And Speaking of Singing...

...as I was a couple of posts ago, I'm off on Friday for two weeks of singing Russian Orthodox Church music.

There's a monastery in upstate New York, not too far from the Baseball Museum in Cooperstown, which hosts the Summer School of Liturgical Music for two weeks every summer. If you go through all the courses, over a three-year period, you are certified as a choir director and/or Reader in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. I completed this course in 2003, went back in 2004 to help out in the kitchen (and sing, of course), missed it in 2005 for my grandson's second birthday -- I'll never do that again -- and last year, well, we know about that.

So I need this course this year. I plan to take a couple of refresher courses in Choral Conducting Methods and Church Music History, and, never having passed Church Slavonic, I really want to take that course for a (ahem) fourth time. Well, come on, most folks who take it at least have to read the stuff in church on Sundays. Until a few years ago, I never even knew it existed.

Now, I do attend a Greek church. So why am I taking courses in Russian Orthodox choral singing? Well, apart from the chance to sing four hours a day, with music composed by the likes of Rachmaninov, when I began the course I was in fact a choir director. Shortly after completing the first third of the course, my choir and I had a falling out, and I have not conducted since then, but the course material itself is so compelling that I just had to go back and finish it out, and I did.

However, there is now an ulterior motive: We have a new priest. I have met him, like him very much, and spoken with him at length about the parish, the choir, and the fact that although there are a number of Russians in the area, they don't seem to feel awfully comfortable at our church. They show up for Pascha, then crawl back into the woodwork until the next year. He would like to change that.

My husband points out that any such effort is likely to put a number of Greek noses far out of joint, and he's probably right about that. Some folks in the parish are still in a snit that they've had to put up with a non-Greek priest for the past six years, and the new priest is also not Greek, but Romanian. Still, seven years ago they didn't even want to have English in the parish, and now they use it all the time, so I hope that there's hope. If you focus on the Church as a spiritual hospital, this isn't usually a problem, but if you focus on it as an ethnic club, that's where the sparks fly. Will keep you all posted how this goes.

Meanwhile, I shall shortly be off for my spiritual "fix" for the year. I need it.

Tagged by Emily

See links to other blogs at right. I wasn't specifically tagged, but she said, "anyone reading this post," so Good Little Do-Bee that I am, I thought I'd play along.

Rules: After posting these rules, each player proceeds to list 8 relatively random facts/habits about himself/herself. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, leaving them a comment on their blogs to let them know.

1. Although I love to sing, I'm not all that wild about opera. Go figure.

2. Speaking of singing, my late aunt told me once that I could sing before I could talk. Whoa.

3. I have never been able to sit around in my jammies for very long, and prefer to get dressed the second I get up.

4. I loved being a secretary. If I'm not sitting at a typewriter or keyboard, I don't feel as if I'm working.

5. I would have loved to have at least half a dozen children, but got a late start. Sigh.

6. I am a shocking housekeeper, despite really loving a clean and tidy home. It's tempting to say that it's hard to be clean and tidy when living with a packrat, but I seem to have developed tendencies along those lines myself.

7. If my chores aren't done by 9:00 a.m., they won't get done at all.

8. Despite my terror of flying, I actually do hope to make it to Russia one day.

Tagging: anyone who reads this blog, since I appear to have just six readers, per Bloglines.

You Must See This

Over on the right are links to my favorite blogs ("Other Sheep of This Fold"). Click on Nancy's (Treasured Heart) to see something that -- well, it took my breath away. You do have to let it run for a couple of seconds before you realize what it's about, and turn up the sound -- it's well worth it.

Update: Paul Potts won the competition! Elizabeth, God bless her, has posted all three of his performances on her blog, and when I clicked on over to You-Tube, there was also a clip of the announcement that he was the winner. Just thrilled for this guy, and so very, very pleased that culture is not dead, after all.

