Month: September 2022

Michaelmas

/ Rachel Fenton / 4 Comments

September 29th in the Western calendar is known as Michaelmas, or the feast of St. Michael and all Archangels. It’s a joyful feast, celebrating the angelic powers who serve the Lord and war against the demonic forces. St. Michael specifically is known as the Commander of the Lord’s army, and is the one who will cast Satan into Hell.

Our icon of the three Archangels: Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael

As an Eastern Orthodox Christian who lives in the West, I take great delight in living in both calendars. One of the beloved traditions of Orthodoxy is celebrating the Name Day of your patron saint. It’s similar to a birthday: your patron saint is chosen when you come into the Church. Though it’s a family name, we also named our son after Saint Michael because he has a very special place in my life: as a Protestant, my faith was fortified at a church camp called St. Michael’s Conference. When I began inquiring into Orthodoxy, I was enrolled as a catechumen at Saint Michael’s Orthodox Church in Whittier, CA. At this church I later met my husband, and was chrismated as an Orthodox Christian.

The fountain at my first church, Saint Michael’s in Whittier

At some point I will write more on the beautiful tradition of patron saints and how they help us participate in the cloud of witnesses that St. Paul talks about — but this is not that post. Instead, I want to talk about how we celebrated Michael’s Western Name Day and enjoyed some of the British traditions around Michaelmas.

Michaelmas has a rich history: it was celebrated in the Middle Ages as the days become shorter and colder, symbolizing the last day of the harvest and asking St. Michael’s protection against the coming darkness. One of my favorite resources on British holidays and folklore is a book called Cattern Cakes and Lace. Many of the holidays they describe overlap with church feasts, and they give delightful recipes and ideas for celebration.

Blackberries and goose are the two primary foods eaten on Michaelmas: blackberries because of the British folktale that Satan fell into a blackberry bramble when he was cast down from heaven, and goose because of a superstition it would protect against financial hardship in the coming year.

Given we’re in the midst of moving, I wasn’t quite up to cooking a goose. Maybe next year. But blackberries were perfect: and also happened to be among Michael’s favorites. I used this recipe to bake a blackberry torte for dessert, and Michael loved observing and taste-testing the berries with me.

After dinner, we sang God Grant You Many Years to Michael, and he enjoyed smashing his torte and eating some of it, though I think most of it ended up on his face and onesie.

His aunt called to wish Michael a happy Name day, and his uncle/godfather FaceTimed us to say the same, making Michael giggle up a storm. It was a delightful and joyful day. I’m so grateful for these traditions that bring us together and infuse our daily life with the goodness of the faith.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in the day of battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel

sinks, stitches, and sanctification

/ Rachel Fenton / 7 Comments

Jake had very long work days/evenings this week and all of us are pretty tired, so progress on getting the house signed off has stalled a little. The last item before occupancy sign off is the driveway, which takes at least three people and an entire day to complete. So we shifted our focus towards the kitchen and finished what we could in the short bursts of time and energy we had.

Dad and Jake worked wonders installing the butcher block countertops and fitting our new sink. Our faucet is arriving in a few days, and I have to apply a few more coats of finishing oil to the countertops, but otherwise it’s fully functional. It’s been incredible to watch this kitchen I’ve had in my dreams for over a year become a reality.

I think I’m more excited about the sink than anything else in the kitchen. Whenever I envisioned my ideal kitchen, it had a huge farmhouse sink for washing dishes and preparing meals. Washing dishes is my favorite chore — I find it satisfying and meditative — and I love having a beautiful space in which to do it.

It’s hard to move boxes or furniture when you have a baby clinging to you 24/7, but I’ve also been able to move a few odds and ends from our current studio into the house. We also got the living room cleaned up, and our rug and chairs moved into their spots. Jake and I lovingly call these our “Up” chairs — inspired by the two chairs Carl and Ellie have in the Pixar movie Up.

We’re hopeful we can move in the first week in October. Slowly but surely, it’s coming together and we’re excited (although Michael wasn’t so certain when I took the above photo). He is sprouting his fifth tooth and loves to climb and explore as long as he’s not too far away from me. His favorite toy is my parents’ screen door (and the awesome sound it makes when he bangs on it). He’s still an abysmal sleeper, but at least he’s adorable.

Grief still sticks us with its thorns here and there. My grandparents found an old photo my uncle had in his place: it’s of him and me when I was six months old. They gave it to me to keep, and I cherish it as a reminder of how much he cared for me.

Knitting continues to keep me grounded. I’m working on a few different projects, and recently had to frog a portion of a sweater. (For those of you who don’t know knitting lingo, frogging is when you tear out stitches/ unravel your work). I wound the yarn back into a ball and began anew, and the sweater still grows on my needles (though I still feel frustrated when I think of the time spent on torn out stitches). Unraveling is painful, but in the end, the finished product is so much better for it.

