Saturday Shearing in the Barn

 

  

Good Friday

In Orthodox liturgics a new day begins at Sundown and so it is natural that services for the following day are often held by way of anticipation on the evening before.  Last night was the first of the Good Friday services, a reading of twelve selections from the Gospels recounting the Passion, that is the arrest, trial and crucifixion of the Lord.  In between the Gospel readings we sang hymns and verses meditating on the wonder and paradoxes of what is taking place in that liturgical time of the service which places us simultaneously in Palestine and the present.  Here is an Antiphon we sang which seem to follow with the theme of water that has been cropping up in my posts this week:

Today he who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon a Tree, (x3)

He who is King of the Angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns.

He who wraps the heaven in clouds is wrapped in mocking purple.

He who freed Adam in the Jordan receives a blow on the face.

The Bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails.

The Son of the Virgin is pierced by a lance,.

We worship your Sufferings, O Christ (x3)

Show us also your glorious Resurrection.

The full service as translated by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash can be found here.

Holy Thursday

The One who made lakes and springs and seas, instructing us in surpassing humility, girding himself with a towel, washed his disciples’ feet, humbling himself in the abundance of his compassion and exalting us from the depths of wickedness, he who alone loves humankind.

From the service for Matins (Morning Prayer) on Holy Thursday

The Morning Fog Lifts

The Promise of Spring

Steve Hayes commented on yesterday's post from his Southern hemisphere home in South Africa: 

 And I heard noises outside my window this morning and looked out and the wind was swirling the dead leaves. I turned the heater on for the first time this year, and somewhere reported the first snow of the season.

This reminder of the reversal of seasons that comes from living on different halves of a big round ball mixed with the last few days of rain and brought to mind one of my favorite songs; The Waters of March/Águas de Março, by Antonio Carlos Jobim.  Jobim wrote two versions of the song.  The Portuguese original is a stream of consciousness meditation inspired by the rains of March, which in Brazil signal the end of summer.  The second, English, version is not so much a translation as a Northern hemisphere adaptation.  Here is a bit from the lyrics:

The plan of the house, the body in bed
And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud
A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail, the promise of spring
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart
A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone
A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn in your hand and a cut in your toe
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night
A pin, a needle, a sting a pain
A snail, a riddle, a wasp, a stain
A pass in the mountains, a horse and a mule
In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue
And the river talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life in your heart
A stick, a stone, the end of the road
The rest of a stump, a lonesome road
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A knife, a death, the end of the run
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart

Reading the lyrics does not do justice to the song, with its deceptively simple syncopation and sweet but melancholy melody.  I counted yesterday and discovered that I own five versions of the song by different artists.  I did not plan this, it is just that I find myself listening to a lot of bossa nova lately.  Perhaps it is the combination of beauty and sadness in the best of it.  Perhaps it is just an urge to listen to music made by grown ups for a change.  The Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart maintains in his The Beauty of the Infinite that "Bach's is the ultimate Christian music; it reflects as no other human artifact ever has or could the Christian vision of creation."  This is no doubt true for the big picture.  I see Bach as like the physics and higher math of cosmology and quantum mechanics.  It is true and it is beautiful but it describes a world both bigger and smaller than the one we humans live in.  Here on the human scale the math gets messy.  Coastlines are fractals.  Swirling waters and weather patterns are non-linear, defying easy prediction.  Even the human heart beats chaotically and a "perfectly regular heartbeat is more likely to presage sudden death than good health."  Jobim's little bossa nova about the change of seasons, be it North or South is not Bach, but, for me at least, it speaks of the underlying beauty amidst the ten thousand seemingly unconnected details found in any day in any life if you stop and look around.  Not a meaningless chaos then, but something more:

A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail, the promise of spring
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

The View From Home April 21 2008

In the Orthodox Church Calendar yesterday was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.  Pascha, as we call Easter, is much later this year than the Western celebration, late enough in the season so the redbud is in bloom and the grass in our fields has turned from winter brown to green.  Here is the view from home this Monday morning in Holy Week.

The National Weather Service has placed us under a winter storm watch for Thursday night. Ice, sleet and freezing rain expected. From the photo archives, here is another picture of the aftermath of a mid-December ice storm.

Our flock has done some strange things, but I've never seen this before.

Light, Shadow, Classics and Packing Tape?