Dictionary definition of "Margaret"

How could I resist? Margaret -- [noun]: A real life muppet 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Red Alert

Ever since last August -- I think we all know what happened then -- I have had a really difficult time keeping to my prayer rule. At that time, I'm sure it was just sheer physical exhaustion, as my body recovered from a major assault on it, and then from a life-threatening illness (turns out that MRSA kills a lot of people). Also, dh was home a great deal, and over the years, he's made it plain that he thinks prayer is for "holy rollers."

Well -- his tune has gradually changed, and since he's been home this past month, recuperating from his own stay in the hospital -- I think I blogged about that -- he doesn't seem to mind my praying so much. This week, when I reminded him that I was fasting (he wanted to fix me eggs for breakfast), he just said, "Oh! Okay!" This is a major change for him.

So there isn't too much excuse for the fact that I managed a bare minimum, sometimes, of prayer rule throughout Lent and the Paschal season. I'm just starting to get into it a bit more regularly now. It's embarrassing; I'll have to bring it up in confession; but until today, I haven't been able to figure out what the problem is.

Today I got it. Now I just have to remember it, which is why I'm blogging about it.

When Jim's home, I'm on nonstop Red Alert, a military term for, "Be ready to leap into action at a moment's notice." Yep, that's me.

What happened this morning was that as I was debating whether or not to get into my prayer rule, at 8:30 a.m. (it takes about an hour to do the whole thing), Jim suddenly shouted, "Do you consider this redundant?" and proceeded to quote a sentence that, well, actually was redundant. He does this all the time, bouncing grammar rules off me; he's actually very savvy with the English language himself, but if he isn't sure about a point, it's me he comes to. And while it's flattering, it's also very interfering.

"Would you put a semicolon here?"

"Is a colon followed by one space or two?" (It's two. Semicolons are one space.)

"How does this sound to your ear?" (Reads the rough draft of a report he's doing for work.)

"How many days did I work from home last month?"

Etc.

When he goes into Boston to work, this is not a problem, only when he works from home. Sometimes I feel like saying, "There is life in Rochester when you aren't here, I don't live in a state of suspended animation until you get home, so please stop acting as if I had nothing better to do all day than dance attendance on you." In the heat of the summer, it gets real interesting; he leaves off working around 3:00 (having worked since 6:00 a.m., so all you taxpayers are still getting your money's worth!), and then I'm supposed to Drop Everything at a moment's notice so we can drive up to his favorite swimming hole, where he swims for a couple of hours while I work on embroidery and stew about dinner, which I will still have to prepare when we get back home. Why do I have to go along? It's More Fun with me along.

Do any of you married women have a similar situation, or is this yet another manifestation of the Generation Gap?!?!

And you single gals: Think about this, when you get to hankering after being married. You don't have a life. You're on nonstop Red Alert.

White Flower

With thanks to Philippa:

You Are a White Flower

A white flower tends to represent purity, simple beauty, and modesty. At times, you are dignified like a magnolia. And at other times, you represent great ecstasy, like a white orchid. And more than you wish, you're a little boastful, like a white hydrangea.

What Color Flower Are You?

HO-LY COWWWWWWWWW...

...as Phil Rizzuto used to say when Mickey Mantle would knock one clear over the bleachers.

This morning I finally got to watch "Ostrov," or "The Island," in English, a Russian film with English subtitles that I have been reading about since last December. I did buy it as far back as February -- didn't know that there were two different formats for watching this baby. The European format is PAL, and it's supposed to be superior to NTSC, which is the American format -- so why aren't we using NTSC (referred to, by a priest of my acquaintance, as "Never The Same Color")? Go figure.

Anyway, I am still reeling. Everyone said, "You gotta see this film, it's a must-see," and I concur. Absolutely. The only caveat I would add is that it really helps to be Orthodox; otherwise, the protagonist just looks like a nut. But if you're Orthodox, you understand up front that he's a Fool-for-Christ, and that his wacko behavior is what makes possible the many miracles that take place in the movie.

