand posts, and harder to imagine that I would do that many more in the future, if I live that long. I’m not the same person who started blogging back then. But in church tonight we sang a refrain that spoke to me encouragingly of the main thing I need to know about the future:

O God, Thou art my Helper;
Thy mercy shall go before me.

cross border yellow[February 2010] Today marks a year that I have been blogging, and that seems like an opportunity to tell the origin of my blog’s name. I only now looked on Wikipedia for the vesperal hymn “O Gladsome Light,” which, when I hear or sing it, always imparts something of the reality of the Holy Trinity of which it tells. When I first thought of writing a blog, there was no other name that ever came to mind, even though I feared it might be presumptuous, to put it mildly, to take that title for my own.

But just as we Christians are to be “little Christs,” so I see that all the gifts I write about come from Him, and anything good that comes from me is a lesser light emanating from God. So I post a candle picture in thanks to Him. I like the little dot at the bottom, a lesser, mirrored light. My tiny candle, or reflection of a candle.

As we are reminded in the first chapter of James: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

O Gladsome Light of the holy glory
Of the Immortal, heavenly, holy, blessed Father,
O Jesus Christ….