The Orthodox Church in America has a special page on its website with materials to aid in prayerful remembrance of the events of September 11. The following petitions from the site are for use in Memorial services for the departed victims.

Again we pray for all who have fallen into the hands of our enemies: for the
children, the aged, and the sick; for prisoners of war and for all those whom our
enemies have killed and injured through terrorist attacks; that the Lord our God
may look upon them with compassion; that He may comfort, strengthen, and
preserve them; and that He may deliver them speedily from bondage and
oppression and have mercy on them.

Again we pray for the repose of the souls of the valiant people of God who have
departed this life: especially for the souls of all those who lost their lives during
the terrorist attacks.

Again we pray for our relatives and friends who continue to mourn and to grieve
the loss of their loved ones; that the Lord our God will grant them His peace and
consolation.

Again we pray for those who serve in the Armed Forces of our nation on land and
sea and in the air; that the Lord our God may bring them safely out of every peril
and danger and ever sustain them with the comfort of His mercy.

Again we pray that we may be preserved from wrath, pestilence, earthquake,
flood, fire, the sword; from invasion by foreign enemies, from terrorist attacks,
from civil war, and from sudden death; and that our God, Who is good and the
Lover of Mankind, may be gracious, merciful, and easy to be reconciled to us, so
that He may turn away from us the storm of wrath and affliction stirred up against us;
that He may deliver us from the righteous judgment impending against us; and
that He may have mercy on us.

The following is something I wrote in the aftermath of 9/11 last year. I have some hesitation about posting it here, both because of its inadequacy in face of the subject matter and because it assumes knowledge of two poems by Yeats that are not quoted in full. I cannot do much about the first problem without becoming a better writer than I am. As to the second, the first Yeats poem can be read in full here and the second here. (Thanks to Steven Riddle and his Flos Carmeli blog for the link to the poetry resources at www.blackmask.com.) Susan and I had the honor of helping in a small way at the Pentagon crash site in the days following 9/11. We were there in response to a call for folks with a ham radio license to provide communications support for the Salvation Army. For the one night and one day we were there, I witnessed the quiet heroism of the military, law enforcement and public safety personnel. The job was massive, harsh and mostly thankless, but it was done without hesitation. I am used to crime scenes as part of my daily work, but this was on a scale beyond my imagination. This piece was an attempt to process at least part of my own reaction.

Like everyone else gathered around a screen on Tuesday, I had the feeling that the world had changed, radically, while we watched. It was as clear as a curtain closing between acts or an orchestra turning the page from a movement marked "staccato" to one captioned "largo." What it means for all of us we will find out in the weeks to come. For me, the first, and greatest, surprise was to discover I was an American again. This, I admit, sounds absurd. After all, I have lived here all my life and I'm sure that in any other nation I would only have to open my mouth to remove any doubt of my nationality. What I mean, is that for the last few years I have felt an erosion of loyalty to any grouping larger than family, friends, neighbors and congregation. Just a few weeks ago, I was revisiting a poem by Yeats, "An Irish Airman foresees his Death." The lines that have struck me since I first read them are:

Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Yeats' airman lives in that peculiar modern dislocation, where the glories of the brave new world draw you to strange places disconnected from the old places and values. The "lonely impulse of delight" in flying, of facing life and death in the clouds replaces the old reasons for fighting. He is not a mercenary, but neither does he fly as a patriot, for Britain, for Ireland, for anywhere. His is a life, and a death, disconnected from any place that any man born before this last century would recognize as home.

For many years I was convinced that home, in any deep sense, was something we had lost with advent of modern America. To have mobility, the ability to reinvent oneself at will, is a great thing at times, but it is the opposite of being rooted from generation to generation, in either a place or a tradition. We all, in these times, are subject to that "lonely impulse of delight" that can take us far away. The thing delighted in could be as simple as city lights and loud music, as complex as the marvels of science, art or literature. In any case, it leads us to a place where patriotism is not so much false, as irrelevant. Our true country is, at best, our callings, career and colleagues. At worst, our highest loyalty is to the products we consume.

These past eight years I have tried to run in the opposite direction. I live on land occupied by my wife's family for over a hundred years. (Longer, if the family story about a Shawnee grandmother many generations back is true.) In a time where mendacity and materialism have been the norms on both ends of the political spectrum, the acres I call home have seemed country enough. When Clinton was elected to a second term, my wife switched from flying the American flag to hoisting up the old secessionist banner of a white star on a field of blue, the "Bonnie Blue Flag" of the War between the States. I had a pretty good idea of what we were seceding from. Where we were seceding to was a little less definite. The combination of local land, relatives, neighbors and friends I felt loyalty to did not have a name of its own. In my own mind I have half-jokingly thought of it as the Republic of Gooney Run. Until Tuesday it was enough.

Now I fly the flag without hesitation. Chesterton, a great patriot, cautioning against an unreflective patriotism, once said "'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'my mother, drunk or sober.'" This land, right or wrong, drunk or sober, is my land and I owe it whatever I can give. Not in spite of its sins and failings, but because of them, for they are my own. When Susan and I were down at the Pentagon helping with the Salvation Army relief effort, we rode by a parking garage filled with refrigerator trucks borrowed from the local supermarkets. When I realized what those trucks were holding it chilled and angered me. Those were my people in those ad hoc mortuaries. And I thought of some other lines by Yeats:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned

I cannot quote the next two lines. The worst, indeed, are full of passionate intensity. But after seeing the rescue crews face to face at the Pentagon, men exhausted from back-breaking, soul-tearing labor, men struggling, not with the hope of finding anyone alive, but simply to fill a coffin for a grieving family, it is impossible to say that the best lack all conviction. Men like these were ignored and disparaged in this nation the last eight years, but they were still here when needed. One of the first acts of the rescue crews, both here and in New York, was to put up an American flag. They were not ashamed, and now, neither am I.

I'm trying another photo upload. If this works, you are seeing a sheep pedicure:

I spend an inordinate amount of time in bookstores. While I like a Borders or Barnes and Noble just fine, the real treasures are in the small shops; independent sellers, specialty shops and used book stores. Front Royal is blessed with the presence of Royal Oak Bookshop, my own favorite reef on the ocean of bibliomania. You can take a virtual tour on their website. I would recommend a visit in the flesh if you are in the area.

Royal Oak is a small store with a constantly changing stock of new and used volumes. Literally anything may come through, like shells washed up with the tide. One day there may be nothing of interest. Come back later, and there is that odd little book you have searched for all your life. Some years back, I found on their shelves a copy of In The Service Of The King, the memoirs of my great-grandfather, the Reverend Joseph Dunn, concerning his life as an Episcopal priest in Virginia in the early part of the last century. Up until that moment I had good reason to believe the only copies in existence were in the hands of family or moldering in the State Library in Richmond. The chain stores may offer discounts, but they can't give you miracles.

Blogger appears to be having technical difficulties loading images. If one picture is worth a thousand words, I have a lot of writing to do. Will try and do some of it later this evening.

Telford Work has returned to blogging after a move to the west coast. Until I can add him back to the link list on the left, you can find his theological meditations here.

Between family, farm, job and the kids' return to school, there hasn't been much time for blogging. I do have a few things in the works which will get posted later this week. To those who have written me or left comments, my apologies. I will get back to you in the next couple of days. In the meantime, here is another picture, looking out to the south. It was taken last summer during a dry spell and doesn't do justice to the look of the place now after the rain last week. The days still feel like summer, but nights and mornings have a certain slant of light that hints of autumn. There is a moment near sunset when a rush of cool air pours down from the mountain and the heat of the day vanishes as everything is lit up by the last burst of sunlight over Buck Mountain. Who could want more?

I'm experimenting with the new blog*spot plus/blogger pro upload feature. Here is a picture taken from the front yard earlier this summer. In the foreground are some of the flock who did a four footed limbo under the fence. Their taller, less flexible, brethren are behind them, still in their proper place. Below, to the left, are the barn and barnyard.

Rebecca Poe died today after a long battle with cancer. She was nobody famous, though if you have lived more than a few years in Warren County, you knew her, or at least had read her work in the local papers. Becky devoted her life to recording the comings and goings of our community. In later years she took up the mantle of local historian, and became the keeper of our memories. If you wanted to know where the creek that flowed past your farm got its name, Becky could tell you. She knew the old census records, newspaper files, and the few formal works of history our community produced. More importantly, she knew stories. She was related to most of the old-timers, had talked to all of them and remembered everything. She wrote down much, but the loss of what she held in her own heart and head is immeasurable.

