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Sunday Gratitude – 5.IV.2026
To those celebrating today – Christ is Risen! – Happy Easter!
And then there are the “weird” ones here who are still waiting another week, among which I count myself. There have been a lot of services already – yesterday, I think I was in church for nearly four hours. I’ve really struggled this Lent; from the beginning, I felt less ready for it than most years and this year… wow. For the greater part of Lent, I believed that the Orthodox were also going to be celebrating Pascha today, and it was only looking at the calendar more carefully a couple of weeks ago when I realized that no, there’s a one-week difference. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting to spend so much time in church this weekend, but I was at vigil last night, and I certainly had the feeling of moving from the darkness into the light, and by the time the service was over, there was an air of hopefulness and joy there. For that I am grateful. (My brain did fight against this on the way home, though. *sigh*)
I am grateful for the more spring-like weather, and the opportunity to be outside. I’m also grateful for my neighbor who invites me to come walking with her.
I am grateful for friends who take the time to talk even in the rain.
I am grateful for making it home in a storm the other day; I wasn’t expecting it, then all of a sudden, I was driving down this country highway with lightning flashes all around. I don’t think that they were very close, as there was only a tiny bit of thunder, but what a show! The next day, driving down those same roads, I could actually see how high the water is, and I’m grateful that there were no issues with low-lying stretches of road or the bridges.
Time to take the Christmas wreath down! I am thankful to have had a little bit of time to be outside with my kids, and I’m thankful that they have places around that they can enjoy riding their bikes through, and that they’ve been fine with this “exploring”.
I am thankful for the joy of singing.
I am thankful for the things that are showing signs of life (and even blooming) even after a very cold winter and long periods of neglect.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have been in contact with a number of people on this day, in the joy of Easter.
I am grateful for yet another sign that I’m not alone through the hard stuff.
Thank you so much for being here! Christ is Risen!
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Sunday Gratitude – 29.III.2026
I really hate it when it seems like I blink and yet another week has passed. Somehow so much of this time ends up feeling like a blur, and it seems like all that is left is a growing list of things that should have been done long ago, but haven’t been done yet.
In the meantime, though, I’ve been trying not to lose a sense of gratitude, and to also try to make the most of the days at hand. We’ve had a couple of days that have hit 70F, which has been amazing, and especially as the days are getting longer, it would be terrible if we didn’t do something to take advantage of the warmer weather. My younger son had a day off of school a couple of weeks back, and the two of us went out on our bikes and rode ten miles together, and it was amazing. He also started taking pictures with my camera that afternoon, so I’ll be sharing a few of those in this post.
A couple of weeks after the real birthday, my youngest, in kindergarten, had her first real birthday party. It was a bowling alley affair, and, per the terms of the contract, was less than two hours long, but for a group of 5 and 6 year olds, it was fine. I was completely stressed out over this for at least a week for a number of reasons, but it turned out really, really good. Even the weather held out, kind of… It started raining about the time that the party started, and it was still raining as people left. Had we started a couple of hours later, everybody would have been going home in sleet, because we had a blizzard come through the next day. The kids were thrilled to get the day off of school, and despite the crazy wind, we never lost power. The next day, our dear neighbor made a path for our car using a snowblower.
I’m grateful that even though I managed to break a spoke on the one bike (a different one than before), this happened in a place where I could ride to a place where I could leave the bike for a couple of days, and which was very close to the bike shop. On the night that this happened, I was also able to get a ride back home with one of the ladies from church. I’d never talked to her before, and she’s incredibly sweet, and lives just a couple of streets over from where I live.
I’m grateful for the amazing time I had at St. Haralambos in Niles a couple of weeks back. Not only were some very dear “real life” friends there, I finally got to meet Fr. Andrew Damick in person. We have been online acquaintances (friends) for over 20 years, and it seemed like high time to meet him in person. He actually recognized me by sight as well, which is crazy because it’s been a looong time since I posted any photos of myself that he might come across. 🙂 That was a lot of fun, though.
