You cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives.

All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a swamp that nothing in another can equal it.

That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgment. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult and outrage and will shield your glowing hearts against all evil.

St Seraphim of Sarov (1753-1833)  h/t St. James Kids

. . . She Shall Be Saved In Childbearing. . .

. . .  if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

Maternal Caress by Mary Cassatt

I am realizing how far behind I am getting ready for the new little.  The sorting, cleaning, a replacing of many things, plus the establishing a new sleeping situation for E. (4) who has been family bedding with us for the last five months and B. who needs to transition to the boys room.  


6½ weeks to go.  So many things to worry and fuss over.  I know I need to stop, drop (everything), and roll (my prayer rope through my fingers).  Everything will get done, one way or another.  


We have settled on a St. Irenaeus as the patron of this little girl.  As much for his apologia, as for our desire that this child should embody the peace that this name means.  We are waiting to see what day she will be born on before we decide on a middle name.  


What a year we have had already!  My beloved and I have almost always managed my labor together and mostly alone.  Husband-coached childbirth takes years to achieve.  Suddenly we've been thrown a loop in our routine.  Will I be able to walk pain-free and unassisted when the time comes?  What impact will The Ankle have on my labor?  I am now considered "High Risk" and I'm hoping this is a distinction that is more pro forma than reality.  These are anxieties that I am holding at bay (barely). 


There isn't much we really need.  Maybe a new car seat.  Some newborn diaper covers and a few more more newborn diapers.  A small layette and some onesies and sleepers.  I made one sweater, I'll make another along with some more hats and some baby booties.  It feels bigger than it really is.  


When I dwell too long on these things, I feel my heart lurch and run into to overdrive.  I think this is the faith, charity, holiness, and sobriety part of my salvation that I need to work on.  


What rituals and things do you have to have as you prepare for birth?  What prayers or meditations are helpful for you?

New Year Preparations

We are getting ready for the new year and another name day, this time for our youngest son, B.  January 1st is his name day.  Never before has there been a more inflexible menu!  Except we changed a bit this year to accommodate my brother-in-law, J., who is Jewish. C'est la vie!

Every year we celebrate with a sugar spiced ham, black-eyed peas, braised cabbage, cornbread, and lighter-than-air, buttered biscuits.  This year Mama served roast goose.  The crowning glory of the dinner is a rich, aromatic cake called Vasilopita.  It is essentially a pound cake which it is perfumed with oranges and lemons and two spices of mysterious origin, Mahlab- (pronounced mă-HĂ-lăb) the seed kernel of a St. Lucia Cherry, and tears of Chios- resin of the mastic tree. The flavor of the mahlab is something akin to bitter almonds crossed with cherries, while the tears of Chios is very clean smelling, almost antiseptic.  In ancient times this mastic gum was worth its weight in gold, chewed as a remedy against bad breath, and was considered a powerful medicinal drug. Even today its antibacterial properties continued to be studied and it is reputed to kill H. pylori, the bacteria that cause ulcers which can cause stomach cancer.

You could use pre-ground ingredients or commercially prepared extracts, but I like being connected to all the little Greek women of the past, who had to grind their own spices and seasonings for their festal breads and cakes.  I use a heavy brass mortar and pestle.
Here is a little history about St. Basil the Great and the cake or bread baked in his honor from the website, The Vasilopita Coin:

THE HISTORY - This age old tradition commenced in the fourth century, when Saint Basil the Great, who was a bishop, wanted to distribute money to the poor in his Diocese. He wanted to preserve their dignity, so as not to look like charity, he commissioned some women to bake sweetened bread, in which he arranged to place gold coins. Thus the families in cutting the bread to nourish themselves, were pleasantly surprised to find the coins. 

THE MAN - St. Basil was one of the greatest Fathers of the Christian Church and appeared on the spiritual horizon of the Orthodox Faith. He was Bishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia (Asia Minor). He was born four years after the First Ecumenical Council held in the year 325 A.D. Saint Basil was one of the three Cappadocian Fathers of the Church (the others were Gregory of Nazianzus, his best friend, and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa). Saint Basil was the first person in human history to establish an orphanage for little children. He also founded the first Christian hospital in the world. His fame as a Holy Man spread like wildfire throughout the Byzantine world. He was considered one of the most wise and compassionate clergymen in the entire history of the Church. His Feast Day is observed on January 1st, the beginning of the New Year and the Epiphany season. The Church, therefore, in respect for his many contributions to the Church and to mankind in general, combined the joy and happiness of the New Year with the glory of the birth of Christ, and the Epiphany into what is known in the Orthodox Church as the Vasilopitta Observance.

The Vasilopita is a Beautiful Tradition, and a custom which should not be neglected by Greek Orthodox Christians as should perhaps be adopted by all Christians in the Western world. It is such a wonderful way to begin each New Year which God has given to the world. If you have been holding the observance in your home, congratulations 

and please continue to do so! If you have not, please start and keep this glorious family tradition!

Gran and B.

Happy New Year and a joyous feast to you and yours.  God grant my little B. many years in peace, health, and happiness.

