Interrupting his dinner.

The fellow attorney and Orthodox seminarian who blogs as Minor Clergy has a fine post on Forgiveness Sunday in his parish. Recommended reading on this first day of Lent.

A small sheep takes a big drink of water.

Today is Forgiveness Sunday in the Orthodox calendar, the last stop before Lent begins tomorrow. I drove into the city this morning to St. Mary's, my "home" parish where I was introduced to Orthodoxy, to join the congregation in asking each other for forgiveness, beginning our repentance with reconciliation. Here is an excerpt from Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent on the meaning of this Sunday:

Lent is the liberation of our enslavement to sin, from the prison of "this world." And the Gospel lesson of this last Sunday (Matt. 6:14-21) sets the conditions for that liberation. The first one is fasting -- the refusal to accept the desires and urges of our fallen nature as normal, the effort to free ourselves from the dictatorship of flesh and matter over the spirit. . . . The second condition is forgiveness-- "If you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you." The triumph of sin, the main sign of its rule over the world is division, opposition, separation, hatred. Therefore the first break through this fortress of sin is forgiveness: the return to unity, solidarity, love. To forgive is to put between me and my "enemy" the radiant forgiveness of God Himself. To forgive is to reject the hopeless "dead-ends" of human relations and to refer them to Christ. Forgiveness is truly a "breakthrough" of the Kingdom into this sinful and fallen world.

We begin our fast with an act of reconciliation, a return to unity with those around us. The fast itself teaches us another lesson as we struggle. It should be simple enough; eat this, not that. No real sacrifice, just a demand for a little effort and a modicum of attention to the daily routine. Soon enough, I know, I will start looking for excuses, exceptions, exemptions. Worse still, I will simply forget and have that cheeseburger half eaten before I give a second thought to what I am doing, or why. As the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans, "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." The fast makes me realize that, not only am I divided from those around me, I am divided within myself, walking about in a kind of daydream constructed of appetite and ingrained habit. Again in the words of the Apostle, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

So, is Lent simply an annual run into the brick wall of your own failures and finitude, a reminder that one is, in fact, a sinner? No, or, if there is some truth there, it is only a half truth. The final word of Lent is spoken not in Lent itself, but just after midnight as Holy Saturday turns into Easter Sunday. Who will deliver me from this body of death? The answer comes as we sing triumphantly, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." Despite all appearances, there are no "dead-ends" in ourselves, our lives, our relationships. At any moment the Kingdom is poised to break in and our Lenten disciplines teach us to wait with hope, and with great expectations.

Today we got the whole family down to the barn for one of my least favorite parts of the shepherd's job; tail docking and castrations. If you go down the page to some lamb pictures, you will notice they are born equipped each with a nice long tail, quite unlike the small appendages on their mothers. So, why take them off? Unfortunately those cute little tails become muddy manure clotted messes as sheep get older, a path for disease and fly infestations. So, off they go. I will not describe the process for the faint of heart except to say that the the little critters are all fine and properly docked. About the castrations of the ram lambs not destined for breeding, the less said the better. Susan does it quickly and efficiently with utter disdain for the squeamish males surrounding her, wincing in shared horror and sympathy.

Here is a the classic nursery rhyme, on the subject of lambs and their tails and the travails of a young shepherdess who needs to get with the program:

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
And doesn't know where to find them.
Leave them alone, and they'll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.

Little Bo peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were still a-fleeting.

Then up she took her little crook,
Determined her to find them;
She found them indeed,
but it made her heart bleed,
For they'd left their tales behind them.

It happened one day, as Bo peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tales side by side,
All hung on a tree to dry.

She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should,
To tack each again to its lambkin.

Having a little of mom's hay.

Our weather has taken a turn back into Winter lately; snow showers with unseasonable cold driven even further down the scale by brisk winds. Bishop Seraphim, who lives several hours north of our supposedly Southern latitude has coined a new phrase, "Indian Winter," to capture our current climactic variation. On the road just outside of town, frozen daffodils wilt in the median, relics of the warm breezes that came through just a short time ago.

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

From "Little Gidding" Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

The "eclectic but orthodox" folks at Eighth Day Books have put together a series of excellent suggestions for Lenten reading. As useful as Amazon may be, we shouldn't forget about those wonderful independents like Eighth Day who operate as much for love as for profit. Owner Warren Farha reflects on his vocation here.

