Be always with Christ.

I am listening to Fr. Evan Armitas class, "I'm a Christian, Now What?" in which he explores Fr. Tom's 55 Maxims. These are so lovely to meditate on again and again. I have found in the past, however, that when I put up the list somewhere in my home, I just see a big block of text, and I don't really read them much. So this time, I thought maybe I'd spend a little more time thinking about some of these maxims.  Carefully lettering and reading one at a time. Here's number 1, we'll see if I get around to doing more. <3 Hope you enjoy this little printable!

The whole universe is a cosmic Burning Bush

All things are permeated and maintained in being by the uncreated energies of God, and so all things are a theophany that mediates his presence. At the heart of each thing is its inner principle or logos, implanted within it by the Creator Logo; and so through the logoi we enter into communion with the Logos. It is to discover through our spiritual intellect that the whole universe is a cosmic Burning Bush, filled with the divine Fire yet not consumed.  

The contemplation of nature has two correlative aspects. First it means appreciating the “thusness” or “thisness” of particular things, persons and moments. “True mysticism,” says Oliver Clement, “is to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.” Secondly, it means that we see all things, persons and moments as signs and sacraments of God. In our spiritual vision we are not only to see each thing in sharp relief, standing out in all the brilliance of its specific being, but we are also to see each thing as transparent: in and through each created thing we are to discern the Creator. 

Natural contemplation signifies finding God not only in all things but equally in all persons. When reverencing the holy ikons in church or at home, we are to reflect that each man and woman is a living ikon of God. “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). In order to find God, we do not have to leave the world, to isolate ourselves from our fellow humans, and to plunge into some kind of mystical world. On the contrary, Christ is looking at us through the eyes of all those whom we meet. 

Many people who find the imageless prayer of silence altogether beyond their present capacity, and for whom the familiar phrases written in Scripture or in the books of prayer have grown dull and dry, can renew their inward life through the practice of natural contemplation. Nature and Scripture complement each other. In the words of St Ephrem the Syrian: “Wherever you turn your eyes, there is God’s symbol; Whatever you read, you will find there his type. Look and see how Nature and Scripture are linked together. Praise for the Lord of Nature. Glory for the Lord of Scripture.”

- from Chapter 6 of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s The Orthodox Way 

Mother Raphaela on Abundant Life

I am very slowly reading Growing in Christ, Shaped in His Image by Mother Raphaela.  The quote below from the first chapter especially struck me as counter cultural - the antithesis to Oprah and mommy-bloggers who are encouraging me to find my true identity, to not lose myself in the mundane work of motherhood. I am so tempted to look forward to the time when my children are sleeping so that I can have "me-time," or to feel glad when no one else shows up for prayers so I can pray alone. But these times alone are distractions from abundant life of love to which God calls us.

"It is a struggle to have a life of our own, distinct and apart from others around us, whether these others be family members, fellow community members, or fellow workers. Often we may feel that the demands of life are far too great for us; that we cannot fulfill our obligations to others and still have time for ourselves, to 'be' ourselves. Yet if we see our life as our own private affair, that we can only be our true selves when we are doing what we alone want to do without the need to respond to the needs and demands of others, we have created a false sense of identity, far removed from the human ideal taught by our Lord: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself' (Mt 22.39) and St. Paul: 'We, though many, are one body in Christ,  and individually members of one another' (Rom 12.5).  

Anna Boganis

When we fall into this mode of thinking, we begin to feel that time spent with our family or community or fellow workers is time taken from our real life...The energy needed to maintain a separate sense of identity while living in a close family or community environment can become phenomenal. In fact, those who enter into marriage or monastic life with such an attitude usually come to find themselves in a living hell. They cannot maintain this approach to their personal life and remain married or persevere as a member of a monastery.  

For some people, there is an easy and quick way out of such a hell. They can withdraw from the demands of community and family, especially on a live-in basis. Such people often try to find a place to live and a means of support that will not take much time or energy from their perceived real lives. A simple job with undemanding hours, where even during their work they can think, dream and look forward to the hours of their lives off the job can bring them a sense of real relief. Sadly however, by trying to save their own lives, they lose them. These people end up at best on the fringes of life, unable to share fully in the abundance of love.  

There is another way for Christians. It is the way of concretely dying - laying down our individual lives out of love for the brethren - and then discovering that there is an abundant life after such a death. Accepted and lived out in one way or another, this death to the old man is definitely at the heart of any vocation or call from Christ our God. There are all sorts of 'christs' being preached these days. The Church preaches Christ crucified, and His words to all, not just to his chosen disciples, were, 'If any one would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me' (Mk 8.34)."
- pg 15, 16

Why are vigil lamps lit before icons?

Why are vigil lamps lit before icons?

By Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich

1. Because our faith is light.  Christ said: I am the light of the world (John 8:12).  The light of the vigil lamp reminds us of that light by which Christ illumines our souls.

2. In order to remind us of the radiant character of the saint before whose icon we light the vigil lamp, for saints are called sons of light (John 12:36, Luke 16:8).

3. In order to serve as a reproach to us for our dark deeds, for our evil thoughts and desires, and in order to call us to the path of evangelical light; and so that we would more zealously try to fulfill the commandments of the Saviour: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works" (Matt. 5:16).

4. So that the vigil lamp would be our small sacrifice to God, Who gave Himself completely as a sacrifice for us, and as a small sign of our great gratitude and radiant love for Him from Whom we ask in prayer for life, and health, and salvation and everything that only boundless heavenly love can bestow.

