Just A Quick Synopsis Before I Write A True Post:

This weekend I was able to go on the high school ski trip.  It was an amazing weekend, full of fun, laughter, chanting ridiculous things (to borrow Mary's phrase), and a few bumps and bruises along the way.  Here's a quick run-down of the weekend while I take some time to write a real posting:

- Approximate average tempurature: 25*
- My approximate average snowboarding speed: 1 mph
- Approximate falls I took on the slopes: 50
- Number of times we played Disney Princess Old Maid: 9 (at least)
- Round of Mau played: 4
- Rules created in those rounds:  - Everytime you play a consecutive card you must name a Disney movie
                                                 - Whenever you play a 5 of any suit you must announce, "High Five!"n and proceed to give every other payer a high five.
                                                 - Whenever you play any heart from 2 through 10 you must sing the number and click your tongue.
                                                 - Whenever you play a card of the same number played by the person before you you must stand up.
                                                 - When you play an ace you must do "the Caleb" (point both index fingers toward the sky and then do a "rock on" motion with your head).
                                                 - When you play a jack you must chant, "It's a jack. *snap* It's a jack. *snap* It's a jack. *snap* It's a jack, Mr. White." (Watch "That Thing You Do!"...You'll get it.  Maybe.)
- Feet of snow dropped on us: 2
- Height of the snow - in actuality: thigh to waist
- Days we were snowed in: 1
- Angel visits: 2
- Times we chanted the "Mr. White" chant: Well, Amanda said it was 101, but I think it was probably only half that.
- Times we did "The Caleb": Probably around 80.  Really.  Maybe more. 
- Times we questioned whether the "Malt Shoppe" was a pub or an ice cream shop: 10 (it was actually both)
- Approximate number of times the chains fell off the car: 4


I promise there's more coming.


All in all, I think it was a great weekend.

The Ragman

****A poem by Walter Wangerin, Jr.****

I  saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for.

Hush, child. Hush, now, and I will tell it to you.
Even before the dawn one Friday morning I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our City. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice: "Rags!" Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.

"Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!"

"Now, this is a wonder," I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?

I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn't disappointed.

Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.

The Ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.

"Give me your rag," he said so gently, "and I'll give you another."

He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.

Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then HE began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.

"This IS a wonder," I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.

"Rags! Rags! New rags for old!"

In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.

Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.
"Give me your rag," he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, "and I'll give you mine."

The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers. And I gasped at what I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood - his own!

"Rags! Rags! I take old rags!" cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.

The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.

"Are you going to work?" he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head.
The Ragman pressed him: "Do you have a job?"

"Are you crazy?" sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket - flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.

"So," said the Ragman. "Give me your jacket, and I'll give you mine."

Such quiet authority in his voice!

The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman - and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman's arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.

"Go to work," he said.

After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, and old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.
And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider's legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.

I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.

The little old Ragman - he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket.

And he died.

Oh, how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope - because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.

I did not know - how could I know? - that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night, too.

But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.

Light - pure, hard, demanding light - slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.

Well, then I lowered my head and trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning in my voice: "Dress me."

He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him.

The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!

In my last post I referenced this poem.  I wanted to share it with you, as it is so special to me.

A Frozen Moment

Lent is coming.  I can feel it in the rhythm of the Church.  It's a strange moment - a sort of wrinkle in time: Church life speeds up and speeds up and then drastically slows down to slower than it had been before.  If you pay attention, though, you notice a frozen moment.  The wrinkle.  I don't know if the frozen moment is in the same place for every person, but I do know when I find that instant I have just become aware that the slow-down - Lent - is about to happen. 

Lent is an interesting time in the life of the Church.  It seems to me to be like Winter: from the outside it looks like things are dead.  Indeed, the music of the Church moves from major to minor, the services are dimly lit, and let's not forget about the fasting.  Self-denial is tough, and expected.  For a person who has never experienced an Orthodox Lent it seems like a pretty grim time.  But, just as in Winter, beneath that facade of death amazing things are happening.  Lent - while stripping away all the excess in our lives - can be a very busy time.  It seems as if there are at least three times as many church services every week.  Somehow there is growth in the time of sadness.  When Spring suddenly comes in the form of Easter the new shoots burst forth out of the ground that had once been covered by snow...Well, spiritual snow, at least (for those of us who live in Santa Barbara).

I was minding my own business when suddenly I realized Lent was on it's way.  Five weeks....Four weeks....Three weeks....I began to feel that dread that so often comes before Lent.  Oh, man.  I'm going to have to start fasting.  Okay.  I've done it before I can do it again.  But is fasting really all that important?  I mean really...  I started justifying why I shouldn't have to fast this year, but then I stopped when I realized that train of thought brought guilt.  I wanted the Church to stop hurtling toward Lent.  And then, as I mentioned before, I happened to look up and noticed the wrinkle.