Becky spent most of her working life as a journalist, reporting, writing, editing; doing at one time or another every job that can be done on a small town paper. She retired when her health got bad. After an unexpected remission from the first bout with cancer, she treated her reprieve as a gift and decided it was time to do whatever her heart truly desired. She discovered that what gave her the greatest pleasure was what she had done for all those years, running a small town newspaper. She wanted to do it on her own terms though, and started the Warren Times, a small paper produced weekly from her kitchen table. My wife Susan, who was a cousin to Becky on her father's side, helped out by selling and designing ads for the Times. I grew used to seeing oversize sheets spread across the table in Susan's study, ready for advertising copy and last minute stories, before being returned to Becky and the printers. The paper thrived for several years, breaking even and even making a little money on occasion, until Becky's health began to fail again. The paper has been dormant for a while now, and with Becky gone, will not likely see print again.

We will miss her. She had a quick mind and a great heart, a love of family and a love of community. In any place, large or small, there are a few souls who do more than their share to see that what is good survives, and that what is wrong gets fixed. Most of these folks are unknown outside their own town or neighborhood, sometimes not well known within it. Becky Poe was one such person. Her time among us left us richer, her passing will leave us that much poorer.

Tomorrow (September 1) is the beginning of the Church year on the Orthodox calendar. My own Church, the Orthodox Church in America, follows a revised Julian calendar which tracks the civil calendar for most dates, but calculates the timing of Pascha (Easter) according to the traditional reckoning. (For those Orthodox Churches that use the traditional Julian calendar, September 1 is still thirteen days away. Orthodoxy being conservative in all things, many Churches have declined to use the revised, or "New" Calendar and, in some circles, the change is viewed as the first step of a descent into secularism and relativism.)

The custom of starting the Church year at the beginning of September dates back to the times when Orthodoxy was the official faith of the Eastern Roman Empire. Even in these more secular times, it is still the custom of Orthodox hierarchs to send a word of greeting and encouragement to their flocks at the beginning of the new Church year. The message of Metropolitan Herman, new chief hierarch of the OCA can be found here. Archbishop Demetrios, head of the Greek Archdiocese, sends his greetings here.

While unloading groceries this afternoon, I saw a very large bird walking by the roses along the back fence. Since the (still unnamed) peacock was over by the small sheep shed, I assumed it was one of the vultures I had seen this morning, sitting out on fence posts at the far end of the feed lot for the ram lambs. Walking closer, I could see my mistake and the reason for my confusion. It was not a turkey vulture, but an actual wild turkey. For several years there has been a good sized flock living in the National Park above us on the mountain. Usually shy, wary birds, they sometimes come down to the pasture by the house to feed in the early morning. I am used to seeing them from some 100 yards distance, not 10 feet away, walking in my own backyard. This fellow (I say "fellow" because he had the Tom turkey's characteristic beard, a long tuft of feathers dangling down in front) panicked when he saw me, tried to find an opening in the wire fence, and then flew off into a tree on the property line. I lost sight of him in the foliage, and with frozen foods thawing in the truck bed, could not stay to watch.

What's Coming Through the Speakers:

Tonight's soundtrack is a RealAudio stream of June Tabor's album, Rosa Mundi, courtesy of Green Linnet Records. A veteran of the British folk scene, she has a dark, haunting voice, capable of crystalline beauty in the midst of heartbreaking pathos. Richard Thompson and Elvis Costello both write for her. In a better world, June Tabor would be selling out stadiums, while Madonna, Brittany, Christina et al would be reduced to strutting their stuff in front of a few drunken Shriners in the lounge of a Holiday Inn outside of Trenton, New Jersey.

Green Linnet provides complete streams of four of her albums for the curious. While this is generous of them, RealAudio, even over broadband, doesn't do justice to the quality of her singing. Grab a CD if you can find one. You can read more about her here and here.

The Suburban Ascetic

Back in June I started this feature, intending it to be a regular series on living a basic Orthodox spiritual life in a consumer culture. The first two installments, on the Jesus prayer, can be found here and here in the archives. As you can see, I now have to refer to it as a series of irregularly appearing essays on Orthodox topics. This installment has some thoughts on iconography, though I still intend to get back to the promised piece on fasting and present a basic bibliography on prayer.

Someone coming from a secular or Protestant background cannot help but be struck by the role icons play in Orthodox life and worship. If you enter an Orthodox Church, the first thing you see is the iconostasis or icon screen, at the front of the Church, between the congregation and the altar. Some may be modest and open, others reach from floor to ceiling in the traditional manner, forming a wall covered with images of Jesus, Saints, Angels and the Virgin Mary. In some Churches, the images spill out over the entire sanctuary, leaving no surface unpainted. In a devout Orthodox home, somewhere there will be a corner with small icons, and perhaps a prayer book and oil lamp. These are more than just decorations. To the horror of some protestants, icons are venerated; they are kissed, parishioners cross themselves before them, the priest censes them, they are carried in processions. It is hard to think of an act of Orthodox worship which does not involve icons in some way, shape or form. This strikes secular and protestant souls alike as superfluous and superstitious. I have heard protestants exclaim, even after a lengthy theological and Christological explanation of the basis for icons, that it still feels like idolatry. Why, if the heart of the faith is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, would anyone need these peculiar artworks as part of their life?

To give a full answer to the question is beyond the scope of my abilities, and certainly beyond the limits of what can be jammed into a weblog. The classic apologia for images was written by St. John of Damascus. The best translation of his work is published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, but an earlier translation can be found online here. St. John's argument is wide ranging, covering Old Testament precedents, discussing the worship of the Church, analyzing the role of tradition and, most importantly, exploring the centrality of the incarnation in our redemption. With the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, everything has changed. Even matter itself is charged with the possibility of bearing the Kingdom of God. Redemption does not happen simply in the mind, nor is some disembodied soul the subject of redemption. Just as Christ was raised in a body, so shall we be. The earth is not merely doomed to destruction, but will become a new earth, with a new heaven. Icons are a foretaste of this. They teach us that men and women can become transfigured in Christ. We live in the midst of glory, even in this fallen world. The Saints are part of this: Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:1-2) The images of Jesus, the Saints and the Virgin remind us of this "cloud of witnesses" and show us the goal of our race.

Orthodoxy asserts against the materialist that there is a spiritual world. It asserts against the Gnostic and Manichean that the spiritual is linked to the material and that the material, though at times dangerous, is fundamentally good. Seeing the spiritual in and through the material is one of the goals of Orthodox spiritual life. For those of us who are a long way from sainthood, icons provide a way of seeing we could not achieve on our own. Technology has shown us that much of reality exists beyond the visible spectrum. Pick up any issue of National Geographic and you will see photographs of earth or the stars enhanced in what is sometimes called "false color" to show realities hidden from the narrow band of energy our eyes can see. Infrared pictures show the heat plumes from towns and factories, x-rays show stars invisible to the naked eye. Even radio waves tell stories of pulsars and quasars inaccessible in visible light. The iconostasis, or icon screen, does not hide the altar from the people, it reveals it. The liturgy tells us that we celebrate together with Saints and Angels, that Christ is present and that His Mother is there, interceding. The iconostasis shows this to us, revealing a hidden spiritual reality, just as the "false color" of an infrared or computer enhanced photograph reveals a hidden earthly one.

The "cloud of witnesses" commemorated in icons is particularly important in Orthodox life. In Orthodoxy, no one is saved alone. Orthodoxy is not opposed to knowing Jesus as one's "personal" Savior as long as that does not mean merely personal, as if our Lord could be someone's private possession. To be redeemed is to enter into a communion that extends to both the living and the dead, to angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, as well as to earthbound men and women. A "personal" relationship with Jesus that does not involve this is unthinkable. It is as if a man or woman were to turn to their beloved and say, "I want a personal relationship with you. Your parents, your family, your friends, the people in your past, I don't want to hear about any of them, I just want you. The beloved (unless their friends and family are horrible indeed) might reply, "If that is so, you don't want me at all. All those people are part of who I am, and you cannot truly know me without them." Orthodoxy asserts that the figures pictured in icons are the friends and family of our Lord. They are part of His story and His story in turn encompasses all that is and ever will be. If we bow before an icon, or say our prayers before it, we are not worshipping an idol, but merely taking our place within that story, as part of that great company.

There is a welcome break today in our summer-long drought. Steady, soft rain has been falling all afternoon. I was trying to get one of the fool house cats to come inside out of the weather, when my youngest explained the problem: "You have to open the door real wide. Cats like to think that they're royal . . ."

I was unloading thirty bales of hay from the farm truck Monday when one of the ewes came over to scratch her back on the frame of the truck. Sheep being into groupthink at a genetic level, this resulted in a half-dozen other ewes under the truck, stretching and scratching. They had the thing (a battered battleship gray Dodge Ram with an oversize hay rack on the back) popping up and down like a low rider on an L.A. street corner. I'm glad it was the smaller commercial ewes. The Hampshires might have flipped it. I can see the pictures now; rioting sheep turning over vehicles and smashing windows!

