1. Fire and Ice
Light touching our crimson maple was more as it should be this morning. Hints of gems and a golden season. Recently the dull red hood of burnt forest pasted the sun's disc like plastic above us.
This year, first ice then fire have been vehicles for our humility. Other places are offered storm and flood. Nature gathers us, interpreting deep longings, betrayals, and the process of grief. Both disc and gem enlighten when I draw near to ponder before setting forth once more.
2. Inch by Inch
A journey and pilgrimage found Tim and me, on the way to Pasadena, in San Francisco. My father's joy, who at fourteen spent a grand time there with his aunt and much later, in 1970, witnessed Haight-Ashbury and Richard Brautigan's apartment on Geary Street. Longing to show Tim the city, I made plans centered around a church, a cathedral of joy built through the efforts of our beloved Hierarch John, also located on Geary. We explored cathedral and traffic, fog-bordered sunshine and Grocery Outlet. We spent the night near Fisherman's Wharf and rode the cable car.
Our trip happened inch by inch, cabled, so it seemed, to endless freeway between soil-deprived fields crying for water. Yet, blanketed by record heat, dreaming restoration. Our drive home included a journey west, to tiny Platina, to monks toiling through the mundane with joyful step on paths of prayer for all, for healing.
3. Lack of Oomph
Back to work, to treasure hunts in troves of mightily penned volumes. To accepting I have no drive, no oomph, for anything but this right now. To wondering, as I process orders for Texas, for Florida: are they okay? Higher learning will continue, the book dust assures me. Send my lowly prayers.
Ponder the authors--Kierkegaard, Luther, Kant, Barth--in appreciation. Gather joy in silent tears, breezing past Symeon, Palamas, Theophan. And our beloved Hieromonk Seraphim, the rose lying in Platina, who toiled, wrote, and prayed and still calls for restoration.
Light touching our crimson maple was more as it should be this morning. Hints of gems and a golden season. Recently the dull red hood of burnt forest pasted the sun's disc like plastic above us.
This year, first ice then fire have been vehicles for our humility. Other places are offered storm and flood. Nature gathers us, interpreting deep longings, betrayals, and the process of grief. Both disc and gem enlighten when I draw near to ponder before setting forth once more.
2. Inch by Inch
A journey and pilgrimage found Tim and me, on the way to Pasadena, in San Francisco. My father's joy, who at fourteen spent a grand time there with his aunt and much later, in 1970, witnessed Haight-Ashbury and Richard Brautigan's apartment on Geary Street. Longing to show Tim the city, I made plans centered around a church, a cathedral of joy built through the efforts of our beloved Hierarch John, also located on Geary. We explored cathedral and traffic, fog-bordered sunshine and Grocery Outlet. We spent the night near Fisherman's Wharf and rode the cable car.
Our trip happened inch by inch, cabled, so it seemed, to endless freeway between soil-deprived fields crying for water. Yet, blanketed by record heat, dreaming restoration. Our drive home included a journey west, to tiny Platina, to monks toiling through the mundane with joyful step on paths of prayer for all, for healing.
3. Lack of Oomph
Back to work, to treasure hunts in troves of mightily penned volumes. To accepting I have no drive, no oomph, for anything but this right now. To wondering, as I process orders for Texas, for Florida: are they okay? Higher learning will continue, the book dust assures me. Send my lowly prayers.
Ponder the authors--Kierkegaard, Luther, Kant, Barth--in appreciation. Gather joy in silent tears, breezing past Symeon, Palamas, Theophan. And our beloved Hieromonk Seraphim, the rose lying in Platina, who toiled, wrote, and prayed and still calls for restoration.
