St. Aidan of Lindisfarne

Today is my husband's Name Day - the day when we celebrate the feast of his patron saint, Aidan of Lindisfarne.

Aidan is not his given name, but his saint's name. In Orthodox circles, particularly among converts, you will meet people living a life with two identities - their given name and a name they use at church, especially when receiving Communion. For the laity, it seems to mostly be a pious custom to take on the name of a saint whose life holds special meaning for you. For clergy, it tends to be less voluntary. When the Deac was ordained a Subdeacon back in 1996, the Bishop asked him what his saint name was going to be - he would not ordain him with his given name. My husband weighed the names of two of his favorite saints - Aidan and Polycarp. No offense to St. Polycarp (one of the first martyrs of the Church), but I think he made a good choice. He now prefers to be known as Aidan in most of the circles of his life. I think he should go about getting Aidan legally added to his name, but I don't know if he ever will.

I recently found a fun new Orthodox website - the Orthodox wikipedia. A wikipedia, or wiki, is basically an encyclopedia that can be edited and added to by anyone. In exploring the Orthodox wiki, I found a story from the life of St. Aidan that I had never heard before and immediately HAD to send it to my husband because he is a volunteer firefighter:

In 651 a pagan army attacked Bamburgh and attempted to set its walls ablaze. According to legend, Aidan prayed for the city, after which the winds turned and blew the smoke and fire toward the enemy, repulsing them.

Apparently the Deac's namesake was a firefighter of sorts, too. I'd love to have an icon written for him of the Bamburgh event.

Dear Deacon, in the transliterated words of our Romanian friends: Multi Ani Traiasca! God grant you many years!

(although I pilfered the icon image from the wikipedia site, it's the same one we have in our prayer corner at home - I'm pretty sure we found it at Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, MA)

Thy Kingdom Come

As part of my prayer rule, I try to say the Lord's Prayer each day by myself and with the kids. A week or so ago, I was suddenly struck by the phrase "Thy Kingdom come." I remembered back to my Protestant years and how I would stay up late with friends discussing the "end times" and getting completely freaked out through the discussion. Now that I'm Orthodox, my outlook on the Second Coming seems so different - it seems like there's no reason to get worried or upset about it because it's in God's hands, you know? So anyway, it just occurred to me that every time we repeat this prayer Christ gave us, we are praying for the end of the world to come so we can join God in His Kingdom - something that never occurred to me back in those days of worrying so much about it.

I looked up this particular phrase in a little book I have of the translation of a Russian radio program given by Fr. Alexander Schmemann on the Lord's Prayer (called, appropriately enough, "Our Father"). He agrees that the phrase can be taken to mean that the end of the world should be brought about, but points out that Christ also said that the kingdom has already arrived. Fr. Alexander says:

[The Gospel] calls "kingdom" the encounter of man with God, God who is fullness of life and the very life of all life, who is light, love, knowledge, wisdom, eternity. It tells us that the kingdom comes and begins when man meets God, recognizes Him and with love and joy offers himself to Him. It says that the kingdom of God comes when my life is filled to the brim with this light, with this knowledge, with this love. And finally it says for the person who has experienced this divine life, that everything, including his death, is revealed in a new light, for that which he encounters, that with which he fills his life here and now, today, is eternity itself, which is God Himself... we pray that this encounter may take place now, here, and today, in the present circumstances, that in my mundane and difficult life I could hear the words, "the kingdom is near you," and that my life would be filled with the power and light of the kingdom, with the power and light of faith, love and hope.

So there you go - everyday I've been asking God to allow me to experience Him in a way that would leave no doubt as to the degree of His love or mercy for me - I just haven't realized it. This weekend I thought a lot about the image of God as the Good Shepherd who would leave the 99 to find one missing lamb. What would motivate him do that? What makes that one little lamb so valuable to the shepherd that he would leave the rest of the herd to search for it? And, perhaps more importantly for my journey, what will benefit that lamb more - giving into despair and realizing there really is no reason for the shepherd to come rescue it? Or bleating in the faint hope the shepherd will hear it and come? I guess in my own life it makes more sense to bleat, either literally by continuing to ask God to give me His kindgom and figuratively by repenting and crying over my sins.

