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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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Wordle #434
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Oh! Back to the “E” in the incorrect place! Yippee!
Line 2: Eliminating more letters, la di da di da!rd #2 and we’ve made some progress!
Line 3: Yay! I found where the “E” goes!
Line 4: I’ve even got a second letter! Bonus!
Line 5: Here’s the process of guessing: considering what was left, there probably was a second vowel, and it probably had to be “U”. Considering the letters left, I figured I’d try “ruder”, even though it’s basically a 4-letter-word with a suffix, which is not what the writers usually choose to do.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #433
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Nothin’.
Line 2: Start word #2 and we’ve made some progress!
Line 3: Just guessing at how the letters might work together here.
Line 4: Now I’m really puzzled – how many 5 letter words end in “RONY”?
Line 5: Oh, “irony”! I found this a really fun game to play today. 🙂
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #432
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Nothin’.
Line 2: Start word #2 – “L” is completely correct; “N” belongs somewhere else
Line 3: Obviously, it couldn’t have been “clunk”, but I wasn’t thinking of that when I played it. I was happy to get the “CL” though.
Line 4: Knowing that this was a word that started “CL” and that the vowel probably had to be “O” and the end had to be “N”, the choices of word got narrowed down very quickly.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #431
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. Good news: One letter correct and in the right spot. Bad news: It’s the “E” in spot 2. (There’s only thousands of 5-letter words with “E” as a second letter, don’t worry!)
Line 2: At least I got to play “weird”. And I now know there’s a “D” in either spot 1, 3, or 4.
Line 3: I get to play strange words – yay!
Line 4: Now we know that the D has to be in spot #4, and we have a misplaced “N” as a bonus.
Line 5: You mean you don’t think “bendy” is a word either? As in “bendy” straws???
Line 6: Considering that the word had to start with “NE” and end in “DY” and “R” was already eliminated, “needy” seemed like it had to be the answer… I was still relieved to see it show as correct though!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Another quick note
Life sometimes is more than a little overwhelming.
I have a crazy-long list of stuff I have to get done in the next week or so, and at the same time, I’m not feeling great. And the dishwasher is acting funny. And the drains all seem to be draining slowly…
I’ve got stuff I’ve started on but haven’t finished. I haven’t forgotten about posting more than Wordle – it’s just that my time is getting devoured by other things at the moment.
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Wordle #430
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. I am seriously beginning to hate the lone, misplaced “E”.
Line 2: More letter elimination, but still that misplaced “E”.
Line 3: Okay, now we are getting somewhere. I know “money” was a previous solution (Wordle #337), but even if the word is not the solution, maybe I can get some more leads, and to that, playing this worked.
Line 4: “V” is a tricky letter. It isn’t all that common, but it does have this tendency to show up regularly enough that it shouldn’t be forgotten. It’s one of the six not in any of my base words (Q, X, J, Z, V, & K) but of these six, is probably the most common to be played. Playing the “V” works out here, but I still don’t have the “N” in the right place.
Line 5: This is actually a common trick in Wordle… Looking at “oven”, it makes one think of the word, but that adding a consonant to it would still sound the same, such as with the word “coven”. However, since we already knew that there is no “C”, going through the alphabet gives us “woven”, which doesn’t sound similar at all. I have had this “trick” of the Wordle writer(s) trip me up in the past, but today wasn’t too bad.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #429
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words. “E” and “T” and both in the right place. Nice start!
Line 2: And… I am so smart, yes?
It was a good guess – and I was very lucky. Not the first time I’ve gotten the wordle in 2, but this is why I went with “merit”:
- “E” ends up in a lot of words in the second place, but often together with another “E” or an “A”. “EE”, “EA”. “A” had already been ruled out. “EI” is rare (and the weird exceptions are famous!) I didn’t want to double the “E”, for the sake of playing letters, so trying to think of words with “E” and ending with “T” that might have to have another vowel that was not “A” kind of became the challenge.
- There are a fair number of words which start “RE” but I figured that it was unlikely that they were going to have something like “repot”.
- “Depot” was actually Wordle #279, so I wasn’t going to play it again.
- I suspect that since Merrick Garland has been in the news recently, the word “merit” is of somewhat easier recall in my brain at the moment. I know… I’m probably more weird than smart! 🙂
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #428
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Wow! This worked very well – four letters already!
Line 2: Except that there are a TON of words that use these four letters in different permutations.
Line 3: Look! Finally one of those four letters in the correct place – but no idea on the magic 5th letter.
Line 4: Umm… This is still going to be tricky. Two slots left and there is still at least “caste”, “haste”, and “waste” that could be played.