It's also a good reality check for those of us who aspire to the monastic state. In the beginning of the film, during WWII, he's humping coal on a barge, and 30 years later, at the monastery, he's still humping coal, keeping the monastery's fires stoked. This is not an easy thing to do in a Soviet-era monastery; the Soviets made sure that living conditions were, well, unliveable, and there many scenes that show just how difficult this monk's life is, even by monastic standards.

What I came away with: All of us really are called to this radical way of life. Not to giving up our homes and families, or those things that go along with having homes and families, but those little luxuries we allow ourselves (like that ice cream I had when I got home from shopping because "I needed to make room in the freezer". Really. Honest to Pete).

I will have to watch this movie a lot more often to internalize it, but on first seeing -- it was, to me, a call to monasticism while living in the world. Oh, two other things I got from it: one, you don't choose the monastery, God places you in it (this monk would never have become a monk if he hadn't been dragged there by monks who were trying to save his life). And two, from a scene where the monk is reading Psalm 1, "Blessed is the man": "He shall bring forth his fruit in its season." In its season: How many of us try to rush this season? I sure do. I want fruit now. I keep forgetting that the same God Who created that peach tree out in my back yard, created me, and it's entirely possible that I'm no readier to bear fruit than that peach tree is, right this very second. I'll have to wait till September to slurp up its tiny, perfect peaches. And whatever season it is when I'm ready to bear fruit: that's not for me to know.

Get this movie, if at all possible.

Phew

They found him. Turns out that when they (my sister and her husband) were on their way to my house, they passed an ambulance that was taking him to the hospital.

He had driven to Wal-Mart to get some plants (which was in his game plan). Now, my sister checked the parking lot at Wal-Mart, but never thought to check across the street -- he had turned into the Unicel parking lot and decided to take a nap. Folks there noticed that he wasn't getting out of his truck, so tapped on the window and asked if he was all right, and he explained that he was feeling sleepy and wanted to get off the road. (I wish everybody were that smart.) So they let him be, and just kept checking on him periodically.

Around 4:00 p.m., they found him unresponsive, so called an ambulance. The paramedics found that his body temperature was 106 degrees -- that's not a typo -- so transported him to the hospital. After they got him back down to normal, they released him.

While he was there, they ran an EKG and an EEG, and found him to be in fantastically good health. Now, here's the kicker: While the rest of us are Eating Healthy and trying to exercise and not having too much success watching our weight, Dad eats a diet of meat and potatoes -- his lips haven't tasted a vegetable probably since his mother weaned him, he's been to the doctor four times in his life (and one of those was his Army physical), and having been raised by Polish peasants, he thinks nothing of eating food that's been in the fridge for a couple of weeks. And he has the constitution of a 30-year-old. His exercise has always consisted of home improvements and, since they moved to NH, raking leaves. Period.

We were freaking out because if he had become disoriented, who knew where he'd end up: New York? Canada?? As I said to my sister, "If he missed the turnpike exit for Milton [where they live], he could be halfway to Canada by now and have no idea where he is."

So, to answer the obvious question of why is he driving at his age: We have been trying to get the keys away from him for the past six or seven years. One day, the police called my sister (he lives with her): They had found him driving down the middle of the road, over the double yellow line. When the cop pulled him over, doubtless thinking, "Boy, I've got a live one," Dad explained that he was driving there to avoid the potholes in the road. Okay. The cop said, "But what about oncoming traffic?" And Dad said, "Well, there isn't any. When it comes, I'll get over." Annie said, "Please take the keys away." And the cop said, "We can't. We can only do that if he hasn't passed his driving test."

In NH, you have to take a road test every time you renew your license, if you're over 75. Dad's last road test was last year. Among other things, it involves driving on a very heavily-travelled 55-mph highway. And he isn't all that confused, normally, though over the past few months, it's getting obvious. Well -- I'm hoping this scare will give my sister the courage she needs to take the keys. He will make her life miserable if she does, though.

Thanks, all, for the prayers. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me how living into your 90s is supposed to be a good thing.

Dad's Missing

My sister just stopped by our house to let me know that my 92-year-old stepfather has been missing since noon today. She last saw him at the cemetery where my mother is buried, and said that he seemed disoriented; she put him into his truck, made him drink some water he had there, and told him to go straight home. He never got there, she and her daughter have been to all his usual haunts, and there's no sign of him.

