Thoughts and Things

Chapter 8

2011-05-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

Sir Henry deposited Catherine at the Coleworth gate and asked her to make his excuses to her family. Catherine gave her mother the parcels, not mentioning her escort, and escaped to the chicken coop.

“There’s no shame in mindlessly feeding chickens”, she grumbled to herself. “Why should one worry about the place and the rights of the chicken feeder in society? Why should the chicken feeder be either an object of study or gain a voice for him or herself? What difference does it make? Perhaps it even hurts society to promote chicken-feeder consciousness. Shouldn’t we all just sing softly as we feed and eat chickens? Well, maybe not singing and eating at the same time. But surely one should just be tasting and enjoying with sweet music in one’s head.

Chick, chick, chicken
never leave a speck
cluckety, peckity, cluckety peck,

all you care

is that someone puts it there

What else matters?

“Reading is diverting and enlightening,” she thought after giving up on song-writing, “but there is such a thing as idle curiosity.” Sir Henry’s point about understanding each other came to her mind and connected with her. “Reading isn’t just about learning new things, it’s understanding other people. I like learning how they think and what they feel is important. Isn’t that nosiness? Hopefully people like to be understood. But does a chicken farmer need to be understood? I guess that’s up to others to decide and not the chicken farmer girl person.

“I wonder why he talked about casualties. Will Father or Uncle Josiah be punished for raiding Lord Essex’s library? Will we be punished for learning from it? It’s for certain that we’ll not be allowed to borrow any more books.”

***

“Henry,” bellowed Lord Essex as he met him at the door of the mansion, “I demand to know which tenant you are experimenting on.”

“‘Experimenting’ is better than ‘corrupting.’ Does that mean you’ve warmed to the idea, Father?”

“Hardly. I need to make sure that this foolishness goes no further.”

“Why don’t we wait for the results of my experiment, and then you can decide.”

“What sort of results?”

“Increased productivity.”

“If a tenant’s yields increase by his own education and independent thinking, will he not begin to feel he is outgrowing his position? He will also want to increase his property and his goods. How many more demands will he make for his family? The natural balance will be set off.”

“The various impacts cannot be fully predicted. I believe one must act on principle and not always with the status quo in mind as the top priority. It is not right to keep people in the dark. They should have the opportunity for educating themselves as much as they are able and care to.”

“I see that you believe your intentions are good, but I do not believe you understand the risks to society by this line of thinking.”

“Risks to our aristocratic society you mean.”

“When you observe tenants and servants, do you not find them happy in the simplicity of their existence? Do you not observe in our class, if you will, the burden of responsibility?” Are you certain you have considered this fully?”

“I believe the expansion of one’s horizon is worth the burden, Father.”

“Industrialization is already threatening the simplicity of the tenant arrangement. It’s one thing to have one’s horizons expanded in an agricultural setting, but what if that expansion leads to losing it?”

“I’m not sure that has to be so.”

“The risk is real, Henry.”

“Younger people aren’t as afraid of risk.”

“That is true,” Lord Essex granted. “I still want to know who you have been educating.”

“Why? What do you plan to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then neither do I.”

Chapter 7

2011-04-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Sir Henry maintained his calm as he strode towards the stables. He knew his father’s position, and had planned to plant just a seed of an idea today. Yet even though Lord Byron’s reaction was predicted, Sir Henry could not quell his disappointment. He was used to his father’s temper and his half-hearted, semi-amusing insults, which he did not believe afflicted any real wounds. Apathy may be a sort of wound as it was. He found it encroaching on his grand scheme as well. What good is an education when one’s relationships are so strained. He would wait out the storm on horseback.

A few hours later he drew towards the Coleworth’s road. He came upon Catherine carrying some parcels home. When she heard the approaching horse steps, she turned. Sir Henry saw her smile before she quickly concealed it behind an impassive face. “Good afternoon, Miss Coleworth.”

“Good afternoon, Sir Henry.”

“Would you like Roman to carry your goods?” he offered as he dismounted.

“They aren’t a burden, thank you.”

“May I walk with you, then?”

“Surely.”

“I know I haven’t been around lately.”

“You must be very busy,” Catherine hurriedly filled in to keep him from having to explain.

“Busy,” he said shortly.

Catherine decided not to push the conversation further.

“What have you been reading lately?” he asked to distract himself.

“Actually nothing. I can’t keep my mind on it.”

“I’ve been wondering about the point lately anyway. I was so happy to hear of your family’s enjoyment of books, and thought it would make such a difference. It has made a difference. I don’t know if we would have understood each other so well had we not read many of the same or same types of things. But what if neither of us had? I suppose we would have been happier with what we were told from our forefathers.”

“I don’t know about happier. At least accepting. But what if our immediate forefathers were wrong? Aren’t ancient writers also our forefathers?”
“Excellent point. Somehow though, accepting them can make it harder to accept one’s closer relatives, which feels like disloyalty. Besides, they had similar ideas of class.”

“When I read them, I can’t help but consider their point of view rather than the point of view of other objects and classes of their scrutiny. If they are free to categorize about the world, then so should I be because I’m hearing first person and interpreting in first person. I think most people identify, unless it’s too unpalatable, with the author.”

“But those in power wont feel you have the right,” Henry said bluntly.

“I haven’t had much dealings with them, nor sought it out.”

Henry looked at her and wondered how that would be. “Until I showed up. Not that you’ve sought out my visits.”

Catherine kept her eyes on the road before her.

“Do you mind my visits?”

“I enjoy them, but at the same time I find them confusing. I don’t know how candid I should be, for one thing.”

“I like your candor.”

“Don’t you think about the ‘should’ness of it?”

“Not really.”

“That confuses me too. How is it so easy for you? I guess because you are used to freedom. Till now I have been free in my reading, but nothing else. It was all very innocent. Father did not tell us until you started visiting that the books were borrowed without permission. I don’t know what I’d have thought if he’d told us that it was our right to learn without the consent of the Lords. Now it feels wrong. I’m not really the rebellious type.”

“I am if I’m convinced that wrongs are being done. I don’t think the aristocracy is right to keep workers uneducated. However, once you decide to fight something, there’s going to be casualties. I don’t want you to be one of them.”

“I don’t feel that I need the liberty to read or death. Like I say, I don’t even want to read right now.”

“I wonder why that is.”

She turned moistened eyes up to him. Her look caused a tremor in his chest. He stopped himself from reaching for her.

“Hard to read with misty eyes I guess.” He handed her his kerchief, and she dabbed her eyes as they walked along in silence.

Chapter 6

2011-04-14T07:44:00.001-07:00

Dear Sir Henry,

I am especially intrigued by your grouping together senses and emotions. One cannot help how much one’s mouth may water, for example, in response to smelling a savory food, so it may follow that one cannot help one’s emotional responses. We do not choose what makes us happy or sad. In one sense this puts emotions on an animal level, even if some of our emotions are higher than theirs. I suppose it is good to devalue them in this way. It would be natural to assume that rational thought is above emotions, yet I am glad that you do not place it at the top. Not that we are to discard all these things, but we are to place them in the proper chain of command, as it were.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Regards,
Catherine Coleworth

Catherine could not help feeling disappointed at how proper it all was, but she did not want to place this emotion in the forefront. There were other things to consider. Sir Henry’s response to her letter was similar. How nice it was to be able to categorize things correctly, but surprising was how empty the exercise left him.

After some days Josiah wondered at Sir Henry’s extended absence. He and Susannah Coleworth had suspected he was becoming interested in Catherine and had anticipated more visits. It did seem that both of them had talked themselves out of moving towards union, however, even if Catherine at least was unhappy about it. She devoted herself more fervently to her prayers, but her joylessness at it concerned him. Previously she had engaged in her prayers more light-heartedly. Though Josiah agreed that cultivating the spirit is a first priority, his daughter’s somberness worried him. Why must romantic attachment be so important to women and their parents? Survival of the species and the nature of women in desiring their husbands and in finding fulfillment in child-bearing is a curse and a blessing.

Meanwhile, Sir Henry busied himself with the affairs of the estate and found a certain fulfilment in maintaining and improving its efficiency. Once his father returned from his trip, Sir Henry broached the topic of a community library.

“What the devil?” said Lord Byron abashed, the smoke from his pipe puffing out with each syllable. “Tenants have no time for such high-minded pursuits. It will take their attention off their farming.”

“I think you underestimate them, Father. Some may have the capacity to handle both, not to mention the idea that if they are more educated, they may care more about their work.”

“Nonsense. They learn the traditional methods and are rewarded with their yeilds. Their stomachs make them care about their work.”

“I wonder how my education relates to how much I care about their work and their minds. I could perform an experiment on one of the tenants We have never been afraid of trying new methods to increase productivity, Father. Surely one tenant’s education,” he did not think his father was ready to consider a whole family of men and women, “wont spoil anything if it doesn’t go well.” Sir Henry also did not want to tell his father that this had already occurred covertly.

“Balderdash. It would be like mixing oil and water. Leave it alone.”

“I can’t, Father. I’ve already made efforts with one of them.”

His Father looked at him more seriously. “You’ve gone off your nut! What possessed you to defy order and class distinctions! I’d no idea I’d raised a renegade. Where’s the loyalty, where’s the family responsibility? If only I’d had another son! Miriam! Come here!”

Lady Essex proceeded into the study. “What is it, Dear?”

“Your son has sold the family name to the tenants. All is lost.”

“Surely not, Dear.”

“Don’t you defy me, too, Woman!”

“How has Henry sold the family name?”

“By pretending he was not born noble and that they were not born workers. How could you have raised him without a sense of place? It’s all because of your embarrassment with the servants. I’ve told you to maintain a proper distance and respect for distinctions!”

“It is true that I have not felt a distinction between their existence and my own. I do not see diverse endeavors in a hierarchical way. There is a greatness to serving.”

“Then let them keep their greatness! How dare Henry demean them by filling them with high-minded philosophy!”

“I agree. I don’t see the use.”

Remembering his discomfort with Catherine made him question it too. Had he been unwise to support the Coleworth’s reading, and then to engage them in classless conversation?

“Which tenant are you corrupting?” demanded Lord Byron.

“I’ll not say until we’ve reached more of an understanding.”

And with that Sir Henry removed himself to the grounds.

Chapter 5

2011-04-13T05:16:00.000-07:00

Chapter 5

Dear Miss Coleworth, ℅ Mr. Josiah Coleworth

I am writing to you instead of speaking in person because of the personal nature of discussing the senses, as we began to do when I last visited your family. The senses are both personal and according to human nature, so I do not want to neglect the topic merely out of respect for individual feelings. Hopefully one can retain personal distance through an intermediary such as pen and paper as only the sense of sight is involved in reading the words.

If I may speculate. It is the human senses that initially detect relationship between diverse objects, visible and invisible. The invisible is felt mainly by emotions. Humans place value on things, many times based on feelings, either higher or lower ones. For example, through taste we determine which foods and their various combinations are good and which are not. Regulating the senses is our conscience. Though a food may be “good”, judgment determines when and how much of it we eat. A sensual person does not use judgment as much as one who lives more in his head, so to speak. A person who lives in his head may have different troubles regulating his idealism, however, but that is another topic.

In addition to judgment, we also have a spirit that if rightly related to, can guide us above the senses, or help us put them in their proper place. A spiritual person isn’t solely reliant on their senses and emotions, nor on their rationality, but receives inspiration and direction from their relationship to God. This relationship takes much cultivation.

Therefore, as you so astutely observed, relationship is the binding or repelling force between diverse objects.

Respectfully,
Sir Henry John Essex

Catherine struggled with her mixed feelings after reading Sir Henry’s letter. During their initial talk, she had been chiefly motivated by a desire to understand, but she had also been impacted by the personal nature of the senses discussed. Indeed the question of hoping for more had presented itself. She also pondered the idea of putting emotions in the same category as the senses, as if they were as common and automatic as physical reactions. She decided that she should pursue this thought on paper also.

Alternate Chapter 4

2011-04-12T10:16:00.001-07:00

Sir Henry returned to the Coleworths a few days later. Towards the end of the conversation-filled meal, Catherine asked Sir Henry, "If we do not agree with the dialectic process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, what is the good of a conversation? Do we always need to maintain diversity?”

Glad that she was keeping up with the conversation, Sir Henry explained, "Diversity will always be maintained because everything imagined already exists, or else it could not be imagined. If a synthesis is created, it becomes a third thing. The third thing may be preferable to both conversants, but the other two things should not be seen as being destroyed by the process. They remain options. People tend to like to burn bridges because keeping the other options open produces anxiety and insecurity. I suggest that the reason for the insecurity does not lie in the likelihood of a person changing their mind, but in the individualized value of necessity placed on one of the options to the exclusion of the rest. This is not to say that one option should not be thus valued, but the insecurity associated with it may have unhealthy factors attached. Reasons become all-important. Not objectives. Determining reasons then becomes the goal of conversation. Could your reason for asking be based on a fear of silence?"

"Hmm. Perhaps. Silence and the connotation of lack of relationship that goes along with it."

"Ah. Relationship is the mysterious element when things are allowed to maintain their diversity. What would conversation be like then, individuals explaining their differences?"

"I suppose a response could be to point out similarities."

"Similarities amongst diverse individuals. One could be afraid, again a reason, not a negation of the possibility, of losing individuality if similarities are focused on."

"Then one could discuss the value of fear or move beyond that to the relationship of similarity to diversity."

"How like a woman to keep bringing it back to relationship! Or how about a comparison, contrast of synthesis to relationship? Actually, I wonder if there is such a thing as a synthesis. In chemistry, a solution is able to retain the properties of both the solvent and the solute, though the solvent keeps its dominant physical properties."

"When a person drinks a glass of highly concentrated salt-water, which are you most aware of, the water or the salt?" Catherine said, not the least flustered.

Sir Henry, however, was. He quickly recovered. "Tasting being the required step to detect the diversity."

Now it was Catherine’s turn to fluster. The others busied themselves preparing the table for clearing.

"Comparing and contrasting tasting to the other senses involved, mainly sight and touch, would be an interesting conversation."

"Maybe too interesting, which would be a reason not to have it now." Then to the family, "Thank you for the delightful evening. I must be going."

Pysanky note

2011-03-31T11:36:00.000-07:00

Each line is infinite around the egg. It always surprises me when it meets itself on the other side. 20 down, 4 to go.

Chapter 4

2010-11-20T13:41:00.000-08:00

Sir Henry returned to the Coleworths a few days later. After an impressive and meaningful philosophical conversation with the whole family, Sir Henry spoke privately to Josiah and then proposed to Catherine. “First I have to summon my ancestors to ask their permission too.” Horrified, Sir Henry ran out the door decrying pagan upstarts. “I guess that’s off”, Catherine shrugged. “Maybe I should quit trying to shock people. Whose litmus test is superior, the one who wants a proper partner, or the one who wants one who will accept-me-as-I-am. Neither and both. I don’t deserve him and he doesn’t deserve me. She tearfully went to the chicken coop to console herself in their simplicity. To her surprise, Sir Henry found her there and said, “You were kidding weren’t you?” “Yes, but that doesn’t mean that talking to one’s ancestors is pagan.” “Maybe not. I think we should spend the rest of our lives talking about it.” Sir Henry took the bowl of chicken feed and made the outline of a five-pointed star on the ground, around which he enclosed a heart shape. As the chickens were eating it Catherine laughed but smeared the remains around with her foot. She crossed herself just in case. “We may end up corrupting each other,” he said. “But isn’t that better than being alone?” “I don’t know, but I can’t help it.” With that he took her in his arms and kissed her willing but trembling mouth.

The End

Chapter 3

2010-11-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

After a few days, Mr. Carl Coleworth announced to Sir Henry that his nephew, Josiah, had returned and that the damaged cart was now again ready for service.

“Capital,” said Sir Henry. He summoned the groomsman to make ready his horse.

This time he was greeted by the sight of Josiah splitting logs.

“Mr. Coleworth, Sir Henry John Essex at your service.” He said joyfully as he dismounted.

