A lingering, varicolored sunset this evening. There is still a scattering of light and it is almost 7:00 p.m. The longer days of spring are just as welcome as the new grass or warm weather. It is hard to express the pleasure of having chores finished before dark. The curse of the part-time farmer is that every job gets crammed into time around paying employment. By late December that means feeding by lantern or flashlight while the temperature drops around you. It means cracking ice on water troughs in the morning while the sun is still trying to haul itself up over Skyline Drive. With the non-negotiable demands of court dockets on my time, the bulk of the daily work falls on my wife, who has her own off-farm responsibilities as a part-time teacher. She embraces the return of warm weather and longer days with a passion that starving men reserve for food or castaways for rescue. Our life is "pastoral" in the most literal sense, but that does not mean that it is easy or gentle. If I had to pick fitting soundtrack music, it would be one of those pieces by Charles Ives where bands are playing in different keys in each corner of the hall. The academic year, the calender of the criminal courts, the needs of two growing children and the biological cycles of livestock all make seemingly irreconcilable demands. Nonetheless it is a life with beauty and its own sometimes inexplicable satisfactions.

As a prosecutor I struggle daily with the question of how a Christian should respond to the evil actions of his fellow man. The "just war" tradition works out this issue on a larger scale. Lutheran theologian David Yeago has an excellent examination of just war thinking in our current context in this article from the journal "Pro Ecclesia".

The March issue of First Things magazine contains a reaction by Father Neuhaus to a talk by Prof. John Erickson of St. Vladimirs' Seminary on the Orthodox retreat from ecumenism. I may have some comments later, but in the meantime, here is a link to the full text of Erickson's remarks.

The set of people interested in both Orthodoxy and sheep farming is vanishingly small. Here, however, is a page from an Orthodox sheep, resident at the Holy Myrrhbearers convent in New York state; Maude's Page!

Here is another Lafferty page that perhaps gives a better introduction:
Great SF&F Works: Books by R.A. Lafferty

Those of you who are older, and widely read in obscure literary science fiction, will be sad to know that R. A. Lafferty has died. He was one of the few truly original stylists in the genre. A Lafferty story was as distinct in voice as a poem by Hopkins, another great Catholic eccentric. His writing was uneven, but at his best he could break your heart or crack your ribs with laughter, sometimes both at once. There is not much about him on the web. Here is the largest site I could find:
R.A. Lafferty: Devotional Site

Most of his work is out of print, or available only in small press pamphlets. If you want someplace to start, try "900 Grandmothers", a story collection, or "Past Master" a novel both absurd and touching, about what happens when an honest man is put into Utopia.

With the coming of coyotes to the Shenandoah, sheep farmers are turning to a variety of guard animals for protection. We use llamas. If sheep are a neglected subject in English verse, llamas are more so. Here, however, is an ecumenically "incorrect" poem on the subject by Hilaire Belloc:

The Llama is a wolly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
Like an unsuccessful literary man.

And I know the place he lives in (or at least-- I think I do)
It is Ecuador, Brazil or Chile-- possibly Peru;
You must find it in the Atlas if you can.
The Llama of the Pampasses you never should confound
(In spite of a deceptive similarity of sound)
With the Llama who is Lord of Turkestan.
For the former is a beautiful and valuable beast,
But the latter is not lovable nor useful in the least;
And the Ruminant is preferable surely to the Priest
Who battens on the woful superstitions of the East,
The Mongol of the Monastery of Shan.

While the English literary tradition is chock full of pastoral themes, oddly, there is little verse directly on the subject of sheep. Here is a contemporary effort, courtesy of Ploughshares, the literary journal

Greetings on a rainy Easter morning. This site will contain periodic comments on things that interest me. I am a full-time prosecuting attorney in a small town in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. I am also a part-time sheep farmer, living on property that has been in my wife's family for the past hundred years. The intersection of those two lives will provide most of the material for these posts. In addition to the weekly farm report, there will also be comments on books, music, movies, politics and religion. As to the last, I am a convert to Orthodox Christianity. Periodically I may try to share some of the wealth of that tradition. By doing this, I make no claims to special insight or sanctity. In describing my own spiritual condition, I can do no better than the little girl in Flannery O'Connor's story "Temple of the Holy Ghost"; "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."