Getting Ready

I am already starting to get excited about Great Lent. In the past I have failed at keeping the fast. I don't mean the food part, I mean the attentivness, repentence, and the alms-giving parts. I haven't done very good at the food part either, but I do better at that than the more important parts of the fast. Anyway, that isn't what I wanted to write here. What I wanted to write about was a new word I learned while getting ready for Great Lent: xerophagy.

Here is the the dictionary definition:
"Xerophagy\Xe*roph"a*gy\, n. [L. xerophagia, Gr. ?; ? dry + ? to eat.] Among the primitive Christians, the living on a diet of dry food in Lent and on other fasts. "

It seems that during the first three days of Holy Week our one daily meal is to be a xerophagic meal. I knew about the one meal, of course, but I had not heard of xerophagy until today. This is very exciting!!! (More info on Orthodox Fasting can be found here.)

I know it might seem weird, but the weekly fast on Wednesday and Friday is one of the things that pointed me away from Roman Catholocism and toward Holy Orthodoxy. During the couple of years I was reading the Ante-Nicene Fathers and the Early Christian Writings, and comparing my "conservative" Protestant faith with the Roman Catholic faith, I read a little book called the Didache. (It had been mentioned by my then pastor, Brian Morgan in one of the sermons he preached at Peninsula Bible Church. It was the first patristic text I ever read, other than the New Testament. Thanks, Brian.) In the Didache it mentioned that Christians were expected to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. Protestants don't do that. Neither do Roman Catholics. When I encountered the Orthodox Church and learned about the their Wednesday and Friday fasts, man, I'm telling you, a thrill went through me like you wouldn't believe. Who would have thought that I, the libertine of libertines would fall in love with the Orthodox Church because of its asceticism? Now, if I would just live that asceticism...[sigh]. Oh, well. Practice makes perfect.

In other news, the little boy and I went to the beach today. Specifically, we went to Bonny Doon Beach.

Here is an arial photo of the beach. In this picture you can see the Pacific Coast Highway running left to right, the road that goes inland to the little hamlet of Bonny Doon (Fans of Robert Heinlein might be interested in knowing that this is the town where the famous libertarian Sci-Fi philosopher lived.), and the little river that comes out of the cliff and circles around the beach in a clockwise direction.

In the hot days of summer it kind of turns into a hang out for old naked gay men, but that isn't a problem in the winter. It is the best beach between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. There is, as I said above, a little river that comes out of a tunnel in the cliffs. And wow what cliffs. (Here is a picture taken from the top. The beach is about 70 feet straight down.) The little boy and I had to climb down a 70 foot rock face to get to the beach below. The whole time, my fearless little boy was pulling on my hand and trying to jump (JUMP!!!) to the next lower rock. Ordinarily, I would keep 3 points of contact the whole time, but in one hand I had the little boy, and in the other I had a basket with dry clothes. It was scary! I wasn't entirely sure we were going to make it down the cliff. But we did. And boy did we have fun!

We ran in the waves, walked up the winding course of the river, dug holes in the sand, climbed on the rocks. Along the cliffs at the south end of the beach, where the river joined the sea, there were thousands of mussels - big ones! I thought about harvesting them but I don't know the law about that. So we left them. But the little boy had fun playing with them. We also tried to build a dam in the little river, but the little boy didn't want to do anything that organized. He just enjoyed throwing rocks into the water. At the top of the cliffs, and even growing on the sides there were gorgeous sweet smelling wildflowers. They were white but I don't know what they were called. (FYI: I didn't take any of the pictures in the links. I don't know any of the people who did take them, but they will give you some idea of what it is like at Bonny Doon Beach. Apparantly, a lot of people besides me think this is a very good beach.)

Tomorrow is the 4th anniversary of the day I first became aware of the existence of the woman to whom I am married.