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32)

11 days

I've had this blog up for 11 days and this is my 11th post. Crazy! I hadn't planned to be so prolific. I guess I have a lot on my mind.

In fact, there were several topics meandering around my brain to post about today, but I'm so tired I think I'll spare you. Given the weekend to think about it, I am more likely to come up with something rational.

By the way, Russian cursive? Kinda cool. Hard at first! But cool. I need to get back to practicing...

Those ubiquitous rubber bracelets

It started with the yellow bracelet bearing the words "LiveSTRONG" that our friends Tom & Maxine sent to us for donating to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Tom and Max (before her passing in May from metastatic breast cancer) are active in the Foundation. Max was an inspiration to many fighting this terrible disease. We picked up a second bracelet for $1 at the CU Health Sciences Center bookstore so that we could both wear one and feel proud of showing our support.

More recently, Em and I found a new bracelet at a local La Leche League meeting. It is purple and says "Encourage, Support, Protect BREASTFEEDING." The price was steep - $5 this time - but all of the proceeds go back to La Leche League, so I splurged. Em insists that this is her bracelet. She allows me to wear it while she is at Preschool so it doesn't get lost.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the Deac attended a Conference called Fire Rescue International. He picked up a black bracelet (again, $5! The charities are figuring out how to use this trend to their full advantage) with the words "Everyone Goes Home" that supports the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. The band is black to remind us of the bands firefighters place over their badge when mourning a fallen comrade - the idea is to keep the black on our wrists to "keep them off the badges." The girls actually squabbled over this one, so he had to garner a second one at the Conference the next day.

So I guess these bracelets identify the causes we most support at this point in our lives? At the very least, it shows that we are not immune to the memes of modern society. It's amazing to me how these little pieces of rubber we wear on our wrist can start in-depth conversations about needs and charities some people have heard little about - but I wonder how long they'll be the "in" thing. So, of course, I had to scrapbook it.

Cyrillic

Last night I memorized the Cyrillic alphabet. 33 characters which made me wonder more than once exactly what must have comprised St. Cyril's (that's him in the icon above) diet while he was inventing these letters. Emmelia was really funny when I kept repeating the alphabet - she would say "I like that!" and I'd say "It's the Cyrillic alphabet!" and then, invariably, she'd launch into the singing of the English alphabet song. I need to find some music to sing the Cyrillic alphabet so that the girls pick it up while their brains are tender.

Since I can get extra credit for giving a short presentation in my Russian class, I looked up the origin of the Cyrillic alphabet on Google. It was pretty interesting. Apparently some folks question whether St. Cyril wrote it at all. I think in general not a lot of history was being written down in the 10th century, especially among a people that didn't have an alphabet. I'm going to have to assume holy tradition is right about this one, but I'm not sure I'll actually do a presentation on this topic now. Instead, I'm going to continue giggling everytime I get to "tvordy znak" and wonder why a character which has no sound has to have two words to describe it.

Walking on Water

I haven't been dealing so well with life lately. As you can probably tell, I've been wrestling with some heavy spiritual questions and I've been struggling equally hard on the parenting front. I haven't been as accessible and patient towards my kids as I wish I could be as a parent. I think a lot of that is sleep deprivation. Being tired makes it exponentially harder to deal with anything.

Last week I had the thought that I am at a point where I need to sink or swim in my spiritual life. By doing nothing to work out my salvation, I will sink. But in order to swim, I need God's help. It's a tough place to be because it's a leap of faith - do I believe God is there for me or not? Do I believe myself worthy of God's help or am I going to continue denying it? It's probably not coincidental that the Gospel reading on Sunday was about Peter walking to Christ on the water. God may work mysteriously a lot of the time, but sometimes he beams you with a two-by-four just to see if you are paying attention. Anyway, since Sunday I've had the refrain of a song from one of Em's CDs ("Fruits of the Spirit" by Kh. Gigi Shadid) in my head: "Do not be afraid, I tell you, do not be afraid... keep your eyes on Me, and you will never sink."