Now, he makes this trip to the cemetery at least twice a week, so he shouldn't have become disoriented that easily; plus, his bank is on the same street, and he goes there once a week, so this is not unfamiliar territory. But he has been getting vague of late, and of course, now she's kicking herself for not having foreseen that he couldn't drive ten miles from Point A, where he goes 2-3 times a week, to Point B, where he lives.

OK, somebody want to go into this with me one more time, why old age is supposed to be such a freaking blessing?!?!?!

Thrice Blessed

I had intended to post this a couple of days ago, but life kept getting in the way. ;-)

On Thursday, dh and I celebrated 38 years of marriage. We began the day by attending Divine Liturgy for the Ascension, and after Liturgy, I asked my priest if I could sing a Te Deum to give thanks for the reunion of Moscow and ROCOR. Interestingly, my very Greek priest didn't know what a Te Deum was -- and I didn't know what it would be called in Greek, or even if it exists in Greek -- but once he understood what I wanted to do, he was all for it. I know this nifty Te Deum that I had to learn for my courses at Jordanville, so was able to sing the whole thing through in Slavonic.

After that, we went out to breakfast, and then spent the rest of the day just knocking around Maine -- went to Kennebunk and Cape Porpoise, and then drove back along the coast to a place called Cap'n Simeon's Galley for lunch. Great seafood (even if it was a non-fasting day... Sigh). It's nice to be able to visit old favorite haunts now and again, and this has been on our list of favorites for 21 years now, which is as long as we've lived in New Hampshire.

As someone pointed out, the Ascension and wedding anniversaries occur annually. But rarely do they occur on the same date. And added to that the joy of the reconciliation between the two Churches of Russia -- yeah, thrice blessed says it all.

BTW, I notice that today is the birthday of Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II. I have often read that he knew he was born on the feast of the Prophet Job, and expected to have a difficult reign, filled with tribulation. Incidentally, Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert K. Massie, is quite enlightening on the subject of the Tsar-Martyr. What I like best about this book is that it was written by someone with absolutely no agenda; his only reason for researching the Romanovs was that his son had hemophilia, and in searching for famous hemophiliacs, he came across the Tsarevich Alexei. Then he began to research the Romanovs. Up to reading about them, the only thing he knew about them was all the Communist propaganda ("Commierot") about how awful they were, but his book shows that Nicholas truly tried his best to govern. Sure, he made mistakes. That's the best of Orthodox saints: they do make mistakes. What's rewarded is their efforts, not their successes. Боже, царья храни!

The Apron Pic

Mimi had a great post about yesterday's having been Wear an Apron Day. With my usual Keeping on Top of Current Trends skill, I am a day late with this, but here is my apron pic. Note that, despite all the fussing I did over there about a real apron's having a bottom ruffle, mine doesn't. Sigh. What it does have is a gathered waist and a bib. If I were a lot thinner, the bib might actually cover something, but as it is, beggars can't be choosers, and at least this one has a bib and a pocket, the other essential for an apron.

I remember when these were standard wear, and no woman in any kind of mind, right or otherwise, would have been caught dead in her kitchen without her apron. On the other hand... Yesterday I was at a local cafe, where I go when I need to write (too many distractions at home), and I purchased a cuppa joe for the usual $1.00++. Some guy said to me, "Gee, remember when coffee was fifty cents?" And I had to laugh, as I came back at him, "I remember when coffee was ten cents." And I do.

I'm not kidding when I say I'm old.

OK, Why am I here??

No, this is nothing radically existential -- I just forgot what it was I wanted to blog about. The joys of aging.

Well, at least I have reconnected with an old blog friend. Bloglines, which is supposed to help me keep track of all my favorite blogs, has a nasty habit of dropping people on me, so I don't know whose blog is missing until one day I say, "Hey, I haven't heard from So-and-So in awhile," and discover that their blog is gone from Bloglines, and I can't remember their blog address. This happened with Paradosis, Catherine, Alanna, Philippa, and Emily. I was especially annoyed to lose this last because this girl belongs to my former parish, and only became Orthodox a year ago, and I'm very fond of her godmother.