The lamb in yesterday's picture, together with her mother.

In a reversal of the proverb, March comes in like a lamb.

Two new lambs this weekend. I was surprised that they came now, in the relatively nice weather instead of the last snow, but I am certainly grateful. The boys have the new arrivals in pens with their mothers. If I have time, I will post pictures tomorrow.

Today is "Meatfare" Sunday on the Orthodox calendar, marking the last week of preparation before Lent. This week the observant begin abstaining from meat until Easter, followed by dairy products next Sunday. I usually try and post some appropriate Lenten reading suggestions during this season. In keeping with past custom, I will list some books throughout the week, and I will also attempt something I haven't tried before. As part of my own observance I will be re-reading Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent and will try, beginning next Sunday, to post excerpts from and reflections inspired this and other of Schmemann's works as we journey towards Pascha.

Here is a picture from a few days ago during the snow. As you can see, sheep are very serious about eating.

Another backdated entry; our cable connection has been acting up causing posts to vanish into whatever quasi-metaphysical space there is that houses thoughts attached to electrons gone astray.

I am writing this after rummaging through dresser drawers in search of old glasses. I keep a spare at the office, but here at home I find only one relic from the early nineties, tortoise rimmed and goggle-sized. I wore them about two prescriptions and several turns of fashion ago. What, you may ask, happened to my gold-rimmed bifocals, appropriately styled for the new millennium? Sheep happened. Our barn, like Caesar's Gaul, is divided into three parts. One is our working area together with the four lambing pens. The second part opens into the paddock where the ewes with lambs stay. The third opens to the barnyard and larger pasture where the ewes still expecting come in for the evening feeding. This evening feeding was later than usual as Susan and I had met for dinner at the South Street Grill in town. (Nice place, classic diner food, cheap by big city standards.) So there I was after dark down in the barn. I had put out the feed for the ewes with lambs and let them in. They were in a bit of a rush, as they did not appreciate the delay in dinner. I was putting out grain on the other side of the barn when I noticed a lamb had gotten caught in the press and was upside down under a feed trough. I knelt down and reached through the gate panel dividing the barn, head pressed against the metal tubing as I stretched towards the lamb. Behind me was the gate to the barnyard, the gate chain stretched to the maximum as hungry ewes pressed against it. One ewe was convinced that, if only she could get my attention, food would be forthcoming. She put her head between the bars of the gate and lunged. In a classic illustration of the continuing effectiveness of Newtonian physics on a macro level, her head struck my head which in turn struck the gate in front of me. The vision in my right eye blurred. Disoriented, I started feeling for the incipient lump that signaled an oncoming concussion, and found instead that there was no longer a lens in the right eye of my glasses. Picture a man on his hands and knees in a darkened, dirt floor barn, right eye closed, peering through a left bifocal, trying to find a small oval of glass while sheep hooves are stamping around him. Not much luck there. I did get the lamb upright and out of the crush before walking back to house, squinting like Popeye as I picked my way up the dark hillside.

I have been reading in the poems and essays of Joseph Brodsky lately. One surprise, at least for me, was the discovery that Brodsky considered himself a disciple of W. H. Auden. While I cannot match Brodsky's devotion, nonetheless I am also an admirer of Auden's. Here are the opening lines of an early poem of his which have always moved me.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

For the rest of the poem, go here.

The white line just below the ridge is the snowpack on Skyline Drive. The view from home, looking east a little before sundown.

Waiting for dinner.

Tuesday afternoon, just before sunset.

Snowfall at sunset.

We have had a few false alarms this season. Today appears to be the real thing. A scene from a snowy afternoon, looking toward Buck Mountain.

Another snowfall predicted for tonight. The track of the storm is still uncertain, but it looks to be a big one. I had the boys carry the bags for tomorrow's feedings down tonight and have the barn open for the sheep to take shelter. It looks like Monday will be a good day to stay close to home. Unfortunately, I have trials in traffic court up in Winchester at 9:00 a.m and 2:00 p.m.. If you are travelling between Front Royal and Winchester tomorrow, I'll be the guy in the dark suit with the white knuckles gripping the wheel of a gray farm truck.