***
Curry bowl empty.
So sad.
Sound of tear falling.

I actually read it slowly… with meaningful pauses… savoring each line… kind of like a haiku verse:

***
A happy heart.
Fasting creates simple pleasures.
Lentil Curry, & cooking oil and onions.
“Yummy” Black Cherry soda.
The Theme of the Great Canon.
St Mary of Egypt.
Irony.

Hense my response:

***
A scent of spring in the air.
Dirty puddles of melted snow on the pavement.
The Metro train is crammed – can’t pull my Molitvoslov out.
Swaying and shuffling with the crowd in a penguin motion.
Jesus prayer to the rescue.
The church is full – thanks be to God and Perestroyka!
Great Lent in Moscow.

Nat

this is all I can track for today, as I have to wind up for today – I can’t stand the computer any more.

Natalia

FOOD:

Father, your description is so delicious, leaves the impression of some Pascha meal!

CANON:

“The greatest penalty of sin is the confusion and pain it causes us. This pain DOES NOT go away when we are forgiven!”

This is what I feel. Even when I suffer my sin enough & feel repentance, and am forgiven at the confession, the pain of it remains, as well as the memory, the vividness. I’ve been once told by a priest that if God decides, not only the sin, but all my past can be erased…But in my present state of inner person I cannot fully realize that – i.e. that God is SO merciful. I once heard that when God forgives a person he feels it. Maybe it is so, but maybe only very righteous people can feel it. For me – even if He forgives, everyone forgives – I cannot forgive myself, and this impedes me to fully realize our Lord’s mercy. Once one of our priests said that restraining from a sin, keeping oneself away from it – is hard for everyone, but it’s not the same for innocent person (I mean the one who did not do this sin at all), and the one who did it, and got accustomed to it, for whom the sin turned into a sinful skill. It is of course possible for him, with God’s assistance, to give up a sin or his sinful habit, but even if he manages – there is also the space inside him, a route, which remains empty, and it will always remind him of itself, and require to be fulfilled. This father compared it this way: the river, running in one direction – as it happens with decisive people who did not take up the sin (or sins), it helps a person to keep up his integrity, get together all his efforts, maintain chastity. But when a person commits a sin, this integrity is, yes, broken, and there appear a special, allotted channel. And the more grave sins we accomplish, the more channels are opened, and the river starts flows there too. The chastity is ruined. To get it together & send it to the sole, united stream is enormously difficult. Even if a person manages to empty these channels, make them float in one direction, the channels, though empty, remain for ever. And the person will do twice hard job in his life – keeping the water all together, maintaining one right direction, and tracking these channels, always trying to prevent water get there…Thus we should think thoroughly before committing a grave sin – as we pay too much for this, very high price & for a very long time.

When the Canon is read and we pray to St Mary…it always seems to me inconceivable. There are such saints that are inconceivable for me – like St John the Bishop, St Mary of Egypt. I first though it’s because of their extremely ascetic lives, they are both preachers of repentance, but not only this…I feel there is something else under all this, but it’s a mystery for me for now.

ST MARY:

“I flitted from one useless, trivial thought to another”.

The state I find myself with “enviable regularity”. Strange, not only in the church or praying, but in some serious circumstances of life, tough situations, when all my thoughts & emotions should – as it seems – be concentrated on this event. But at that moments – strange as it might seem – many additional minor thoughts & recollections often crawl into my pooh head….

I once heard the following expression: “A person is what he thinks about during the day”. Cruelly! But is not deprived of sense. If I admit it is so (well, I admit, no escape!), I am at a loss for words with which I can call myself? Besides, I was always convinced (since childhood) that “many” means “nothing”: many words (nothing said actually), many professions (that means he cannot do anything professionally), many friends (“hi”-“bye” relations), for example. Or when I read in a book that a certain Father had “thousands of spiritual children” – it makes me tremble, softly speaking. Or “that bishop spent days & nights in payers” (if anyone shows me this miraculous bishop I’ll give him a prize!:-) – of course, if this bishop retired. What I am driving at (sorry, by the very round-about way:-) is that many thoughts means no actually valuable thought. Means nothing. Emptiness. Zero, multiplied even by a multitude, remains a zero. Apologies, didn’t aim at frightening you – the consoling factor is that midnight will come not very soon for you:-)

Bless,

asking for your prayers – now & for ever,

Natalia “the catterbox”

Thank you for all your posts! It is hard for me to comment on posts because it seems that you say it all, and you say it so well. I remember being baptized as a 12-year old, not ever having been to a single church service before or after baptism, until thirteen years later. Would you explain more about how baptism guards us and what it really means?

St. Mary of Egypt’s story moved me deeply and so did participation in the Great Canon on Wednesday.

I know what you mean about the relationship between abstinence and appreciation. When I am not fasting, I find that I do best on a high protein, low carb diet. (By proteins, I mean good healthy, chemical free, free range meat, eggs & dairy and by carbs I am referring primarily to refined flour, sugar, corn syrup, etc..found in breads, pastas, sweets, soft drinks, etc..)

I find that the first week I abstain from these things, I battle cravings for them. Then, after a while the cravings go away. After a while my appetite decreases and it only takes a small amount of food to satisfy me. In fact, I find that when I allow myself an occasional sweet ‘indulgence’ it only takes a very small portion to satisfy me. Not only has my appetite decreased but my taste buds have changed. When one eats sweets on a regular basis, the taste buds become desensitized, accustomed to the taste of sweet, and more sweetness is required to give the same level of satisfaction. After abstaining for a while, the taste buds readjust and it takes only a tiny bit of sweetness to satisfy a taste for sweet. When I am limiting myself to just a little sweetness, I find I become very discriminating in my tastes–no longer content with just stuffing my face just to satisfy a craving. I am then eating because I really enjoy the taste, not to satisfy an insatiable appetite and craving that has become unbalanced due to insulin resistance.

There’s a spiritual metaphor in there, somewhere.