“Of course, honored I’m sure,” came the stony reply. Sir Henry could not tell if he was being patronized or not. One could never be certain about intelligent tenants.

“I wonder if your Uncle Carl told you of our conversation during your absence.”

“As long as we’re getting straight to the point, Sir, I would like to thank you for loaning your very interesting books to me. It was very magnanimous.”

“You are welcome on one condition, that you invite me into your house.”

“If the mistress of said house doesn’t mind.”

“That being my condition too.”

Sir Henry wondered if this deference to womankind was indeed a portent of what happens when tenants become educated.

Josiah proceeded behind the small stone and beam cottage to find his wife in their kitchen garden. After a length of time that indicated that there were bumps in the conversation, he emerged as stony as before. “This way please.”

Inside the wooden door, Sir Henry’s eyes adjusted to the light limited to the one window whose wooden trap door lay open on this balmy day. Josiah pulled out the chair opposite and they both sat down.

“Cozy,” offered Sir Henry.

“So you are curious about the brains of lowly tenant cabbage farmers, Sir. I’ll tell you how I came to read your books. My father first wandered in your library as a child as he and Carl were sons of the previous gardener’s assistant. He picked up the Iliad and began our family habit of borrowing books, replacing them once read.”

“Do you discuss them with your family?” Henry wondered if discussions would lead to a desire to change their circumstances.

“Yes, we share with each other what is of interest in the books.”

“Are you content?”

“Yes, Sir. We are content.”

“Curious.”

“Why so?”

“Some believe that once a tenant has become educated that it will make him discontent with his circumstances and seek to better himself in other ways.”

“I would say that I should be very discontent if I did not have books to read. My mind would become restless.”

“That is exactly my feeling,” said Sir Henry.

“However, there is a problem.”

Sir Henry did not expect Josiah to mention a difficulty when he was a beneficiary of the situation.

“And what is that?”

“’With knowledge brings responsibility.’”

“Ah. You do not wish to upset the status quo, but fear it may be required of you?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you believe you may be responsible for?”

“Teaching other tenants and making books available to them as well.”

“Do you believe that a desire to be so engaged exists in other tenants?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Have you ever talked about it to anyone?”

“My friends and extended family are aware of our enjoyment of books, but have not expressed an interest in joining our activity. I have not asked them why not.”

Mrs. Coleworth and her daughter came into the house carrying various vegetables which they placed on the kitchen pantry.

“Sir Henry, I believe you’re acquainted with my wife, Susannah, and my daughter, Catherine? Albert is tending the cabbages.”

“I’m pleased to be more formally introduced,” he said with a bow towards each of them with was met with shallow curtsies.

“Would you care for some mead, Sir Henry?” Susannah offered.

“Splendid, Madam.”

Catherine went to the buttery to fetch the refreshment. When she returned Sir Henry said, “Your father has been telling me of the family practice of reading books from the estate library, Madam and Miss Catherine.” Before she could question his feelings about finding out their source, he continued towards Mr. Coleworth,

“As you know, it is not customary for tenants to be so occupied. Are you aware that there are some who would object if they knew?”

“It surely must be so or my father would not have originally introduced the habit of not talking to others about the estate library. Neither did he speak of his reading when selling our cabbages or in paying the rent. This was his main dealing with the aristocracy and those more closely connected to them.”

“Then why did you respond to my post?”

“Your post!” he chuckled a few moments before scratching his head. “I reckon one risk leads to another.”

They both raised their mead in pleasant silence as the ladies turned towards their vegetables. After downing the last of his glass, Sir Henry got up and said, “I’ve interrupted you too long. I’ll contact you again soon.”

“It was an honor, Sir Henry,” said Josiah as Sir Henry removed himself after bowing to all present.

Once outside he saw Albert coming into the yard. “Ah, Master Albert, coming in from the cabbages?” winked Sir Henry.

“Sir Henry, I presume?”

“Stanley! Good show. Goodbye for now.”

Enigmatic indeed, thought Sir Henry to himself.

The Enigmatic Coleworths (Chapter 2)

2010-11-09T09:03:00.000-08:00

Chapter 2

Not too long after, an elderly man approached with a slight limp.

“Yes Sir?” was all he said.

“Yes, are you Mr. Coleworth?”

“Yes Sir, Carl Coleworth.”

“What relation are you to Josiah Coleworth whose farm lies across the meadow?”

“Uncle, Sir.”

“Let me ask you, do you read?”

“Yes Sir.”

“What do you read?”

“Plant labels and such mostly, Sir. And the Church Hymnal.”

“What about Plato?”

“No, Sir. Don’t have much use for that.”

“Curious. Are you aware that your nephew reads Plato?”

The gardener’s assistant’s eyes went to the ground.

“Yes, Sir.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Coleworth. I am very interested in finding out about the intellectual pursuits of my tenants. No one is in trouble. If you are not interested in the books in our library, how do you think your nephew became so?”

“I’m not sure, Sir, all I know is that on my afternoon off, when visiting my nephew, he usually asks me to bring a book or two next time. Sorry for not mentioning it to anyone, Sir.”

“No matter, I understand. In future, please inform me when you wish to borrow anything.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Sir Henry John Essex had always been a curious person himself. He greedily consumed the books required during his schooling, as well as many others, and continued the habit while helping his father manage the family estate. It was customary for gentlemen to be so engaged, but for tenant farmers and their sons and daughters, well, he had never heard of it.

He decided next day to pay another call on the Coleworths.

This time he was greeted at the gate by Mrs. Coleworth who was leading the cow into the barn for its hay and oats before the evening milking.

“Good Day, Mrs. Coleworth?” She nodded in assent.

“ I am Sir Henry John Essex. I spoke to your daughter yesterday. Mr. Coleworth has also written me explaining his necessary leave to aid his cousin. How are you faring in his absence?”

“Thank you, Sir. We are faring well. Catherine mentioned your kind visit. Albert can do the heavier work while Josiah’s away.”

“Let me repeat my availability should you require it.” Sir Henry said as he bowed and turned towards his horse.

“Thank you, Sir,” said Mrs. Coleworth.

“Proud folk,” Sir Henry thought to himself as he rode away, “not wanting to ask for help.” Or was he being proud in thinking they would suddenly need him once they were aware of his proximity? Perhaps it was he that needed them. For what? A diversion. From what? Boredom with his aristocratic life.

He was never a materialistic person, preferring nature, theology and philosophy to military, colonial, and estate matters. The word that was distasteful to him about all three was the word, “acquire”. It bespoke of greed and selfishness. One would think he would have been a philanthropist with his distaste for taking, but giving carried with it a certain presumptuousness too. Who was he to decide what was best for people? His loyalty to his family was such that he would be a responsible Lord once his father died, but he would not take pains to either enlarge or diminish the estate. Stability and responsibility were noble enough goals for him.

If he needed these tenants, at least to satisfy his curiosity, so what? He decided to return home and wait for Mr. Coleworth’s return. Meanwhile he’d suggest to his mother that she not speak of the tenant’s book-reading to his father. Lady Essex had never stressed a need for class distinctions, not that the subject had come up much. Her manner to the servants was equinanimous, calling them by their titles and surnames, and considering their welfare when delegating duties. In contrast, his father’s keen sense of proper order and efficiency would be offended by the idea of the intellectual advancement of tenants. The link between education and inefficiency in the lower classes appeared to be more of a psychological one. Once the workers’ minds were broadened, they would become discontent with the narrow scope of their menial lives. They would become greedy like their masters apparently, and there must not be enough material things to go around for that.

The Enigmatic Coleworths

2010-11-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1

Sir Henry drew his horse up from his gallop at the fence. Over the rolling fields he spied the little cottage of one of his family’s tenants. He wasn’t supposed to wonder what went on there as long as they kept up with their yield of cabbages. Still, he wondered if they wondered about the goings on of his class. He dismounted and drew from his saddle-pack paper and pencil on and with which he wrote,

Dear Tenants,

It is my belief that you do not concern yourself with what occurs beyond this fence. You are content with your own lives and perceive ours to be beyond reach in both possibility and knowledge. I will tell you that it is my impression that the responsibilities that come with wealth also bring a stifling quality to luxurious life. The amount of choices one is faced with induces an unsuspected amount of stress. I would imagine that a life taken up with hard labor and no choices brings a stronger sense of peace. Is your life peaceful?

Sincerely,

Sir Henry John Essex

Sir Henry folded the letter, removed one of the leather tongs from his saddle, and affixed the note to the other side of the fence.

Next day he came back and found that the paper remained. Removing it from the fence he saw that it had additional writing on it.

Dear Sir Henry,

Au contraire. We are not such simple folk. In our spare time, between cabbage picking, clothes wringing, butter making, candle-dipping and cabbage stew boiling we find time to read borrowed copies of Plato, Chaucer, and Pythagoras. Granted we do not have the burden of choosing which fine goods we would like to purchase or which country we would like to tour, but we find the questions of existence and immortality enough to keep us wakeful many a night in quandrous sweating. The rich do not have a monopoly on stress.

Demystifyingly,

Josiah Coleworth

After pondering over the response, Sir Henry prepared another draft,

Dear Mr. Coleworth,

Thank you for your informative and surprising reply. As you have sought to find common ground, I would like to meet with you to see if it be adequate for further conversation. Since you have fewer opportunities for such occupations and, being on holiday, I am at your disposal, I await your apprising me of time and place.

Till then,

Sir Henry

Next day there was another reply.

Dear Sir Henry,

I am honored by your request, but regret that I am off to visit my cousin in the next county as his wagon was destroyed by hitting a ditch exceedingly hard due to a runaway mule. The mule is fine, but the wagon will require as many hands as possible to fix. I do not know when I will return.

Regretfully,

Josiah Coleworth

Hoping to catch Mr. Coleworth before his departure in order to offer monetary assistance, Sir Henry rode around to the opening in the fence and headed over the cabbage fields towards the cottage. A young woman who was feeding the chickens in the yard turned her blonde, curly head at the sounds of hooves, revealing surprised large, blue eyes.

“Good-day,” Sir Henry spoke with aristocratic confidence despite not knowing if he should say Miss or Madam. The girl quickly bowed her head in acknowledgement.

“I am looking for Mr. Josiah Coleworth.”

“My father is Mr. Josiah Coleworth, Sir. He left early this morning and will be gone for a few days.”

“Ah, too bad. I am Sir Henry John Essex. Will his absence require more hardship to those who remain?”

Curtsying she said, “Thank you, Sir, but no. Unless one counts having less reading-time a hardship. My brother, mother, and I can manage.”

“You read too!” Sir Henry could not stifle his surprise. “Pray tell what authors.”

“The prayer book, the Bible and a few others.”

“Only fitting.” Her embarrassment in answering revealed a desire to be respected.

“Could you please tell your Father that I request notification when he returns home. And if you need anything in the mean time, please send word to the house. Good day.”

Sir Henry rode back, happily distracted by his new protégées.

“Mother, you’ll never guess!” Sir Henry called upon entering the great, stone manor that had been his family’s country estate for generations.

“In here, Henry,” his mother called from the dining room where she was adjusting the great bouquet of roses, snapdragons, and fern fronds.

“The tenants are educated intellectuals! The father says he reads borrowed books on philosophy, and the daughter reads the Bible and prayer books!”

“I wonder from where they’ve borrowed these books and who taught them to read?”

“I have a suspicion.” Sir Henry left to go to the library. He picked up The Complete Works of Plato, flipped through the pages, and there on the second to last chapter, was a dried cabbage-leaf bookmark.

“Well-done, Mr. Coleworth!” exclaimed Sir Henry. “Now who assisted in this “borrowing”?

Sir Henry thought through the servants. “Mother!” Henry called as he returned to the dining room. “Do we have any servants named “Coleworth” in the house or stables?”

“Let me ask Mrs. Ludlum.” Lady Miriam Essex rang for the head housekeeper.

“Yes, my Lady?”

“Mrs. Ludlum, do we have anyone under our employ with the name “Coleworth”?

“Yes, my Lady. I believe the gardener’s assistant bears that name.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ludlum.”

“Would you like me to fetch him, my Lady?”

Lady Essex turned to her son, eyebrows raised.

“Why yes, Mrs. Ludlum. If you would.”

“Of course, Sir.”

“I’ll be on back lawn.”

“Very good, Sir.”

Sir Henry passed through the marble halls, descended the stone steps and walked out towards the lawn furniture to wait and think of how to broach the subject with the other Mr. Coleworth.

What Would the Phantom Do?

2010-11-08T05:43:00.000-08:00

Haley settled in her chair with anticipation. All it takes is to start typing and the story will come to life. She liked the idea of the story taking a life of its own without the stifling interference of an outline or a rainbow arc. There were characters in the netherworld waiting to tell their story. Their story, not hers. Lost things and people do not remain hidden, but they do wait for an entrance. The white paper and her fingers were all that were required.

Her breathing slowed as she felt the story approach. Each stroke of her fingers was a birth. A birth of the tiny cells that would form a new living organism. A story.

Kenneth was a deeply romantic single person. He believed in true love, but noticed that girls did not find him exciting. His love was too accepting, too puppy-doggish. He did not provide the rush that girls were waiting for. His friends that were girls told him that they preferred the Phantom of the Opera to Raoul. He was Raoul and believed the Phantom to be a messed up criminal. He could not understand the attraction; neither could he deny it. He decided he would just have to accept that girls wanted to feel guilty about loving their heart’s desire. He decided to become a rogue.

First he removed all of the pastels and plaid from his closet. Wearing black should help. It would be better if he had black hair, but he wasn’t going to go so far as to dye its original medium brown. His hazel eyes would also have to do. He’d have to compensate for their innate gentleness some other way. As much as it made him uncomfortable, he realized that he would have to stare confidently at prospective girls. It would seem presumptuous and rude, but he would do it for their sakes. He wanted them to feel the thrill of victory. But he would have to be careful not to be too free with it so as to appear sleazy. He should also add a guilty look to activate their maternal side.

After making the wardrobe changes, Kenneth practiced his knowing stare, followed by a subtle guilty tightening of his features. Constrained desire should definitely work. Women love a man at war with himself.

Haley’s fingers stopped. She liked Kenneth, but worried that he was wanting to attract women-in-general instead of the woman of his dreams. Someone who wants a relationship isn’t as good a subject as someone who has found Her.

Nevertheless, Kenneth decided to test out his new look in the park: black t-shirt over casual jeans and sneakers. But walking alone in the park didn’t sound cool. Maybe he should borrow a dog. He heard that a great way to attract female attention would be by walking a dog. No. The Phantom of the Opera would not have a pet. He would probably steal other people’s pets and kill them in the bushes where they’d be found with notes attached to their collars. Girls love guys who write notes.

He took out his sticky pad, wrote notes on a few of them and put them in his pocket. Haley was dying to find out what the notes said, but she’d have to wait.

Kenneth sat on a bench in the park and waited. The Phantom isn’t desperate, except for revenge. Jogging men and women, couples and ladies with strollers and/or little kids on bikes passed him by, but no attractive women of around his age of 23, walking dogs. Towards evening he decided to go to Petsmart and look there. He went to the dog food section and found an attractive young lady in a jogging outfit, accompanied by her dog, reaching for a large bag. Kenneth approached, offering to hold her dog. The girl looked at him funny, thinking it would have been manlier if he’d offered to lift the 25lb. bag of food. Reading her frown, he thought, “the Phantom wouldn’t care about that. He’d just take the dog and keep going.” Instead Kenneth attached the sticky part of a note to the inside of Rover’s collar while her back was turned.

She still thanked him as she reached for Rover’s leash. Kenneth nodded after staring knowingly and made his exit. While at home waiting for his experiment to contact him, as he had included his email address in the note, he wondered what the Phantom would do in his free time? Desperately wait by the computer? No, he’d watch CSI for ideas for how to kill people. He casually checked his computer when the episode was over.

Sure enough. “Dear Opera Ghost, it is not my custom to answer emails from people I do not know. However, since you were helpful at Petsmart, I am curious to know the nature of your request. Sincerely, mst4.5k@gmail.com.”