The good news is that the kids seem to finally be sleeping a little better and waking me up fewer times a night. I'm still tired, but last night I had the wildest, craziest dreams all night. I think my brain is catching up on REM sleep - and after that, maybe there's hope for getting my energy and brainpower back! Let's hope I can continue to stay afloat, anyway.

A new challenge

When I was 11 years old, I got to go to a summer camp for gifted & talented kids held at a University in northern Colorado. The program was designed for kids to take two weeks worth of various college courses just for fun. I took Russian, Astronomy, Greek Mythology and Creative Writing. It was a blast and my very favorite course was Russian. Ever since then I've wanted to learn the language and now that I'm Orthodox it seems like an even more fitting language to pick up (esp. since my Father Confessor is fond of saying things like: "if you could only read in Russian, I'd have the perfect book for you on this topic...")

Now that I'm done with my bachelor and masters degrees, I find myself with the opportunity to use the free tuition vouchers I get for working here on classes that are truly just for fun - today I started my first Russian class! I am really looking forward to it. It's going to be a lot of work, of course, and I wonder how quickly I'll pick up another language now that I'm in my thirties and have had two kids, but it will be fun, too. Even better, it will be a good exercise program. The class meets four days a week and the walk from my office across one of the most beautiful campuses in the country to the language building is 20 minutes one way. Plenty of time to think about possible blog topics and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Today we just learned about our professor and each other, what texts we'll need (which cost me over $100! - more than I spent on all the books I needed for grad school put together - oh well) and one letter - kind of a backward "R" which is apparently pronounced "ya" and means "yes, here"... something like that. By the end of this week I should be starting to write Cyrillic in cursive.

Books I'm currently reading

Here's what sources are currently providing me food for thought for the 10-15 minutes a day I can manage to read after the kids fall asleep and before I get too tired to think straight. All three are interesting in their own way. The one by Anthony Bloom I have read before, but it's the sort of book that one does well to re-read every few years because of the changes in the landscape of our spiritual lives over time. That's annoying - I just tried to make the photos link to the Amazon reviews for these books, but I'm not technically gifted enough to figure it out today.

Love & Forgiveness

My husband made it back safely from his business trip to New York - yeay! I hadn't mentioned that he was gone before because I'm neurotic enough when I'm alone in the house with the kids without advertising it on the internet. This week was particularly difficult - not only is Emmelia old enough to really understand his absence and get all teary-eyed about it every evening, but I made the mistake of reading some of the news reports out of the BTK killer's sentencing going on in Wichita. Scary stuff - not recommended reading if you're going to be alone in your house at night.

One of the things that struck me in one of the articles was a quote from a woman who said something about how it was even worse because the BTK killer said he was a Christian. Well, history is full of cold-hearted people who were nominally Christian, isn't it? Take Hitler, for instance. Christ Himself said "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 7:21) American society has such a pervasive attitude of "all dogs go to heaven" - if you say you are a Christian then that must mean you are saved, have accepted Christ into your heart, will never sin again, will automatically go to heaven. I almost added in "will vote Republican". Hee.

I'm beginning to believe that the real meat of what is required of us in this life is to practice love and forgiveness. If we practice those two things then of necessity other virtues such as humility and repentance will take their place in our lives. And if we practice love and forgiveness we can see how it's possible that we will see people like BTK and Hitler in heaven without any hint of hypocrisy. We should desire their repentance and forgiveness even in light of the atrocities they committed in this world. Closer to home, there are people in our lives who we might find it equally difficult to meet in heaven, and yet we should hope to see them there if we believe in a merciful God.

Of course it's no accident that the two hardest concepts for me to get straight in my own life are the very virtues I think are so important. I find it hard to love those people involved in allowing the hurtful events of my childhood to happen. I find it hard to love myself - even God - sometimes. I find it difficult to find forgiveness for those who have hurt me, or even forgiveness for myself. Heck, I often find it hard to even understand exactly what forgiveness means! But I believe my salvation lies along this path. Thank goodness I have the rest of my life and then some to figure it all out.

Whew! That was quite a digression. Mostly, I'm glad the Deac made it home safely.

