Dry wood

We are dry wood, and the Word of God is fire.

Everything in us aches to be burned by that Fire, to be transformed from mere sticks into bright light.

Why we are not transformed is because
we do not let the Fire near us.

Our holy and divine ancestors, the saints of all times, were most of them unable to read or write, yet they were saved by coming to the divine services and hearing the Word of God, seeing it in the ikons, feeling it engulf them in the liturgy. Like men drowning in the tempestuous seas who find a piece of wreckage tossed about, they grabbed onto it and held fast, and the currents brought them at last safely to shore.

And here we are, we can hold the written ikon of the Word, the precious and all-divine and only Holy Scripture, the Bible, in our hands, our eyes can see the letters, our lips read the words, and our minds understand them, by day or by night, alone or in a crowd.

Yet we hide ourselves from the Book who is a Man who walks among us unobserved by our lack of desire, while we speak of faith and feel justified by our works, all of them worthy in our eyes, but worthless because we use them as Adam used the bushes to hide from his divine Lover.

We are dry wood, that is the weakness of our nature,
and dry wood is made for the Fire.

Come, brothers, let us run to the Word brighter than all created things, Himself the Creator and Lord of all, the Almighty, and let ourselves catch fire from Him. That is what He made us for.

As He spoke at the beginning, so He speaks at the end,
'Let there be Light.'

There was evening, and there was morning, one Day.

Sentenced to immortality

Joking around with a co-worker this Bright Monday afternoon, I said, ‘I can hardly believe I’m really here! I thought I was gonna die over the long weekend!’ My buddy replied, ‘You can't die! No dying is allowed in this company!’ I wondered if he knew what he was saying, as for us who are in Christ, as I often witness during my church tours at the Greek Festival, ‘For Christians death doesn’t exist anymore. Christ defeated it and its power over us has been removed. Nobody has to die anymore, unless they really want to. For those who believe in Christ, there is no death, only sleep for their bodies, and wakeful rest for their souls in Paradise, until the Day of Judgment.’

Right after this, I happened to look at Fr Milovan's blog Again and Again, and found this…

Sentenced to Immortality
by Saint Justin of Chelije

Man sentenced God to death; by His Resurrection, He sentenced man to immortality. In return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a blessing; for death, immortality. Man never showed so much hate for God as when he crucified Him; and God never showed more love for man than when He arose. Man even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by His Resurrection made man immortal. The crucified God is Risen and has killed death. Death is no more. Immortality has surrounded man and all the worlds.

By the Resurrection of the God-Man, human nature has been led irreversibly onto the path of immortality, and has become dreadful to death itself. For before the Resurrection of Christ, death was dreadful to man, but after the Resurrection of Christ man has become more dreadful to death. When man lives by faith in the Risen God-Man, he lives above death, out of its reach; it is a footstool for his feet: “O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?” (I Corinthians 15:55) When a man belonging to Christ dies, he simply sets aside his body like clothing, in which he will again be vested on the day of Dread Judgement.

Before the Resurrection of the God-Man, death was the second nature of man: life first, death second. But by His Resurrection, the Lord has changed everything: immortality has become the second nature of man, it has become natural for man; and death – unnatural. As before the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be mortal, so after the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be immortal.

By sin, man became mortal and transient; by the Resurrection of the God-Man, he became immortal and perpetual. In this is the power, the might, the all-mightiness of the Resurrection of Christ. Without it, there would have been no Christianity. Of all miracles, this is the greatest miracle. All other miracles have it as their source and lead to it. From it grow faith, love, hope, prayer, and love for God. Behold: the fugitive disciples, having run away from Jesus when He died, return to Him because He is risen. Behold: the Centurion confessed Christ as the Son of God when he saw the Resurrection from the grave. Behold: all the first Christians became Christian because the Lord Jesus is risen, because death was vanquished. This is what no other faith has; this is what lifts the Lord Christ above all other gods and men; this is what, in the most undoubted manner, shows and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is the One True God and Lord in all the worlds.

Because of the Resurrection of Christ, because of His victory over death, men have become, continue to become, and will continue becoming Christians. The entire history of Christianity is nothing other than the history of a unique miracle, namely, the Resurrection of Christ, which is unbrokenly threaded through the hearts of Christians form one day to the next, from year to year, across the centuries, until the Dread Judgment.

Man is born, in fact, not when his mother brings him into the world, but when he comes to believe in the Risen Christ, for then he is born to life eternal, whereas a mother bears children for death, for the grave. The Resurrection of Christ is the mother of us all, all Christians, the mother of immortals. By faith in the Resurrection, man is born anew, born for eternity. “That is impossible!” says the skeptic. But you listen to what the Risen God-Man says: “All things are possible to him that believeth!” (St. Mark 9:23) The believer is he who lives, with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his being, according to the Gospel of the Risen Lord Jesus.

Faith is our victory, by which we conquer death, faith in the Risen Lord Jesus. Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. The Lord “has removed the string of death.” Death is a serpent; sin is its fangs. By sin, death puts its poison into the soul and into the body of man. The more sins a man has, the more bites, through which death puts its poison in him.

When a wasp stings a man, he uses all his strength to remove the sting. But when sin wounds him, this sting of death, what should be done? One must call upon the Risen Lord Jesus in faith and prayer, that He may remove the sting of death from the soul. He, in His great loving-kindness, will do this, for He is overflowing with mercy and love. When many wasps attack a man’s body and wound it with many stings, that man is poisoned and dies. The same happens with a man’s soul, when many sins wound it with their stings: it is poisoned and dies a death with no resurrection.

Conquering sin in himself through Christ, man overcomes death. If you have lived the day without vanquishing a single sin of yours, know that you have become deadened. Vanquish one, two, or three of your sins, and behold: you have become younger than the youth which does not age, young in immortality and eternity. Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.

