Forgiveness Sunday

Wow. It's 10:38pm as I start to write this, but it feels so much later. I'm so tired.

In the Orthodox Church, we have a few weeks of preparation before Lent, the last of which is called Cheesefare Week (and means no meat or fish, but LOTS of milk! Got to use it all up, right? *wink*) and then the last Sunday is called Forgiveness Sunday. This year, that was today.

It's an intense day, not really from the services - it's something 'in the air' I suppose. Church this morning was just a normal Divine Liturgy (Mass), though it was HOT (40*C, ugh), but with only a few people because when it's hot most people at this Church stay home. We had been asked to help at the Greek festival, but as it was so hot there were very few people there. The minute we walked in the sun we just about died, and I turn red really easily so I was beetroot coloured by the time I got to the stall! People threw cold water at me and I cooled down. Eventually we got bored, and after some yummy food and thickshakes (c'mon, last day to eat dairy - THICKSHAKE!) we dropped Troy at his house and I went back to Jeremy's house to wait the afternoon out (another four hours, ish) before Vespers. He gave me a book called Dancing Alone by Frank Schaeffer which is wonderful...but he pulls no punches so it's hard going. Very true, just...ouch! He napped, and I read, and worked on memorising Psalm 50 (51 for everyone not Orthodox) which is one of my goals for this Lent.

Vespers was...wow. We had a packed Church, and the Bishop came, and we had every greek priest from the state, I think! It was incredible. And I'm used to Vespers, but this was something new. Halfway through the service they all processed through the Church, and then went inside the altar (there's a screen in front) and shut the doors. When they came out again, they had swapped their light coloured vestments for dark ones, and it was time for Lent to begin. The music changes, too - much more solemn, and we said Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy) 40 times in a row! All the lights were turned out, and we finished the service in the dark. At the end, we lined up and the Bishop and priests were in a row, in order of rank, and we kissed each one's hand as they asked us to forgive them anything they might have done against us, and we asked the same in return. Then we went around doing the same to all our friends, and wishing each other a blessed fast!

Lent isn't as hard for us, I think. We all do it together, and it's a communal thing. Lots of chickpea curry for me, I think, and fassolada - bean soup with lots of vegies. We'll see if I still think it's 'easy' in a few weeks though!

The other thing for me is that it's a harbinger. At the end of Lent, 40ish days from now, I will make my vows before God and my Church to Orthodoxy, and be baptised. Which is wonderful, but kind of scary. As Father said tonight, this begins the time of earnest preparation.

May God help me :)

I know this is all a bit religious for my blog, even though I talk about religion a bit. It's just... so much part of my life, and today is so significant.

As we do this for all - to anyone reading this, all my friends and those I don't know, please forgive me anything I may have done to offend or hurt you in the past year, and to any Orthodox readers - have a blessed fast!

Randomosity

The last few days have been...well, different. Saturday I spent in bed, Sunday was long and exhausting but wonderful - Judgement Sunday, the second Sunday before Lent. It was also the last day we got to eat meat before Pascha - Easter, on April 27th. I love the icons for this feast:


Everything there should make sense to most people - it's the icon for the story of the Last Judgement in Matthew 25. To those not used to Orthodox iconography, the two people with Christ (closest to Him) are the Theotokos (Mary) and St John the Baptist. I remember the first time I saw an icon of St John and wondered who it was - it seemed logically to be St John the Baptist, but he had wings! Why was he an angel? It turns out, it's a pun of sorts. Angelos means 'messenger' so it can mean angel, but it can mean another messenger too. No wings in this icon though. The men on thrones either side are Ss Peter and Paul representing the apostles, and the people bowing at His feet are Adam and Eve representing the human race.

Jeremy, Daniel and I went for lunch after Church (and we all had meat, naturally - Jeremy asked for the biggest schnitzel they had, and when the lady figured out we were Orthodox - she was married to a Greek guy - she put ham on it too) and sitting down with a bottle of red Jeremy made a toast to 'a good defence before the dread judgement seat of Christ' - a phrase from the Liturgy, one of the things we ask God for at least once every service. It was an odd toast, but a good one - and thoroughly memorable.

We had a quiz night that night at Church, and my table won, which was fun. I like quiz nights, they're a fun kind of crazy.

I've spent the last few days recovering though. Just settling and stitching. My sister bought her formal dress (formal = prom, minus the politics) yesterday and it's so sweet, rosebud pink. She looks lovely in it.

Here's my weekly update on Peaceful Paradise, anyway. Less got done this week - last week's seems to have been a marathon update!


