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b. Concerned with wholes rather than analysis or separation into parts

holistic.

Whole.

Entire.

Complete.

Whole soul.

Whole person.

Whole life.

Whole family.

Whole being.

Whole self.

Whole heart.

Whole mind.

Whole lifestyle.

Whole of time.

Whole. Complete. Healing.

What Orthodoxy is to me.

Gray and Francesca hate each other. Gray and Everett love each other. Gray and Sam are companions. And a new little kitten, a look a like to Sam (which means Tiger hath begat yet another generation) has turned up at our door.

Each morning Celia makes separate bowls of food so that Gray and Sam eat in one corner, Everett eats alone and so does Francesca. The nameless little new kitten cries until they all leave and then she gets what’s left from all the bowls.

The nameless kitten is dirty and likely needs a bath. She is skittish and will often hide in my van engine. Red  Fox wants to eat her.  I look at her and wonder what to do. There is an animal shelter in Oak Ridge and I might load her up and see if they’ll take her.

It would be nice if there were some program to spay and neuter (and give basic shots) to rural cats. Gray and Sam have become excellent mousers and turn up some little carcass almost daily. Everett is a sweet boy that just loves love. Francesca is so bony and pitiful (but also sweet) that we can’t bear but to feed her back to health.

But this kitten….sigh. I don’t want to become “the cat woman” :D. She mews almost constantly, wanting to be brave but too frightened to do anything but huddle, tail wrapped around her body, eye darting. She doesn’t look malnourished; just dirty and homeless.

Anybody want a free cat?

I’ve got a new blog! This one for a project called Project 365. The idea is to take one photo a day for a year. A bunch of my friends are doing it; I’ll be adding their links in the coming days.

My photo project blog!

When someone hits another person, they leave a mark. The bible says that, “whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Sometimes people hit another to make them shut up and sometimes they hit them so as to bait a response. And it seems to me that verse in Matthew is quite miraculous a response to bait and a humbling one when used to allow the bully to hush one’s voice.

Either way, the striking is a sin on the part of the striker. In the case of the bully, I wonder when there is a time to stand up and not allow them to continue the attack.

Interesting thing about bullies. Put them together with thieves, murderers, and other abusers: they most often do their deed in the dark. Behind the scenes. In private. In ways that would put the bringing of it into the light squarely on the shoulders of the one persecuted.

This morning I went outside and discovered that in the dark of the night, a raccoon had plundered my chicken coop and robbed us of our eggs. The birds were safe, probably because the varmint could probably only reach an arm in and the birds were able to crawl to safety. Surely “turn the other cheek” doesn’t apply here…though I could put out a plate of food I suppose and hope the Raccoon would leave my egg supply alone.

We recently received something that held within the expected and the unexpected. Expected were the consequences of a recent change in our lives. Expected was the disagreement on the part of the authors. Unexpected was the personal attack and slander that accompanied it. We are left hurting and wondering what response, if any, is best.

In the internet world, this would be considered a “private slam”. No witnesses. No accountabilty. No way to answer the inaccuracies without continuing an unpalatable conversation. The burden of bringing it into the light is on our shoulders. Matthew has a few verses about that as well.

We are pondering letting it go. Yet it seems wrong somehow to allow the writers to go on assuming they hold the truth, people in positions of power, likely continuing the slander among others whose opinion of me I care about. It defies my sense of personal justice. I ponder the verse in Matthew, which most assuredly counters any form of “personal justice”. I think about what we teach our children, “even if no one is around, God sees what you are doing.” I think of  christians  gone before, who absolutely withstood much more grievous attacks, both in public and in private. I think of my Champion, the Theotokos…how odd it is to my protestant ears to consider the mother of God, a defender. But if I’m surrounded with the heavenly host, with the church Triumphant, then others see the sins committed in the dark as well.

I wonder at the stature of men who can not say what they think in the light, directly to us. I wonder at shepherds who only govern, and neither tend nor speak. I wonder at heartbreak and how to best react, with wholeness and serenity.

