blob of wax

Under the nave's skylight I stand. I am dressed in white, except for the deeply red cross stitched to the back of my robe. My hair tumbles below a tasseled white scarf. No one else is here except Paisios, the bearded young man who usually assists during services. He is over in the choir corner, setting out books, several of them, open to pages, open to psalms, to liturgy in portions.

I step toward him and whisper, "Shall I light some candles?"

"Sure," he says. "Thanks. I'll go ring the bell."

It's noon. Sixth hour, so they called it who-knows-when. I lift a thin taper and touch its wick to one of those Paisios was lighting as I arrived. I've found these things hiss a little if you brush wick on wick. They snuff each other out on occasion. Mostly, they cooperate. Even quite young children light them, their mothers or aunts or the priest's wife standing, watching close. The small ones are more confident than I. But today they're at home or in school. So I pass the flame.

Outside, the bell rings. Six peals. Next door is a rehab group. Down the street, a health food market, a cafe, a couple taverns.

Paisios comes back in and begins chanting. I stand.

In front of me, beyond candles burning and icons of Jesus on one side, St. John the Wonderworker on the other, there are icons of Jesus, Mary, St. John the Forerunner (John the Baptist), St. John the W. again, and still more St. Somebodies.

I was put off by this Sainting. We're all saints, the New Testament says so. Yet. Study of the NT shows plainly we, none of us, know another's heart. Even my own, especially, I am reminded is a mystery.

Paisios and I were talking about this one Sunday in the narthex. Tim stood by, his gaze on light fixtures needing new ballasts above. I told Paisios I've gathered from an Orthodoxy class that Saints weren't the sorts of folks to call themselves anything but saints. If that. Regular. Not somebodies.

"Exactly," Paisios said. "That's the cool thing. None of them would say they deserved sainthood."

How paradoxical.

My robe began so white after baptism last month. Now it has grayed at the sleeves, along the hem. Tim and I are wearing ours to services for 40 days. The point is not to wash them. Purity the goal, the striving. Yet this existence grays the edges; spots appear in the center. We're paying attention.

I recall that, according to Kierkegaard, purity of heart means to will one thing. To focus.

Every day blurs me.

There is a blob on my robe above the knee, from a dripping candle. It doesn't look dirty, just flat and round and unmoving. Like a scar on my flesh. A permanent feature. A wish to be made new, this waxen seal.

reading Bible not a relief

[caption id="attachment_4501" align="alignright" width="107" caption="Travis Griffith"][/caption]

Over at Relief Journal today, I wrote a response to a post by Travis Griffith, a fellow blogger who started reading the Bible, from the beginning, for the absolute first time.

You can find what I said here.

I won't link you to Travis' post, because he was so upset, I guess, that he found and included a rather (at least I would call it) pornographic cartoon illustrating Lot's daughters' deception that got them both pregnant by their father.

If you know the Old Testament, you know that story won't be the last one of dirty deeds and very human failings Travis reads. (And if you're like me you don't need to see them depicted this way.)

But they're real. Because these are real stories. And humanity's record is not so lovely.

Investigating the Bible isn't for the faint-hearted, same as with all great literature. The writings are ancient, so it takes some work to try and figure them out. I hope Travis will give it plenty of time and effort.

But he doesn't have to. I, who am committed to a belief that I was created by a good ultimate being, must continually seek out what's really happening in the history of faith, as humbly and honestly as possible. I want to. I don't think I'll ever not want to continually stir and sort and ponder what might be going on in the richness of centuries past and in the purposes of my maker.

time for Tim

One recent Saturday, Tim and I stopped in at Hollywood Antiques, the clever-usage new shop in town that took over after the demise of the Hollywood Video where our daughter used to work. We were on the clock that day, but we zipped through the place, enjoying and planning to return on a slower afternoon.

Right away Tim spotted this nifty travel alarm. It's a Bulova, shaped like a stack of Liberty dollars, and the face cover rotates over to open or close. I bought it a few days later, stopping in at the shop late after work, hoping my hubby wouldn't have already snatched it up. But he didn't, and for once, anyway, I surprised him this birthday morning with something he likes.

Interesting how growing older makes one in-the-know regarding antiques. I remember toting travel alarm clocks on camping trips and to motels. The need to wind them, the way we wound our watches, a ubiquitous part of life if we wanted to arrive places punctually.

The hands on my first watch, a Timex, had the same glow-in-the-dark stuff. At 2:00 a.m. I squinted at it and felt relieved to have three or four more hours left before I'd need to get ready for school. Lying in the stillness of night I could let my mind roam free.

I may have had a wind-up clock before receiving my rectangular, electric timepiece somewhere around third grade. On trips, though, we always snoozed to the tick-tick-tick of our travel clock. And of course we could nestle one of them close to a new kitten or puppy so they wouldn't miss their mother's heartbeat.

Nowadays, the luminated, digital watch James Bond first made famous has given way to the cell phone. Which is kind of funny. Our grandfathers carried pocket watches, and we do, as well, though they're part of a whole different paradigm. Trying not to be late has evolved (or devolved) into carrying along all of life's necessities and every Facebook friend. It's cool and weird.

Also weird is that when I didn't use flash, capturing Tim's clock made it look silver, while using my camera's automatic flashbulb shows his birthday present in its true golden state. Remember flash cubes? And snapping photos with an Instamatic, then waiting for the film roll to be used up, the developing time the drug store took, the lack of ability to share a present's image with anyone till long past the celebratory date?