As I sat with a pile of bedraggled yarn at my feet it felt like an apt metaphor for this entire summer: unforeseen events causing our plans and our timelines to shift, and grief leaving us feeling like a heap of tangled yarn. But we can’t deny there has been growth in the midst of the difficulty. We are all very different people than we were fourteen months ago when it all began. We’re stronger, and sadder, and wiser. I pray that we are holier, too.

Perhaps sanctification is a bit like this: unraveling things we’ve proudly and imperfectly made in ourselves in order for them to be made again, and made better. Doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it in the current moment — I’m definitely not holy enough to delight in the frogging of a sweater or the refining fire of life’s circumstances. Maybe someday I will be. But for now, I pray that our tangled mess will, in the end and by God’s grace, become something beautiful and glorifying to Him.

light

/ Rachel Fenton / 2 Comments

We have power! Last Wednesday, PG&E and the electrician finished the project. It feels too good to be true, but indeed, when I flip a switch, the lights turn on.

Hallway lights!
Flipping the breakers

It’s a temporary fix: they still need to change out our transformer, which will take some time. But thankfully we were able to come to this compromise: they turned on limited power to the house as long as we don’t have an AC unit. Given the weather has already begun cooling down, we figured we’ll be just fine.

Dad and Jake finished the porches this week too. We still have to get them inspected, and still have the driveway to complete, but once that’s finished we can get the house cleared for occupancy.

Finishing the porch

In the waiting periods between big tasks, we’ve been installing baseboards, assembling IKEA furniture, and moving small items into their places. Mom and Dad got Michael a Nugget play couch for Christmas and gave it to him early to keep him occupied while we work on the house. He absolutely loves it.

Despite all our unforeseen roadblocks, we’re hoping we’ll be moved in by the first week of October. We are all tired, but it feels like we’re on the very last lap of a huge race, nearing the finish line.

We had some much needed rain this week as well, and with the dark clouds came a glorious and vibrant double rainbow. We stood outside in the golden sunshine and the falling rain, getting absolutely soaked (but I think the pictures made it worth it).

Both the rain and the rainbow felt like a breath of fresh air after the stagnant heat and barrenness of summer. It’s a tad ironic: summer is usually associated with fruitfulness and life, but for us personally, it’s been a summer of grief and death. As we head into autumn and gardeners prepare their gardens for overwintering, I envision us sinking into rest as the earth does the same.

And as we leave this summer behind us, I am grateful: the light in the midst of the storm and the presence of the rainbow felt like poignant and visible reminders of God’s faithfulness and love for us. He will not spare us from the storm, but He will walk through it with us.

eight months

/ Rachel Fenton / 8 Comments

Michael turned eight months old this week. In the midst of a difficult year, he has been a constant source of delight. Nothing compares to the growth I’ve experienced being his mother, and nothing compares to the joy he gives me.

The intensity of his personality really shouldn’t surprise me, given we’re his parents. His joy, his focus, his frustration, his excitement: all overflow from his tiny body.

He proudly sports two bottom teeth, and the two top teeth are starting to peek through his gums. He is incredibly fast and agile, crawling everywhere and afraid of nothing. He pulls himself up on every surface he can, without concern for its stability. Like his father, he is fascinated by electronics of any type (especially cords).

He has a hearty disdain for most baby food, and has learned to spit it out with an impressive velocity. He is very determined to eat whatever we are eating whenever we are eating it. Mashed potatoes and bananas have currently risen to the top of his list of favorites.

He loves music, especially when Jake sings to him. He often likes to sing along when he hears his dad chanting in church. We have sung him the Song of St Simeon to lull him to sleep since he was born, and it remains his favorite lullaby.

Sleep remains a struggle: he doesn’t want to miss out on anything, so each nap is a battle. However, I’m sure his fighting spirit will be a force for good someday.

We love watching Michael interact with my parents. They love him so much, and he is delightfully close to them. This is the blessing of living in community: despite the sacrifices we’ve all made to make this living situation work, I’m so happy he will grow up with them as a strong presence in his life.

Happy eight months, my dear son. We love you more than words can say.

good enough

/ Rachel Fenton / 10 Comments

Well, we don’t have power yet. PG&E cancelled the morning of the scheduled installation due to the high temperatures. They’ve rescheduled for Wednesday. Please continue to pray for us! We will be glad when our dealings with PG&E are over.

To handle our disappointment, we’ve been painting baseboards, finishing the porches, and choosing the kitchen counters. I also found a large farmhouse sink and I’m absolutely thrilled. It’ll make canning and preserving much easier next summer. And we got a washer and dryer! Our house is looking more and more like a real house.