5. So that terror would strike the evil powers who sometimes assail us even at the time of prayer and lead away our thoughts from the Creator. The evil powers love the darkness and tremble at every light, especially at that which belongs to God and to those who please Him.

6. So that this light would rouse us to selflessness. Just as the oil and wick burn in the vigil lamp, submissive to our will, so let our souls also burn with the flame of love in all our sufferings, always being submissive to God's will.

7. In order to teach us that just as the vigil lamp cannot be lit without our hand, so too, our heart, our inward vigil lamp, cannot be lit without the holy fire of God's grace, even if it were to be filled with all the virtues.  All these virtues of ours are, after all, like combustible material, but the fire which ignites them proceeds from God.

8. In order to remind us that before anything else the Creator of the world created light, and after that everything else in order: And God said, let there be light: and there was light (Genesis 1:3).  And it must be so also at the beginning of our spiritual life, so that before anything else the light of Christ's truth would shine within us.  From this light of Christ's truth subsequently every good is created, springs up and grows in us.

May the Light of Christ illumine you as well!

source

Thanksgiving

I am looking out my window at the odd gray sky: it was warm yesterday, and today the temperature is dropping as an ice storm approaches, all while the new grass we planted is finally growing on my lawn. 

It is an awkward transition, as they so often are. 

My Thanksgiving Cactus is again blooming as Thanksgiving carries us into the Nativity season. I look forward to these delicate blooms each year: to the wonder of shocking color amidst all the gray, as if to say the cloudy skies, frosty mornings and early evenings can not stop the earth from bursting forth with thanksgiving.

I haven't taken care of my houseplants as well this year, since moving into our new home. I'm still finding the right window, and remembering to mend my disrupted routine. And yet they persist, they bloom. Thank God!

Wishing you all a beautiful season of joy and thanksgiving!

I'm thinking how so much so often
comes of showing up, comes of being
willing to arrive, regardless,
as our several mute anxieties subside, and now
I startle, blinking—so much so

that I am for the short term almost wide awake—
and see a bit more clearly how
this willingness or that
can make of the confusion yet
another likely scene, make of the troubled,

packed interior a zone of calm, which calm
avails momentarily a glimpse
to mark among so many frank,
unlikely revelations that I continue
to observe that I am blinking still.

 - From Scott Cairns' Thanksgiving Poem

There is only one way to salvation

"There is only way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone one, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things." - Dostoyevsky

You are worried and troubled...

I am so easily distracted by too many thoughts. It leaves me feeling all hurried and flustered and worried about things I need to accomplish right now. 

I think about things I wish could do, I plan to do, I forgot but just remembered to do. My mind keeps going and going. It takes me hours to fall asleep each night. I don't really know how to turn it off! But I know that I need to. A few suggestions:

Discerning the One Thing Needful - Fr. Andrew (unplug! embrace the silence, listen)

The One Thing Needful - Fr. Stephen
(pray, choose God)

Here's to the weekend! To a weekend of less worrying, more hugging my children, talking to my husband, and playing in the dirt outside, marveling at the world around me. A weekend renewing my prayers. A weekend of sitting at the feet of Christ and listening.

You are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed. - Luke 10:41-42

God descends to the humble as waters flow down from the hills into the valleys. 

- St. Tikhon of Voronezh.

Loving others

“If you find that you have no love but desire to have it, do the works of love and the Lord will see your desire and effort and put love in your heart.” ~ St. Ambrose of Optina

The Image of God

Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him; because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement.  - St. John of Kronstadt

Prayer and Art

from Scott Cairns podcast on Vocation, Poetry and Prayer.

"Less as a means as expressing what they already know and more of a process by which they come to apprehend what they do not know. Perhaps what they can never exactly know, but what in exhilarating joy they come to suspect. It is therefore very misleading for us to talk of literary writing in terms of expression.... the process must be understood primarily as a way to see." 

"If this disposition of Prayer as expression, or worse as petition merely, is all we know of the matter, ...we have yet to begin." 

photo by Mat. Ann

"The pursuit of art becomes worthless when it is reduced to being the expression of what you know or what you think you know. I want to insist that the pursuit of art becomes a vocation only when it is understood as a discipline, a devotion to a way. the medium of language or sound or pigment or clay or fabric, the stuff of your art, the devotion to a medium a craft whose pursuit leads the artist into making something worthy of attention... something worthy of repeated attention." 

 "The poetic however is necessarily something else: it is an occasion of immediate and observed, which is to say present presence, it is an occasion of ongoing generative agency." 

"The poetic then: the presence and activity of inexhaustible indeterminate enormity apprehended in a discrete space... It is poetic to the extent that it occasions further generation, that it bears fruit." 

"Like the holy mysteries then, the poetic is involved in communication, but not in the sense that that word has become misunderstood as the unidirectional distribution of information, rather in the sense that something of each communicant is imparted to the other, and necessarily in the sense that new creation is the desired result. Like the holy mysteries then the poetic, is utterly involved with presence, not merely its history but also its currency and its continuing life giving current."

(While Lu was writing her alphabet at the table next to me. She heard his introduction where he says in his youth he wanted to be a good writer. "Oh, did he say good writer? Is he talking to me? I'm being a good writer!" "Yes, yes you are!" I looked at her beautifully crafted letters and wondered at who she will be.)