Cancel New Address

I just realized -- I have no means of notifying anyone who reads this that I changed my address. So CANCEL THAT NOTICE about the new address: It remains www.nepsis.blogspot.com.

I hope this is comprehensible. Clear as mud, probably.

Nicholas & Alexandra & Jim & Meg

Description of May 17th:

Wedding: $300 or so, including the gown, the rings, and the food for the reception (it was 1969, my dad was on strike, so we held the reception at the house).

Honeymoon: $200 or so (we stayed at the weekend home of my husband's cousin).

Three years in Germany: free (he was in the service).

First home: $250/mo. rent, plus, let's see, I think $750 for the furniture (bedroom suite, sofa, and kitchen table and chairs. Everything else we cadged from the homes we had grown up in).

Kids: Don't even go there. One moved out at 24, the other at 25, so figure 29 years' worth of exponentially increasing expenses. My only regret: not having more kids.

36 years together: priceless.

And now, as the Buddhists say: After ecstasy, the laundry. Not that I mind doing laundry. Just coming down off the high of the past three days of having that Special Someone all to myself. Why read Anna Karenina, the story of adultery and its fruits, when I can read about one of the greatest love affairs of all time?

Currently Reading: Nicholas and Alexandra

New Blog Address

To my intrepid readers who have been accessing my site as www.nepsis.blogspot.com: I have just changed my address to www.muttonings.blogspot.com. Makes it easier for me to find my blog. ;-)

Reflections on Motherhood

1. I always knew my kids would grow up and move out. I just wish they had moved out closer.

2. Looking around this house, I can see that it was time for them to move out when they did. Actually, it was time for them to move out before they did. You really do outgrow a house.

3. I wonder if everything important in life assumes an air of unreality when it's over. I'm having a hard time believing I ever actually lived in Germany. I'm having a hard time believing we ever shared this house with two other people.

4. I guess that, although it was time for them to move out, I would have liked to know them better as adults before they did.

5. Rooms that seemed so big when you were small, become so small once you're big.

6. Overall, I can't think of anything I'd change in my motherhood techniques, such as they were. They weren't perfect, but they did produce two spectacular people.

7. I do wish we had played more board games as a family.

8. Once they're gone, they're gone. Even when you do see them, they have become such different people that you wonder if this is the same person you shared a life with.

9. If I had known these things when I was younger, I wonder if I would have been nicer to my mother.

10. On the other hand, I wonder if my mother would have been nicer to me, if she had realized these things when she was younger.

Happy Mother's Day.

Christos voskres!

Well, it rained last night, so I missed the Resurrection service, too. I must admit that was a mixed curse, since, as a morning person, the midnight services has always been especially rough on me. But the sheer beauty and joy of it has always carried me through. Not this year, though.

On the other hand, I woke up a lot during the night. And every time I woke up, I'd think, "Christ is risen!" smile, and go back to sleep. Now it's 5:00 a.m. (5-ish, anyway), and I'm up for the day.

Spent yesterday baking two kulichi, that Russian Easter bread that is full of all the cholesterol we've been denying ourselves for seven weeks, all the butter and eggs (for cream and cheese, there's the pascha, which also has butter in it). The one kulich is for the Agape Vespers my parish in Saco is having; everyone was invited to bring something special from their paschal tradition, and since the parish is now about 70% Greek and 30% convert, there's at least a chance we'll get something other than roast lamb and baklava. Like, well, pascha and kulich.

The second kulich is something I was asked to do at the beginning of the semester. Every Monday afternoon, my Russian class holds something called "chaipitye," or tea-drinking, which is supposed to be a chance for us to sample Russian food and talk about Russian topics (in English, thankfully!). I was asked if I could provide something paschal for this meal. I e-mailed my one Russian prof yesterday as it was baking, and this morning, her comment: "My mouth is watering just reading this. I cannot wait to taste everything." The irony is, this particular professor is Jewish -- non-practicing, at that -- and my other professor is an out-and-out communist. I should see if I can find an icon of the Resurrection online, and print out and bring that along with a couple of my other icons. After all, this is an Orthodox feast. (I am so bad.)

CHRIST IS RISEN! TRULY HE IS RISEN!! Best news I've had all year.

Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord...

From yesterday's high, crashing back into reality. I will not be able to attend any more services until the Agape Vespers on Sunday -- and even after that, I won't be able to stay as long as I'd like.