I think it's no coincidence that my eyes were opened on the week of the Prodigal Son.  (In Orthodoxy each week that leads up to Lent commemorates a specific person, parable, or event.)  I "came to myself" and turned my direction back to facing God.  It's almost as if I had been swimming underwater and suddenly broke the surface today.  All the sounds I had heard were muffled by the water.  All the sights I had seen were blurred out.  Something about today made it all sharp.  I need Lent this year.  I need to have the junk stripped away and I need to meet God.  I need to be clothed by the Ragman.

And so I decided that I wanted to do something to prepare myself for Lent. (How Orthodox is that?  I'm preparing for the preparation.)  I decided that starting today, and throughout Lent, I am going to read books to aid my spiritual journey.  I have enough of them.  Some of them I've read before and some of them I've ignored as they sat on my bookshelf, waiting for me to open them up.  As I was looking at my bookcase a title jumped out at me: The Divine Dance.  I grabbed it and started reading.  Within the first 30 seconds I was hooked. 

All the fairy tales are true, you know.

There is a real Prince.  He came from the vast kingdom of His Father with one purpose: to woo and win His long sought-after bride.  One day, He will return to carry her away and they will be together forever.

- Robin Jones Gunn (from the Foreword)

I was amazed.  They speak my language!! I thought.  I can understand when it's put this way.  It makes perfect sense to me.  I've since read two chapters.  I'm trying to finish it quickly - while still absorbing the good stuff - because I know the danger that faces me: I get so excited about an idea and then it fizzles out.  It's the danger of over-enthusiasm, and I am one overly enthusiastic person.  It will be a struggle for me, I'm sure, to stick to this during Lent.  But I want to learn.  I want to work on the discipline. 

And so I will.

I am sure I will post many more ramblings about what I have read, or seen, or felt, or whatever this Lent.  I have to admit that I have no idea what I am talking about most of the time.   But I can promise you that I will commit right now to being totally honest in what I write.  And who knows?  Maybe we can learn a thing or two from each other this Lent.

Night-time Ramblings

It's a strange thing, waking in the middle of the night.

It's been happening a lot to me lately.  First I become aware of the fact that I should be sleeping.  There's a little bitterness to this thought, but in the next instant I become aware of the fact that I am still horizontal and am really quite cozy in my bed.  After that I hear the cars on the freeway, and I wonder where all those people are going: are the running away? running home? heading off on adventure?  Are they happy, or sad, or indifferent?  I hear the trucks downshifting on the freeway and smile as I sink further into my pillow, because while the sound inspires wanderlust it somehow also inspires comfort. 

Then the first minute or so of being awake has passed and I open my eyes.  The darkness is there, pressing down on me, but not in an uncomfortable way.  No, the darkness is a friend at this point, a warm blanket that wraps me in a strange fairyland: an alternate universe.  The thoughts are murky and surreal - thoughts I would never have during the reality of day.  But here in this place they are free to roam and wander and they very often do.  There's no self-judgement in this place - no pulling in on the reins of imagination, no worrying that other people might not understand the flights of fancy I take; that they may not be "normal."

Some time later - whether it be seconds or minutes I really don't know - I begin to notice the glow of light coming from my bedside table.  My clock.  I know the instant I see the time my friend the darkness will turn on me, but curiosity forces me to turn and look.  In that moment the darkness becomes an enemy - who knows what fairies lurk in that land?  Because anyone who has read just one fairytale knows that for every friendly sprite there is a dark fairy, bitter and out for some sort of revenge.  One legend says that when the Great Battle happened in Heaven the fairies chose to wait it out and avoid taking sides until there was a clear winner.  For this they could not remain in Heaven.  Because they had not actively participated in the battle, however, God showed compassion and threw them not into Hell but onto Earth, where they are sentenced to live until He comes again.  Some of the fairies, says the legend, have found joy on Earth: others have not.  This comfortable fairyland of darkness, the land that just moments before had encouraged whimsy, has suddenly become slightly forbidding.  I pull the covers more tightly around me and turn away from the clock. 

I catch sight of the moon and somehow - for better or for worse - reason kicks in.  I am simply Stephanie, in my room, at 1:00 or 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.  There is no fairyland.  There is no whimsy.  There are only a few more hours to sleep, and my eyelids drift closed as I say a quick prayer of thanks that I still have those hours of sleep. 

When I wake in the morning I greet the day (whether cheerfully or resentfully) and try to remember the thoughts I had in the night.  They're murky - as if I am looking at them through water, or maybe even remembering something from a storybook and not a clear thought I had thought - and I begin to question if I ever built them.  I can remember the time on the clock.  I can remember the position of the moon when I looked at it for comfort.  But the whimsy that was spun, the enchantments that were built, are gone. 

I shake my head as I get up for the day.  Maybe they'll come back to me later.