Around the corner of the house, another dove makes use of handy subtropical foliage for a more traditional nest.

Mockingbirds and Mourning Doves were nesting around my mother's house, making for an interesting morning serenade. Here is one dove that decided to use a hanging basket as a nest ready made to hatch her chicks.

For those who check regularly, my apologies for the lack of posts. I took some time off and went down to Florida to visit family. The picture above is the view from Caspersen Beach last Saturday, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. I have been back since Tuesday night, but caught up in the press of work since then. After a short burst of vacation pictures, regular farm blogging will resume.

This week after Pascha is "Bright Week" in the Orthodox Church. The customary Wednesday/Friday fasts are lifted and we greet one another with "Christ is Risen!", to which one responds, "Indeed, he is risen!" The website of the Orthodox Church in America has a special page with the Paschal Greeting in languages ranging from Aleut to Coptic to Latvian to Romanian to Zulu. My current favorite is Hawaiian:

Ua ala hou 'o Kristo!
Ua ala 'I 'o no 'oia!

Update: Father Steven Bigham has a new site where you can read (and hear!) the Paschal Greeting in 250 different languages. (Link via Orthodoxy Today)

The BBC has a wonderful audio portrait of Orthodox Easter here, narrated by Canon Michael Bourdeaux, an Anglican priest who was a great friend of the suffering Church in Russia under the Communists. He also interviews Irina Ratushinskaya, whom I have written about before.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

For this Good Friday, a photo from the archives; darkness and light at sunset.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

From "East Coker"; The Four Quartets

Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, the washing of the disciples feet, and the betrayal by Judas.

Of your mystical Supper, Son of God, receive me today as a communicant; for I will not tell of the Mystery to your enemies; I will not give you a kiss, like Judas; but like the Thief I confess you: Remember me, Lord, in your Kingdom.

Father Joseph at Orthodixie has posted a useful tour of Orthodox Holy Week for those who are curious.

We are now well into Holy Week, only days left before Good Friday and Pascha. As always, words fail. I commend to you the services for the week, which can be found at Archimandrite Ephraim's indispensable site. For myself, I turn again to Eliot:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years--
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

From "East Coker"; The Four Quartets

No, we did not have a sudden spring snow here. If you look over to the right, you will recognize this as the picture from my profile, seen full size for a change. My laptop is off for service, so I resurrected the old computer in my library and spent the evening browsing through and indexing images on the hard drive. I may put up a few other archive images over the next couple of weeks. If you have a favorite scene or subject, let me know and I will try and find the appropriate picture.

With Palm Sunday we move from Lent into Holy Week. As usual, as I look back on Lent I find that my customary sins and failings have made it past the last few weeks of fasting and introspection and now go with me to Pascha. What then is the value of Lent? Perhaps for those of us struggling far from sainthood it is that we do not grow too comfortable with our faults. It is far too easy to cease from trying and settle down with our favorite sins, thinking that, after all, we are only human and our failings are not so bad now, are they? Why bother with all the drama of repentance when life is short and comfort precious? This is perhaps the kind of "wisdom" T. S. Eliot had in mind when he wrote:

. . . . Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

From "East Coker"; The Four Quartets

Saturday Morning; Clouds on the mountain.

This morning I found a llama in the yard who was not at all pleased about last night's rain. (For Liz, who requested more llama pictures a while back.)

Rain coming on a spring afternoon.

Silo in afternoon sunlight.

Looking toward home Wednesday evening.

I checked my site log today in a break between clients and court hearings and was pleasantly surprised by the deluge (by my standards) of visitors from Mere Comments, a weblog from the editors of Touchstone, a journal which describes itself as "a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox." As you may imagine, they have been watching the news about the papal election with great interest and are very enthusiastic about Benedict the XVI, until yesterday know as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. I have two observations on the new Pope, one frivolous, the other more serious. First, has anyone else noticed how much he looks like an older Joe Pesci or is it just me?

The second, more serious observation is that commentators on the "left" and the "right" seem to be identifying Ratzinger almost entirely with his role as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a job he never wanted and undertook only at the request of John Paul II. It is often overlooked that Ratzinger is, in his own right, a subtle and occasionally adventurous theologian who several times asked for leave to return to academic life. There is no doubt that he has grave misgivings about the direction modern western society is heading in, but it would be a grave mistake to think of him as a man who can only say "no" or would want that to be his chief legacy to the Church. While my record as a prophet is dismal, I nonetheless make bold to predict that all of us, "left", "right", "center" , Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, will find something to surprise us in the papacy of Benedict XVI.

Another picture from younger son, tree with the first hint of leaf.