Thursday, April 25, 2024

After Saturday night…




Jane slipped away, dying on a Saturday night while we surrounded her bed in the hospital emergency department. In what feels like a parallel universe, our parishioners, at the same time, were saying reader’s vespers next to my binder and books that I had set out for the all-night vigil the day before. They should have finished their work at the same time she did, and we all quietly retreated back to our homes. The next day, exhausted, dehydrated, and brittle, we forced aching bodies out of bed too early, and we headed to church, feeling like hung-over party-goers scraping themselves together after a wild Saturday night on the town. There is a fog that surrounds the first few days after death, and every death feels like the first death as we feel our way through the days and nights. Order is good. Structure is good. It is important to not let the pieces fall too far apart because they will only be harder to put back together.


Monday’s child is fair of face. My mother-in-law was born on a Monday in a small Kansas town where her father was a farmer and local surveyor. One of the gifts of dementia is that early memories become stronger, like flowers that thrive in the sun and air when the weeds are cleared away. She remembered things we had never heard about before and shared them readily. She told us about the time the tax man came by and spoke to a very young Jane, and she revealed the unreported and untaxed cows that were kept in the barn. When her father went to punish her, she plainly asked if he was telling her that lying was ever appropriate. He had to let it go.


She grew up across the road from the Emporia Zoo, and one time, for reasons she never understood, the monkeys escaped the zoo, and they ran to their farm and took up residence in their barn. The cow was terrified and ran away. It had to be hunted down, but it would not return readily. She remembered the first day of first grade when she walked herself to school, something seven-year-old children did back in the early 1950s. On that day, she met her lifelong best friend. It turned out that Jane had walked to the wrong school; she was meant to go to the other, but she refused, not wanting to leave behind Janetta, somehow knowing this was someone who would become so important to her. The teacher spanked her. Jane refused to switch schools. They spoke to her parents, but they told the teacher she would have to give in because Jane would never. The teacher relented because no amount of spanking would convince Jane.


Jane had complex dementia, there were several causes. What they were mostly doesn’t matter except for one: she had vascular dementia. This form has a very low life expectancy, most sufferers die from stroke on average only five years after symptoms begin. Jane lived for four. We always knew that she could die at any time and that strokes often don’t give warnings. We knew this but also did not. We expected our life with her would continue the way it did for years. We had plans. We had short-term ones and long-term ones and lists of things we wanted to do over the summer. We would not have the summer. We did not know that this would be her last day, the Saturday morning that began with breakfast and laughter and ended up with quiet tears.


I was her daily caregiver. It would not have been appropriate for her son to help her with bathing and dressing and bathroom chores, so I did it. No one made me. I wanted to do it. I begged her for two years to move in with us, and she relented. I know that there was nothing I did to convince her. Jane had to decide because no one could make that woman do anything she did not want to do. My husband was cautious. He did not want to put me in a position like this; he did not want me to feel obligated, but I did feel obligated because I loved her. I loved Jane for the person she was when I met her, when she welcomed me into her family, and I loved her for the person she was becoming as pieces of her fell away, and I loved her for the person she might become when dementia would filter her essence.


I spent hours moving through her routine with her and sitting with her while she ate. I brought hand sewing and knitting with me, and I sat with her, but the real work was silent and still. It was the hours of being present with no words so that the most important things could be said and felt and pondered. My husband has always said that it takes an investment of many long, boring hours of nothing before the real words come out, and he is right. I heard so many stories. So many lost moments were found, and I hold them in my heart. I was devoted to Jane, and as time passed, she leaned on me and into me. I always told the doctors and nurses that Jane was my best friend and that we went everywhere together. She was my best friend, but I was not her best friend, that was Janetta, and I was not one of her children. I was something else and she was devoted to me in a way that escapes definition. When she was in the hospital eleven months ago with a mini-stroke, the nurses and doctors promised they would take care of her and told me to go home. She asked me to stay with her, so I did. I slept in a chair next to her bed and held her hand all night.


On Saturday, the day that she died, she suffered a massive stroke, and as her brain filled with blood, she lost the ability to interact with us. I watched her slip away slowly, retreating to a place that I could not follow. I sat with her, spoke to her, and promised help was coming, and she reached for my hand. I will never, ever forget that moment. I watched her shaky hand reach out for me, and I clung to it in desperation. I felt like we were sinking, and if I held on, I could hold us together. We waited for the ambulance together while my son drove to the end of our quarter-mile driveway to guide them. The rest of the children crowded the windows, willing it to appear.