If a man fights with sins and passions, this demonstrates that he indeed believes in the Risen Lord; if the fights with them, he fights for life eternal. If he does not fight, his faith is in vain. If man’s faith is not a fight for immortality and eternity, then tell me, what is it? If faith in Christ does not bring us to resurrection and life eternal, than what use is it to us? If Christ is not risen, that meant that neither sin nor death has been vanquished, than why believe in Christ? For the one who by faith in the Risen Lord fights with each of his sins there will be affirmed in him gradually the feeling that Christ is indeed risen, has indeed vanquished the sting of sin, has indeed vanquished death on all the fronts of combat. Sin gradually diminishes the soul in man, driving it into death, transforming it from immortality to mortality, from incorruption to corruption. The more the sins, the more the mortal man. If man does not feel immortality in himself, know that he is in sins, in bad thoughts, in languid feelings. Christianity is an appeal: Fight with death until the last breath, fight until a final victory has been reached. Every sin is a desertion; every passion is a retreat; every vice is a defeat.

One need not be surprised that Christians also die bodily. This is because the death of the body is a sowing. The mortal body is sown, says the Apostle Paul, and it grows, and is raised in an immortal body. (I Corinthians 15:42-44) The body dissolves, like a sown seed, that the Holy Spirit may quicken and perfect it. If the Lord Christ had not been risen in body, what use would it have for Him? He would not have saved the entire man. If His body did not rise, then why was He incarnate why did He take on Himself flesh, if He gave it nothing of His Divinity?

If Christ is not risen, then why believe in Him? To be honest, I would never have believed in Him had He not risen and had not therefore by vanquished death. Our greatest enemy was killed and we were given immortality. Without this, our world is a noisy display of revolting stupidity and despair, for neither in Heaven nor under Heaven is there a greater stupidity than this world without the Resurrection; and there is not a greater despair than this life without immortality. There is no being in a single world more miserable than man who does not believe in the resurrection of the dead. It would have been better for such a man never to have been born.

In our human world, death is the greatest torment and inhumane horror. Freedom from this torment and horror is salvation. Such a salvation was given the race of man by the Vanquisher of death – the Risen God-Man. He related to us all the mystery of salvation by His Resurrection. To be saved means to assure our body and soul of immortality and life eternal. How do we attain this? By no other way than by a Theanthropic life, a new life, a life in the Risen Lord, in and by the Lord’s Resurrection.

For us Christians, our life on earth is a school in which we learn how to assure ourselves of resurrection and life eternal. For what use is this life if we cannot acquire by it life eternal? But, in order to be resurrected with the Lord Christ, man must first suffer with Him, and live His life as his own. If he does this, then on Pascha he can say with Saint Gregory the Theologian: “Yesterday I was crucified with Him, today I live with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him, today I rise with Him.” (Troparion 2, Ode 3, Matins, Pascha)

Christ’s Four Gospels are summed up in only four words. They are: “Христос воскресе! Ваистину воскресе!” (Christ is Risen! Indeed He is risen!”) In each of these words is a Gospel, and in the Four Gospels is all the meaning of all God’s worlds, visible and invisible. When all knowledge and all the thoughts of men are concentrated in the cry of the Paschal salutation, “Christ is Risen!”, then immortal joy embraces all beings and in joy responds: “Indeed He is risen!”

Any place

The following excerpted from the article A Holocaust to His Love by John Brady, at the site In Communion.

Avrilía Papayanni was born in 1897 to a wealthy Greek family in Constantinople [Istanbul], which remained her home until 1923, when the family was deported to Thessalonika as part of the infamous exchange of populations. Though the path to worldly distinction seemed open to this intelligent, unconventional and privileged young woman, she chose another way: in 1932, responding to a command (as she later described it) of Christ Himself, she moved to Athens to live alone and work in nursing homes.

She then traveled to England (arriving with one pound to her name) and studied physiotherapy in London. In 1947 she opened her own physiotherapy practice in Athens. Already her nearly-unique path of combined service and hesychía [inner prayer] was beginning to emerge: though she had many wealthy clients, she donated her services to the poor, said the Jesus Prayer constantly during her treatment sessions, and healed many by her prayers, often using her medical procedures as cover for her wonderworking intercession.

In 1954 her beloved mother died. The moment was a pivot in her life: she wrote that her mother’s death ‘severed the last tie that had kept me bound to normal, material life on this Earth. Suddenly I was dead… I was dead to the world.’ Within a year she had closed her therapy practice, given all her money and belongings to the poor, resolved to live in absolute poverty, and (now aged almost sixty) headed for India with no plan, but a strong sense that Christ had called her there.

Avrilía arrived in India with one dress and a Bible (her only reading at that time) and stayed for five years, at first giving free physiotherapy to lepers and the poor at several clinics and ashrams. She worked and mingled freely with Hindu gurus and Protestant missionaries, making no distinctions in her loving openness to all.

Toward the end of her time in India, the same Voice that had called her to give her life to the poor led her to spend eleven months in eremitic solitude in the Himalayas. During this time she received the call to monastic life. In 1959 she entered the Monastery of St. Lazarus in Bethany, where she was tonsured a nun after a three-year novitiate, receiving the name Gavrilía [Gabriela].

The next twenty years were a heady mix of monastic quietude alternating with speaking tours, three years of missionary service in East Africa, and another three years in India working with Fr Lazarus Moore’s Orthodox community. Archimandrite Sophrony asked her to become abbess of his women’s monastery in England, but she declined—one of the few times that she refused any of the calls to service that repeatedly drew her away from her increasingly cherished silence and solitude.

In 1979 she was given free use of an apartment in Athens that over the next ten years became known to her disciples as the House of Angels. Here she would spend half of each day in prayer, receiving no one, the other half in counseling and healing a stream of visitors. In her last few years she moved to a hermitage in Aegina, then to Leros, where she received the Great Schema in 1991 and reposed in peace the following year.

The sweetness and openness of Mother Gavrilía’s character was fed by a quiet but constant áskesis and awareness of the rigor of Christ’s commandments. Even as she extended herself without reserve to serve others, she felt the relative smallness of her service.

