introducing the Talented MK!

Mark Kate's video debut, with a little help from her dear friend "Miss Katie". Enjoy!

I've watched this over and over as it keeps a huge smile on my face!

We're the Lucky ones!

"Let us Begin with Joy"

Let us enter the Fast with joy, O faithful.
Let us not be sad.
Let us cleanse our faces with the waters of dispassion,
blessing and exalting Christ forever.

Let us begin the Fast with joy.
Let us give ourselves to spiritual efforts.
Let us cleanse our souls.
Let us cleanse our flesh.
Let us fast from passions as we fast from foods,
taking pleasure in the good works of the Spirit
and accomplishing them in love
that we may be made worthy to see the passion of
Christ our God
and His Holy Pascha,
rejoicing with spiritual joy.
(First Friday Matins)

Forgive me a sinner...

By your prayers for the next 40 days, my wavering attentions make room for Great Lent.

I'll do all this by falling, getting up and falling to get up again and again.

May the mirror of my sins be ever before me. May I keep forgiving...

In all my ways, may I acknowledge Him, who is Christ the Lord.

May I learn that Great Lent is more than the abstaining of food but rather that which ought not come into my thoughts nor dare reach my wretched tongue.

In fervent prayers, my I abstain from the flesh of the world as God directs my path where I struggle to trust in Him, the Bread of Life!

May I endure to fight the good fight while praying, through the intercessions of the Most Holy Theotokos and all the Saints, for His strength in attaining True Love, till the end of my days.

May I learn to quiet my mind - placing Truth into my heart - to make room for He who cannot be contained!

God forgives a sinner, as must I, a sinner, forgive...

Blessed Lent!

Everything out in the open...

While speaking to a friend on the phone, FDR mentioned how much I missed my laundry chute and how EVERYTHING now is thrown into a hamper inside our room -- out in the open where others may happen to smell it -- EVERYDAY!
I laughed...remembering how blissfully simple it was to toss all our dirty laundry down the chute into the darkness of the basement. I laugh...knowing full well that our dirty laundry is OUT IN THE OPEN for anyone to view.

Living at our old home was an oasis; it was an island of our very own. Privileged few saw anything out of place -- unfortunately only available to those residing inside. Nevertheless, here on campus in an apartment building among several other families, the magnifying glass is in front of me. Did I mention the laundry area is right outside our door? All who do their dreaded must-do chore hear, hopefully not always, the going ons of the Barberg gang.
Yesterday was an unexpected blessing. After minutes from throwing my back out, this community came calling offering all the help needed from watching/feeding children, setting up a chiropractor appointment, preparing a meal, precisely situating the heating pad while taking in the aroma of the un-showered moi. And then, then, the laundry was washed and folded!

A self-proclaimed (and many on-going confessions) control freak...a sassy "I'll-do-it-myself"; *this* allowing others IN is uncomfortable territory for me. But since I was stuck literally on my back, I had no other option and relinquished control. Letting go where others are, indeed, welcome into my mess, inspite of this messy soul, and are willingly embraced.
To think that I had the nerve to believe one could handle anything on their own -- by hiding away -- by hibernating the soul! God-given love is the remedy. Carefully, I learn, for myself that is, that by allowing others to truly love you, to receive God's grace, and forgiveness... it is then one may start to heal...Lord have mercy!

So, for now, I actually like my dirty laundry out there while tending to it more often -- rechecking and rechecking to make sure I am well enough to help others the way they have helped me.
Thank you!

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him who is alone when he falls, and doesn’t have another to lift him up." Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Memory Lane...

My twin sister, Kimmy, and me at our First Holy Communion when we were Catholic before we were Protestant and where I am now, Eastern Orthodox...whew! :)

I think I am 17 here...with the Amy Grant look-a-like hair do!

Senior Prom 1991!

Bear with me as I embellish my listening pleasure -- a little. Upon a stimulating response from a friend, and with all my affection, I shall fill the need to endulge our memories...

Last word

Lately, okay more than once a day, I am entangled in this web of where I fail miserably in trying my hardest, against my will no less, in keeping my mouth shut. The battle of the wills surmounts in the never-ending need to get the last word in, or is that out? In other words, I would like to break the cycle of continuous arguments with my children.

This largely occurs with my older two whenever it comes to chores, school work, when, how long and where they can spend time with their friends. I mean every time I say "no", "did you do your chores?" or "How about finishing your Math" etc... The correct answer being: "yes, Ma'am" or "no, Ma'am". However, I hear moans, groans, and the infamous but, but...it's not my fault!

Now reader, we have schedules of "to-do" lists for the work that is expected to be accomplished throughout a given day -- for all within the family. No one is exempt...For Goodness sakes! this is not at all new to anyone. So why the resistance? Why the weeping and gnashing of teeth? ARGH!!!!

I realize that yes, in fact, I am the parent here and not trying to make friends with my on-the-threshold-adolescent children. On many occasions I have been dubbed "the mean mommy" Although, I know this is par-for-the-course, yet it stings...a tad bit. No mom wants to be the meany. Yet, I know my actions and reactions toward the children's balking is to be firm while being loving. I lose site of loving them while remaining firm and lose the firmness while loving. The truth is I have never done this before. I've never raised a "tween" nor read the-book-of-the-month-club and lack the wisdom to write one on this topic.

I love my children very much. Let me be honest, there are those times -- those moments when, well, I'd like to hop on the next available plane and head for Bali or Greece to escape it all. Reality hits knowing that I could not nor should I do this...unless, of course, the trip is well thought out and planned with my husband's blessing :)

While my finger-tips quickly form the words of my heated thoughts, dear hubby is preparing dinner, so that is an escape. In the background the two youngest are arguing about who knows what. Hannah puts out the fire. Colin helps his father set the table. It is, afterall, his "kitchen duty". So, that is also a break, right?

