Two blogs I read, Orthopraxis (a.k.a. 1453.org) and Xavier+ have recently mentioned the victory of Constantine (Saint Constantine for us Easterners) at Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D.. The victory followed a vision (or so the story goes) where Constantine saw a vision of the Cross, together with the words, IN HOC SIGNO VINCES, "In this sign you shall conquer." The legalization of the Church that followed changed everything. In some protestant circles it is customary to think of Constantine's embrace of Christianity as the beginning of the end of the real church and its replacement by an official, imperially endorsed counterfeit. Many writers speak of our age as "Post-Constantinian," and this is almost always regarded as a good thing. There is a truth to that. Secular power's embrace of Christianity often results in a too intimate embrace of secular power by Christians. But there is also another truth, that trying to embody Gospel truths in law and culture is itself a not unworthy goal. Let me give an example. When an ambulance comes up behind traffic with lights flashing and siren wailing, the cars in front give way or pull over. The passenger in the ambulance might be a drunk, fallen in a gutter, it might be a thief, injured while committing a crime. It might be a person of no importance, with no claim on any worldly power, nonetheless, cars pull over to let him pass. The only requirement for this special treatment is that the passenger be a person in pain and in need. If the Chairman of General Motors is ahead of an ambulance, his car pulls over. The same for a Senator. Your family name doesn't exempt you. Your religion or your ethnicity doesn't privilege you. It doesn't matter, rich or poor, famous or unknown, if you are in that ambulance, by law and by custom, all give way to let you pass. We give the sick and suffering a prerogative and privilege reserved in cultures untouched by the Gospel solely for the powerful. This is what "Constantinian" Christianity at its best is about. This is also why I have mixed feelings when I hear the phrase "Post-Constantinian."

In an entry on the LiveJournal for Orthodox Christianity, Bishop Seraphim Sigrist asks about what icon touches you. By way of an answer to that question I present the clumsily photographed image on the left, an icon made by a friend of a friend. Before becoming Orthodox, I met a Russian couple, Mark and Lena Khaisman, then living in Front Royal. Mark was working as a stained glass designer for a local studio, but had trained in Russia as an iconographer. I had seen icons before, under glass from a distance at museums, or as prints in books. When I saw his works for the first time, held them, really looked at them, there was a quality I had never before imagined. It is a cliche these days to call icons "windows to heaven." I did not see heaven, but when I looked through these "windows", there were depths that looked back, judging, and comforting. It was the kind of encounter with the Spirit I thought possible only in prayer and reading the Scriptures. This was unexpected to say the least. In my mind icons were simply another form of religious art, instructive when used properly, idolatrous when abused, but totally understandable within my Anglican/evangelical world view. Standing before Mark's icons I felt like a wading pool swimmer shown the ocean for the first time. To my regret, I never purchased one of his before he and Lena left Front Royal for Philadelphia. My wife Susan did buy me as an unexpected present the icon displayed here. It had been carved by a friend of Mark's back in Moscow, blessed, and sent to America in hopes that it would send back some hard currency to help his family survive in the worst days following the Soviet collapse. I had admired it at Mark and Lena's home, and it took my breath away again when I unwrapped it in mine. It would be overstating the case to say that I became Orthodox to make a proper place for this icon in my life, but it would not be a lie either. For the curious, the icon is a bas-relief, carved in wood and lightly lacquered, of the "Vladimir Mother of God." The Orthodox Church in America web pages have a history of the place of the "Vladimir" icon in Russian piety here.

This one is for Gerard, who missed the peak of fall color on his visit.



How the dew and the autumn rains
Have dripped through,
Even to the lowest branches on Moru Mountain,
Coloring them for autumn.

Ki No Tsurayuki (Trans. J. Thomas Rimer)

Robert Brady of Notes from Pure Land Mountain gives news of the shiitake mushroom harvest at home in Japan. Here in Front Royal we have our own celebration of the flavorful fungi every May. It is now a major tourist draw, officially known as the "Virginia Wine & Mushroom Festival," bringing in as many as 15,000 people to Main Street, but it had much humbler beginnings.