While living at the New Jerusalem Monastery in Greece (1967, aged 69) she offered free physiotherapy to residents of the Russian Old People’s home. She wrote ‘You can imagine my joy at being here and treating these aged people… I joke and laugh and see their mournful faces change. What a pity all is so temporary… Unless Joy comes from within — that is from its Source — it does not last. As soon as I leave, it is as if I had never shared His Joy with them. Here I understand the words of Christ: My joy I give unto you: not as the world giveth…’

Mother Gavrilía’s life obliterated the inane distinctions that we so often make between prayer and service, contemplation and action. She had no theories about the Church, society, the Christian life, or anything else. Her only ‘program’ was to love with the love that proceeds from complete abandonment to Christ, and to act as that love dictated. At one time this might express itself in social action, at another time in secluded hesychía. The difference was immaterial because the Source was the same.

One of the most valuable portions of Ascetic of Love [a biography of Mother Gavrilía] is a luminous collection of her sayings. I can find no better way to close than to quote the first and last of these…

‘Any place may become a place of Resurrection, if the Humility of Christ becomes the way of our life.’

What, then, has death become?

Holy and Great Saturday

April 23, 2011
by Alana Roberts

Sir, we have heard of your death.
To die thus is plainly brutal.
But when we came to your tomb
the sweet smell astonished us.

You spoke once of white, painted tombs
that reek of corruption within.
Your tomb is shameful outside,
the grave of a malefactor,
but inside the breath is forever ravishing,
more than lavender and cloves.
What, then, has death become?

Day without night

I saw that there was no temple in the City since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the Temple, and the City did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it. The pagan nations will live by its light and the kings of the earth will bring it their treasures. The gates of it will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there…
Revelation 21:22-25 Jerusalem Bible

The whole of the message of Christ is contained and taught in two yearly feasts: Christmas, the nativity of Christ, at the time of the winter solstice, and Easter, Pascha, the resurrection of Christ, at the time of the spring equinox. This isn’t the Church taking over two pagan religious festivals and converting them into Christian ones. This is Nature itself pointing to the truths of faith and existence given a place within the New Creation, demonstrating that there is only Christ, who is in all, and in whom all ‘live and move and have their being’ (cf. Acts 17:28).

The world wants to localize these holidays, wants to contain them within calendar dates, wants to milk us for money as ants stroke and milk their aphids for nectar, giving us short respites between ‘holidays’, between milkings, so we can sufficiently recover. It doesn’t matter to the world whether the holidays are real or not. We tend to blame commercialism for spoiling the holidays, especially Christmas but to a lesser extent Easter, but it’s not their fault. ‘It’s not against human enemies that we struggle, but against fallen spiritual powers’ (cf. Ephesians 6:12).

So, they make Christmas end with a splash of presents and crumpled, glittering wrapping paper on the afternoon of December 25th, and they’d just as soon like to see Easter disappear under mountains of discarded candy boxes and deflowered Easter lilies: all very valuable and costly in the days leading up to the holiday, and suddenly transformed by studied consumption into garbage before sundown of the Lord’s Passover. Just as there is no mention of the birth of the God-Man during official Christmas, there is no mention of His resurrection during official Easter.

For the disciples of Jesus Christ whom He has ‘set free like birds from the fowler’s net’ (cf. Psalm 124), the great and holy Pascha does not disappear after the day of Resurrection, nor does the God-Man’s taking birth from the Theotokos retreat into mere myth and folklore after the day of Incarnation: These holidays are not days that inhabit one number on the world calendar. They are not days at all, as we experience them, but entrances into the Divine Nature, into the life eternal, the life of the Holy Triad, which begins in time but proves to contain even time itself.

In Christ’s birth, God becomes Man, not once, but forever, taking human nature up into the Divine Nature, divinizing the whole Tree that Man is, Himself one of us, by hanging on that Tree as its first fruit.

In Christ’s resurrection, Man becomes God, not once, but forever, reopening to us the gates of Paradise, a Serpent raised on a stake, inviting us to partake of the Fruit of the tree of life, renewing all creation.

In Christ’s birth, the two greatest commandments, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27) become One commandment: to love your neighbor is to love God, thus brotherly love is theological.

In Christ’s resurrection, His entire life as Man becomes the pattern of our life, and only by following Him, by doing what we see Him doing, ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill’ (Matthew 5:17), can we fulfill the One commandment, becoming by grace what He is by nature.

Tradition mandates twelve days to celebrate the birth of Christ, and after the day of His resurrection an entire week is gathered up into a single liturgical day, and a total of forty calendar days will hear the greeting ‘Christ is risen! He is truly risen!’ But after celebration, life must go on. We still must live our day to day lives. Tomorrow, I must return to the office and deal with what I find there, pretending to be ‘only human’ when I know by the testimony of His rising from the dead, that Christ is with me, even as He stands in the Presence of His Father, for He says ‘where I am, there will My servant be also’
(John 12:26).

In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet He did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself to assume the conditions of a slave, and became as all men are; and being as all men are, He was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised Him high and gave Him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-11 Jerusalem Bible

This, beloved brethren, is the Day of Resurrection,

the Day without night,

the Life without death,

and the Love without end.

I was in that room

A lot of things have gone through my head, both before and after I met Jesus son of Joseph. Sitting in the synagogue and hearing the Torah read, commented upon, for years, and then comparing what was said with what they did, those betters of mine, made me sense a cleavage in my mind, a breach impossible to mend, a wound that could not be stitched together and healed.

With the others, those of us who now understand what no rabbi or teacher of the Torah could ever know, I was attracted to this man whose words seemed to have an authority, a power and grasp of reality, that we had never encountered before. Not only that, but as we came to walk with him more often, we noticed it wasn’t just his words. What he did—sometimes incredible things—shook the very foundations we thought our faith was built on.

We were an odd bunch, those we began to call ‘the brothers’ as if we had the same mother. Before we met Jesus, our hearts hungered for something but we didn’t know what. Other tradesmen thought about their work all day, but we, even before we knew him and one another, were always preoccupied with thinking through questions that seemed to have no answers.

Some of us found ourselves thinking so much, we were bound to become insane, so we thought. All of us felt so close to the solution, yet infinitely unable to grasp it. When he appeared, as he was first pointed out by the baptizer John, a few of that righteous man’s followers began to follow him around, and then very soon they were telling us, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about.’

‘A likely story,’ I thought to myself and laughed out loud. I always laugh when I don’t understand, and why not? It’s better than weeping. It seemed to me then, after all my thinking, I had never gotten any closer to the answer to my question. In fact, I hardly even knew what my question was, but my mind never ceased its revolutions, sifting, straining, funneling, and soaking up what I could.