Today I’ll mend the chicken wire fence. I will pray. I will stay in the light.

“Aquire the grace of God and a thousand shall find peace around you.”

St. Seraphim of Sarov

I read that in The Handmaiden, a journal for Orthodox Women, in an issue that features the monastic life. A novice shares, “But insofar as being monastic, my focus is not on what I do, but on who I am becoming by doing it.”

Ah. Life is not merely a laundry list of things to do, just for the sake of saying we did them. But the same tasks, when one allows themselves to be transformed in the process, can surpass the mundane and bring new meaning entirely. I’d like to be the kind of person who spreads peace. I found it good food for thought today.

Cathy sent me this link about a group of people who decided to try and see if they could go a year without buying more “stuff”. I’d heard of someone who did this a few years ago and they wrote a book about it….it the idea catches on just a little it could empower a movement of contentment! Imagine!

““I really found a lot of times there were things I thought I needed that I don’t need that much,” she said.

The pledge provided unexpected dividends as well, such as the joy of getting reacquainted with the local library and paying down credit cards. Gone, too, was the hangover of buyer’s remorse.

Perry got satisfaction out of finding he had a knack for fixing things and how often manufacturers were willing to send replacement parts and manuals for products that had long since outlived their warranties.

“One of the byproducts of The Compact has been I have a completely different relationship with the things in my life. I appreciate the stuff I have more,” he said. “I don’t think I need to buy another pair of shoes until I’m entering Leisure World.”

in the game of “blog tag” that is. I was tagged by Richard well over a week ago and between the baby, the server change, and some internet work, am just now getting going.

5 Things about me that you may not know…

1)  I was born with a tooth. I’m not lying. It was a real baby tooth (and it comes in handy when I play games like this!)

2)  I just learned how to properly spell “their” last year. Thanks to spellcheck, I quit obeying the misnomer that “i before e except after c” bunk.

3) My 3 boys were born at home and the last two, in the water.

4) I only like to sit against a wall in a restaurant, facing out. Booths are best.

5) my dreams at night are in full color and have plots. I can go to sleep telling myself a story and finish it in my dream.

I now tag Joel and Erin,  Misty, and Rick (who really must blog again sometime soon anyway!).

Home again, home again. My van pulled into the drive way early in a dark night of pouring rain and our tired little selves came in for hugs and warmth and bed. It has been a fabulous week of service, of blessing, of family bonding.

Years ago, when I was a new mom and in various churches, my friends and I often lamented about this pesky verse in the book of Titus:

“Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”

>The “older women” we knew didn’t want to be known as “older”. Most of them had day jobs and didn’t think of themselves as “homemakers”. They didn’t understand then newer generation of women choosing to stay home with their children when they’d gone to work. Many more of them could make a good “cream of” casserole, had various shades of hair from a bottle, and liked to attend “ladies only” everything: Sunday school classes, bible “studies”, shopping days, visitation, etc. Everything was age-segregated. Young moms ran the nursery, the children’s programs, the meal lists for births and deaths, themselves into the ground….with a smile on their face of course. The older women relaxed, having “done their time”.

My friends and I would look at the verse….we were the “younger women” at the time, often feeling grossly inadequate enough to know that we needed someone to “teach” us the practical, outward, manifestations of what it looks like to “love their husbands and children”. It’s not as if the women we considered older were critical…they just were silent.

It was frustrating. Stories would circulate, real hero tales that would make us jealous. “So and so was visited by so and so, who did all her laundry and cooking after her baby was born!” “So and so babysat her toddlers so she could go grocery shopping.” “So and so called up so and so to see how she was doing and offered to come watch the baby so she could get a good few hours of homeschooling in this week!” “So and so taught her how to properly knead bread!” Who were these “older” women that were helping the tired young moms?