Like many great ideas, this one started with a few guys sitting around drinking beer, or so I am told. The major spring celebration in our area has always been Winchester's Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, which is truly a big deal, shutting down the entire city for the weekend and attended by upwards of a quarter million people. Front Royal, about 25 miles south of Winchester, had nothing to compare. Smaller, more blue collar, and until a dozen years ago, blessed with a rayon fiber factory that featured all the best odors of a chemical plant and a paper mill combined, we have always been the unwanted step-child of the Northern Shenandoah in comparison to Winchester. In the 1800's we used to be known as "Hell Town," a name which no longer applies except on a particularly bad Saturday night. The gentlemen who were drinking beer, community leaders all, decided that what was needed was a good way to thumb our collective noses at our presumed betters in Winchester and their precious festival. Someone noted that a number of folks had started growing shiitake mushrooms for the D.C. restaurant market. They decided that if Winchester could celebrate apple blossoms, we could honor the humble mushroom. They planned a parade featuring a man in a mushroom costume, called a few vendors, talked to some mushroom growers and got the thing going. It was, frankly, a joke that got out of hand. When people began showing up in larger groups, and mushroom growers became scarcer, it turned into what is now essentially a wine festival and street craft fair. It is a good time, and good business for the community and the many fine local wineries. Nonetheless I miss the anarchic ad hoc days of the earlier festivals and hold on to my Shiitake Madness! t-shirt in their memory.

Rain past, fall colors coming; the view from home.



Buck Mountain; morning light and shadow.

Joel Garver at Sacra Doctrina has a useful summary and review of an essay by Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson in the volume The Strange New Word of the Gospel: Re-Evangelizing in the Postmodern World. Jenson is one of our more acute theological observers of the modern (or post-modern, if you will) circus. His essay in First Things, "How the World Lost Its Story" published back in 1993, has become a minor classic among orthodox (both small and large "o") Christians interested in the forging a response to the post-Christian environment in which we now live. Jenson has a long list of publications, including a two volume systematic theology. His work can be difficult at times, but it is always fruitful. He is one of those thinkers that, even when wrong, is instructive. Read the two essays linked above or go here for his essay "What If It Were True?" a fine short introduction to Jenson's "method" and some of his favorite themes.

Poet and critic Dana Gioia will be the nominee for next head of the National Endowment for the Arts. Gioia created a tempest in the literary teapot back in 1991 with his essay in the Atlantic Monthly, "Can Poetry Matter?" arguing that poets need to break out of the increasingly inbred and sterile subculture of writing programs, grants and little magazines. A larger sampling of his criticism and his own work as a poet can be found here. I have to agree with the author of the Wall Street Journal piece linked at the top, that this is a felicitous choice.

As a regular visitor to Bishop Seraphim Segrist's LiveJournal, I was delighted to find that the good Bishop is an admirer of Manly Wade Wellman's Appalachian tales of John the Balladeer. Wellman was one of the great "pulp" writers of our age, active from the 30's until his death in the mid 80's. The "Silver John" stories are some of his best work, by turns charming, scary, funny and wise. There are five John the Balladeer novels, which are worth reading, but the real treasures are the stories, now alas, out of print. Night Shade Books is reprinting selected stories of Wellman's in a series of volumes, the fifth of which is scheduled to include all the John the Balladeer stories.

Folk musician Joe Bethancourt has RealAudio samples of his versions of John's ballads at a web page devoted to his cassette release, (title taken from a Wellman tale), Who Fears the Devil.

Frost, fall color, fog; a morning view of Buck Mountain.



Feeding time; autumn light, hampshire ewes and hay bales.

I had a face from the past drop by the office this week, a woman whose husband I had prosecuted for assaulting her on several occasions. They had one of those relationships that is doomed from the start to end up as an item on a Court docket. He does not hold his liquor well and has a mean temper when he drinks. She, while not exactly being crazy, has a mind that tends to wander off the beaten path and get lost in the underbrush. She stopped by to ask a few questions because she thought I had spoken kindly and truthfully to her those several years ago when her file was part of my caseload. If you are in any kind of public service job, you have met people like her, and after a while, you cringe when they come in. You know that whatever you can do, it will never be enough to fix what is wrong, and, in the meantime, they are taking up time you could use on a solvable problem. As it happened, she had picked a good day to stop by, and I was able to take a few minutes and talk with her. I don't think I changed anything, but it was good to have the chance to hear her out and leave her with a little dignity. I was thinking of her, and all the others who walk through my door, while reading in The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann and ran across this entry:

What is the most frightening aspect of social work, administration, power? It is the gradually growing indifference, a certain passive cruelty. In order to satisfy everybody, one way or another, one must limit each, reduce one's rapport with each to a minimum, until it becomes impersonal. Each person demands everything. The mystery of Christ: giving Himself totally to each one.

