myfatherslily
-
Posts
2,470 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by myfatherslily
-
-
Fourteen baptisms is amazing!
-
Yep, tired here, too! It's 5:45 pm... I went to bed too late last night (my fault; I WAS out late, though, for the 3 hr Lamentations service), morning service today was another 3 hours, then Iran to a couple stores, then visited some family, then still had to stop for some MEAT groceries. Thus I just recently got home and will need to leave again in less than 4 hours. I don't want a tiny nap; I want BED!
Now to squeeze in a quick supper before the next round of fasting begins! And guess what - I ironed DD's skirt, but still haven't done my own...
-
(How does one post a video so it's embedded on the screen? I don't have time to figure it out right now, sorry!)
-
-
It's working for me. Maybe it was down briefly?
-
So why does my to-do list include ironing skirts and finding my son's black shoes and buying popcorn chicken :drool5: for our Pascha basket, as well as running by the bank and library and working online.
If only someone had given me a heads-up.... :leaving:
So what do YOU need to do? Are you wisely prepared?
P.S. It's supposed to be in the 40's and rainy Saturday night. This is a problem for us Alabamians who fully expect to eat outside at 5 A.M. wearing no more than a light jacket. It's MAY. We're not supposed to feel cold anymore. Sheesh, if we wanted to be cold in May, we'd move someplace like... Northern Michigan, perhaps... ;)
-
Thank you for the suggestions! I'll write these things down and see what I can dig up. I am talking to some family and friends as well. DD seems really excited about this possibility, so hopefully we can find what works best for all of us. I'll have a somewhat better feel for the school after tomorrow.
-
Hey all! Not exactly Orthodox-related here, but I wanted to ask for advice and maybe a short "Lord, have mercy!" from you! :) I'm thinking about having my upcoming 4th grader attend public school in the fall. I'm nervous at the thought, yet at the same time, surprisingly relieved at the thought! I'm pretty proud of our 4 years of single-mama homeschooling (made possible in part by a supportive ex... I'll give him a tiny sliver of credit... but I'll take most of it ;) ). But honestly, I'm just stressed all the time. I would still keep my younger boys home for at least one more year, so I don't anticipate much LESS stress. I'm just stressing about adding more stress! lol:)
I called the school this morning and they said we could come talk with them Wednesday morning. How many of you started homeschooling having no idea what you're doing cause you'd never experienced it first-hand before?? Well, that is how I feel! I was homeschooled myself K through 12! Public school is a totally foreign place for me.
One of my concerns is the schools testing-based rating on greatschools.org. It's pretty low (4 out of 10) and I am trying to figure out how to evaluate the school. They have a larger number of immigrants than some nearby schools with higher ratings, and a fairly big percentage of low-income students. So my concern is less about their testing averages, and more about the school itself, and their teachers and administration and such. So with all that excessive amount of background, my actual question is whether any of you have any suggestions about what to ask or look for?
DD is interested in giving it a try. The plus is that I'll still be home with the boys and could pull her out if it was going poorly.
This is a very rambling post, and I apologize. I actually sat down to work and got myself distracted here! You're stuck with my unedited ramblings!! :)
-
Beautiful!!
-
We're squeezing in my daughter's 9th birthday party Palm Sunday afternoon, so I'll definitely be cleaning this week! Also working (at the store, out of house) all day today, Thursday, and Saturday... Hmmm, wait, when AM I going to clean?! Oh dear!
I need to make sure the boys' white shirts actually still fit them and iron some skirts. However, I'm pretty sure that will NOT be happening this week!
-
Ours is similar. We got the schedule today.
Sun-Mon-Tues night - Bridegroom Matins
Wed - Holy Unction
Thurs - Mystical Supper Liturgy (morn), 12 Passion Gospels (eve)
Fri - Royal Hours (morn); Vespers, Shroud to the Tomb (afternoon); Lamentations at the Tomb (eve); all night vigil at the tomb
Sat - Divine Liturgy (morn)
Pascha begins Sat at 11:30 pm; Agape Vespers (Sun afternoon)
Bright Mon - Divine Liturgy
-
Probably all of us were freaking out at some point beforehand!:) It'll work out. And you know, if a detail gets missed, it's not essential, you know? The point is the service and the chrismation and the dunking!
