It’s Official!

I just received an email letting me know that I’m officially added to the Catholic Stitchers webring. Joanne, I understand perfectly what you mean about the beauty and transcendence of the Tridentine Mass….but once I discovered the wonder that is the Divine Liturgy, and happened to realize that the Eastern Rite is part of my liturgical heritage, I could do nothing but turn to the East. I love the Mass according to the 1962 Missal, but as I’ve said several times before, the Eastern Liturgy and its spirituality are as comfortable to me as a favorite old sweater. I used to wonder why I often had this strange feeling at Mass of ‘well, look at me, here I am at Mass, isn’t this neato’ and a sense of being on the outside looking in, so to speak. I wasn’t in the right Rite! From the very first time I attended the Divine Liturgy, I found myself caught up in the chant, the incense, the warm colors of the icons….and felt as if I had finally come home after a very long and convoluted journey. And what a long, strange trip it was, too, but that’s another story!

There will be a momentary delay

in the commencement of the GMSCP, as my kitchen will be unusable next week.  My mom is getting me a new kitchen floor, and I have to take everything out of the kitchen except the stove (the wonderful contractors are moving and replacing that, thanks be to God) and are arriving on Tuesday morning to start.  Add to that the fact that I have to get the kitchen ceiling painted before the new floor is laid and you can see I will have no time for making sugar cake.

This has made clear several things to me, most of all that I have entirely too much stuff in my kitchen.  However, it will give me the impetus to move the homeschooling bookshelf to the kitchen, as the dry sink is going either to the garbage or to the basement and I will have room for the shelf in the kitchen.  That, in turn, opens up more space in the icon corner for more comfortable praying by all of us (we are currently scrunching ourselves into a tiny space and it is quite non-prayerful).  So this is a blessing in disguise.  And one of these days I will post pictures.  A new roll of film is on the shopping list for this weekend.  Have to do ‘before’ and ‘after’ pics of the kitchen, although ByzCat could tell you it’s pretty grotty at the moment – yellow walls, green woodwork and dark red peel-n-stick tile floor.  Ick.

So – “please excuse the mess as we remodel to serve you better!”

Happy Belated Blogiversary to me!

I was playing around with trying to make this a nicer looking blog and realized that I’ve been blogging for a year now!  Wow, time sure flies!

I am pondering mightily at present, deciding in what direction I want to take the blog this year.  Do I want to be funny, or profound, or spiritual, or ironic?  Decisions, decisions.  Perhaps I’ll be a bit of all of those things and let the blog be itself and see where we go.  I can’t be funny all the time, and I can’t be profound and spiritual all the time, either.

Mnohaja  blahaja l’ita!  (To me and to all of you.)

Well, whaddya know…..

I suspected as much, but it’s always nice to be sure!

Hope everyone had a thoroughly wonderful Thanksgiving.  I sure did.  Everything on the menu went over very well, and we spent a cozy evening in front of the TV watching no football.  I finally got to watch “Rocky V” and was disappointed with the ending.  They shoulda quit while they were ahead, at #4.  I’m glad I skipped it when it was in theaters!

The possible guests neither showed up nor sent their regrets, so I can only hope they are inexcusably rude, rather than hopelessly lost somewhere driving around in circles looking for my rather obscure and hard-to-find address.  Although I must admit I am a bit peeved at my neighbor across the street – an impoverished college student who evidently preferred dormitory food to my home-cooked Turkeypalooza.  He’s an engineering major, so perhaps that explains it.  (I am permitted to poke fun at engineers, as I am the daughter of a civil engineer).

I must do several things today:  pay bills, do laundry, clean my room, and clean off my desk.  I spent the morning sorting laundry and doing the next two week’s lesson plans for school. (Just remembered, also must file receipts…..the stack on top of the file cabinet  teeters precariously whenever the furnace comes on)

What’s on the menu tomorrow?

At our house, where there will be at least 5 and possibly more (the result of inviting people who haven’t RSVP’d yet), we’re having:

Roast turkey, dressing, fresh spinach salad (requested by girlchec), green beans (from our garden!), creamed corn (also from our garden), braided bread (requested by younger boychec), homemade cranberry sauce and cranberry-orange relish, pumpkin pie and caramel apple nut pie. Oh, and gravy.

Oops, almost forgot, to drink we’re having apple cider!

Eli will get a plate of Thanksgiving dinner of his very own. We don’t normally feed him table food but I think on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter he can eat like we do.

This Old House…..

Somewhere in a previous post there is a picture of my house. A large Victorian house. It is drafty, it has a weird floor plan, it sits oddly on its lot, but it is home. I recently hired a painter to patch cracked plaster and paint the entry hall, stairwell, and upstairs hallway…..he says he will be finished tomorrow afternoon. The cracks are gone, and I can squint and visualize the way it’s going to look….right now the walls and ceiling are a sort of ivory color, but the walls will be a color called Imagine (Sherwin-Williams #6009) and the ceilings will be white. I’m making new window treatments for a window on the second landing (which, as you can see it from the front door, needed something spiffy) in navy iridescent taffeta – two rod pocket panels overlaid with three swags trimmed in navy tassel fringe. “Glass curtains” under the taffeta in white lace. I also need to do something special for the front door which has a big glass in it, and the transom above it. And yes, photos will be posted.

(Several weeks later) photos still not available, being forgetful about purchasing film.  Anyone who wants to buy me a nice digital camera drop me a comment, ha ha!  But I did get the front door re-dressed, and additionally have painted the downstairs bathroom and Friday will paint my ‘fitting room’.  Boring white, unfortunately.  Then on to the kitchen, which is transmogrifying from green and yellow to red, black and white.

GMSCP 2008

Kicks off this weekend!  Stay tuned for updates.  This year, not only enough for my parish, but the entire neighborhood.

Mea culpa, mea culpa,

mea maxima culpa.  I certainly did not intend to some across as superior and arrogant about Eastern Church tradition, although it may have seemed that way.  I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone.

It will never cease to amaze me, however, how Roman Catholics who are blessed with reverent and orthodox priests, rubrically correct Masses (under either form, NO or Tridentine), and modestly attired and attentively reverent parishioners with whom to worship, can seem so taken aback by reports ‘from the field’ about liturgical dancers, Zen-friendly spirituality being preached from the pulpit, icky modern-art Stations of the Cross (where they exist at all), and parishes where the focus is on community rather than Communion.  I know there parishes and dioceses exist (the good ones) – I’ve been to Masses in them and know people who have nothing but good things to say about their priest and Bishop.  But I also know the state of affairs in the Latin diocese where I live.  It’s one reason I was able to so easily hear my call to move East.  And I readily admit that perhaps in some other Easter parishes some strange things may have gone on, and could still be going on, for all I know.

The fact is, the Latin Church is in a real mess, truly, and we all ought to be praying for the Holy Father as he does what he has discerned to be the Will of God to move the Western lung of the Catholic Church back to where it is truly “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.”

‘Nuff said.

Congratulations

are in order to my girlchec, who after only three short months has earned her white belt in mixed martial arts.  Yay, and way to go!

I wonder….

upon which planet the reader Matt has been residing…..yes, there are Roman bishops permitting, yes, even encouraging, diaphanously-clad females prancing about the sanctuary and nave during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  I envy you your obviously wonderful and rubrically correct parish and diocese.  Now tell my other readers where it is so the Romans who don’t feel called to the Eastern Churches can move there!

(Everyone laugh now)