But I started following him, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth, with the others. He told us things we’d never heard before, opened our minds to fill them with what we never knew existed. In my bright moments, I believed him wholeheartedly, and with the others followed this peculiar rabbi, and went along with whatever he told us. His ideas at least made sense. I felt I was finally making progress.

In my dark moments, ah, well, what can I say? His teachings, even his doings, incredible and miraculous as they were, seemed somehow just talking and tricks. Maybe he was just a charlatan after all, a magician and smooth talker, all in one. As dark as I sometimes felt in those moments of doubt, though, even my doubt turned upon itself, and taunted me like the demon who says, ‘I never tell the truth.’

Towards the end, we all felt we were being dragged along behind him on a journey we’d hoped we’d never have to make, one which we couldn’t believe was happening. After all we had experienced with him, our hopes were held captive in the thought that everything would turn out victorious in the end. Instead, after ignoring his many warnings, we found ourselves driven with him at our head towards, not the kingdom of our people restored, but to the enactment of a hideous crime.

Impossible when it happened, and so quickly that we barely understood what was going on, he was arrested after our mystical passover together as we rested afterwards in an olive grove.

I was already descending from bright to dark in my mind and heart, one part of me believing, ‘He won’t let this happen,’ and the other part despairing, ‘It’s all over. It was never real. What a fool I’ve been.’ Neither my belief nor my doubt was right, as it turned out.

What happened that night launched all of us into isolation, fear and self-pity, even though it was Jesus that was captured, beaten, mocked, stripped, and nailed to a stake. We didn’t really give him a thought at all, though we wouldn’t admit it to ourselves. All we thought about was how our hopes and dreams had been dashed to pieces. We didn’t want to even be around each other at first and, except for the young one John, and his mother and a couple of the women, we didn’t want to watch him die either.

After his body was taken down from that scaffold, I didn’t want to live. I felt so ashamed, of myself, of him, of my dashed hopes, of my foolishness in loving him like I did. Yes, loving him, though when he was alive I didn’t let anyone know. I kept up my reputation of doubting and questioning, right up to my last moments with him and the others.

Later, when I heard that Judas had hanged himself, I couldn’t believe that either. Was that really Judas who led the guards to Jesus with a kiss? Or was it someone that just looked like him? It was so dark. In the even greater darkness that was my mind I thought, ‘It might as well have been me that led the guards to him. Did I ever really believe what he said or did?’

Still oppressed in a dark moment that I thought would never end, I hid myself from the brothers for days. Finally—I don’t know what possessed me—I got up the courage to look for them, going back to that room where we had all had our last supper with him. I almost couldn’t say his name. They told me some fool story about him being alive. I was overcome with doubt. I said words I now wish I’d never spoken.

I opposed Cephas and the others to their faces, my doubt flashing like sharp shards of broken glass to cut their hopes to slivers, as mine had been shredded. ‘You say he’s alive? How’s that? Can I see him too and poke my finger through the holes in his hands and feet and jab my hand into that spear cut slash?’ Little did I know that my scathing words, meant to hurt, would in the end heal.

They let me go, saying nothing, nor defending themselves. I hated them for that. I’d wanted them to oppose me, to counter my barbed accusations so I could feel justified in making them. ‘Hah! So they have faith, and I don’t!’ roared inside my head where no one but I could hear. Why did things always have to end this way? Why can’t anything good ever last? What is the point of it all?

Days passed. I hated the brothers because they seemed to have something that I would not permit myself to have. I hated myself more, I hated how I was, I hated my doubt, I hated my hateful words and the dark thoughts that produced them. That’s what drove me back to where they were hiding out. Hiding, yes, but at least, together. I was envious too of their company, where their first fears seemed to have yielded to a gentle, abiding love.

‘Why are they like that?’ I asked myself. ‘How can they still love one another and seem so peaceful and happy, when everything we lived and hoped for is finished, when it was crucified between thieves? Are they pretending? He can’t really be alive. We all saw his body, limp and dead, being moved somewhere by that rich man, what’s his name.’ Such were my thoughts as I approached the door and knocked.

Cephas let me in. He could tell, he said, that it was me by my knock. ‘What’s so special about it?’ I thought but didn’t ask. I barely had time to walk into the room as I heard the door slam behind me and the thud of the bolt falling. Then I heard my name pronounced from somewhere behind my back. I turned around quickly, almost running into Cephas who was right behind me.

We all turned to face the one who spoke my name. It was Jesus.

‘No! This can’t be happening!’ the words died on my lips as I felt every muscle in my body liquefy. I fell to my knees as though the weight of the world were crushing me down to the floor. Jesus looked at me and was softly asking me something, but my eyes and ears were both overwhelmed by what is beyond sight and hearing. I was blind and deaf for a moment.

‘My Lord and my God! My Lord and my God! My Lord and my God!’

I couldn’t stop babbling these words that didn’t even come close to what my spirit groaned inwardly. He came close to me, laying one arm across my shoulders and lifting me gently with the other. At His touch I felt weightless. I rose effortlessly and my mind was suddenly clear. I could see with my eyes, hear with my ears as He said to me, ‘You believe because you can see Me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’

Now, no matter what thoughts assail me inside or out, no matter what wars of words between men sunder the world’s peace for vainglory, I am no longer safe in what I know or merely believe or doubt, for beyond all this is the peace that only He can give, because I was in that room.

Let God arise

PSALM 68

National song of triumph

For the choirmaster, of David, psalm, song.

Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,

let those who hate Him flee before Him!

As smoke disperses, they disperse;

as wax melts when near the fire,

so the wicked perish when God approaches.

But at God's approach the virtuous rejoice,

exulting and singing for joy.

Sing to Yahweh, play music to His name,

build a road for the Rider of the clouds,

rejoice in Yahweh, exult at His coming!

Father of orphans, defender of widows,

such is God in His holy dwelling;

God gives the lonely a permanent home,

makes prisoners happy by setting them free,

but rebels must live in an arid land.