Definitely have a good talk with your godmother. What she doesn't know, she can find out for you.
No advice about confession. I am definitely still a nervous novice on that one. :)
-
I think it partly is because we still have a lot of activity on the FB group, so it's split. We just need to get back into a groove. Also, I haven't seen Juniper around as much lately, and she's one of our frequent posters! :)
-
Presanctified Liturgy is lovely. Depending on the parish, there may be lots of prostrating at this service. I only say this because that threw ME off a LOT the first time. :) It's perfectly okay to not prostrate (there are plenty here who don't for whatever reason, and those who do aren't looking around!) and is entirely up to you. That parish may not (like if they have pews and don't have room), but I would have liked a heads-up. :)
-
LOL! I'm sorry you're at the hospital, though. That's lousy.
Okay, I don't have many examples, as it hasn't been something I've thought much about (so I don't remember what's caught my attention). One that comes to mind is, "Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..." in Hebrews. Always one of my favorites since memorizing those verses in Awana! But the great cloud of witnesses? All those dead people the listed in the previous chapter's "hall of faith" are the great cloud of witnesses. The only reason I can remember that one is because the kids and I *just* read it less than 2 weeks ago. :)
-
I have a hard time going to weekday services. I did go to pre-sanctified Liturgy this week, but it was so stressful getting there because of all the traffic, that I'm not sure I was in the proper frame of mind to get much out of the service. I wish I could figure some way around the travel problems.
That would be very frustrating. I drive 45-50 minutes, but I'm driving INTO the city at rush hour, when everyone else is leaving. It's an easy route, despite being long.
-
Yes, true, it would be quiet enough during the Presanctified Liturgy to go out there. It's actually pretty noisy during the Sunday sermon now! So many littles! I try to keep them in as much as possible now that they're getting older. The older two are definitely capable of staying quiet, and they really do pretty well.
-
Thanks! I really just want them to hang in there till tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I can lure some ants into the house... Where are all the fruit flies when you actually NEED them, right? :)
-
My daughter found two praying mantis egg cases about a month ago, so we put them in our butterfly garden to await their arrival. One of them hatched tonight! As far as I can tell, it was only one case that hatched. Tons of tiny praying mantises! But OF COURSE my daughter is not home! I've heard that if you don't set them free pretty quickly, they will start to eat each other. Do you think they'll be okay to leave in there until tomorrow afternoon? Is there something I should feed them?
It's really very cool! I am wishing my kids were home right now! :D
-
The Presanctified Liturgy has become without doubt, my favorite, my lifeline during Lent! How did I miss this last year? I can actually answer that. I was so self-absorbed because I couldn't partake of the Holy Eucharist that I missed the blessings of the extra services. Glory to God for the strength He gives us through His Body and Blood!
So on to my question: I was likewise out of it during Nativity...are there extra services offered during that fast? What about the Dormition and Apostles fast?
Apparently I mostly missed it, too! I thought I went several times, but now that I've gone this year I've realized I only went once.
To be completely honest, I've found it somewhat stressful. I don't like going out at night. And it's another long service during which I have to rein in my 5 year old and speak to my 7 year old about him quietly ignoring the things I tell him and tell my almost-9 year old to PLEASE stop sitting so CLOSE to her brother and poking at him. And that 5 year old has a HARD time being quiet when we prostrate for so long. He wiggles and tries to just sprawl on the floor and throws his arm around my neck and last night he laid his LEG over my back (I put a stop to all these things, of course).
That said, it IS truly a beautiful service. I do enjoy it, in spite of the wiggly-ness of my wiggle worms!
-
Some ideas:
*Make a simple number chart and count together every day.
*Give her little cards or pieces of paper with numbers on them and have her put them in order (always left to right, of course). Start small until she understands what you're doing, then add one number at a time as she gets comfortable with the last one (i.e. don't give 1-20, start with 1-5, then maybe 1-10 if she knows those well, then just add 11, then later add 12, etc).
*Easy dot-to-dots. For this age, they are so simple that it's pretty obvious what comes next. You can count together as she goes. I recently bought this one for my DS (who was 5 in Feb). It has a nice progression, starting easy at the beginning of the book and getting progressively more challenging throughout.