The doctor believed it would be less than twenty-four hours before Jane died, so she was not transferred upstairs but instead to a large, private room where they wheeled in a refreshment cart with coffee and water bottles and snacks and so many boxes of tissues, which were somehow not enough. They had prepared us for a different kind of all-night vigil, and we pressed in around her. She passed in just minutes, and we were unprepared. Everything had been set out for the work of the night, and now it was over, and these were left unused. Meanwhile, our parishioners fumbled through a shortened version of the service, not really sure what to do with my stacks. Instead, they turned to the horologian and tried to piece it together from there, leaving my books on the stand next to them. Saturday night was over. Our work was finished. All was quiet and still, and it was time to go home and prepare for what would come next.


I am unsettled and disjointed. Everywhere around me are things that Jane left behind. I see her favorite crochet throw made by a friend. Her favorite ice cream fills my freezer. Her Bible is still next to her bed. Her beloved Gospel albums are unplayed. My time is filled with preparing for her funeral, but I always feel like I am forgetting something because I keep feeling like it is time for medicine or blood pressure or a visit with my knitting in my hands. Even though there is no one there in her chair, I feel the need to check that she is there. My husband has a recliner next to her spot, and he went and just laid down and took a nap in it. He has been struggling to sleep, but for a brief respite, he was sleeping, and we moved quietly around him so that he could have this time. Maybe for a moment, he felt like he was holding her there next to him, in the magical chair that always made him fall asleep, resting with her instead of sinking.  


I know what happens after Saturday night. After the night comes the dawn and the morning and Sunday and the Resurrection. Monday’s child is fair of face, and my beautiful mother-in-law died on a Saturday evening so she could be ready for the Resurrection on Sunday.


You can read this post about Jane and me and our dementia journey together here.


You can read Jane's obituary here.


Thursday, September 28, 2023

Words...

 

Words have meaning, and that meaning makes them powerful. That power affects the people around the speaker, and those effects have consequences.  We must be careful with our words. We should mind what we say because sometimes we are not the only ones who pay the consequences for what we speak. We should not casually say, “I love you.” Physicians should not absent-mindedly announce a diagnosis of cancer. Jurors should soberly deliberate before pronouncing a judgment. Journalists should check and double-check their facts. The more widely we can spread our words, the more gravity with which we should approach our speech. We cannot take back the words once they leave our mouths, and we owe it to society to remember that. This makes the absolutely slanderous and libelous content of the Foreign Affairs magazine far so dangerous. They declared an entire group of American citizens to be foreign spies based on poorly gathered facts and emotive speculation, and those words were incendiary, dangerously so.


Today, I was at home with my younger children when I received texts from my two sons who are students at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Monastery and Seminary in Jordanville, New York. Because of a bomb threat, they had to evacuate the church, seminary, and monastery while the police blocked off roads and the bomb squad began the painstaking task of clearing the numerous buildings on campus. My young sons were safe, but I worried about the potential.


Just this past spring, my oldest daughter, a senior at Michigan State University, hid in a bathroom with her three roommates in their ground flour on-campus apartment while a ruthless gunman shot and killed her fellow students. We stayed on the phone, texting so that we could silently communicate with her while the entire tragedy unfolded. Now, we were waiting to find out what could be happening a thousand miles away in a small rural enclave that holds a central place in the hearts and minds of Russian Orthodox Christians like myself, like my family, like my husband who happens to be a priest. Fortunately, no bomb was found, and while I am deeply grateful, I also know that next time might be different. We are one radicalized and unstable person away from serious injury and loss of life.


I hold many people responsible but none as much as Foreign Affairs Magazine and specifically Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan who claimed that Russian Orthodox clergy was being recruited to act as spies for the government. Among other claims in their shockingly poorly fact-checked piece was that we have 2,380 parishes. This figure probably comes from a thirty-year-old estimate of the total number of faithful, that is parishioners. Not parishes. This is a strong indication of the gross failure to perform due diligence in their reporting. They state, “FBI privately warned members of the Orthodox community in the United States that Russia was likely using the church to help recruit intelligence sources in the West…” which is absurd on its face. What could American priests tell Russian intelligence operatives that could not be learned from watching the national news or reading Twitter? The Russian government could not possibly be interested in us, we are nobodies. Shouldn't the FBI know that? Shouldn't Foreign Affairs? It would be laughable if it had not led someone to decide to at least consider bombing a church and school. We should recognize the road we are on because we have traveled it before.


