Here I am awake, watching my Ukrainian metal detecting guys survey a newly plowed field. They find the usual stuff, coins, buttons, spent cartridges, religious medals, and cutlery. Some of their funds are nearly one thousand years old. Some were left by Die Deutsche Wehrmacht almost 80 years ago. We can only imagine the horror visited upon this earth not all that long ago, as the Germans sought this land for Lebensraum, living space.

The dirt of Ukraine is the famous “Black Earth”, the source of its fame as a prized agricultural region. Only about thirty years ago, under Communism, the agricultural production model was the collective farm. When the collective farms disappeared, the jobs in the rural economy went away also. Villages were depopulated and there are many abandoned houses. Eerie.

I made some decaf. I will sit and drink some of it as I watch the lay faithful, the monks, and the clerics do their Christmas festival. Now the people are singing Silent Night in Ukrainian Russian. This comes from monastery at Sviatogorsk Lavra in the Don Bass region. The people sing over there. Truly moving.

The peoples of Russia and Ukraine had their “revolution” over a century ago and found it wanting. They embrace their Orthodox faith and its customs and traditions because they experienced the spiritual desert of secular atheist Marxism. A lot of Westerners need to see how fervent their rejection of secular agnostic materialist values is, Pope Francis, for starters.

J had this experience of sadness yesterday that I managed to feel also. We need to talk. Again. That’s the thing about relationships. The partners need to talk more than once. Who knew?

Time for me to get really intrusive. Maybe her health isn’t good. Work exhausts her. I don’t know any more. It’s hard living with someone whose principal activities are work and watching cable and broadcast TV.