With COVID and its corresponding fatigue still making their rounds through the property, it’s been a difficult week. Brain fog has kept me from writing. And the closer we get to moving in, the wearier we seem to get. The 110+ degree temperatures of the past week feel especially fitting for this season of desert dryness: we’ve all found it especially difficult to recover from the events of this summer.

So it is time to rest and recover, watering the garden of our souls as we also tend our homestead. Gardening has taught us many skills, and one of these is pest control. There will always be pests trying to destroy what we’re cultivating, until Christ comes again.

This doesn’t only apply to our gardens. I’ve noticed a new pest rearing its ugly head in our lives: the pest of perfectionism. It’s been eating its way through us and leaving its casings of lies behind it. I’m sure you’re quite familiar with it: it’s most commonly recognized by its nagging whisper that eats away at you and shakes your roots.

We’ve fought perfectionism through many steps of this house process: it’s the desire for everything to be just right; to line up perfectly with our ideals. And when it isn’t just how we dreamed it would be, it’s the discouraging thought, is this even worth it? It takes the setbacks we encounter and magnifies them while dismissing the progress we make.

I’ve seen it eating away at my blog posts: is what I’m writing really worth posting yet? Couldn’t I do better? I’ve even seen perfection start to worm its way into my parenting: a doubtful whisper telling me I’m not a good mother because I’m not perfect. Because I make mistakes. Because Michael is different than “other babies” in X, Y, or Z and maybe it’s something I did wrong.

To fight this invasive pest of perfectionism, I’ve found a simple phrase works wonders: good enough. I can be a good enough mother, writer, maker, and homesteader. I can work to be better while also fighting perfectionism’s lies that my mistakes invalidate the progress I make.

When I was a kid, I would often sit in the back of the room during my mother’s parenting seminars. Something she said stuck with me: “A perfect parent isn’t”. It’s a twofold truth. Not only is it impossible for us to be perfect parents as sinful human beings, but even if we were, it would not properly prepare our children for the sinful reality of the world around them.

A good parent repairs. (This is also true of a good spouse, or a good friend). When the relationship is broken, we apologize, make amends and reconnect. A good writer edits. When the words aren’t right, we coax them to convey the truth as clearly as they’re able. And a good homesteader repairs the damage pests make while taking precautions against them in the future.

So we’re defying perfectionism and embracing the unique and good enough aspects of our lives: the crooked stitches in handmade garments, the paint splotch in the corner, the porch railings that came out slightly different than we’d envisioned. All are evidence of a job well done — not perfect, not slipshod, but good enough.

labor, love, and hope

/ Rachel Fenton / 5 Comments

Despite the punishingly high temperatures, we’ve been using this long Labor Day weekend to make progress on the house. The front porch and back porch are framed and just need the railings and a coat of paint, and they’re chipping away at the side porch steps.

We have the electrical installation scheduled for Tuesday. It’s quite an ordeal. We will be without power or air conditioning for a large portion of of the day, and the high is projected to be 114 degrees…so pray for us!

This week we won’t be able to make much more progress given the heat. But, when the porches and the electrical are taken care of, all that stands between us and moving in is the driveway inspection. The end is in sight.

My parents’ 29th anniversary was this weekend. To celebrate, we had a charcuterie board and steak dinner. I made a Manhattan cake (a cake inspired by the cocktail with whiskey, bitters, cherries, and oranges).

I’m so grateful for my parents and their marriage. Throughout my entire childhood, they modeled sacrificial love and showed us what a marriage should be: laughter, grace, tears, repair, hugs, kisses, inside jokes, and above all, unconditional love.

The celebration was small but beautiful. It was a light in the midst of a dark summer. We are all still weary: I’m slowly recovering from COVID, and we suspect Michael now has it too (but we aren’t going to try to stick a swab up his nose to check). He’s been unhappy and uncomfortable, which has led to very difficult nights this week.

It’s amazing how sleep (or lack thereof) can change our perceptions and moods. When I’m especially sleep-deprived, I often find myself thinking of the illustrated version of Pilgrim’s Progress I read as a child, with Christian falling into the Slough of Despond. With illness and exhaustion and a sick baby, it certainly feels as though I’m slogging through a swamp and despondency can become overwhelming.

But because of that, I’ve been thinking about hope, one of the cardinal virtues (faith, hope, and love). One of my favorite books on education is titled Tending the Garden of Virtue. I love that metaphor of virtue as a garden: all gardeners know the work that goes into gardening. For life to thrive, we must tend to it. We can’t just hope healthy and fruitful plants will spring up. We must water, weed, prune, and till.

Gardening is also an inherently hopeful activity. We hope the seeds sprout and the flowers blossom. We do our best labor to cultivate, and then we wait.

This season of our lives has been full of waiting, and full of death. But I have been trying to more mindfully tend my own garden of virtue — particularly my hope. I remind myself that seasons change, and while in this season there is much in the ground, and much in darkness, this darkness won’t endure.