Fred First at Fragments From Floyd blogs on the topic of vultures today. We get more than our share around here. They fly the thermals coming off the ridge line of Skyline Drive back behind the house, circling for road kill on Browntown Road, or letting us know that one of our older sheep has gone on to her last reward. The native turkey vultures are with us all year. We are on a migration route for black vultures. It is not unusual to have a tree full next to the driveway, roosting until the air warms up on spring mornings.

Last summer we had a young black vulture with an injured wing on the farm. He would never let you get close enough to catch him, but he had the run of the place for the month or so he was here. An odd sight, a giant ugly black bird running through Susan's rose garden. I used to see him standing on a large rock in the pasture, looking for something dead. I always wondered, if he did find food, would he walk around it in big circles first? I never did find out what happened to him; did he heal and fly off, get caught by something larger and meaner than he was, or just simply hike over the next hill, hissing and snapping on his way?

I read James Lilek's Bleat with the morning coffee. He is always worth a minute of my time, but today's piece is exceptional. He takes on the case of the radio "shock jocks" who encouraged a (embarrassingly enough) couple from Virginia to have sex during mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Or more to the point, he takes on those who think the swift response of the radio station was a bad thing. He goes on to confront the entire modern genre of "transgressive" art:

It’s the work of people so jaded they think that intellectual bravery is defined not by the traditions you honor, but the ones you debase.

My father-in-law keeps a floating population of peafowl on the farm. I haven't done a head count recently, so I can't give an accurate figure. At one time there were over a dozen peacocks and peahens strutting around the place, shrieking and stealing cat food off of the in-law's kitchen porch. Their numbers are somewhat reduced, but they are still a visible and audible presence. Our house is about forty acres north of theirs and we have been spared the peafowl infestation, until now. First, the five geese that are the remainder of my father-in-law's more traditional poultry flock moved down to our barnyard. (They sneak in and eat the spilled grain from the sheep troughs when they are not honking and squawking like old church ladies mad at the minister.) Now one of the peacocks, apparently unhappy with his standing in this year's mating competition, has joined them on our side of the farm. We first realized he was over here when we began finding shed tail-feathers around the place. He has tried to move into the yard, much to Charlie, the house dog's disgust. Sheep he is used to. Llamas, he has adapted to. Peacocks are just too much. At the moment they are in a kind of stalemate, the peacock coming in under the fence rails when Charlie is inside, retreating down the hill to the barn when he is out.

Peacocks are remarkable creatures, hardy, but weirdly impractical. They grow those giant tails every year for mating displays, only to shed them at the end of the summer and start the whole process over. My boys have grown up gathering two and three foot long radiant rainbow-touched tail feathers off the ground every August. We have bundles of them stashed around, like summer sunlight stored in quills. It almost makes up for the trial of living with them. One would think, after seeing a male in full display, that these birds must have the most beautiful of all calls. Wrong. Imagine, if you will, the sound of someone crushing a cat under a giant rusty hinge, echoing off the hillside. Multiply that by the total number of nesting peafowl and you have our night time music when they are disturbed. Makes a great alarm system though.

Our friend is an India Blue Peacock, the kind usually raised domestically, but still found in the wilds of Southeast Asia. Susan commented today that, since he seems determined to stay, he should have a name. Being fresh out of ideas, I am taking suggestions. Drop me a line or leave your pick in the comments section!

We just returned from the Page County Fair where we finally succeeded in our quest to buy a steer. The auction in Page is in a covered building, the heat kept just on the near side of bearable by strategically placed fans. Good people though, and the kids did a great job with the livestock. The auctioneer was the same fellow who worked our Warren County sale. He has the classic high speed sing-song patter, broken by the staccato cries of the guys taking the bids ( A dollar ten, dollar twenty, dollar twenty?, Yep!, A dollar thirty? . . .) At Page he cautioned the crowd that all animals were sold by the pound, recalling the case of the suburbanite in Warren County this year who thought she had bought a sheep for three dollars, fifty cents. Multiply that by 110 pounds and you get the shock she had when time came to settle up. And they say us country folk are ignorant . . .

We ended up buying a nice Hereford steer raised by a little girl who came up to about my elbow. She had a little trouble in the ring persuading her 1235 pound charge to stand still, but you had to admire her pluck. She didn't name the animal, which is just as well. It disturbs some of our dinner guests when we can tell them who they are eating. The steer now goes to Gore's Custom Slaughter & Processing, where he joins the hog from the Warren County sale. (Yes, I know, a meatpacker named Gore is right up there with a Dentist named Gum, or an Osteopath named Bones. They do a great job nonetheless.)

If you have the time and inclination, go find yourself a rural County Fair and stop on in. Nothing fancy, just real folks doing things most Americans have forgotten. And if you are in the area, give us a call. We'll throw a steak on the grill.

On Friday night Susan and I went to the Clarke County Fair, where we know a few folks, in an attempt to buy a steer at the 4-H Auction. My father-in-law picked up a hog at the Warren County auction the previous week. He was a stout fellow (the hog, that is) and is now on his way to becoming pork loin and sausage. The 4-H kids got good prices for their animals, good enough that we were priced out of the steer market. The irony is is that we have a few cattle here on the place and sell feeder calves. We don't have the facilities or the temperament to raise them up to the 1,000 pound plus size for slaughter, so we buy our beef from the local 4-H sales. The quality of the meat is better than anything you will find in the grocery store and the money goes straight to the kid who raised the steer. I often say that the purpose of 4-H auctions is to give young people the illusion that there is money in farming, in the hopes that some will be foolish enough to give it a try. Clark County's prices were lower than Warren's, but still higher than our budget allowed. We had a good time nonetheless. A few Warren County Deputies moonlight as security there for the week. We ran into one, an investigator whom Susan had spoken to many times, but had never met. (The phone is on her side of the bed - the Sheriff's Department wakes her first, then she wakes me.) He took a good look at her (a former Miss Warren County), looked closely at me, noted the contrast, then asked her, "Did you used to drink a lot?"

This week we try again at the Page County Fair.

Here is a link I misplaced when I switched computers last year; Inner Light Productions, Michael McClellan's web site and online gallery devoted to the Desert Fathers and his own remarkable photographs of Eastern Orthodox and Coptic monks and monasteries.

One of the more pleasant surprises in writing this blog has been my introduction to some of the many articulate and creative Calvinist bloggers out there. My guess is that I owe my Reformed links to Wayne Olsen, who left Calvinism for Orthodoxy, but seems to have kept all his friends along the way.

I attended (ironically enough) an Orthodox Presbyterian Church during my college years, and still have copies of Calvin's Institutes and Berkhof's Systematic Theology in the bookcase. My friend David Yeago (now a systematic theologian at the Lutheran Seminary in Columbia South Carolina) and I used to delve into the arcana of Reformed theology until the early morning hours during our undergraduate years. Eventually we began to notice a certain procrustean quality in Calvinist scholasticism and turned to the Catholic and Patristic traditions of the Church for balance. In my case after many years the process led me to Orthodoxy. I still remember the moment when I realized that I could not be a classic TULIP Calvinist. I was up late one night listening to Patti Smith singing on (the original) Saturday Night Live, deconstructing the Van Morrison tune, "Gloria." She opened her version by chanting "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine ." The doctrine of the Limited Atonement, (in the admittedly simplistic way I was introduced to it) would have required me to respond, "Well, probably so." This struck me as just wrong at a gut level. The intellectual dissatisfaction followed closely thereafter.

Nonetheless, I still retain an affection and respect for the Reformed Tradition and enjoy listening in on the conversations going in the Calvinist blogging world. Joel Garver's reflections on the atonement and the discussions they have provoked have been particularly interesting.

For those who have never heard of Patti Smith, go here for a piece at Blogcritics.com that tries to explain why she seemed so important to those of us around at the time.

Huw at Doxos.com has some good thoughts on the rhythms of feasting and fasting today in his post on the Feast of the Dormition.

NPR presents this fictional tale of the anonymous soul who began the practice of shouting out requests for "Freebird" at concerts. Actually, in this town when people call out for Freebird, they mean it, without a shred of irony. Making fun of Lynyrd Skynyrd around here is a good way to have yourself an educational experience out in the parking lot. Give it a listen anyhow, just for the free jazz version of the song at the end. (RealPlayer needed)

We added a new stud ram to our flock this week. We are breeding for genetic resistance to scrapie, a neurological disease which can afflict black-faced sheep. The new acquisition has the genetics we want, as well as being a showy young sheep. Susan made the mistake of asking her former English major husband for a name for him. Being that our current stud ram is named Pride, the new arrival now goes by Prejudice. Expect a crop of Jane Austen-themed lamb names this winter.