I drove back, that whole 40 miles, this morning, just so I could be at the Royal Hours. That was good till about 11:00 a.m., and then I had to come back home, in theory, so I could bake kulich (but I didn't. I did some laundry, then spent a lot of time on a prayerbook I'm making for myself). And I've spent the afternoon kicking myself for not having hung around for the Vespers of the Unnailing, which took place at 3:00. The Greeks do something very beautiful -- my former ROCOR parish didn't do this, so I don't know if Russians have this custom -- the Greeks have a structure that represents the Tomb of Christ, and right after the Royal Hours, they decorate this Tomb with flowers and set it on the solea in front of the Royal Doors. At the Vespers of the Unnailing, they take the icon of the Body of Christ down off the cross, process around the church with it, and place it in the Tomb. Then, at night, everybody goes up to venerate the shrouded Body, and during the Lamentations the Tomb is taken off its stand and paraded out into the street, while the entire church follows it holding candles and singing, "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us." The Tomb is processed around the church, then held high above the door so that everybody can pass under it. At the end of the service, everyone gets a flower off the Tomb.

I could have stayed and helped decorate the Tomb. I could have had Orthodox fellowship with people I really enjoy. Instead, I was Conscientious and came home, and have been wallowing in isolation ever since. This Lone Orthodox business is FOR THE BIRDS. I want my Pascha! I want fellowship! I want to be with other people who know how beautiful an Orthodox life is!

Surfacing (glub)

A comment from a new subscriber (Hi, Mimi!) reminded me -- oh, yeah. There's a world of blogs out there, from which I have been noticeably absent lo these past two weeks. Hello, time to rejoin the human race.

Well... No, that hasn't been my problem, exactly. My problem has been more, the Dative Case in Russian, followed by the Instrumental Case, and the attendant humongous vocabulary lists. Tell me, who in their right mind starts to study Russian when they are pushing 60?!?!?!

And Holy Week hasn't helped. In fact, neither has Great Lent. It's just been the most mixed-up, squirrelly Lent I think I've ever experienced. Nothing earth-shattering, apart, of course, from having my son's Significant Other explode in my face because of the comments I posted about my son's situation on the OrthWomen's list. (Still haven't heard from her, BTW.) But you know how, when you wake up late, you spend all day trying to catch up? That's how all of Lent has been. Now it's Holy Week, the Bridegroom is at the door, and never mind running out of oil, I can't even find the dratted lamp.

Fortunately for all of us, but especially a scatterbrain like me, God is God; and being God, He is so phenomenally merciful and doggone good. I went to Liturgy this morning in a parish that's 40 miles away, which I attend every other week (the parish that's closer has Liturgy every other Sunday, so it works out). This particular parish is in Saco, ME, right on the southern shore of the state, and it's about an hour's drive from where I live in Rochester, NH. I like the priest because he is very conservative and very aware of the need for a spiritual life, as opposed to some of the Greeks I've met who truly believe the Church is about preserving Greek culture.

For reasons I have yet to fathom, this parish has Holy Thursday Liturgy at 6:00 a.m. Not too big a problem for me, since I'm a morning person anyway, except that I do have to be up at around 4:30 a.m. so I can leave the house by 5:00, to get there by 6:00. That didn't happen today, but even so, I only missed about the first 15 minutes. So I get there, they're just reading the Epistle, and then that long, long Gospel (just think of Christ on the cross, if you want to think in terms of long -- must have seemed like all of eternity to Him), and then comes the Cherubic Hymn.

Now, there are three people standing at the Chanter's Stand, but it's pretty obvious none of them have a clue what to do next. So yours truly, former choir director and person-who-sang-before-she-could-talk (according to my aunt), started singing. Great Entrance occurs, and the next Big Hymn comes, as we all know, right after the Epiclesis: "In thee rejoiceth." By this time, I've figured out that apart from the two priests celebrating, I am the only person in this building at this time who knows the music, so I sing a bit more strongly. Finish that hymn, and about five minutes later, I feel a tap on my shoulder. It's one of the people from the Chanter's Stand: "Could you please come over and give us a hand?"

