Silence

So I guess it wasn't smart of me to start a blog on the eve of a very busy week, was it?

Don't worry, I'll try to keep up. I hate when my favorite bloggers take unscheduled vacations without so much as a by-your-leave (although I do understand) and while I know I'm not anyone's favorite blogger yet, I'll try to keep this little thing of mine going.

This week is the first week of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church (it started Monday, which we call Clean Monday... we don't do Ash Wednesday, except maybe in the western rite?). Every night of the week we pray a portion of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete within an evening service. In plain English, it's a very long, but beautiful service with many prostrations involved (get on your hands and knees with forehead touching the ground, get back up, repeat as needed until the Second Coming) and can be a bit exhausting. On Wednesday and Friday this includes the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, so this can be a very spiritually-intense week.

To demonstrate this, note that I am a college student, and I want to go to bed right now. Now note the time stamp on this post. 'Nuff said?

By the way, I have officially invented the near-prostration. This is where you bend down towards the floor as if doing a full prostration, but notice just before your knees hit the floor that no one else(!) is doing it at the moment. Your fingertips sink into the carpet/bang against the floor from your momentum, but you quickly rise to your feet again, and glance around a bit to see if anybody saw that (they did).

I did that totally on purpose tonight, every single time, I swear. Near-prostration. Ask anybody.