Reflections on the years that have gone and the ones yet to come

I remember being in BC in the Spring of 2003.

I remember the white phone I had,

cordless but not a cell; 

cell phones had not yet exploded in use...

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I called Canadian Immigration and found that within

7 weeks I could be a Canadian citizen, 

as I was born of a Canadian mother.

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That May I got my citizenship card,

what a Chinese student called the 

'Maple Card'

and we went out to Tim Hortons to celebrate.

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Well, the January that I was dating Mr. Husband

I was flying back from NJ to Ottawa and 

my wallet did not come with me;

of course I reported it right away, when

I suddenly was in the taxi and realized my wallet was not in my purse.

He drove me back to the airport and I went right

to the airline to report it,

calling my bank first to cancel all my cards.

I never got the wallet back,

or the many things I had in it, 

including my Canadian citizenship card.

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I am reapplying for the card;

the picture above is of the paper that came with the card,

that I was so thankful for finding today.

Mr. Husband has been pushing me to get this application done... 

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So many memories...

when I was applying for my Canadian Citizenship;

I had no idea that within a year or so I would be Orthodox

or even going to an Orthodox church;

I had only been to one service in Lent on a Sunday

and it was in the middle of writing my BA Honours Thesis,

applying for citizenship and being burnt out with school for 

so many years.

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I was reading this article today

and realized that I too am past that point of youth

where every option of life seems possible...

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I still miss Canada a lot.

I miss my parish there and I miss Ottawa.

It's strange to go back to those 

dusty streets that I loved so much;

to realize the poverty of the downtown people again,

to see how run down Hartman's is,

to see that Herb and Spice changed their buildings,

restaurants that are closed, stores gone,

things never stay the same.

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It's the memories of all I love that perhaps

are the hardest; the trees I would walk under,

the sense of space I often felt when in church;

the streets having lots of memories and of

connections and seeing people and

having conversations with the poor

or seeing the same store managers at Hartmans

or just walking down Bank Street or my favourite

Metcafe street;

the sunshine; the flowers; the OC Transpo buses;

the friends and good architecture.

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But yet in all of that, 

there was this lack, this missing bit, of not having family.

Of Paschas where I would be back in 

my apartment happy but alone.

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It's different now;

I do not have my Ottawa streets,

I don't have my Ukrainian family, my Romanian table,

I don't have the red roses

in my big Pascha basket to bring to church on 

Great and Holy Friday.

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Though I did have some dear friends buy roses on my behalf this year,

to my great consolation:

{The roses are on the left in this picture}.

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But I have so much new now.

I don't go back to an apartment alone but

am with Mr. Husband.

I have new Bright Week traditions and a husband,

whose happy laugh lights up my world;

I have a husband who delights in me.

I am still often so surprised by this.

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I often have the feeling of growing up all over again;

of the realization that one can not go back to 

old places and have them be the same.

Things can still be good and new normals can be found,

but nothing stays the same ever.

Children grow up;

parents grow older...

My Mom is retiring next week from her work and 

my parents hope to come out and help 

Mr. Husband and I with our new home.

It is a time we will treasure.

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All I can see is what I started learning in Ottawa:

we must be with God today.

God is the One who will always be with us.

We must be joyful and glad today because God is with us.

We must have hope for the times that we 

will be given that are difficult; hope that God can

get us through them, 

hope in Christ's Holy Pascha.

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Right now I am in a time of all things new;

a bright season, when the house will be new,

the furniture to be arranged, some new pieces added

and new things to find out,

air to breath deep into lungs,

a life to be built.

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But in all things,

it is God that I must turn to,

a God who is new but eternal,

a God who does not change,

who is ever shall be and was forever and ever.

A God whose love is not fixed on a star,

a God whose love never wavers, never changes,

never ends.

Pondering beauty means pondering life

 

I took this picture on my phone
when I was walking in sunshine
on a beautiful day
one of those days that you wish would
be all the days
a day you think
this is summer to me
and I went to the local yarn shop.
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It's funny,
after being sick and relapsing many times
just walking places like this
doing new things
is a huge achievement instead of just a normal
what you do when you are still new in a city/place.
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I loved very much reading of this miracle.
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This video from Ira's blog
is beautiful:

Kinfolk Magazine: Issue 4 (An Ode to Summer) from Kinfolk on Vimeo.