Fortunately, she left a comment on my last post, and I was able to track her down that way. So now I'm back in touch with my young friend, and with several of my older friends, too ("older" in the sense of how long we've been friends, not in the sense of age -- as far as I know, I've got 'em all licked).

Well, so! I see that my former parish is getting a new priest. Mostly, I'm sorry to hear that; while this priest was a bit too "Catholic" for me personally (those girls on the solea, and in the Great Entrance, have always fried my excessively orthodox brain!), I know many people were horrified to lose him, and his going has been very divisive for this parish. On the other hand, there's always the hope that the next priest will be a bit more Orthodox in his practice, though I don't know: his rumored successor has a quote from St. Theresa of Lisieux on his current parish's website. Yep, another ex-Catholic, and if this quote is anything to go by, not ex enough.

Yes, this is my problem. I had fifteen years of the old Catholic Church, which was a lot like the Orthodox Church, and fifteen years of the new Catholic Church, which is a lot like any Protestant church, and this year it will be thirty years since I last worshipped as a Catholic. And I'm still hypersensitive to it. I guess it's freaking me out to realize that there's a whole generation of middle-aged people who have never known the beauty of the old Catholic Church, and seriously think that the claptrap that's around nowadays is Catholicism -- and the most recent priests at my former parish are among this group. OK, 'nuff, before I seriously tick off all my friends. Pray for me, that I get over this sometime before I die.

NIFTY!!

Dear Philippa has a nifty new thingie on her site called "Menologion." I followed the link, and now I have it too! I think hers is for the New Calendar, and mine is for the Old Calendar, so between us, we have the bases covered. ;-)

Chris is home for the weekend, and took me out to dinner for Mother's Day, along with Jim. We went to a seafood place, where I had a chicken Caesar salad -- Jim said, "Don't you want seafood?" and I replied, "When you eat seafood half the year, you learn to appreciate the half the year you don't have to." Ah, Orthodoxy.

(And I'm dying to add a family anecdote, about the year my son and daughter collaborated on a Mother's Day card for me that was signed, "Happy M---er's Day." The knitters among us will understand that there are certain words best not uttered aloud among us woolfolk.)

My third book is finished, at least the first draft. I plan to let it sit for a month or two until it's thoroughly out of my system, then go back and look for the inconsistencies and start editing it, cleaning it up, tightening the plot, and all that. Meanwhile, I'm at work on the fourth in the series, "Russians Unorthodox." It's completely unlike any of the other three; for one thing, it's told in the first person, and for another, I'm hoping to make it funny, at least in spots.

Oh, and I expect to edit the one book, "An Unorthodox Spy," and break it down into two books, which it was originally, only I couldn't think of a title for the second book. So if you happen to see references to "The Unorthodox Christian," and have already read the "Spy" blog, you've already read the first two books. Clear as mud?

OK, Deep Breath, Power Down....

Once again, I am boggled by what nice people I know in the blogosphere. Thank you, one and all, for your support and prayers, and your offers to help -- just being here was an enormous help. Thank you.

Jim came home today. His bronchoscopy went well, they were able to biopsy the bit of lung tissue in question, and, as his doctor put it, "It's not an 'Oh my God' matter." (Love that esoteric medical terminology.) However, they still don't know what's causing the clots -- possibly because they only did an ultrasound on half of one leg, not all on both legs -- so he has to go for the gross tests sometime next week.

Of course I am not handling any of this well. Brings back too many memories of last summer. He even has to do the belly shots. He, having been brought up by a nurse, is 100% okay with all of this. I, having been brought up by normal people who only saw doctors for broken bones and DPT boosters, think he's fallen into the hands of ghouls. Oh, to top it all off: the belly shots are costing us around $140.00. And we have a prescription-drug benefit to our health insurance. Jokingly, I said to the pharmacist, "What does it cost without a drug benefit, $5,000?" And she said, "Yes." I hope she was kidding. I thought Jim would have a stroke on the spot.