Breezy days and kites! I am grateful, as well, for the opportunity to visit an old friend and just enjoy sitting on the front step, having a conversation in the sunshine.
In many ways, I feel pulled very, very, very thin. There have been a lot of good things, to be sure, but there have been a number of very, very frustrating things as well. I don’t know; at this point, I’m not sure that I’ll ever have things “figured out”, but there’s a path to go forward on, and that’s the way through this all. Forgive me again for the blog silence – I truly am grateful for you.
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Saturday on Substack – 15.VII.2023
Come check out this week’s hodgepodge: https://breathofhallelujah.substack.com/p/saturday-on-substack-15vii2023
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A life cut far too short (Michael Montoya)
On the morning of July 15, 1993, my mom told me that she thought Michael Montoya had been killed. I didn’t know Michael Montoya personally, but I certainly did know he was a kid at my very small elementary school. Furthermore, my mom worked in the kindergarten there, and he was one of the little kids there; he had just finished first grade.
Not only that, but he was taking part in the Vacation Bible School where my mom and sister were volunteering. I couldn’t since I had to make up classes that from what had been the disaster of my freshman year in high school, so it was sitting in Mr. Adamowski’s biology class that day that I heard on the radio, indeed, that Michael Montoya, from my elementary school had been shot and killed.
Terrible as it sounds now, the announcement on the radio left me only with the thought in my mind, “Well, I can tell my mom that she heard the news right.” Nothing more than that. As a kid growing up in a bad neighborhood in Chicago at that time – the 1990s had some of the worst murder numbers until 2020 – hearing about kids getting killed was kind of ho-hum. It happened; such was life in the city. That year, the Chicago Tribune was even doing a series about kids getting murdered in the city, and so Michael Montoya even ended up on the front page of the paper – how odd it was to see his school picture there, knowing it had been taken in the same place as so many of my school pictures had been taken!
My mom and sister went to his funeral; he was dressed head to toe in Chicago Bulls regalia, after all, this was Chicago of 1993, and the air was electric, as Michael Jordan and the Bulls had just managed their first “Three-peat” a couple weeks earlier. I didn’t end up going, after all, I didn’t know him, and I probably had school… I do know that Michael’s mother, at one point, picked up this petite red-headed boy named Ralphie and said to the crowd assembled, “This was his best friend”.
It wouldn’t hit me until over a year later what some idea of what a child’s death actually means. I was the first “responsible” person on the scene of an accident with a child badly injured. I thank God that the child survived and that there seemed to be no long-term damage. Ralphie was there too, and after the incident, I had picked him up and was kind of holding him on my him, and he turned and said to me, “I know I’m easy to pick up.” The scene that I was told about from Michael Montoya’s funeral flooded my mind…
Even in a city of tons of senseless violence, the murder of Michael Motoya was kind of the epitome of it. Michael’s mother was incredibly protective of her son, being as his father was killed by a stray bullet of a drive-by shooting when Michael was 12 days old. She moved to a better neighborhood, she didn’t let him hang out outside, she was making sure he was getting an education to do great things with his life. According to my mom, he was the kind of kid who was mature for his age, who one would expect to someday be a leader of some sort, a preacher, perhaps.
And yet, as I recall, his mother allowed her son outside to return something, perhaps a video game, to another child down the street. It was an errand that should have taken a couple of minutes. Yet in that short amount of time, an argument broke out down the street, somebody getting angry about someone blocking the street or something, and then gunshots. The man who did it fled to Mexico for some time, but due to the persistence of Michael’s mother, he was eventually arrested. The man cried that the reason he fled was because he wanted to have time to spend with his children, never mind the child that he took away from this young mother. According to one article, the man is set to be released later this year, but chances are, it’s already happened.