God, when You set out at the head of Your people,

and marched across the desert, the earth rocked, selah,

the heavens deluged at God's coming,

at the coming of God, the God of Israel.

God, You rained a downpour of blessings,

when Your heritage was faint You gave it strength;

Your family found a home, where You

in Your goodness, God, provided for the needy.

The Lord gives His couriers the news,

‘Shaddai has scattered a huge army.’

Kings are in flight, armies in flight,

the women at home take their pick of the loot.

Meanwhile you others were lolling in the sheepfolds.

There were dove wings covered with silver,

on their pinions the sheen of green gold;

jewels were there like snow on Dark Mountain.

That peak of Bashan, a mountain of God?

Rather, a mountain of pride, that peak of Bashan!

Peaks of pride, have you the right to look down on

a mountain where God has chosen to live,

where Yahweh is going to live for ever?

With thousands of myriads of divine chariots

the Lord has left Sinai for His sanctuary.

God, You have ascended to the height,

and captured prisoners,

You have taken men as tribute,

yes, taken rebels to Your dwelling, Yahweh!

Blessed be the Lord, day after day,

the God who saves us and bears our burdens!

This God of ours is a God who saves,

to the Lord Yahweh belong the ways of escape from death;

but God will smash the heads of His enemies,

the hairy skull of the man who parades his guilt.

The Lord has promised,

‘I will bring them back from Bashan,

I will bring them back from the bottom of the sea,

for your feet to wade in blood,

for the tongues of your dogs

to lap up their share of the enemy.’

God, Your procession can be seen,

my God's, my King's procession to the sanctuary,

with cantors marching in front, musicians behind,

and between them, maidens playing tambourines.

Bless God in your choirs,

bless the Lord, you who spring from Israel!

Benjamin, the youngest, is there in the lead,

the princes of Judah in brocaded robes,

the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali.

Take command, God, as befits Your power,

that power, God, You have wielded on our behalf

from Your Temple high above Jerusalem!

Kings will come to You, bringing presents.

Rebuke the beast of the reeds,

that herd of bulls, those calves, that people,

until, humbled, they bring gold and silver.

Scatter those warmongering pagans!

Ambassadors will come from Egypt,

Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God.

Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth,

play for the Rider of the heavens,

the ancient heavens, selah.

Listen to Him shouting, to His thundering,

and acknowledge the power of God!

Over Israel His splendor,

in the clouds His power,

God in His sanctuary is greatly to be feared,

He, the God of Israel,

gives power and strength to His people.

Blessed be God.

King of Glory

Anger can be replaced with love, and ‘warning against’ can be replaced with ‘inviting to,’ but what is most important, is to follow the Lord's instructions every day, as you follow Him in the world.

As for me, I am a servant who has been told, ‘Go to the highways and byways and find wedding guests to fill My banquet hall.’

Loving the stranger may not be as effective in fighting evil in the world in the short term, and you may even have to pay with your life, but in the long term, love wins.

Christ going down to Hades, to She’ol, is no ‘frog in a well’. He went down there and emptied it of its captives, bringing them to Paradise.

The more closely we follow Him, even in His descent into hell, the more miracles and resurrections we will see happening around us, by His power, and the more certain and faithful we will become, as His witnesses.

There is a saying, ‘not the world, my parish, but my parish, the world.’

What you know, what you have learned from your experiences in this world, is part of the armory which the Lord, the King of kings of kings (blessed be He!), has given to you, but the battle is still His.

Let Him direct you in what weapons to use, as you follow Him into battle. You witness by living as though the resurrection were a fact, and the victory already won. Why?

Because He did rise from the dead, and the victory was, and continues to be, won, but only from the throne of His cross, where He is seen to be ‘the King of Glory.’

This is hard for us to assimilate, and to accept, but Jesus said to Peter, ‘Don't you know that My Father could send myriads of angels to defend Me? Put away your sword, for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.’

How will the world know who Christ is?

By seeing His disciples loving, not just each other—that is a given—but also those who are not yet one of them, even… their enemies.

The world and life wear down our sharp and cutting edges, and Christ lets the experiences of our lives polish us to a very bright sheen, but He rounds us, and makes us worthy stones to be built into His spiritual temple, His Body.

That is so we will be found worthy to be one of the building blocks of His heavenly City when it finally descends to earth, and the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of Christ and His saints.

Love to you, and peace, brother and sister in Christ, love and peace, in the midst of this world of war.

Christos anesti. Christ is risen.

Let's live today as if He really did rise, because He is with us right now, in this very room, to accept our faith, and by means of it, to transform us into creatures worthy of eternal life.

Only one Passover

The world is quite happy to oblige us in helping us celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as if we needed any help. In its grosser, more obvious forms, the pre-Easter deluge of candy, cards, flowers artificial and natural, and the rest is in our faces long before the world is really ready for them. It’s as if it wants to fool itself as well as us, into thinking that Easter is a springtime renewal holiday, a sort of ‘out with the old, in with the new’ holiday, at best a kind of spiritual spring cleaning, as if we could ever really clean ourselves.

But that’s what the world likes to think, and it’d be only too happy if the Christians, for whose sake the world goes to all this trouble, would just settle down and get with the program. Unfortunately, there’s a fringe group of these ‘incredible Christians’ that seems to want to push something else at the world. Well, patience and forbearance isn’t the monopoly of these fanatics. The world can be patient too. Along with its helpers, satan, and the flesh, the world never seems to tire of taking over our lives, even the smallest details.

So we find ourselves going to church services to celebrate Easter, after which many communities have fun activities for the children like Easter egg hunts, and of course, there’s plenty of chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chickies to go around. Those Christians who belong to communities that try to take the season more seriously, prepare themselves with fasting, prayer, confession and good works, then trade all this abstinence for an extravaganza on the night of Pascha.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with celebrating Pascha, the Lord’s Passover, with feasting and other delights. In fact, Holy Church has been encouraging us to do this at least ever since John Chrysostom preached his famous sermon that we still read in Greek and English at the end of the Resurrection service…

Do you honor God? Do you love Him?
—here’s the very feast for your pleasure.
Are you His servants, knowing His wishes?
—be glad with your Master, share His rejoicing.
Are you worn down with the labor of fasting?
—now is the time of your payment.
Have you been working since early morning?
—now you will be paid what is fair.
Have you been here since the third hour?
—you can be thankful, you will be pleased.
If you came at the sixth hour,
you may approach without fearing:
you will suffer no loss.
Did you linger till the ninth hour?
—come forward without hesitation.
What though you came at the eleventh hour?
—have no fear; it was not too late.