Mark Khaisman is an artist living and working in Philadelphia.  Born in Ukraine and educated in Moscow, Mark has worked as an architect, animator, iconographer, and stained glass designer.  In the last few years he has pulled together the skills from all his previous artistic incarnations and has applied them to creating art that at the same time combines the disciplines of classical drawing with the use of light from glass work to create something wonderful by layering common brown packing tape over Plexiglas.  This is what I mean:

The subject matter is a suit of ceremonial armor, perfect for a classic figure study, accenting detail and exercising the artist's ability to sketch in light and shadow.  Mark suggests it all simply by layering tape over a backlit panel.  Without the light, the figure would be a barely differentiated mass of muddy brown.  With the light shining through it becomes detailed, elegant, even radiant.  (to be continued . . .)

Susan I took a road trip this weekend; no kids, no computer, no sheep except the ones out the car window. We left Friday afternoon for Lancaster County PA and spent the night at a Bed and Breakfast in Bird in Hand. Saturday was farmer's markets, furniture stands, Amish food and a quick trip to Philadelphia, a new hotel and a reception for the opening of an exhibit of work by Mark Khaisman. More about that tomorrow. Tonight it's time for bed.

This is Amy Sue. She was purchased at a livestock sale by a friend who went there to look at horses and felt so sorry for the single bedraggled sheep in the sale that she put in her bid and became a sheep owner. Amy Sue came over to live with us a few years back to take advantage of our larger summer pastures and stayed when she decided she would rather hang with the flock than be a pet. That doesn't mean that she still doesn't want a little more individual attention than the rest of the flock.

From the photo archives, looking out towards the mountain after a mid-December ice storm.

One of the online journals I read regularly is Bishop Seraphim's livejournal. Bishop Seraphim seems to have an inexhaustible interest in almost anything and everyone. Today's entry (posted from Moscow) takes us back to New York to an exhibit honoring Jack Kerouac. At this point in my 50's I should have outgrown Kerouac, but I still find myself rereading On The Road and Dharma Bums every few years. There is a music there you either hear or you don't. As Richard Thompson put it in one of his songs:

Like a myth you rode in from the west
From the go you had my button pressed
Did the tea-time of your soul
Make you long for wilder days?
Did you never let Jack Kerouac
Wash over you in waves?

Here is a picture from back in December of the first lamb of the season.

Among my other Christmas presents was gift card for Borders. I used most of it on a CD sale at the local branch and picked up the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard's A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina). The first I was familiar with, the second I picked up after reading reviews. Both are great listening. I will not attempt to review Blanchard's work until I have spent more time with it. As for Pet Sounds, this is music I have heard for over 40 years, and still listen to. A few days ago, after my umpteenth listening to "God Only Knows" on the car stereo on the way home, I did a little web surfing before dinner and went to Maclin Horton's Light on Dark Water to catch up on a few weeks of his Sunday Night Journal entries and found this appreciation of what us old-timers still refer to as an "album."

If you read here for any time you know that I live outside a small town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. We have not heretofore been much affected by multiculturalism. Our idea of exotic cuisine is the local Mexican restaurant or carryout Chinese. Because of this I was surprised when the Royal Dairy, an old style diner attached to what was formerly an actual dairy, was sold and reincarnated as a Korean barbecue, Japanese steakhouse and Sushi restaurant called the Royal Garden. Susan and I stopped in tonight and much to my surprise, it was now under new management as the "Samurai Steakhouse;" being in this latest incarnation a Mexican (yes, Mexican) restaurant with a sideline as a Japanese Steakhouse and sushi bar. Being on a post-Christmas diet, we opted for the Japanese grill experience, which was ably executed by the cheery Hispanic chef. It was actually pretty good, and when I have shed a few pounds I might try the Mexican part of the menu.

From Alan Jacob's online commonplace book, comes a link to this story about an unusual link between Indian writer and poet Vikram Seth and the great English poet George Herbert.

I discovered Herbert in high school and re-read him regularly. Here is one of my favorites:

Prayer (I)

Prayer the Church's banquet, angels' age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;

Engine against th'Almighty, sinner's tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days' world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

George Herbert

We did not get the predicted four to eight inches of snow today. Enough came down to give everything a good coating, but most of what fell came as sleet and freezing rain. I have to say I would have preferred the snow. The sheep are fine. No new lambs today, which was a surprise. Perhaps because we had everybody in a paddock close to the barn and they did not have the opportunity to drop a lamb out on the ice it took the fun out of it. If the sun makes an appearance I will try for some pictures tomorrow.

What's on the ipod: Richard Thompson. For proof that a great musician can elevate anything, go to this page and play the interview. It is all good, but what you want is eight minutes and fifty-five seconds in.

Hot Library Smut

Hot Library Smut No, this has nothing to do with lady librarians taking off their glasses and shaking their hair out. If you click the link, you will find photographs of the most beautiful spaces for the display, reading and storage of books one can imagine. I have worked in a few libraries over the years, but these are libraries apotheosized.