Domestic Monestary: Daily Prayer

I'm not good at consistency in anything, but especially in prayer. My life, more often than not, is a series of enthusiastic bursts, followed by neglect and distraction. But I know better than to be satisfied with such a life, so again and again I try to build ritual..two steps forward, one step back..

Building ritual in my own life begins and ends with prayer. This year, having dedicated myself to the Virgin of the Passion, I'm trying to develop a relationship with the Theotokos in both her suffering and sustaining aspects - because her role in the passion goes beyond suffering - she is there with her Son to continue nourishing Him through His Sacrifice - uniting herself, and her every moment with Him - joyful, sorrowful, and mundane.

From her I am trying to learn to put my prayers into Time - to pull moments from each day and fill them up with holiness. To light my candles and stand before the altar, opening wide the tiny doors that fill my wall, and welcoming in the saints who peer at me through them. We have a slowly growing ritual: Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Noon Prayer, Divine Mercy. Not a perfect ritual, not one that lasts through all distractions, but a beginning. January is all about beginnings. 

How do you include ritualized prayer in your daily life?

St. Nikolas

Yesterday was ideal for walking in the mist. It hung heavily among the trees, making little paths appear, where no paths are on bright days, and playing tricks with the light. I would have liked to walk deep into the woods, following the mist and losing myself in the frost-painted ferns, but Luba was uneasy, she thought she saw things, and hunted for scents all afternoon, which made me uneasy - maybe there was something out there, lurking. A stray hunter, the neighbor dog who likes to wander, or something more. I stuck close to home and started a Danish pastry, insulting Luba’s nose but obeying her warning all the same. The rain came at night. It sounds so mournful, but I’m grateful it’s warm enough for rain - not ice or snow.

 

Today I’m practicing croissants again, along with the Danish. I made a batch last week that were good, but missing out on some of the flaky lightness, the new batch is on it's second turn. My husband is thrilled. He loves when I'm working on a recipe again and again.

 

St. Nikolas brought Yarrow a pair of new black shoes, she spent the morning stomping around in them and admiring herself in the mirror. He brought me two boxes of tiny red candles to make the season bright. Last night was our biggest success so far with night-weaning Yarrow, I'm thrilled with the hope that someday in the not-too-distant future my nights will be broken only by the stove and my own restless thoughts.

Autumn

This morning I lit the stove to drive away the chill. It isn’t cold enough yet to keep the stove going all night, but the mornings have needed heat. This is the earliest we’ve started burning since moving out here, usually it’s closer to the end of the month, or even into October when we start wanting morning fires.

I did little else though. Petka refused to nap, and she was so delightfully happy I couldn't work up the need to try to force a nap. Now it's too late to nap, and she's running around in pink and white. Falling, laughing, and getting up again. Carrying books from the shelf to her father and back again.

I brought in most of the laundry my husband hung to dry while I was away, walked for the mail and watched Luba chase grasshoppers around the yard. We picked tomatoes and poppies and smiled at the sunflowers. I love being home.

Simplicity: Food, Meals, and Beauty II

 

I’m too often guided by whim. In an effort to simplify, I’ve been working on building a pantry full of food to add to our garden produce (mainly eggplant and tomatoes) to make a variety of foods that are simple, beautiful, healthy, and interesting. I want beautiful meals - meals that are more than just one dish, meals that are bright and sensual and satisfying in a holistic way, we will be less inclined to go out, or to run to the store “for just a few things” every other day. The biggest trouble is refrigeration, we can’t keep perishables for more than a day or two without ice. We’re still in the market for a used propane fridge, a small one, with just enough room for a couple leftovers, a few quarts of milk, and yogurt. The trouble with me is, I let this little limitation affect my attitude toward meal prep. I allow my mealtime aesthetic to be damaged by a simple limitation, one that a majority of cooks in the world, and throughout history have shared.

        Another limitation is financial, we aren’t wealthy, and I often want food that really isn’t within our budget. But planning meals well, and using the space I have to store ingredients that do keep is the best way to deal with that frustration. In the summer, with access to my own garden, I try to craft meals around what I have access to: eggs, tomatoes, summer squashes, eggplant, herbs, and others.

The point really isn’t to have an overwhelming variety of meals, but to have beautiful, filling, healthy meals. Meals that bring us together around the table with flickering lamps, good conversation, and love.

        My attitude toward our meals has been evolving, in a subtle way. The ideas are the same but the feeling behind them is growing stronger. I’m planning a winter of hearty soups, crusty bread, preserves, good cheeses, and an abundance of pork.