To my regret, I don't find in myself the self-giving of Christ in the face of the needs around me. Another great Christian writer of our time, the late Vassar Miller, nails the problem exactly in one of her poems:

Prudent

I dip a cautious foot in the Atlantic
Of generosity, yet keep my wits
To draw it out in time before I panic.
I give myself away by modest bits
In crumbs fed birds of dainty appetite.
I give my love out in judicious doles.
Mine is the wise man's, not the widow's mite,
Leaving in my largesse enough loopholes
Through which I may escape if necessary
To practicality. For, though no miser,
Conservative and not reactionary--
I shun those few whose goodness is a geyser,
Who cannot comprehend a balance sheet
And fling their lives like pennies at God's feet.
(If I Had Wheels Or Love: Collected Poems of Vassar Miller)

Prudence is a tricky virtue for a Christian. It is far too easy to be foolish when you should be prudent. Perhaps, easier still, to be prudent when you should be a fool.

I was asked this week by a visitor to the farm, "What do you see here in twenty-four hours?" I'm still not quite sure how to answer that. Everything. Nothing. Here, as a beginning, is the view this morning:



As I rise from sleep I thank Thee, O Holy Trinity, for through Thy great goodness and patience Thou wast not angered with me, an idler and sinner, nor hast Thou destroyed me in my sins, but hast shown Thy usual love for men, and when I was prostrate in despair, Thou hast raised me to keep the morning watch and glorify Thy power. And now enlighten my mind's eye and open my mouth to study Thy words and understand Thy commandments and do Thy will and sing to Thee in heartfelt adoration and praise Thy Most Holy Name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

The past weeks have been unseasonably warm. The local insect population responded like a desperate team granted a sudden death overtime in the Reproductive Bowl. Buzzing and chirping everywhere at night, a constant drone of sound at evening feeding. The weather shifted on Monday, a cold front ahead of rain. Yesterday morning, our first frost left the lawn in ripples of white. Last night, as the rain started, only a single cricket could be heard.

Crickets --
as the cold of night deepens into autumn
are you weakening? your voices
grow farther and farther away.

Saigyo (trans. Burton Watson)

I have spent most of the weekend struggling with an attack of the "klez" virus. I think the hard drive is now safe and sanitary, but I still feel as if I should be ringing the cyber-equivalent of a bell, chanting "unclean!, unclean!" For anyone who may have received their own copy of the virus when it hijacked my address book, many apologies. For whoever sent it to me, forgiveness. I had some rather less annoying trespassers out on the front lawn yesterday morning, who are pictured below:

For my regular readers, I apologize for the lack of new content. Exhaustion sometimes overtakes inspiration. The addition of a homicide to the normal routine of stabbings, rapes, thefts, burglaries, drunk driving, assaults and shopliftings has had the office working overtime. I do not say this by way of complaint, especially considering the nightmare that is taking place to the east of us in the Washington D.C. suburbs. Our town may have its troubles, but they are still on a (mostly) managable scale.

If I can find some time, there will be a new installment of the Suburban Ascetic and number of shorter pieces up this weekend. Until then, please check out the folks linked on the left who continue to blog good stuff daily.

Tonight, when I picked up the last bale of hay in the corner of barn, I found a three foot blacksnake looking back at me, not pleased to be disturbed. I, on the other hand, was quite happy to see him. We are unwilling donors of grain and alfalfa hay to the rat and field mouse survival and reproduction fund. Having a snake around means there are substantial penalties for withdrawal. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Burn's "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beasties." I simply would like them to eat less than the sheep do.

