Pascha 2014

Another year, another Pascha celebration.

Easter never gets old, when celebrated rightly.

Fasting, prayer, loss

and then Resurrection!

Lately, whenever I feel that great void,

as though God were very far way, 

or not there at all,

 I have been reminding myself,

"You are never so far away as you think you are."

 Then I feel myself rush back into His presence.

There it is like a hot, breathless, summer day

--warm and encompassing.

When breathing swarms back,

Tears of joy fall.

Though I feel not worthy,

I almost feel as though I could be one of His saints

--someday.

An Easter Luxury

Mmm, I have been enjoying lots of butter lately.  My husband and I both agree that the thing we missed most during Lent was butter.  Everything tastes so much better with butter smeared, or melted on it.  One of my favorite foods for Easter this year was our Pascha Bread.  Every time I ate a slice of our blessed Pascha bread with butter on it I would say a little prayer, because I was reminded of the Sacrifice.  I felt holy eating it. 

Banana bread and butter

Bright Week & Bright New Ways

From out of the darkness, Christ’s disciples begin to learn that not all is lost.  In fact, eternity is gained.  And one by one, Christ shines His light upon the Apostles and disciples, giving glimpses of Alpha to Omega…

Monday I continued the Spring cleaning and gave the upstairs bedrooms a deep cleanse.  The kids played in Alex’s room.  Kristiana screamed her head off for a while—big brother does not play so well with her.

Monday is also laundry day.  However, laundry day seems to be turning into laundry three days.  It always seems to  take a full day to wash the laundry and then it takes another two days to fold, iron and put away.  Further, this week I started using our cloth diapers on Kristiana, so that added another load. 

We have had the diapers since Alexander was born, but it was too stressful to use them regularly.  I have used them for fours days so far.  The caked on toddler poop is awful.  After my husband changed one poopy diaper we immediately went online and bought some diaper liners so we can simply pull it away and flush it.  The diaper washing went well.  I had some practice from when we used them before. 

My bright new thing is hanging the laundry on a clothesline.  I hung the diapers out on the line and they dried nicely, white and clean.  I was so pleased with the results that I hung the next load on the line and watched the clothing gently waft in the wind.  The load dried in an hour, which is about the same if not quicker than the dryer. I think I am addicted to hanging the laundry.  It just felt right and it saves energy, which means we will save on our electric bill.  I probably will not hang every load, because sometimes it’s raining and or something else might come up that prevents hanging.

I made a mistake though.  I did not tighten the strands of rope enough, so the line sagged when I hung the clothing.  I also hung the lines too close together, so the clothing twisted about each other.  It still got the job done.  I will have to take the line down and re-hang it, but that’s something for the next laundry day.

My mom used to hang clothes on the line when I was little and we lived in Australia.  I remember we used to play in our play pool every day we could and when we were done, we would run over to the clothesline and pull sun warmed towels off the line.  When we moved to Wyoming there were many reasons to not use a clothesline, chiefly the weather.  The air is frozen nine months of the year and the wind blows so hard always that your underpants would be blown to Nebraska by nightfall. 

Somewhere, a couple years ago I read a humorous article about clothesline etiquette and I could not find it again to share.  If I ever find it, I will share it.

Christ is Risen!

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! Alleluia!

Our Easter dinner turned out perfect.  It was glorious.  Truly befitting to celebrate Resurrection and our salvation. We, my husband and I, were highly impressed.  Our guests enjoyed it as well and asked for recipes.  We had ham, green bean casserole, hash browns, cheese and salami, deviled eggs, Pascha bread and butter, a big fruit platter, delicious sweet and bitter beets…I ate some leftovers later in the evening and had to pat myself on the back.  The flavors had set in more and it was better reheated.

We moved our Resurrection icon and our cross to the dining room for Easter dinner. 
They are hanging where our Advent calendar hung, and where my painting normally hangs.
I think we’ll leave it for the remainder of Easter.

This is the first Easter Kristiana was able to hunt for Easter eggs.  She had jelly beans for breakfast.
 

Alex found most of the Easter eggs.  He was also perfectly behaved in church.  Alleluia.
During the consecration he looked up at me folded his arms in prayer and said, “Like this, Mommy.”
He was trying to tell me how to do it as we have told him over and over.  We will make a couple of trips to daily Mass this week for more practice.

My beautiful family.

Easter

Here is a picture of our Easter basket. We are missing the Eastern Easter chants.

By death, by death, He conquered death. By death, by death, He conquered death.

And to those in the graves, and to those in the graves.

He granted, He granted, He granted

Life.

This Week - A Complete Analysis

To give you some background, Andrew and I have been enjoying the traditions of our faith this Easter season. It makes me so happy that Easter celebrations last as long as Great Fast. After the purging of sin during Great Fast, the celebrations of Easter seem more pure and holy than any other celebration. By Easter Monday, after having blessed celebrations Sunday, Andrew and I were more serious about our faith than we were even during Lent. I guess the procession of Holy Week and Easter Liturgy really awakened our sleeping souls.

By serious, I mean we decided that we were going to start living the faith more in our home. It was time to put our money where our mouth is. We decided we would go into a little debt (pay it off in the next couple of months) for the sake of our faith. We went to the internet and bought a Resurrection icon, so that we could more properly celebrate the season. We want to obtain an icon for every season, since the Roman Catholic church we attend is pretty barren. We also bought an censer and some incense, since this is also one of the things we have been missing. Finally, we bought 33 knot prayer ropes to help us pray without ceasing. We also ordered some icons, a set of theotokos and pantokrator, for our God-daughter, because as Andrew said, he wanted us to be seriously involved God-parents.

We have now received all the items we ordered. Last Friday, we received the icons and prayer ropes. The prayer rope has definitely changed the level of prayer in my life. It is always there on my wrist to remind me. Whenever I see it I say the Jesus Prayer as many times as I can at that moment, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." When I put Alexander to bed, I nurse him and lay with him a bit and say 100 of the Jesus Prayer. My goal is at least 300 a day.


When we went to New York city, our friend, Zane, took us to a beautiful, Eastern Christian style, Roman Catholic church. The Christos Pantokrator icon, of Jesus, in the apse, behind the altar, was incredibly soul penetrating. I keep thinking about the eyes. It's whole composition really made me think about who Jesus is. Now when I say the Jesus Prayer, I reflect on that icon. This as in depth as I can go at the moment, because I cannot tell you what is in my soul.

We received our censer yesterday and hopefully we can begin prayer with it tonight. It is a longstanding tradition to direct every sense we have toward heaven, toward God. It has been a very exciting and holy Easter season for us. We hope to learn more about the traditions of the Eastern Church over the next year.

God Bless. (The icon to the side is the one from the church and below is altar. Click on altar images.)