Like any other job, farming has its good moments and bad. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is which. It is all a matter of perspective. Night before last I went down to the barn to feed and found that one of the lambs had wedged his head through a wire panel separating the feed sacks from the rest of the barn. Since his head was larger than the opening in the panel, this was an accomplishment. One of the feed sacks was barely within reach, but reached it he had, torn it open with his teeth and chowed down on a small river of spilled grain. This was a bad thing for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that overeating can actually kill a sheep. Their system is designed for grass and foliage; bulky food and not too rich. Too much grain will actually cause ruptures as it works through their very intricate (and surprisingly delicate) digestive tract. I moved the sack out of the way, much to his displeasure. Since he had eaten more than enough, I left him wedged while I fed the other, less creative, lambs. After everyone else was cared for, I turned back to our greedy friend and started working him free, a process not unlike getting a ship out of the bottle. While I was pushing him back, he was pressing forward, still fixated on the remaining spilled grain with the kind of dumbstruck intensity seen only in crack-heads, rare book collectors, porn addicts and boy band fans. Needless to say, we were not experiencing a high point in human-ovine relations. After much effort, and a total loss of composure on both our parts, he came loose, but not before I had speculated on his chances of eternal salvation and commented, at length, on his personal hygiene, the character of his mother, and his reproductive preferences. This was one of those bad moments, unless of course you were anyone but me, in which case it would have been both amusing and instructive. As I said, it's all a matter of perspective.

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Dormition, or "Falling Asleep" of the Virgin Mary. David Melling's Anastasis site is displaying the icon for the feast and has links to Patristic texts and sermons. Archimandrite Ephrem's translation of the Vespers and Matins services for the Feast can be found here.

In giving birth you preserved your virginity,
In falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos.
You were translated to life, O Mother of Life,
And by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death.

I have been linked by another talented Calvinist blogger; Gideon Strauss. His interests range from poetry to architecture to African monastic chant. He blogs from the intersection of faith with culture, always an interesting place.

James Ferrenberg hosts a wonderful meditation on fairy-tales, childhood, and the gospel at his Paradosis blog today. Well worth a read.

I cited a passage from the Japanese poet Basho last week. His great work "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" is available in a useful hypertext edition at Basho's World. Not only are there photographs and illustrations of the places Basho visited, but you can read each entry in Basho's travelogue in up to five different translations. The Japanese text is also linked for those more linguistically gifted than I am.

Many of the hits I get on this site are referrals from a search request on Google. It is always interesting to see what people are looking for when they come by. I'm not sure I want to know what page this surfer was expecting to find with the following search: watch me i am a beautiful farm girl. The really odd part is that the referring Google search page was in Finnish. Backtracking though the search, I discovered that it had linked to the post where I told the story of meeting my own beautiful farm girl.

The Warren County Fair wraps up tonight. The 4-H Auction last night went well, and both my sons were pleased with the sale prices for their lambs. Susan, who made sure that sheep got fed, boys got to shows on time, and that difficulties both usual and unusual were dealt with quickly and (relatively) calmly, is recovering with a long afternoon nap. By tomorrow afternoon, everything should be cleared out and the space returned to empty fields with a few permanent display and show buildings near the roadway. The lights from the midway, the music from the ampitheatre and the sounds of animals from the show barn have brought a little life to a part of the County that is increasingly industrial. Across the street from the Fairgrounds is the Family Dollar Store Distibution Center, a single building the size of downtown Front Royal. The jobs it provides are welcome, but I miss the open fields that were there before.

Father Nectarios at Orthopraxis and Gerard Serafin at A Catholic Blog For Lovers have both posted recently on Orthodox-Catholic relations, though from very different perspectives. Father Nectarios links to some interesting and irenic remarks about Eastern Rite Catholics from Metropolitan Nicholas, the hierarch of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese which he had posted earlier. The status of the Eastern Rite, or "Uniates" is a sore point in current Orthodox-Catholic dialogues. Most of today's Eastern Rite Catholics are former Orthodox, brought back into communion with Rome through means which have been the source of centuries-long controversy. The ongoing existence and post-cold war expansion of the Eastern Rite Catholic churches has disrupted dialogue between Rome and several local Orthodox Churches. Most Catholics seem baffled by the vehemence of otherwise ecumenically oriented Orthodox on this point. This situation is, to say the least, complicated, and I would recommend Metropolitan Nicholas' remarks for a fresh perspective.

I once tried to explain the problem to a sympathetic Catholic by suggesting an analogy to the world of business and corporate mergers and acquisitions. For nearly a thousand years Rome approached the East as a kind of corporate raider, attempting to pick up the Orthodox Churches cheap in a series of forced buy outs and hostile takeovers. Since the sixties, Rome has shifted goals, and seems sincerely interested in a negotiated merger with the East. From the Roman standpoint, the Catholic Eastern Rite is a situation that will take care of itself once full communion is restored, much the way overlapping departments are gradually combined and reorganized in any merger. The Patriarch of Constantinople is the prime mover in dialogue with Rome from the Orthodox side. The Patriarchate sees Orthodoxy as living in a hostile environment, troubled by rising secularism on the one hand, and resurgent Islam on the other. While not adverse to merger, that is, to restoration of full communion on proper terms, the Patriarch is more interested in finding support for the survival of Orthodox Christianity in an increasingly hostile world. To follow through with the business metaphor, he is not seeking a merger but rather is trying to negotiate a strategic alliance to reduce competition and preserve market share. From this perspective, the Eastern Rite Catholics are not a problem to be dealt with later, but a chief item on the agenda. If Rome really accepts the Orthodox as "Sister Churches," why are they marketing a competing product in traditionally Orthodox territories? If they continue to do so, does this suggest that talk of merger is really just a cover for yet another takeover attempt?

Needless to say, this explanation of the situation is my own eccentric perspective and should in no way be taken as the "Orthodox" view!

Wayne Olsen, whose weblog is linked over at the left, has started a new blog; The Fathers of the Christian Church: A Weblog . He is inviting contributors to post their favorite excerpts from the Fathers.

Today is the feast of the Transfiguration. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story in their Gospels. The Gospel writers felt great freedom to arrange the particulars of Jesus' teachings and actions to suit the purposes of their own particular Gospel. Here, though, they all follow the same sequence of events. You have Peter's confession, that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and Jesus' revelation that he will be killed in Jerusalem and be raised on the third day. And after this (and after rebuking Peter), in all three Gospels, he tell the disciples that "there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God." What comes next is the Transfiguration on the mountain. Moses and Elijah stand with Jesus. Peter, James and John stand looking on, and God's glory comes overshadowing all. The law, in the person of Moses, the prophets, in the person of Elijah, the apostles, present, but bewildered, all witnessing the Reign of God revealed in the Uncreated Light shining forth from Jesus. This image, which hearkens back to Moses on Sinai and looks forward to the radiance of the New Jerusalem, is key to understanding Orthodox spirituality.

Here is a hymn from Ephraim the Syrian on the feast, from Anastasis, the web page of Archimandrite Ephraim of the Monastery of Saint Andrew:

He led them up the mountain to show them the glory of the godhead and to make known to them that he is the redeemer of Israel, as he had shown through the Prophets, and that they should not be scandalised in him when they saw his voluntary sufferings, that as man he was about to suffer for us. For they knew him as a man, but did not know that he was God. They knew him as son of Mary, going about with them in the world, and he made known to them on the mountain that he was Son of God and God.

The troparian and kontakian (special hymns) for the feast follow:

Thou wast transfigured on the mount, O Christ God,/ revealing Thy glory to Thy disciples as far as they could bear it./ Let Thine everlasting light shine upon us sinners/ through the prayers of the Theotokos, O Giver of Light, glory to Thee.

Thou wast transfigured on the mountain, O Christ our God,/ and Thy disciples beheld Thy glory as far as they were capable,/ that when they should see Thee crucified,/ they might know that Thy suffering was voluntary/ and might proclaim to the world/ that Thou art indeed the reflection of the Father.

Tomorrow is the commemoration of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, one of the odder tales in Orthodox hagiography. Recountings of it can be found at this page from St. John's Cathedral of the Russian Church Abroad and on this page from the OCA website. The story of the Seven Sleepers was popular in both Eastern and Western Christendom and a version of it can be found in the Koran. For the skeptic, it is an interesting folktale. For the believer, it is a story of faithfulness in persecution, and a living parable of the Resurrection.

The cave where the Seven slept was later turned into a pilgrimage site. The ruins of the site remain today and pictures of it can be found here.

Monday is the start of the week long Warren County Fair. Both of the boys are showing sheep at the 4H Market Lamb show, so someone from the family where be there every day for the duration. If you want to put in a bid on a sheep, goat, hog or steer at the 4H auction, just stop on by Friday evening at 6:30. I'll be the middle-aged man in the Glenrose Hampshires ball cap. Come on by and say hello.