I'm still trying to figure out what the point is of some hotshot medicine that has to be injected (ewww) into one's gut (EWWWWWWW) by oneself, that costs thousands of dollars. Not to mention the bubbly assurance, "And it doesn't even hurt." Let me tell you -- I had those shots, and I can guarantee you that no one who's prescribing these puppies has ever taken them.

Okay, I'm getting wound up again (ya think?!), so I will just make one further note: the guy I thought was the emergency-room doctor, isn't. He's something called a "hospitallist," and his job is to coordinate all the various medical procedures so that doctors with conflicting agendas don't prescribe conflicting treatments/medications/whatever. I like the idea of a hospitallist. I even somewhat like this particular hospitallist. Great bedside manner, and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as to knowing his stuff -- he's the one who said the mass in Jim's lung wasn't cancer, and well, holy cow, he was right. What a shock. Okay, okay, for all you medical people, I'll shut up now.

For all you who have read my book, I have a question. I have to break up the two books in order to get the thing published, and I need a title for the first half. I'm kicking around "The Unorthodox Affair" -- does that sound like anything you'd buy? Does it sound like it summarizes the plot? My daughter, who read it faithfully every day when she got home from school (she'd hold out her hand and say, "Give"), thought "An Unorthodox Love" would work. Ideas, suggestions, rotten tomatoes???

Back on the Bicycle

Thanks to all for prayers and responses. They are much appreciated, and much needed.

Today Jim saw the pulmonologist. There appears to be a disagreement between the emergency-room doctor and the pulmonologist. The ER doctor thinks the mass in the right lung is an infarction, that is, dead tissue that has necrotized over a very long period of time. The pulmonologist thinks it's cancer, and wants to do a broncoscopy, as well as an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, because after all, These Blood Clots Must Be Coming from Somewhere, and apparently, Hidden Cancers Can Cause Blood Clots.

The operative word, as far as I'm concerned, is "can." As in, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but why not go for broke and assume it is until we find out it isn't, at which point, why, we can do more vivisection, what fun!!! The ER doctor's point is, there are absolutely no risk factors for cancer: This guy isn't overweight, doesn't smoke, doesn't live with smokers, doesn't work in a carcinogenic environment, and lung cancer doesn't just show up for the hell of it!

Ya know what scares the living daylights out of me? Of course, all the nurses are pulling out the Sympathy Card that says, "Oh, yes, These Things Are Scary." Yeah, they're scary, all right, but not for the reasons most people find them scary. I find them scary because I can't escape the impression, based on my own rather vast experience, that my husband's life is in the hands of a HATFUL OF INCOMPETENT BOOBS WHO DON'T HAVE THE FAINTEST CLUE WHAT THEY'RE DOING!!!!!

To top it all off, when I walked in this evening, my brother was visiting my husband, and regaling him with his own hospital experience, which involved walking into another hospital's ER with severe pain in his right shoulder, and being kept overnight for cardio observation because he had Risk Factors (i.e., he's fat). The next day, they gave him a stress test and an echo-cardiogram, both of which he passed with flying colors, so he was discharged -- with his right shoulder still killing him. His own doctor diagnosed tendonitis. See, this is what gets me: The docs go into overdrive on their own pet theories, and completely ignore what's actually going on.

As I said to Jim, I can't advise him on how to handle this. I know what my own response would be, but that's not his response. He's inclined to let them do their vivisectionist thing. So all I ask is that he conduct his business with them without me anywhere in the vicinity, because if there's one thing I love for dinner, it's Doctor Stew.

Grumble, grumble, grouse, curses, kick the cat...

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Writers....

As readers of my book blog know, things are reaching a climax, at least in this first draft, and I had planned to finish off a chapter today. Hah.