Should he answer right away? Most definitely, the Phantom doesn’t worry about appearances. Well…

“Dear Myst 4.5, Thank you,” scratch the thank you – too grovel-lish. “You have wisely taken this chance. Your wisdom will better serve you if you and your dog will join me for coffee outside the Café du Fronde (women love it when mysterious men speak French) at 4pm tomorrow afternoon.” He hoped she wouldn’t be so desperate as to answer in order to make him feel more secure. He wasn’t a child. The Phantom would know that she would show. If she answered, he probably wouldn’t.

She didn’t, so he did. Early. The Phantom probably would have waited in order to have the advantage of observing her first, but he was more secure than that. He bravely sat on the tiny wire chair, legs apart, wrist dangling. He glanced at her boldly when she approached in her white t-shirt and floral skirt with a matching green leash. Rover knelt at her heals as she sat across from him. He forgot to look sheepish about it.

Neither of them spoke at first, but looked steadily into each others’ eyes. He narrowed his to look less gentle. Christen was expressionless. “Can you sing?” he asked, pushing her coffee and the packets of creamer and sugar towards her. “Not really”, she said evenly as she poured in two creams.

“Doesn’t matter, I can.” He took a sip before he leaned towards her, “When you’re beautiful, no one CARES,” in an operish, though quiet whisper.

Her gaze said her heart was his. “It worked!” he shouted inaudibly so that only Haley could hear. His return gaze promised that he would flirt with her every day for the rest of their lives. Haley was very glad for them.

2010-09-02T05:36:00.001-07:00

The ground will catch you if you fall, eventually.

2010-08-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

Ungnostic detachment precludes formless imagination. Judgment, hurt feelings, and dreams slip under the radar as they are pushed and held down to drown. Words of new freedom from painful bindings express unempty absences. Which to cultivate...

Worthy of a place

2010-04-19T09:39:00.001-07:00

The land is holy, are those on it? Somehow those in it are.

Vigil lamps burn less than 12 hours or Why I cannot pray

2010-02-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

Blast the acrid smell of your light gone out,
Blast the curling grey, lifeless smoke of the sooty, ashen wick extinguished.
Oh to see you shine again, my boy, in my eyes as you do in heaven!
Alas and alack.

Skating and Logismoi

2009-10-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday, while I stayed at home with childcare obligations and 6/8's of the family went to hear visiting Priest, Father Dmitri Cosby, speak about the end times and logismoi, I watched Grand Prix ice skating on the new NBC sports station, Universal Sports.

So how does one incorporate a talk on logismoi into one's planned talk on the end times? According to my husband's account, Fr. Dmitri is a student of eschatology, but he is moving away from prioritizing the knowledge of specifics about the future. Logismoi are thoughts that our undisciplined brain incessantly chatters which make us worry about the past and the future. A result of the fall is that we are unable to dwell in the present. He very much recommends Archimandrite Meletios Webber's book, Bread & Water, Wine & Oil, An Orthodox Christian Experience of God, to find out how to dwell in the present so that one need not unduly worry about Christ's Second Coming.

I find it much easier to work out on the elliptical exercise machine while watching figure skating, especially engaging figure skating such as Olympic hopefuls Davis and White from the USA and Virtue and Moir from Canada are able to deliver. Usually I am more attentive to the single skaters, but this year these two ice dancing teams are able to translate moving arms and legs into a transcendental experience that I can't describe. This routine won the Canadians the gold in France weekend before last:

Virtue and Moir

(Sorry, I haven't yet figured out how to post youtube videos on blogger yet.) The routine that won the United States the gold in Moscow this past weekend apparently hasn't been posted yet, but this one's pretty good:

Davis and White

I can't predict which one will win the Olympics as they didn't compete against each other during these events. I'd be happy for both North American teams.

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

2009-10-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

Faith therefore is not an aesthetic emotion but something far higher, precisely because it has resignation as its presupposition; it is not an immediate instinct of the heart, but is the paradox of life and existence. So when in spite of all difficulties a young girl still remains convinced that her wish will surely be fulfilled, this conviction is not the assurance of faith... Her conviction is very lovable, and one can learn much from her, but one thing is not to be learned from her, one does not learn the movements, for her conviction does not dare in the pain of resignation to face the impossibility.

-Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

I've read this quote about five times and believe at this point that he's making a distinction between faith and wishing. Wishing is an immediate instinct of the heart and faith is not. A young girl following her heart is lovable, but not faithful. What could one learn from her then? To not be a nihilistic materialist or a pessimistic intellectual. But one cannot learn from her how to achieve union with God. Her wishes can't come true and she must face this. This resignation is death to her, and she cannot fathom committing suicide. Of letting her heart stop. But without doing so, she will not reach her end. She will remain a fat caterpillar instead of becoming the beautiful, soaring butterfly she was meant to be. 'Be still and know that I am God.'

Just Breathe

2009-10-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

What must it be like to be told when and how you are probably going to die? Like a death sentence from a judge? Or like an end of a prison sentence, a release date? There have been a few times when I've wanted to die, but then when I thought it might happen I usually changed my mind. One time though I was resigned and when it didn't happen, it felt like I would have to re-resign myself to this painful life. Mostly the thought of dying can be like holding your breath, and then something forces you to involuntarily take a breath. Our "life-force" is usually pretty hard to overcome.

With my low blood sugar, it can seem like an impossible task to just get up and make my protein shake and vitamins. This is sort of like medication because without it, I can hardly function. When my blood sugar is low I am also in a very low-willing state. I don't really want to function when it's like that. But something inside propels me amidst my lack of will to get up and take my medicine. It's then that the voice of my children bring a spark of vitality to me. Before my shake their noises remind me that I have no strength, but after, interacting with them is a source of joy. There is something in me that is stronger than me that wont give up, except for that one time. I wouldn't say it's a will to live, but that it is part of being human to keep doing stuff that contributes to life. We can't help ourselves.

One time I heard the Saturday Night Live comedienne, Julia Sweeney, talk about her brother's last moments. His body had given out due to cancer, but he was having trouble letting go. They had to call in a death therapist who talked him through it. At the end of the session she told him to imagine that he was on a trampoline jumping up... and down... up... and down... up... and down, and now imagine jumping off.... and he died. I've always felt that one has to, except in cases of devastating trauma, voluntarily let go of life. That otherwise one can always force oneself to breathe one more breath. Ms. Sweeney's story gives some credence to that.

Right now as long as today is today, I can keep breathing. It may be almost all I feel I can do sometimes, but it is enough to allow me to pray,

Sveti Boge, Sveti Krepki, Sveti Bessmertniy, Pumiluy nos.
Slava Ottsu, i Sinu, i Svetomo Duhu

nynje

prisnw

vjeki

vjekwv"

amin'

I found a new pronunciation page for Slavonic prayers. I put it with the others I mentioned recently in a new link category, Slavonic helps.

That which must be unsung

2009-10-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

Why is it that it isn't romantic to write about the internet? We can rhapsodize about letters and books, extolling the qualities of the paper, parchment, binding, the stamp, the handwriting, etc. But to write about pixels, buttons, screens, or wireless, satellite, or dsl connections seems inhuman. I've even heard about typewriters being sentimentalized, electric and manual. But not computers. I suppose one could say that it's because the hand actually touches the paper that goes into an electric typewriter, and the copy is printed more deliberately and personally by a manual push of the button. The envelopes have to be individually stuffed even if address labels are used. These are things that we connect with on a very human level. But the internet and cell phone transmissions aren't physically tangible in the same way. They belong to the immaterial. To electrons and positive and negative charges. They are more like fluorescent lights. An incandescent light, though less personal and organic than a candle or kerosene lamp, still has a warming flame. Fluorescent lights are phosphorescent gas. I think.

But I wont vilify electronic pixels, radio transmissions, and fluorescent lights. They still illumine content. We can still connect with the content. It's just a more gnostic connection, and we do have an invisible intangible element to us. Electronic warmth is still warmth. It is more efficiently transmitted across space and time. The content may not warm us as much or as long, but any warmth is more than nothing. Not that people before these devices weren't warmed. Perhaps they went outside and felt the sun, smelled the earth, and beheld the green leaves more for that necessary warmth. But today most of us can't buy food and shelter if we spend the necessary time doing that for our health. We are imprisoned by our technology, and instead subsist on its paler light. But there is still a person on the other end of that dim light. And that person can warm you with content about God, love, and Orthodoxy so that when you do go outside or to Church, your senses can be more informed. Maybe it's not best, but it's what some of us do.

Zombieland

2009-10-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

Dispassionate or apathetic coping skills?

Nerd guy uses boyscout type rules to survive the zombies. He critically analyzes each situation and applies the appropriate rule, then continues his search for a zombieless place. He is the reluctant warrior.

Tough guy kills zombies as catharsis. He's angry and he takes it out on the zombies. Nerd guy realizes that he must let tough guy vent (another addition to his list of rules), or he'll get it aimed at him. I still say he's dispassionate or apathetic about the zombies. He seems to care less about them, he's just using them as opportunities to vent.

Pretty girl long ago realized that anything is permitted in her independent quest for her sister's and her own survival. Instead of destroying things, she leaves them behind.

Little sister is along for the ride and trusts big sister. Sort of like nerd guy.

All are searching for a zombieless place when they meet. The developing relationships between them are worth the gore.

But if tough guy needs something to violently vent at, what would he do if he found a zombieless place? I suppose he would seek a more positive thing to replace that which made him upset in the first place. If he didn't have the zombies though, would he have gotten over the loss and been able to move on?

Nerd guy, with his seeming calm, had previously been immersed in a video game, so his calm could be attributed to the catharsis of virtually killing things in World of War Craft.

Catharsis is set up to be that which enables a person to purge the effects of negative things in their lives. Depression seems to be what happens when those negative effects are kept inside. Healing is seen to take place when a person is able to verbalize their pain, but sometimes a physical action is seen to be helpful too. Is it relative? I have heard that watching Saving Private Ryan was cathartic to veterans of WWII who had never told anyone of the horrors of war. They had kept it in their whole lives. Having the story told by someone else made them cry. Perhaps they took the nobler course. The course of those who patiently wait and then relief comes finally from another source.

But is it possible to be affect-less when painful things are inside? I believe there is a problem of rage and depression in the WWII generation. This has had a cultural effect that could explain the baby boomers of the '60's and my generation, generation X. Not to be too reductionist, but I believe that many of these men, not just the veterans but the ones who were a bit older and younger than they, took out their rage at home, and many of the women superficially dealt with it by denying it which caused them not to relate realistically to others, including their kids. There are other extenuating circumstances, but in talking to my peers, I have noticed similar dysfunction in their families, and one psychologist has written a book about the family dynamics of that generation. I haven't read this book, but a client of his told me some basic things, not all of the nature that I related above.

But if one is killing things virtually, in video games and in stories, isn't one participating in the act to some extent? Plato seems to believe this, and that it contributes to unhealthy passion in one's own life. He concedes though that since there is an innate charm to stories, that it's okay if one doesn't let ones self validate the vicarious experience. I take this to mean that one should not wish revenge and destruction to be had on any real people or things. Perhaps then one can be relieved at the cessation of the causes of pain by attributing the cause to spiritual forces such as demons. It is easy to imagine that the zombies are demons, and that the person they took over is essentially gone. And are we not to be ruthless with demons? The nerd guy even says to one of the newly turned zombies that he realizes that they are sick and that their zombie insatiable cannibalistic behavior is not something that they would normally do. Yet they have to be stopped. The question of self-preservation is brought up, and based on the premise in the movie, it is pointless to sacrifice ones self for the zombie because that person has ceased to exist and if they have their way with you now, you will be forced to become a zombie yourself and perpetuate the illness. Resistance is the only option.

This raises the question of giving up on people. If we look to history, it seems that certain people had to be stopped and that they were not going to repent but continue on a path that would destroy all in their wake. The people who have stopped these destructive people are considered heroes. There are also instances where people have been vilified and destroyed wrongfully. Nowadays people are questioning who were the villains and who were the heroes and coming up with conflicting answers. I suppose people have always disagreed on this, but there is a consensus about Hitler especially that dominates thinking. All of us have to choose what we will allow near our lives and those of the ones we love. These choices are often painful. And what about if someone else has drawn a line between you? Then what to do with the pain? Nice people don't want to hurt others, so do they sock a pillow, go shopping, eat a tub of ice cream, pelt someone in an online forum debate, watch Zombieland, take it out on family members or gossip in a way that makes them temporarily feel better? Is it really possible to hold it in without one of these or another choice of outlets? I think we all engage in these from time to time. This probably makes up a lot of the content of our guilt and confessions to our priest.

Another choice is to escape it all in beautiful things. But we can't seem to escape for very long. Still, I think it is important to get away from the cycle and look at something beautiful in silence or in peace.

But it is likely we will also watch or read something where catharsis is taking place. Perhaps we can grieve and have compassion on the pain of our times that tempts us, if that is how we are going to categorize the reaction, to participate in it. Lord have mercy.

Henry Poole is Here

2009-10-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Henry Poole is Here stars Luke Wilson, brother of Owen Wilson, as a terminally ill man who is trying to resolve his life by moving back into the neighborhood where he grew up. His Catholic new neighbor notices that the new paint job to his house has left a stain that she thinks is the face of God. He is not a believer, and her persistence with venerating his exterior wall causes a lot of the tension in the movie.

****

The mini bio at imdb quotes Luke as saying,

[On his quirks]: I have this weird thing where I feel exhilarated when I cast things off in my life. Let things go. Even things that are important to me. Sometimes I know I’m making the wrong decision, but I do it anyway. Like, I just lost this watch that really meant a lot to me. I bought it after Bottle Rocket (1996). The first nice thing I ever bought for myself and I lost it. Yet I have this feeling of being glad it’s gone. I don’t know why.

At the end of the movie, when it seems his character is getting something he wants, I was disappointed that I didn’t sense that it was really what he wanted. I think he was supposed to be happy with it, but after reading the above and another quote about how Luke himself handles relationships, I think he really struggles with this. I believe Chris McCandless would relate.

Perhaps it comes from feeling deprived of something necessary, then dreaming about something that should replace it, attaining the new thing and then feeling empty. After deciding that no earthly thing can fill the void or ease the longing, a period of anti-materialism and detatchment can ensue. Like Luke said at the end of the bio page, I don’t think this is depression. Maybe it’s seeing that earthly things don’t satisfy our deepest longings, and gaining a sense that giving things up is the way towards attaining something higher, as Plato might say.

Four feeble attempts at levity

2009-09-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

If there are fifty-two weeks in a year, how many strongs are there?

One hundred and seventy-nine blind men go into a crowded bar and then can’t find a place to sit.

If fifteen days is half a month, and six months is half a year, how many years are worth halving?

Falling in love is like falling into a river, but you’re happier about it for some reason.

Thoughts and Things

2009-09-11T17:42:00.000-07:00

I just finished exporting these posts of a more personal nature from my other blog which used to be called, "Words, Words, Words", and is now renamed, "Studying the Classics". These posts now designated under September 11th, actually begin around June 2007 and end September 2009. I'm not sure where this blog will go, or if I will share it more publicly yet.

Words, words, words 3

2009-09-11T16:42:00.001-07:00

Yesterday at the Church picnic I was asked what comes before and after "Words, words, words" in Hamlet. I remembered Hamlet's frustration with words, but not the exact context. So today I reread that part of the scene and it gives me more questions than answers about words and mental turmoil. I am also thinking of similarities between Chris McCandless and Hamlet. By the way, the movie Into the Wild either chronicles Chris' poetry or poetically speculates the nature of Chris' thoughts, which I find similar to Hamlet's, or at least springing from a similar source. Chris deals with the turmoil differently though (see again the warning in the last post about it being rated R. I wish I'd known the number of scenes to fast forward so that I would have kept the remote more handy).

Back to Hamlet, I am intrigued by this statement,

What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET

Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS

What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET

Between who?

LORD POLONIUS

I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.

I suppose Hamlet is leveling the playing field. He is worried about slandering his elders, but is denying that decrepit age makes them above the law.