A Typical Day

Christie, over at Everything to Someone did a similar post, that inspired me to post on a typical summer day:

 

5:00am: Wake. Feed the pigs, start coffee, make oatmeal, try to write a bit. If I’m lucky, Yarrow will sleep longer, if I’m not, she is generally content to nestle in bed while I work, but not while I write. Seth gets up around 5:40, to eat and pray with me before leaving for work.

6:00am: NPR and neatening up the yurt. There’s more work here than you’d think. Yes, it’s small, but with no closets and dirt all around, our little house can get messy quickly. Along with neatening, I check the chickens, feed Luba and let her out, and pick whatever vegetables need picking.

9:00am: If Yarrow didn’t sleep in at all, now is when she starts to need a little nap. If she sleeps, I write, or do one of the many projects outside (right now, it’s the little yard fence), and if I’m really tired, I nap too.

When Yarrow’s up, we do more ‘work’ outdoors or in, depending on the weather, and the general mood. There’s a lot to do, but working with Yarrow is sometimes very slow. She wants to help though, so we work together. Our day flows through lunch and play, work, and little walks. I sometimes wonder where the day has gone, and other times, I wonder why the time goes by so slowly.

We walk for the mail, go for a run, or nap if she hasn’t slept much that day.

2:00pm: The afternoon is generally a time for baking, if I bake that day, and recently, it’s been a time for making preserves and canning them.

4/5:00pm: Seth comes home, we have tea together, while Luba begs and squirms and Yarrow imitates her.

In the evening, Seth works on the kitchen building, plays with Yarrow and tells me the gossip from work. We read over coffee and listen to music. I throw when I can, and watch the sky get dark slowly.

It sounds a little dull put down like this, but I love my days. I’m rich in time and in beauty.

Daily Life

Summer days are long. As we creep toward the solstice I try too often to stretch myself in the daylight hours. I know the night will come eventually, and these cloudy nights are deep black - eating up the lamplight. But we moved to the words in rebellion against the “Protestant work-ethic” - the life of trying to get ahead. We moved in pursuit of an older style of living, a rhythm of days and of hours. So though I do fill my days with regular chores and exciting new projects, I break up the day into manageable sections divided by tea.

My husband leaves for work at six, and except for checking my pigs and chickens, I spend the early hours indoors drinking coffee and neatening the yurt. Later in the morning, while Petka naps to Suzanne Nance’s classical selections, I sit down beneath the dome to write, to plan my week, pay bills, and think. When she wakes, Petka and I collect eggs and send the chickens out into the yard. She likes eggs with bread and chives at lunch, I like green tea and Taproot. On sunny days we’re outside building our front garden, visiting the pigs, tending vegetables and walking down to collect our letters. On our last sunny day, Yarrow played with sticks among the blueberries while I primed the bookshelf. She’s happiest outdoors, even in the rain she’d rather be greeting her pigs, smiling shyly at toads, or raking the dirt into piles with stones and sticks all around.

Afternoon tea, with my husband home, is the hardest to plan consistently. I try to fix it will Petka rests, but too often I’m tempted by other things - by the dirt outside or the wheel in the kitchen. I’m too easily distracted; still, we manage. And a chance for a sit down conversation is a common part of our evening - even if it is conversation over the sounds of barking and crying, or before a date with the rototiller. The sun won’t go down before 8:30 now, and we’ve plenty of time to enjoy the primary good of our lifestyle: community. Off the grid, away in the woods we build a domestic church in the monastic style - ora et labora.

Laundry Day II

I've given up my little laundry barn. My attempt to go regularly - every Tuesday - to wash fell apart there thanks to too many people with no sense of ritual and too few machines to accomodate us all. One week I would have the place to myself, another week I would come in to find the whole place full, and a line formed for the washers. As I'm in the process of preparing for winter: bringing out our stored warm fabrics to clean and hang, I would rather go to a laundromat I can depend on. This week, I've rediscovered Betty's. It's clean, close, and free from overly-friendly attendants. It is more expensive, but only slightly, as the machines are bigger, and there are enough of them to garuntee I won't be stuck waiting with a fussy baby, dirty clothes and nowhere to go. Best of all, Betty's has wi-fi, so waiting around for clothes to dry should be a lot more fun!

Now laundry day is Thursdays, the day I meet my mother-in-law in town, though I may go twice this week, to make up for delays. I have so many tapastries to clean before they can start keeping out the cold.