Line 5: If I were playing in hard mode, I would not be able to play this word because it deviates from what we already know. However, I’m playing it to play “C”, “H”, and “W” as possibilities.
Line 6: And the winner is… “Waste”!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #427
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: One of my typical start words and it does pretty well here – “T” at the end, and “E” and “A” present, but somewhere else.
Line 2: So, I go for simply moving the “E” and “A” over a space, and it works! The “R” is a bonus – now how many more 5 letter words end “REAT”?
Line 3: This actually took me a moment, as I didn’t immediately think of a second “T”, but all in all, this was a pretty quick one.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future – AI Art Edition
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Two things that I have been hearing a fair amount about recently are Fr. Seraphim Rose and AI art – the DALL-E 2 text to image generator, in particular, seems to be getting some attention. In short, these programs take text that is entered in and look for images on the internet that are tagged or described as such, then use the artificial intelligence to try to create an image that matches the cue of the entered text. The images are often pretty impressive.
Therefore, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see in the Orthodox Christianity reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/) that someone (user: thomaesthetics) had used one of these AI art generators to create Orthodox “inspired” art. He posted six images created by the MidJourney program, and I share the results with you because they are pretty impressive.
prompt: “God’s presence at Divine Liturgy” 
prompt: “Cyberpunk Orthodox Church” 
prompt: “Holy Eucharist” 
prompt: “Futuristic Eastern Orthodox Icon” 
prompt: “Orthodox worshippers at liturgy” 
prompt: “Holy sacrament of the Orthodox Church” The comments on Reddit range from “rarefied” to “bizarre”, but there are more positive reactions than negative. It seems like one of the themes on the negative comments tends to be the lack of small details – it feels less human, for example, when there is no detail to the faces. I think the other criticism is somewhere along the lines of when one wants to see what happens by entering “sacred” things into a type of technology which certainly often raises a lot of questions, the results may or may not be something like looking for answers from a Ouija board.
Personally, I ind them to be quite impressive. I don’t believe that the machine “found God” – after all, it’s a machine and is not sentient. I certainly don’t think the images are holy – I can only imagine the disaster of AI-generated iconography! However, they are, at the very least, interesting. More than that, though, I think they kind of capture an aggregate spirit… Little details aside, the first one, for instance, certainly seems to visually portray some of what we talk about when we speak of the importance of Church.
I find it interesting, too, that two of these six specifically deal with futuristic themes. Mind you, this is probably a failing on my part, but I have never read Fr. Seraphim Rose’s book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. However, as someone who lived in the 20th century, an American, and as someone who seemed to be keenly aware of modern trends (and spoke to this), it seems like he uses the book to help modern Orthodox Christians prepare for defending themselves against the “modern spirituality” – heresy and false teachings, if you will. He uses teachings from the Church Fathers to do so, and in a Church that is steeped in history and tradition, this is the right thing to do,
However, I also believe that by naming the book as such, rather than “Orthodoxy and New Age Religions” or similarly, he also saw Orthodoxy as the true religion of the future. This is important. It is important because as Orthodox Christians, our faith needs to be integral our actions and direct our thoughts. Not only this, but we have to believe that it is relevant to life in the future as well. I don’t suppose that the Divine Liturgy will ever look like the “Steampunk Orthodox Church” but believing that Orthodoxy is still important in a technological age is crucial, and I think that there’s something about this image that touches on that.
When I was looking into the Orthodox Church all those years ago, it was important even then (2001-ish) that there were online resources about Orthodox Christianity, and there were communities forming where one could find other Orthodox Christians to talk to. There’s a lot that is less than ideal with “internet Orthodoxy”, but it’s still critically important to improving the accessibility of the Orthodox Church, especially in places where Orthodox Christians are a tiny minority.
The traditions of the Church are incredibly important, but it is imperative that Orthodoxy is not just lived behind the cloistered walls of a monastery where there is little difference as to what century it is, but also everywhere else, and into the future, so to speak. I would argue that this art represents part of that.
I won’t belabor the point too much, I also posit that it helps stimulate the imagination – I don’t think an icon will ever resemble the AI “futuristic” rendering here, but there is something very intriguing about the picture “Futuristic Eastern Orthodox Icon”. On one hand, I like the borders to the picture – I really like the (real) “storytelling” icons that do that. On the other, even though it’s not an icon, the image reminds me a little bit of Gustav Dore’s illustration in Dante’s Paradiso, seen here:
Orthodoxy needs to belong to the imagination, as much as it does to history and today’s reality.
Anyway, I figured I would share these images with you. I also found out that AI-created images cannot be copyrighted in the United States, as they lack “human authorship“. What do you think?
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Breath of Hallelujah 