*Use numbers WITH the cuisenaire rods. There are little number papers I have from *somewhere*... maybe printed from MEP, I'm not sure. Anyway, you could make them easily. You just have all the ones and the tens - 1, 2, 3, etc., and 10, 20, 30, etc. You would only need a "10" for now and the numbers below it. *When you make "11" with the rods, lay out the "10" paper with the orange rod. Then add the "1" rod and get the "1" paper. Then put them together by laying the "1" paper on top of the 0 of the "10". Clear as mud? Sorry, that's a terrible explanation for something very simple. :) Just a visual for 10 and 1 more making the numeral "11".
-
"Orthodox Christian." Nothing else occurs to me as fitting right.
Down here (western end of the Bible Belt), someone who self-identifies as "Christian", without further identifier, invariably turns out to be non-denominationalist.
Although one of the proper titles for the Church is the "One Holy Orthodox Catholic Church", people will not know what you mean by the self-identifier of "Orthodox Catholic". In fact, people with broader knowledge of the Christian-based groups in the U.S. may even think that you belong to one of the numerous vagante "Orthodox" groups (which possess no legitimacy apart from whatever they think that they have conferred upon themselves).
Sometimes I refer to myself as "Eastern Orthodox" because most people these days have heard, at least, of the Greek Orthodox. This, then, provides opportunity to answer their questions and help them learn that not all Orthodox are Greek!
LOL, yes a friend once told me that her sister's Russian in-laws are Greek Orthodox. :)
I, as one of the not-seasoned Orthodox here :), would say either Christian or Orthodox, depending on who I'm talking to. If it's a broad conversation, I would likely just say I am a Christian and leave it at that. If I'm talking with another Christian about where we go to church, I would clarify.
-
Thanks for that! I am lazy and like to click directly there. Type stuff in?? What?! :)
-
...
So his writings did serve as a point for me clarifying what the boundaries are. And it appears that the boundaries are that if you are "married" to the church (ie have gone through certain rituals) you may commune (at least according to some priests) despite not believing any longer some core truths of the faith and publicly declaring so. And if you believe, but have not gone through the rituals, you are "unmarried" and therefore may not commune. And the first point is up to an individual priest. The second point is standard across priests. That's what I'm understanding at this point.
...
Maybe, yes, perhaps there's an element of truth to this. I'm just pondering out loud here.
The Eucharist is the deepest intimacy with Christ, right? His body becoming one with mine.
Might we say that one could be tenderly, lovingly intimate with a partner outside of marriage; honest and true love at it's finest, but without the ritual of ceremony? We all know couples like that, right? On the other hand, one might be married without love, giving and receiving intimacy despite the lack of a healthy relationship.
Perhaps the married couple were to ask their priest, "Should we stop being intimate? We don't love each other." Maybe, depending on their situation, he might caution against it. Or maybe... maybe it's their last hope.
So maybe this priest in this linked story has made poor choices. Maybe he hasn't. Maybe, hope against hope, there's one last thing to cling to. Maybe in that deepest intimacy, past ritual, united once but falling... one might find salvation.
Has anyone experienced this? Joy stolen...
in Exploring Orthodox Christianity
Posted
I was feeling kind of bad about thinking, "I'm not sure I LIKE the midnight Pascha service." It's just so long and exhausting. We started at 11:30 pm and finished at 3:20 am. At one point, I sat on the floor in the narthex with my 5 year old, and I literally almost fell asleep. Kids are restless and tired. Mine all fell asleep in a nearby room, and I had to wake them for communion. DD sleeps very deeply and she was quite upset that I woke her, to the point that she wouldn't raise her head to received communion until I spoke very firmly to her to do so. It was a huge struggle to stay awake for the long drive home.
I DO like the Pascha service. But it is difficult.
But upon those in the tomb, He bestows life, right? Even those tombs in which we enclose ourselves!
[Added: About the candles! I actually DID burn a family member's hair!! We had to all crowd in quickly as the priest practically flew past with the incense, shouting "Christ is risen!!" I turned quickly to face him and drew my candle right past her hair and heard a sizzle! I looked and there was smoke coming from her hair!! Thankfully that was all! OOPS!!!]