I also found some interesting and concise interpretations of Hamlet here. I like this one by Professor Ross the best, even though the feminist and post-modern ones also intrigue me. Lord have mercy.

•This is a play about not knowing, or being certain, how to behave.

–Customs seem to determine what is right and wrong, not the other way around.

–Hamlet wonders about Purgatory, mourning, dating, fencing, remarriage, succession, action, acting, drinking, custom itself, believing a ghost.

–See Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead for film approach to these issues.

Frida Kahlo

2009-09-11T16:39:00.001-07:00

Last night George and I spent a few hours learning about Frida Kahlo, a Mexican surrealist/realist painter. I do not want to judge her morality here (which was similar to the Bohemian artists and writers of the 1920's), and instead want to think about this aspect of her life,

On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus when the vehicle collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries in the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. An iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which seriously damaged her reproductive ability.

Although she recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she was plagued by relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She underwent as many as thirty-five operations as a result of the accident, mainly on her back, her right leg and her right foot.

Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932, by Carl Van Vechten.

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention away from the study of medicine to begin a full-time painting career. The accident left her in a great deal of pain while she recovered in a full body cast; she painted to occupy her time during her temporary state of immobilization. Her self-portraits became a dominant part of her life when she was immobile for three months after her accident. Kahlo once said, "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best." Her mother had a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed, and her father lent her his box of oil paints and some brushes.^[8]

Drawing on personal experiences, including her marriage, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works often are characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." (from Wikipedia, bold mine)

I am drawn to stories about pain, probably since my accident when I was 12 which left me immobilized in the hospital for almost a month, not to mention other heartbreaks including divorce, miscarriage and a still-birth. I find Frida's portraits refreshingly honest. She has been criticized for being self-absorbed, but I am satisfied with her reasoning given above. There is also a certain morbidity about her paintings. I can't completely say that she despaired, though there are statements that would point to that, but there are other evidences that she did not stay in that frame of mind. Her last painting of watermelons bears the caption, Viva la Vida.

The Ochlophobist's 'book club' suggestion, Orthodox Thinking on Theosis, has the title "Self-Transcendence" in the "contents". On the surface (I'm looking forward to reading what Mr. Russell says about it), I can interpret this title to promote a dialectical relationship with the idea of self, where one loses ones self. We can rest in the attitudes suggested in the Orthodox prayers, which can have a self-negating posture, but I think if we were to count the number of "I" pronouns in the Psalms, and even in many of the other prayers, penitential though they be, there would be a lot of them. We are to be honest about ourselves, not totally forgetting ourselves and our lives. Monastics tend to try to forget their past life, and make a complete break with it. They take on a completely new name, part with their possessions and heirlooms, and do not wish to be asked about their past before the monastery, after a certain period anyway. Probably the later vows. Frida painted a dialectical relationship with her self, not of negation by any means, but one that showed how her husband Diego saw her, the Frida he liked, and the Frida he didn't.

This was her perception of how he saw her anyway. I suppose that is what Frida did best, she painted her perceptions from her point of view. I don't want to invalidate this. She struggled to not be consumed by her pain. She struggled very long and intensely. She neither denied it, nor let it completely blind her to the beauty in the world, though she was blinded to beauty immediately after her accident. She said at that time that there was nothing beyond the ugliness of the world, and if there was she would be able to see it. She didn't stay there though. Maybe that's why she was spared, she learned to see the beauty again, even in herself. Her self-portraits can be pretty harsh, but there is a certain acknowledgment of the divine spark, a certain retained comeliness of form.

One painting in particular describes external, imposed pain pretty well, as do the ones of her miscarriages. [I've removed it here, but if you click on one of the other paintings it will take you to her gallery, which can be graphic]

I can't help but be reminded of the cross and the cup of suffering that our Lord accepted. Frida was not ignorant of Christ's sufferings, even though she rejected the Catholicism of her upbringing. Her exposure to Mexican religious art also influenced her paintings.

Perhaps though, when one has suffered, it is easy to get caught up in a persecution/Messiah complex. On one hand this can draw one to Christ, who also suffered, but it is probably easy to slip into the delusion that one is innocent, sinless, and undeserving, or worse, Divine, as He. I sort of like people with Messiah complexes though because they can try harder to act like Christ, with whom they identify. Frida built a garden of Eden out of the home of her childhood, and gave art classes there, Bohemian though they were. But we are not sinless. We can't be naked in the garden. Should she have been so naked in her sufferings as well? One thing being in the hospital does, is that it strips you naked. Indeed even during the bus collision, all of her clothes were torn away and she lay naked and impaled on the ground. During surgery one is stripped bare, and in recovery, there are those stupid gowns, barely on, which the staff draws back with too-familiar ease and entitlement. Necessary evil?

How can one pretend modesty after that? Once one has been involuntarily exposed to the world, what's the use of covering up? If I had had complete control of who to trust to expose myself to, the list would have included two people only. As an infant, a trusted child care provider, who loved me, and then no one until the husband of my choice who would also deliver my baby. To keep that list so short, should I risk my and my babies' lives? I'm going to leave the door open on that one. If they had been the only two, I probably wouldn't be blogging. But since there have been many breaches of protection of my privacy, I want to take control of the information I suppose. That's what Farah Fawcett did when she was diagnosed with cancer. Since the National Enquirer told it wrong, she decided to tell it and produced her own documentary chronicling the last few years of her life and her struggle. I'm glad for her and Frida's sharing of their pain. Frida said that she felt we are all united. When one expresses ones self openly, one is voluntarily inviting a certain type of communion. Oh yes, it was related in the PBS documentary that Frida became communist because of a mistaken idea that it would bring about community, where she wouldn't be alone in her suffering. I'm going to cut her and Farah some slack and pray for mercy on their souls.

If only Chris McCandless could have met Fr. Seraphim Rose

2009-09-11T16:36:00.000-07:00

He headed to the Alaskan wilderness as an extreme ascetic forsaking money, companionship, and the comforts of "civilization". In his light backpack however, he brought along Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Dr. Zhivago. Sean Penn made a movie about Chris McCandless called Into the Wild (which is rated R for occasional language and about 3 nudist scenes), based on the book by John Krakaur. Mr. Krakaur's original essay about the innocent is available, but don't click on it if you don't want the ending given away. Incidentally, the author makes a comparison to 5th and 6th century Irish monks who tried to escape civilization in Iceland, then Greenland.

Weekend Happenings

2009-09-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

Friday the kids and I went to Church to peel, cube, and boil 100 lbs of potatoes, which were then mixed with cheese, and scooped into little balls, with around 14 people.

The kids brought home some of their friends and we finally beat the 4-player N-64 Tetris game which was begun 10 years ago. The last of the seven wonders was St. Basil's Cathedral! That was cool. Then we watched Tommy Boy, which I'd never seen all the way through before. We had to fast-forward more parts than the kids remembered. The deer scene brought back the trauma I experienced earlier this summer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiG4SGByY-8]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1lBAjxDrmo&feature=related]

Saturday morning we went back to Church, rolled out pie dough, ran it through the pasta machine and cut it into discs which were then pinched around the potato cheese filling. A team effort of about 25 people produced 195 dozen Peroghi! One more work day and we'll have enough for our annual Christmas bake sale.

So with all that, Vespers, Liturgy, and Half Priced books (just jr. fiction), and returning #2 son to UD (and the friends to their home), I've had a pretty full weekend.

There Will Be Blood

2009-09-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

This past weekend the older ones watched There Will Be Blood with George and I. The credits revealed that it is based on Upton Sinclair's novel, Oil. Wikipedia reveals that the movie is only very loosely based on the book, and that the screen writer only admits to basing it on the first hundred or so pages. I had drawn all sorts of conclusions about Mr. Sinclair watching the movie, but now I have to mix them in with the producers of the movie, as well as my own personal experience and opinions and those of others.

I have read a few critiques from Orthodox bloggers recently on materialistic or scientific cause and effect. Probably much of "secular" psychology is based on it. I have said before that I'm a bit Freudian in my analyses of people, but I think I need to clarify that by relating it to the idea of cause and effect of childhood relationships with family and other influential people, rather than on erotic tendencies. There Will Be Blood is pretty heavy on scientific cause and effect, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, theory, mainly in the relationship between fathers and sons. I appreciated the depth of thought and the acknowledgment of how we treat others will affect them, unto the next generations, but the effects were too mechanical, too copy cat. While we may build up steam after being traumatized, and explode on others to a similar degree, I think our reactions are a little more varied, taking into account other influences in our lives, than how they were portrayed in this movie.

Also, there were no efforts towards forgiveness. People seemed unable to control their reactions, and had no other options presented to them, especially not by the cooky churchpeople, who sang a hymn I know and still believe in, "Take it to the Lord in Prayer". However, it did acknowledge complexity in people, such as what to do with inconsistent behavior in parents. The little boy in the movie is portrayed as having the most excusable actions. I imagine that he represents Mr. Sinclair and the screen play writer. We always imagine ourselves the protagonist. But sometimes, maybe we are. The boy has to deal with his greedy, cruel, alcoholic father, who also pays him a lot of positive attention. But the boy knows something isn't right, you can see it in his face, even though he barely speaks throughout the whole movie. When he feels he is being replaced by a long, lost half-brother, he becomes jealous and tries to burn the guy and the stuff that connects him to his father - but there's something not right between his father and the brother, too. When he kicks and hits his father after he was abandoned to a boarding school, his father deserved it, truly. He had been used and replaced. Towards the end, I believe that the son is sincere and correct in being grateful that he had learned a trade from his father, but that it was time for him to move on to start his own business, deliberately out of his father's territory. But his father was paranoid about competition and abandonment and abused him. The son kept his cool and his dignity and rightly walked out of the room. But he did get a pretty good barb in on his way out. The barb had to do with not wanting to be biologically related to his father. That went too far, I thought. I don't think that biological relation has to carry with it the sins of the father. It may predispose one to certain temptations, but I think they can be overcome and the bloodline redeemed. The movie was too fatalistic in presenting effects from influential causes.

There were a few bones throne to the father. Apparently his father, the grandfather, had a mistress, and reading between the lines, he was raised in poverty and probably was not treated very well. I get this mainly from how he sleeps on the floor.

Other than that, the experimental soundtrack noise was quite irksome. The cinematography was really good, and conveyed a tactile sense of being connected to the thentofore unaltered earth. Daniel Day Lewis is a phenomenal actor in everything I've seen him in, beginning with "My Left Foot".

Wikipedia talks about Mr. Sinclair's political activism and socialism. He vilified capitalism, which is very evident in the movie. I recognize abuses caused by greedy profiteering, but I do not idealize the opposite ideology. Any ideologue can be abusive. Wikipedia also says that the book focuses more on the son than the father. I think I'll put it on my very long Amazon wish-list.

Who'd have thought?

2009-09-11T16:19:00.001-07:00

That if teenage boys put a firecracker inside one of a dozen eggs that was accidentally left out overnight, through the hole made with my Pysanki egg drill, with the wick sticking out, that it could explode safely in their hands, or in the air, or even under water?!

The Hills Are Alive

2009-09-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

It was over 100 degrees, as it has been for days and days, when Maxim, three of the kids and I drove the scenic route to Kendalia, via Comfort. The hills were brown, but the valleys were holding on to green for dear life. I wonder if the pecan grove was irrigated, or if the stream along side it keeps the deep roots watered. As uncomfortable as the heat is, and wishing that things weren't so parched, including the driest Paluxy River I've ever seen (though this condition enabled us to see the dinosaur tracks better), I do not find reason to despair. 'The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God lasts forever', and so do the hills and the rocks. Forever means in the lifetimes of trees and anyone else I know (except the dinosaurs). These hills have been there since I found Jesus at camp in Comfort when I was 15. I've tried twice on my way to Kendalia to drive by that camp, but it always takes longer than I think, and I don't get passed the triangle of highways at Comfort's entrance because either the burial service or Vespers is about to start at the Monastery. I don't despair at this either. Just getting to the edges assures me that it was not all a dream. The hills are still there even though much of the grass isn't.

As it turns out Vespers wasn't served Monday evening because of construction at the Monastery in preparation for a Bishop visit. So we walked down to the dried up creek and began to climb the hills on the other side, the dry grass noisily cracking under our shoes. Shortly, the girls said their Vespers shoes were hurting their feet. I wore tennis shoes with my dress and wanted to keep going over the next hill in the heat, but I had to turn back. Poor me, the tragedian. When we got back the girls made friends with another visiting girl between their ages and had a good time talking to her and teaching her to knit till it was time to visit Jamie and head back home. People first, hills around highways, camps, and monasteries second, I suppose.

(p.s. the video at the above link shows how the Paluxy normally looks.)

Holy Archangels and St. Peter the Aleut Summer Camp

2009-09-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

I was at Holy Archangels Monastery in Kendalia two Saturdays ago visiting little Jamie's resting place with his family. I loved being there and feeling the peace at his graveside. It was palpable, quiet, and still.

It was not so peaceful on the way back when I hit a deer. Thankfully no one but the deer was hurt, except for my car which is still in the shop. The rental car is a Kia Rondo, which has a bigger hatchback area than my Matrix. Monday, I and a few of the kids will return to the Monastery in the Rondo with our dear blog friend, Maxim, who's coming down for a visit. Please pray that he'll have a peaceful time with no traumatic run-ins with the wildlife.

On another note, our two eligible kids had a very fun time at the annual St. Peter the Aleut Camp at the YMCA facility at near-by Possum Kingdom Lake last week. I went ahead and had Jordan drive my damaged Matrix to camp two Mondays ago since there wasn't time to get the damage assessed before then, while I drove his car. My door wouldn't open and he is sprier than me at crawling over the middle console. When we picked the kids up from camp last Friday I had a Mitsubishi Galant (due to last week's limited availability of cars in our price range), which was nice, but too low to the ground. The cheaper Rondo's seats are much higher and easier to get into.

Jamie's Priest, Father John from the new mission in Tyler (he gave the homily, "The Kingdom of Heaven Belongs to Such as These" on the header above), and his two kids came to camp this year, as did Father Seraphim with his son from the ROCOR Church in Dallas, and the two returning Priests, Father John with his Matushka Lydia from Dallas, and Fr. Antonio from Pharr. Matushka Patricia, Father John Whiteford's wife, also brought a carload of kids from Houston and was one of the counselors, as were a few other parents, Fr. Antonio's older daughters, and another friend of my boys. The kids love getting together with other Orthodox from around mostly Texas every year for services, talks, and the many fun activities. It's rare for them to have 50 Orthodox peers. We also enjoyed having a house full of campers as well as Fr. Antonio the weekends before and after camp.

Our Trip to Colorado

2009-09-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

I would like to write about this past week in one post even though the more organized part of me could compartmentalize the different elements and themes into several different posts, or at least do a chronological, journal type series. Instead I am inspired by the haphazard cataclysm of the Rockies to just throw it all together and let the dramatic diagonal strata be exposed for what they are. The resultant dust will either settle or be washed downstream, but it will not disappear.

Above the strata, dust, flora and fauna stand my husband and children. Now that number one son is approaching 21, and does not really like road trips, he was left behind to take care of the subterranean homestead and the omni-terrestrial Church services. The homestead is subterranean because before the flood, the ground it now stands upon was buried. Texas is part of the great drainage system east of the Great Divide, which we crossed. I would like to read Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything to be better informed, but barely south of my house is a famous deposit of dinosaur tracks that they say are embedded in what used to be the Texas coast. If that is so, since then more deposits of dirt have extended it perhaps through the great explosions of Yellowstone volcanoes. This must have been pre-flood, because since then layers of sediment have solidified, and great tracks of it washed away by the Flood and subsequent rains, leaving too flat valleys for any other explanation between fingered, stratified ridges. At least west of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex where I live. East of here is more flat, but greener as the drainage becomes more concentrated. These ridges, plains, and valleys make a gradual, leveling ascent to the great plains in the Texas panhandle. Palo Duro Canyon, 30 miles south of Amarillo, reveals a not too modest crack in the high plains with beautiful layers, especially the red sandstone which makes the Red River, which separates us from Oklahoma, red.