OH SURE. YES! ABSOLUTELY!! Ask me if I want to breathe! The only reason I wasn't there faster is that I haven't learned to fly. After Liturgy I received several comments on how nice my voice was, and why wasn't I singing in the choir, to which I answered, quite honestly, "They sing too low for me." And they do. Last time I tried to sing that low, I got nodes on my vocal cords and had to stop singing for two years before they healed. But you know -- it was so nice to sing again as a cantor, something I haven't done since Fr. Dean left in 2001 (I acquired the nodes under his successor).

Thank you, God, for letting me use this particular gift today. I appreciated Your heads-up that maybe this Lent wasn't the bust I feel like it's been.

Wacko Drivers

Church in Maine today, one of the two parishes we visit regularly (the other parish is very small, and only has services every other week). During the sermon, the priest mentioned that it has been a very tough Lent for him, and that got my attention, since every Orthodox Christian I know has said this has been an unusually tough Lent. I wonder why?

Afterwards, we drove to our daughter's house for lunch. Our daughter became a Catholic a year or two after her marriage, so for them Easter is long over, and she had -- meat. Just meat. Around 3:30, just as we were thinking of getting underway, she trotted out the strawberries she'd been saving for dessert. That's the kind of Lent it's been. We did have a nice visit, if you ignore the counter-cultural Orthodox bits -- and the fact that the Orthodox "bits" are your whole life, somehow gets lost in translation. I'm still trying to figure out how to get that across.

Anyway, after a truly lovely afternoon we drove home our usual way. As we took a turn-off onto a side road, a van shot past us and one of the passengers yelled something at us. A mile or so later, we were on another highway -- also part of our usual route -- and the same van pulled up hard on our bumper, then passed, forcing us into the breakdown lane to avoid getting our bumper clipped, and gave us the finger once it was in front of us -- sped off down the road, having narrowly missed oncoming traffic. I hate warm weather, it brings out all the nuts. (I should add that my husband was driving the speed limit, which was 55 mph.)

Three or four miles down the road, we pulled up to a traffic light, right behind the green van. The light turned, the van didn't move, and my husband tapped the horn. The driver started up -- came to a dead stop so that we were smack in the middle of the intersection -- then took off with a roar, and a few hundred yards down the road, made a left into a gas station. I didn't like the look of that. Sure enough, shortly thereafter, who do we see in our rear-view mirror again. This time, we were close to a State Police barracks, so my husband pulled into the parking lot, giving Tootsie a chance to get a decent distance down the road. And that was the end of that -- we thought.

We get all the way into Sanford, which is about 15 miles from where all this started, and whom do we see in the left-turn lane? Fortunately (we thought) we were going straight, so we did, and Tootsie made her left. Suddenly my husband pulls hard into a side street and heads down, glancing into his rear-view mirror -- this chick had made a U-turn after making her left, and was pursuing us down the main road out of Sanford. Can you say "stalking"?

The side street seems to have done the trick; we got back onto an intersecting main road, and got home by another way. I just hope this idiot isn't roaming the streets of our town, looking in each and every driveway for our car.

What is it with female drivers, anyway?! I used to get so offended when I was young, and men would make remarks about Female (or Women) Drivers; but so help me, they were right. All the worst drivers around here are women, and I don't understand why.

So Much for Silence

For the time being, since I seem to have a whopping two subscribers, both of whom know my situation, I think I can discuss it fairly freely here.

Thanks to both of you for your insight and comments. If it were a question of sinfulness, yes, being made aware of it would be a very good thing, painful though it might be. What's more painful is the frustration, as one of you so accurately pinpointed, of having to apologize for an offense inadvertently given -- that's nothing, we all do that -- but not having it accepted, and also, the notion that the remarks I made were a deliberate attempt at character assassination. Once people put their own spin on your actions, nothing you say or do makes any difference; and as you both know, this is an important relationship in my life.

I'm glad, too, to have the input on silence not being a good thing, since the description of "bad" silence -- a prison -- is exactly what this is becoming: a place to be stuck in, where my letters are not answered and my phone calls not returned, and I just don't know where else to go from here.

The answer, I guess, is patience, the hope that over time, being distanced from me will get to be more of a disadvantage than an advantage. I do have one ace in the hole: my son's favorite recipes. (The way to a man's heart...) I used to share them, but have by no means given them all out, so when he gets sick of having the same five recipes over and over, maybe then I'll hear from his Significant Other. But at this point, as things stand, I don't see what else I can do for these people, and racking my brains for a solution is wearing, to say the least.