If you are in the area tomorrow night, come to the fairgrounds before 7:00 p.m. for a special show by Loretta Lynn.

In Court yesterday I was prosecuting a former resident of Floyd County, Virginia, and was reminded that I had been meaning to link to this site: Fragments from Floyd (Virginia). This is one of my favorite rural blogs, and well worth a visit.

For those of you who are not regular NPR listeners, go here for Baxter Black's cautionary tale on the dangers of Sheep Farming.

While doing a little housekeeping on the "comments" feature, I found I had overlooked a response to my post on Billy Collins. The writer takes me to task for missing the intended humor of the poem, consistent with its original French models. She may well be right. Hanging out with cops, crooks and lawyers all day can dull one's sensitivity to the subtler shades of irony. We in criminal law specialize in tragedy and farce. Disagreements about Collins aside, I can heartily recommend her own web site, Laurable dot com. She has a unique collection of links to audio files of poetry and a poetry weblog of her own.

The author of Notes From Pure Land Mountain lives near the western shore of Lake Biwa. Three hundred and twelve years ago the haiku poet (and proto-blogger?) Basho lived in a hut on the southern tip of the lake. Here is his report of life there:

In the daytime an old watchman from the local shrine or some villager from the foot of the hill comes along and chats with me about things I rarely hear of, such as a wild boar's looting the rice paddies or a hare's haunting the bean farms. When the sun sets under the edge of the hill and night falls, I quietly sit and wait for the moon. With the moonrise I begin roaming about, casting my shadow on the ground. When the night deepens I return to the hut and meditate on right and wrong, gazing at the dim margin of a shadow in the lamplight. (Translation Makoto Ueda)

Robert Brady's story of an encounter with the descendants of Basho's boars can be found here.

This is the summer of rabbits. We are overrun with Sylvilagus Floridanu, that is, the Eastern Cottontail. We have always had a few around; our mixture of woods and pasture with tangled brush at the margins is perfect habitat. This year however, I can hardly walk in the early hours or the evening without kicking up one. The morning trip down the dirt and gravel driveway is an exercise in rabbit avoidance as they break across in front of truck. Usually the local alliance of foxes keeps their numbers down. I'm not sure what has caused this break in the food chain. Perhaps the presence of five llamas on this part of the farm has caused our red coated raiders to find other hunting grounds.

Up til now, the largest list of Christian Blogs has been kept at Martin Roth's site. His list has migrated and mutated into a searchable index of 245 (as of this morning) sites at blogs4God. Blogs are broken down into eight categories. I can be found under "Church Polity." I probably should be under "Journals" but the current category has a pleasantly Elizabethan sound, so I won't complain.

By happenstance I ran across another rural "Notes" site, only this one is by an American living in the countryside of Japan; Notes from Pure Land Mountain. I lived in Japan for two years as a small boy at a time when most of the country was still rural outside a few big cities. Here is a quote from the first post in his archives:

I decided not to take the main and faster highway back home, but to meander a bit in search of the kind of moments one can only come upon in mid-meander, and so took the narrow winding road along the Lake. I would thereby also get to see the old thatched-roof cottage again, where the beauty of its old wood and the stone path to the door was discreetly revealed by elegant bamboo fences and the gracefully sloping arms of ancient red pines and I could feel that old spirit, one of those last embers of the old Japan, like sitting close to fading loved one, moving close to a dying fire

The rest of the post goes on to mourn the loss of that "old Japan" which I can only half-remember myself from forty year's distance.

I was sorry to discover that Gerard Serafin has removed the Orthodox section from his blog list. I had grown acustomed to getting a few ecumenical hits a day from his link. He gives the reasoning behind this here on his blog. Orthodox/Catholic relations are a convoluted and controversial subject. I have previously posted on the topic here and may have some further thoughts in the near future.

I have added a list of a few of the Orthodox folk who keep on-line journals on LiveJournal.com to the permanent links section on the left. LiveJournals are typically more personal and less link-oriented than most weblogs. The first one listed, LiveJournal for Orthodox Christianity, shows off one of the useful features of the LiveJournal software, the ability to easily create a jointly authored "community" page. If any of you other Orthodox LiveJournaler's stray into blogger territory and would like your page listed, drop me a line.

We had a lamb die this afternoon. I'm not sure what the cause of death was. Sheep can die for a thousand different reasons, some usual, some so implausible as to defy description. His body was in the barnyard. It was raining when I got down there in the truck to carry him off up the hill to the spot we use as a graveyard. When I picked him up, there was a patch of dry ground underneath, lighter in color than the wet barrnyard, in the shape of a lamb. It looked half like a crime scene outline, half like some ancient petroglyph line drawing saying, here we once had sheep.

Tolle Blogge links to another rural blog, View from an Iowa Homestead, the online journal of John VanDyk, entomologist and Christian back-to-the-lander. I had a great-grandfather who was a doctor in the mining town of Lucas, Iowa, which about exhausts my knowledge of the state. When a friend of mine headed off for grad work in drama at the University of Iowa, I remember telling her, "Debbie, why Iowa? Iowa is just like Kansas, except no one from Iowa ever got to the Emerald City . . ." I'm willing to learn better, and will try reading a while.

Francis Mooney at Xavier+ has some kind words to say about my Bill Mallonee post. His latest post is a link to a site where you can view online Action Comics #1, the original episode of Superman. Watch, as the man of steel takes on domestic violence. If only it were that easy!

Archbishop Rowan Williams of Wales has been named the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Fr. Nectarios at Orthopraxis has links to the announcement on BBC news. I posted some thoughts about this earlier, which can be found in the archives here.

Archbishop Herman of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania has been elected as the new ruling hierarch of the Orthodox Church in America. Go here for the official press release.

Come back baby, Rock and Roll never forgets . . .

Just returned from a concert by Bill Mallonee at Jammin' Java in Vienna, Virginia, about 65 miles from home. It's the type of thing I did without a thought in my teens and twenties. I find that forty-seven is a little old to be up past your bedtime, traipsing up and down the road for a little live music. Nonetheless, it was a good time. Small club, great band, good sound. I discovered Mallonee's music last year and have been listening ever since. He is my age, and I can hear in the background of his music all the bands and artists I grew up with; Lennon-McCartney, more than a little Dylan, Neal Young and Crazyhorse, Roger McGuinn and the Byrds, the jangly Athens GA sound of my college and law school years as well as the folk sounds of a hundred high school and undergraduate coffee houses -- good stuff. It may be fatigue, but I swear I could even hear some Freddie and the Dreamers run through the blender in the more British Invasion pop influenced songs. What makes all this more than a classic folk-rock rehash is the bite and beauty of Mallonee's lyrics. They are grown up stuff, notes about the kind of pain and joy you only get by living for a while, succeeding, failing, falling in love, raising kids, wondering if the new dreams measure up to the old ones. Mallonee is also a Christian, which puts him in a kind of pop-music no-man's land. He is too interesting and honest for CCM (that is, the Contemporary Christian Music industry) and too concerned with sin and redemption to ever fit into a corporate music marketing niche. It makes it tough for him, but it means the rest of us can see a world class artist in a small club for what you would pay to park at a bigger venue.

As I said, the show tonight was a good time. Acoustic solo pieces mixed in with electric numbers backed by bass and drum, played loud. As a would-be agrarian pursuing an Orthodox spiritual life, it is a little embarrassing to admit the pleasure I get from feeling the kick of the bass drum inside the ribcage when the band is cranking. Folks my age and younger seem to have an inescapable urge to turn the knobs up to "11" on occasion. I remember reading once that scientists who study acoustics have found ways to cancel out noise by playing an equally loud sound just out of phase. Maybe rock turned up loud has the same effect on the mental noise the tensions of modern life leaves inside our heads. Between the two clashing rackets, there are sometimes moments of equilibrium. Like making an eye in your own mental hurricane. If so, it serves as a poor man's pasteboard imitation of hesychia, the stillness sought by Orthodox spirituality. I'll have to think about that, and think even more about how to attain the real thing.

Orthodoxy makes little distinction between "Old" and "New" Testament Saints, celebrating both equally. For those of us using the New Calendar reckoning, today is the feast of the Prophet Elijah. Here are the troparion and kontakion (short hymns) for the feast:

Incarnate Angel and summit of the Prophets,/ second forerunner of the coming of Christ,/ glorious Elijah sent down grace from on high to the Prophet Elisha./ He heals diseases and cleanses the leprous./ He pours healings on all who honour him.

O great Prophet Elijah,/ seer of God's mighty works,/ who didst halt the torrential rain by thy word,/ pray for us to the Lover of Mankind.

Scrap of conversation today at the library:

"Hello Mr. Bell, how's the law business?" "Too busy, I'm afraid." "'Litigious', that's an evil word. It just sounds slimy . . ."