Number two son did not play in the canyon with the rest of us because he was completing his nine days at the Gunnison, Colorado Observatory. His physics group won a grant to travel there to set up new equipment to confirm the existence of planets in other solar systems. It took a few days to calibrate the equipment, and then just when they were ready, rain and clouds prevented any observations through the telescopes for the rest of his time. Before the rain though, Jared saw the milkiest Milky Way he had ever seen through his contact lensed eyes. They still had work to do with some sort of calculations, and additionally had fun scoping out the area with his comrades before we arrived to pick him up. This made him an excellent restaurant and hiking guide for us. We did not get to meet his classmates because google maps plotted the wrong directions to the observatory. We spent an hour driving around in the beautiful mountains south of Gunnison while his friends said good-bye and packed up. One of them let him copy her trip pictures onto his flash drive, so at least we got to see them that way.

After picking Jared up from his hotel, we spent a day hiking around Gunnison and Crested Butte. By then the rain had cleared and the temperature warmed a bit. I am amazed at how warm 60 degrees feels at 12,000 feet. That night we had delicious local pizza and told Jared about recent events, obliquely referred to in my post the beginning of the week before. The heaviness has not gone, but was more easily born at higher elevations in the thinner air and almost overwhelming surroundings. In our winter trip through the Appalachians, which was preceded by a lets-ignore-everything reunion, the surroundings completely absorbed my attention. The more dramatic Rockies were not able to drown everything out. Though they did quiet them a good bit. The Rockies were loud enough, however, to distract me from The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesteron. We had gone through the first 60 pages in the Texas plains, which accommodate audible.com embellishment. The Rockies wouldn't have it. This way Jared had time to catch up on those 60 pages, as I had also brought the book and was reading along to help my concentration, which has been very scattered since last week. We all, except for Rebecca who had other things to do, listened together for the remaining five hours after Amarillo coming home. We had about half an hour to discuss it for the remainder of the drive. We didn't like some of the dualistic/ying yang theology nor the Alice in Wonderland type ending (see Aaron's clarifying comment), but thought the characters were pretty intelligently done. The initial confrontations were very engaging, but I thought some of the revelations disappointing. He paid homage to women at the very beginning and ending of the story with what I guess is a Beatrice-type allusion. This balances out his emphasis on and justification for the war-like actions of men, not that I agree with the nature of these balances or justifications. All of this can slightly be spun in one's own mind regarding spiritual warfare with one's own sins, but the way the God-type character is depicted makes that a very generous stretch. Still, I like the way Chesterton works out his philosophy in fiction, even if I don't agree with it. He made a comment in the preface about the story being written in a play-like manner. I notice this with C.S. Lewis too. There's a lot of cutting to the chase. I like that this story can be read in one trip to Colorado, or rather Amarillo, and back, unlike David Copperfield which was four times longer. But I don't know if I would have liked Lewis or Chesterton to lengthen theirs, nor Dickens to shorten his. They are what they are in the way they are written.

I think I'll post pictures next time.

First-fruits

2009-09-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

My first tiny, cute, and as it turns out, sour, strawberry

Two tomatoes on the way!

And the Mother's Day chilies (minus oh so busy at college, Jared. It seemed like a milestone however to get my first remote Mother's day phone call.)

In Memory of Mara

2009-09-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

I have not seen my ex-Mother In Law in over 11 years. My children, Ben and Rachel, have not seen her in about 6 years, but yesterday their dad called to say that she had just died after a long illness. She was a very private woman, and the only Catholic in her household. When I knew her I was staunchly Protestant, but I played "Ave Maria" on her antique piano one time and opened my mind to it just a little. She went to Mass pretty often by herself and did not pressure her family to do likewise. She and her husband built a house from scratch in the country and restored antique oak furniture. I very much admired them for that. When her son and I had difficulties, I wanted her to be more active in helping me, but she did not see things the same way I did. Maybe she was right. However, I'm sadder than I expected at her death. Last night Ben chanted this prayer slower than he usually chants, in his lovely bass voice, for his departed Grandmother:

Chosen Intercessor and High Priest, Who hast laid down Thy soul for the salvation of the sinful world and hast given us authority to be children of God, and to dwell in the never-ending day of Thy Kingdom, grant forgiveness and eternal joy to Thy servant who has fallen asleep, for whom we cry to Thee in supplication. Jesus, All-merciful Judge, vouchsafe Thy servant Mara the sweetness of Paradise.

O holy Guardian Angel given by the Lord: Come pray for thy servant, whom thou didst accompany, preserve, and direct on all the paths of life, and cry with us to the All-compassionate Saviour:

Jesus, tear up the handwriting of the sins of Thy servant Mara.

Jesus, heal the wounds of her soul.

Jesus, grant that there not be bitter memories of her on earth.

Jesus, for the sake of this have mercy on those who were grieved and offended by her.

Jesus, cover her imperfections with the radiant garment of Thy redemption.

Jesus, gladden her by Thy loving-kindness.

Jesus, Ineffable, Great and Wondrous- reveal Thyself to her.

Jesus, All-merciful Judge, vouchsafe Thy servant Mara the sweetness of Paradise.

Lazarus Saturday, Remembering Jamie after 40 days

2009-09-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

John 11:14 Then Jesus said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵ And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.”
¹⁶ Then Thomas, who is called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”

¹⁷ So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles^[a] away. ¹⁹ And many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.
²⁰ Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him, but Mary was sitting in the house. ²¹ Now Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.”
²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
²⁴ Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. ²⁶ And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
²⁷ She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

³² Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
³³ Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. ³⁴ And He said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”
³⁵ Jesus wept. ³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”
³⁷ And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”

³⁸ Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. ³⁹ Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.”
⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying.^[d] And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. ⁴² And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” ⁴³ Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” ⁴⁴ And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.” (emphasis mine)

This has always been a confusing story to me. Why would Jesus deliberately take His time? Why did He tarry when He could have prevented Lazarus' death? Just so that people could believe? Belief was more important than saving someone's life, and was worth the emotional roller coaster? It is comforting that Christ was troubled and wept. He enters into our sorrow. Four days. I would have been pretty upset at Jesus by then if He were a close friend and I knew and believed in what He could do. People who lose loved ones even now get mad at God. We know He could have prevented it and very often does for other people.

Some suffer in order to increase their faith. The fact that Lazarus was dead for four days, longer than any other person who had been raised from the dead is significant too. Christ shows that there is no amount of time that is too long to be raised again. Four days is too long for a mother to wait. A whole earthly lifetime is too long to wait to be rejoined with a loved one. Much too long. And Jesus wept for this fact.

I remember the cloth over Jamie's (as well as my son Isaac's) face, and I can't wait, but God defiantly makes us anyway, till it is removed and his body is set free from its confines at Holy Archangel's Ephraimite Greek Orthodox Monastery. Aionia Mneme, Kyrie Eleison. Memory Eternal, Lord have mercy.

Flowers and Lizards

2009-09-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

This Purple Shamrock has survived my not-so-green thumb since it was given to me nine years ago when Isaac died. It's a mercy.

This is one of two Bluebonnets that are growing in my yard after a baggie full of seeds from a dear parishoner were broadcast last fall. Bluebonnets can be hard to grow as they're pretty picky about soil. They like Mary's yard and the steep embankments of Texas highways however.

I'm glad to have a couple of indigenous Mesquite trees in my yard as well. I've heard that cows distributed Mesquite pods in Texas during the cattle drives and that they weren't here before then.

This desensitized lizard lives in our backyard.

Lament not for me

2009-09-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

After the Panikhida Sunday night I shared with the parents that when my baby died I was not yet Orthodox, and so he did not get to have an Orthodox funeral. I told them I was experiencing this with them, and in many ways it felt like it, though I'm sure the pain is not as acute as it was when the loss was still new in my case. I have been hungry for these services and to know what it was like for them as Orthodox. When my son died I had a confidence that he went to be with the Lord, but the Orthodox services have the clout to back that up and the poetry to express it well.

Father Basil had told us at Church Sunday morning that the funeral service for an infant is different than for an adult because babies are considered Saints since they have not sinned.

One of the monks at the monastery where Jamie is buried said, "It is rare to have a funeral where you have no doubt where the person is."

Here are some excerpts from The Service for the Burial of an Infant (St. John of Damascus Orthodox Mission),

Let us not lament the infant, but rather mourn for ourselves who sin always, that we may be delivered from Gehenna.

Thou hast deprived the infant of earthly delights, O Master. As the Righteous Judge, do Thou count him worthy of heavenly good things.

He hath taken thee from the earth and numbereth thee with the choir of the saints, hath shown thee a citizen of Paradise, O truly blessed infant. (from Ode 4)

"Lament not for me, for I have in no way begun to be meet for weeping, But rather weep always for yourselves who have sinned, O kinsmen and friends," the dead infant cries out, "that, tested you not receive torment." (from Ode 5)

Thou hast deprived Thine infant of earthly good things, that Thou mayest show him a partaker of Thy Heavenly good things, in-asmuch as he has not transgressed Thy divine command. We glorify the boundless depth of Thy judgment, O Good One. (from Ode 6)

With Thy light, o Word, do Thou illumine the face of Thine infant, who, in the Faith, has now been translated unto Thee at an untimely age, and sings unto Thee: O Lord God, blessed art Thou.

Thy parting now appears to be a cause of sorrow unto them that love thee, but for thee, in truth, obtains joy and gladness. For thou, O infant, inheritest eternal life.

Behold my affliction, O Virgin, which the multitude of my evils have brought upon me. And before I depart hence, by thy maternal prayers grant me refreshment, that God may be merciful to me. (from Ode 7)

In his rage the Chaldean tyrant ordered the furnace to be heated sevenfold for the Godly Ones. But having seen them saved by a better might, he cried aloud unto their Maker and Redeemer: You Children, bless; you Priests, sing; you people, highly exalt Him unto all the ages.

Refrain: Give rest to the soul of the infant, O Lord.

May Christ establish thee in the bosom of Abraham, in the abodes of rest, where is the joy of them that ever keep festival, in the places of release where living water is, Who dist become an infant for the sake of us who are crying out unto Him unceasingly: You Priests, sing; you people highly exalt Him unto the ages.

The constant memory of thy parting, in truth, has become for us a cause of sorrows and tears. For before tasting the beautiful things of this life, thou hast departed the earth and the bosom of thy parents. But Abraham's bosom shall receive thee as an infant that had no part in any defilement.

Let us bless the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord.

"Why do you mourn me, the infant that has been transplanted hence?" he cries out invisibly, as he lies dead. "For there is no cause for grief. For the joy of the righteous is appointed unto infants who have committed no deeds worthy of tears. For they sing unto Christ: You Priests, sing; you people, highly exalt Him unto the ages!" (from Ode 8 )

O Christ Who dist become an Infant, yet without change; Who, of Thine own will, didst unite Thyself unto the Cross and didst behold the maternal affliction of her that gave Thee birth: Do Thou ease the sadness and cruel grief of the faithful parents of the dead infant, that we may glorify Thy majesty. (from Ode 9)

***

In addition to these comforting words which tell us the state of our dearly departed infant, the Orthodox funeral service speaks to the grief of the mourning loved ones, especially the parents, as Reader David Bryan also brought out today.

No one is more pitiful than a mother,/
and no one is more wretched than a father,
for their inward beings are troubled/
when they send forth their infants before them./
Great is the pain of their hearts because of their children,/
and still more when these are pleasing of speech,/
as they call to remembrance/
their words with the song://
Alleluia.

For often before the grave they beat their breasts and say:/
"O my son, and sweetest child!/
Hearest thou not what thy mother says?/
Behold, also, the womb that bore thee./
Why speakest thou not with us,/
as once thou didst speak?/
But thout art silent/
and speaketh not with us://
Alleluia!"

"O God, God, Who hast summoned me;/
Be Thou the consolation of my household now,/
for a great lamentation has befallen them./
For all have fixed their gaze on me,/
having me as their only-begotten one./
But do Thou, Who wast born of a Virgin Mother,
refresh the inward parts of my mother,/
and bedew the heart of my father with this://
Alleluia!"

***

The burial at Holy Archangels monastery was sad but peaceful, and the monks chanted very gently and sweetly in Greek while the breeze was blowing over us. When they were lowering the casket, a big sustained gust came and my daughter Rachel, and later Jamie's mother remarked that they thought it was a special gift. George just said that when it happened what went through his mind was, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints."

[edited to include a link to the wonderful Homily given by Fr. John at Jamie's funeral]

The Sunday of Orthodoxy

2009-09-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Today, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, is the fourth anniversary of the reception of my husband, myself, and our six children into the Holy Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ. I believe it is in large part due to the intercessions of our seventh child, Isaac, departed this life shortly before he was born on March 10th, 2000, the same day that Ben was born, but nine years later. When we buried Isaac, we had inscribed in his tombstone, "In His Care". I believe Isaac petitioned the Lord to put us into the care of the Orthodox Church to be nurtured by His Body and Blood.

Today the Church commemorates the Triumph of Orthodoxy in which the Seventh Ecumenical Council proclaimed that the Church is visible and material in the Incarnation of Christ, and that thus holy images of Christ and the Saints may be venerated, held, and kissed as one would love their prototype, as had been done by the Church since Christians departed this life.

Today after Liturgy, before the procession of Holy Icons around the Church commemorating the re-establishment of icons by the Church, there will be a Panikhida, for Baby Jamie (1/2/08 - 3/3/09) at St. Barbara's. After that we will travel to East Texas where we will be reunited with him and his family at the funeral home for another Panikhida.

This is what the family shared about him for public release, "'Jamie' was always so happy and active. We will miss his sweet personality, bright blue eyes, and dimpled smile. He brought such joy to our lives and we look forward to our reunion with him, where there will be no more parting.

May his memory be eternal."

Our very dear friends, the Reader Daniel, "Zachary" and Lindsey and their older son, Josh, moved from our parish shortly before Jamie was born and began attending the mission which our blogging friend, John "Terry", from Notes from a Common-place Book helped found. They came back to our parish to have Jamie baptized. That is when I first met John, by the way, as he traveled to St. Barbara's for the occasion. I wrote about that here. They also came back to visit several times during this past year. They were received into the Orthodox Church a few years before we were at St. Barbara's, and so their Godparents are here. In fact, Zach is my son, Jordan's, Godfather and Lindsey is my daughter, Rachel's, Godmother. Jamie's Godfather also attends our parish. Jamie was indeed a very happy, loving baby. He did not seem to have as much separation anxiety as many babies. I had the privilege just a couple of months ago at fellow parishioner and blogger (Oh Taste and See), the Reader David "Bryan's" house to hold him and appreciate his exceptionally sweet nature. The picture above says it all.

Tomorrow morning we will attend his funeral at the mission Church, St. John of Damascus, whose namesake eloquently defended icons in the Seventh Council. Then we will travel to the Holy Archangels in Kendalia, who will care for his body and pray for his soul. Our prayers are with Jamie and his dear, sweet family.

In Memory of Baby Jamie, who fell asleep in the Lord 3-3-09

2009-09-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

Commemorated on March 6

The Holy Empress Helen uncovered the Precious Cross and Nails of the Lord at Jerusalem in 326.

At the beginning of the reign of St Constantine the Great (306-337), the first Roman emperor to recognize Christianity, he and his pious mother St Helen decided to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. They also planned to build a church on the site of the Lord's suffering and Resurrection, in order to reconsecrate and purify the places connected with the Savior's death and Resurrection from the foul taint of paganism.

The empress Helen journeyed to Jerusalem with a large quantity of gold. St Constantine wrote a letter to Patriarch Macarius I (313-323), requesting him to assist her in every possible way with her task of the restoring the Christian holy places.

After her arrival in Jerusalem, the holy empress Helen began to destroy all the pagan temples and reconsecrate the places which had been defiled by the pagans.

In her quest for the Life-Creating Cross, she questioned several Christians and Jews, but for a long time her search remained unsuccessful. Finally, an elderly Hebrew named Jude told her that the Cross was buried beneath the temple of Venus. St Helen ordered that the pagan temple be demolished, and for the site to be excavated. Soon they found Golgotha and the Lord's Sepulchre. Not far from the spot were three crosses, a board with the inscription written by Pilate (John 19:19), and four nails which had pierced the Lord's Body.