Over the weekend, my husband started spitting up blood -- why do these things always start on weekends?! -- so this morning, he called our family physician, who told him to get to the emergency room. We got there around 9:30 a.m., and proceeded to spend the rest of the day there, while we dealt with x-rays and blood draws and CAT scans and heaven alone knows what else. But the bottom line is: dh has a pulmonary embolism, or blood clots in his lungs. We have no idea where they came from, how they got there, where they may have migrated from, how they came to lodge in his lungs -- we only know that breathing has become steadily more difficult for him since November, when he began not to be able to run his usual five miles/8 km, without having to stop for breath every so often, and that over the past week, he has had trouble breathing while walking the one mile to work. Then this business of spitting up blood.

It all "sux," but OTOH, maybe it will get him to think a little more seriously about his church relationships, or lack thereof -- when we got to the hospital, and he was asked his religion, he hemmed and hawed and finally said, "More Orthodox than anything else." So I hope there's hope.

Meanwhile, I intend to escape for a little while, if not to Moscow, at least to Brighton Beach. ;-)

The Saint Meme

Cribbed from Elizabeth:

The task is to name four of your favourite Saints, one who was well on the way to sanctity, is widely venerated already and very likely to be made a Saint in due course, and one who isn't yet publicly declared a saint but probably should be made a Saint.

My votes:

St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco
St. Sergius of Radonezh
St. Xenia of St. Petersburg
The Holy Royal Martyrs (that's seven saints, actually, but I love 'em all): Nicholas II, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei

Blessed:
Fr Seraphim Rose

Should be made a Saint :
Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain. One anecdote: He and his disciple Athanasios were standing in their cell praying, when suddenly the lamps started to sway as if stirred by a strong breeze, only there was no breeze. When they were done praying, Athanasios asked Paisios what that was all about. Paisios said, "Oh, the Holy Virgin likes to visit people on the Mountain [ie, Mount Athos] and see what they're up to." "And what did she see when she visited us?" "Why, she saw two idiots praying!" Anybody who can call himself an "idiot" when visited by the Holy Virgin gets my vote for sanctity. ;-)

Who would you choose ?

I tag Mimi, Philippa, and Catherine......... and anyone else who wants to play.

(And I must confess that I left in Fr. Seraphim, who was mentioned on Elizabeth's blog, only because I don't know of anyone else who's as widely venerated but not yet a saint. I'd appreciate hearing other people's nominations.)

Barking Mad

A very dear internet crony, who has been feeding my ego by reading my books ;-) came up with the phrase "barking mad" to describe one of my characters, who is indeed slightly batty. A crank. Just at the moment, that's a bit how I feel.

I live next door to a Catholic church. Regardless of what we are all supposed to think about Catholicism (namely, that God Loves Them Too and that we should Pray That We May One Day All Be One, etc.), the fact remains that after Vatican II, they became horribly Protestant in their entire tone and structure. Their substance remains Catholic (and therefore, by Orthodox understanding, flawed), but the form has radically changed.

This particular church is about typical of most Catholic parishes I've seen in action: lots of emphasis on Peace and Justice Issues, lots of Programs, and lots of congregational singing of mostly Protestant hymns. Now, some Protestant hymns are gems--I'm thinking in particular of the hymns written during the Reformation, and those by the great J. S. Bach--but post-Bach, there came to be a movement known as the Quietist Movement, or maybe it was the Pietist Movement. Anyway, those marvellous old Reformation hymns were all transformed into 4/4 meter and rhythm, referred to by one Orthodox musician as the Plod of God, and so help me, he was right.

This place next door has an electronic carillon, and they play a lot of Plod-of-God hymns. Most of the year, I have to put up with, "Immac-u-LATE Mary, THY praises we-he sing," which gets old when you hear it twice a day, every day. At Paschaltide, however, they change the record, so now I listen to a variety of Plod-of-God hymns. This evening's was "The Church's One Foundation is Jesus Christ, Her Lord," which at least doesn't repeat the same dratted thing over and over.