God is a generous Sovereign,
treating the last to come as He treats the first arrival.
He allows all His workmen to rest—
those who began at the eleventh hour,
those who have worked from the first.
He is kind to the late-comer
and sees to the needs of the early,
gives to the one and gives to the other:
honors the deed and praises the motive.

Join, then, all of you, in our Master’s rejoicing.
You who were the first to come, you who came after,
come and collect now your wages.
Rich men and poor men, sing and dance together.
You that are hard on yourselves, you that are easy,
honor this day.
You that have fasted and you that have not,
make merry today.

The meal is ready: come and enjoy it.
The calf is a fat one: you will not go hungry away.
There’s kindness for all to partake of
and kindness to spare.

Away with pleading of poverty:
the Kingdom belongs to us all.
Away with bewailing of failings:
forgiveness has come from the grave.
Away with your fears of dying:
the death of our Savior has freed us from fear.
Death played the master: He has mastered death.

The world below had scarcely known Him in the flesh
when He rose and left it plunged in bitter mourning.
Isaiah knew it would be so.
‘The world of shadows mourned,’ he cried, ‘when it met You,
mourned at its bringing low, wept at its deluding.’

The shadows seized a body and found it was God;
they reached for earth and what they held was heaven;
they took what they could see: it was what no one sees.
Where is death’s goad? Where is the shadows’ victory?

Christ is risen: the world below is in ruins.
Christ is risen: the spirits of evil are fallen.
Christ is risen: the angels of God are rejoicing.
Christ is risen: the tombs are void of their dead.
Christ has indeed arisen from the dead,
the first of the sleepers.

Yes, there is certainly nothing wrong with celebrating Pascha, the Lord’s Passover, Easter (as it is called in English and other Germanic tongues) with feasting and celebration. This is what the Lord wants us to do, though He celebrated it with His disciples at a campfire on a beach, grilled fish on the menu. The world, when it can’t distract us with cheap tricks, still goes in for the big illusions, still hopes to snare us, to make us forget the Truth—or has it already succeeded? There’s a fine line between happiness and joy, between indulgence and celebration.

Let our feasting, like our ikons, be windows into the life of the age to come, reminding us of our destination, letting us see glimpses of it, like the first rays of a sun still below the eastern horizon. Let our feasting not be commandeered by the world, the flesh and the devil, the three of whom delight in deluding us, in denuding us of our covering, the Lord Jesus, turning our anticipation of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb into just another gorging ourselves on the flesh of lambs. We must not be found without our wedding garment, lest we be cast out into the outer darkness.

Brothers, let’s celebrate the Lord’s Passover with spiritual rejoicing and not be satisfied with mere mortal happiness. Let our hospitality toward one another be real and from the heart, for the One who was dead and is alive forever is really in our midst. If we are Jews, let’s live as though the Passover Night and the Exodus from Egypt really happened, for in truth they did, and they still do. If we are Christians, let’s live as though the Passover Night and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened, for in truth, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, by death trampling down death, and to those in the tombs, bestowing Life.’

There really is, after all, only one Passover.

Not a bone was broken

Like the scourged and beaten body of Christ, nailed hand and foot to the wood of the Cross, punctured by a lance, pierced by a circlet of harsh thorns, left to die for lack of water, stripped of a robe that would not be rent but gambled for by enemies, but of which not a bone was broken, so are we, His suffering body, His church.

Like that body lying in the rich man’s virgin tomb, cold and dark, waiting to be embalmed by precious oils that were never to be, sealed away from the land of the living by a seemingly immovable stone, so are we, His body dead to the world, hidden from its eyes, buried like seed scattered on good soil, dying in order to live.

Like the risen body of Christ, still marked by the sign of the nails in hands and feet, still bearing the gash in which unnumbered souls find new birth and release from the curse, unrecognizable to its enemies except by their astonishment and dread, seen by all eyes from farthest east to farthest west, so are we, when He comes again.

Two nations in your womb

The LORD said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.’
Genesis 25:23

It is a common error to think that Judaism of our contemporaries is the Judaism of the days of Jesus.

The brilliant Israeli scholar, Prof. Israel Jacob Yuval of Hebrew University in his book, Two Nations in Your Womb, proved that Judaism we know of (Rabbinic Judaism) came to existence in the end of the first century after Christ. It came out of ruins of the old Temple-centered Biblical Judaism, practically at the same time as Christianity. It is a full answer to the notion of ‘superseding faith’. Christianity actually superseded Biblical Judaism and became the faith of millions. Still, a small band of men challenged its advent, and offered an alternative, Rabbinic Judaism. In the eyes of its followers, Rabbinic Judaism superseded Biblical Judaism.

Rabbinic Judaism has very little in common with Biblical Judaism. It produced its own holy books, the Mishna and Talmud, as Christianity produced the New Testament. Prof. Yuval wrote: The Biblical Judaism died, and two religions claimed to be the legitimate heir, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

Thus, Judaism we know of is a jealous sister, not a mother faith to Christianity. Its adepts are not the people who remained faithful to the ‘old religion’, as the Biblical Judaism with its sacrifices, Jerusalem Temple, ritual purity, tithes and priests disappeared two thousand years ago.

I have quoted the above, except for the scripture verse at the beginning, from the blog A Living Text, where it also was quoted, I believe, from yet another source (Israel Shamir). That Rabbinical Judaism is different from biblical Judaism, I was aware. What was impressed on my mind in a new way is the relationship between modern Judaism in nearly all its forms, and contemporary Christianity. Somewhere in my mind was unquestioningly entrenched the notion that Judaism was the elder brother and Christianity the younger. The truth is actually quite different. The two faiths are more like brothers, twins of the same mother (the biblical faith, nameless unless called Judaism because only Jews or Hebrews held to it).