Americans are known for their short attention spans so it should come as no shock that we have already forgotten the Japanese internment camps. We, as a people and a nation, became so fearful that our friends and neighbors who happened to be Japanese could somehow pass along some kind of useful information to the Japanese government that we actually dispossessed them and relocated them into camps. We became no better than our Nazi enemies who established ghettos. These were ordinary citizens who had no more access to government secrets than any of their neighbors but because they were Japanese, found themselves subject to cruelty, judgment, and bizarre accusations. We stopped short of the Nazis in that we did not kill the Japanese for the supposed crime of being Japanese, and thank God for that, but we should be horrified at how like our enemy we became.


Is this what is next for Russians and American converts to Orthodoxy? Or will we find ourselves hunted down by our neighbors instead after irresponsible and click-hungry media outlets and savvy politicians looking for a pickup have whipped the electorate into a frenzy? Foreign Affairs and the other outlets that have rehashed and reheated their dubious reporting (Newsweek, I am looking you hard in the eye) are to blame for the anger that they generate in Americans and the fear that we, also Americans, feel. Words have consequences and we face them while they sit in smug comfort somewhere else not worrying about their children and their friends and their holy sights.



It doesn’t matter what we say. It doesn’t matter what our bishops write. It doesn’t matter that my Russian Orthodox bishop was formed in a Ukrainian monastery. It doesn’t matter that each Russian Orthodox bishop has instructed his priests to include prayers for the suffering people throughout this region and an end to fratricide. It doesn’t matter that we raise money and send it to Ukraine for the people there. It doesn’t matter what we say or do because Foreign Affairs has many ears for the inflammatory words they speak and we are small, much smaller than they suggest, and we do not have the platform they do. We reap what they sow and the harvest is bitter. This threat has deep meaning for us; it cuts deep, even if Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Soldatov, and Borogan don’t realize it. They owe us an apology, but we will never get it. Right now, we are the whipping boy for Americans who pretend their hands are clean and their history is fair and just. We must be satisfied that we know that we are not spies or agents or even remotely dangerous. We are just ordinary Americans, living and working and praying in a manner that they have deemed unfit, but there is no one to appeal to because there is no one to listen to our words. Theirs are just too powerful right now.



Saturday, April 29, 2023

A life well lived…

 



Elizabeth Johnson was a creative woman. She fashioned children and raised them to strong and creative adulthood. She cultivated grandchildren, sharing stories and her ever-expanding homesteading skills with them. She then expanded her world to include her students, the children she tucked into her heart where she could give them warmth and support so they could thrive in a cold world that teaches children to ignore rather than wonder.

From her sunlit, window-filled room, she led classrooms of students in wonder. They read and studied poetry and art and learned to think. She made it a family affair. Her daughter also taught with her own daughters in tow. Her granddaughter presented poetry and art lessons. Her broad wooden farm table was stacked with books, and the New York mountains filled the space behind her, and both things pointed to her creative personality. She loved words, writing, gardens, her yellow house, her husband, Brad, her family, the ox team she trained, and the sheep she raised. Her students looked through their computer screens like looking into a window on her life.

But windows only show a slice of life and never the full picture. If we could have spun the view around, they could have seen her house for all of its glory. She and her husband, Brad, lived an extraordinary life in an extraordinary way. They lived in a glorious yellow hobbit house, one literally set into the side of a hill. It tunneled into the hill, but the sunny front poked out like a turtle peeking out from its shell. Her wide front door opened onto her gardens and expansive property filled with her various creative projects. For the rest of my life and that of my children, when we read about Tolkien's Hobbit and consider his description of a hobbit hole, we will know that he meant her house.

One of the last times that we saw her, Elizabeth sat outside with us in her little garden area and read unpublished stories to my children, swearing them to secrecy and drawing them further into her heart. She showed them her latest creative outlet, fairy gardens. As her strength faded, her ability to influence the world around her felt smaller, and she described her world as smaller so she intentionally influenced smaller worlds. In a complex system of hanging baskets and window boxes, she created a series of separate but interconnected worlds, each with its own theme. There was a fairy world, a dragon world, and a pixie world, and sometimes the figurines would visit other worlds. My children's favorite was the Beatrix Potter world, where all their favorite stories came to live in charming little gardens within a larger garden within her homestead. Always the loving grandmother, she also made a section for her grandchildren to influence their own little worlds with flowers and figures just for them and she let my own children play in it. For as much as she believed that her world was getting smaller, it was continually growing as she pulled people and projects into it. Her heart flowed with love, and it poured out and saturated everyone who came into contact with her.