As for Michael, it’s been thirty years. He’d be thirty-seven now. But there’s no magic that can bring these children back, only the hope remains that they will be there to meet us in the life to come. Of course, Michael shouldn’t have died then, but Chicago still has not learned this lesson, and its children continue to be killed for no reason, their names forgotten in time to all but the few who may have known them.
Memory eternal, Michael Montoya.
Michael Anthony Montoya, Jr. at Find-a-grave.com
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13 July
I was pleasantly surprised to see this this morning on Instagram. July 13, 1943, was the date on which Alexander Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber were executed for their parts in the resistance group called the “White Rose”.
It’s quite interesting; when I first heard of Alexander Schmorell, he wasn’t a saint, and I don’t know that most people had heard of him. I joined OrthodoxWiki very early on because the priest who started the site wanted me to write an article about him, and so I eventually did. At some point thereafter, one of the sysops even questioned whether it was appropriate that the article was on OrthodoxWiki since he didn’t feel that merely an interesting story of an Orthodox Christian fit the scope of the project.
These days, I’m beginning to not be as surprised that people, at least in the Orthodox world, have heard of Alexander Schmorell. The OrthodoxWiki article did a lot. Also, the fact that while his siblings were near the end of their lives, they started talking about him more. Up until 1999 or 2000, there was no biography of him alone; now different biographies have been written in Russian, German, and English.
The icon in the instagram picture above is something special, too. It’s by the hand of Paul Drozdowski, and it’s the first icon that I know of that was of St. Alexander alone. It was done before his glorification as a saint, hence the lack of a nimbus and the title “passion bearer”, but it was already known at this time that he would be, in the near future, counted among the saints. I have a copy that Paul made here in my living room – it’s the only commissioned icon that I have – but it’s particularly special to me because due to a certain “coincidence” on LiveJournal, I was able to help a little in its creation.
It’s been eighty years. When I was first finding information about the White Rose back in Germany, I was pretty certain that Alexander and Sophie, at the very least, would have still been alive at that point. I even went to Orenburg, Russia to celebrate what would have been his 85th birthday. At some point, I lost that sense, because we just don’t have a lot of people who make it to 105. Also, the people who were alive 20 years ago who knew him are all gone now, including his (half-)siblings and Nikolai Hamazaspian, who I got to see (and even talk to) personally. Matushka Elena Perekrestov, through another “coincidence”, got to meet another one of his close friends who happened to end up out in California, but I think she entered the eternal life, at over 100, on the first day of 2021.
We people walk the earth such a short time, but we have the choice whether to stand up for the Truth or not. I was talking to a good friend last night over the computer; he isn’t particularly religious, but I think his soul thirsts for some connection to God. Out of his mouth came the sentiment that he’s coming to the conclusion that “God really does represent the ultimate Truth”. Never mind that I’ve been trying to convince him of this for over half my life, but it’s an important thing to remember nonetheless.
It’s funny, because back when I started with the White Rose, I was twenty, and even Sophie Scholl was older than I. Through my years in Germany, I kind of rolled through the ages of the group; Christoph, 23; Hans 24, Willi and Alex, 25.
And then there’s Professor Kurt Huber, who, at 49, was the oldest of the group, and this year, especially, I’ve come to the realization that it won’t be many more years (God willing) before I’m his age as well. And… I think his story also gets shortchanged quite a bit. Mind you, he wasn’t so much part of the group the way the other five were – he was established with a career and wife and children, and though he did participate in “reading evenings” with members of the White Rose on occasion, in a sense, he still belonged to a different world.
What strikes me now is how the man struggled, and struggled his entire life. He had physical disabilities, and some of that is apparent in photographs. One of the things affected his speech, but he became a university professor anyway. He was one of the most learned experts in his field, but he struggled to find a job in academia because it became apparent that he would not bend what he knew as an expert to the will of a government which demanded that all expertise point in one direction. He was smart enough to be able to give lectures that made clear that he stood apart from the onerous restrictions dictated by the Third Reich by anyone with two brain cells to rub together, but which totally flew over the heads of the young men whose job it was to observe his classes and report back any suspect behavior.
Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell respected him a lot, but also did not agree with him completely either, which led to Huber being quite upset with his leaflet – the sixth – being edited by Hans and Alex. This sixth leaflet was what Hans and Sophie got caught distributing around the Munich University that fateful day in February, 1943, and not only did they pay with their lives, but those who were close associates of theirs – Professor Kurt Huber included – paid that same price.
Professor Kurt Huber is buried in Munich. I made one attempt to find the grave, many years ago, but I’m not even positive I was in the right cemetery. I probably should have tried harder, but at the time, I figured that I’d complete that “quest” at a later date. (Living on the other side of the ocean does make these things quite a bit harder! *L*)
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Wordless Wednesday #37 – Random Castle in Slovakia (Devín castle)
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Queen – Face It Alone
Back in October of last year, the band Queen released a song that they had worked on for their album The Miracle but which didn’t make the album. Here is that song:
It’s interesting, because in the Beatles’ later works, it seems like there is an overarching theme of wanting to go home, to find the place where one belongs, or at least “once belonged”. I’m not a Queen expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems that the theme that developed later in their music was more one of facing mortality. Songs like “Who Wants to Live Forever“, “These are the Days of Our Lives“, and even “The Show Must Go On” demonstrate this. Of course, what the band knew was that Freddie Mercury was dying of AIDS. So it is no wonder that even without making this public until the very end, pieces of this ended up showing up in their music.
“Face it Alone” is another song that fits this category. The song has been finished, insofar as it’s been put together and polished up and the like, but I don’t think it actually was done – had this gone on an album, I think that there would be another verse where Mercury just repeats “When the moon has lost its glow…” However, by leaving it that way, it adds to the spookiness of the track.
The short and long of the sentiment of this haunting song is that no matter what one has done with his or her life, there’s some point where we stand and face the hard things by ourselves; even money, fame, or hard work can save us from these times. It’s an excruciatingly lonely place, and in many situations, there’s no coming back from it. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard another song that really captures something of that.
I found out about this song through the Babylon Bee‘s sister site, Not the Bee. (Listen: Queen drops long-lost song featuring Freddie Mercury, and it’s so sad). The main comment from them is as follows:
It’s a beautiful song, but the message is so hard to hear when you consider how Freddy Mercury left this world via complications with AIDS.
And that’s the rub isn’t it? If you count your life as your own, then there’s not much hope.
Of course the good news is that if you believe in Christ, you don’t have to face anything all alone, not even death.
There certainly is a very good and very valid point here, that with God with us, we aren’t truly alone, and our hope in Him will not disappoint.
However, I can’t help but think that even among the saints there isn’t some amount of realization that sometimes we stand and we go forward alone. Maybe because we’re coming up to the anniversary of St. Alexander of Munich’s feast day, that is, the day he was executed, that even if he had been given a glimpse of heaven, and even if he was aware of the angels all around him, he was human, after all, and as he was being prepared to have the guillotine separate his head from his body, there was some feeling of being uniquely alone there as well.
When Jesus went out into the wilderness and he was tempted by Satan, certainly that feeling of being alone also played a part of it. Afterwards, Jesus needed to be attended to by angels afterwards. I believe that each one of us has these times in their lives, and we endure or we let it destroy us. Going back to the Beatles, I’ve had the song “Let It Be” turn up on the radio at providential times over the last few months. A week and a half ago, as I was driving, I started crying at the line “And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me / shine until tomorrow, let it be.” In some sense here, I think it’s talking about the same type of situation that we find ourselves in, but it also points out to the fact that there’s hope to hold on to, even just getting us to tomorrow.
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Sunday Gratitude – 9.VII.2023 – Well into Summer
I am grateful that we had a nice 4th. With so much going on, I find it hard to stop and celebrating sometimes.