Understand that, and suddenly the long, painful history of the relationship between the two faith communities reveals itself to be a sibling rivalry run wild. Each thinks of itself as Jacob, and the other as Esau, though they may not say it to themselves aloud. For me, this explains so much.

Now, being a lover of Israel, of the Hebrew scriptures, and respecting and even drawing light from the wisdom of their fathers after the Temple's destruction, one has to be respectful but still cautious, not pretending to untruths. We are dealing with those whom holy apostle Paul says, ‘One section of Israel has become blind, but this will last only until the whole pagan world has entered, and then after this the rest of Israel will be saved as well’ (Romans 11:25-26). The holy apostle writes conclusively for us as much as the Lord wants us to know about His people Israel, and the mystery of their testimony to the world, in chapters 9 through 11 of his letter to the Church at Rome. Thank God, we know at least this much. If only we had read and understood what is written there, over the centuries could the history shared between us have been any different?

Something that Blaise Pascal wrote, which can be found in his Pensées, as fragment 592, has always intrigued me.

If the Jews had all been converted by Christ we should only have suspect witnesses left. And if they had been wiped out we should have had none at all.

Pascal's book is also a treasure trove of Christian understanding of the Jews, and not very well known. That is one of the reasons I love Pascal so much: he was not afraid to look the Truth in the face, even when it might seem to go against current thinking inside the Church, or out of it.

If all Israel had been converted, why would they have been suspect witnesses? Could it be because they only supported Christ because He is their Messiah? That would mean they were confirmed in the unique truth of their faith, that their eternal King had come among them, and by accepting Him, they were now, indeed, lords of the earth. Where would that leave the nations? At worst, as enemies to be vanquished and exterminated, at best, as mere servants and slaves of the Chosen People.

But by rejecting Christ for who He was, their witness is not suspect. They rejected their own flesh and blood, making themselves martyrs for twenty centuries of the unique truth of their faith, which the eternal King had come to fulfill, but not only for them, but for the whole world. Otherwise the prophecies of the conversion of the nations would never have come to pass. Conversion, not conquest. Conversion, not subjugation. Conversion, not annihilation. ‘For God so loved the world…’

What Pascal writes is drawn from his intimate knowledge of holy and divine scripture, secreted to him by the Holy Spirit, taught him by the Master he followed so closely. Yes, confirming—though it needs no confirmation if you just see what is before you—what the holy apostle himself writes, ‘Since their rejection meant the reconciliation of the world, do you know what their admission will mean? Nothing less than a resurrection from the dead!’ (Romans 11:15)

Pray, brethren, for our brothers, the people of Israel.
Pray, people of Israel, for your brethren, ‘those who fear the Lord.’

Canonized by Jesus

Tonight, my attention is turned once again to the good thief, the man who was crucified next to Jesus, and who said, ‘Lord, remember me when you come into Your Kingdom,’ and to whom Christ replied, ‘I tell you truly, this day you will be with Me in paradise.’

Looking this man up in Wikipedia (he has been given a personal name in the Orthodox Church—Dysmas), I found this interesting passage (the first line, especially, grabbed me for some reason):

Though never canonized by the church, Dismas carries the distinction of being the only human to be canonized by Jesus himself, if by ‘canonized’ one means the formal recognition of a person's place in heaven. According to tradition, the Good Thief was crucified at Jesus’ right hand, and the other thief was crucified at his left. For this reason, depictions of the crucifixion often show Jesus’ head inclined to his right, showing his acceptance of the Good Thief.

In the Russian Orthodox Church, both crucifixes and crosses are usually made with three bars: the top one, representing the titulus (the inscription that Pontius Pilate wrote and was nailed above Jesus’ head; the longer crossbar on which Jesus’ hands were nailed; and a slanted bar at the bottom representing the foot rest to which Jesus’ feet were nailed. The foot rest is slanted, pointing up towards the Good Thief, and pointing down towards the other.

The biblical account of the repentant thief is foundational to the teaching of the church regarding baptism of desire, whereby one who desires baptism, but is prevented by circumstances beyond his control from actually being baptized, may be saved by the grace and mercy of God.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Matthew 16:24-26 NIV

Living witnesses

We are living witnesses of Jesus' divinity:
Jesus, who was hanged on the cross.

We are the loud and piercing heralds of this sign that was given.
We confess the power of the Cross that was raised on Golgotha after so many centuries have passed.

From where did this transformation originate?
How did a certain man who was hanged and crucified on a cross in Judaea as a criminal among two thieves conquer the entire world after his death?
How was mankind persuaded to acknowledge as God a man who died on the Cross?

How did mankind follow Him with self-denial, lifting as He did the Cross on its shoulders, ready to ascend eagerly to Golgotha with Him, ready to shed its last drop of blood on His behalf?

How did kings accept Him as the King of kings and the Lord of lords?
How did the nations and peoples decline to worship their own gods in order to offer worship to the crucified Jesus?
Why did they abandon their personal idols in order to honor that which was foreign, and the known to honor the unknown?
How did the cross of dishonor become a most Venerable Cross adorning the crowns of kings and emperors?
What power accomplished all these things?

The power of the Crucified One.
The power of the Son of God, Who descended from heaven.
His divine, almighty power made all these things happen.
His power is the power that conquered the world.

The disciples of the crucified Jesus did not have an army to lead.
They had no weapons.
They possessed neither a bag nor a staff.
Rather, as sheep among wolves, they preached the crucified Jesus, who was a scandal for the Jews and foolishness for the Greeks.
They did not preach with wise rhetoric, but rather with simple, powerful words.

Where, though, did this power come from?

Truly, this was an ineffable power, because with simple commands the fisherman, the tax-collector, and the tent-maker resurrected the dead, cast out demons, repelled death, muzzled philosophers' mouths, sealed orators' lips, defeated kings and rulers, and ruled over Greeks, barbarians, and all peoples.
This was because they preached the Gospel with authority all over the world.

How did the fishermen become Apostles and heralds of the revealed truths?
How did they catch the nations and peoples as fish in a net?