My primary vice

Okay, okay - it's a hobby and not necessarily a vice. I do spend a lot of time working on digital scrapbooking that I could spend more productively doing something else. But that's okay. There's worse vices.

I just completed this digital scrapbook layout today with some photos I took of Emmelia a week or so ago. I loved them all and wanted to showcase them all on one page. I like the way it came out. It was my first real attempt at tinting a photograph a certain color.

For you techies out there, all my layouts are done with an open source (read: free) software program called The Gimp (www.gimp.org). It's pretty powerful - I can do basically everything my friends with Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro can do. The geek in me gets a kick out of learning how to use The Gimp for all kinds of special effects and scrapbooking fun. All this to say that I'm sure you'll regularly be seeing more layouts if you keep checking my blog.

God's love

How do we know God loves us? It's a question I've been struggling with lately, that's for sure. For me, the experience of my childhood gave me a shaky understanding of love - how it should be expressed, why it is expressed or felt. My self-esteem issues make it difficult for me to accept love sometimes - I feel unworthy of it. And when that happens in my relationship with God, it's the ultimate pride: I am the one person in the universe for whom God goes against His very nature (which is Love). Right. (eye roll)

So today I had this thought: I love God. It's true, I do. I may not know why or how but I know I love God and His Church. And if I, little me, can love God then how much more can He who IS LOVE, love me? Perhaps I try too hard to circumvent my ingrained Western way of thinking about things.

When bad things happen to good people

Today I'm going to visit a friend who just suffered her fifth miscarriage in three years. It's heart-breaking and brings back to me all of our struggles with infertility. Thank God, we now have two beautiful daughters, but 5 years ago today I was pregnant for the first time after many, many struggles to even get my body to ovulate. And I remember how completely devastated I was when I lost that pregnancy at 6.5 weeks gestation. I have Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and because of that, as my doctor once said, my body "has no rules." With the help of the miracle drug (for PCOS) Metformin, I was finally able to ovulate. But I had two miscarriages before finally one stuck. There's actually a long, beautiful story about how the prayers of St. Raphael of Brooklyn led to us having a healthy child. But I won't go into that today because I'm trying to think of how best to comfort Z. in her grief. She is understandably angry at God and the universe but the thing is, God really does love us. Even if WE can't see the benefit or reason to His will, we still need to trust Him that what happens to us is for the best in the end. That's often easier said than believed, as I'm finding out while trying to figure out why God allowed certain things to happen to me. I think I'll show up on her doorstep with chocolate and just offer a shoulder for her to cry on. The advanced theology can wait a few weeks.

Celebrating Death

This morning I wished my husband a happy Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos. Being the optimist that I am (get used to sarcasm around here), I added "Happy Death Day!". Today we as Orthodox Christians celebrate the day that Mary, the Mother of God, passed away from this life and entered the next. The Tradition of the Church tells us that she knew in advance that she was going to die and that the Apostles gathered to be there with her. They buried her in the garden at Gethsemane that Christ loved. As my priest mentioned in his sermon yesterday, her death gave us a form of what Christian death and burial ought to be like. It also reminds us that death is not a scary thing (or shouldn't be, anyway) for someone who has faith in God. This life is simply preparation for a much better one that is waiting for us.

After liturgy yesterday we said good-bye to two good friends, one returning home to family on the East Coast and one heading off to begin a whole new chapter in his life - he's off to seminary. We wish them both many blessings. We wished Reader Michael farewell after some delicious calamari at Carabba's yesterday (that's what the photo above is about - Rdr. Michael is on the far left).

What does THAT mean?

It's true, most people laugh when I tell them the perfect title for my blog. Where it comes from is a long story - I'll spare you.

I'm hoping to use this blog to explore some of my journey as I grow in my Orthodox Christian faith, heal from a less-than-perfect childhood, and engage in the adventures of tandem nursing and attachment parenting as we raise two wonderful children to be as ready for life as we can make them. Sure, I know that they'll hate their hair when they're 13 and that they'll probably hate me when they are 17, but I hope in general they find themselves equipped to deal with life when they find themselves in the throes of its fickleness. And I hope that we're good friends again by the time they are in their mid-twenties or so.