April 23, 2022

Staying up late.......


Tonight is our Pascha (Easter) celebration.  The culmination of 40 days of preparation will end tonight, the biggest event on the Orthodox calendar.  We will go to services at 11 pm tonight, and it will go on for a few hours.  A celebratory meal is offered after services.  It is a very beautiful service, for at midnight, all the lights are turned off....and in the darkness, the priest will come out of the sanctuary with a candle, and light the candles of two parishioners, who in turn pass the light along (because we will all have candles), filling the church with a warm glow, symbolizing the illumination of the faithful.  We will greet each other  (in Greek) with Chritos Anesti! and reply with Alithos Anesti! (which means Christ is risen and indeed he is risen).    It won't be easy staying up so late when we've gone to bed around 10 every night.....well, unless we can't fall asleep, which these days happens more often than we'd like.  

We will both try to nap a bit this afternoon.  I am not really a nap taker.  It is hard for me to take naps.  If I try and actually succeed, when I wake up I find 10-15 minutes has gone by, not the hour or so I had hoped for!  Romeo can nap on demand, an ability I wish I had!  No matter if I find it easy or impossible to nap, I will so enjoy our services tonight.


 

Yesterday was a day of truly prodigious winds.  Gusts up to 70 mph and more, and continuous wind all~day~long.  It was awful.  We had gone for a walk somewhat early in the morning, but not early enough to beat the windy conditions.  By the time we were back home, my skin felt like sandpaper.  Dry, scratchy, itchy.  I felt so much better after a shower and slathering on tons of lotion.  The sky looked beige with all the dust in the air, and it was tough to be outside even for a few minutes!  I saw some guy jogging in it, and marveled that he could be out in it that long.  Everything has a coating of sand and dust on it, and my poor wysteria looks a bit worse for it today.  It's universal around here ~ no one enjoys that kind of wind.  

Today it is quiet and much cooler.  We sure could use some rain though!  

Time to finish my laundry!

Christos Anesti!

Love, 365

5 comments:

  1. Alithos Anesti!

    Sounds like a lovely service! Reminds me of a candlelight service at Christmas Eve, but really I think it is lovely at an Easter service too. What food is served for the celebratory dinner?

    Sometimes I can take an afternoon nap but it usually is only for that short period of time like your naps. I used to take a 2 hour Sunday afternoon nap but got out of the habit and haven't developed it again.

    Enjoy your service tonight and your celebrations!

    betty

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, it was wonderful! But we were so tired.....after we took Romeo's sponsor and his wife home and fell into bed it was 4 am. The celebratory dinner was a traditional margaritsa meal (Greek Easter soup). We did not stay to have any, because it was around 3 am by then. Romeo dripped wax all over his pants and jacket, but he took my advice and used a warm iron and paper towels, and it came right out!

      Delete
  2. Alithos Anesti. You described it all so nicely. We went to the service with hundreds of other people. The island is full. After the lighting of the candles the younger ones light firecrackers and there's a cloud of gunsmoke 😮 and a firework displays . Then we came home to eat offal soup and crack those red eggs.
    Lots of lamb and goat eating today.
    Happy easter

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Other than the hundreds of people, and the fireworks, that sounds like our night/early morning! Yesterday we had bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches....yum!

      Delete
  3. Hope you had a lovely service and wonderful celebration. Also hope the wind has taken a vacation and you got some rain. We are getting lots of both this month and, I know we need the rain, but I could use some blue skies and sunshine.

    ReplyDelete

Cheap sunglasses..........

I love sunglasses.  I've had many pairs..some expensive, some not cheap nor expensive, and the pair I have on in the photo, which I prob...