Seraphim's Seraphim

Blessed Pelagia Ivanovna Serebrenikova was born in the Russian town of Arzamass in October of 1809. Her parents were rather too busy with the trials of raising a family, and she occupied the position of scape-goat in the family. When she was a young girl, she suffered from a long bout of fever. Some people speculate that this fever affected her brain and made her mad. Perhaps. She was also much buffeted for her dreamy ways. When she became of marriagable age, her mother married her, despite her wishes to the contrary, to a nice young man of a good family. He was industrious and ambitious, but Pelagia did not want to be married; she wanted instead to dedicate her life to Christ, her first love. She had visited St. Seraphim who talked long and privately with her, and instructed her to go to the Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent. She was always giving away all her belongings to the poor and angering her husband, who beat her unmercifully, and even chained her with heavy chains. When her firstborn child was born, she carried it in her apron to her mother and gave the child to its grandmother to raise, even giving up the joys of motherhood in an effort to follow her heart's desire. She did the same when her second child was born. Finally, she was allowed to live in the Convent, but her sufferings did not end there. Whether because she was mad from the childhood fever, or from the severe beatings, or because of secret instructions from St. Seraphim, she took up the podvig of a Fool for Christ. She would frequently visit those who disliked her the most and vex them in order to receive their buffets and insults. She would sit on the floor in the doorway so that whenever anyone came in or out, it was impossible not to step on her. Her whole life was one of self-denial and of seeking out humility by encouraging and welcoming insults and blows from those around her. She was granted the gifts of clairvoyance and of directing souls, and many visitors to the convent as well as many nuns became her spiritual children. She never did anything without the blessing of her beloved abbess. She reposed on January 30, 1884. She loved much.

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More of her Life here.
Painting is acrylic on canvas in my possession.

What have you done?

I was reading Philippa's blog this morning about "What haven't you done," and I thought I'd just filch her idea, but give it a twist and make my own list of things that I have done, including the things I listed in my comment.

• I’ve baked all my family’s bread and developed my own high protein recipes for bread.
  
• I’ve watched a spider weave its web.
  
• I’ve held a newborn kitten in my hand while it died.
  
• I’ve raised three baby wrens when a cat killed their mother.
• I've cried when family members died, and laughed when others were born.
  
• I’ve trapped and relocated wild animals.
  
• I’ve marveled at the Rockies while flying over head.
  
• I’ve held my newborn granddaughter in my arms and seen the look of wonder in her mother's, my own daughter, eyes.
  
• I’ve danced with my husband in the kitchen when there was no music playing–at least none that anybody else could hear.
• I've seen my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, and they're both still around a decade later.
  
• I've watched storm clouds gather, form, and drop their load of rain.
  
• I've felt both pride and fear as my children started school for the first time, and again when they left home for college, and again when they got married, and again when they told me they were expecting.
• I've been awakened by birdsong in the morning.
• I've been lulled to sleep by the sound of frogs and crickets.
  
• I've watched the full moon come up.
  
• I've seen Haley's Comet.
• I've felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
• I've sung in a girls' trio.
  
• I've felt the warmth of friendship.
• I've seen the wonder in a child's face during midnight Pascha services.
• I've read books while swaying in the breeze in the top of a tree.
• I've gone fishing with my Dad and Mom.
• I've felt both the emptiness of loneliness and the warmth of companionship.
• I've climbed part way up Mt. Shasta.
• I've felt the freshness of the morning breeze and seen the dawn turn the sky rosy.
• I've watched the stars come out on a clear, moonless night.
• I've walked in the shade of trees still laden with their blossoms, while the earth beneath my feet was already strewn with their petals; and breathed in that sweet, Spring freshness.
  

What about you? What have you done?

Leaving Spring and Entering Summertime - The Baking Season of our Souls

I've noticed this week that the privet has dropped all its flowers and the honeysuckle, what little of it there is this year, is past its prime. The only flower left in my yard this year is a beautiful lily. Perhaps it is appropriate that an "Easter Lily" is the last flower to bloom before the heat of summer kills back Spring's rush to life--just as we leave the Paschal season and go into another season of inner work. I got to thinking about how the baking heat of summer is just beginning and how long that season is compared to the other seasons down here in Dixie. Just as a baker mixes the ingredients and then bakes the product, Spring is perhaps the time we store up sweetness in our lives before the heat of life comes to bake us into the product of whatever ingredients we've put into ourselves.

During the deadness of Winter, we sleep. We go into ourselves and rest from the labors of Autumn's harvest work. Then, at the end of Winter and just before Spring fully arrives, Lent comes and awakens us to ourselves and to the inner work of repentance. And Spring, of course, is the Paschal season--the taking in of sweetness in our lives--the foreshadowing of Paradise--the gathering together of all the "ingredients" we've gathered during our sojourn into repentance--before returning to the baking heat of life.

During the learning seasons of Lent and Pascha, we search for and endeavor to restore our "soul's powers to their former nobility." This brings us an unutterable sweetness. This "sweetness" we experience during the season of Pascha brings very sharply to our awareness the happiness we hope to share with the angels in eternity. Happiness in this world seems to be very elusive, but that's just a "seeming." We have happiness if we just look for it. It's not easy. We're too caught up in our troubles and our failed or unaccomplished goals in life. We start out life with dreams and expectations of how our life will be; and then, of course, Life intervenes and all our dreams and expectations go down the drain while we watch with a "silent scream" on our faces, helpless to do anything about it. So, we have no happiness because we mourn the "can't be" instead of what we actually have in our hands. Actually, we're so busy mourning what we don't have that we literally cannot see what we have. We need to stop for just a minute or two (these days that can seem like a very long time) just to open our eyes and be aware, MINDFUL, of what is really right in front of us and work with that. Lent and Pascha help us to sharpen that mindfulness--that spiritual vigilance necessary for our growth into personhood--while the drudging, heat times of our lives allow us to put these things into practice.

During the "baking season" of our lives, all the ingredients we've gathered during the learning seasons of Lent with its inner work of self-awareness and repentance and of Pascha with its foretaste of Paradise and eternity come together in our souls and form us into a new person. During this time those things that we have learned--those things that we have re-discovered and have tried to grasp--come together in a "convergence of the principal virtues in an activity that accords with nature" through the practical application--the practice of them--during the drudging, working time of our lives. Who and what kind of person this is will depend on what "ingredients" we allow to remain in the mix during Lent and Pascha. The good thing is, though, we get to do this every year; so if we get the mix wrong one year, we have another chance the next year.