Thanks, ladies -- your input was a big help.

The Silence of the Mutton

Recent events, which I would prefer not to discuss publicly, have had me thinking about the possibility of observing an overall silence -- including shutting down my blogs. In looking back over my life, one consistent thread has emerged: It seems I can't open my mouth without somebody taking offense. I can say the most innocuous thing, such as expressing an admiration for German culture, and in somebody's mind, this automatically turns me into a Nazi. (Yes, this actually happened.) Sort of like me telling my mother-in-law that I hoped my kids would get to spend junior year abroad (they didn't), and her telling my husband that I was planning to throw them out of the house when they turned twenty.

So it's a serious temptation just to say nothing. Not nothing offensive, since that seems to be impossible: Nothing. Just my prayers. It's radical, it would almost certainly lead to isolation, which is never good, but then, neither is offending people, so who cares?

And then I opened my e-mail Inbox, and I read this:

The Spiritual Senses: St. Mark 7:31-37, especially vs. 34: “Then, looking up to heaven, [Jesus] sighed, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’” Read here of a man who could neither hear nor use his ordinary physical organs of speech. However, the man heard the command, “Ephphatha!,” and “...he spoke plainly” (vs. 35). After that, there was no silencing the man nor his friends.

Who has not encountered terrible seasons when the spiritual senses are closed off to God? The Prophet David knew such inner silence and darkness: “And now, what is my patient endurance? Is it not the Lord? Yea, my hope is from Thee. From all mine iniquities deliver me; Thou hast made me a reproach to the foolish. I was dumb and opened not my mouth, for Thou hast made me. Take away from me Thy scourges...” (Ps. 39:10-13 LXX). (From the Bible study Yahoogroup Dynamis)

I'm not sure what exactly to think about this. But it was plainly the will of our Lord that this man be able to speak; in other words, not speaking was not a good thing, and He made it possible for this man to speak.

So, I guess this is also His will for me, considering that this particular reflection came into my life on the precise day I was seriously considering giving up speech; also considering that I still have the use of my vocal cords. After all, if He didn't want me to speak, I could have developed laryngeal cancer or something. As for giving offense, though -- I'm not sure there's much I can do about that, other than shutting up permanently. I can't control what people choose to read into what I have to say. I do my best to keep it non-offensive as it is, so total silence really does seem to be the only alternative; and since that's evidently not the Will of God, well.... Chill. Stop putting words into my mouth, and thoughts into my head, that aren't there. You know who you are.

To Be the Tree

If you ever get a chance, try to locate a recording of Krysztow Penderecki's "St. Luke Passion." Penderecki is/was a very modern composer (I'm not sure if he's still alive), so this particular Passion is a chaos of some of the most god-awful sounds human voices can make. But I recommend it because of the very, very last chord of the piece, when three four-part choirs come together for the final "GLORIA!" -- a masterpiece of harmony, when you suddenly realize that the piece had to be chaotic, because the Crucifixion was a triumph of chaos -- but God's perfect harmony is still more triumphant. What genius.

Yesterday, as I'm sure we all know, was the Feast of the Holy Cross. In typing up the material for this Sunday, I was struck by this Ode from Canticle Nine of the Canon: Let all the trees of the forest dance and sing, as they behold their fellow tree, the Cross, today receiving veneration: for Christ, as holy David prophesied, hath exalted it on high. Some years ago, I belonged to an Orthodox list, now sadly defunct, on which we encouraged one another to write poetry about specific events. This was my offering for September 14, the Elevation of the Cross:

To Be the Tree

"Cursed is he who hangs," they say,/ as though there were nothing worse./ But I tell you, to be the tree,/ on which hangs the One Who created me/ -- now that's a curse.

No matter to me He rose from the dead./ I hide myself for shame./ Those others with me, on whom others died,/ in terror and trembling also hide,/ for fear of the flame.

Three hundred years I lay in the earth/ before I felt it turning./ Now, in the light of day I stand,/ exposed to all by a woman's hand,/ and await my burning.

But wait! What does St. Helena say?/ "Behold the life-giving Tree/ by which salvation came to man!"/ Even I, it seems, was part of God's plan./ Salvation comes -- even for me.

Let all the trees of the forest dance and sing, as they behold their fellow tree, the Cross, today receiving veneration....

