John S. Bell

Morning Clouds 3-31-04

Wed, 31 Mar 2004 11:42:17 GMT

Lent

Wed, 31 Mar 2004 11:41:05 GMT

We are now well into Lent as well as Spring, past the halfway point with the Paschal celebration in sight. As usual, I have accomplished less than intended, kept the fast less well than I wanted and live no less comfortably with my many faults than I did before. Still, without the annual discipline, what state might I be in? I don't have any deep thoughts about the season. For that I would recommend a work like Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent. There are great treasures in the services and the disciplines of the Fast. Still, for me it is more like one of our more mundane chores here on the farm, walking the fencelines. Sheep, like my thoughts, tend to wander off from their own pastures with small respect for boundaries or even their own health and safety. We fence them in with posts and fence rails, mesh wire, barbed wire, old stone walls, whatever is available. Some things work better then others. Even the best fence fails sometimes. Tree limbs fall at inconvenient places. Gullies wash out under wire fences leaving escape tunnels for fugitive sheep. Every so often, we need to walk the fencelines, repairing a tear here, removing a fallen tree there, piling rocks or logs to close a gap under the fence. It won't keep the sheep from trying. It won't even keep a few from succeeding in sneaking through. But, with luck and a little grace, it does keep us from waking up and finding the entire flock chewing it's way to town down either side of the blacktop. Likewise, the disciplines of Lent may not have made much of a dent in my own wayward nature, but they do remind me of where the fences are.

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:52:23 GMT

We had a bit of wind yesterday . . .

October Update

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 02:10:23 GMT

Saturday Morning 10-19-03

There is no mistaking it, autumn has arrived. The first batch of leaves that turned were stripped down by wind and rain last week and scattered around the pasture. The survivors are turning more slowly, as if made cautious by the fate of their more impetuous brethren. We have had our first big frost, the fields white again, bringing back memories of last Winter's snow, and perhaps prophesying about the Winter to come. In between the extremes, we have had a few of those warm days where you wish for nothing more than to stretch out in the slanting afternoon sunlight. There is so little time to sit and watch it all. I have an election just over two weeks away, and mixing work with the campaign gets me out of the house at sunrise and keeps me away until after dusk. Our town and county may look small on a map, but they expand to continental proportions when you are traveling through one door at a time, talking to folks. Knocking on doors and asking for support is not something that comes naturally, but I do think that if you want your fellow citizens to vote for you and provide you with a living, you should at least have the courtesy to stop by and introduce yourself. It is at once invigorating and exhausting. Sometimes I think I have learned more about our hometown in the last month than I have in the last fifteen years I have lived here. Great works could be written on the different ways people decorate their front walks alone. So much love and effort spent to make a place in the world. I have talked to more people, shaken more hands, and spoken more in public these last few weeks than I have ever done before in my life. I will be glad when it is over, but I will also miss it a little. It is too early to predict the outcome of the election, but win or lose, the leaves will still change. Win or lose, it is time to get the barn ready for Winter and the lambs due to arrive in December.

Rock you like a Hurricane

Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:51:52 GMT

Isabel passed through our hillside farm Thursday night. The overall damage is not as bad as the last big snowstorm, but we are still pretty impressed. In the field next to the house, the wind picked up a three-sided shed big enough to hold a dozen ewes and turned it over on its roof. The sheep who were in it are fine, apparently all having escaped safely before the big flip. A few looked a bit bewildered though by the unexpected change in their accommodations. They were standing in the inverted shed, hooves on the tin roof, casting uncertain glances up at the open sky. The rest of the purebred flock weathered the storm snug in the barn, which held up much better than the shed.

We lost electricity at half past eleven, about an hour before the center of the storm came through, so I am writing this from my office in the Courthouse in town. This morning, after checking the livestock and helping the in-laws get situated on the other side of the farm, I fired up the generator and ran extension cords to the chest freezer and the refrigerator. We got the Coleman stove off the camping supply shelf and moved the gas grill back out of the basement. The water supply is whatever is in the bathtubs supplemented by three cases of bottled water for drinking and food preparation. We should be good until the lights come back on, though a hot shower would be awfully nice right about now. I will upload some pictures when home internet access is restored.