My attitude towards snakes is not, I regret to say, typical of farmers around here. The old-timers wage an never-ending war against snakes of all sizes, shapes and colors. Poisonous, non-poisonous, it makes no difference. God tells the serpent in Genesis that the son of the woman will bruise his head. Folks around here seem to take that as a command, rather than an obscure messianic prophecy. Tonight's blacksnake seemed more elegant than subtle and tempted me not at all. If he wishes to share the local rodent population with us, he is more than welcome.

Thursday night we had the first murder in Warren County in almost two and a half years. It rained without letup that evening, soaking the body as it lay there in the lot by the river, spreading blood in shallow pools over the gravel like an obscene watercolor. I knew the boy slightly, which is not surprising in a small town. He had committed some traffic infractions which I had prosecuted. He also had some other, more serious, brushes with the law, but nothing that justified the scene Thursday night. I had little sleep that night, the investigators on the case even less. Work on the case in ongoing. We are all angry, angry at the waste, angry at the arrogance of someone who would take another's life for no reason worth a damn. We are angry that all our worst suspicions about human nature have been confirmed again. It is easy to get hard in this job. Sometimes it is even a necessity, to do what needs to be done. And yet . . . I saw one of our investigators, who had handled the carnage of the crime scene seemingly without sentiment, open the trunk of his car and find that a field mouse had nested in his rubber boot, falling out as he up-ended it. She scampered across the parking lot, leaving her three finger-nail sized babies there on the asphalt. The investigator put on a crime scene glove, and gently moved them all to a grassy strip near where the mother had run, having had enough of death of any kind that day.


Looking on me as I lie here prone before you, voiceless and unbreathing, mourn for me, everyone; brethren and friends, kindred, and you who knew me well; for but yesterday with you I was talking, and suddenly there came upon me the fearful hour of death: therefore come, all you that long for me, and kiss me with the last kiss of parting. For no longer shall I walk with you, nor talk with you henceforth: for to the Judge I go, where no person is valued for his earthly station: Yea, slave and master together stand before Him, king and soldier, rich man and poor man, all accounted of equal rank: for each one, according to his own deeds shall be glorified, or shall be put to shame. Therefore I beg you all, and implore you, to offer prayer unceasingly for me to Christ our God, that I be not assigned for my sins to the place of torment; but that He assign me to the place where there is Light of Life.

(From the Orthodox Funeral Service)

Gideon Strauss linked to a poem by Kodojin I posted last week. Kodojin was a near-contemporary Japanese poet (1865-1944) who lived in a time when that nation's ancient traditions were being reshaped to create a modern (and militarist) Japan. Kodojin self-consciously moved against this stream, adhering to traditions of scholarship, art and poetry, that went back thousands of years into Asian history. As one might imagine, this placed him out of step in his own time, and virtually forgotten in ours. Stephen Addis, a noted scholar, artist, potter and calligrapher, rediscovered Kodojin's work and brought it to an English speaking public in the volume Old Taoist: The Life, Art and Poetry of Kodojin. Many of Kodojin's poems were written in classical Chinese, and translated for this volume by Jonathan Chaves, himself a noted scholar of Chinese literature and a fellow parishioner at St. Mary's Orthodox Church. Here is his translation of one of my favorite poems by Kodojin, a description of the good life for the country dweller who also loves literature:

Fertile fields enrich my household;
a good wife completes my home.
Auspicious trees grow along my paths;
wonderful books fill my carts.

I have edited the 9/23 post to include links on Amazon to the books I borrowed the poems from, in case you want to add them to your own cart.

You see, it all started with the cows. We were living in town then, and my father-in-law went and bought about twenty Hereford cows from North Carolina and an Angus bull to match. Cattle prices were up and it seemed like a good idea at the time. They arrived on the place and promptly scattered. There were cows sneaking over on to the neighbor's place. There were cows in my in-law's yard. There was one cow who jumped the cattle guard and headed full speed south to Browntown, right smack down the middle of the blacktop, traffic be damned. We made quite a few retrieval trips out from the townhouse to the farm until they settled down and started to feel at home.

