Falling and Getting Up

"Mercifully, God's goodness longs to help us, and He encourages us, 'Every time you fall, get up again.' To fall is human, but to fall and not get up is demonic. Even if we fall seventy times seven a day, let us arise again. Many times we find fault with others, we harbor feelings of hatred and hostility, and we do not forgive easily, ignoring God's commandment to forgive seventy times seven a day (vid. Mt. 18:22)."

-Elder Ephraim, from The Art of Salvation

Icon Corner

One of the first things on my Lenten cleaning list this year was to get all our icon corners in each room set up. Well, we've had quite an eventful Great Lent so far (with many little temptations and a really sick little girl for a while!), and so I'm a little behind with my list. Some things I have done ahead of time, some things late. 

Today, my hubby finally had a free minute to hang up the icons in our bedroom. These are really special icons to us. The one in the middle is of Archangel Gabriel. We got married on his feast day (July 26), so my extremely thoughtful godmother/aunt and uncle gave us a hand-painted icon of Archangel Gabriel to remember to pray to him for our entire life together as a wedding gift. To the left and right of our icon of Archangel Gabriel hang our wedding icons. A Russian Orthodox wedding tradition is to have wedding icons - specifically, an icon of Jesus Christ for the husband, and an icon of the Mother of God for the wife. There are no specifications regarding the style of the icon or the specific icon of the Mother of God (there are so many different portrayals of her!)... Anyhow, in our case, we asked a friend iconographer of ours to paint us our wedding icons back before our wedding. He chose to paint us the image of the Three-Handed Mother of God because the original Three-Handed icon is located at a Serbian monastery on Mount Athos (Hilandar), so he thought that was nice for a Serbian household. (Of course, we had an icon of Jesus Christ too, for my husband).

To finish up about the wedding tradition - on your wedding day, you are blessed with your icon by your parents just before taking off to your wedding service (as a final blessing to get married). I LOVE THIS TRADITION! It always makes me tear up when I see this in real life (like for my sister's wedding) or when I look at this picture of this special moment on my own wedding day.

We have SO many icons in our collection, but I love having these three very special icons in our bedroom. They are a reminder of our wedding day every time I look at them, and they are a constant reminder to both of us that in marriage, you always need to put God and the Church first if you want to have a successful marriage.

I should mention that I have somewhere, deep down in a box, a beautiful icon cloth that my aunt/godmother gave to me (it is the one in the photo above, actually)...Once I find it (I am very slow at unpacking at the moment) I'll drape it along the icons or underneath them to make this space look even nicer (and to cover up the weird spacing in the right side). 

Remembering God...

"A certain saint advises, 'Remember God in times of peace, so He can remember you in times of sorrow.' We must always remember God; not only when we experience sorrow, or when we are in need and in danger, but also when we enjoy good days with peace, health, and prosperity. In this way, God will remember us in our time of difficulty."

From the book (the amazing book I'm currently reading!!) The Art of Salvation, by Elder Ephraim

The Baker Family

Great Lent is always a time of extra temptations. For some families, the temptations are greater than others. On Sunday night, a Greek Orthodox priest died in a tragic car accident while driving home from Vespers with his children. Fr. Matthew Baker was thrown from his car after it tumbled several times, but somehow (by a miracle) his children were all ok.

Fr. Matthew leaves behind not only his wife, Presbytera Katherine, but SIX young children, all ages 12 and under. Truly, this is an enormous tragedy. I have not been able to get this family out of my head since I heard about this horrible news. According to many, Fr. Matthew was truly a giving soul, a person who was not only an intellectual but a true person of God. One person put it so beautifully "the world lost someone it was desperately in need of."

The main thing this family, especially Presbytera Katherine needs, is of course, prayer. But in terms of material needs, there has been a fund established to help this family survive, as they have lived in poverty for many years and have no material goods. They had just moved into their first rental home as he had JUST started receiving his first priestly salary on his first parish.

PLEASE, please, reach into the depths of your heart and into your bank account if you can, and make a donation to this family who is so much in need of our help right now. Click here to go to the page where you can not only safely donate whatever amount you'd like, but also follow along with the donations and updates (frequent ones) about this family and their status.

May Fr. Matthew's memory be eternal, and may God send peace, blessings, and most importantly, strength to Presbytera Katherine and her six beautiful children at this extremely difficult time for them.

PS: I had asked a few friends where Pres. Katherine was during the accident out of curiosity...and was deeply saddened to find out that she had been at home resting after just having suffered a stillbirth of their 7th child at 17 weeks of pregnancy. This poor woman really needs our prayers!

