Cat Inventory

You wouldn’t think with only 3 cats that we would have a tracking problem… that is keeping track of the. It doesn’t seem like that many cats. Still, there are some days when an actual inventory of cats is needed before we can leave the house. If you begin to think about it in terms of total # of legs running through the house, there are 12 cat legs, 4 dog legs and 4 human legs for a grand total of 20 legs treading across our floor at any given time. So, we need to make sure that all cats are present and accounted for and that no one has wandered into a closet where she might be stuck for several hours without food, a litter box, or worse yet, no play mate. The young ones have also recently started a campaign to be let outside and barring the likelihood of someone willingly letting them go out, they have started scheming on how to sneak out of the house whenever we open the door for ourselves or for Elmo… one more reason the cat inventory has become a necessary mainstay at our house. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could put bar codes on our cats and then whenever we needed to we would just scan them to make sure we had accounted for everyone.

Vesper? Check!
Flatt? Check!
Scruggs? Check!

Writer's Block

Forgive my lack of blogging this month. I've been struggling with writer's block and too much self-censorship. I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things. I've had a few thoughts percolating on the back burner... so look for more from me soon!

Theophany Traditions

Sunday (Jan 6) was the celebration of Theophany in the Orthodox Church. This is the celebration of Christ’s Baptism and the revelation of the Trinity. It is the 12th and final day of Christmas made famous by the well-known Christmas carol. For Orthodox all over the world it is a feast day even greater than Christmas itself. This day is the day that all of the waters are blessed by priests that the fulfillment of all Creation brought forward by Christ’s baptism can be renewed.

For us at our church there is the blessing of the indoor water on the eve of Theophany – in this celebration water is blessed that can be used to drink or bless other objects. The priests bless all of the church with this Holy Water, including the parishioners. Everyone leaves anywhere from mildly damp to completely wet depending on your level of bravery.

On the day of Theophany itself, the outdoor waters are blessed. Most churches go to their closest body of outdoor water and bless that water as they blessed the indoor water the night before. In many churches after the water has been blessed the celebration culminates in a group of people diving/swimming for a cross that is thrown into the water. For us, this is a rather murky affair as our pond is usually very cold (it’s spring-fed AND it's January) and cloudy due to algae and dirt in the water. Still, Sunday we had a group of people heading into this water to find the cross. “Diving in cold, slimy water for a cross?” you ask. Yes! Although I don’t know the meaning behind the tradition, what I can tell you is that it is a Greek tradition that dates back to about the 5th century. This tradition has spread across all of the Orthodox countries, including such chilly climes as Russia and Serbia.

The most famous cross-diving church in the U.S. is in Tarpon Springs, FL. This was the 102nd year to dive for the cross as part of their Theophany celebration! Theophany in Tarpon Springs is accompanied by a big Greek festival (it’s a Greek Orthodox Church in a heavily Greek community) and a doubling of the community's to 25,000 person population.

The celebration's high point each year in about 50-60 young men diving into the springs to find the cross.