Addendum

I just realized that in these times of excessive Political Correctness, the final paragraph of my last entry may offend somebody; so I should clarify that the word "Polak" is simply the Polish word for a man of Polish descent. I grew up hearing about "good Polaks," and never realized it was anything but a compliment until I was married and said that to somebody, who automatically assumed I was being facetious as well as anti-Polish. Some people assume too danged much.

From one "Polak" to Another...

This afternoon, my husband and I drove to a local restaurant to celebrate my stepfather's 90th birthday, which was yesterday. We had a wonderful time, and around 2:30 we started drifting out of the restaurant on our way home. As Jim and I left the restaurant, one of my brothers, on his way out of the parking lot, rolled down his window and said, "Turn on the radio when you get into the car -- the Pope just died."

This particular Pope is very special to me because he was Polish, and my stepfather (who's really the only father I've ever known -- mine died when I was two, and my mother remarried when I was three) is also Polish; his mother was a Polish farmgirl from the Lodz area, and his father came from a rather more cultured family in, I believe, Krakow, the Pope's hometown. My grandmother used to refer to him as her "boyfriend," and kept a large portrait of him -- maybe 24" x 48" -- in a place of honor on her wall. She was so thrilled when he was elected. Although I left the Catholic Church right around the time he was elected, I always felt that he was a "good" Pope, in the sense that it was obvious he truly cared for his Church and for his vocation as its temporal leader. It was never about power for him. I felt bad for him because it must have become obvious to him, as the years went on, that he would never be able to undo the damage caused by Paul VI; but he had to keep trying. Now he can rest from his labors.

My husband and I were just speculating about the next Pope, where he might be from and what direction he might take, and I realized: Religiously, it's not going to affect me. For the first time in my life, the election of a Pope will have no direct affect on me. Will the new Pope choose to admit women to the priesthood, or reinstate liberation theology (Marxism in a cassock)? Or will he affirm the policies of John Paul II and continue to try to stem the liturgical abuses that have eviscerated Catholicism? I don't know, and I almost don't care, except that whichever direction he takes will affect everyone in the world -- that's the nature of being the leader of a large body of human beings. Whichever direction he chooses, he's bound to annoy somebody; somebody, somewhere, will declare that "this is the final nail in the coffin of the Catholic Church." What a very great shame, how sad, that people who are depending on this man to be their shepherd will continue to be buffeted about spiritually, just when and where they are at their most vulnerable. For their sakes, I do care.

Meanwhile, on a much more personal level, I'm dealing with the dichotomy between life and death: The 90th birthday party of one old Polak, and the death of another Polak five years his junior (John Paul II would have turned 85 this year). The old Polish song, "Sto lat," "May you live to be 100 years," keeps drifting through my head. It was sung so often for the Pope. It's sung at every Polish celebration, and I heard it many times, growing up. Sto lat, Francziszek Swienty (not my maiden name, but close); may your memory be eternal, Karol Wojtyla -- our Polish Pope.

Back on Track

Yesterday I had my first "real" confession in two years.

I love confession. For those of us brought up Catholic, the word conveys a sense of either beating up oneself, or getting beaten up by the priest; for those of us who were raised Protestant, the word smacks of "papism," something Those Catholics do, and therefore to be shunned. But Orthodox confession is a true gift, a time of taking inventory and assessing where one is or is not on track, and if off-track, how to get back on.

To the despair of certain members of my family (you know who you are), my earthly life is governed by a set of 5 x 8 pages, also known as a Franklin Planner. I don't use this tool as well as I could or should, mostly because I spend so much time on other pursuits, such as my current and concurrent projects of learning Russian and entering the Triodion into my computer in a format that will allow me to take it with me wherever I go, like on early-morning walks around the Common in the middle of our town. Why just say prayers when you can pray with the birds?

Anyway, one of the components of the Franklin Planner is the development of a "personal mission statement," something that allows you to define your purpose on earth. Mine has been clear for some time: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father Who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Recent events in my life have shown, and confession has confirmed, that not only have I gone off track on this mission statement, I have been altogether derailed. (A little RR terminology for my railroader son...) But hey -- derailments happen all the time, right? So you roll up your sleeves, get out whatever equipment they use on the railroad to set trains aright, and get that puppy back on track and under steam.

Under steam I am not, yet. But definitely back on track, with a clearer vision of how to implement this mission statement, now that the "grime" around my particular light has been cleansed in confession. "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..." And keep after it, so that when, not if, it starts to dim, I'll catch it before it gets too grimy to be seen. "Let your light so shine before men...."