Soon after, cattle prices went down, but the cows stayed, producing black and white calves each year. When my father-in-law got sick one winter, Susan began going out to help him feed. In winter when the grass dies off, you load last summer's grass in the form of hay on the farm truck. Soon enough, the cows learn the routine and follow in line when the truck comes in to the pasture, waiting for the square bales to be cut open and tossed down. This happens every day. If sleet is blowing sideways, you do it. If it is so cold your hands go numb as you cut the baling twine, you still do it. If it is soaking rain, barely above freezing you do it, and hope that some day you will feel warm again. Susan did all this. She fed cows in knee deep snow. She fed cows in mud. She fed on days when she was sick herself. She would say that she hated those cows. Each time she went out to help with some chore, be it worming, castrations, or birthing, she would come back claiming that cows were absolutely the dumbest, most aggravating excuse for an animal God had ever placed on the planet.

Somehow, in the midst of it all, her ties to the home place began growing stronger. We were out there every weekend, helping with farm chores until it began to seem like second nature. She and her father started talking about rebuilding the purebred sheep flock. The next thing I knew, the girl who wanted to hit the ground running after college had us building a house on the same place she had planned on seeing in the rearview mirror. Somehow she had found a love and a satisfaction here that went deeper than her adolescent dreams. (She still keeps pictures of tropical beaches and palm trees though.)

After we moved out here, a typical winter morning would see Susan in the truck, and when the kids were too young for school, at least one child in her lap, trying to help steer, as grandad threw hay off the back. After the kids were in school, Charlie the house dog, would go out with her, looking out the window as the cows (giants from his perspective) clustered around the truck. Feeding cows became as big a part of his day as breakfast, which is saying a lot from a dog's point of view.

Over the years, the size of the herd dwindled, until it was down to nine cows and a bull. The ladies we had left, though old, were all good keepers, used to us, used to the place. As Susan said, they were cows an old man and a woman could work. She would still say that sheep were much better than cows; that while she couldn't bring herself to eat one of her ewes, there wasn't a cow on the place that she wouldn't see sizzling on a plate. These last few years though, she said it mostly out of habit. Something about caring for an animal on a daily basis changes you. She would complain about cows in general, but speak with humor and affection about the surviving ladies on the place. She even started liking the bull, P.T., who was something of a character himself.

My father-in-law is fighting his way back from a new round of health problems and has not been able to pitch in much lately. The sheep flock has grown to a full time job on its own. We built a new barn a few years ago and moved most of the flock over closer to our house. He has been talking for a while about whether to keep the cows or let them go. On Tuesday, he had a neighbor who runs the local livestock sale come and get them. Susan was in school teaching, and never had a chance to say goodbye. She wept last night, disconsolate. Because, you see, it all started with the cows.

Today was the beginning of Fall, with the September Equinox occuring at 12:55 a.m. for those of us in the Eastern time zone. The change in season was marked by a change in the weather; clear and cool today, after yesterday night's downpour swept away the day's unseasonable heat and humidity. The equinox itself came hard on the heels of the Harvest Moon, traditionally, the full moon closest to the equinox.

Here is a small gathering of poems to commemorate the turn of the season. Their authors lived years ago and half a world away, but the sights can be seen from my own front porch, and their thoughts are as fresh as the day's weather report.

The moon speeds on --
the treetops
still holding rain.
Basho (trans. Stephen Addis)

Four or five clusters of mountains, colors
freshened by rain;
two or three lines of wild geese,
dotting the clouds of autumn.
Tu Hsun-ho (trans. Jonathan Chaves)

Solitary cloud, feeling of a thousand ages;
setting sun, a skyful of autumn.
As far as eye can see, departing birds--
watching the mountains, alone I lean on the railing.
Kodojin (trans. Jonathan Chaves)

To my regular readers, I apologize for the light blogging this week. The lawyer part of my life took precedence, with teaching at the local law enforcement academy and a trip to Richmond to consult with a blood spatter expert at the State lab added to the normal Court schedule. I don't get many road trips as a prosecutor and took advantage of the opportunity to stop in Fredericksburg on the way home to eat lunch at Allman's Barbecue. Allman's has been serving wonderful slow cooked pork accompanied by their own secret sauce out of the same building since the fifties. My father would take me there as a boy back in the sixties when we would drive down from Alexandria to fish the Spring shad run on the Rappahannock River. Not having been back in several years, I am happy to say that the place is still the same, and the barbecue just as fine as I remembered. Those with high bandwidth (or a lot of patience) can take a video visit to Allman's here.