In the midst of the grief and the waiting, hope is here. I see it in my son’s smile, and hear it my husband’s laugh. I water it in our garden every morning. And, by looking for it in all of these beautiful things, I cultivate it within myself.

The seed is in the ground.

Now may we rest in hope

While darkness does its work.

Wendell Berry

on the new year, growth, and socks

/ Rachel Fenton / 4 Comments

Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain.

Henri Nouwen

The Orthodox liturgical new year is celebrated on September 1st, and I love the way the seasons of the Church help us reflect on the seasons in our lives. There’s something about new beginnings that makes me pause and reflect, and as we near our hopeful move-in date, I’ve been contemplating the past year and all the many changes that came with it. Our move was only a bit more than a month away from the liturgical new year, and it really ushered in a new season in our lives. Looking back, I can see God’s provision for us in so many ways. Most of all, I am grateful for the ways He helped me grow this past year.

In early 2021, I remember doing dishes and looking at the icon of Christ hanging over my pots of herbs, and realizing He was telling me it was time to grow our family. It wasn’t a large, powerful revelation with visions or strong emotions. Just a gentle realization and a sense of peace about it, even in the face of all the unknowns.

Next month, we discovered we were expecting. That sense of peace remained even as my world was turned on its head. I adored my job as associate dean and history teacher, and thought I would never leave. Suddenly, we were signing a purchase on a prefab home, leaving our little house by the sea, moving back to my childhood property, and adding to the small homestead my parents and grandparents had already started.

The studio we live in while we wait for our house to be finished

The months that followed were incredibly difficult. Pregnancy nausea was intense and lasted for more than 28 weeks. We lost one of our closest family friends to cancer. Our house hit delay after delay due to COVID and supply chain issues, pushing our timeline further and further. My parents and I learned to co-exist as a jumbled household as we moved into the small studio in the back of their garage and shared their kitchen (and often their living room).

And under it all was this aching loss of identity. My body was changing to grow my son, and felt alien to me. I was back in my childhood home after being married and independent for two years. I was unmoored from a full-time job for the first time since high school.

And yet, in the midst of all the chaos there was peace — that same peace I had felt while doing the dishes and looking at the icon of Christ. I knew we were where He wanted us, even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there. So, fighting through nausea and fatigue and chronic pain exacerbated by pregnancy, I decided to pick up knitting as a way to focus on that peace.

The first time I made a pair of socks, I swore I would never do it again. I don’t want to admit how long it took me to slowly and clumsily piece together a single sock, riddled with mistakes. Heavily pregnant, I gave up halfway through the second and stuffed it away in a project bag. I didn’t pull it out again until postpartum (and only because because my pride didn’t let me stop so close to the end). I finished my first pair of socks bleary-eyed and bleeding, holding my sleeping baby through his naps.

Months passed, and I grew into motherhood the same way my son grew: subtle changes, some painful growth; jerky and uncertain movements. Together we grew — but while I loved my son more than my own life, I still struggled with my new vocation of motherhood.

And I still struggled to see why anyone would want to knit socks. Why would anyone dedicate so much time and effort to such a small and mundane object? When you knit a sock, you pour a sweater’s worth of time and stitches into something that goes on feet and hardly anyone ever sees. And you do it twice.

Then, when told Jake I wanted to knit him something and asked what he would like me to make, he answered innocently: Socks. This is how you know I love the man. I cast on a pair of socks. I had another project on my needles too — a gorgeous slipover vest that often took precedence. Sock progress (sockgress) crawled.

Then a sleep regression hit, along with teething. Michael would only nap in my arms, and knitting a large and cumbersome object while holding a sleeping baby isn’t a great idea. So it was back to the socks. And as the heel formed beneath my needles, I realized my struggle with motherhood and my struggle with socks weren’t that different.

I had been used to all my work being external: checklists and accomplishments where everyone could see them. They were like knitting sweaters: beautiful, visible, and easily noticeable and praised. Now I was doing internal work: in myself, in my family; in my son. That work was like knitting socks: beautiful, invisible, not really remarkable or noticeable by anyone except God and my family.

Both types — the external work and internal work — are beautiful and worthy. In this season of my life, my vocation is mostly internal. And now, watching my husband and son play together in their matching socks is a reminder that internal work can be just as rewarding — perhaps even more so.

I continue to find knitting as a source of peace in the midst of life’s storms. I look at the work on my needles (especially socks) as a physical representation of the quiet work set before me. I lean into it, this internal-yet-others-focused vocation of wife and mother and writer and homesteader.

2022 has been difficult, but I see this as a chance to look towards new beginnings, and God-willing, an autumn full of healing and rejuvenation. And I look forward to whatever growth this next liturgical year brings. As my one of favorite prayers, the Akathist of Thanksgiving says, “Glory to God for all things”.