Papouli once said…

“… these are things that belong to the grace of God. There is nothing of my own. God gave me many gifts, but I did not respond; I proved myself unworthy. But I have not abandoned my efforts, not even for a moment. Perhaps God will give me His help so that I can give myself to His love.

That’s why I do not pray for God to make me well. I pray for him to make me good.

…

It doesn’t concern me how long I will live or whether I will live. That is something I have left to God’s love. It often happens that you don’t want to remember death. It’s because you desire life. That, from one point of view, is a proof of the immortality of the soul. But whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

+St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia, Wounded by Love
(I think it’s from the section “On Illness,” but I can’t remember)

O Cross of Christ, intercede on our behalf!

Rejoice, life-giving Cross of the Lord,
Thou never-conquered battle trophy of piety,
Support and staff of the faithful,
The wall surrounding the Church
And the door that leadeth unto Paradise;
Through Thee hath corruption been made to vanish and be no more,
Death’s mighty power hath been vanquished and swallowed up,
And we have been raised from earth to celestial things.
O truceless foe of demons, and our weapon invincible
Thou art the glory of martyrs and true adornment of all the Saints,
Calm port of salvation,
That which granteth the great mercy of God unto the world!
from the Vespers Aposticha of September 14, HTM translation

There was once a time when I thought that praying to the Cross was extremely weird. And on some level, I suppose I think it still is.

However, I also do not think it is possible to understand the power of the Cross, the meaning of the Cross, and even the Cross itself without praying to it.

The early Christian martyrs (and the early Christians generally) had a much different relationship with the Cross than we do now (at least in my estimation). The Cross was the gate to Paradise — first because the Cross mediated the death of the God-man Christ and thus made possible the Resurrection, and second because it is by imitating the Cross and embracing the sufferings of martyrdom that they themselves gained Paradise. The Cross has active power and grace. The Cross is the key and the ladder to Paradise.

If it doesn’t make sense to pray to the Cross, I encourage you to try, and to stick with it for a while. The hymn above is a good place to start; the two that follow it in the service are also addressed to the Cross. It is what I prayed when I thought the entire expedition and effort was stupid, and it totally transformed how I see the Cross.

Blessed feast day, friends! Through the intercessions of the Cross, may God grant us the strength to do our homework, go to our medical checkups, clean the kitchen, stand up to tyrants, defeat idols, and be kind to all people, Amen.

the close of February

St. John Cassian (the Roman): feast day 29 February, transferred to today, 28 February

February has been, of course, such a short month! Being in grad school means time flies by, moments skip on the surface of life, and Lent is somehow just around the corner again.

I have been knitting a lot; I am coming close to finishing a shawl I have been working on for a really long time (it is the Find Your Fade pattern by Andrea Mowry; I love her patterns and eventually want to make them all). I am really excited to finish the shawl because for once I am actually excited to wear something that I’ve made (that isn’t a hat!)

I have been reading a lot this year so far. I think that having a bunch of required reading (about a specific subject like theology) has ironically made reading non-theology books/novels seem so much more appealing! According to Goodreads, I’ve finished 13 books since the beginning of January, but they have all been very short and I truly do not believe in reading success as being counted by number of books read. It is still a bit of a marvel to me, though!

I’m really excited for Lent! The number of services on my calendar added with the classes listed feels a bit overwhelming, but with God’s grace everything is doable, and the services themselves usually help us do them. I’m trying to figure out if I should pick a book to read during Lent, or just let my theology reading suffice, and let the ascesis be in doing it with as much attentiveness as possible. As usual, the solution is to ask the priest (a most wonderful and generally safe method of conducting the spiritual life).

Good strength, everyone, for Lent and for all other aspects of life going on right now! It is sometimes helpful for me to remember that we do not in fact live in particularly remarkable times, we are not special in our afflictions, and that no matter what God is with us (we have a whole hymn about it in Great Compline). I hope that might ease any burden you might feel, knowing that we are never alone in anything, and that the angels and saints always surround us with their prayers.

Keeping the thought of God always present before you, this form of words for your devotions is ever to be put first: “O God, make haste to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me.”
St. John Cassian, Selected Writings
(St. Paisius Monastery, 2000)

International Orthodox Christian Charities is doing relief work in Ukraine, I’m putting a link to donate if you can or are inclined to; I know things like this are going around the internet and you’ve probably seen a lot of requests for help, but these things do help relieve people’s very real suffering and it is something very tangible even if it is something small

-Odds & Ends-
A youtube channel I have been loving recently (her videos are so peaceful and beautiful and Christ-oriented)
If anyone is interested in resources for any kind of Byzantine studies, here is a link for a bunch of open access databases; I think my favorites are the Athos Digital Heritage one and the Manuscripts of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Library of Congress one (I would recommend exploring these if you have some time on your hands, these database websites can require a lot of clicking through)
Paraklesis to St. Paisios the Athonite, because we all need a lot of prayers for peace right now

Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity came at a timely point in my life. Lent started; church was hard. COVID-19 happened; church was banned. Then, I decided to pick up this book, because not going to church was easy, and staying away from church felt normal.

So I was faced with what is part apology for Christianity and part challenge to become a Christian. The part of me that really likes where I’m at right now resisted this challenge, but the quiet part of me that used to really love going to church started to raise its head. It reminded me that at one point I wanted change in my life, and that the good things I have right now are gifts that even several months ago I was begging to have. All that is to say, this book had an impact on me.

Mere Christianity consists of three parts. The first is about the challenge which the existence of morality essentially poses, the second is about Christian morality particularly, and the third is a sort of explanation of basic Christian doctrines.

In the first part, I found Lewis’ critique of Dualism insightful, as I had not thought about the fact that by labeling one power “good” and the other “evil” we are essentially passing judgment on them. His ideas about the source of the idea of good being an Entity (Person) above all of us which guides us rather than forces us to do things made a lot of sense to me.

The second part I found easiest to read of all three, as I have grown up Christian and much of what he wrote was already familiar to me. Here he introduced the idea that in order to practice love (the most essential of all Christian virtues), you really need to do exactly that: practice. One does not start out by being able to love perfectly, but by practising love of neighbor and by practising love of God one can get better at it.

This sort of theme of you don’t start out perfect was continued in the third part. We are commanded to be perfect, yet we are not perfect; the reconciliation of this occurs when we give ourselves fully to Christ and allow Him to make us perfect through the “good infection” of His presence. One point Lewis kept making here is that we do not become Christians to become nice people but to become good men.

Once there was a time a couple years ago when I started reading this book. I did not get very far that time. Reading it now, it has moved me and caused me to think in a way that would not have been possible when I originally tried to read it. It is so nice to read a book about theology that was written in my native language and not in a translation of the Greek; the Fathers of the Church can teach us so much, but often the language is not as natural as what I found in Mere Christianity.

As is so often the case, this book entered my life exactly when it needed to, and I am very grateful for that. Lewis reminded me of faith and challenged what little I have, and I hope that this book will continue to make me think more deeply about the nature and challenge of Christianity.

(This book is 1/50 for my 50 Classics in 5 Years Challenge.)

yarn along June 2020

This month is a solidly summer month, filled with berries and scones and grilled meat (at least until the Apostles Fast starts). I have been steadily working on many things, such as sock patterns from 52 Weeks of Socks and also many books.

The most exciting thing I have been working on is my Etsy shop! I am selling handmade wool prayer ropes. I have been wanting to do this for some time now, and I finally got around to it, now that I have enough inventory to actually fill some orders. 10% of all profits will go to support Orthodox Christian mission work in Albania. (If you want more information on that, please go here. I had the great privilege of visiting Albania as part of a missiology class I took, and I loved it very much and I really hope to go back someday.)

In my previous blog post, I mentioned that I read 11 books in the month of May. Some of these were fairly short, like The Little Prince by Antione de Saint-Exupéry, or Transcendental Wild Oats by Louisa May Alcott. Some I had already started, like Becoming a Healing Presence by Dr. Albert Rossi, or Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

This month I hope to keep up with this amount of reading (if not more). I really want to finish Louisa May Alcott’s A Long Fatal Love Chase and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, as well as Fr. Thomas Hopko’s really wonderful book Doctrine and Scripture (here I should mention that SVS Press is having a 50% off sale right now, so if you’re interested, go check that out). I also want to read Further Up and Further In by Edith Humphrey (also an SVS Press book), since it was part of a graduation present from my church. I could list more, but my reading is very prone to changing as time goes on, so I don’t want to overcommit here!

As far as knitting goes, I am working on another pair of socks from Laine’s 52 Weeks of Socks. This pair (pattern #1 in the book) is in a deep purple from Farmers Daughter Fibers held with a strand of Shibui Knits mohair in a similar color. They have such delightful cables!

I am also working on finishing my gray Honey Study Hat (pattern by Andrea Mowry in one of my Taproot magazines). At this point I’m really hoping to have enough yarn to get through the crown, but I might have to introduce a yarn in a similar color and weight to finish it. Fortunately I have one, so this shouldn’t be a problem, but the texture difference between woolly wool and soft alpaca might be a bit obvious. We shall see!

I hope you are all doing well and taking care of yourselves!

(Joining up with Ginny’s Yarn Along)

(All the links to Bookshop are affiliate links, which means you can support me a little while supporting independent bookstores!)

Christ is Risen!

O divine, O dear, O sweetest Voice! For Thou, O Christ, hast faithfully promised to be with us to the end of the world. And holding fast this promise as an anchor of hope, we the faithful rejoice.
Troparion of the 9th Ode of the Paschal Canon

on the meaning of prothesis

*Photo taken at an old abandoned monastery in Albania*

Way back at the peak of ancient Athenian glory, in about the mid fifth century BCE, there was a tradition of public burials for soldiers who had died in service to their city-state. Greeks at the time had funeral pyres (we see this even as far back as Homer, and who knows how much farther back it went). So, the public ceremony of the burial opened with a laying out of the ashes and bones of the dead soldiers.

This process was called prothesis.

Now, if you are Orthodox, this might give you a bit of a pause. Wait, you might think, isn’t that the Greek word for the Table of Preparation, on which the priest prepares the offerings of bread and wine to be ready for the Liturgy?

And indeed, you would be correct.

Just as the ancient Athenians would lay out the ashes and bones of the dead soldiers, the priest lays out the Lamb, Who comes to be slaughtered and offered as food for the faithful (as the Cherubic Hymn of Holy Saturday says), surrounded by His Mother, and his faithful servants, the martyrs, confessors, bishops, ascetics, unmercenaries, holy virgins, and so forth (see here if you want the whole service).

It always utterly fascinates me when I learn the origins of the words of Orthodoxy with which I am so familiar. I hope this is as awe-inspiring for you as it is for me!

one year, and good Triodion!

My blog just reminded me that it has been one whole year since I started this project. Thank you to all who have come along on this journey so far, and I hope there are many more adventures to go!

Also, tonight is the opening of the Triodion. Tomorrow is the remembrance of the Publican and the Pharisee (which is crazy, right?), along with the Leavetaking of the Presentation of our Lord as well as normal Sunday celebrations. It is a gloriously mixed up festally repentant mess.

In any case, Lent is just around the corner. I’m excited, although I’m dreading additional ascetic exercises (services, fasting, etc) on top of my schoolwork, but with the grace of God all things are possible.

Kalo Triodion! May we all have a blessed Triodion!

a word from St. Nikodemos

…through this spiritual work [of the constant remembrance of the name of Jesus] you will establish the whole of your inner self to be a temple and a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, while your heart especially will be a holy altar, a sacred sanctuary. Your mind, moreover, will be a priest; your will and disposition will be a sacrifice; your prayer of the heart to God will be an offering of spiritual fragrance, as St. Basil used to say.
St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain, from A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel

I read this yesterday in the assigned reading for the class I am taking on the Philokalia, and it stood out to me. Our hearts are also altars for God, and St. Nikodemos himself in an earlier part says that our hearts are our true home, where our minds rejoice to return.

How beloved are Thy dwellings, O Lord … even Thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.

in stillness and silence

This week I started having scheduled work again after having two weeks off. This was not particularly difficult in terms of the type of work I have to do (I work in a small bookstore), but simultaneously it was spectacularly difficult because I lost a large degree of creative control over my time during the day.

As irritating as this was, I suppose it’s a nice reintroduction into the world of prioritization and scheduling. In my last Sunday post, I wrote about how many obligations I’m going to have, and realistically the only way I am at all going to get through is prioritization, scheduling, and most of all the grace of God.

I think the biggest thing I’m going to have to remember is to slow down and remember God. In his book Becoming a Healing Presence, Dr. Albert Rossi talks about stillness and silence being a form of prayer. He is, of course, harkening back to Elijah’s finding of God not in the thunder, earthquake, or wind, but in the still quiet breeze. Interestingly, we Orthodox actually just read this 5 days ago as the third Old Testament reading for the Vespers of Transfiguration.

I suppose, then, that the only way I can transfigure my time into something positive and God-serving is to find the stillness and the silence and allow it to permeate throughout my day. More accurately, find God in the stillness and the silence and allow Him to permeate my life.

I suppose that’s what Dr. Rossi was really saying and it just took me a while to understand, but then, this is a life-long process, and I am just a beginner.