BC : AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

U. A. Fanthorpe

On keeping saints' days... or not

[Trying to keep Valerie's Rules of Good Blogging, one of which is that if you have a substantial comment, don't leave it in the comments, make a new post of it. I originally posted this as a comment on Brandy's blog, which you should all be reading.]



We notice saints' days, but mostly in an informal way -- the same way we talk about loved ones who've passed away on their birthdays or the anniversaries of their deaths. Our church gives everyone a calendar, which I keep hung near my phone, that tracks which Sunday of the year it is and the proper liturgical color for each day, plus the saints that Anglicans recognize, and there's one for maybe a fourth of the days. Some of them I've never heard of but occasionally it'll be one with a really cool story, like Boniface, and then I'll mention it and we'll retell the story of him chopping down Thor's sacred oak. Other times it'll be one of the twelve apostles or one of the martyrs, and I'll mention how they remained faithful till the end, suffering much for the sake of Christ.

There are a very few that we notice a little more formally -- St. George, for example, whose feast day is in April. During that month we read Sandol Stoddard Warburg's adaptation of Edmund Spenser's Saint George and the Dragon. Some day I hope to be able to read the original. Then in October, we read Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse about Alfred the Great (who, inexplicably, isn't on our calendar).

For the most part, you see, it's a way of teaching Church history, which is really the history of our extended family. If you start looking up saints' biographies you're likely to find all sorts of wild stuff, like Saint Nicholas standing on his own two feet on the day he was baptized (I'm assuming as a newborn) for three hours, in honor of the Trinity, and that he early on began fasting twice a week, refusing his mother's milk on Wednesdays and Fridays until after evening prayers. I usually skip those, but occasionally include one or two to let my kids know that some fantastic tales have grown up around these heroes of the faith. I don't want them to be cynical, so I don't usually pooh-pooh stories of healings, and things that really could have been miracles, if you see what I'm getting at, so a huge amount of discretion is required on Mama's part when reading anything about the saints to the kids.

We've done a few things to commemorate St Nicholas's day -- one year we bought hope chests for our two oldest daughters. We plan to do the same for our two younger ones in the next few years. If I ever find anything nice to put in there, I try to save it for St Nicholas day, but I'm not too good at doing that. We're not doing anything at all for it this year, other than reading a bit about him -- about how he slapped Arius at the Council of Nicea and temporarily lost his position over it. LOL.

We don't notice Valentine's day at all, unless Mike happens to bring home candy or flowers, and we may or may not wear green on St Pat's day (I've avoided the orange b/c it seems to politicize the day, which misses the point) -- but I just learned something interesting. Green is itself political. The original color of Ireland before the whole Prot/Cat issue came up, was blue. After reading that, I was looking at the flag of our county -- King George -- it has George I's coat of arms on it, which is quartered with all the realms he ruled over. In the lower left quarter is the arms of Ireland, azure (bright blue) with a gold Celtic harp. That's Irish Blue, and I think we'll wear it next year.
;-)

What the best-dressed teapots are wearing this season

.




My latest knitting project, I made this tea cosy based on a pattern found here: Super Simple Tea Cosy Pattern Generator. You type in your teapot's circumference and the page generates a pattern that makes the cosy the right size.

I used wool left over from two projects -- the brown is from a scarf I crocheted my youngest son a few years ago, and the green is from a shawl I made my sister to help her through her first bout of leukemia. There wasn't enough of either one for anything, but I liked the way they looked together and thought they'd go well with the Brown Betty teapot my oldest daughter gave me for Christmas two years ago.



And it really is simple. I'm still learning to knit, so until now I've only made dish rags and one scarf, which was just a very loooong dish rag. This pattern is two rectangles that you sew together, leaving openings for the spout and handle. The brown yarn is thicker than the green, which is why the brown part is wider.



New-for-me stitches include making the lacing eyelets, using two colors at once, and making I-cord for the drawstring.



Here is Lily, demonstrating how to put on the tea cosy:









... and how to pour tea while hugging big sister:

Advent preparations

We've celebrated Advent with an Advent wreath nearly every Christmas since we married, but last year we began a new tradition: an Advent Tree!

It came about like this: We usually wait till just before Christmas Eve to get the Christmas tree and for some reason the kids always panic -- they always think we're not going to be able to find one this year. It almost happened once, ten or twelve years ago -- there had been a drought out west so there were fewer trees available than usual, and nearly all of them were sold out by the time we went shopping. We ended up with a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Well, five years ago when we first moved here to Virginia, we went to a church that put a Christmas tree up in the Parish house right after Thanksgiving, and had the children make ornaments on the first Sunday of Advent to put on it. Each ornament was decorated with, or made in the shape of, a traditional symbol that represents Christ -- a lamb, a cross, the Chi Rho, Alpha and Omega, and so forth. This style of ornament is called a "Chrismon," which means "Christ Monogram." I thought it was a neat idea and tried to figure out how to do it at home -- I mean, really, where would I put a second tree?

Finally, last year I figured it out -- we didn't need two trees. All we had to do was put up the Christmas tree at the beginning of Advent, call it an Advent tree, and then decorate it with Chrismons. On Christmas Eve we could remove the Chrismons (or not) and add our usual Christmas ornaments. It worked out so well we're going to do it again this year. We made the ornaments yesterday and will decorate them on Friday.

Here are the specifics (sorry I don't have any pictures -- I'll see if I can get some this year and add them later).

Here's where you can find an explanation of Chrismons and a PDF file of patterns you can print out [link corrected].