I love confession.

Memory Eternal

At 3:35 this afternoon, my Aunt Mary fell asleep in the Lord.

It wasn't entirely unexpected; she was 83 years old, she had macular degeneration and a wonky heart, and her life over the past year had been rather wretched: one of her sons had mortgaged her house, then defaulted on it, so that she was forced out of a house she had lived in for almost 60 years. She didn't want to move out to Vancouver, where this son's job is; she didn't want to move in with her other son, whom she never liked; so the alternative was to move her up to NH, where she had two nieces and a nephew to keep an eye on her. That move seemed to do something to her soul. She became very bitter, very suspicious of people, and ironically, the only person she really trusted was the son who had occasioned the foreclosure!

So her passing is somewhat of a blessing. What bothers me about it, though, is that for the past year, her entire conversation consisted of reminiscences about her "womanizing" father (not that we ever heard from anyone else in the family!), her "stupid" husband, her "sneaky" second son, and her "brother-in-law, who treated her sister so bad" -- since that particular brother-in-law happens to be my stepfather, who worshipped the ground my mother walked on, that was especially tough to put up with. And I used to think about how she would carry that bitterness of soul with her into the next life, and wonder what I could do to get her out of that mode of thinking, so that she could face God with something positive. I never did figure it out.

This afternoon, after she passed, her sons, my sister, my brother, and I sat around making jokes about her life, and about her "setting heaven on its ear" once she got together with her brothers and sister, and that bothers me, too: I know what Orthodoxy says about our passage from this life to the next, I know that it isn't the current "floating-to-a-better-place" Feel-Good b.s. that our culture promotes. And yet, for that short space of time, I bought into it. On the other hand, what the heck was I supposed to say?!

Well, it can certainly be said that she lived life to its fullest: not just in negative ways, like her drinking and smoking and doing pretty much whatever she felt like, regardless of how her husband felt about it, but also, in the way she opened her home during the post-WWII housing shortage to any of her relatives who needed a place to stay. She took in three cousins (that I know of, there may have been others), her brother and his wife, who lived with her for a number of years, and at one point, one of my brothers who was separated from his wife. (Not all at once, of course!) They lived with her and her husband and sons, paid her rent as they could, ate from her table, and enjoyed her hospitality as long as they needed it. When she and her sister (my mother) bought a summer home in NH, that too became a vast open house for whoever wanted to vacation near the White Mountains. There's no way I could do something like that.

We all have our gifts, and hers was a strong sense of family. I hope it will cancel out any of the negatives in her life, and there were many. May your memory be eternal, Aunt Mary!

Forgiveness: Not an Option

As mentioned in my previous post, I have managed to almost completely alienate two people whom I care about very much, and have apologized to both. One has accepted my apology, the other...much more resistant.

I can understand that. Some things are harder to forgive than others. For me, there are four things I have struggled with over and over again: (1) my mother's abuse of me and my brothers when we were growing up; (2) my mother-in-law's repeated attempts to sabotage my marriage; (3) the neighbor we had, when our kids were little, who lodged a complaint of child abuse against us; and (4) the various teachers my son had throughout his school career, who made no attempt to get to know him and made his life miserable, who knows why.

It's hard to know which is the hardest to live with. Attacks on your kids are always more painful to live with than attacks on yourself, but ultimately, attacks on your kids are attacks on yourself, since your children are you. The neighbor who reported us for child abuse -- ultimately, her allegations were proven false, but colored the whole of our kids' upbringing, since we lived in constant fear of its happening again, and I knew of cases where kids had been forcibly removed from the homes of loving, caring parents whose chief "crime" was bringing up their kids in a Christian home. The little snipes and digs my mother-in-law excelled at were difficult enough to bear, but the outright lies she told my husband about things I'd said to her were almost beyond belief (such as telling him I was planning to send our son out of the house when he was 20, after I'd expressed to her the hope that he would be able to spend junior year abroad). As for my son's teachers, all I can say is, if you want cookie-cutter kids, go bake cookies. Chris was so far outside the mold that the only way to interact with him was to take him on his own terms. Those teachers who could, said he made their whole career worthwhile. Those who couldn't, made his life a misery, and by extension, our lives.