Elizabeth was a gifted writer with the ability to paint worlds with her words and find ways to describe feelings and moments and scenes so that she could take the thoughts in her head and put them in other people's heads. She was magic and filled every moment with magic. Even those who didn't know her through the classes could get to know her through her books. One of the most wonderful things about her books is that they captured her; they feel like what it feels like to be in her home and her garden and soak up the love that she so generously lavished on others. I think she was a fairy herself, capturing thoughts and emotions, bottling them, and sprinkling them throughout her projects like flower seeds. The entire world was like her fairy garden and full of beloved figures and beautiful plants all tended with loving care.

She lived in New York, and I don’t, but I am often in New York. I have two sons in seminary there, and my sons have spent many summers in the Summer Boys program at Holy Trinity. For the last several summers, I had boys coming home from seminary in the summer and other boys going back for summer camp, coming home just giving me a brief respite before bringing those seminarians back again. Four trips back and forth along the New York turnpike each summer gave me ample opportunity to visit her and look into her world when the time was short.

On one of those trips, one of my seminarians was with me to take boys to the summer program. This son is a deep thinker, a philosopher like his father, and he carefully considered everything she said. Elizabeth had planned her own funeral and put everything that her family and friends would need to execute her vision into a plastic tote. She wanted us to see the glade where she would have her funeral. She told us how she commissioned the icons, including one of her patroness. She discussed her "home birth" plans with my son who took it in with so much gravity and profound respect and nodded in agreement. This is the way it was meant to be done.

After she had reposed, her daughter, Celeste, sent me an iMovie which showed the depth of her mother's plans, more than I had seen over the summer. Beyond binders, the pavilion, and the glade, she had made a map of where and how to set up the tables and chairs and even assigned chores for everyone. She provided the candles and candle holders and paper plates, and other items needed for her mercy meal. She had pulled her friends into her plans, given them their assignments, and then placed everything they would need in this bin. She thought her world was small, but through her magic, her world was ever-increasing, ever-growing as she reached out and embraced others and pulled them into her. Her life teaches us how to live, and her death teaches us how to die and how to die well with every moment stepped in love.

The other night, in the hours after she slipped away, I lay awake in my bed and I wept. I was thinking of Celeste and the family’s plans to wash, dress, and prepare Elizabeth for the moment she had prepared for because her home birth was at hand. I lay on my side, facing away from my husband, and tried to hide the tears. My husband pressed against my back and told me about something that struck him in the adult class he had led in the evening. St Anthony of the Desert wrote that the common interpretation of Job is one of endurance in suffering and how it is wrong. What it is really about is the powerlessness of the Devil. He can do nothing without the explicit permission of God, and even then, he is severely limited. No matter how powerful we might think he is, satan can do so very little in the presence of a single holy man.

Elizabeth was a single, holy woman. She loved God and, through her books and classes, taught others to love Him. She reposed on Radonitsa; in the Slavic tradition, this is the day that we take red eggs to the cemetery and greet our beloved dead with the Paschal tropar and gifts signifying the resurrection. It is the first time after Pascha that we can have the service of the memorial, the Panikhida.  One of my great sadnesses will be that she reposed so shortly after vespers and the panikhida, but my husband immediately served another for her the next day. I stood at Kliros and looked at the Pascha decorations, and I struggled to sing, but I did it. I breathed deeply to give me stability, and I sang every word and thought of Elizabeth and how greatly she will be missed. Every anniversary of Radonitsa now belongs to her in a special way, she can be remembered at the first memorial, and we can greet her with red eggs and sing to her the paschal tropar and again be drawn into her world, her new world where she will wait for us to follow.

In your generosity, remember her in your prayers and the services of the Church. She is Cripina in baptism. She wrote several books but her book, The Miracle of the Red Egg, will now be iconic given that she reposed on the day we bring red eggs to our beloved reposed. I will always think of her happy death on Radontisa, and I will remember that death has no power here and suffering has no meaning because God’s love is greater. May the Theotokos comfort all who grieve and may Crispina's memory be eternal.


Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Tears like wine...


It’s the morning after. All the days now will be the days after, yesterday morning permanently marking the place that neatly divides the time with him and the time after him.