Now the task was to determine on which of the three crosses the Savior had been crucified. Patriarch Macarius saw a dead person being carried to his grave, then he ordered that the dead man be placed upon each cross in turn. When the corpse was placed on the Cross of Christ, he was immediately restored to life. After seeing the raising of the dead man, everyone was convinced that the Life-Creating Cross had been found. With great joy the empress Helen and Patriarch Macarius lifted the Life-Creating Cross and displayed it to all the people standing about. (OCA.org Daily Commemoration)

***

What earthly sweetness remains unmixed with grief? What glory stands immutable on the earth?

All things are but feeble shadows, all things are most deluding dreams,

yet one moment only, and death shall supplant them all.

But in the light of Thy countenance, 0 Christ, and in the sweetness of Thy beauty, give rest to him whom Thou hast chosen,

for as much as Thou lovest mankind.

I weep and lament when I think upon death,

and behold our beauty created in the likeness of God lying in the tomb disfigured, bereft of glory and form.

0 the marvel of it! What is this mystery concerning us? Why have we been delivered to corruption? Why have we been wedded unto death?

Truly, as it is written, by the command of God Who giveth the departed rest.

- St. John of Damascus Funeral Hymns

Memory Eternal

Eggs in Different Baskets

2009-09-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

I guess -C inspired me without realizing it. I picked the pattern out of Ukrainian Easter Eggs and How We Make Them after viewing her exquisite Pysanki without remembering she had one very similar. Circular patterns feel more natural to me so I'll probably make more like it. The red one isn't dark enough in that it doesn't contrast enough with the gold, so I either should have left the egg white before drawing the lines, or I should have used a darker red than Scarlet.

The wooden egg behind it is of and from the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Juneau, Alaska.

Here are some of the ostrich eggs our authentically Carpatho-Russian Matushka does for the sale. She also teaches classes. See the St. Barbara website to the left for timely details.

Pysanki Lament

2009-09-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

The lines seemed to be working,

The colors, except the green which mottled, seemed pure,

Up until the last, the black, after which,

I dropped it. I dropped it. I green and yellow dropped it.

Forgive me. You can live here, even though you're cracked.

(H/T to Ella Fitzgerald)

Yesterday's Egg

2009-09-11T15:19:00.001-07:00

I took pictures between colors so that you could see the process better. This one shows the waxed lines that will end up being the white ones. See how it's counter-intuitive when you're making them? The one on the left is Rachel's. Again, sorry for the blurriness, it apparently focused on the crumbs on the lid.

The extra lines in the next one shows what will stay gold. The gold that you see in this picture will not stay that way. I also dabbed in some green with a Q-tip because the next layer of red will not be as bright if I were to dye the whole thing green. I could dip the egg in "orange wash", which is just orange without vinegar, to get rid of the green, but since the green will be so small, it's easier just to dab the few spots.

I didn't take an extra picture after I blocked in the green. This next one shows the extra lines and shaded parts that will stay red.

Then it's ready to be dipped in the black. You can kind of distinguish between the black dye and the black wax in this shot. The wax turns black, btw, because of the carbon changes when it's heated on the stylus. The one on the left is Rachel's finished egg, which was dipped in watered down light blue, full strength light blue, and royal blue.

And the finished egg, except for varnish.

I am not the most geometrically correct pysanki person. It is hard to draw straight lines on a curved surface, and you can't use a straight edge. My kids however are much better at line control than me. Mercifully, somehow the colors make the imperfections not so devastating. I've always been an impressionist anyway. And usually I like to make more organic pysanki of flowers, leaves and such. So far this year I've been practicing more on basic lines, but I'll probably get back to the flowers soon.

Another note on dyes. Our first year we did not buy the packaged dyes, but made our own. Traditionally in Eastern Europe, people would make dyes out of the plants that grew in their region, so each region's pysanki took on a local character in both color and design. We made brown dye out of coffee and blue dye out of blueberries. However, neither the coffee nor the blueberries were grown anywhere near my area. I don't think I have pictures of those eggs which were sold at our Church's annual spring Pysanki sale. You can click on the link for details about this year's sale.

I should have begun by sharing the history of Pysanki, which is mostly a Ukrainian and Carpatho-Russian tradition, and the nature of the symbols used. This site has most of the explanations I've heard about Mary Magdalene and about an egg representing the Resurrection. It also includes this description of how ancient pagan symbols were "baptized" when Christianity reached the region,

There is a whole vocabulary of the symbols which are used to decorate the eggs. Many of the symbols are universal, drawn from nature: the sun and stars, flowers and fruits, leaves and trees, animals, birds and fish. Sometimes the pagan meaning is simply carried over to the Christian use of the symbol, and sometimes a new layer of meaning is added. A fish is an ancient symbol of health and also a symbol of Christ himself. A pine tree represents youth and health, as well as the Christian hope of eternal life. A rooster is a symbol of fertility, and also a reminder of the cock that crowed when Peter denied his Lord. Geometrical symbols are also popular: a triangle represents the human family--father, mother, and child--as well as the Holy Trinity. An egg with forty triangles represents the forty days of Lent. Specifically Christian symbols such as the cross and a church need no interpretation.

It also has some very nice pictures.

Pysanki 2009

2009-09-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am somewhat behind on my Pysanki making this year. If I commit to one a day I should be able to come up with 26 before they are due. Our family has promised 36 so I hope the kids will be able to take up my slack. Fortunately Spring Break will occur before the due date, so maybe my talented college kids will find the time.

Here's my first four in the order of making them. So far I like #3 the best. I don't know if the blurriness is because of me, the camera, or the computer. They looked focused on the viewfinder, but not when I uploaded them.

These eggs have been cleaned with Charcoal Starter, but they have not yet been varnished, which really makes the colors pop.

There are good explanations of how to make Pysanki available to anyone who will buy a book or do a computer search. Last year I provided a link, but this year I'll try to explain it. The design is created by drawing lines or filling in shapes over the desired color with melted wax. The hardest thing to get used to, is that you create your design in opposite order from light to dark, so that the highlights come first. You start with a white egg that has been blown and cleaned through a drilled hole in the bottom. We use a German made drill and accordion "bellows" connected to a needle. The color will take better if the egg has been rinsed with distilled water and vinegar.

Many people pencil in the egg divisions which are at least horizontal and vertical into 8 parts. Most eggs will start with these 3 lines being covered with wax by using a calligraphy stylus that has been heated in a candle flame, usually beeswax, and loaded from a separate beeswax block. Then the loaded stylus is reheated to melt the wax which for a few seconds will cover the line that is gone over on the egg, before it has to be reheated in the flame. The first egg above shows that I blocked in the cross and the wheat with wax while the egg was still white. Then the egg is usually dipped in yellow, depending on the design. What is desired to stay yellow is then drawn or blocked in. The design becomes increasingly obscured by wax with each layer of color, so the end result will be a complete surprise, but I get ahead of myself. After the yellow is blocked in, the egg is dipped in the next color, which was red in the third egg. After the red was blocked in, that egg was dipped in black. After the last color has taken, the egg is carefully held over the candle, not too long or it could scorch or even explode, and not too short or the wax wont come off cleanly. The wax is wiped off with a Kleenex. All the steps make a tedious process, especially for the non-detail oriented like me, but the unveiling makes it worth it. It usually turns out better than I think because I am aware of mistakes when I am drawing on the wax, but I can't predict how forgiving the colors will be until the wax is removed. But then when one's egg is held next to a truly experienced and skilled pysanki maker's, one is not so impressed with ones self.

A brief statement about the dyes, they come from the Ukraine, I think, in powdered form in an envelope to be added to 1 1/4 cups of distilled, boiling water. Most also require a tablespoon of vinegar, which can be re-added later if the dye stops taking to the egg. Most of our people use Jet Puff Marshmallow Cream jars as they are a good width to make sure the egg gets covered when dipped. Since the eggs are hollow, they float, so a spice jar is usually placed over it to keep it down for the necessary few minutes until the desired color is achieved. By the way, one must remember to seal the hole at the bottom of the egg with melted wax so that it will not fill up with dye and continuously drip even after you think you've drained it and resealed it. A most frustrating experience.

Like reading books, Pysanki making is a very worthwhile pursuit, but I have to really put my determination hat on to begin every day. Reading and writing blogs takes no such determination, but is like falling off a log. Reading and writing well, now I do have to exert effort to not be totally reckless, which I'm sure I don't apply enough of which to do.

Torchfire Productions

2009-09-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

With the college boys home for the holidays, they had time to devote to making another movie. This one's called Red Window. Again, it's easier to see in "higher definition" available on the youtube page as it is filmed at night, albeit a moonful night...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QovXtddrEs]

Monastery pics and Shaping up

2009-09-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

I wish I'd taken more pictures on our trip, but I have mixed feelings about taking photos since my divorce. Since then even baby pictures of my kids are something to be avoided as they can also contain bad memories, or memories made bad on retrospect. Fortunately Jeremy took some videos, so we have a bit more of a record than I can share here right now. This is the view of the Church at St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in Ohio from the porch of the homey building which had the parlor and refectory where we were received.

The next two are of the Hermitage of the Holy Cross in West Virginia.

The red building is their Church which has a very warm, cozy feel inside. I usually prefer this type of Church to the ones that are often being planned at this stage.

If I may switch topics, this season after Nativity is one in which I have learned to start preparing for Forgiveness Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent. The week after our first Forgiveness Sunday 5 years ago left me a wasted lump of jello, barely able to move without excruciating leg soreness. This was after about 20 prostrations in front of our dear fellow-parishioners. I love this service as I usually feel I am failing my fellow man miserably, and it is a chance to wipe the slate clean. But since then, I've started trying to condition myself before this yearly event. However, I guess it was three years ago last fall, I came down with a terrible back spasm that left me bedridden for a week, barely able to move at all. Since then I've slowly gotten stronger, but still have to be extremely careful how I bend over. I have also favored the way I sit and move around to the point that my lower body, except for standing and walking, is very weak. I think the injury was due to unprepared lifting of heavy patients during my young adult years as a nurse. Maybe my back was also weakened by 4 epidurals during childbirth, and also a particularly stressful time that fall, because I don't remember any other event happening during that time that would have caused it. Anyway, for Christmas George gave our family a new Wii Fit that I have now tried out for the past two days. I can already feel my posture muscles and leg muscles getting stronger, and I am letting myself bend laterally for the first time in a while, as I've had to balance myself vertically to avoid back pain. The exercises are very slow and gentle and while strenuous, they are not too daunting. It's amazing how much a balance sensor in the "step" can diagnose your posture and keep you in a more healthy zone. About 10 years ago I used to do aerobics at a public location and haven't gone back, recently because of the strenuous pace you usually have to adopt at the beginning, but also because it is public and inconvenient. This program however has a very gradual buildup, and after you've achieved a certain measured proficiency you unlock new exercises and more repetitions. It also measures and graphs daily, or however often you work out, weight fluctuations. I am really impressed with how the Wii motivates the whole family to get off the couch with healthy and fun options that are not overtly seductive in nature, as many video games are. I don't really like how they portray the female personal trainer, so I chose the male, but the Wii caricature you make of yourself is shaped more like a peanuts cartoon, and your family members' Mii's participate with you even when they are not physically present. I suppose this contributes to a virtual and non-authentic life, but hopefully being in better shape will lead to something more authentic in the future. So bear with me.

Here's a demo,

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oNVIcMnZh4]

We Can Rebuild It

2009-09-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

My almost eight-year-old daughter's above average height enables her to reach most of our shelves by herself. She has a little red cut on her finger, so I sent her to the medicine cabinet. "Do you mean the Triple Bionic Anti-annointment Cream?" Yes, that's the one.

(this post is a few out of sinc)

Wendell Berry, Claude Monet, and Walt Whitman

2009-09-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

Rod Dreher has a good introduction to the philosophy and practices of Wendell Berry in "Wendell Berry's time is now", posted last fall. (H/T to With Each Passing Moment)

As I watch old homestead ranches around me getting bought up by commercial businesses and packed housing developments, as Americans have been doing for a few generations, well it's what Americans have always done, ask the Indians, I wish more people would do as Mr. Berry in living within his means and respecting creation at his family homestead as the article describes. I love this part of his poem,

I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.

While I agree with and admire his ethics, I haven't been able to become an ardent disciple because I don't think his particular way of life is completely practical for everyone. I love self-sufficiency, but not everyone is as smart as he is. Did he make most of his livelihood on his farm or by his gifted writing? I've talked about how much more fertile and better watered Kentucky is compared to where I live too. Still, I could probably get by with the produce available at our Farmer's Market. Wait, last time I was there I noticed that most things weren't local. But if I spent a lot of time studying, I could probably find enough local sources to keep us well-fed. But my attentions are usually diverted elsewhere. I resent the hour and a half I spend at Walmart every week as it is. And my home garden, which I prefer to access rather than going across town to the farmer's market, I'm self-sufficient that way, got mostly eaten by bugs, or didn't produce much (for the needs of a family of 8 ) for other unknown reasons. I intend on getting better at gardening though. It is a healthy sport.

I also agree with him that greedy people's industry has exploited much of our natural resources and littered the landscape. But I have decided not to be angry or contemptuous about it. I'm not saying he is, as I haven't read his works directly. I watched a program on Monet the other day which made a comment about his industrial cityscapes being unusual compared to other Impressionists who avoided them. I can't find the painting they talked about, but his Waterloo Bridge in London will suit my purposes. (See also his train station paintings.) I just read that he was frustrated with London weather when he painted it, but I like how he kept the mood and was true to what he saw. I don't get the feeling he hated the smoke stacks the dirty water or the fog/pollution, but made an unromantic yet non photographic work of art out of them. That's an interesting distinction. Most people probably like his garden paintings or the ones of his wife, Camille, better, but I'm glad to have his statement about the city too. It just sits there with the rest because that was what he experienced, even though he loved gardening better. Maybe it's a statement against Total Depravity.

On that note, I'll leave you with this poem by Walt Whitman,

There Was a Child Went Forth every day;
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of
the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads--all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms, and the fruit afterward,
and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had lately risen,
And the school-mistress that pass'd on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass'd--and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls--and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

His own parents,
He that had father'd him, and she that had conceiv'd him in her womb, and birth'd him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day--they became part of him.

The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild words--clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor
falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture--the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay'd--the sense of what is real--the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time--the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?
The streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves--the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset--the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide--the little boat slack-tow'd astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away
solitary by itself--the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Here I raise my Ebenezers

2009-09-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Today the hymn "Come Thou Fount", my mother's favorite hymn, has been going through my head, and I'd like to set it down here. It is one of the songs in the night I used to play quite regularly on my recorder, which she gave me on one of my early teen birthdays.

1. Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

2. Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I'll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

3. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

4. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

5. O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

And here's a recording of Enya's "How Can I Keep from Singing" while to that rock I'm clinging.

The world is too much with us

2009-09-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Is he saying that the sea and wind as they are are not enough? Or is he saying that people are too caught up in acquiring goods to notice even them? I think the former because he isn't saying they aren't being noticed, but that they no longer move us. Greed has deadened our hearts. He posits that naturalistic paganism is better than heart-killing wealth procurement. That giants appearing, sounding out of the depths is what it would take to resurrect the heart. This would produce a pounding heart, but isn't this a call for excitement? Something awesomely fearsome needs to trump wealth, which has grown stale, to revitalize man? No, a return to paganism is not what we need, though it seems many find it superior to materialism. I heard an Orthodox lecturer say one time that America is returning to paganism in this "post-Christian" world. I'm not sure we're "post-Christian", but we're certainly not shining as brightly as we should.

I don't think the sea and wind need to become more exciting than the way he first describes them. If one is bored looking, feeling, and listening to them, there is a sickness of soul all right. It could be greed, despair or some other besetting sin. Something else is howling louder than the wind, and we must rise up like Proteus to silence it.