Travelling at home

Sun, 31 Aug 2003 18:09:26 GMT

I had not intended to go weeks between updates, but the end of summer has come quickly. Oh, the days are still hot enough, but the signs are there. The tadpoles in the seep from the pasture spring are gone, replaced by the voices of frogs in the tall grass. Birds fly in crazy connect-the-dot clusters before dropping into the big sycamore, pausing as they congregate for the flight south. I duck under spider silk as I walk into the barn, looking for egg sacks, and any last messages written into webs. (Bambi never made me sentimental about deer, but Charlotte's Web has stayed my hand from many a spider. Foolish, I know . . .) I can't understand how I ever thought that rural life moved slowly. There are days I feel like I am in one of those time lapse nature films, and the projectionist keeps pushing the speed control. We are in that last rush of nature to get business done before winter, and every day looks different in some great or subtle way. Each day, this small piece of ground I pretend to know shows me new possibilities, many good, some bad, almost all unexpected. It brings to mind the truth of what poet-farmer Wendell Berry says in "Travelling at Home":

Even in a country you know by heart
it's hard to go the same way twice.

Wit

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 01:40:46 GMT

I have been reading lately in Powers of Heaven and Earth; New and Selected Poems, by John Frederick Nims. Here is a new favorite from the epigrams interspersed between his longer works:

Avant-garde

"A dead tradition! Hollow shell!
Outworn, outmoded--time it fell.
Let's make it new. Rebel! Rebel!"
Said cancer-cell to cancer-cell.

Reading Nims, whose published work spans from the forties until 1999, when he died, I realized that he has a characteristic that I miss in most of our contemporary writers; wit. In our post-modern age we have sarcasm, satire, and irony, but, rarely, wit. Wit shares in post-modernity's delight in word-play. Where wit parts with post-modernity is that wit assumes the existence of standards, of ideals, and skewers our failure to live up to them. In our post-modern days we, by contrast, seem to have come to the conclusion that, since no one lives up to an ideal, it is hypocrisy to hold one. Cleverly pointing out the gap between the real and the ideal is pointless, if ideals themselves are fictions promoted by the dominant class structure. Holding firmly to the existence of standards, wit plays in that gap between our actions and our best intentions. Here is another example from Nims:

Contemplation

"I'm Mark's alone!" you swore. Given cause to
doubt you,
I think less of you, dear. But more about you.

Here the poet makes a double-play, skewering both the narrator and the lady in question, as both fail to live up to the ideal of fidelity. The play of wit, of course, is not the same thing as actually repenting of our sins and hypocrisies. What use is it then? Perhaps it is as close as some of us can come to humility; recognizing our own sins as we smile at our neighbor's. As Nims says in another epigram, directed to

You Pious People

Most any sin--read Scripture if you doubt it--
'S forgiven sooner than righteousness about it.

Water in Summer Shade

Sat, 19 Jul 2003 20:31:55 GMT

Easy-flowing brook,
Hushed--till root or rock impede.
Then it learns to sing.

Ragdale Haiku, John Frederick Nims

Visitor

Sun, 13 Jul 2003 00:59:29 GMT

Redsox, the sheep pictured above, was a bottle lamb, born half-dead and brought back to life by my wife with "mouth to snout resuscitation." She spent her first few weeks being bottle fed in a box in the basement intensive care ward. To our amazement, she survived and thrived. When she was older she used the children's small plastic playhouse as a barn, growing strong enough on a diet of front yard grass and Susan's back yard roses to rejoin the flock. She adapted to life as a regular sheep quite well, though she still comes up to see us, her first flock, when we are out by the pasture.

Morning mist and trespassing ewes

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:54:14 GMT

This year has been hard on the sheep flock. A harsh winter followed by the wettest spring in recent memory has stressed lambs and ewes alike. The pastures, while green enough, are getting choked with weed and thistle who have formed a kind of vegetable mob, rioting in the wet fields. The ladies pictured above picked their way across the cattle guard, filled in with gravel wash from the latest downpours, to get at the more well-mannered grass in the yard. With all the labor and losses we have gone through together this spring, I didn't have the heart to chase them out. I left them to their breakfast as I went to pour the morning coffee.

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 02:56:15 GMT

Bishop Seraphim has been passing out questions over on his livejournal. I held out my hat and caught these five. After a quick look, they were set aside while I took some time away from writing to get my name on the ballot this fall. I am now an official candidate for Commonwealth's Attorney here in my neck of the wood. (For you non-Virginians, that's the same as District Attorney.) With the opening phase of the campaign over, I have a little breathing room and time for questions:

1) John the Balladeer comes to stay the night and says he might could have a song of blessing for a need in your heart just now...is there a song you would ask for (perhaps not a title but the kind of work the song might do)? I would like to hear several songs. Some sad ones for things lost in life's changes. Some funny ones to lift the mood and remind us of small blessings and humble pleasures, and finally, a song that leaves the listener filled with joy and courage

2)I have asked a couple of others , and ask you also what childrens book do you remember teaching you the most about life? I learned to read at a little school on a Naval base in Sasebo, Japan. The one room library there had no space to divide books by age once you got past the big board books with pictures. I ended up reading a lot of things that were not necessarily age appropriate. Imagine a seven year old interested in Robin Hood puzzling over Childe Ballads. I was interested in mythology and somehow found an illustrated verse translation of the Odyssey. The part about the Cyclops had me frightened for years. I didn't get around to many of the children's classics until I was in high school and read them on my own. I loved them all, but my favorites then (and now) were the Narnia books. Lewis wrote better books, but none wiser. All a young man needs to know about faith, courage, loyalty and hope are found there. I don't know that I will ever outgrow them. Now, well into my middle years, I still hope to grow into them.

3)when you became Eastern Orthodox was it originally more a leaving behind or a drawing towards? It was a drawing toward. I was raised as an Episcopalian, spent my late teens and twenties in charismatic renewal communities, and returned to the Episcopal church in my thirties. I still love the cadences of the classic Book of Common Prayer and the deep sense of worship in the best of the renewal communites. Nonetheless, an exposure to Gregory of Nyssa and the Desert Fathers started a hunger for something I found still living in the Orthodox Church. I converted some nine years ago, not so much fleeing the Episcopal church, as trying, like the children in The Last Battle, to go "Higher up and deeper in!"

4)You have the career in the city I understand as well as on the farm ,do they go together well for the most part? By way of reply, here is an excerpt from my weblog, written last April: 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.

5)Do you know fr Gordon Walker? in Tennessee? if you should see him give him my regard. Actually, I live closer to New York City than I do to most of Tennessee. I've never had the pleasure of meeting Fr Walker, though I have met an old classmate of yours, Fr Stephen Plumlee, who is attached to Holy Spirit Church in Venice, Florida, which I attend a couple times a year while visiting my parents.

6)a favorite Bible verse? Romans 8:26-28

No love is ever wasted

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 00:07:20 GMT

Last week on my Hillside Farm weblog, I wrote about the approaching death of one of our sheep. A reader left the following question in my comments box: "[W]hat does the Orthodox Church teach concerning the eternality, if any, of animals?" It is something I have thought about myself. The Scriptures and the Tradition are not overflowing with information on the subject. The great vision of the New Jerusalem in Saint John's Apocalypse is strangely silent on the fate of these companions of ours for whom we struggle and pour out our care, and who, sometimes, provide our sustenance. For a vision of animals and the Kingdom, we must go back to the Prophet Isaiah:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah 11 6-9.

The vision of Isaiah encompasses a renewed Creation where other creatures, themselves renewed, have a place. It does not answer however, the question of the fate of individual animals. Do all dogs go to heaven? We do not know. What we do know is that all things are embraced by the love of God who keeps track of the fall of a single sparrow. In Orthodoxy, when we wish to know what God is like, and to understand what God is doing, we can look to the Saints, those men and women who lived in close communion with God. The goal of Orthodox spirituality is theosis, a participation in the life of the Trinity, whereby men and women become God-like, or as the Tradition sometimes puts it, "gods by grace." One ancient Saint that many modern Orthodox turn to as a kind of touchstone for the spiritual life is Isaac the Syrian. He had this to say about the nature of the person who has made the Divine compassion his own:

An elder once asked, 'What is a compassionate heart?'. He replied: 'It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons and for all that exists. At the recollection and at the sight of them such a person's eyes overflow with tears owing to the vehemence of the compassion which grips his heart; as a result of his deep mercy his heart shrinks and cannot bear to hear or look on any injury or the slightest suffering of anything in creation. 'This is why he constantly offers up prayer full of tears, even for the irrational animals and for the enemies of truth, even those who harm him, so that they may be protected and find mercy. 'He even prays for the reptiles as a result of the great compassion which is poured out beyond measure- after the likeness of God- in his heart'.
From 'DAILY READINGS WITH ST. ISAAC OF SYRIA'- 1990 Templegate Publishers, Springfield, ILL

If the compassion of the Saints is such, how can we doubt the compassion of the God whose likeness they bear? While I know of no specific revelation concerning the animals we have loved, I do know from the Orthodox Tradition, that in God's mercy, no love is ever wasted.

Thu, 15 May 2003 11:44:21 GMT

I have been remiss in cross-posting from my weblog to this Journal lately. For the most recent farm pictures, please go to Notes From a Hillside Farm. I have some longer entries in the works when time permits, but in the meantime, here is a favorite quotation from Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, in honor of Bishop Seraphim's recent trip to celebrate the Liturgy with the shepherdess nuns of the Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery:

Sheep are nourished with what is from God, but you are men, intended to be nourished with God. If men were also to be nourished with the nourishment of sheep, why would God have created both men and sheep?

What are sheep except grass -- the nourishment with which they are nourished. But you are invited to be gods, therefore God offers Himself to you as nourishment.

From Prayers by the Lake

CHRIST IS RISEN!

Sun, 27 Apr 2003 16:12:36 GMT

At midnight the congregation walks slowly around the darkened Church, candles in hand, singing softly. Outside the doors of the sanctuary, the Gospel is read. Father knocks loudly on the closed doors; "Lift up your gates that the King of Glory may come in!" The doors open to a flood of light, flowers, and candles, as we proclaim, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life!" We stand shoulder to shoulder as the choir and chanter sing, proclaiming the joyful paradoxes of the feast. At the end of matins, before the start of the liturgy that will take us past two in the morning, we hear the words of St. John Chrysostom, John the Golden-tongued, inviting all to join in the joy of the day:

If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him now receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 02:41:17 GMT

We Orthodox will celebrate Pascha, the great feast of the resurrection, a week later than our western brethren this year due to differences in calendar calculations. The Lenten fast continues for a few more days, but even now preparations and foreshadowings of the joy of the coming feast appear. This past Saturday was the commemoration of the raising of Lazarus, and, as if to join in the foretaste of the Resurrection, the redbuds and dogwoods burst into blossom at the foot of the mountain. Here is a photo from this Sunday of three of our guard llamas, keeping watch in the midst of it all.

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 11:41:58 GMT

had not intended to take a twelve day break from the weblog, but time passes quickly in Spring. Every day the scene outside changes, green where there was brown, leaves where there were skeletal branches. Too fast to capture in a daily slice of words. I can understand why the haiku poets loved this season. Things will not stop in their rush to sit for a full portrait of words, but a quick seventeen syllable sketch is just barely possible.

Last week it rained. Not just for one day. The whole week it rained, cold and continuos showers. Down at the sheep barn there was mud above the ankles, sometimes up to the boot top, grabbing and holding on like an insistent drunk at a party -- "Have you heard this one?" The joke, it seems, was a good one, as the Lenten grey and gloom of the rain has given way to this week's riot of sunlit green.

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 21:33:18 GMT

As the saying goes, what a difference a day makes. A sudden cold front, moisture in the air, and we have snow again. The first flakes fell just after sunrise, precursors of those still falling outside my window as evening approaches. It is a wet snow, falling on to ground warmed by a week's worth of spring weather. The gravel road is mostly clear, but the pastures and trees are covered, the snowflakes temporarily winning the see-saw battle between freeze and thaw by sheer force of numbers. In sheltered spots, the new grass still shows through, looking almost emerald green by contrast. On the lower hills, the dogwoods are in bloom, white flowers bending under white snow, springtime delayed until the storm passes.

For today's view of Buck Mountain,

Fenceline and Clouds, 3-29-03

Sun, 30 Mar 2003 21:30:22 GMT

Sunset, 3-26-03

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 03:15:12 GMT

Farm Updates

Sun, 16 Mar 2003 20:51:10 GMT

The latest farm reports and today's photo of Hogback Mountain can be found over at the Notes From A Hillside Farm weblog.

Lenten Reading, continued

Sun, 16 Mar 2003 19:22:11 GMT

Irina Ratushinskaya was, for a brief time, fashionable in the west; a bold young woman, sentenced in 1984 at age 28 to seven years hard labor by the Soviet state for the crime of writing poetry ("anti-Soviet agitation"). Her case drew the attention of Amnesty International, International P.E.N., and other institutions of the educated and well-meaning. She spent four years in a "strict regime" forced labor camp until international pressure, together with the early beginnings of Glasnost, resulted in her release and forced exile to the west. Her citizenship finally restored by Yeltsin in 1998, she now lives in Russia with her family.

Several volumes of her poems were published in English translation, but, with nothing being so unfashionable as last year's cause, most are now out of print. There are also two volumes of memoirs, Grey is the Color of Hope, and In the Beginning, as well as a novel for the interested reader to explore. Cornerstone Press, a small Christian publisher, has put out a new volume of her poetry. You can read selections at their web-site by following the link. More excerpts can be found, along with a short article, at the Books and Culture magazine website.

Ratushinskaya is a believer. Some of her poems are explicit about her faith. In others, it is a quiet background, the horizon behind the observations and word plays in even her more seemingly secular work. Here are two shorter poems. The first, uncharacteristically direct, was written the day after her release. The "Small Zone" of the second poem is Zone 4 of corrective labor colony number 3, where Ratushinskaya was imprisoned.

Believe me, it was often thus:
In solitary cells, on winter nights
A sudden sense of joy and warmth
And a resounding note of love.
And then, unsleeping, I would know
A-huddle by an icy wall:
Someone is thinking of me now,
Petitioning the Lord for me.
My dear ones, thank you all
Who did not falter, who believed in us!
In the most fearful prison hour
We probably would not have passed
Through everything - from end to end,
Our heads held high, unbowed -
Without your valiant hearts
To light our path.
Kiev, 10 October 1986

So tomorrow, our little ship, Small Zone,
What will come true for us?
According to what law --
Like an eggshell over dead waves?
Covered in patches and scars,
On the word - the honest word - alone -
By whose hand is our ship preserved,
Our little home?
Those of us who sail to the end, row, live to the end --
Let them tell for the others:
We knew
The touch of this hand.
Small Zone, 18 September 1983

If you can find her poems, whether in a library, used book store, or in one of the volumes still in print, I recommend her as a companion through Lent. Here are a few more lines from the Cornerstone Press collection, Wind of the Journey, as food for the journey:

In our hearts we're not waiting
For April but growing toward it.
Oh, 'tis joyful and hard
Like all journeys we make for Your glory.

Sat, 15 Mar 2003 00:57:49 GMT

Over the next few days, I will post my own idiosyncratic suggestions for Lenten reading. To start with, I like to draw your attention to three writers whose work came out of the experience of the long Lent of the Russian Church in the twentieth century. While we all know intellectually that the Church was persecuted under the Communist regime, it is hard to grasp what this really meant. Bishops died in the hundreds; priests in the thousands, executed or condemned to a lingering death in the camps. Ordinary believers had their churches closed, and faced loss of jobs, housing, even their lives for a simple profession of faith. Some survived by compromise with the State, some suffered in silence, some kept the faith in heroic fashion. After the worst of the persecution, the Church was allowed a kind of shadow existence, like a child chained in a closet. The threat of imprisonment was always there for those who grew too vocal. I venerate those who spoke out and suffered. I do not judge those who compromised or remained silent, having only the slightest idea what they faced. The Soviet system of prisons and forced labor camps, most familiar to Westerners from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, swallowed generations of believers. The first two writers, Sergei Fudel, and Irina Ratushinskaya, are both survivors of the camps. Fudel (1901-1977) lived through the beginning of the darkness. Ratushinskaya, from a younger generation, lived through to the end of it, surviving prison and exile to return to Russia in the 90's, where she lives today.