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I have known this beauty.
The one thing I can say about the video is that I have had
a lot of the beginning of it ~ the alone-ness but also the beauty.
But there is more to it,
at the same time.
It hints of what one is looking for,
but does not capture it,
though it does show culture and beauty and all in one
the wish for community, roots and the door to summer
that they write of opening everything.
I understand it, it is beautiful.
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This video I watched many times from Mat. Anna:



I showed it to Mr. Husband...
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So I finally got my computer-typed journal that I began over 8 years ago.
When my last computer died
I could not find my Windows MS CD to install MS Word
and thus did not have access to my files,
including the journal there.
This morning I found it and found my journal and wrote.
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I am reading Flannery O'Connor's letters.
She writes in a time when it was still more common to be
Christian.
She has a steadiness and a determination that I really like.
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I began reading Elder Paisios' Book
and now I understand more of why this priest finds it a
living book.
It is actually one of those books that makes me think
my goodness! Elder Paisios is a poet!
He captures our lives!
He sees what we struggle with!
He understands! He gets it! 
Oh, he sees! he really sees!
and yet
he gives hope! 
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Really,
Mr. Husband grabbed the book to read,
took the plastic off it,
as we had just gotten it at the local Greek monastery
a few weeks ago and had not yet begun reading it
and so it was that I began reading it and there it was ~
the feelings of stress that we experience,
the lost-ness, the sense of isolation, abandonment,
the things I have seen in my friends, in myself,
the stress of it all.
 But at the same time he writes giving us hope,
a way forward,
as if suddenly we are given something under out feet
and while we still feel like we are floundering lots of the time,
yet there is this memory that there is something
stable and with God somehow things are still possible,
endurable,
even blessed.
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As I was looking over my journal that I have kept all these years,
before I even had this blog at all,
I can see how in the last years,
with all the transitions and then marriage,
moving, sickness and life as we
have it,
that I am still in this tumbler that I have yet to see how it will
settle into and what that means for what
my life is now.
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But somehow,
when I think of Elder Paisios' book
it's all OK again,
in the sense that
Jesus is the same today, yesterday and forever.
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I read to Mr. Husband about a miracle in Russia in
our times in the Everyday Saints book
and that it is because Christ is always the same
that miracles still occur.

This church we go to
often as not
as it is nearer to us.
It is a vast beautiful church,
one that when I first entered
and saw the gleaming candle stands and the beauty
of the green carpet and unity of it all,
I immediately thought of Elizabeth Goudge books and that
it is one of her churches.
You know that before the crazy times of the 1960's
this church was standing room only?!
Must of been over 1000 worshipers here!
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Something that I did not understand
in my undergraduate years
and that somehow everyone failed to tell me
was what had happened in the past century or so.
I had a good inkling of it,
saw how the likes of writers such as
Virginia Woolf,
whose command of language I liked at the time,
was really messed up and lost.
But back then I was really distracted by
earnest feminist questions
that once I discovered the Orthodox church
just fell away.
Simply are not there.
Not questions that are suddenly
denied, repressed or ignored,
literally just not questions I have any longer.
They were answered and yet not there.
Back then,
  I was also really taken by
post-modern literary criticism
but did not realize that this often meant that
novels and literature itself were not the thing studied.
Or they were studied in a way that was never discussed
on what the text was saying or what it may be missing
or the intellectual history and what had changed
and was this change for the better?
I loved reading philosophy;
it made me feel alive somehow, back then.
Yet I knew then that some of the literary criticism
was absolute nonsense.
How one can not understand any words or
signification of anything
yet the very words saying
it's all meaningless were understood and sadly believed.
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But it was never said ~
how Christ was being hated, denied.
Or how humans were being abused by the very
philosophies of the times.
Or how things would be more and more strung out,
with broken families,
and families moving to various parts of the world
and mothers struggling to raise kids without
the help of their Aunts and Uncles or Mothers & Fathers near by.
Or that we have lost a lot of traditions and what
the world is looking at now as spirituality or traditions
is not an equal replacement.
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Back to the video ~



When I showed it to Mr. Husband
he understood it immediately and said
early Christians did the same thing,
taking children in Roman times that were abandoned 
in the dumps and Christians would go and find them
and raise them and teach them of the 
life in Christ
and how the Christians cared for the poor.
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Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever.
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“Stand in the ways and see,
And ask for the old paths, where the good way is,
And walk in it;
Then you will find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
~Jeremiah 6:16
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God is with us.