St. Lucia and St. Herman
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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3M ago
  This past week some families in our community gathered to remember two special December Saints: St. Lucia of Syracuse and St. Herman of Alaska. For St. Herman, we made Spruce Island cookies. A Presbytera friend gave me this recipe years ago, and I taped it into the back of my parish cookbook. This post has the full recipe with instructions, as well as a link to purchase the cookbook with the original recipe. It's traditional to make green tree shapes for Spruce Island, and yellow stars since St. Herman is called the North Star of Christ holy Church in his troparion. In a ..read more
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Saint Moses the Ethiopian
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
You might have arrived at my blog from the link in my bio in my short story in Kosmeo, so I thought I would introduce you the historical man that inspired me.  Meet Moses! He has several epithets that help the faithful distinguish him from Moses of the Old Testament.  Moses the Black Moses the Ethiopian Moses the African Moses the Strong You can read a short history of his life in wikipedia.  Why is St. Moses the Ethiopian so inspiring to me?  His Strength I love the story of the Moses as a monk in the desert, attacked by four robbers. (You can read the story in ..read more
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Make Your Own Free Icon Coloring Page
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
I made this one year for our annual pilgrimage for our beloved Saint Raphael of Brooklyn We have enjoyed free icon coloring pages like these in the past, but sometimes I can't find the saint I want.   No worries - it's easy to make your own! I was raised in the 80's on the TV show MacGyver, and his name became a verb for us, any time we needed to cobble something together we didn't have. MacGyver rigs up a lie detector. It seems that this idea of "macgyvering" seeped into my bones, because it has been my default response many times in my li ..read more
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Nativity Fast: Nachos
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
  Also known in my motherly mind as "Chips and Veggies" "Cheese" Sauce = puréed veggies  baked butternut squash roasted red bell pepper (jar) caramelized onion (I doubled the onion I needed last night and had it waiting to go in the fridge) pickled jalapenos mustard, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, smoked paprika, chili powder, cumin, salt, cayenne, whatever spices you like fat of choice  (For fat, I alternate between what I have available, usually coconut oil, blended cashews, or a packet of Daiya cheese sauce. It's expensive at $6 per box, but each box ..read more
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Book Review: Exile by Loren Warnemeunde
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
 What if a YA novel made you think of Dostoevsky? It seems rather unlikely, but the new YA novel, Exile, moved me to think of Dostoevsky, the Old Testament, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (And fairy tales - as we all know - contain shadows of the Gospels, right?)  And it’s also just a good story!  Loren Warnemeude says in the Author’s Notes that she set out to write a retelling of Grimm’s fairy tale, “Maid Maleen,” but it grew into something much more. I agree. In the beginning it does feel like a fairy tale, complete with the threat of a tower/tomb, a garden, an apple tree, a t ..read more
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Book Review: Into the Flames (& Other Plays on Saints' Lives)
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
  My first experience of a children’s church play was at St. Nicholas in Shreveport, where my children got to participate in a play every December, for either St. Nicholas or for the Nativity. I was also blessed to spend a couple of years in Ann Arbor, Michigan at St. Vladimir Orthodox. Each year on their parish Feast Day, the children put on a play. It always impressed me afterwards how these kids could remember details from the stories, more than if they had only been taught a lesson. The play enabled them to embody the story. I love plays! That’s why I waited and waited (with no pati ..read more
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The Birthday of the Church (Pentecost)
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
Music Review My oldest is almost 19 years old, but he can still sing all the words to all the songs on this wonderful album - Celebrate the Feasts! When he was a wee lad and his little siblings were strapped into their car seats in the old minivan, this cd was pretty much on repeat whenever we drove anywhere. I love how the music is fun, but the lyrics are straight out of Orthodox theology, often even straight out of the services. If you are new to Gigi Shadid, I hope you enjoy this song about Pentecost with your children this week. It will be a nice way to prepare them to engage in the Fe ..read more
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Help to do Shakespeare
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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1y ago
I promise, you could just follow my own family's plan and get a good taste of a Shakespeare play. However, you might like to go deeper for a number of reasons: 1. You are just curious. 2. You are nerdy like me and like going deeper to see more ideas. 3. You would feel better about answering your children's questions if you had a little more preparation yourself. This one might especially be true if your child was assigned Shakespeare in school and you want to be able to participate and/or help at home. 4. You want to learn more about a specific play in order to decide if it is appropriate fo ..read more
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How to do Shakespeare at Home
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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2y ago
Last week I shared some reasons WHY it can be good to read Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays have found a home deep in the gut of an awful lot of people, people from super diverse backgrounds and in varying time periods. This reveals that something within the plays transcends time and place – that something is truth. It's the same truth we see in fairy tales, because the plays are patterned after the same structure as fairy tales. I've heard that perhaps we should avoid Shakespeare plays because all theatre is dangerous. I can think of one reason why this might be true: if his ..read more
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Why Shakespeare?
Orthodox Mothers' Digest
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2y ago
A couple of years ago, I read aloud Lamb’s version of King Lear to my kids. When the villain, Edmund, was scheming to hurt people, my 8 year-old son clenched his fists in anger. His eyebrows drew in and his voice grew tense. He hated it! The story gave him a way to experience for himself an inner knowing that such scheming is bad – in a way that trumped anything I could have preached to him about the topic. Likewise, when the good and faithful servant, Kent, stuck by the king after everyone else had abandoned him, my son set his jaw and drew up his chest and said, “I want to be like him ..read more
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