My birthday celebration made me pause a bit, take a breath. My blog is about my life with Maria, and I am happily writing about myself, but I am happiest when I am learning and writing about others as well – Moise and his family, the Mansion residents, the Bishop Maginn High School refugee kids.

I realize that this kind of writing – which I will continue to do – can be distracting, exhausting, and pull me away sometimes from what I really came upstate for – the pastoral song.

A man, say the mystics, is known for his end. He is also known for his beginnings. If you wish to know him at any given moment, find how far he is from his beginning and how near he is to his end. You will know him quickly.

I am far from my beginning and nearing my end and every day is precious to me and full of meaning. The spiritual life, the pastoral life is very important to me.

That’s what I call life in the country, in the hills, in nature, with animals. I call it the pastoral song.

So I was intrigued when some friends strongly recommended a book from England called Pastoral Song, as fate would have it, by James Rebanks, a British farmer and writer.

It is a beautiful book, one of the loveliest and richest, and most touching books I can remember reading. It has just been published in America, and boy do we need it.

Pastoral Song is beautifully written. Rebanks’ story of his family farm is just about perfect, raves author and farmer Wendell Berry, who should know.

The London Sunday Times called it the “nature book of the year.”

I’m halfway through and it has touched me deeply. Rebanks reminds me that I have drifted away from the pastoral song, pulled by the craziness and intensity around me.

I need to never forget who I am and why I came here.

In my life, the pastoral song is all around me, but sometimes I let it slip away. I am determined to keep it close to me.

I won’t give up on the things I’m writing, but I’m going to work harder to keep the pastoral song alive for me – that is what I always called the spirit that pulled me to move to a farm.

Rebanks book is remarkable, a rare, fierce, eloquent look at what has gone wrong with the way we farm, the way we eat, and the frantic and stressful way we live.

Farms are an antidote that frantic life, so are animals and the food we eat and grow.  So is nature.

This story of one farm and the three generations of farmers who owned it got right into my heart, I walked around the farm for an hour this morning, seeking to recover the pastoral song in my life, and drink from it.

And I did. There are some things I can only do alone and in solitude.

Our world is busy, angry, at war with itself. I have to work hard to remember the good and the beautiful and keep my spiritual grounding in order to hear my pastoral song. A farm can do that for a person, but I am not a farmer, I am a writer with a farm.

It doesn’t matter how poor or difficult a temperament I have. If I make good use of what I have and what is around me, it can make me serve my better angels.

St. Thomas says that a man is good when his will takes joy in what is good, evil when his will takes joy in what is evil. He is virtuous when he finds happiness in a virtuous life.

We are all influenced by the world around us, and I need to take time to see and walk in the beautiful parts of life. I need to drink it in.

The pastoral life takes time and attention.

I never want to take it for granted. When I focused on this and went outside this morning, I heard and saw this pastoral sound all around me. I was eager for it.

Thanks for the jog, James Rebanks, and I am so eager to finish your beautiful book.

Liam, the pastoral life