There is only one work by Sergei Fudel available in English, a sampling of meditations, anecdotes, memoirs and short essays collected under the title Light in the Darkness. I first read the book in a sitting. I re-read it a little at a time now, skimming to find a story or a word that catches me, and then ponder it, seeing what I missed at first reading. Here are two passages selected almost at random, both in their own way appropriate for the Lenten season:

Everything in Christianity is determined and checked out by love. We should know some of the definitions of fasting given by saints:
Saint Isaac of Syria says: "Your spirit will not submit to the cross unless your body submits too" (This means effort, fasting).
Saint Paul writes: "You were called to freedom, bretheren, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for flesh" (Ga 5:13)
An elder said to his disciple whose fasting lacked love: "Eat everything, but do not eat people."

I do not understand the suffering of the world. I only understand that the Creator of the world became part of the world's suffering and let His beloved Son share in it. Christianity speaks to us of God who suffers, suffers not because of His guilt, but because of his compassion, because of love. If this is so, then suffering is not to be feared, because it cannot be separated from love, or from God. "God suffers in His flesh . . ." That is why we dare to say "Of Thy sufferings make a participant" (Stikhera on "Lord, I call upon Thee," Tuesday, 2nd week of Great Lent).

To come; excerpts from Irina Ratushinskaya and an introduction to Mother Maria Skobstova.

Thawing Out

Tue, 11 Mar 2003 01:47:45 GMT

This past weekend saw a rise in temperatures into the fifties. The snow piled in the barnyard Saturday morning vanished by Sunday afternoon, seeping into the once frozen soil and leaving a kind of brown soup in its place. There is still snow visible on a few north facing slopes and on the mountain sides, but it is increasingly becoming a memory instead of a present obstacle. Looking around the barnyard, it comes as a surprise to see the odd pocket of white hidden here and there by an overhang or bit of shade. I thought of quoting Robert Frost's "A Hillside Thaw" in honor of the occasion. Instead, the following Frost poem seemed more appropriate:

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten--
If I ever read it

Lenten Links

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 12:58:02 GMT

It is rightly said that Orthodoxy is a Church that celebrates the resurrection like no other. What is often overlooked is that the great outpouring of joy in the Paschal services is built upon weeks of struggle and preparation during the Great Fast of Lent. It is a season set aside for repentance, for facing down all that hinders us as we journey to meet the Risen Lord. Accordingly, the services for Lent contain some of the richest treasures of Orthodox theology and spirituality. The webmaster at Monachos.net has put together a page of Resources for Great Lent which is an excellent place to start. He provides a calendar, selected texts and links to useful commentary on the major commemorations throughout the season. There are several places on-line with selections from the rich liturgical material in the Lenten Triodian (the service book that carries us through to Pascha.) The nuns at Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery post a daily selection from the Lenten Triodian at their website. Archmandrite Ephraim of the Monastery of Saint Andrew in England has translated some of the services and provided them on his website here. As always, David Melling's Arimathea website provides thoughtful material and links for the season.

Sun, 09 Mar 2003 23:14:58 GMT

Today is Forgiveness Sunday, the last day of preparation for Orthodox Lent. In the words of the Vespers service for this evening:

Let us set out with joy upon the season of the Fast, and prepare ourselves for spiritual combat. Let us purify our soul and cleanse our flesh; and as we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. Rejoicing in the virtues of the Spirit may we persevere with love, and so be counted worthy to see the solemn Passion of Christ our God, and with great spiritual gladness to behold His holy Passover.