I left work tonight one step ahead of the annual parade for the Fireman's Carnival. When I first moved to Front Royal, I lived around the corner from the parking lot of Bing Crosby Stadium where the Carnival is held. Every year I would dread it, partly for the lost sleep from loud noise and bright lights, partly because of the extra work it would bring sorting out the fights and alcohol related incidents in Court over the succeeding weeks. Things have quieted down since those days, and it is now, mostly, a pleasant family event. Still, it brings to mind a few verses from Leigh Hanes, former poet laureate of Virginia, and himself a lawyer:

From SMALL TOWN

Anything can happen
When the silver crown
Of the moon is laid
On a small town.

This weekend we rounded up the purebred Hampshire Ewes for drenching and hoof trimming. One, Number 16, did not get with the program. She somehow got herself turned around in the chute and had to be dragged, bodily, out through the foot bath. Full grown Hamp ewes weigh in well upwards of two hundred pounds and, as a breed, are noted for good muscle development. It was not a satisfactory experience for either of us. Sheep all have their own personalities, but I had not remembered her as being difficult before. Yesterday, we found the reason when she presented us with a pretty little scrap of a lamb. She did not lamb with the rest of the flock this winter and was put in with the back-up buck. We thought she had been bred, but, surprisingly, had no clue she was that far along. Mother and son are doing well and staying temporarily in a pen in the barn. Me she remembers from the footbath incident, so Susan is doing the post-natal care. We have had fall lambs, winter lambs, a few spring lambs, but this is our first mid-summer arrival!

This morning while going down to the barn, I heard the sound of a small gas engine on the hillside. My father-in-law, out early, cutting down weeds and thistle to clean the pasture. In my work day as a lawyer, everything is up for negotiation. At times it seems that facts are slippery things, sliding out of your grasp into a sea of interpretation. Here in the fields, working with the flock, reality is made of sterner stuff. No matter how good a story I tell, weed and thistle will grow, streams will run or go dry, sheep will thrive, or die. A good farm comes from labor and prayer, together with a measure of grace disguised as luck. Clever talk has little to do with it. Farming can make you rich, but not in any sense an economist or self-help guru would recognize. In a "post-modern" world having a reality that pushes back at you is itself a treasure. "The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows." said Robert Frost in his poem Mowing. I post it here to prove again that poets (and farmers) are wiser than lawyers.

MOWING
There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound--
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

While some elements in the Jerusalem Patriarchate may be soft on terrorism, not so the iconographer of this chapel in Romania!

I've added a link to Telford Works' excellent blog, Clutter from the Desk of Telford Work over on the left. As someone who has read, profited from, and mentally argued with the work of theologian Stanley Hauerwas over the years, I refer you to Work's site for links and reactions to the controversy over some remarks of Hauerwas' post (and pre-) 9/11. Work also has some interesting comments on the stagnation of Islamic world. Let me quote a passage that goes to the heart of the matter:

It took only a few centuries for the Muslim empires to burn through the cultural capital it inherited from late antiquity. Early Muslims relied on Jewish and Christian expertise to administer their territories (John of Damascus, for instance, worked for a while as the Christians' representative to the caliph). Early modern Muslims, unable at first to incorporate themselves into businesses, needed people free from the sharia to be engines of economic ingenuity.

I would follow this up by asserting that Islam is a fundamentally parasitic faith. It is tempting to quote a comment attributed to Samuel Johnson about a new work he had read; "Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is orignal is not good." The great vitality of the Muslim empires came from a prodigious borrowing from their non-Muslim predecessors. In addition to the Jewish and Christian influences mentioned by Work, there was also the influence of Persia, a great empire with its own heritage, and the material and cultural treasures of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Northern India. What we call "Arabic" numbers, including the zero, were adapted from Hindu mathematicians. The Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban were some of the last relics of a civilization annihilated by the Islamic "religion of peace." Islam flowers in the aftermath of the rape of a higher culture. With the end of conquest comes stagnation.

Today we worked with the lambs set aside to show at the Warren County Fair. Nothing special, just normal sheep "maintenance"; worming, trimming hooves and generally checking them over. They were not enthusiastic about the hoof trimming. I always manage to bang, scrape or cut some appendage of my own when I do this. My right hand looks like I've taken up bare knuckle fighting as a hobby. It will heal in a few days and be none the worse for the wear. I'm afraid my hands are in the awkward in-between stage; not callused enough for a real farmer, but too beat up for a proper lawyer.

Compared to Catholics and Calvinists, there are very few Orthodox bloggers. One reason may be that they are all hanging out at Livejournal.com, writing on-line diaries. Here are two: Seraphim's LiveJournal prints the reflections of retired Orthodox Bishop Seraphim Segrist. Dasha's LiveJournal, in both Russian and English, offers cross-cultural thoughts from New York.

With the end of June, July has taken us into what feels like deep summer. A week of thunderstorms, a few days of relief, and now nearly unbearable heat and humidity. Handling fifty pound grain sacks leaves my clothes wringing wet at evening feeding time. Shade is a grace and a breeze a foretaste of glory. There are some other consolations as well. Fireflies are everywhere. Driving home after dark on Saturday, one landed on my windshield wiper and stayed, flashing out his lovelorn semaphore at 50 miles per hour down Browntown Road. Beast, the black cat, was on the porch last night, nearly invisible, his eyes glowing green in the twilight, surrounded by the blinking green of a half dozen fireflies. If I weren't so tired, I would go out and catch some in a jar, and let them light my way home.

The latest controversy in the Anglican world surrounds the status of Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Wales, as front runner for appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury. The choice of Williams, known to support both the ordination of women and revision of church teaching regarding homosexuality as well as being an outspoken pacifist, has stirred vehement protests from the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, both at home and abroad. For a sample of the conservative reaction, see this editorial by Episcopal "muckraker" David Virtue.

As an Orthodox Christian, and a former Episcopalian, I share some of their misgivings. At the same time, Williams is the one figure on the "liberal" wing of the church that I read and admire. His early work on Christian spirituality, The Wound of Knowledge, has repaid repeated readings over the years. He is aware of and knowledgeable about Orthodoxy, both through study and some first hand experience. In one interview, he describes how regular use of the Jesus Prayer is part of his own discipline of prayer. He has written on major figures in Russian Orthodoxy and his latest book is a meditation on several Orthodox icons of the Virgin.

A vital part of Williams' work is his engagement with Tradition. As distinguished from such figures as John Spong, who facilely rejects Tradition with all the sophistication of an old fashioned village atheist, or Frank Griswold, who grazes through the Tradition, picking and choosing like a banquet line, Williams wrestles with it. He is a sensitive, acute reader who listens to the voices of the great Christian thinkers of the past. Yet, at the same time, his engagement with Tradition is still, in a sense, from the outside. Where Tradition conflicts with the apparent needs and pains of persons before him, Williams feels free to abandon or change it. Perhaps this comes when one confronts the Tradition embodied in books, rather than monks. In the Roman Church, the magisterium speaks on behalf of the Tradition (at least as it developed in the West). In Orthodoxy, monasticism and the liturgy serve the same function. The Anglican church was born in the rejection of a magisterium, the destruction of the monasteries and the radical simplification of the liturgy. As a result, when even as sensitive and intelligent a scholar as Williams reads the Church Fathers, he is engaging in an imaginative recreation of a past world, much like those ensembles devoted to early music. In Orthodoxy, the Tradition is a living music.

If Williams is chosen as the symbolic leader of the Anglican Communion, we have the irony, as Orthodox, of dealing with a man who is both closer to and further away from us than Archbishop Carey, his Evangelical predecessor. It would be a further irony if Williams, a man devoted to peace and reconciliation, were responsible for a final schism within the Anglican Communion.

I would like to welcome another Orthodox blogger, James Ferrenberg, a convert from pentecostal protestantism, who maintains the thoughtful Paradosis site.

Susan laughs at me for my frequent checks of the stats for this site. Perhaps it is a sign of excessive vanity on my part. I am curious though, when I launch these messages in a bottle out onto the cyber-sea, to know what shores they have washed up on. I can understand the three hits from Bulgaria because of the Orthodox connection, but the hits from Singapore, Brazil and Japan leave me at a loss. I wonder what they were looking for, and what they thought of what they found here?

This Sunday is the feast of Pentecost in the Orthodox calendar. For a meditation on the hymns from Vespers for the feast, go here to David Melling's consistently edifying Arimathea site.

