Month: December 2021

Blessings, all

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As the sign in front of an Aroostook County church advised:

When temptation knocks,

let Jesus open the door.

~*~

Yes, I had to laugh.

It all starts with the events being remembered today.

The quote also flips the quotation from Revelation, which I recall with its association with an illustration on my grandparents’ dining room wall, where he’s knocking at a thick wooden door. Maybe that’s a symbol of our own hearts, too many days … closed, hard, and dark.

Today, let him enter, in spirit, and dine with you and those you love most dearly.

May you be spared all temptations in this blessed day.

 

Under cardboard

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

still wondering why I’m amazed what one discovers in each move, why, unpacking is almost like Christmas, even the delights of discovering the workings of another’s mind, like Evelyn’s neat way of wrapping electrical cords to appliances (Mennonite heritage appears in curious ways) moving forward, rather than sideways or backwards on ice, your friend who made it thus far and nothing much broke

Some we lost too early

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I can’t help reflecting on some acquaintances who departed this life way too early.

Here are ten from my life.

  1. Carp: He was the heart of my high school newspaper staff, the cutup with a heart of gold. He had health issues, though, and a few years after our graduation, he suffered a rare and months-long decline that completely changed his personality.
  2. Orpha: Something similar happened to this Mennonite-Amish young nurse who came to Baltimore from Lancaster County.
  3. Cynthia: The wife of one of my best friends, she was a victim of cancer. I don’t think she was yet 40.
  4. Charles: My best friend ever, we knew each other during my three years in Baltimore and then went separate directions. I still don’t want to know what really happened in that hotel room, but I do wish I could have eased his pain.
  5. Bill: He had come through some difficult years and then found and married the love of his life. Unfortunately, he came down with a rare infection. We grieve especially for his widow. Life can be so unfair.
  6. Jean: She was a year older than me but definite proof of vitality in your sixties. I expected another ten good years of faithful service from her in our teamwork, but then a virulent cancer kicked in and moved quickly.
  7. Cissy: She had just retired, was delighting in her volunteer work at the local theater, but then she had a hard fall at home. She was always in motion when she worked with us.
  8. Larry: He knew how to command a room and then lead. Photojournalism powerhouse up almost until the heart attack.
  9. Swami: No warning. The ashram didn’t last long without her.
  10. My Grandfather Munroe: Three years before my birth, while giving a toast over dinner, he had a heart attack and died on the table. He was in his early forties and would have definitely had a big positive impact on my childhood had he lived.

 

Passin’ dem family boneyards along the route

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of my more familiar drives while living in Dover meant crossing over into Maine on my way to or from the Antique House.

Within a seven-mile stretch of the roadway, there were at least 16 family cemeteries – some with only two or three visible stones.

It’s all the more striking when you realize that two separate two-mile stretches have none at all, so the burials actually occur in just three miles. In those parts, you probably couldn’t turn around without encountering a tombstone.

Many of the graveyards are overgrown, with some surrounded by iron railings.

I’m guessing there are more, if we were going more slowly and looking even closer.

Still, we’re left wondering about the families, some who settled the grounds in the 1600s, and how long they remained.

But on the drive, each one is gone in a flash.

 

In my dreams

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just because I watch the stars doesn’t mean I trust them.

We had foxes at the bird feeder and viewed them as they slinked off into the woods, akin to Garrison Hill, and next to it was a bear.

I was a championship swimmer and a symphony violinist not actually competing or performing but enjoying the status.

At the airplane crash scene as a reporter, I helped put bodies in valet bags.

 

Now I’m wondering how our utility bills stack up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

With a landmass of 16,577 square miles, the country of Denmark is almost exactly half the size of Maine and has six-times the population of the Pine Tree State. Yet Denmark uses close to 10,000 megawatts of power annually, about double of what Maine uses.

If my math’s right, that means they’re using only a third of what we do, per capita.

How do they do it?

We both have cold winters with long nights. And most of us rely on fuel oil for heat.

And, for the record, nearly half of Maine is uninhabited, year-‘round, meaning the lived-in part of Maine’s about the size of Denmark. They do stay warm and keep the lights on, don’t they?

Just to get Saint Nicholas clear

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

He’s not a synonym for the fat man who comes down the chimney at Christmas, especially in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, where he’s especially revered. Let’s set the record straight.

  1. He was born in 270 CE to wealthy parents of Greek descent in Patara, now southeastern Turkey.
  2. After they died of an epidemic, he went to live with an uncle, also named Nicolas, who was bishop of Patara and guided him into the priesthood. After ordination, he gave away his large inheritance to those in need, establishing his reputation for generosity.
  3. During the first half of his life, it was illegal to be a Christian in the Roman Empire. Even so, he was ordained bishop of Myra, also in southeastern Turkey, before being imprisoned for refusing to worship idols.
  4. After his release from prison in 305, he zealously made the rounds of local pagan temples and shrines, smashing their idols and turning their temples to dust, as the account goes.
  5. In 325, Nicholas was sufficiently esteemed to be summoned by Emperor Constantine to a gathering to discuss issues Christians were facing. There, at the First Ecumenical Council, he became so outraged at hearing views voiced by Arius (“the first heretic”) that he either punched or slapped the offender. He was then stripped of his bishop’s robes and thrown into prison because it was illegal to strike someone in the presence of the emperor, to say nothing of his own violation of his bishop’s code of non-violence or self-restraint. While in shackles, Nicholas repented of his actions but not his views, and then received a nighttime visitation by Christ and the Theotokos (Virgin Mary). Constantine freed him the next morning. (Nicholas is somehow not mentioned in the writings of any of the people who were actually at the sessions. Ahem. It’s still a hot story.)
  6. In another report, a formerly wealthy man had three daughters of marriageable age but not the money for a dowry or prika for them to be married to good men. He feared they might become slaves. When Nicolas heard of the man’s plight, he came by the house secretly at night and tossed a sack of gold through the window, where it bounced into a sock or a shoe. This happened each time before a daughter’s wedding. The third time, the father saw who the secret donor was. Nicolas pleaded with him to keep the secret. In another, more salacious version, the father had planned to sell off his daughters, into either slavery or prostitution, and Nicholas arranged to save them all from a host of sins.
  7. He is attributed with many miracles, including saving drowning people at sea, rescuing three innocent soldiers from execution, and restoring at least one mortally injured sailor.
  8. He’s widely known as Nicholas the Wonderworker and one of the highly regarded Eastern Orthodox saints.
  9. He died peacefully in his sleep in 343 in his old age, that is, 73.
  10.  In 1087, Italian sailors from Bari seized at least part of the saint’s remains from the church where he was buried in Myra, over the objections of Greek Orthodox monks. Two years later, Pope Urban II personally placed those relics under the altar at the new Basilica di San Nicola in Bari. For the Eastern Orthodox and Turks alike, it remains theft.

~*~

So much for Santa Claus, eh?