A friend pointed out that this snowman looks like he stepped out of a Hayao Miyazaki film.Of course, after featuring My Neighbor Totoro yesterday, I couldn't resist sharing this.
Woman with a snowman, early 20th century. Collotype with hand coloring; unknown photographer, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
When you feel the Lord's displeasure, if you see that you are troubled by this, you can say Psalm 6.Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15
There is great food for thought in the points made about asking God to judge as a father and not an authority. There is a nice difference there in the love and personal concern that a father brings versus a more disinterested judge. Surely that is the frame of mine we should always have when we turn to God.
Also, the idea that the psalmist is asking God to restore the right, the intended, order is one that reminds me about how the world was meant to be, versus what it is.
I like the way this illustration shows David surrounded by dangers — a wild animal, a man with weapons, a centaur — but he keeps his eyes on God.
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| Psalm 6 illustration from A Book of Hours from Namur |
6:1, Not in Anger
Like a Father, Not a Judge. Theodoret of Cyr: He does not beg to be uncensured but rather not to be censured in anger, nor does he plead to avoid discipline but not to suffer it with wrath. Discipline me like a father, he asks, not like a judge; like a physician, not like a torturer. Do not fit the punishment to the crime; instead, temper justice with lovingkindness. Commentary on Psalms
Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)
6:3, How Long, O Lord, How Long?
The psalmists did not lament just the personal, individual, or societal suffering they saw and experienced. They also complained because ... the rightness that should have been an integral part of a world created by Yahweh seemed to have run amok in suffering, pain, injustice, oppression, and death. Life was not just difficult, it was not only painful, it was also very, very wrong.
... The psalmists' sense of rightness demanded that God act to reestablish his intended order. Thus, the psalmists felt free to ask, "God, what are you doing? Where are you?" By these tough questions hurled at God the psalmists were aligning themselves with the tough-minded worldview that the world as we have it is not the world as it should be or as God intended . The world is broken and needs divine help to restore it.Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)
From the disclaimer page of The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin.
NOTEIt is a nutty story and what he says is absolutely true.
None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and nobel city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of Unlikely events and persons. But there are liimits.
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| Robert Spear Dunning - Still life with orange and plum |
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| Mary Fields: Freighter, cook, domestic worker, star route mail carrier, first African-American woman star route mail carrier in the U.S. |
I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to finish watching all the TV shows it's downloaded.Light, entertaining, fun, exciting. All that with a sense of humor and a mystery to solve in order to keep everyone alive. I like that Murderbot uses its free will to spend all day watching TV, if possible. I also liked the reason that it was capable of the killing that makes it name itself "Murderbot."
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.
The French in another context call this "nostalgia for the mud." They mean a bourgeois romanticization of impoverishment. But I mean it in spiritual terms. Every time I recognized the truth and lived it, I was happy, and when I did not, I was not. And yet I always returned to not-happy, as if that were ... warm and happy mud.Peggy Noonan, John Paul the Great
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The Night of the 3D Ult. [copyright 1890]. First edition, first issue. |
This sounds like just my type of book. Too bad it is so rare.Set in London, in a lower class boarding house, and concerns the doings of both a police detective and a private detective. Bleiler calls the ending of this novel “almost brilliant.” OCLC locates only three copies of this title, including the deposit copy at the Library of Congress. A significant and very scarce detective novel.Image and description via Books and Art
When you see the evildoers planning to lie in wait for you, and you wish your prayer to be heard, get up at dawn and say Psalm 5.Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15
There is an emphasis on the power of words here which really struck me — from the beginning where the psalmist beseeches, "Hear my words, O Lord" and toward the end where the enemies' mouths are compared to an open sepulchre.
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| Jewish sepulchre, 1st century |
5:1 Hear My Words, O Lord
God Weighs Our Words, and So Should We. Asterius the Homilist. God judges your cry: whether you have cried out against anyone unjustly, whether you have trumpeted unjust anger with your cry or whether you, overcome with such wrath, have called for the striking down of the innocent, like those who stoned Stephen: "Shouting with a loud voice, they covered their ears and in one spirit united against him they rushed him." And their shout became a vehicle of murder. God, therefore tests your words ... Homilies on the Psalms
Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)
There is something about the shout being a vehicle of murder that really brings home how careful we should be before we speak.
5:9 An Open Sepulcher
By telling lies and employing seductive flattery, people draw to themselves those whom they entice to sin, and they swallow them, so to speak when they make them turn to their own style of life. When this happens the flatterers die through their sin, and so it is right to refer to those by whom they are drawn in as open graves; indeed they themselves are somehow lifeless in that they lack the life of truth , and they gather into themselves the dead whom they have slain by lying words and empty hearts, making their victims into copies of themselves.
St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms
This seems like a horror novel, doesn't it? The undead swallowing up those they have enticed to them and making them into clones? We think of slander or gossip as a fairly benign sin but this helps see below the surface to the unholy horror that can come from using words wrongly.
5:4-6, You Are Not a God Who Takes Pleasure in Evil
5:7-8, But I By Your Great MercyThe psalmist begins with a phrase that describes the essential nature of Yahweh from which human consequences flow: God is incompatible with evil. Where God is, evil cannot coexist. ...