My particular pet peeve, though, is, "Jesus Christ is risen today." As in, "A-a-a-a-ahhh-lay-hay-loo-hoo-ya." You know the one:
"Are try-umph-ant ho-ly- day-hay, a-a-a-a-ahhh-lay-hay-loo-hoo-ya."

In sheer defense of my own sanity, I have had to compose my own lyrics:
"Cheerless on the path we've trod, a-a-a-a-ahhh-lay-hay-loo-hoo-ya,
Marching to the Plod of God, a-a-a-a-a-a-lay-hay-loo-hoo-ya!"

Please, PLEASE, somebody tell me you have heard a version of this hymn that actually SOUNDS triumphant and glorious?!?!? Otherwise, I shall shortly join my (very peripheral) character in the Barking Mad category. Thank you.

Into the Dark

I noted, a few posts back, that I had returned to writing, and that this latest book in a series was dark. It just got darker, in ways I had not anticipated.

I began the series by wanting to write just one book, a simple romance about an American cop and a Russian cop. (I should note that I have a lot of cops in my family -- as the joke goes around here, there are more cops in our family than some of the local forces have cops.) And then I got curious about their life in Happy-Ever-After-Land, and wrote a second book that had some dark elements, but conquered them all. And there it ended, for fifteen years, while I focused on becoming Orthodox, not just by chrismation, but in mind and heart, as well.

Smack in the middle of Great Lent, the third book in the series presented itself almost fully written -- at least fully outlined, in terms of what happened to this young family after Trouble descended on it -- and I have been churning that out, consistently writing at least one-third of a chapter every day. When it started, I just wanted to bring "people" (namely, me!) up to date on how things resolved in their lives, and bring them to the next level of Life After Police Work. There would be a lot of stuff about interrogation -- not making it too ugly, since it seems that even the KGB has caught on to the idea that police work is a profession -- and setting the stage for the head of my little household to decide that Police Work Is for the Young, i.e., retirement therefrom and entry into the next level of his life. That's all.

And then, looking for quotes about treason -- I like to start my chapters with quotes -- I found a good one by Aldrich Ames, the American who fed the KGB an enormous amount of intelligence about its people who were spying for the US. And, to my shock, I realized that I was writing about real people without having been aware that that's what I was doing. There really was a KGB general who spied for the US. There really was a list of names to be conveyed from one "side" to the other -- admittedly, in my story the names were to be conveyed from the KGB to the FBI, and not, as in actual fact, the other way around, but still.

And I found that my youthful and idealistic KGB officer was physically revolted by his father's treason. In other words, this tale is going far beyond any place I had ever intended to take it, and has begun to explore the human toll of treason, the people it affects far beyond the actual players in the international chess game known as espionage.

Where is this coming from?! When I started, I knew who Aldrich Ames was, and that was all. I never read any aspect of his story; beyond a mild "Oh, for crying out loud," I wasn't even especially affected by his arrest. Now....

Well, as I wrote in the initial post about my latest literary effort, your characters take you over and make you tell their story. All you are, is a chronicler. The KGB officer Sergei Makarov doesn't exist, I don't think, though there is a hockey player by that name (and evidently a darned good hockey player, too). His vivacious American wife doesn't exist, either -- well, she does, because she's patterned after my sister Anne, but my sister Anne is married to a very solid son of New Hampshire, and besides, she's Polish. But somehow, people who don't exist have a story to tell, and they intend to see it told, and they are co-opting other lives in order to tell it. And that story is about...betrayal. Treason. And a love that overcomes the darkest corners of the human heart.

I just wish I understood why I'm the one telling it.

The Lit Nerd

Cribbed from Elizabeth's blog. Disappointing that this code apparently doesn't show how you scored on other types of Nerddom, because the actual test did: I scored about 80% as a Music Nerd, maybe 60% Drama Nerd, 50% Artistic Nerd, 30% Gamer/Computer Nerd (probably because I spend upwards of six hours a day online!), 20% Science/Math Nerd, 10% Social Nerd, and 0% Anime Nerd (what is anime, anyway????). Ah, well, back to "litting." ;-)

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and its eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Musician
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Social Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace