Three little monkeys

My evening tradition with Russell and Elliot has just recently developed from rocking and singing into reading each of them a book before they go to bed. Last night Thomas asked if he could read to them. Luckily, they chose "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," a book to which he knows all the words. This relief from reading duty allowed me to go grab the camera. So here are a few pictures for all of you who love my boys.

The Icon of God Incarnate

I searched for the singers and for prophets

who wait by the ladder to heaven,

see signs of the mysterious end,

sing songs beyond our comprehension.

And I found people who were restless, orphaned, poor,

drunk, despairing, useless, 

lost whichever way they went,

homeless, naked, lacking bread.

There are no prophecies. Only life

continuously acts as prophet.

The end approaches, days grow shorter.

You took a servant's form. Hosanna.

Mother Maria Skobtsva

Snow Day

I am that mom. You know the one, the kind whose procrastination and own personal aversion to frigid temperatures has caused her family to be ill-equipped for the winter season. Boots that fit? Snow pants? Matching gloves? Nope. Not in this house. And while I hate to admit it, though it is nearly March, my children had yet to play outside in the snow.

By early Sunday afternoon, clouds engorged with snow placed themselves over Davenport and by evening snowflakes fell at a fast and furious pace. While a tremendous winter storm was predicted, we actually received only a few inches of that wet snow perfect for constructing snow men and snow balls. Unable to resist the offering of a sunny Monday whose temperatures hovered just above freezing and desperate to flee the stagnant air of our home, the boys and I instinctively threw on coats, hats, and our mismatched mittens for some temporary relief from the winter blahs. Fresh, brisk air. Talking to a neighbor we have not seen in months. Splashing in puddles. Laughing. Laughing. Laughing.

Images of God

"We preach Christ our true God and honor His Saints in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in churches, in Holy Icons; on the one hand worshiping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord; and on the other hand honoring as true servants of the same Lord of all and accordingly offering them veneration." - from the Confession of Faith for the Sunday of Orthodoxy

Favorite Things

I don't know why it seems like such an insurmountable task to get the water colors out, but it does. And each time Thomas innocently requests to paint, I must admit, inwardly I groan. It doesn't take long to get the materials assembled. All I really need to do is fill up several old baby food jars with water and squirt some red, blue, and yellow paint into the liquid. Then,while singing, "Just Three Colors," a song Thomas and I learned from an old Sesame Street record, we begin the mixing: "Red and yellow make orange; yellow and blue make green; blue and red make purple fit for a royal queen." (I must note that Thomas recently commented, "Mom, you are full of songs." Later when he began to pretend to zip my mouth shut, I realized that my eldest child was not fully appreciating my musical abilities.) With the paints ready, my role in the project is complete; Thomas takes over and the artistry commences. And of course, the outcome is well worth any perceived inconvenience on my part.

The above is our airplane flying away from Korea over Japan on course for the United States, bringing home our own Wonder Twins, who I must add, are always activating.

A frog trying to catch a fly.

Both portraits now hang in our basement encased in wooden frames from the Goodwill. They are some of my favorite things.

Choruses from "The Rock"

Though I make no claims to understand much of T.S. Eliot's writing, the beauty and poignancy of his words leaves me craving more. My poetry choice for this week is snippets from Choruses from "The Rock."


The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to Dust.

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of GOD,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.
And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with roads and settled nowhere.
Nor does the family even move about together,
But every son would have his motor cycle,
And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

O weariness of men who turn from GOD
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,
Binding the earth and the water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred,
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

A Holy Thing

Because Leslie suggested it and because I have been truly blessed with a bounty of friends whose uniqueness and honesty continuously challenge me to embark on new endeavors, reflect on unfamiliar ideas, and strive to become better than I am, I turn again to Gibran's, The Prophet, for my poetry choice this week. Know my dear friends, near and far, how precious you are to me and how much I appreciate you. Your presence is a manifestation of God's love in my life.