At some point I gave up dreaming of that kind of “sit at her feet and learn” kind of opportunity. Many, many things my mom taught me (among my friends I had more homemaking training than most) and I learned-by-doing much more. Instead of help and instruction from women I spent time around, I got it from online sources, books, and trial and error. I hung my diapers one by one on the line, fed my kids, stopped going to women’s groups, listened more to my husband, learned to have dinner on time, swept my floors, and began to wait. I waited to age, to become “older” myself, and to answer the question for myself. I don’t know where the older women were….some of them were probably trying where they could and maybe others were still part of the generation they came of age in, trying to do it “all”, too unskilled in home keeping themselves to pass it onto the next group. Maybe they were discounting the importance of the “mundane” tasks of home and child keeping and the eternal significance these can carry. Maybe.. But I knew by then that when the time came, I would know where I was. I would at least be available.

I”m not that old yet and neither are my children. It’s with some surprise that the chance to pass on even a tittle of what I’ve learned has appeared. Perhaps what the “baby years” gave me, with my own birth experiences and the several births I’ve attended, with the long nights of crying babes and wearingly endless home chores, is enough to get started.

My sister isn’t that much younger than I in age….yet my oldest is nearly 11 years old and hers is 4 days. For much of the past decade I’ve been on the outside looking in to a world that didn’t really parallel mine much. She went to college; I didn’t. She has a career; I never did. She waited to get married; I was married at 20. I was pregnant quickly; they had time as a couple first. It’s been a decade of listening for both of us, the lines rarely crossing enough to really relate well to the other’s experience.

This is different. I had something to offer this time, this waiting for a new life to come. Shelves of parenting books, boxes of hand me downs, a sympathetic ear, a reassuring voice. Back rubs on sore hips, knowledge of natural labor and birth, enough to help her get the experience she wanted in a less than pro-offering setting. How to get a good latch on, how and when to nurse, how to swaddle….cooking for a few days and a stocked freezer with minestrone, meatballs, a few soups and stews, chicken pies. I painted art for the nursery to match the bedding (frogs in Monet’s Water Lilies), took several rolls of film shooting the baby’s portrait, helped her learn how to use her sling wrap, and vacuumed the floors.

Several times I wondered who really did the giving. It was a tremendous privilege to be invited to participate in such an event. My little niece is 6lbs of perfection and I love her as nearly as my own babies as I ever dreamed I could. Fatigue is not really something I felt until the final hours of my stay, so blessed I was to hold her with my hands and to inhale her sweet warm scent of newness, to kiss those soft little cheeks, to see her know my voice. The mutuality of our giving was a tandem harmony.

It wasn’t until I had my children, quite hyper from a week in a different time zone and much candy, finally loaded into the van and headed home that the verse in Titus came to mind. Two things happened: my “younger” sister was open to receiving help and this “older” woman was available to share.

The rain for most of the trip wasn’t very heavy; the wipers were primarily on to deal with truck spray. My head had begun to throb, feeling the fatigue of the week, and needing coffee that wasn’t gas station sludge. As I pondered if I’d somehow walked through some kind of gateway this week, not knowing myself if I”m “done” with the baby years but knowing I have something to offer younger, newer moms, my family looked in vain online for a Starbucks on the way. I eventually settled for some burned and lukewarm tar from McDonalds as the rain picked up. The mountains were rising and the mists settling around, my spirit sort of sighing as I felt myself nearing home. By the time we reached our county the rain drove in sheets through heavy fog that hid even the lines on the pavement and I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting home safely.

I hope older women show me how to age gracefully and honestly. I met someone recently who exudes a peaceful dignity; I immediately thought, “I hope I stand like that when I’m the same age.” Maybe if our culture were more comfortable with the transition there would be less angst and less denial of the process. When women work on their marriages (and what marriage doesn’t have areas of struggle?), they teach younger wives how to do the same, whether they realize it or not. Maybe that’s why I find it especially discouraging to hear of divorces between those married 20 years or more. But even if older women don’t take the initiative, I’m determined to adapt the little song, “let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me”. Determined…and when I get that way about something I tend to attack it with a bit of a vengeance, a hyper energy that gets a lot done. Older women have appeared here and there, teaching by example, often when they are not very aware of it, and I’ll take what they teach and add to it energetically, stepping up where the opportunity presents, learning and passing it on for the segue of years to come.