In Which Worldly Trouble Uncovers Abundant Blessings

or ... how I learned not to prophesize . . .
(My how lofty that sounds!) This is a brief post to relate some news.

Thursday, December 2, was A.'s birthday.  Birthdays in the Motherworks-Flavius household tend to be well celebrated family affairs.  We have not typically gone in for the large elementary school gathering that I grew up with, but we do tend to stretch out these natal celebrations for a full week.  The school parties, the home gatherings, the grandparent celebrations . . .  it is a big deal.  I tend to make 2 or sometimes 3 desserts for these multiple birthday party week's festivities.  All of this is to cover over that there will not likely be 50 gifts from little friends, a material explosion from family members, a pre-Christmas Christmas (and even then presents aren't the prominent feature of that holiday either).  We do not run short on the singing, the celebrating, and the feasting (as best we can during a fast such as the Nativity Fast).

With some sisterly help A. planned her meal and picked out her cake.  She asked if we could celebrate at my mother's and Gran readily consented.  So I baked a cake, Mr. Flavius wound up his work day, and the children prepared to go a'celebrating.  The cake was a tall, three layered, chocolate affair covered in raspberries, filled with raspberries, and smothered in chocolate.  Seeing as we would be traveling to mother's I plated the dessert and went searching for a cake cover.  I spied with my little eye a glass cake dome that I inherited from my grandmother.  Perfect.  I grabbed a chair (a well built, sturdy chair of generous proportions and counter-heighth) and proceeded to try and fetch the dome.  Alas!  It was too high and so I set about climbing down from my perch to ask Mr. Flavius to obtain the object for for when . . .  the chair went sideways.  Even now, it seems beyond physics that it could have turned sideways, but it did.  My foot slipped between the rungs of the chair as I fell without a cry toward the ground.  Somehow things were twisted and wrenched and slammed and snapped.  Specifically my tibia was torqued and snapped and my fibula apparently tore through flesh to make up for the extra pressure and science of my circumstances. I landed as  though I had leapt to my stead from the balcony of a saloon and I was preparing to get  out of town.

I did not pass out or faint or cry out or go into shock.  I knew from the pain that my ankle was broken.  I glanced down, the grave injury hidden by my pant leg, and saw blood on the ground.  As Providence would provide, I landed in front of the telephone.  I immediately called 911, explained that I was need an ambulance and then laid down on the ground to wait.

Since then I have had 2 surgeries and an 8 day stay in the hospital.  I am currently at my parents' home recuperating.  I will write more and update you as time allows.  But I did want to thank everyone for all their prayers, gifts, well, wishes, and support.

This broken leg has turned out to be a gift of many blessings.  I hope to adequately relate them to you in the near future.

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