As for my own mother...after 35 years of thinking about it and talking about it, intellectually I can grasp that her own background ill prepared her for motherhood, and that she did her (limited) best with what she was given. The fact remains that my entire childhood was filled with terror, between the sadistic nuns at school and my sadistic mother at home. And this experience colors my entire relationship with God, as I struggle to believe that I have worth in His eyes.

How do you forgive these kinds of things?!

The author G. K. Chesterton wrote of having been slapped in the face so hard, by one of his schoolmasters, that he was deafened in that ear. When he was 80, he wrote that he felt he had finally completely forgiven that schoolmaster. All those years, 70 or so, and at least 30 or 40 of them as a Christian struggling to live life in Christ -- and it took him that long. His secret was that every time he thought of the injury done to him, he made a conscious decision to forgive -- for the sake of Christ. That it didn't happen overnight, was his gift to all of us who struggle to forgive wrongs that assault our innocence.

Then there's my personal model, the Theotokos. I read once that it wasn't her Yes to the Angel Gabriel that mattered, it was her Yes at the foot of the Cross. If you read some of the Stavrotheotokia of the Church, there can be no doubt in your mind as to what went on in her heart. And she had to forgive those who put her Son on the Cross. She has to forgive -- us. Our sins, those things that occasioned the necessity for the Cross. Worse, we actually ask her to intercede for us. What a nerve, to ask such a thing! And, to my eternal amazement, she does. She actually forgives us the pain we have caused, not to her -- though that's bad enough -- but to her Son, the worst pain any mother can be called on to endure.

Well then -- forgiveness is not an option. It's a requirement. It's a struggle, and that's OK; but it remains a requirement. So I'll just keep on struggling with it, as I hope others will with me.

I never feel really prepared for Lent -- it's always all I can handle just to fast. I don't think a young mother should even think about fasting -- being a mother is enough! (One reason it's such a good idea for our priests to be married -- it's harder for them to get on their high horses about The Church Says when they can see how their own wives have to struggle with the chores of womanhood -- like bearing, feeding, and caring for children.) Reminds me of a comment I read somewhere else, from a young mother who worried that she wasn't able to focus on the Liturgy because her children took all her attention -- she was told by her Bishop, "Your children are your Liturgy. Bring them to church, help them to learn how to behave in church -- that is your prayer." Wow.

Meanwhile, with a skill and elan that only I possess, I have managed to anger two people I really care about, right at the beginning of Great Lent. I don't know how I do this, but I've done it pretty nearly all my life -- caring about people, in trying to express that, I manage to tick them off no end. As of yesterday, I was just about ready to give up trying, just crawl into a corner and not contact anybody or do anything that wasn't strictly necessary for the upkeep of the house. And then, in Touching Heaven, I read this:

An encounter with [a staretz, an elder] may reveal a clear and brilliantly lit path, the very one you have been patiently seeking. Or, it may not. The gift one gets may simply be permission to go on struggling. We seek guidance, and sometimes receive; we seek relief, and sometimes receive only the encouragement to keep fighting the good fight....Occasionally it feels as though the world has an overwhelming power to crush us; that is, if our human nature doesn't finish us off first. But there is absolutely no sound promise offered from the circles of holiness that life is free from struggle. To struggle is to engage, and to engage the spiritual life is one of the few worthy pursuits of man.

Or, as we used to say in my youth, no rest for the wicked. Not struggling is not an option, in this calling. Dang.

Weather or Not, Here Comes Lent!

It's snowing. Again.

Normally, I like snow. I certainly prefer it to the broiling heat of summer, when the sun glares down on you through a haze of humidity and all you can do is sit around the house in survival mode. When it's 25 or so degrees out, and the snow is falling in big, fat flakes that cover all the bare branches of the trees with a coat of white, there's no wind, and it looks as if all the world is drowsing -- that's beautiful. I don't even mind shovelling in such circumstances, because as dusk falls the street lights pick up the sparkle in the snow and it looks like "poor man's diamonds." It's almost a moment for prayer.

