Daily Archives: May 21, 2014

The Monastery: Mr. Vid and the Nun [Russian Orthodox in Norway]

Hi readers.  More Nun stuff.

Worlds collide, tempers flare and dreams come true when Mr. Vig, an 82-year-old Danish recluse who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a headstrong nun, join forces to transform Mr. Vig’s run-down castle into a Russian Orthodox monastery.

The heel of the loaf

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I mostly never forget to do my gratitude affirmation ritual as many times per day as I remember to do it.  Suffice to say, many times each day.  But I’m prone to forget my forgiveness rituals unless I catch myself being angry, or sense a seed of anger feeling around for a hold on my consciousness.

This morning I had to add forgiveness affirmations as an adjunct to the gratitudes, however.  Old memories climbing up into my head for a breath of air.

I was associated for a number of years with a family who didn’t throw away the heel of the loaf, as some families do and my own family would have never considered because it was too alien a concept.  In my childhood home you ate the heel if it arrived on pain of I can’t imagine what.

But this family I had to forgive this morning found a way around throwing the heel away, or throwing it away.  They’d each reach past it and get the next slice down, leaving the heel for someone else.  Me when I was around, because they all just passed it by.

When the loaf bag went empty except for two heels, someone would carefully place the two heels into a bag of left over heels, presumably in case anyone came along who’d prefer eating a dry heel to a piece of wasp nest fresh out of the loaf.

A lot of it got thrown away I’m sure, and a fair amount fed birds or went into stuffings.  Meatloafs got rice instead of dry breadcrumbs.

Something got me remembering that after all these years, and I felt my gorge rising.  Damned people leaving the heel for someone else.  And what it implies.

And had myself a specially scheduled on-the-spot ritual of forgiveness affirmations.

Old Jules