Oh, Yeah, It's Pascha.

Not that I hadn't noticed. In the Orthodox church, you can't miss it - there are a stack of services the week before it, in Holy Week. At least one every night, and sometimes two in a day. Your day gets all shifted around, too - the services, at least in our parish take place at night, and your entire focus becomes that, so you sort of end up on the night shift, which is good because when Pascha actually gets here, it starts late Saturday night and keeps going until Sunday morning. This year we started at, what, 10 pm? We brought two new catechemens in (that's people who want to become Orthodox but aren't quite yet), baptized a new member, and chrismated him and two others. Then we started with Nocturne, and then the procession and then Matins and Liturgy, and then of course the Paschal feast, complete with chocolate fountain, which was incredible, and incredibly good - chocolate dipped banana - mmmm! By the time we got home and into bed, it was 5 am, and we had to be up again at 11 because we were having Western Easter lunch with my mother-in-law.

But by Monday we were just back into the normal routine and it was as if Pascha had never happened. Certainly things around the house are more like deep Lent, when everyone is snappy and grumpy and tired of the fasting and the acetism than it is like Bright Week when we're all supposed to be joyous and celebrating the Resurrection. I'm tempted to think that because Big Red left us alone this year during Lent (our parish certainly had enough fuss, and so did our other Orthodox friends) but we seemed to be not only fine, but as if it wasn't Lent at all. So, no great spiritual insights, no great and wonderful rejoicing.

Just living through the current tension in the house, fighting with my son's school (again - this has been - well, never mind - that's another blog entirely.) I've come to the conclusion that the entire school system, at least in BC, is totally broken. This is beyond fixing - to make it better, we'd have to scrap what we have entirely, figure out just what we want public education to do and be, and then work out how to accomplish that, and build a totally new system from the ground up. Ain't gonna happen. And I'm deep into the Mother Alexandra story, which is going better than I had any right to expect. Thank you for your prayers, because they are working.

So that's why there's been no great spiritual insights this year during Lent and Pascha. However, my torn cartilage is healing up nicely, and I started swimming and walking this week. And will be doing more to both get in shape and lose weight. There is even some indication that I may actually, contrary to earlier evidence and belief, still have abdominal muscles, or at least vestiges of same. Not bad. And I think I'll nag the reclusive luddite about the photos from the monastery trip so I can get them up on flickr for people to see.