A favorite Lenten snack...

I wanted to share one of my favorite Lenten snacks. These Pita Chips from Trader Joe's are only lightly salted, and also way less fattening than regular potato chips, so I looooove them! They are pretty much guilt-free, and if you want to watch your white flour intake, they have multi-grain ones, too. I usually switch between regular and multi-grain.

The salsa is Black Bean & Corn Salsa from Whole Foods. I have tried just about every single black bean & corn salsa out there, and this is the ONLY one I'll eat!

Our Paschal Countdown

I wanted to share our way of couting down to Pascha this year (which is actually the same as last year).

My children are young. My son, the oldest, is recently 4, my oldest daughter will be 3 in May, and my youngest is 13.5 months old. So when I made up our Paschal countdown, I was keeping in mind that I do not want to do anything too complicated or confusing for them. As a bonus, I wanted to keep it simple for a tired and often forgetful Mama like myself!

We began this last year, and this will probably be the last year I'll do it this way, since next year we'll have an almost-kindergartener who will be ready for something a little more complicated. 

But for now...

I took a basket and I filled it with 49 plastic Easter eggs (which cost less than $5!), one for each day of this fasting season (including Holy Week). It is so simple, but yet draws the kids in so well because it is so colorful. Each morning, after prayer, we are taking out one egg because we are one day closer to Pascha. I remind the kids with each egg that we remove, that we are doing this to count down to the Feast of Feasts, and that as our basket gets more and more empty, we will be closer and closer to Pascha. Then, on the Paschal night, I tell them, we will take our now empty basket and fill it with kulich and cheese pascha and hard-boiled eggs and take it to church to be blessed. I get so excited each time I talk about Pascha night! 

The best part is that the kids remember doing this last year, so they are double excited this year.

On the Brink of Great Lent

Here we are, the eve of the most special time of year - Great Lent. Today is Forgiveness Sunday, and also the day we prepare for tomorrow's beginning of Great Lent.

My preparation tonight consists of flipping my music to church music only. I have prepared my reading. The refrigerator is starting to look empty and ready for an abundance of fruits and vegetables (to come tomorrow). But most importantly, the soul... My soul feels in need of and ready for this time of prayer, repentance and spiritual labor. I cannot wait to attempt to empty myself of worldly things and take in the words of the Holy Fathers, listen to the beautiful words of spiritual music, read the Scriptures and focus on and remember what is truly important.

I am currently listening to the Forgiveness vespers service at the Sretensky monastery in Moscow...you can listen to any of their services (at any time) on their website.... They have the most beautiful singing! Once you are on their page, scroll down the page and you'll see on the right hand side a place to play their most recent church service. You can also play other services that they have recorded in the past if you click around a bit.

Getting back to Great Lent...

I've finalized my Lenten reading choices, and here they are.

The Psalter (actually, I have joined a Psalter Group for this Lent like I did for the Christmas fast...Being accountable for my reading each day makes it even more likely that I get to my reading each day)

This book, The Art of Salvation, is on its way in the mail to me, and should be arriving tomorrow. I cannot wait to read it, because I have heard it is incredible.

The Missionary Letters of Saint Nikolai Velimirovich. Except, I am reading Part 3 instead of Part 1 (the order of reading these does not really matter, and I couldn't find Parts 1 and 2 right now amongst our boxes).

The Spiritual Life by St. Theophan the Recluse. I have been actually reading this book for quite a while now, reading one chapter each day. The chapters are rather short, and are actually letters that St. Theophan wrote to one of his spiritual children. Each chapter finds me thinking "wow!"

Actually, I should mention that though this may seem like a lot of books, they are all actually either consisted of letters or extremely short chapters, so they make for a quick read during my morning cup of coffee. I am going to read ONE chapter/letter a day in each of these books. For the Psalter, I'll be reading one Psalm a day.

In addition to these books, I have a lenten tradition of my own that I'll be continuing. Pravoslavie.ru has a daily reading for each day of Great Lent, and I really look forward to this readings each day. They always pertain to that particular day of Great Lent, and even though the readings are the same each year I am always learning something new from them.

The last thing I will be doing for myself this Great Lent is using this new Orthodox Lenten Study workbook which I recently downloaded from Orthodox Mom. She created this very handy spiritual reading/writing guide that I am excited to test out! There are readings for each day of Lent, complete with a little writing section per each day. If you'd like to download it, it is available for purchase for $6 on her website (click on Orthodox Mom above to navigate to the site).

Happy Fasting to you all!