I fumbled around in the kitchen, having overslept so everything was rushed and poorly done but at least there is coffee. When I sat down on the sofa to put off the next stage of tasks, the critical work of the morning behind me, I saw my mug from last night already sitting next to my place. Last night, I sat here waiting for one of my sons to drive back from a social thing. He drove over to a town a fairly good drive away and it was dark and snowing. I sipped my favorite herbal tea while I waited knowing it was just better to be honest with myself that I wouldn’t have slept if I had tried to go to bed. Once he was safely inside and the doors closed behind him, I did go to bed but I did not go to sleep. I left my cup here on the windowsill next to the place I like to sit, the tea bag resting in the bottom and the string and tag hanging over the lip.

Now I am sipping my coffee out of a favorite mug that was a gift from a dear friend. It has a rose on it and the words, “Hola, Bonita!” which means, “Hi, beautiful girl!” As I sit drinking this morning’s coffee among the remnant of last night’s tea I reflect on yesterday. I don’t want to think about it only I do, I want to dwell on it and obsess over it and think about it over and over and over again. When I was a kid, I used to like to wiggle my loose tooth, strangely reveling in the slight pain. As an adult, I think I do the same thing.

Yesterday, we got the news that Father Basil died from complications of Covid after a battle as fierce as it was brief. He was a monk at another monastery, the Byzantine Catholic one further up the Keweenaw Peninsula, even further from the farm than the Orthodox one my husband is attached to. We have always been close to those monks, ever since moving here, and they occupy a very warm place in my heart. Our visits over good dark roast coffee and the times my children have spent running along the rocky shore of their private Lake Superior beach remain some of my most beautiful memories.

Once they bought an enormous beach ball, truly enormous, like a dozen feet across. They invited our family and dear friends visiting from Denver and then surprised us with it. They rolled it out into an open area in their woods to the cheering of fourteen children. They were running and screaming in pure joy as they played with the largest ball any of them would ever see. Their bellies were filled with hot chocolate and homemade marshmallows and my heart was filled with gratitude. I didn’t have any family here and no friends really but we had two monasteries of monks and sunny days filled with woods and laughing children and cocoa and coffee. It was good and it was my constant, it was the place I can go back to in my mind when I think that the work God set before us isn’t working.

They say that the first stage of grief is disbelief. First things first, I don’t know who “they” are or if the seven stages are always totally accurate but the first one is. Disbelief. I think that is the hard one. My coffee is almost two-thirds drunk and I stare down into my cup I have realized that people are not as enthralled with change and excitement as any single person pretends to be. We don’t actually like change that much. We insist that some things stay the same so we can safely revolve around them, we are spinning like mercurial planets that pretend that we are not like the others. But we are. We can only spin and twirl if the center stays the same, unmovable, constant. That is why the first stage is disbelief. We have always counted on the people in our lives being there. We cannot easily come to terms with what comes after the break, with what is left when we have lost what was before.

For us fragile human people, life only begins, it never ends, or at least it should not. We never question that life has a definite start. We never ask if anyone is sure, really sure, that a baby was born but we surely ask that, again and again, when someone dies. We ask more than one person, just to corroborate their story because we have doubts, we have questions. Even when we think we have solidly accepted it, there are those moments we forget, or just try to forget, that someone is gone.

Going on nine years ago, I moved to the Keweenaw, away from all of my family and friends, and in the shadow of death. Yesterday, I was already dwelling on that. We have reached the time of year when my memories feature on my main social media app recalls my father’s rapid descent into death. It reminds me of posts from that date for all the years past and late 2012 was not a good time. I was pregnant and my father was having some confusing medical issues that in retrospect were obviously cancer but back then we didn’t know what we didn’t know. I had woken up yesterday, stupidly checking my app before my work was done, and reminded myself of those days when we didn’t know. It hit me squarely and I spent the day pretending to shake it off. My father is dead, he died in a rapid explosion of cancer that took him too quickly so that it felt like we didn’t have time to catch our breath. He did live long enough to see the child I was pregnant with but he did not live long after. She will never remember him.

By the time she was born, her grandfathers were spent, one dead and one dying. She has always been fiercely loved and I suppose she doesn’t miss what she never had because her life is full. What she has instead is the constant presence of monks in her life. It’s a funny life my children have. Their whole life is the church and The Church and monastic services and monks just generally. Monks come to dance recitals and animal showmanship competitions, they come to birthdays and Christmas dinners, they are emergency contacts on activity forms, and they are the central constant until they fall out of orbit and disappear.

In the last few years, the Ukrainians have lost two monastics who have fallen asleep in the Lord and one who just fell away. Our Russian monastery has lost three monks who fell away and some have left behind larger and more painful voids. I can hardly believe what we have lost, what is absent now that was there on the sunny summer day my children played with a ball that was more than a story tall.