Peter had grown old casting nets on the shores of Tiberias.
How did he become a most-wise and most-eloquent speaker in one day, thus persuading thousands of Jews who had aged in the worship of the Old Law that the external grandeur of their ancient and revered worship was no longer pleasing to God, and that it would be abolished forever?

That all of its mystical services were nothing other than a shadow of the things to come, which were now being revealed?
That the traditions to which they were adhering were commandments of men that opposed God's law?
That He Whom they had condemned, the disregarded man Who breathed His last upon the Cross, is the Great Redeemer Himself, the awaited Messiah Who was pre-announced to them by the prophets?
That they are not the only object of divine providence's wonderful graces, but that all the nations of the earth are invited to share in the delight with them?

How did the fisherman successfully persuade the polytheistic Gentiles to purify themselves, render their thoughts spiritual, detach them from the dead matter they were accustomed to, and return them to the living God?
How did they separate them from the deceptive pleasures of the senses, cleanse them from the passions, and render them wiser than the wise?
How, especially, did they persuade them to worship a man who died on the Cross and transform before their eyes the foolishness of the Cross into heavenly wisdom?
How did the heralds of the Crucified One convince their new followers to denounce their secular interests and live subject to the disdain, humiliation, and derision, to disregard all types of pain and punishment, to resist all temptations, and to endure unto death in a teaching whose rewards are guarded for the next life?

Truly, it is a great mystery.

The foolish things of the world, the weak, the things that are despised, and the things that are not, put to shame the wise, they weaken the powerful, and they abolish the things that are!
He who was crucified on the Cross gave such power to His disciples!
God was hidden in the person of Jesus!
The Son and Word of God, Who contains everything, is contained in a body!
Man becomes a mystic of God's desires!
God's Spirit descends upon men!
Man foresees the future!
The infinite God communicates with finite man, the immaterial with matter, the Creator with creation, the Potter with clay!
God reveals Himself to people, God's Spirit refashions and renews man who has been corrupted by sin.
Man becomes a god; he becomes a communicant of the grace of the Holy Spirit!

In essence, these are truly unfathomable mysteries; their outcome, however, is clear.
We are incapable of understanding how God became man, but we realize that only the God-man was able to accomplish that which is a unique property of God.
We are incapable of understanding how man becomes god, but we realize that without God man could accomplish nothing, especially that which the men of God, that is, the Prophets, the Apostles, and all the Saints, accomplished.
The miracles are truly an enigma, but their power and outcome are obvious.

The Christian Faith is a mystery, but its truth is apparent from its power and effects; because the Christian Faith provides abundant evidence externally and bestows assurance internally.

All the above attest to the divine character of our Savior Jesus Christ, Who provided the great sign sought by the Jews. This sign proclaims most loudly the heavenly descent of the Son of God, Who came to save man in accordance with the will of His eternal Father.

— Nektarios of Pentapolis, Christology,
Part II, Chapter 8, Christ's Divine Nature attested to by the moral rebirth that took place in the world

7th Gospel of Holy Thursday

In the Orthodox Church, the service which in Western Christendom is the service of Good Friday, culminating in some churches with the veneration of the Cross, is observed on the evening of Holy Thursday. I just returned home from that service, and the seventh gospel reading really stayed with me, so I wanted to share it, along with this ikon. Blessed and holy and bright Pascha from Romanós to all the brethren…

Gospel Reading 7

The Reading is from Matthew 27:33-54

At that time, when the soldiers came to a place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull), they offered him wine to drink, mingled with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots; then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, "This is Jesus the King of the Jews." Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "This man is calling Elijah." And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him." And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

A country life

The only part of my adult life in which I truly lived 'in the country' was the few months that I lived on a small but efficient dairy farm near the village of Millet, Alberta, which is near Wetaskiwin, which is near Edmonton. I was ‘the hired man.’

I learned to drive a stick shift, learned how to drive and operate an old fashioned farm tractor with front-loader as well as the big enclosed-cab John Deere that also had a front-loader, learned everything I ever wanted to know about manure and where it comes from.

I learned how to milk a cow, by hand as well as by machine, how to check for mastitis, I learned how happy a cow can be to see fresh straw on the barn floor, so happy that it kicks up its heels, learned also how heavy a cow can tread when it steps on your toes while crushing you between itself and the wall of the milk house.

I learned how practical, unfancy and friendly farm people can be, how much faith they could have even in a city boy with scraggly beard and pony tail, to trust him to do his best, how they just assumed I was a Christian and let me know where the church was by a visit from the pastor.

Winter was cruel in the season between 1973 and 1974. By October 10, there was already a foot of snow on the ground, the silage pit under its plastic tarp was a steaming mass of fall fragrance, calves were still being dropped by their once pregnant mothers in distant snowy fields, and I had to rush to their rescue before coyotes found their supper.

The bright noontime sun cast very long shadows against the wall of my neat whitewashed cottage with its propane tank beside it as the sun made its short journey from south southeast to south southwest. Fifty milch cows had to be milked twice, both times in darkness.

If only I had stayed there, Farmer Cameron's herd would have gradually built mine, as I was due two calves per season as part of my monthly wage, which was $300 plus the cottage. Everyone was happy then, except me. I missed my friends in town, missed having free time of my own in which I could do something besides sleep.

I was owned by the herd I served, just as Farmer Cameron was, just as Aunt Irene and Uncle Hank were. I used to spend the summers as a boy on their farm outside of Genoa City, Wisconsin, at Slades Corners, where I played farm boy while they worked. No integrated milking systems back then.

Milking machine emptied into portable tanks that still had to be brought over to the vat to be emptied. I never quite got over the farm smells. I am a 'nose person.' That's my strongest sense. But still remember how safe and free I felt sleeping in the attic bedroom of their old farmhouse. Muddy boots left in the back porch.

Years later, my life in the city, the inner city, is as close to country life as I can make it. I have preserved the essential externals. Walk if I can, drive if I must. City streets mostly empty most of the time where I live. No struggling with highway entrances and exits, no traffic jams. No television, not even a radio, just peaceful, sunlit rooms, furniture that soothes to sit on or look at. Windows uncovered and open to the cool air most of the time.

Yes, we take our shoes off and leave them in neat rows in the front hallway, rain or shine.