(poem from About.com's Classic Poem Daily.)

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times

2009-09-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

He wrote, directed, scored and acted this last of his silent films made in 1936, well after Talkies were introduced. The whole movie demonstrates his amazing coordination and multi-talents, but this scene, yikes!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oybM6O6fjHk]

Serendipitous Valentine

2009-09-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

Two years ago George planned a wonderful evening of dinner and a play for Valentine's day. The play was based on P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves", and was my first introduction to Jeeves and Wooster. I was enthralled from the start with the wit, pacing, and surprising plot twists being spun in different directions by silly Bertie and his wise butler, Jeeves, amidst undauntable amicability between the two. I went promptly to the library and acquired the Jeeves Omnibus and had fun reading the first couple of stories aloud to the kids.

A few months ago I saw that Netflix offered the early 90's British TV series, Jeeves and Wooster, with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and put the first season, two episodes per disc, on our queue, spread out between other movies. The first disc with two episodes met mixed reviews in our family. George was out of town so he didn't see it, and mine and Ben's enthusiasm was mostly carried in on the coattails of our previous experiences with the play and the books. The other kids were luke-warm to bored. I'll admit Hugh Laurie is a more annoying Bertie than the actor in the play was. And the first episodes were a bit slow. All this to say, it has taken us a while to view disc 2.

So last night, after George's and my post-Valentine plan to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button fell through as it is on its way out of our local theaters, with only an hour before bedtime, we decided to go ahead and put in Episode 4 (see link above, I don't know what happened to #3), which would be an hour long. Much to our surprise, as it was not titled the same (again see link above), it was the first half of the play that we saw two years and one day before! The five kids who are not living in a dorm like Jared is, enjoyed this episode much more than the episodes on the first disc. Ben's laughter was exceptionally mirthful throughout. Of course we had to go ahead and watch the fifth episode to complete the tale.

OK, maybe I am a cynic.

2009-09-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

To the tune of "Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music.

Rainbows on gay people's windows and litter on kittens,
Microwaved hot water and chemical packs in mittens,
Tons of cardboard shipping boxes mean many trees died,
These are a few of modernity's things.

Genetically designed ponies and Krispy Kreme drive-thru donuts,
IM bells and cell bells and Chef Boyardee noodles,
Wild geese that fly into airplane wings,
These are a few of modernity's things.

Girls in white dresses even though they're not virgins,
Snowflakes that get blown by belching smoke blowers,
Silver white winters that melt into dammed springs,
These are a few of modernity's things.

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply sue someone and take prescription pain numb-ers,
And then I don't feel so bad.

The Nature of Boys

2009-09-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Suffice it to say that I have been asked, "How is “Boys will be boys,” Calvinist? Wouldn’t they say that boys will be condemned for being boys, as it were?"

While Calvinists believe that all are condemnable for being totally depraved, I do not think they believe that the elect will be so, condemned that is, because they are still depraved. My husband tells me that there's a popular Calvinist preacher in Seattle who gets a lot of applause for saying it doesn't matter what you do, your position in heaven is totally based on His choosing you regardless of any works or merits. No wonder they're so thankful!

Calvinists believe that a person is corrupt by nature. Orthodox believe that our natures are good and made in the image of God. Individuals must choose to live up to their natures, as Christ was the first to do. While an Orthodox is the chiefest of sinners, it is because he has failed to choose what God has predestined him to be, united in heart, mind, soul, and body to Christ as evidenced by words, deeds, and thoughts. He has chosen against his nature.

Here's a NY Times article on the above mentioned pastor, Mark Driscoll (Warning, it's pretty graphic.)

"Mark Driscoll’s sermons are mostly too racy to post on GodTube, the evangelical Christian “family friendly” video-posting Web site. With titles like “Biblical Oral Sex” and “Pleasuring Your Spouse,” his clips do not stand a chance against the site’s content filters. No matter: YouTube is where Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, would rather be. Unsuspecting sinners who type in popular keywords may suddenly find themselves face to face with a husky-voiced preacher in a black skateboarder’s jacket and skull T-shirt. An “Under 17 Requires Adult Permission” warning flashes before the video cuts to evening services at Mars Hill, where an anonymous audience member has just text-messaged a question to the screen onstage: “Pastor Mark, is masturbation a valid form of birth control?”

Driscoll doesn’t miss a beat: [edited out] The audience bursts out laughing. Next Pastor Mark is warning them about lust [me: disconnect anyone?] and exalting the confines of marriage, one hand jammed in his jeans pocket while the other waves his Bible. Even the skeptical viewer must admit that whatever Driscoll’s opinion of certain recreational activities, he has the coolest style and foulest mouth of any preacher you’ve ever seen.

Mark Driscoll is American evangelicalism’s bête noire. In little more than a decade, his ministry has grown from a living-room Bible study to a megachurch that draws about 7,600 visitors to seven campuses around Seattle each Sunday, and his books, blogs and podcasts have made him one of the most admired — and reviled — figures among evangelicals nationwide. Conservatives call Driscoll “the cussing pastor” and wish that he’d trade in his fashionably distressed jeans and taste for indie rock for a suit and tie and placid choral arrangements. Liberals wince at his hellfire theology and insistence that women submit to their husbands. But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.

At a time when the once-vaunted unity of the religious right has eroded and the mainstream media is proclaiming an “evangelical crackup,” Driscoll represents a movement to revamp the style and substance of evangelicalism. With his taste for vintage baseball caps and omnipresence on Facebook and iTunes, Driscoll, who is 38, is on the cutting edge of American pop culture. Yet his message seems radically unfashionable, even un-American: you are not captain of your soul or master of your fate but a depraved worm whose hard work and good deeds will get you nowhere, because God marked you for heaven or condemned you to hell before the beginning of time. Yet a significant number of young people in Seattle — and nationwide — say this is exactly what they want to hear. Calvinism has somehow become cool, and just as startling, this generally bookish creed has fused with a macho ethos. At Mars Hill, members say their favorite movie isn’t “Amazing Grace” or “The Chronicles of Narnia” — it’s “Fight Club.” [bold mine]

Mars Hill Church is the furthest thing from a Puritan meetinghouse. This is Seattle, and Mars Hill epitomizes the city that spawned it. Headquartered in a converted marine supply store, the church is a boxy gray building near the diesel-infused din of the Ballard Bridge. In the lobby one Sunday not long ago, college kids in jeans — some sporting nose rings or kitchen-sink dye jobs — lounged on ottomans and thumbed text messages to their friends. The front desk, black and slick, looked as if it ought to offer lattes rather than Bibles and membership pamphlets. Buzz-cut and tattooed security guards mumbled into their headpieces and directed the crowd toward the auditorium, where the worship band was warming up for an hour of hymns with Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.”

On that Sunday, Driscoll preached for an hour and 10 minutes — nearly three times longer than most pastors. As hip as he looks, his message brooks no compromise with Seattle’s permissive culture. New members can keep their taste in music, their retro T-shirts and their intimidating facial hair, but they had better abandon their feminism, premarital sex and any “modern” interpretations of the Bible. Driscoll is adamantly not the “weepy worship dude” he associates with liberal and mainstream evangelical churches, “singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.”

The oldest of five, son of a union drywaller, Driscoll was raised Roman Catholic in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Seattle. In high school, he met a pretty blond pastor’s daughter named — providentially — Grace. She gave him his first Bible. He read voraciously and was born again at 19. “God talked to me,” Driscoll says. “He told me to marry Grace, preach the Bible, to plant churches and train men.” He married Grace (with whom he now has five children) and, at 25, founded Mars Hill.

God called Driscoll to preach to men — particularly young men — to save them from an American Protestantism that has emasculated Christ and driven men from church pews with praise music that sounds more like boy-band ballads crooned to Jesus than “Onward Christian Soldiers.” What bothers Driscoll — and the growing number of evangelical pastors who agree with him — is not the trope of Jesus-as-lover. After all, St. Paul tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ. What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”"

Wild Oats

2009-09-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

If mothers are killing their children, what of the fathers who forsook them?

Being forsaken is like being killed.

Boys will be boys, you may say. That is Calvinist talk. God made man to cleave to his wife. Women are not toys to be played with and thrown away. That teaches women that it's okay to throw away a human life if it is no longer useful or pleasurable.

But young men are allowed to sow their wild oats*. Says who?

This is a deeply ingrained (pun accidental) misconception in our culture. I believe it has contributed to the terrible incidence of spoiled rotten men in our society. Men can be careless and unaccountable, but women have to be responsible and clean up the mess and sacrifice themselves in caring for a baby that the father didn't plan for nor want to raise. The nice women are still cooperating, the not so nice are deciding to sow their wild oats too in this new modern age of equality. Neither are how we are created to naturally be. Let's call a devastating sin a devastating sin, and abortion isn't the only one.

*Not so much why oats, as why wild oats. The saying is referring to a European grass species with the formal name Avena fatua, which has for centuries in English been called wild oats. Some botanists think it’s the wild original of cultivated oats. Farmers have since ancient times hated it because it’s a weed that’s useless as a cereal crop, but its seeds have always been difficult to separate from those of useful cereals and so tended to survive and multiply from year to year. The only way to remove it was to tramp the fields and hand-weed it. Even today it’s still a problem, despite modern seed cleaning and selective weedkillers.

So sowing wild oats was the archetypal useless occupation, indeed worse than useless. It’s not surprising that the phrase sowing wild oats was applied figuratively to young men who frittered away their time in stupid or idle pastimes. But there’s a strong sexual association here, too, because the phrase was often applied, in a more or less indulgent way, and always to young men, to what was politely referred to as youthful dissipation. The associations between male sexual activity and sowing seed are obvious enough.

The saying is first recorded in English in 1542, in a tract by the Norfolk Protestant clergyman Thomas Becon, though I’m told that a related phrase appears in the works of the Roman author Plautus. It’s common in older English literature, no doubt because the image struck a chord in a society that was still mainly agrarian. Here’s a typical example, from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, of 1869: “Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles”. (from World Wide Words)

Poppycock.

Words, words, words

2009-09-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

is the original title of this blog, stolen from Hamlet, but I got self-conscious, as I usually do a few hours later, and changed it to plain self-entitlement. Now the original is back.

So here's some words.

Love, joy, peace.

Humor, hugs, smiles.

Meat.

Toys, laughter, games.

Melody, harmony, movement.

Words.

My Ninth Graders' "Scary" video

2009-09-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Well technically Theiss isn't mine, but is Jeremy and Rachel's friend.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIME4YHl-o4]

Higher resolution option and some explanations are in the comments on the Youtube page if you click twice on the video.

Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes

2009-09-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

I was very struck with Marian Anderson's interpretation of "He Shall Feed His Flock" in yesterday's post. The deliberate slowness stands out, along with her control, calmness, and though very practiced and technically superb, a certain naturalness graces her singing. I listened to several other of my new acquaintance's recordings and found these qualities to be very consistent.

According to Wikipedia, "Marian Anderson joined a junior church choir at the age of six, and applied to an all-white music school after her graduation from high school in 1921, but was turned away because she was black. The woman working the admissions counter replied, "We don't take colored" when she tried to apply. She debuted with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925 and scored an immediate success, also with the critics. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. Her reputation was further advanced by her tour through Europe in the early 1930s where she did not encounter the racial prejudices she had experienced in America.

The famed conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice "heard once in a hundred years. "Once he heard her sing, he knew instantly that with a rich voice like hers, there was no way that she could fail. In 1934,^[2] impresario Sol Hurok offered her a better contract than she had previously had with Arthur Judson. Hurok became her manager for the rest of her performing career.

In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall. The District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school. As a result of the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned.^[3]

The Roosevelts, with Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, impresario Sol Hurok, then persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open air Marian Anderson concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.^[3] The concert, commencing with a dignified and stirring rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" attracted a crowd of more 75,000 of all colors and was a sensation with a national radio audience of millions.^[4]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnzb0Jj074&feature=related]

The concert mentioned above was held on Easter Sunday in 1939. Anderson was accompanied by the Finnish accompanist Kosti Vehanen, who introduced Marian to Jean Sibelius in 1933.^[5] Sibelius was overwhelmed with Anderson's performance and asked his wife to bring champagne in place of the traditional coffee. At this moment Sibelius started altering and composing songs for Anderson, who was delighted to have met a musician of his magnitude, who felt that she had been able to penetrate the Nordic soul."

____________

"Land where my fathers died" has a different meaning when she sings it.

I am so thankful to hear her speak of her earlier years in this short video,

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EseEEdLt2os&feature=related]

So then I looked up Roland Hayes, " (3 June 1887–1 January 1977), a lyric tenor, is considered the first African American male concert artist to receive wide international acclaim as well as at home. Hayes was born in Curryville, Georgia, near Calhoun, on June 3, 1887, to Fanny and William Hayes, who were former slaves.

[...]He began with arranging his own recitals and coast-to-coast tours from 1916–1919. He sang at Craig's Pre-Lenten Recitals and several Carnegie Hall concerts. He made his official debut that year in Boston's Symphony Hall which received critical acclaim. He performed with the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra, and at the Atlanta Colored Music Festivals and at the Washington, D.C. Washington Conservatory concerts. In 1917, he toured with the Hayes Trio which he formed with baritone William Richardson and pianist William Lawrence who was his regular accompanist. His London debut was in April 1920 at Aeolian Hall with pianist Lawrence Brown as his accompanist. Soon Hayes was singing in capital cities across Europe and was quite famous when he returned to the United States in 1923. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1924.

Hayes finally secured professional management with the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Company. He was reportedly making $100,000 a year at this point in his career. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills with songs in French, German and Italian. He published a collection of spirituals in 1948 as My Songs; Aframerican Religious Folk Songs Arranged and Interpreted.

[... In 1942] After Hayes' wife and daughter were thrown out of a Rome, Georgia shoe store for sitting in the white-only section, Hayes confronted the store owner. The police then arrested both Hayes, whom they beat, and his wife. Hayes and his family eventually left Georgia."

_____

Listen to how he sings the word "tremble",

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFOsVxQ_SmY]

Handel's Messiah

2009-09-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

I became acquainted with Handel's Messiah at a Christmas concert twenty something years ago. I think it was probably one of my first experiences of four part soloists, and it was a good one. The first solo tenor part, "Comfort Ye", helped me relax and listen attentively to the rest of the beautiful story. Some time after then I purchased my own copy of the complete work with all four parts and piano accompaniment, which was a prerequisite to attending a "Sing Along Messiah" presented at a local Baptist Church. That is when I got hooked. The alto part was many times out of range and too fast, but the parts I could participate in provided a wonderful experience of coordinated harmony with a whole "santuary" full of people, and with talented soloists and orchestra leading the way. After that I began to try to learn the music on piano at home where I could play a semblance of all the parts.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhN9LzQpeGg&feature=related]

Not only did I connect with the musical style, but the libretto, comprised solely of Scripture passages, Old and New Testament, provided a uniquely comprehensive picture of Christ, prophesied, born, suffering, rising, and magnificiently glorified. It's completeness was different than hymns of individual experience, aspects of theology, or snapshots of moments in His life. To listen, sing, and/or play the whole thing straight through provided a holistic experience that I'd not found elsewhere. I have many favorite parts, and parts I sometimes play in isolation, but at Christmastime at least, I try to listen to the whole thing either in concert or on CD or from my book at home.

Thus, after 20 years, the stage was set for what occurred while attending my first Orthodox service. At that time I had been suffering from a lingering cough and was worried about how my stifled noises may distract people. Around midpoint in the service, I don't remember exactly where as I wasn't familiar with the Liturgy at that time, the Western Rite choir in the loft behind us began singing "He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd". It was then, as I have related a few times, that my eyes with no conscious effort on my part, were inexplicably drawn to the icon of Christ to the right of the alter area. I looked in the dark portals of His eyes and He looked at me. I'd never experienced that before. Christ looked at me, gave me a heretofore unknown tangible sense of His presence, and took away my cough. I knew then that I was home.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZoqU_-J-UY&feature=related]

Thankful for Daily Bread, Others, and Forgive Us Our Debts

2009-09-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

The house is quiet while the turkey completes its thaw in the oven (four days in the frig wasn't enough), the girls with presumably strep throat (the nurse practitioner at the minor emergency clinic says she would treat their symptoms the same whether the test was positive or negative so Amoxicillin it is) continue sleeping, and the boys (three of which are thankfully home from college) are at Thanksgiving Liturgy.