The first two rows of lettering are totally done now, and I'm working on the rest. Again, I'm getting bogged down in the sky, but I'm alternating a length of thread in that with a length of thread on anything else and that's helping. When I'm not sick of blue I'll often do two lengths. It's worth it, I love the effect that it has with the stars - and the stars are wonderful, so much fun to stitch! The moon is new this week too. And I've just reached a point where I need to stitch an ornament amongst the text, which is nice - always good to stitch on something different. I'm not sure what I'll do if I finish everything else before I finish the sky - I think I'll just start the next page down, while finishing the sky. I learned from last time not to try and just stitch sky, I got so sick of this piece I couldn't look at it for a while!

Stitching and stuff

I've been happily working, and life's found a steady pace.

I went and sorted out correspondence school stuff on Friday, and that's set up - I now have 'classes' on the phone/internet three times a week for 15min-1hr, and work from workbooks mostly. Sounds good to me, now just to rediscover my desk! My subjects are Maths Methods (academic maths, but without the stress of the top tier math), Studies of Society (sociology YES), and Australian History (love love love history). So this should be good.

Today's the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican in the Church - the Gospel reading is really short, so I'll post it. It's a good story, even if you're not religious:

The Lord said this parable, "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."

And here's the icon (which I really like):


So, it's one of the three Sundays leading up to Lent in the East. This one reminds us not to be too proud of ourselves, especially in our sacrifices and fasting - which is what we do during Lent. So, a fast free week (usually we eat vegan on Wednesday and Friday), and it was a beautiful homily this morning. Jeremy's away visiting his family (his Dad just had an operation) but I did get to see Nona (godmother) Nikki, and my parents came with me and seemed to like it.

Yesterday was just sleepy. Nothing much happened, we just hung around, and today was Church, and now I'm exhausted. Troy and I have discovered that if he gets to the knots in my muscles (which are really deep down, and he has a knack for finding) that the stabbing pains don't affect me so much, and so he did that last night before sleep (I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow) but it hurt a lot and I had a pillow I was hugging tight. I'm glad he did it though.

And tonight...well, tonight I'm just resting. Veg-ing and watching tv, So You Think You Can Dance is on tonight, and I plan to settle down with my stitching and rest.

Oh yeah, I took a before picture for Peaceful Paradise, too. So this is what it looked like Thursday night:

My fingers are starting to hurt from stitching

So I'll post for a while instead, give them a break before I wear a hole in them!

I forgot to mention the other day - god-sister-creature has asked me to make her a gothic-y medieval dress for a party she's going to. Ever wanting to be helpful (and also because I couldn't resist the chance to make said dress) I said yes. Well, I then had to convince her to come with me to buy a pattern and fabric, because I don't like the idea of making something that the other person doesn't like, and we got a beautiful wine red damask for the dress itself, which is a wide A-line (I think) with fitted sleeves that flare out into bells at 3/4 length, and a black satin ribbon for the trim. Very pretty. It promptly got cut out, and has been taking over our living room floor for the past few days, except for when I had to pack it up for the football yesterday when we had people over. There was 3.6m of fabric! It's nuts. Beautiful though.

I have the front done, panels sewn together and trim added, along with the loops to thread lacing through, but no neck facings yet as I'll add them when the front and back are sewn together at the shoulders. I sewed the back sections together into pairs, but then in the morning I realised I'd sewn the pieces together wrong - the right side and the wrong side on the one side, argh. So, much unpicking had to happen, and I haven't fixed it yet! Tomorrow. It's coming together well though, I think.

I misread the instructions for how to finish the sleeve edges too, but I like how it turned out so I'm keeping it. Much neater, in my opinion.

I dragged myself out of bed this morning when I wasn't feeling at all well, dragged an even more unwilling Troy out, and took my never-experienced-Orthodoxy friend Hannah (who got called Anna and Anne, much to her confusion, by everyone) to church, as Jeremy had to take his godmother.

Was worth it. Oh yes, it was worth it. We got asked to do the readings at the beginning, which was confusing as we stumbled our way through, but Jeremy came and rescued us and we settled into it and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it clicked for Troy today! He read the Liturgy with me during the arabic, and listened and prayed during the english. He's been struggling with the liturgical side of things for a while, and he's always had issues focussing in church services in general. But...the joy as it all clicked in and the two of us joined in the Liturgy was just wonderful. We're home, just settling in before we can be called residents :)

Hannah enjoyed it too, almost more for aesthetics than anything else but I don't mind. I like that she didn't hate it, and she wants to visit St Nectarios' in a couple weeks, so if I can borrow a lift off a parent this weekend (Jeremy might be going to the UK, lucky) then in a fortnight maybe we can go there with her. She'll love Father Silouan, I think.

So I'm very pleased. It's been a good day - I've been working on the Historic Countries sampler again, I've finished the rice stitch block, and one of the two four-sided stitch sections, and my stag now has everything from his neck down done. This one is going much faster than the last one!

So now I've settled in to watch the news, and it's Aus Idol tonight too so I'll spend the night stitching I hope.