Disbelief is a way of acknowledging what really stays the same, what is really constant, and that is Our God. Our goodbyes are strained because I think deep down, we know they are temporary because there is something that comes after that which comes after. People leave the monastery for different reasons and in different ways and to different ends but it is not forever and always. It is for now. We ask if someone is sure that someone has actually died because, on some level, we know they aren’t really gone forever. We are checking to see if they have already left for the place where we will see them again later. It is all a matter of time. The only real problem is that I am impatient.

My coffee is now gone and I know that today, I will need another cup. I also know that this great realization that God is the constant and death is temporary doesn’t ease the suffering. Cold comfort, they call it.

This is the morning after, the morning after Father Basil died. It reminds me of the early days after my father died. Since I heard, I am always on the verge of tears. They sit there behind my eyes and it takes just one fragile, unguarded moment and they spill out. Last night, I made a cup of herbal tea and started supper. I had set all my ingredients out on the island and I was moving like everything was normal and full and complete with no holes, no empty spaces. I picked up my knife to chop the onions and my daughter looked at me.

“Maybe no onions tonight. When you start chopping, then you will start to cry and then you will start to really cry.”

That was all it took. It felt like uncorking a bottle and then I was pouring out tears like wine. My cup overfloweth. Then she started to cry. I was and am drunk on my tears, my head aches, but I still indulge. For a moment, we stood soaking in our grief and the dinner ingredients lay abandoned on the island, waiting for me to float back to them, waiting for what comes next.

I have my second cup of coffee now and the tears have returned. They were just waiting for me. I hate grief. I hate the way the tears sit behind my eyes and the way sorrow chokes my throat and the way the pain settles behind my ribs.

Queen Elizabeth once summarized a quote of Colin Murray Parkes when she said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” When I think of it this way, I remember that these people are worth grieving, they deserve to be grieved. I sit sipping my coffee, my tears spilling like wine from my too-full cup, I remember those cups of coffee shared with Father Basil, ones that filled my aching heart with love. Those days were good. My cup overflows with grief now because it overflowed with love before and I think I can be at peace with that...tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

2020 vision...


 I like to write. I write a lot, actually. I write in lots of places from scraps of paper around the house, emails and messages to friends, occasional blog posts, social media posts from both my personal and professional accounts, articles, books and parts of books, and on the whiteboard in my downstairs hallway. As much as I like to write, I hate to write two things: Christmas letters and New Year’s Resolutions.


I never really know what to tell people about the previous year, especially this year. With no travel for conferences or speaking or pilgrimages and the world retreating to the walls of our homes, I think I am not alone in saying that I feel like I accomplished less this year. You might have seen that funny Facebook post that is supposed to be photos of all the places a person traveled this year but it looks like a series of gray images that failed to load. It feels like the whole year failed to load and we sat back and watched the swirling loading image spin endlessly while we waited for life to begin.


This is not really accurate because there was a lot of life that happened in the last year, a shocking amount of life. I think it does the “past us” an injustice to fail to recognize that just because it wasn’t a cute series of Instagrammable moments. I can’t know for sure what you were doing but I know that I was treading water and trying to check in on my loved ones (my husband, my kids, my extended family, my parishioners, and just everyone) because I wanted to know that they were still out there, fighting and not drowning. Not drowning is not a measurable thing. I can’t say I have x number of this or y number of that. All I can say is that I am here and so are most all of the people I was checking in on.


I know people who really, really struggled this last year and it was all virus-related even if they did not actually test positive at any time. We live in a world broken by sin and its effects radiated outward through time and space. Right now, we all live in a world broken by the effects of something else that also reaches out, like sin,  and we all suffered. Understanding what that means in terms of my yearly reflections is hard.


Usually, I encourage people to post on my social media and tell me about something that they were proud of themselves for accomplishing. I do this because new year’s resolutions are often hurtful and focus on the broken pieces of ourselves and not on what we have actually accomplished. This year, I felt like accomplishments are hard to think about in my own life and rather than think too hard on that, I asked people to tell me about something joyful. I noticed a couple of things. Firstly, I noticed that I failed to see what I accomplished because I didn’t bother to think about it. Secondly, I noticed that significantly fewer people commented than usual. It could be an algorithm thing. It could be that people were less interested in my social media at that time. It could be that people just weren’t interested in me. It also could be that people are having a hard time thinking about joyful things. It is a really hard time to reflect on, to feel out. It’s like running our hands over the swollen bumps and bruises of a year that took a bad beating. 