O' Tannenbaum, O' Tannenbaum, How Lovely Are Your Branches?

I am shamelessly lifting this post wholesale from the very intelligent, Opuscula Theolgica.  This is from the St Tikhon's Orthodox Seminary bulletin.

“I suspect that the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas time is not simply a custom which came to us from the West and which we should replace with other more Orthodox customs. To be sure, I have not gone into the history of the Christmas tree and where it originated, but I think that it is connected with the Christmas feast and its true meaning.

First, it is not unrelated to the prophecy of the Prophet Isaiah:
 ‘There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots’ (Is. 11:1). St. Cosmas the poet had this prophecy in mind when he wrote of Christ as the blossom which rose up out of the Virgin stem from the stump of Jesse. The root is Jesse, David’s father, the rod is King David, the flower which came from the root and the rod is Theotokos. And the fruit which came forth from the flower of the Panagia is Christ. Holy Scripture presents this wonderfully. Thus the Christmas tree can remind us of the genealogical tree of Christ as Man, the love of God, but also the successive purifications of the Forefathers of Christ. At the top is the star which is the God-Man (Theanthropos) Christ.

Then, the Christmas tree reminds us of the tree of knowledge as well as the tree of life, but especially the latter. It underlines clearly the truth that Christ is the tree of life and that we cannot live or fulfill the purpose of our existence unless we taste of this tree, ‘the producer of life’. Christmas cannot be conceived without Holy Communion. And of course as for Holy Communion it is not possible to partake of deification in Christ without having conquered the devil when we found ourselves faced with temptation relative to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where our freedom is tried. 

We rejoice and celebrate, because ‘the tree of life blossomed from the Virgin in the cave’.

”

Excerpt from: “The Feasts of the Lord: An Introduction to the 12 Feasts and Orthodox Christology” by Metropolitan of Nafpatkos Hierotheos Vlachos – November 1993
.

Luke 10:27

h/t Moo the Turtle

The Fast Is Upon Us...

I am not a creature of habit.  Actually, quite the contrary.  I create more chaos in any attempt at a routine than anyone I know.  Therefore I am grateful (albeit more reluctantly at some time more than others) for those things that force me out of my entropic repose (because, lazy is my middle name) and into a semblance of a routine.  The kids' school does this.  Of course the first month is sheer panic and havoc for me, but we get there somehow.  My milk co-op does this.  I have to be back before a certain hour so I have to plan my Tuesday carefully and actually act on those plans.  Church does this.  Having a set place to be every Sunday and then some, gets me out amongst people, looking and acting civilized (in addition to all the attendant spiritual benefits).  But more than all of those, the Church Calendar does this.  All the fasts and the feasts have created a spiritual rhythm in my life that always calls me back from wherever I have wandered or gotten stuck.  I get stuck a lot.

The calendar that the Church Fathers set out for us in their holy wisdom, reminds us. Go to confession.  Come to vigil.  Remember the saints.  Prepare for the feast.  Bring your baskets (Pascha), bring your first fruits (Holy Transfiguration), remember your oil (Pascha), your salt, your candles (Presentation of Jesus at the Temple), your jars of water (Theophany), and bless your herbs and flowers (Dormition).  Bless your house (between Theophany and Cheesefare Sunday), bless your many wheeled things (Holy Prophet Elijah), bless your herds, and bless your neighbors and the poor (the feast of St. Phanourious).  Remember to fast.  Repent!  Prepare for the Feast!

I saw a comment on Facebook this week that seem to poo-poo the idea of fasting as a legalism, possibly as something archaic, a superstition.  I'm certain that this was stated in all piety.  I don't know the faith of the individual who drew this conclusion.  I thought about this comment and wished that I spent more time with the Scriptures, more time in my prayer corner, more time in front of the icons, more time in Church, more time repenting the junk yard of sins that I manage to rack up against my salvation.  Despite my wishing, there is no plan to make these things happen, there is just poor, pitiful me, scatterbrained and running like hell to thing to thing to thing.  And so for this reason I like the fast.

During the seasons of fasts, I do stop.  I do plan.  I search the calendar (both parish and Church) for ways to participate more fully.  I make a greater effort to find a way into confession, to vespers, and to Great Vigil.  I am more free and able to say no to parties, activities, and extra school functions.  During the fasts, I find peace in not only the simplified routine, but in simple obedience.  In that obedience we find our salvation.

Does this make sense?

God did not make me a crusader.  He did not make me a pillar among women.  He did not give me great authority or terrible wisdom.  He made me a a fitful, funny thing that grows best with extra support, like a great untrained tomato plant with heavy fruit.  The Lord knows what a mess I am so He does not leave me to my own devices.  Were He to abandon me any fruit I managed to bear would rot or drop off prematurely.  So He has staked out my boundaries and trained me how I should grow and for this I give thanks.

Make ready, O Bethlehem: let the manger he prepared, let the cave show its welcome. The truth has come, the shadow has passed away. Born of a virgin, God has appeared to men, formed as we are and making godlike the garment He has put on. Therefore Adam is renewed with Eve and they call out, "Your good pleasure has appeared on earth to save our kind."