Be thankful in the small moments. Ah! yes, to remain grateful.

Pray for me, a sinful mother, who seriously has no clue what she is doing. I live and pray only by God's grace - day to day. Thank God that is all He gives us...any more and this gal would find the nearest crazy house. Oh yes, she already lives there...

"Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth. A door of enclosure about my lips. Incline not my heart to evil words, to make excuses in sins..."Psalm 140:3-4a

Moments at the March for Life...

In the midst of the massive amount of God's faithful believers, here my family stood for four hours...may the prayers of all be according to God's ultimate will.

FDR with Hannah and Colin

I love this shot (well done DH) where you can get a glimpse of the amount of faithful that showed up on this beautiful sunny Washington DC day holding onto hope through their prayers

Met. JONAH of the OCA giving the first address to the faithful

Hannah united with Srs. Vicki and Martha from the Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration in Ellwood City, PA...happy smiles all around!

one of the many icon banners of St. Elizabeth and the Theotokos, as expectant mothers, bearing in their wombs the Forerunner John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, the Son of God!

Hannah with a friend, Lucy

FDR in the thick of it all...awesome!

The following is taken from the National Review by Frederica Matthews-Green

Just two days after the inauguration, another crowd fills Washington
streets, the pro-lifers who gather each year for the "March for Life." This
January 22 marks the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade, and after so many years
with little change or improvement, the nation has grown a bit blasé about this
annual demonstration against abortion. We still say abortion is a "hot issue"-
but if you think about it, it's not as hot as it used to be. The abortion
controversy used to command cover space on magazines, and TV networks showcased
hour-long debates. You don't see that anymore.

You could say that
people just got tired of hearing about it. Year after year the two sides said
mostly the same thing, and nothing much changed. Eventually, public attention
was bound to sidle off to a newer, more exciting topic (gay marriage, anyone?).
When attention drifted, it was the pro-choice side that had command of the
status quo.
And you could say that that settles that; from now on there will
be less and less talk about abortion, and we'll just get used to things the way
they are.

But I can imagine things going a different way. Not
soon-maybe not till the baby boomers have passed from the scene-but it's
possible that a younger generation will see abortion very differently. And the
reason is, as the saying goes, "Nobody knows when life begins." With abortions
now running around 1.2 million per year, the total number of abortions since Roe
v Wade is about 49 million. That's a big number-about a sixth of the US
population. It's a big number, if you're not absolutely sure that it's *not*
life.

After all, if you saw a little girl hit by a car, you're
going to yell, "Get an ambulance!" not "Get a shovel!" It's in the very fabric
of humanity to be on the side of life, if there's the faintest hope that life
exists. We don't throw children away when we're not sure whether they're alive
or not. And, as the pro-choice side never stops saying, it's not that they're
positive a fetus is "not alive" - it's that they're not sure.

When
I was a young fire-breathing college feminist in the early 70's, we didn't see
abortion as a melancholy private decision-it was an act of liberation. By
choosing abortion, a woman could show that she was the only person in charge of
her life, and bowed to no one else's control. But this formulation turned sour
as the grief felt by post-abortion woman began to accumulate. The flip side of
autonomy is loneliness, and for many women, their abortion decision was linked
to emotional abandonment.

And then there was the advent of
ultrasound technology, enabling live images of a baby moving in the womb. In
1989, word went round the pro-life movement to order the tape of pollster
Harrison Hickman's presentation at that year's NARAL convention. On it he said,
"Nothing has been as damaging to our cause as the advances in technology which
have allowed pictures of the developing fetus, because people now talk about
that fetus in much different terms than they did 15 years ago. They talk about
it as a human being, which is not something that I have an easy answer how to
cure."

So there are some reasons to think that the abortion
question has not been settled, but has merely gone underground. That might be a
necessary step. It has to go away so that it can be rediscovered, and seen in a
fresh light.

I don't expect that reconsideration soon: my Boomer
generation will never see abortion as anything other than the wise and
benevolent gift we bestowed on all future generations. We still control the
media, the universities, and so forth, and it will take time for all of us to
topple off the end of the conveyer belt.

But the time is coming
when a younger generation will be in charge, and they may well see abortion
differently. They could see it, not as "a woman's choice" but as a form of
state-sanctioned violence inflicted on their generation. It was their brothers
and sisters who died; anyone under the age of 36 could have been aborted (and
somewhere around a fourth or a fifth of all pregnancies, in fact, are aborted).
A younger generation might feel a strange kinship with the brothers and sisters,
classmates and coworkers, who are missing.

And I'm afraid that, if
they do see things that way, they aren't going to go easy on my generation. Our
acceptance of abortion is not going to look like an understandable goof. The
next generation can fairly say, "It's not like they didn't know." They'll say,
"After all, they had sonograms." And they may judge us to be
monsters.

Maybe that won't happen. Maybe future generations won't
think twice about abortion. But even we who have grown sick of talking about it
still harbor some doubts. In particular, people who think of themselves as
defenders of the weak and the oppressed must have many a quiet moment when they
wonder, "How, in this one issue, did I wind up on the side that's defending
death?"

There's a lot of ambivalence out there, and a lot of
unspoken grief too, I think. So you never know. Pro-choice may have won the
day-but sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the
grave. When that time comes, another generation will sit in judgment of ours.
And they are not obligated to be kind.********Frederica Mathewes-Greenwww.frederica.com