I’m grateful that this was a week with very little going on. I needed that, and I needed the ability to sit and relax when I wasn’t feeling wonderful.
I’m grateful for nice summer weather.
I’m thankful I got to learn a little bit more about using my camera in different scenerios.
The week still had a lot of difficulties, things I can’t write about here because it involves the kids. I’m working on trying to be grateful for that, but it’s really, really hard.
Thank you all for your time and your prayers.
As always, I’m grateful for each one of you, and hope things are well in your lives.
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Saturday on Substack – 8.VII.2023
Who would have believed it – a “Saturday on Substack” on a Saturday! *L*
I hope all of you are well! Click on over for a bit of this and a little of that over on Substack.
https://breathofhallelujah.substack.com/p/saturday-on-substack-8vii2023
Since we need AI to see fireworks over Mt. Rushmore these days!
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Praise the crazy mother’s son who loved his life
It’s amazing how just thinking back on music can bring it to mind again. It’s like calling an old friend and catching up in a matter of a half hour like no time had passed. I went through a time when I could not get enough of the Natalie Merchant album Ophelia. One of the tracks is a song called “King of May”, which, through the power of the internet, I can share with you right here:
I mentioned in the post about the song “Motherland” that I would guess that this song may have some inspiration, at least. from Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who happened to be born in May. I say this with the idea that the song seems to be commemorating a departure of a king that may be painful, and the melancholy mood of the song reflects that, but with the end result being this person ‘ascending’ to a better place. (At least that’s what I understand from the line “make a hole in the sky for him”.)
AI Tiffany glass There’s a line in the song that has always struck me as particularly poignant, even though I actually didn’t know the full correct lyric until I started writing this post two weeks ago or so. The line goes “Praise the crazy mother’s son who loved his life.” (I thought the line was actually “Crazy, crazy mother’s son…)
Why would that strike me as such an important concept? I actually think that there’s more than a little serendipity here, because a day or so after I started this post, Rod Dreher posted the following quote from a piece that he did in 2012.
It’s a cliche to say so, but there really is something about us Americans — and probably all Anglo-Saxons — that regards pleasure with deep suspicion. If it is to be embraced, we think, it is to be embraced as a respite from the daily grind, as an escape from reality — but always an illusion.
Rod Dreher, The Paris Effect, 10 October 2012I’m sure that a lot of this has to do, first of all, with the huge influence the Puritans had on American culture. Their religious beliefs practically shunned happiness as an evil frivolity. Secondly, it probably also has a fair amount to do with the fact that the United States was still being settled until fairly recently. One of my great-grandmothers was a woman who went out west – western North Dakota – as a single woman in the first years of the 1900s to seek her destiny there. I’m not going to say that living out on the “edge of civilization” was joyless, but life was hard, and the pursuit of happiness had to be derived more from the mode of living rather than the cultivation of “the finer things”. It’s great if your town can have a live theater, but the thing is, they’d better have a jail first. Practicality for necessity’s sake isn’t necessarily beautiful. The socks a mother knit to keep her children’s feet from freezing probably weren’t works of art, but she could make beautiful things when the need arose and the time allowed for it.
In any case, Dreher continues:
“What, though, if pleasure is as much a part of life as work and suffering? What if there is as much to be learned and loved in the feast as in and from the fast?”
“The danger, of course, is that one could make all this pleasure into one’s god. That’s obvious enough, but what isn’t so obvious, at least not to us Americans, is the risks in believing that any sensual delight cannot be godly. We were created as fleshly creatures, by a God who declared His creation to be good. Food, drink, song, art, architecture — they are His gift to us, and to be given thanks for, and enjoyed.”
