13 January 2011. Our “Smaller Brothers”… Братья наши меньшие

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Video. Русины…Борьба! Carpatho-Russians… to Arms!

Here’s a short little vid (2 1/2 minutes) on the brave Carpatho-Russian people. Reflect on this… the Republican Party supported (and supports) the Galician Uniate nationalist nutters. That is, if you support the GOP, you support a political party that not only coddles the enemies of the Church, it helps them in their attacks upon us. It’s one thing for Sectarians to support such nastiness… but Orthodox people should not. You can support the courageous Carpatho-Russian people, or, you can support the Tea Party… but not both. You must choose… do choose carefully and do choose well.

BMD

13 January 2011. A Point of Unity… Haitian Woman Praying for Her Country…

If you believe the popular media, Haiti’s a land overrun by voodoo, witch doctors, and the occult. No doubt, it’s there (and much more than it should be)… but Christianity is there too. On the one extreme, you have the witch doctors and their necromancy… on the other extreme, you have proselytising Sectarians with their enthusiastic excesses. In the middle, one finds Christian believers (mostly Catholic, but there are some Orthodox, too).

Yes… there’s much that’s WRONG in Haiti… but NOT everything is crank. Don’t listen to the Proddie propaganda… look at the Haitian woman with her rosary… now, aren’t you ashamed of listening to Anglo-Saxon triumphalistic rubbish?

BMD

Luminous People… Lyudmila

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Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith, “A whole I plann’d,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!”

But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who mouldest men;

And since, not even while the whirl was worst

Did I, to the wheel of life

With shapes and colours rife,

Bound dizzily, mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

So, take and use Thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as plann’d!

Lest age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Rabbi Ben Ezra

Robert Browning

Here’s a link to the complete text of the poem:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rabbi_Ben_Ezra

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Editor’s Foreword:

Writing about worthless gutter trash like Sarah Palin and prattling posturing poseurs like Gregory Jensen leaves a very sour taste in my mouth, so, I wanted to find something about a wonderful and positive person… and I did. Let Lyudmila inspire you with her true beauty…

BMD

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Lyudmila Mikhailovna Korolyova… In the course of our chat, I naïvely asked her when she planned to get together with her friends. She replied that she’s hardly got anyone left anymore… she’s almost 90, almost all of her friends and relatives have passed on. Nevertheless, despite this, she hasn’t lost heart; she carries on, even though she’s almost completely alone in life. Her mind is sharp, her memory is excellent, she’s full of zest for life, and she still loves to read. Every day, she takes a walk, she doesn’t feel down at all, although she shared with me that she has to remind herself to not to forget to remove the key from the door. She had a rich and eventful life… there were many difficulties, but there were light-hearted moments, too. Through her aunt, her family is related to Tolstoy. In Soviet times, she worked as a teacher at the institute, and she was involved in the theatre there. Despite her external fragility, she still has “backbone”, she has internal resources rarely seen amongst younger people of our generation. She didn’t have any complaints about life; I could only discern two things to which she expressed opposition. One was Stalin. The second was, “Too many people are stealing these days, that’s unfair”. As I said, she’s got no complaints about life. Yes, now, it seems that she’s fond of reading German books on philosophy…

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On the wall… a portrait of her mother painted by her father…

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When I brought the camera in closer for a closeup of her hand, she asked, “What were you shooting?” I replied, “The lines of your life”…

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Despite the vast difference in our ages, our communication was easy and unforced…

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There was a rare moment of outside contact… one of her remaining friends rang her up…

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She used to play the piano… not anymore… not with her hands the way that they are now…

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11 January 2011

Photo Polygon

http://photopolygon.com/free-posting/details/19653

Editor’s Afterword:

This post reminded me of the great poem by Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra… that’s why I prefaced it with quotes from it. Yet, I found, in the end, this was just another way I had of dealing with Denise’s death… no doubt, it’s going to crop up now and again as a motivator and leitmotif, for a while, at least. Death is a mystery… you won’t go away unscathed from its touch, that is, if you were truly close to another soul. I haven’t plumbed the depths of this yet… it’ll come, in God’s good time, and in His ways, which aren’t ours. However, I do know one thing… I must stay the course… come what may. Life is too serious and much too short. You must choose… either you can follow the truth, or, you can follow comfortable lies… I choose the former, what about you?

BMD