While packing some clothes for a short trip tonight, I found a ticket stub to a production of The Fantasticks at Wayside Theatre in Middletown. Susan and I saw it together in April on a much overdue night out. We met in 1988 when we were amateur actors together in a Front Royal Little Theatre production of the show. In what was a clear case of casting against type, I played "El Gallo", a mysterious and romantic figure. If I resembled anyone in the play in real life, it was Matt, an earnest character, young, love-struck and a little ridiculous. The love-struck part happened shortly after Susan walked into rehearsals. Matt, the serious twenty year old, says in his opening speech,

I'm grown up, stable,
Willing to conform.
I'm beyond such foolish notions.
And yet -- in spite of my knowledge --
There is this girl.

She makes me young again!
And foolish.

At what I thought of then as the mature age of 33, I laughed with the script at the follies of young love. Thirteen years later at 46, I have to laugh at the foolish young lover I was. Nonetheless, I still watch Susan when she doesn't know I am looking, and think, how undeserved a grace love is, how lucky I am, and say, like Matt, "There is this girl. She makes me young again! And foolish".

From the troparia of Matins for the Sunday of the Fathers of Nicea:

Creation, seeing God crucified in the flesh, was dissolving in fear; but it was firmly held together by the sustaining hand of the one who was crucified for our sake.

Coward death, destroyed by death, lies lifeless; for unable to endure the divine assault of life, the strong one is put to death and resurrection is bestowed on all.

(Translation by Archimandrite Ephraim)

I have changed the blog description you see on the left, new wording courtesy of David Yeago.

Susan and I were up just after sunrise this morning, together with her father, loading wool bags onto the truck. Five bags packed full, towering ceiling high, plus one partial bag. Just over eight hundred pounds of wool altogether, or so say the scales for the Mid-States Wool Growers Cooperative Association. The local pool ships our clip out to the mid-west for bulk sale. Wool used to be packed in jute bags, like giant burlap sacks. Now we are required to use clear plastic. It makes sense for the buyers, letting them see what they are getting. Looks odd though, to see the fleeces from some 140 sheep going out looking like Brobdingnagian sausages. We should clear somwhere around $80.00 if we are lucky. The wool market has not been good, and our Hampshires produce a short, coarse fleece in any event. Truth be told, we are happy just to have someone take it off our hands. It does tend to take up space. Susan had a conversation once with a fellow at a shepherd's seminar who didn't bother selling his. "Well, what do you do with it all?" "It makes a pretty good garden mulch. As for the rest, it'll burn pretty good if you put enough diesel on it."

My family tolerates (barely) my love for Country music. I look at it as the last vestige of popular verse in America. The kinds of sentiments you used to read in poetry in newspapers are now found only on the radio dial. Sure there are some songwriters who can't get past the usual cliches, but they are cliches because they capture certain home truths in a simple way. Here is a Country song in the making; the story of a woman with a heartache so bad it burned down Colorado.

At dusk coming from up from the barn, I see the crescent moon and below, to the right, Venus. But what's that floating between them? Firefly!

The nuns of the Protection of the Holy Virgin Monastery in Colorado are requesting prayer, as wildfires draw closer. See the latest report at OCA - News Headlines

You can find a useful article on the Jesus Prayer at the St. Vladimir's Seminary website. It says much of what I have said, only better, and includes a good bibliography at the end.

The Suburban Ascetic

Further Notes on the Jesus Prayer

Here is some wisdom from Bishop Kallistos Ware: Being so very short and simple, the Jesus Payer can be recited at any time and in any place. It can be said in bus queues, when working in the garden or kitchen, when dressing or walking, when suffering from insomnia, at moments of distress or mental strain when other forms of prayer are impossible: from this point of view, it is a prayer particularly well adapted to the tensions of the modern world. It is a prayer specially recommended to the monk, who is given a rosary as part of the habit at his profession; but it is equally a prayer for lay people, whatever their occupation in the world. It is a prayer for the hermit and recluse, but at the same time a prayer for those engaged in active social work, nursing, teaching, visiting in prisons. It is a prayer that fits every stage in the spiritual life, from the most elementary to the most advanced. (From the introduction to The Art of Prayer, An Orthodox Anthology)

The best use of the prayer for the beginner is just what Bishop Kallistos has illustrated above. It is the perfect prayer to bring yourself back to what is truly important in the midst of the daily crisis. What does the prayer tell you? First, that Jesus is Lord. This seems trite, but unpacking that statement is the work of a lifetime. To acknowledge that there is a Lord is to say against the sentimental nihilism that is the spirit of our age that life has meaning and purpose, that the solipsist is a fool, and that the world is not governed by our desires. To say that this Lord is Jesus, and that he is the Son of God, is to proclaim that the meaning and purpose behind the world is love, and that this love is stronger than death. To call out for mercy is to proclaim that death and futility are not the final answers in your own life. It is to acknowledge that grace exists, and that it comes to the humble, that is, to sinners like yourself. Quite a lot to handle while passing time on hold, or waiting for your turn at the register.

Many Orthodox find that a set time to pray the Jesus Prayer is useful and make it part of their daily devotions. It is customary to use a prayer rope (the "rosary" referred to by Bishop Kallistos) to aid in keeping focused on the prayer and to return you to it when the inevitable distractions arise. The quiet repetition of the prayer has its own fruits, but is only the first step towards that deeper prayer that the Fathers call "prayer of the heart." That takes us beyond my own experience and I can do no more than point you to the writings of those who have been there.

(Coming soon; fasting, and a basic bibliography on prayer)

Those who are interested in reading more about the Jesus Prayer may want to sample Monachos.net's collection of resources on the subject. I will be posting a further list of resources and suggested readings in the near future.

The Suburban Ascetic

Notes on the Jesus Prayer

Anyone who studies the Orthodox spiritual tradition will eventually run across that wonderfully odd little book, The Way of a Pilgrim. Whatever you call it, memoir or spiritual novel, parable or spiritual instruction, the heart of the book is the practice of unceasing prayer by repeating "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The humble figure of the Pilgrim has inspired Orthodox Christians for the past century. The Pilgrim and his Way may seem alien to us westerners, although perhaps he (and it) should not. The heart of the prayer should be familiar to anyone who has attended an evangelical rally or service complete with altar call. The following was taken from the Billy Graham organization web site:

Dear Lord Jesus,
I know that I am a sinner and need Your forgiveness. I believe that You died for my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I now invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as Lord and Savior.
In Jesus' name. Amen.

As you can see, the "sinner's prayer" of American Evangelicalism is, at heart, the same prayer as the Pilgrim's. The difference comes in the function of the prayer. In classic Evangelicalism, the ideal is to pray the "sinner's prayer" as a once-in-a-lifetime event. This one experience should give you the grace, energy and momentum to go forward through life as a Christian, strong in the Lord. It is not unlike being shot out of a cannon. The problem comes when the momentum runs out and the convert hits ground. Typically there are a number of different responses. Reload the cannon (I'm rededicating my life to the Lord!). Get a bigger cannon (You need to get baptized in the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues!). Study cannon design (For the intellectually inclined). The most common response may be to simply ignore the impact and pretend (at least on Sunday) that you are still sailing through the air. This is obviously a caricature, and not fair to the many mature and faithful Evangelicals out there. The point is that repentance is not a one time only affair.

The Orthodox ideal is not to say the Jesus prayer once, but to say it with every breath and every heartbeat. The goal is to live in a place of repentance, continually conscious of God's grace and your need for it. The Jesus prayer is news that always stays news. You cannot, by definition, out grow it. Is He still Lord? Are you still a sinner? If so, then the prayer outlines the place where you live. This is what distinguishes the Jesus Prayer from the "mantra" of Eastern religions. In a mantra, the sound and the repetition are key to its effects. Content is less important. In the Jesus prayer, the content always stays with you. It is a prayer, addressed from a person to a particular person we recognize as Lord.

The Pilgrim was given special instructions by his elder on reciting the prayer repeatedly and combining it with his breathing. The tradition states that while these techniques can be useful, they should be used only under the supervision of an experienced elder. Saint Gregory of Sinai says in the Philokalia, "Thus, if you hear about or are taught this discipline, and want to practice it, but are not under spiritual direction, you will experience one of two things: you will either force yourself to persist, in which case you fall into delusion and will fail to attain healing; or you will grow negligent, in which case you will never make any progress during your whole life." (Gregory of Sinai: On Stillness, The Philokalia Volume Four, page 269) In short; kids, don't try this at home.

(Coming soon, some thoughts on appropriate use of the prayer by layfolk not blessed with a local elder.)

Blogger seems to be letting me make template changes again. I have added a search function. Give it a try and let me know how it works! If everything stays stable, I will start posting again in earnest.

Blogger has been having troubles today. I have some site maintainance to do before any long posts, so it may be a day or two before things pick up again.

