J, my wife, now works “overnights” at her store, part of a large national chain with a colour motif of red. She just finished her shift. I went to sleep around 11:30 ,just as she started work, then awoke around 3:45 AM, awaiting her return around 5:00 AM. And now she is home. Just as she needs sleep, so do I.

It is a drizzly morning in Richmond, VA. In Ekaterinburg, Russia,(Siberia, to be precise) snow is on the ground. I watched as the priests began their Liturgy, wearing blue liturgical vestments. In the Western (Latin) Churvh, we associate blue with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Perhaps today is a Marian Feast over there.

What am I thinking? I need sleep. I long for sleep. I feel like one of those cloistered religious, who awaken to pray in the dark of night. My love for others radiates out like ripples in the water, when a stone is cast into a pond. In times where conflict perseveres, we must love harder, starting with Our Lord. The stone we cast in our metaphorical lake, is like the entreaty we make to God for restoration. And our love for our neighbours radiates from that.

In early sobriety, I followed three simple rules 1) Trust God, 2) Clean house, 3) Help others. I feel as if I am back at those first days, not that I drank again. I baven’t. It seems like my “reset” button has been pressed.

The recent unpleasantness has taken away many of the fixtures and symbols of our culture. The cultural Marxists ripped out our symbols in this Summer’s orgy of destruction, as if they think a brave new world can be created afresh, by wiping out our identity. These Roundheads, Jacobins, and Bolsheviks of our time know only destruction. We will persevere, not these barbarians. I just saw the icon in the Ekaterinburg church of the martyred Czar Nicholas II and the Royal Family. This church exists to repudiate the intolerance of the twentieth century’s godless. The Faith of Russia perseveres. Their Faithful are the witnesses we need to see. The Faithful will always endure.

Folly, like wisdom, is timeless. Yet Wisdom triumphs. Hagia Sophia. Holy Wisdom.