While contemplating the first Thanksgiving, I thought it would be nice to post a traditional painting of the event. This site has a pretty broad collection which includes Norman Rockwell's famous c. WWII depictions. Though cartoony compared to the other First Thanksgiving masterpieces, this one was the most equinanimous.

The others (imo) showed refined Pilgrims condescending to serve their bounty with charity cases. The reality, as is commonly known but not depicted for some reason, is that the Indians saved the Pilgrims from starving to death, so the scene should depict the Indian's overseeing how well the Pilgrims followed instructions. Even this one, with its mixed seating and the lighthearted enjoyment shared by all, has the Pilgrim's heads higher than the Indian's. Also there is still the idea that knowing how to set a proper table trumps acknowledgment to the uncouth. So in addition to being thankful to God for His bountiful blessings, we should thank the Indians who connected us to them in this land, and pray for the souls of the murdered ones.

Speaking of American guilt, we saw a movie produced by Michael Landon Jr. called The Last Sin Eater [Ten-year-old Cadi Forbes (Liana Liberato) lives in an 1850s Appalachian community proud of its faith and its ability to keep secrets close to home. Wracked with guilt over the tragic death of her little sister, Cadi seeks out the only person she believes can help her -- The Sin Eater (Peter Wingfield). Michael Landon Jr. directs and Henry Thomas and Oscar winner Louise Fletcher star in Brian Bird's screen adaptation of Francine Rivers's novel.] which turned out to be a complicated thing to digest (pun accidental). It was anti-sacramental, violent, and very Protestant, but made some valid criticisms as to how the idea of pagan priesthood was being applied. It was too dismissive, however. Still, the movie is right about loving and coming clean with others, alive and dead, including the Indians.

A Quiet House

2009-09-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

To make a long story short, I am home alone for 3 straight hours. The long awaited and much anticipated silence is a healing balm. In honor of this time, I'm downloading from iTunes the soundtrack to Home Alone by the father of modern movie music, John Williams.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wS2Sa_P_LM&NR=1]

Relaxing Your Grip

2009-09-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

I began to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn some months ago, before my latest C.S. Lewis journey, but put it down because of the intensity of the description of hard times. One has to be sufficiently removed from trauma to enjoy this sort of thing, which I wasn't at the time. I think I'll get back to it eventually though. However, a scene keeps lingering in my mind. I am pretty frugal and scorn waste, (though closer examination would undoubtedly reveal how wasteful I am) so when the mother of the little girl gave her a cup of coffee every night, just for the pleasure of its warmth in her cupped hand, and then allowed her to pour it down the drain, as if they could afford to be extravagant, I felt stricken. I will either drink leftover coffee the next day, or pour it in my garden if it's older than that. I've had so many frustrated talks to my children about not opening a new bag of Great Value bread before the last heel, well sometimes I let them throw away the heel, is gone, that I fear they are traumatized. I try very hard to use every left-over, and consider it a personal failure to have to throw away any moldy food.

George provides very well for our family and refuses to drink leftover coffee. But he only drinks it on Saturday morning, as he leaves too early in the morning on weekdays to enjoy a cup. Therefore I make sure that I use up the last drop on Friday, because it is his gift to me to bring me (fresh) coffee and toast on Saturday morning. Today though, I may have had a breakthrough. I buy Folgers coffee in the big value-container, and I am getting to the last bit at the bottom. I have already bought its replacement. Today, I made 10 cups instead of 8, just to get rid of it. I will probably go ahead and drink part of the leftovers tomorrow morning (See My Dinner With Andre for further context), but there may be more left from the 10 original cups which I will have to pour in the garden. But to do this premeditatedly, in anticipation of waste, is a step, and its because I want to drink from a fresh, new, nothing-like-breaking-the-seal-on-new-coffee, container.

So maybe after I finish That Hideous Strength I'll get back to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. We'll see.

Be Warmed and Filled

2009-09-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

This conversation on NeoChalcedonean's blog and this post by Father Stephen quoting Alexei Khomiakov has lead me to think on what Christ meant when He said to the sheep and the goats, "I was thirsty and you gave me drink." I may have read this before, but I think He may be talking to the Apostles and their subsequent Bishops, putting Himself, in His humanity, in the place of the flock they are to feed with the real Eucharist. This also brings understanding to when He criticizes people who offer invisible blessing only when they say, "Be warmed and filled." The burden is not on every layperson to feed all people (social service), because the ultimate food is Christ's Body and Blood that holy people can subsist on exclusively, which is the goal of humanity, not to be satiated by materialistic consumerism. Yet laypeople are also included in the royal priesthood. Christ healed and fed people's physical bodies while at the same time forgiving their sins. We are to feed the poor, but within the context of the Orthodox Church, which I believe involves being a witness of where the real food is. I guess I want to make a distinction between a worldly expectation of social service and a more organic, familial, Christ-ordained community who dines in the house of their heavenly Father, and doesn't settle for less. "Blessed are the poor in spirit"; I think we have to realize that we in ourselves are poor in spirit and need to be filled before we take it upon ourselves to feed others. Sometimes we have to give ourselves permission to knock on the door and seek food and shelter and a spotless garment, which is in reality found in the physical Church on earth.

Frontyard Sunset

2009-09-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Groanings Which Cannot Be Uttered

2009-09-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

I hope I have not been too confusing or schizophrenic (multiple personality context) in my excursions into death alternating with triumphalistic expoundings on life in Christ. Protestants have put such an emphasis on the morbid, sorcerer, and necromancy contexts of any real association with the departed, that I am still influenced by it and feel somewhat rebellious and mistress of the darkish talking about it. But still, mourning is the foundation of my feeling if I slow down and contemplate my innermost being, as Father suggested in his homily yesterday. He said though, that our soul cries that we hear when we slow down, whether by coming to Church early and praying, or when we take time during the day, are our longing for God. I have cast away the thought that my tears could represent repentence, or love for God, especially since the way for me to access them is to think about Isaac. But at the same time, these tears that began when I was introduced to the icon of the guardian angel and the little boy, have always been in the context of the Orthodox Church. I have had guilt over not getting help for him when he might have been able to be saved, by not being tuned in enough to his growing stillness. This guilt was relieved when I finally confessed it to my priest. There has been darkness when I think about his bones in his grave, or his body when it was buried, and I believe that part of me died with him that horrible week surrounding his birth. But on the life-side, I believe my connection to him also made me seek out the Orthodox experience of communion with the Saints. The Saints are known as the Church Triumphant, hence the triumphalism. Death cannot separate us from each other, but there is also a not-yet aspect to this pre-resurrection time. Grieving and mourning over Isaac can seem like a lack of faith and an absence of the fruits of the Spirit, especially joy. I have also associated his departure from this life as we're used to it, with feelings and fears of abandonment that I've had all my life through various experiences. "Separation" is the key word. My grief is over separation in general. I'll indulge myself for a minute and consider the possibility that this is more about grief over the separation that occurred at the fall. We were separated from ourselves, each other, and God. We abandoned God through disobedience, misguided though it was. Eve was seeking her own version of good through lack of faith in God's version. Sometimes obedience must be blind, or at least achieved by distancing ourselves from the voice that contradicts it. But what it boils down to, is that this separation from God, who, as St. Cyril of Alexandria says is life, results in death.

When I was a protestant, I always felt pressure from my Christian circle to be happy and that sadness or discouragement over my failings and continuing sins, showed that I lacked faith in Christ's saving me and separating me from my sin. I listened to their explanations of Christ separating me from my sin as far as the east is from the west, and how I was clothed in righteousness, but I didn't know how to fit that into my continual giving into temptations. I have a practical realism streak that wouldn't be satisfied covering up the realities in front of my face. Orthodoxy put present sins into context of the continuous, life-long need of repentance in order to actually be conformed to Christ, not just in forced denial, if that's too harsh (but it's what it felt like), or in losing oneself in who Christ is and His successes, which is actually worse - it's annihilation of self. Dying to self is different than annihilation. Dying to our own misguided version of good and accepting and putting on Christ, the Word, is really a fulfillment of self.

So if Orthodoxy can handle that I'm still a sinner and sad about it, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." (The Jesus Prayer), as a part of right believing, then it should be able to handle that I am sad that I am physically separated from Isaac and all the other things I'm separated from, including myself, others, and God. Orthodoxy does not say that to be faithful, you have to only dwell on Christ's triumph, though that cannot be neglected either. His triumph has to be habitually applied to every second of my day through prayer without ceasing, but to me, the reality of this is that He is there, present in every breath, every heartbeat, every neurological impulse that lets my wayward thoughts travel around. His energy is supplying every movement to the sub-atomic level. He is there, He has not left. And with Him is hope because He is also present with everything I am separated from. And He is able to raise it up complete and joined in the last day. But while this can be experienced to some extent now, there is still more for later. I still sin, and Isaac is still separated from me bodily. My sins have real and deadly consequences here and now that limit my experience of union with myself, others and God.

But Christ is still here, those who passed on, joined in love with God, are still here. I need to pray and benefit from the prayers of those who love God in order to overcome my sin, so that I can experience reunion - recapitulation. And I'll say for now that I think it's ok to be sad about what has not yet happened, but it is not a hopeless sadness. The thing that touches me most in the first few chapters of Brothers Karamozov is the sadness of Alyosha's mother when she is imploringly praying with frantic sobs in front of the icon of the Mother of God. This is honesty and faith together. One does not have to deny reality in order to have faith and find help.

Romans 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; 21 because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. 23 Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. 24 For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.
26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. 27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. [italics original]

Sunrises and Opera

2009-09-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

The sunrise this morning on the way to Arlington was the best I've seen. It lasted from 6:45 until I got home at 8:30. While driving, I was composing in my mind how I intended to describe the progression of colors, and how God shares His glory with creation in contrast to condemning clouds for getting in the way of the sun, etc. But the most prevalent association that kept plaguing my mind was that famous Ziggy cartoon where his round bald head looks out over the cliff at the cartoony sunset and says, "Yay, God". It's kind of like not being able to get Bugs Bunny out of your head when you hear Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Oy Veh.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB8L2GzAlD0&feature=related]

Dem Bones

2009-09-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

There's a song in each one's bones. If you get it right, your bones will rejoice. If you get it wrong, the song will stay in your bones, but no one will hear it.

Blood cries out from the ground because we got the song wrong. Blood from above quiets the cries, down to the silent bones.

Let all mortal flesh keep silent and listen.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spwcPxux740&feature=related]

I heard Cynthia Clawson in concert when I was in nursing school. Her singing of this 4th century Greek hymn helps bridge the gap between what I was looking for back then and what I've found now in Orthodoxy.

Better News!

2009-09-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

I just found out that, "Bishop-Elect (Abbot) Jonah (Paffhausen) will be celebrating the liturgy with us at St. Barbara's this Sunday, October 12th. As you know, Abbot Jonah will be consecrated on Saturday, November 1st as Auxiliary Bishop to Archbishop Dmitri, and his see is to be the city of Fort Worth."

Awesome!

And now the good news

2009-09-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

There are 10 tomatoes on the vine.
Rebecca is starting to remember her 3 and 4 multiplication tables without counting.
We had a lovely morning rain with lingering coolness.
Pippin the Corgi is very cute.
The bees were washed off the filter so I wasn't afraid to backwash the pool.
I have plenty of chlorine and shock to keep the pool clear.
The refrigerator shelf now has room since we finished a jar of pickles last night while watching X-Files season 7, disc 3 from Netflix. The two-part episode was about how some children are taken before something bad would have happened to them, and that they are in a better place, and that the parents can let them go.

Hansel and Gretel Aren't Dead (although Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are) II

2009-09-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a year and a half ago during a trying time that I haven't been free to tell about to my satisfaction on this blog. Writing is therapeutic to me, and that is it's purpose, not perfection, so please bear that in mind if you want to read the second half. I don't really feel like editing it substantively though I did tweak it a bit, as to me it is more of a snapshot peculiar to a time and place, and I care more about that than making it better now.

By the way, there is a violent word used.

*****

A few days later as she was searching for bright red berries to fill in the field of her latest circle with a large representation of the light, crusty cubes that had lead her to the children, she heard the approaching rustling in the forest from the direction of the other visitations. This time a woman came with the man and the children. The girl wondered if she were the children’s mother, but they walked closer to their father. When they saw the crusty arrangement in the dirt with a few of the bright stones from the hungry friend’s hut, the children smiled and pointed as they chattered to each other. The woman turned her attention to the girl with a wrinkle between her brows when she looked at her. The smile underneath it and her subsequent cooing confused the girl. The woman then approached her and held out her hand as she smiled. The girl thought that if she touched her that she might not be able to get away, so she backed off. She also noticed that the birds, frogs, and insects had stopped chirping.

The woman approached again, and for the first time, the girl withdrew and climbed a nearby tree out of reach. This seemed to make the woman angry and she raised her voice crowing while her arms reached toward her feet. She stayed in the tree while the father took the woman to see the stars, eye, and cross circles. The woman shrugged her shoulders at the pictures. The girl’s heart was not as heavy as it was when the man had come last time, but still she felt the need to keep distance.

Many days passed as the girl worked on her next circle. Inside was a man’s face framed by a beard of dark stones with light stripes made by seed husks. Two small round, glistening amber stones shone under his dark brows and dark tall hat covered by a drape that extended to the bottom of the circle frame. His draped dark torso was also stopped by the bottom of the white circle. Golden stones provided the background under the top of the white circle.

As she laid the last stone, she heard the approaching rustle. This time it was just the father and the children. She grabbed a handful of seeds and slowly approached them, smiling and offering the seeds. He rumbled and they chattered as they took some of them from her hand. She hummed as she took them to her newest picture. The children bent down and touched the seed casings to see how she had made the stripes in the beard, but the father just stood staring with his eyes wide.

After a few days, before she could see who was causing the now familiar rustling, the girl noticed that a fox and a rabbit had also approached as she was filling in more of the red background to her crust picture with scarce berries.

Birds were also whistling merrily to each other from the trees.

She walked towards the rustling in anticipation. First came the children, then the father, and then the hooded man in her picture! As he approached she bent down and kissed his hands. The fox, rabbit, and now some squirrels also approached. A bird even lighted on his head. The man placed the top of his hand on her head. When he did so, something wet began to erupt from her eyes. Startled, she straightened and put her hands on her cheeks to feel the strange warm liquid streaming from her eyes.

“My child” he said, and she understood!

He then began to explain her story both to her and her friends. The girl could see that he knew it in the same way that she knew how to arrange her stones. From inside.

“The one buried under the cross is her mother. She was cruelly treated all her life and when she was finally raped she escaped to this place in her shame and pain, hoping to never see any other person again. She cared for her resulting baby alone out here in the forest, so that her people could not hurt her as they had her. When she was just a toddler, the mother knew she was going to die. At this time she found a small icon of the Virgin on a tree trunk of a felled tree, and knew that she would take care of her for her. While she still had the strength, and while her baby was napping, she went to find a place to bury herself. She dug her own grave and gathered her own stones. Stones as colorful and pretty as she could find. When she knew her time had come, she made a bed of pine needles under a tree, and for the last time, laid her baby down for the night. She covered her with bark and placed the icon near her head so that she would not be alone when she awoke. Then she went deep in the woods and covered herself with stones. The exertion caused the end of her earthly life. Since then her praying soul, the angels, Saints, and woodland creatures have been guiding and protecting her and keeping her company.”

He had been speaking to the father so as not to overwhelm her with too direct a gaze and the intensity of the specifics of her life. The father then asked as he turned to her flooded face, “Why did she bury the icon with her mother after she found her?”

“She thought her mother seemed more lonely than she. She didn’t feel she had experienced the pain she had.”

******

That's all I have so far.