The amazing publicist at Ancient Faith, Melinda Johnson, asked content providers to give her a couple of sentences about their year for the annual Christmas letter. I was not really happy about it because I didn’t think I had anything to say but it was ultimately a good thing. It made me realize that I do have an accomplishment because I managed to keep my head above water and toss out love and support like lifeboats in every direction possible.


My goal this year has been a small one, a manageable one, but it really was to keep telling people that I love them and that we are gonna make it through. That’s it. I wanted to tell people that they mattered, that their feelings were real, that they are worth loving, that they need to be patient with themselves, and that I am still out there and loving them hard despite the fact that we are separated by miles. I just felt like if I could let one person know they were loved, then I would have done at least one good thing this year. 


I cannot measure that goal or quantify it or pull it out and show it to you. It is not an accomplishment in the same way that an award or a finished manuscript or some shiny object which demonstrates concretely some abstract win. This year, I only have the abstract because the concrete has escaped me. I think that’s okay because the normal measures of any year are not applicable to this year because this year is unlike any of my whole life. All I can say is that I did try. I tried a lot. Sometimes I tried more and though I sometimes tried less, the success of this year is to be found in the fact that I tried.


What did I actually try to do? A lot, now that I think about it. This year, I took a lot of walks. This year, I ate a lot of food. Sometimes it was a struggle bus based on whatever was available but I ate. This year, I told more people “I love you” on a daily basis than I think I ever have. This year, I totally impulse-bought another cow and I freaking love Octavia so much. This year, I let my kids’ school look a lot more like novels and boardgames and long walks in the woods. This year, I watched over the internet as a book that I worked on cooperatively took shape and ended up being EXACTLY what the world needed because we all need a retreat and can’t have one. I wrote deeply emotionally and exposed my vulnerability more fully in my farm memoir than I imagined possible.  This year, I remotely worked on a conference that was a remote conference and a ton of women showed up and we accomplished some real connection in a virtual world.


This year, I can only say that I tried. I tried pretty hard. This year, I accomplished so little but that ended up being a lot of work and it was worth every minute of it. This year was good.

Friday, November 27, 2020

Old Calendar Nativity Group for Nativity 2020

The 150 Psalms are divided into twenty Kathismas and each one is further divided into three stasis though not all publications will show this breakdown. They are divided up and assigned to different days of the week so that between all the monastic services over the course of that week, the whole Psalter is read. Years ago, Sylvia at Orthodoxmom.com began organizing a New Calendar scheduled practice of reading the Psalter for the Nativity Fast with the goal of having the entire Psalter read on a daily basis. I think this is amazing and I participated for years even though I am on Old Calendar, I just continued with my cycle.


Last year, I organized an Old Calendar schedule for the Psalter and I was so grateful for everyone who participated. I knew I wanted to do it again this year, even before I started getting messages. Because I wanted to make this as easy for people as possible so more people could participate and could start whenever they can, I am assigning groups based on the alphabet. You don’t need me to sign you up, you just need to open your Psalter! I know that I would love to pray for you so it would be great if you just list your baptismal name below but if you don’t, that is fine, too. If you are not Orthodox or come from a tradition without baptismal names, that’s fine, I still want to pray for you. Just know that it is not an obligation to list your name below. If you have a specific need you would like prayed for, you can list it or message it to me. You can be discreet with private intentions and just list them as a private need. I will take that list and regularly update a Google Doc with everyone’s names and needs and you can access it.


I can’t think of a year when I felt more dependant on God than this one so I am leaning hard into prayer. Let’s do this! Want to print the schedule? Click HERE!