On Friendship

Kahlil Gibran

 

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

What You Do

In one week, 250 million Orthodox Christians throughout the world will commence their journey together into a time of preparation known as Lent. In his work, The Lenten Spring, Fr. Thomas Hopko writes, this period of forty days is to be "welcomed by Christians in the Church not as the time for self-inflicted agony or self-improving therapy." Rather, this "tithe of the year," is to be greeted as "the sanctified season consecrated to the correction, purification and enlightenment of the total person through the fulfillment of the commandments of the crucified God." Moreover, the hymnography of the Church beckons us to "enter the Fast with joy" and "not be sad." But on this second Sunday before Great Lent, a Sunday designated by the Church as the Sunday of the Last Judgment, the Church presents us with an image that can elicit holy terror and invoke repentance within our hearts through the Gospel reading commonly referred to as Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.

When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, "Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me." Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, "Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?" And the King will answer and say to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me."

As a student of theology at Bible college, I distinctly remember one particular professor's interpretation of this passage: Undoubtedly, he told us, Christ had a message concerning the poor, but these particular words were not to be taken literally by us today. Oh no, Christ was not invoking some sort of social program; this passage was not teaching the follower of Christ what his or her obligations were to the man and woman suffering from hunger, cold, thirst, or loneliness. Read in the proper context (and, I would add, through a distinct pair of theological glasses), one would understand that Jesus was talking about a future dispensation - the time of the "Tribulation" - and that the "least of these" were not all those around us but rather a specific remnant of 144,000 people that God would deliver during this period.

What a relief! Unless I happened to live during the tribulation, I could dismiss Christ's words. I could continue to cling to my belief that my actions had absolutely nothing to do with my ultimate salvation. Gradually over time I realized I could not dismiss the disquieting "what if?" lingering in the back of mind. What if Christ actually meant what He said? What if my eternal salvation was connected to how I acted during my earthly life? And if so, how terrifying.

How totally revolutionary it was to my very being when, through my reading of people like Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, I began to wholeheartedly embrace the notion that I was meeting Christ in "His distressing disguise" each time I reached out to those in need; that yes, indeed, I would be judged on the last day not on the basis of my correct doctrine, or how well I fasted, or how many Bible verses I had memorized, or how many prostrations I had made throughout my life, but on what I did or did not do for the "least of these." My friend Kris recently commented that her priest in Chicago simply stated that if you choose not to help your brothers in need, you would go to hell. It seems harsh but that is essentially Christ's message in this parable. As St. James states, "faith without works is dead." And in the words of St. John, if we cannot love our brother or sister who are visibly present with us, how dare we claim to love a God whom we cannot see. Indeed, the love of the Father is not in us.

Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Then He will say to those on the left had, "Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me." Then they also will answer Him, saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?" Then He will answer them, saying, "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me." And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Better To Give

While my husband possesses many qualities and idiosyncrasies which endear me to him, it is perhaps his generous spirit which I most admire and which has most encouraged and goaded me in my attempts to root out the adulterating seeds of selfishness in my own heart. He truly is the kind of person who would give the coat off his back. Knowing this about him, it should have come as no surprise to me when I learned, quite inadvertently, that my dear husband had extended an invitation to many of our friends via Facebook to help him celebrate his 34th birthday by donating money to one of our favorite charities, Charity: Water. Moreover, Jared promised that he would match any amount raised out of his own birthday money. His goal was $100, and because of many other magnanimous individuals we are blessed to call friends, he raised $220 for this worthy cause. Consequently, eleven people living in underdeveloped countries, whose primary source of water is filthy, stagnant puddles and pools in the ground which they often walk hours to retrieve, will now gain access to clean, life-giving and sustaining water for twenty years. Click here to learn more about Charity: Water or its local arm Water4Christmas.

My choice for this week's poetry Wednesday is from Kahil Gibran's The Prophet. You can click here for more poetry.

Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving."

And he answered:
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself?

Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

Though the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving
And is there aught you would withhold?

All you have shall some day be given;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."

The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.

And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.

And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?

And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.