That hasn't been our weather since the beginning of March. Today's blizzard is the third in two weeks -- March 1, March 9, and now today -- and though at the moment there's no wind, it's supposed to pick up considerably and stay that way for the rest of the week. I still haven't recovered from Wednesday's storm, when we had sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts near 80. I stayed in all day; my poor husband was the one who went outside and coped with the waist-high drifts and the brutal winds. To top it all off, Jim, despite 25 years of living in New England, still thinks like a New Yorker, that we are supposed to have crocus in our garden by March. (Hasn't happened yet. We usually see crocus sometime in April, forsythia around the first of May, and lily-of-the-valley -- known elsewhere as "Maybells" -- in June. IOW, we're a month behind almost everywhere else, except maybe Canada.)

I'm trying to find some spiritual benefit in all this, but all I can think is that last week, I missed church due to my cough, and this week, I'll miss church due to the weather. The final two Sundays before Lent, and I'm missing church. This does not bode well for my spiritual state, during a time that always brings its own struggles, when you definitely don't need anything extra to have to cope with. Like taxes. Or weather. Or the commuter bus breaking down three times in a week, as it did to Jim this week. (When he mentioned that to the bus company yesterday evening, they told him they'd give him a free bus pass for next week. Small compensation for getting home at 7:30 p.m....)

Podvig takes many forms, I guess...

Musical Muttonings

Have had a comment to my last post on my Xanga site, asking, "What is a Triodion, and what is an Octoechos?" Worthwhile answering in a separate post.

The Octoechos is the weekly prayer cycle of the Orthodox Church. It was set up in the eighth century A.D. by St. John of Damascus, and consists of an eight-week cycle of musical "moods" -- not to be confused with the do-re-mi scale of Western culture -- used for praying liturgical prayers. The closest you can come to this structure in Western culture is a knowledge of the "ecclesiastical Modes," the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian scales, and their "plagal" tones -- I must admit to being a little fuzzy on what constitutes "plagal," but it seems to be a fifth above the "base note," or tonic, of the original Mode. So for example, Dorian mode begins on the key of D, and on a piano you would play an octave starting on D and going straight up, without any sharps or flats. In Byzantine Church music, that's Tone 1. We'll be in Tone 1 in two weeks -- this week is Tone 7, known in the Greek Church as "varis," or Grave. (I don't know why -- it doesn't strike me as all that somber! But it is considered somber enough that in the week following Pascha, when all the Tones are sung one per day, Tone 7/varis is the only one omitted -- too "grave" for Paschaltide.)

The Triodion is based on the Octoechos. Again, the basic 8-week melodic structure is used, but it adds prayers that are particular to Great Lent, the 40 days preceding Pascha.

So what does all this have to do with me? As a church musician and former choir director, I like to sing my prayers, and I also went to great pains and expense to learn all of this, so I don't want to forget the melodies. I also like my prayers to be portable -- when I'm on the go, I still want to be able to say them. So, last year, I took the basic Octoechos prayers I purchased at a monastery and entered them into my computer, in a format consistent with a Franklin Covey Compact Day Planner (www.franklincovey.com), and every week I take out the previous week's Octoechos and insert the new Tone. Now I'm doing the same for the Triodion/Lenten cycle -- entering it into my computer and printing it out, week by week. Fortunately, the Triodion is already available online, so all I have to do is format it and print it out (which takes considerable effort anyway, since what's online is in modern English, and I prefer liturgical English). I'll do the same, God willing, with the Pentecostarion, which is the cycle of prayers from Pascha/Easter through the week after Pentecost.

Hey, we all have a compulsion of one sort or another. Mine's more harmless than gambling.

Here we sit, in the middle of yet another blizzard, this one with not so much snow, but with winds howling all around -- sustained at 20 mph, gusts up to 50. It will be good for starting to work on the Triodion -- yes, now that the Octoechos is finished, I decided to go ahead and enter the Triodion, greatly assisted by the fact that it's available online (I was going to try to post the url, but I can't get into it without losing this post. If anyone's interested, let me know, and I'll look it up before I post next). All I have to do is cut, paste, and format, and I have everything in front of me for my prayer rule -- Vespers and Matins. (Note: This is Music Geek or Liturgy Geek stuff. Stick with the prayer rule your priest gave you!)

Stayed home and worked on it yesterday, in fact -- for the past week I've had a cold, and it just wasn't going away. When I woke up dizzy yesterday, I figured I'd better not even try to drive to class, and instead visited the doctor, who prescribed an antibiotic. I feel better already. But boy, it's been some winter; I don't believe I've seen a winter like this in all my life, and I can recall some pretty nasty blizzards in the 1960s. One or two per season, though, not one after another like this year.