Wayne Olsen notes that he is reading Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's excellent Beginning to Pray. That is one of the few books I keep multiple copies of to be able to loan out or give away. (If you check the archives for April 20th, there is a link to a web site devoted to his work.) Metropolitan Anthony has the gift of explaining the basics of Orthodox sprituality in a way that is deep, but not so deep that the beginner like myself is in danger of drowning. I love The Philokalia, the anthology of Orthodox spiritual writing compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth (four volumes in the English translation, with at least one still to go), but feel a constant need to transpose the wisdom there into a key I can actually reach a few of the notes in. Orthodox spirituality has been transmitted mainly through monastic writers. Their work is indispensible, even for us lay folk. The question is, how do you walk that path while living a life with jobs, kids, sex and laughter? God willing, I plan on starting a regular feature here to work out some thoughts on this. I've been mulling over titles. I've already considered and rejected Orthodoxy With Training Wheels. The current leader is Suburban Ascetics; Orthodox Life in a Consumer Culture. Or I might just steal a suggestion from my friend David Yeago (playing off the title of David Brook's popular book) and call it Bobos in Byzantium. By whatever title, I plan on posting the first installment this weekend, talking about the Jesus Prayer.

We have had daily thunderstorms for the past week. Dark clouds and blue skies alternating in a crazy quilt pattern. Sudden downpours leaving pools and streams everywhere. Here is a haiku from the Japanese poet Issa:

Lingering
in every pool of water--
spring sunlight

(Translation, Stephen Addis)

We took thirteen of the lambs off for sale yesterday. Susan, Stuart, John Richard and I slipping in the wet barnyard as we caught, ear-tagged and put them on the truck. Susan drove them off while I changed from boots and muddy denim to a coat and tie. The rest of the lambs were separated from the mothers and put in a fenced off section of pasture to grow a little more. Some we will keep, some will be sold at auction, some sold as breeding stock. The ewes seemed relieved. It was past time for weaning for most anyhow. It seems odd to look out in the yard and not see the usual dozen lambs that have squeezed under the fence to graze on the lawn and eat Susan's roses.

Canadian editorialist David Warren is always worth reading. From his Sunday column: It is probably silly to write in a daily newspaper about such grand things as the rise and fall of civilizations. And yet the core questions of what we are, and therefore what we must do, are questions that arise every day, and govern our judgements on minor events.

The old cat came to the door with a young cottontail in his mouth, still living. Perhaps I have grown too soft, perhaps I am just tired of arguing with the cat about bringing dinner inside still kicking. I got the rabbit loose and freed it over the wire fence into a tangle of honeysuckle. Beast, the cat, followed me down to the barn, hoping I still had the rabbit hidden up my sleeve somewhere.

Tomorrow is the thirteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Eve Tushnet has a post on attending a vigil outside the Chinese Embassy on Saturday; a small but valiant attempt to keep alive the memory of those brief hope-filled days. Long time readers of this site (are any of you out there?) may have noticed that I occasionally post a fragment of Chinese or Japanese poetry. The abundance of good translations of classical Chinese and Japanese verse is one of the few fortunate aspects of our current literary culture. It is a great gift to be able to listen in on this interlinked web of conversations on the human condition, conducted at the highest artistic levels for over two thousand years. It is the antithesis of our contemporary "youth culture."

Thinking of Tiananmen reminds me of some lines from the T'ang Dynasty poet Tu Fu, meditating on another time of loss and change in China: "The nation shattered, mountains and rivers remain." A melancholy poem, which nonetheless takes some small comfort in the continuities of nature and landscape. One wonders what the poet would have thought of the Three Gorges Dam project. Today, the State survives, but mountains and rivers are shattered. Submerging and forever altering some of the most beautiful places in China, the only way we westerners can comprehend the impact of the project would be to imagine an Anglo-American initiative to simultaneously flood the Grand Canyon and pave over Wordsworth's Lake District.

Martin Roth also notes the Tiananmen anniversary and adds an article noting the conversion of many of the dissidents to Christianity.

Here is Peggy Noonan's take on the post 9/11 FBI scandal. After fifteen years as a prosecutor working in local law enforcement, I am not surprised by any of this. Colleen Rowley's statement that "Certain facts . . . have . . . been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons." unfortunately does not describe an isolated incident so much as an institutional culture. Despite the efforts of many fine individual agents, the Bureau is legendary in the law enforcement community for its arrogance, and all too often, its incompetence.

I am experimenting with a comments feature. Give it a try!

Archimandrite Ephrem of the Monastery of St Andrew the Apostle in Manchester England maintains Anastasis, an invaluable site which includes a wealth of newly translated liturgical material. Here is his rendition of the verses from Vespers which introduce today's commemoration of Mid-Pentecost, the halfway point between Pascha and the feast of Pentecost:

The mid-point of the days is here, which begin with the saving Resurrection and are sealed by the divine Pentecost. It shines for it shares the brilliance of them both and unites the two, and it is honoured for it reveals in advance the coming glory of the Master’s Assumption.

Sion heard and was glad, when the good tidings of the Resurrection were proclaimed. Her faithful offspring rejoiced when they saw him also washing away by the Spirit the stain of the murder of Christ. Keeping festival she makes ready the joyful mid-point of them both.

The abundant outpouring of the divine Spirit upon all is near, as it is written. The herald is the day that forms the half-way mark of the certain promise which was given by Christ to his Disciples after his death and burial and Resurrection, and shows the manifestation of the Comforter.

Walker Percy would have been 86 today. If you have never read his work, you are missing one of the great observers of the modern circus. Try any of the novels or Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book.

Our family spent the Memorial Day weekend alternating rest and farm work. For a reminder of why we have a long weekend this time of year, go to Victor Davis Hanson's (himself a family farmer) moving story of a family member who gave all for his country.

Father Nectarios at Orthopraxis has been linking coverage of the Pope's trip to Bulgaria. One of the articles states "Now, John Paul has returned to the road to pursue what he views as a last piece of unfinished business: ending the 1,000-year schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy." A noble ambition, to say the least. This Pope has addressed the Orthodox Churches with more sympathy for, and understanding of, Orthodoxy than have virtually any of his predecessors. Nonetheless the schism persists and shows no signs of healing in his lifetime.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things magazine has commented on the impasse in Catholic/Orthodox relations in the March issue and again in May. It appears to be a source of some frustration for him, as if he were wondering, "How can they disappoint this good man, this great Pope, at the end of his days?" He quotes some words of veteran Catholic ecumenist Walter Cardinal Kasper which reveal the frustration from Rome's end and unwittingly highlight the problem from the Orthodox perspective: “We are increasingly conscious of the fact that an Orthodox Church does not really exist. At the present stage, it does not seem that Constantinople is yet capable of integrating the different autocephalous Orthodox churches. There are doubts about its primacy of honor, especially in Moscow.” Neuhaus goes on to say that "The unhappy truth, however, is that probably most Orthodox in the world do not believe that Catholics, never mind Protestants, are even validly baptized".

The Cardinal's remarks and Neuhaus' show that, at a gut level, Rome still doesn't "get" it. To grossly oversimplify, Kasper is saying that the schism will not end until the Orthodox become more like Rome, that is, until there is a command structure over all Orthodox Churches that can make binding decisions and with whom there can be dialog. Over against this is the Orthodox insistence on the ecclesiastic primacy of the local bishop, which persists despite any primacy of honor given to any one particular bishop. As Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) put it:

All eucharists and all bishops are local in character -- at least in their primary sense. In a eucharistic view of the Church this means that the local Church . . . is the only form of ecclesial existence which can be properly called Church. All structures aiming at facilitating the universality of the Church create a network of communion of Churches, not a new form of Church. (italics in original) (From Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church)

The Orthodox suspicion is that Rome has taken its traditional primacy of honor and turned it into a new form of Church, one which we cannot recognize as true to the Scriptures and to the Fathers. Granted that relations between the local Orthodox Churches appear to be in a perpetual state of crisis, but underneath the nationalistic politics and arguments over precedence, there is a profound unity in faith. The Orthodox do not at this time feel the same unity of faith with the Roman Church. This accounts for the difficulty Neuhaus notes over baptism. "Validity" of baptism is not one item on an ecumenical agenda that can be dissected and discussed in isolation from other issues. When the monastics of Mount Athos were asked to explain their reluctance to support the official dialogues with the Roman Church, Archimandrite Vasileios, then abbot of Stavronikita monastery, responded, not with a treatise on ecumenical dialogue, but with his luminous work Hymn of Entry, an extended meditation on the Liturgy. The question from the Orthodox side is not, do we recognize the baptismal practices of this community, but rather, do we recognize the fullness of the Orthodox faith in this community, however strangely expressed. If full mutual recognition of faith is there, then recognition of baptism, and all other sacraments, is a housekeeping matter, or, in Greek, economia.

It may well be that the current ecumenical dialogue is dead. Or it could be that the impasse will inspire in both sides that deeper apprehension of faith which alone will result in true unity.