Here is the recipe we used to make the ornaments. [Note added 21 November 2011: That link is dead now, but this one has the recipe and a clear explanation of the technique.] I used the first recipe at that link, cut them out with a 3" biscuit cutter. Last year we decorated them with white fabric paint but this year I'm going to try Wilton's fondant icing writer, but I have fabric paints on hand in case that doesn't work out. The plan is to hang them outside after Christmas for the birds.

The designs I used last year were fairly simple -- Celtic cross, shepherd's crook, crown of thorns, cross and crown, eternity cross, IXΘYΣ, and several others that didn't require much detail.

Thanksgiving weekend we put up the tree, with its lights and the star topper, a brass Moravian star, pierced, with a light inside. Saturday night before evening prayers, we turned on the lights (but not the star) and let the kids each pick one Chrismon to put on the tree, and talked a bit about the symbol and what it meant. On Sunday we had the lights on all day, and that night we let them add a Chrismon, or one purple or silver ornament from our collection (purple being the color of Advent). The next week we added one Chrismon a day, but we left the lights off until the next Saturday night. Then we did the whole thing over again so that the tree grew more and more festive as Christmas approached.

On the 24th, we removed some of the purple and silver ornaments (because we have a LOT of Chrismas ornaments) and added the rest of our Christmas stuff. That night we turned on the star as well as the lights, and left them on through Epiphany (except for while we were sleeping or away from home, of course). We take the tree down a day or so after Epiphany, and we generally start back to school on the next Monday, known traditionally as Plough Monday.

The kids love crafty stuff and I normally don't do much of that kind of thing with them, so it makes a nice change, and adding the ornaments day by day builds excitement in a way that's just perfect for this season of anticipation.

Reading and pronunciation

Or, Continuing my daughter's education.

Now that my eldest daughter is home again I'm showing her how to do reading lessons with her youngest brother -- the two oldest girls are teaching reading to the two youngest children while I'm having a Latin lesson with my eleven year old daughter. Yesterday's lesson went something like this:

Me: Now sound out this word.
Little Man: Pĕĕĕĕĕnnnnn.
Me: Yes. What word?
LM: Pin.
Me: Good!
Eldest Daughter: But, he said "pin" not "pen."
Me: We're Southerners. That's the way we say it.


Some of y'all might remember this passage from The Fathers by Alan Tate, but I want to highlight one sentence in particular: "In pronunciation the criterion was the oral tradition, not the way the word looked in print to an uneducated school-teacher."

:-D

Death

Grieving for the loss of my dear baby sister; looking forward to the Resurrection.


But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.
Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

I Corinthians 15:20-26, 51-55

Summer blessings

Summer is not exactly my favorite season, but I do LOVE summer food -- all the raw milk I can drink, fresh home-grown tomatoes, watermelons...

I also love Mexicany food -- beans, salsa, avocadoes. Granted these foods are available year-round, but they just aren't the right things in the winter. In the winter you want your food to keep you warm, not cause you to break into a sweat or otherwise cool you down.

Another yummy summer food is smoothie made with yogurt, coconut milk, and frozen fruit -- my favorite combo is half strawberries and half peaches.

Then there's curried dishes. My current favorite curry is salmon cooked with coconut milk, red curry paste, and various chopped veggies, served over rice.

What's your favorite summer food?

Very Like a Whale

Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971)

One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
      metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
      go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That that Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of
      Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and
      thus hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were
      gleaming in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a
      wolf on the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy
      there are great many things,
But I don't imagine that among them there is a wolf with purple
      and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was
      actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
      mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof woof?
Frankly I think it is very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say,
      at the very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian
      cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he
      had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers
      to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of
      wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets,
      from Homer to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison.
How about the man who wrote,
Her little feet stole in and out like mice beneath her petticoat?
Wouldn't anybody but a poet think twice
Before stating that his girl's feet were mice?
Then they always say things like that after a winter storm
The snow is a white blanket. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep
      under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch
      blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one
      keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

---

"The title is from Hamlet (Act III, scene 2): Feigning madness, Hamlet likens the shape of a cloud to a whale. "Very like a whale," says Polonius, who, to humor his prince, will agree to the accuracy of any figure at all." (footnote in Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, ed. X.J. Kennedy)

A Mongoloid Child Handling Shells on the Beach

Richard Snyder (1925 - 1986)

She turns them over in her slow hands,
as did the sea sending them to her;
broken bits from the mazarine maze,
they are the calmest things on this sand.

The unbroken children splash and shout,
rough as surf, gay as their nesting towels.
But she plays soberly with the sea's
small change and hums back to it its slow vowels.

---

I know "Mongoloid" isn't PC any more but it was perfectly acceptable in 1971 when this poem was written, and nothing derogatory is meant by it. In fact, I sense a deep affection for the child in this poem, and wonder if she was the poet's granddaughter.

---

I know I promised more Donne for today, but on Saturday I got word that my sister's second bone marrow transplant will be this Wednesday, and Eldest Daughter and I are leaving tomorrow to drive to Houston to spend a few weeks with her. I'll have very limited internet access while I'm gone, so I don't think I'll be able to post much more this month.

Lauda, anima mea

Psalm 146

Praise ye the LORD.
Praise the LORD, O my soul.

While I live will I praise the LORD:
I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man,
in whom there is no help.

His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth;
in that very day his thoughts perish.

Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help,
whose hope is in the LORD his God:

Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is:
which keepeth truth for ever:

Which executeth judgment for the oppressed:
which giveth food to the hungry.

The LORD looseth the prisoners:
The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind:

the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down:
the LORD loveth the righteous:

The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow:
but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

The LORD shall reign for ever,
even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations.
Praise ye the LORD.