It is this understanding of the essential nature of God that informs Israel's unique perception of the holiness of Yahweh. In general, the ancient Near Eastern concept of holiness was devoid of any essentially moral element. Holiness was defined by reference to the gods; to be holy was to be what the gods were. Morally, the ancient Near Eastern gods demonstrated no clear distinction from humans. they acted in anger, in lust, or for personal gain. ... Their chief distinction from humans was that they were powerful and lived forever. Thus they were considered the source of both good and evil in human experience ... often completely unrelated to any human responsibility.
Israel's understanding of the character of Yahweh broke with this longstanding tradition. As the psalmist's statements imply, Yahweh's holiness was defined by his essential character. Yahweh is eternal and powerful, but he is also essentially good and incompatible with evil. As a consequence, those who align themselves with evil will suffer the consequences of divine rejection. ...
Yahweh's holiness has two sides. Not only is it incompatible with evil, ... it is also characterized by his relentless goodness" toward his creation and those humans who live in it. ... Yahweh's holiness is not just the basis for his judgment on sin but is at the same time the foundation for his work of salvation.Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)
I do love the fact that the Hebrew worldview is reflected so thoroughly in something like this psalm. Of course, it is liturgical and so should, of course, show us something of God. But I never thought of it in just this way when reading this psalm before.
The holidays are past and we regretfully give up our candy canes until next year.
But we've got something even better — our Andy-cane!
Yes. When you find out you've been using the wrong orientation then everything comes into the proper focus. And you sing for joy.The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
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| "Waratah" by Lucien Henry, 1887. Waratah, a blossoming shrub, is a plant native to Australia. Via J.R.'s Art Place |
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Woods in the Snow, Peder Mørk Mønsted |
Let us seriously reflect of what a pudding is composed. It is composed of flour that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the morning; of milk pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of the beauteous milkmaid, whose beauty and innocence might have recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the destruction of her fellow-creatures; milk, which is drawn from the cow, that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. – Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more is wanting, more may be found. It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction: salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation of a pudding.Samuel Johnson
All Things Made New explores the Christian mysteries by studying the symbolism, cosmology, and meaning of the Book of Revelation, as well as the prayers and meditations of the Rosary, including the Apostles' Creed and the Our Father. These reflections lead us step by step to the foot of the Cross, and to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, where all things are made new.
I love Stratford Caldecott's writing. I first encountered him through The Power of the Ring where he looked at Tolkien's writing through a Catholic lens. The Radiance of Being was a wonderfully honest (and sometimes mind bending) examination of science and world religion (spoiler — Catholicism wins).
Both left me eager for more so I embarked on this look at the Book of Revelation. It is phenomenal.
The first six chapters walk us through the images and symbols of the book with the focus on the Revelation as the bookend to both the creation in Genesis and the Incarnation. Caldecott also looks at how the book will transform us personally if we enter into the mysteries of the Church as shown in the Revelation. This was all fascinating.
The real gems of All Things Made New for me are found in chapters 7 through the end of the book where he gives his reflections on the Creed, The Lord's Prayer, the Rosary and the Way of the Cross. Not only do we get deep spiritual insights but there are comments about the symbolic and numeric symbolism inherent in each. (Who knew?) The examination of the actions of the Son and Holy Spirit as reflected in the Creed were especially wonderful to me. I go in and out of saying the rosary — lately more "out" than "in — but the reflections on the individual mysteries of the rosary as well as the way of the cross were so illuminating that it made me seriously consider taking up my rosary again.
This was the first book I finished this year and it is going on my 2021 Best Books list. Now that's a good start!
In 1922 Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of discovery.
It is with sheer delight that I move this from my 2021 Book Challenge list to my Best of 2021 list. I read it first of my challenges simply because there are so many requests at the library that I wouldn't be able to renew it.
It is a wonderful balance of whimsy and history, fairy tale and reality. It tells us how to survive the rules imposed by others and how to turn dreams into reality.
I didn't expect to be breathlessly excited by the last act but I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Not a thing was introduced that wasn't called back into use by the end. And the end was absolutely perfect. Now I've got to buy my own copy.
I just reread this for an upcoming book club meeting. It has resonated over the past few days, informing my faith and drawing me closer to Jesus. I realized that its been years since I read it. And, partner, that's too long!
My original review is here. This is a bit but do go read the whole thing. And then, read (or reread) the book.
I was struck by the timelessness of the message and the values contained therein. Casper ten Boom models God the Father for his children, and those with good fathers recognize how powerful that can be. Those of us who were not so blessed can recognize in this hero a model of God the Father that we can relate to and call our own. Their mother, though not a key figure in the story, is instrumental in showing how it is possible to live a fully Christian life when home caring for a family, or when stricken by illness.Betsie's point of view displays a Christ-like love for their captors even under the most terrible circumstances. Corrie is the example for the rest of us. She is uncertain, afraid, and needs the examples of Betsie and her father to keep her eyes on Christ. Even so, Corrie steps out in faith throughout the book whenever there is a need.
The Hiding Place also serves as a warning. I was quite surprised at how certain attitudes portrayed in the book resonated with our times; the Nazis showed utter disdain of the elderly, the very sick, and "feeble minded" because they were not productive members of society. If the ten Booms couldn't comprehend such attitudes, I realized with chagrin I understood them all-too-well as the utilitarian ideas of our "modern" society. As Flannery O'Connor said,
If you live today, you breathe in nihilism . . . it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
