Breaking Radio Silence 2.0

 

I''m back.
After a long, long stretch of inactivity on this weblog, I've returned to the (digital) airwaves.  A lot has happened since I last posted, most notably, during the first week of January I managed to injure my back. Not a parachute jump injury or a tae kwan do bout gone wrong, I simply forgot that I wasn't nineteen anymore and stacked a cord of wood (thoughtfully provided us by my daughter Phoebe's boyfriend, Odin, as a Christmas present). It turns out that the movements involved in bending over, picking up and stacking a split cord of spruce and hemlock is just what it takes to herniate one's disk (in my case, at L4/L5.)

After seven months of increasingly severe pain, my doctor confirmed the herniated disk with an MRI and sent me to Seattle for an epidural injection of cortizone, which, since July 15th has been slowly getting better (thanks in large part to my physical therapist-thank you so much!)

It turns out that weeks and weeks in constant pain is both exhausting and distracting. However, it has given me a more profound and sympathetic understanding of the lives of those who live daily with chronic physical pain.  (And to appreciate how many people, especially the elderly and the disabled, bear the struggles and suffering that comes with chronic pain with such grace and fortitude.)   As I shuffled through the winter and spring I  was pleasantly surprised to be welcomed with kindness and sympathy over the past seven months into the company of those similarly afflicted, to greater or lesser extent, with a back injury and consequent back and leg pain.

The upside of no longer being in pain (at least for the time being -- epidurals don't come with a guarantee) is that I've got the energy and focus again for reading, reflection, writing, drawing and painting.

So stay tuned.  

 

A Life Together

The Conception of Mary

The Wedding Icon

It's our thirty-third marriage anniversary today.  A life together that began with just the two of us but that has only gotten larger and fuller over the intervening years.  So many days as a couple, as spouses, as husband and wife, filled with countless, ordinary moments and choices and decisions made with passion and joy, hope and uncertainty, (with sadness, conflict and tears along the way, to be sure), that somehow have given us such extraordinary gifts, faith, children, ministry, community, each other.
With Christ at the center, an ever-flowing wellspring of grace that has sustained us along the way.

Mary, More Glorious Beyond Compare Than the Seraphim!

One of the hymns I have come to love over the years is the beautiful paean to Mary, the Mother of God that is sung at the end of the Great Vespers service in the Byzantine liturgy.  It is very brief, but what a wonderful hymn of praise:

" More honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim!  Without defilement you gave birth to God the Word; true Theotokos, we magnify you."

One of the many beautiful treasures that Catholics and Orthodox Christians share is a common love and veneration of Mary, the Mother of God.  In our iconography, divine worship, in our theology and in our life of prayer, we can't seem to find enough superlatives to praise the Mother of Jesus (and our Mother too).

Unfortunately, one of the controversies that sadly continues to divide our two communions is the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception.  Unfortunate, because when Pope Pius IX definitivly declared in 1854 that Mary had been "preserved immune from all stain of original sin", neither Church thought well of each other.  Orthodox Christians, who were not consulted, largely regarded the dogma as yet another instance of papal presumption and aggression, especially after an abortive apostolic letter in 1848 calling on the Orthodox churches to union with Rome.

In the atmosphere of hostility and suspicion that existed between Catholics and Orthodox prior to the Second Vatican Council, this dogma, which was intended to confirm the faith of Christians, tragically deepened the schism.

For me, the language of redemption, applied to Mary, makes the most sense.   That is to say, she was redeemed by grace, prior to her birth (and prior to the birth of her Son, Jesus).  All of the faithful are redeemed, totally and entirely, in the waters of baptism.  This "new birth of innocence" in which every neophyte shares, was preserved in Mary, through her humble cooperation with grace.  Tempted by sin no doubt (as was her Son) but reliant on God and obedient to God's will in all things.

What makes her "more honorable than the Cherubim" was the humble obedience of the one "blessed among all women", who was glorified and made radiant by God's grace.

May we, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, the All-Holy Mother of God, deepen the bonds of love and communion between our beloved Orthodox and Catholic churches!

Why I Always Use Red Bole

It turns out that burnished water gilding, that is applying gold leaf to a bole ground and then polishing it with an agate (or a dog's tooth) burnisher until it shines, is actually easier than you'd think it would be.  The secret is to apply a thin coat of gilder's clay mixed with size to the gesso, sand and polish it, and apply the gold leaf.  Piece of cake --  sort of -- as long as everything goes exactly right.  But if the clay/glue ratio is off, or its too dry or too humid, or there is unusual solar flare activity, forget about it going as planned.

But lately I've been able to manage to get pretty good results gilding and burnishing haloes.  Not bad for 35 years of effort!  Pretty OK.   Not perfect-the gilding is NEVER perfect, there's inevitably a flaw, a fault, a thin spot or a pinhole if you look carefully enough, which why bole is usually red. (The red makes the faults disappear.)

Seems to me an apt, if homely metaphor for grace .  The color is wrong, of course -  it is our sins that are like scarlet, not grace, but isn't it grace that covers over our faults, failings and sins and makes them disappear?