Rod Dreher, ibid.When I was part of the trip to Orenburg in 2007, to honor what would have been Alexander Schmorell’s 90th birthday, one of his friends, Nikolai Hamazaspian spoke in front of our smallish group that was gathered for dinner, including the mayor of Orenburg. What he wanted to make abundantly clear, above all else, was the fact that his friend was somebody who loved and relished his life and all the opportunities he had. He loved horseback riding and art and literature and getting to spend time outdoors; he loved music and concerts and having friends to spend time with. Many are the accounts that his smile could light up a room (especially for the ladies, it seems!) As much as he wasn’t necessarily thrilled with the prospect of becoming a doctor, he was smart enough and talented enough to make it in medical school, and had he finished, the world would have been his oyster. Hamazaspian wanted to really get it through our heads that he wasn’t dour or suicidal, and he didn’t see the world as an evil place from which one can “volunteer” to make an early exit. No, he said Alexander was full of life and he loved it all. In that case, why be willing to die? Because he loved God more, and despite all his faults and failings, he dedicated himself to serving the Truth.
Nikolai Hamazaspian, 2007, Orenburg, Russia The Bible tells us not to love the things of this world, and that’s well so. When we love the things, we attach to them too much, and they become our idols. However, God gave us a beautiful world, He gave us wonder, and He gave us people to enjoy this life with – if life is nothing more than pain and drudgery, something is very, very wrong. Some of the most joyful people I have known are the young Ukrainian nuns I met many years ago – they were in their mid-20s like me and it was an absolute joy to spend time with them there or play Mario Kart at my place. In a sense, these women are “dead to the world”, but at the same time, they allow themselves to recognize the good and partake of it.
And so, I’m not sure that someone necessarily should be praised for simply loving his life, but the line in the song is a good reminder that someone who does so ought not be condemned. However, when we recognize those who love their lives and are willing to lose it in love, in service to God, or in service to each other, these are the people who ought to be praised and remembered.
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Wordless Wednesday #36 – Fireworks
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Stars and Stripes Forever
In years past, there’s been a fair amount of debate whether “The Star Spangled Banner” ought to have been made the official national anthem of the United States. When I was in kindergarten, and we started the day off with our pledges and songs, we sang “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee)” instead of the “The Star Spangled Banner”, but all things considered, it probably is asking a bit much for your average 5-year-old to sing the national anthem. Some people would rather have “America the Beautiful” as it actually talks about the landscape of the United States, and after 9/11, “God Bless America” kind of became the second national anthem.
However, the patriotic song that “gets” me the most is the John Philip Sousa march “Stars and Stripes Forever”.
The first time I became acquainted with the song was on the Maranatha! Kids “Stars and Stripes Sing-a-long” which came out in 1988. It was part of a medley, and used lyrics that might have been their own, as they weren’t Sousa’s lyrics. I don’t remember the lyrics exactly, but here’s what I remember.
*something* *something* *something* (possibly ending "land of the free") May it wave over this land forever The stars and the stripes may they be *something* *something* liberty May each one give thanks to the men Who gave up their whole lives to give us freedom And for whom this banner still flies For freedom's sake, may this great flag wave on forever
Here’s a rendition probably closest to what Sousa wrote, including his lyrics:
In high school, I was in marching band. I played flute and piccolo, and the “Stars and Stripes Forever” is probably one of the pieces with the most amazing piccolo parts ever. (I never did master it, unfortunately – then again, people are pretty sensitive about where one can practice piccolo.)
There’s an old musician’s joke that goes as follows: Q: How does one get two flute players in tune with each other? A: Shoot one of them. Q: How does one get two piccolo players in tune with each other? A: Shoot both of them! Therefore, a video with 94 piccolo players playing the solo for the Stars and Stripes Forever comes as no small feat!
As a music person, this is hilarious, for what is “easy” on a piccolo doesn’t come quite as easily to tuba! (I must admit, though, that the piccolo trumpet is amazing!)
Not that the wonder of this song is only reserved for woodwinds and brass – this is a fun rendition – poor marimba players, they end up running around all over with all the runs!
And one more, proving that one doesn’t even have to be American to be amazed bi this song.
Happy Independence Day, y’all! Enjoy the day!
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Breath of Hallelujah 