-St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem

Oh! Logismoi!

I was driven from sleep and not long thereafter, my bed, by the flood of anxiety-inducing, mind spinning, thought-racers, logismoi (log-iss-MEE).


For the uninitiated, it goes something like this:


What if?What if!  I bet she thinks that, if she said that to me then I would say this! And then in typical fashion she would respond with 'X' and I would say [insert brilliant remark here].  And that would show her.


Or more commonly:


Hmm.  I'm awake.  The baby hasn't woken up yet.  What time is it?  I'm afraid to look.  What if he isn't breathing?  What if I heard his not breathing and that's what woke me up?  I'm afraid to look.  Should I get out of bed and go over there?  I can't.  He'll wake up or worse not wake up.  Maybe I should wake up Mr. Flavius and get him to check.  Mr Flavius is snoring.  Snoring can be a sign of sleep apnea.  Does he have sleep apnea?  Maybe that's why he does [insert random idiosyncratic tick].  Maybe I should wake him up?  He could check on the baby. Whatwasthat?!  Was that the dog?  Does the dog have fleas?  Fleas carry parasites.  Parasites are so gross.  Can they get in your epicardium?    

This is my brain on logismoi if I do nothing.

The logismoi is the unending stream of thoughts that are always with us.  Freud called this the id and ego, but I truly think that this was giving it too much legitmacy.  Freud believed the ego was the 'I' and the id was the impulse drive behind the 'I.'  The fathers talk about the nous and the logismoi.  Simply put the nous is the heart or the eye of the soul and the logismoi is

the thoughts which are connected with images as well as with the various stimulations originating from the senses and the imagination. The thoughts logismoi evolve to sin through the stages of desire, action and passion. They are called logismoi because they act in the reason (logiki).

~Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

The Fathers would say the nous, the heart is the 'I' and the mind, full of this logismoi, is the thing that distracts us from our authentic selves.  That most of us do not know ourselves and misidentify the authentic self as this stream of consciousness is sad.  It makes the rise of stream of consciousness as a writing technique and therapeutic tool even more sad.  Is there no place that we have not given over to our lowest passions?  But this is the deal, right?


In reading the Fathers, speaking with my priest, and listening to the podcast of Archmandrate Meletios Webber there is but one consistent answer:  prayer.

I am a particularly lazy woman and sometimes (okay, let's be honest:  all of the time) I would rather stay in bed and drown in this dross rather than struggle against it.  Were it not for the anxiety actually causing me to twitch and fidget, thus giving rise to my other great anxiety and physically driving me out of bed and then my bedroom I might actually succeed in drowning in the dross.  And once out of bed I find myself with 3 choices:  the Interwebs:  Extra! Extra!  Google all about it!  Logismoi drowns woman searching internet for endocardiac-parasytic-infections-from-fleas-related-to-sleep-apnea!  TV, to drown out the logismoi and avoid the struggle.  Or finally, the Icon Corner, to wrestle with our defeated foe and throw myself on Christ's mercy.  I wish I could say that I chose Door #3 more often.  Struggle, struggle, struggle. 

I have nothing particularly enlightening to say here about all of this other than to say that Metropolitan Jonah says that when in the course of your struggle you feeling like things are getting worse then it means you're actually getting better.  Maybe it is because we are actually engaged in the struggle.  Fr. Joseph Huneycutt related a story about some-holy-father-whose-name-escapes-me, who said that "when the Devil with his temptations keeps pricking, pricking, pricking at me . . .  I thank him.  'Thank you for reminding me of my Lord.  I had forgotten him, but for your reminding me'."  He went on to say that after that the Devil will leave you because even he will not work for free and bring benefit to your soul. I like what Fr. Stephen of Glory to God for All Things has written about it and I invite you to go read what someone, who is far smarter and holier than I, has said about it.

All Ye Holy Saints

A while back, we experienced an awful thing.  Both sets of the keys went missing.  I suspect the Toddler Patrol, but it is unimportant who is responsible.  Maybe you have experienced a moderately tumultuous period of time in your life.  Rushing from one dramatic episode to another, one mild trauma after mild trauma, a hassle here, an obstacle there- it is exhausting, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  As it would happen, we were feeling quite tapped out when we arrived at the crossroads of our Monastery Weekend and No Keys. 

The search began tepidly after a long Friday in anticipation of the evening Vigil and Confession.  When they did not immediately present themselves, I dismissed the event as providential and plopped down into our evening routine, chat a bit, find a show, try to drown out the day.  Let a few short hours flee in the face of the television, and then suddenly here it is 11:45.  A few prayers hastily said and then off to bed.  The next morning, however, was a different story.  No keys.  At first this meant, no doughnuts.  But as the search began to gain steam and an earnestness that can only be compared to gold fever, No Keys began to take on greater definition, such as:   Trapped with Many Children in the House; Hello, Earthly Cares; Sayonara, Break From the Week;  and You Can Forget About the Monastery Visit.