Welcome to the Psalter Group! Find your initial and start with the Kathisma according to the group you are in . There is a schedule
for all groups just below. If you know someone who wants to pray with us this fast, please let them know that they can start at anytime!
You can use any Psalter or a Bible with the Psalms, whatever you happen to have. Follow the link to see how the Psalter is organized.
Group One
Names that Begin with A
Group Two
Names that Begin with B
Group Three
Names that Begin with C
Group Four
Names that Begin with D
Group Five
Names that Begin with E
Group Six
Names that Begin with F
Group Seven
Names that Begin with G
Group Eight
Names that Begin with H
Group Nine
Names that Begin with I
Group Ten
Names that Begin with J
Group Eleven
Names that Begin with K
Group Twelve
Names that Begin with L
Group Thirteen
Names that Begin with M
Group Fourteen
Names that Begin with N
Group Fifteen
Names that Begin with O
Group Sixteen
Names that Begin with P
Group Seventeen
Names that Begin with Q or R
Group Eighteen
Names that Begin with S or T
Group Nineteen
Names that Begin with U, V, or W
Group Twenty
Names that Begin with X, Y, or Z
Group One
Names that Begin with A
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/41234567
12/5-12/11891011121314
12/12-12/181516171819201
12/19-12-252345678
12/26-1/19101112131415
1/2-1/61617181920Nativity
Group Two
Names that Begin with B
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/42345678
12/5-12/119101112131415
12/12-12/18161718192012
12/19-12-253456789
12/26-1/110111213141516
1/2-1/6171819201Nativity
Group Three
Names that Begin with C
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/43456789
12/5-12/1110111213141516
12/12-12/1817181920123
12/19-12-2545678910
12/26-1/111121314151617
1/2-1/618192012Nativity
Group Four
Names that Begin with D
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/445678910
12/5-12/1111121314151617
12/12-12/181819201234
12/19-12-25567891011
12/26-1/112131415161718
1/2-1/61920123Nativity
Group Five
Names that Begin with E
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/4567891011
12/5-12/1112131415161718
12/12-12/18192012345
12/19-12-256789101112
12/26-1/113141516171819
1/2-1/6201234Nativity
Group Six
Names that Begin with F
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/46789101112
12/5-12/1113141516171819
12/12-12/1820123456
12/19-12-2578910111213
12/26-1/114151617181920
1/2-1/612345Nativity
Group Seven
Names that Begin with G
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/478910111213
12/5-12/1114151617181920
12/12-12/181234567
12/19-12-25891011121314
12/26-1/11516171819201
1/2-1/623456Nativity
Group Eight
Names that Begin with H
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/4891011121314
12/5-12/111516171819201
12/12-12/182345678
12/19-12-259101112131415
12/26-1/1161718192012
1/2-1/634567Nativity
Group Nine
Names that Begin with I
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/49101112131415
12/5-12/11161718192012
12/12-12/183456789
12/19-12-2510111213141516
12/26-1/117181920123
1/2-1/645678Nativity
Group Ten
Names that Begin with J
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/410111213141516
12/5-12/1117181920123
12/12-12/1845678910
12/19-12-2511121314151617
12/26-1/11819201234
1/2-1/656789Nativity
Group Eleven
Names that Begin with K
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/411121314151617
12/5-12/111819201234
12/12-12/18567891011
12/19-12-2512131415161718
12/26-1/1192012345
1/2-1/6678910Nativity
Group Twelve
Names that Begin with L
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/412131415161718
12/5-12/11192012345
12/12-12/186789101112
12/19-12-2513141516171819
12/26-1/120123456
1/2-1/67891011Nativity
Group Thirteen
Names that Begin with M
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/413141516171819
12/5-12/1120123456
12/12-12/1878910111213
12/19-12-2514151617181920
12/26-1/11234567
1/2-1/689101112Nativity
Group Fourteen
Names that Begin with N
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/414151617181920
12/5-12/111234567
12/12-12/18891011121314
12/19-12-251516171819201
12/26-1/12345678
1/2-1/6910111213Nativity
Group Fifteen
Names that Begin with O
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/41516171819201
12/5-12/112345678
12/12-12/189101112131415
12/19-12-25161718192012
12/26-1/13456789
1/2-1/61011121314Nativity
Group Sixteen
Names that Begin with P
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/4161718192012
12/5-12/113456789
12/12-12/1810111213141516
12/19-12-2517181920123
12/26-1/145678910
1/2-1/61112131415Nativity
Group Seventeen
Names that Begin with Q or R
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/417181920123
12/5-12/1145678910
12/12-12/1811121314151617
12/19-12-251819201234
12/26-1/1567891011
1/2-1/61213141516Nativity
Group Eighteen
Names that Begin with S or T
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/41819201234
12/5-12/11567891011
12/12-12/1812131415161718
12/19-12-25192012345
12/26-1/16789101112
1/2-1/61314151617Nativity
Group Nineteen
Names that Begin with U, V, or W
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/4192012345
12/5-12/116789101112
12/12-12/1813141516171819
12/19-12-2520123456
12/26-1/178910111213
1/2-1/61415161718Nativity
Group Twenty
Names that Begin with X, Y, or Z
SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
11/28-12/420123456
12/5-12/1178910111213
12/12-12/1814151617181920
12/19-12-251234567
12/26-1/1891011121314
1/2-1/61516171819Nativity