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Post by Séamus on Feb 3, 2023 10:52:00 GMT
"...travel in the Holy Land is like travel in the dark. You traverse great tracts of country with nothing to indicate any link with the past except you tread the same ground and breathe the same air. Then suddenly a flash of lightning comes and for an instant tower,tree and field are seen as distinctly as in the broad daylight. Jerusalem in the throes of religious and political enthusiasm is such a flash. In the strange agglomeration of ignorance,cynicism,simple piety,sophistication, scholarship and stupidity which fills Jerusalem at this time,I seem to see a clear reflection of the Jerusalem of Christ"
In recent years I've read a few books by H V Morton that I'd come across in old collections, without realising that not only is the travel writer not a forgotten entity,but that indeed a Morton Society exists. Controversies exist also- charges of antisemitism and fascist-sympathies back in the day.
I don't see too much evidence of this in his 1934 In The Steps Of The Master about his journey to the Holy Land during the era of the British protectorate (actually most of the soldiery seem to come from Scotland),where he displayed much respect for all beliefs,though admittedly had much sympathy for Muslims(the term Palestinian is,oddly for our era,never used,they seemed to be all generally Bedouins.)
In contrast to our era, Bethlehem is primarily Christian,Arabs beginning to slowly move into the area- the dress of these Bethlehemite Christian women in particular was distinctive and their headress may have dated back to the crusading state. Zionists existed but American influence seems nonexistent,nor was a Herzog political dynasty blossoming from Ireland foreseen. The Iron Curtain seemed to have had a huge effect. Pilgrims from the old Russian Empire and Eastern Europe had been imperative to the support of the Christian presence, especially eastern rite monasteries. Many were living in poverty due to this new reality.
He starts off in Jerusalem,describing the various religious presences, moving slowly up to Galilee,even to the French protectorate, probably modern Lebanon or Syria, East to modern Jordan. Many of the places visited were unusual,and still are, even to our well-travelled era- a visit to the minuscule Samaritan community who complained about their infrastructure and Britain's lack of beneficence, the pagan buildings of Caesarea, the possible palaces of the various Herods, the WW1 British war memorial in Jerusalem, the tomb of an 18th century apocalyptic adventuress who had once lived in 10 Downing Street with her PM uncle, a crusader castle that had become a Bedouin housing complex,but whose Catholic chapels still existed and were serviced as such, Ethiopian monks living in a monastery treehouses.
He then described the various faith rituals of Easter/Passover,as well as a Moslem pilgrimage to the alleged tomb of Moses,which he suggests was invented to distract from the Christian and Jewish ritual of the season. Each day of the Triduum was spent with a different denomination,in search perhaps for the more bazaar ritual- the fight for the Paschal fire by the orthodox churches, the Ethiopians drumming their way through the Searching For The Body (Holy Saturday) procession,the very ritualistic feet washing of an orthodox shrine,Muslims watching on for entertainment from a neighbouring minaret, and a Passover meal with a local family.
He finishes up with his own historical version of the Passion. Theories always change of course,but I was unaware of several points he made- that,for political reasons, the Passover priestly vestments were locked up in Cesaria,Pilate had to deliver them personally every year. That wives generally didn't reside with governors on these occasions- Claudia was said to be from a family of greater importance than Pilate's,he seems to have married 'up'...and she would have had unusual knowledge and interest in current affairs. The narcotic drug mixture refused by Christ on Calvary was apparently something arranged by a local benevolent ladies group for those condemned to crucifixion.
The recent discovery (December 2022) of a shrine to the legendary St Salome,Our Lady's midwife (interesting to compare the Celtic devotion to Brigid and Ita,there's always been an interest in who may have helped deliver or nurse Christ) may highlight the issue of childbirth in less medically advanced times- Morton didn't ask this,but given that it was a female invention, I wonder was the spiked wine actually originally something to help with childbirth, adapted to help the executed?
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Post by Tomas on Feb 14, 2023 11:19:46 GMT
Fr. Vincent McNabb´s The Craft of Prayer was another rewarding reading. This priest has a way of conveying his own experience. I would wish to emulate that strain in almost anything written even in smaller scales. Maolsheachlann and others here are also endowed with such talent. Apparently to be actually writing "direct from the mind" can often bring much more attention than keeping things into scrutiny first. In digital writings it can easilty be deleted or changed afterward so the need for prepared editing is obviously less than it was now. If any single word transmitted then in theory could somehow be used and misused by extremely high tech AI, is hopefully millions miles off topic to worry about.
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Post by Séamus on Feb 26, 2023 9:05:55 GMT
"Since the Treaty of Limerick in 1691 down to and including 1916 the British terms to the defeated Irish soldiers had always been unconditional surrender followed by a massacre of the Irish leaders. But now they had to deal with an Army that was capable,not alone of fighting back but of actually threatening go to smash their military power in Ireland in the not far distant future. While the Army survived and fought on nothing under God could have broken the Nation's will to victory. Patriotic and brave men might die on the scaffold,on hunger strike or ensure British jails; mass meetings might demand our freedom; electors vote for a Republic,writers and poets cry of British tyranny and of Ireland's sufferings,but none of those would have induced the lords of the conquest to undo their grip or even discuss our liberation. The only language they listened to or could understand was that of the rifle, the revolver,the bomb and the crackling of the flames which cost them so dearly in blood and treasure"
I (yesterday) finished a 1948 copy of Guerilla Days in Ireland by Cork fighter Commandant General Tom Barry. I'm not a war- or battle-story fan; obviously this was a bit different in anyone's version of history,rather than trying for a wide berth the writer concentrates on his own IRA West Cork flying column,as well as the hardships inflicted on the people of this particular region, wether by Black-and-Tans,the lesser-known,but according to Barry more barbaric Essex regiment and the regular British troops,some of which he considered fair enough in their own conduct to set free after their own capture.
In our era of drones and satellites,it's hard to imagine this era,a century ago, of rebel armies working and parading under the nose but not the eye of the still-largest world empire. In contrast,also, to the current outcry after the Duke of Sussex's Taliban revelations, General Tom had no qualms about mentioning names and locations of the killed and those who did the killing. And,needless to say,it would seem strange to us that two western nations would fight each other like this- perhaps that puritanism is easy for us after a century of Irish freedom.
Although Commandant Barry wrote with the stoic mind of a soldier there are a few culturally touching moments also- meeting the aged Fenian fighter who considered the new IRA rebels as soft and who wouldn't listen to contradiction, Collins' love for wrestling other commanders before otherwise white-collar meetings, above all the adding of a piper who played rebel songs to his West Cork column,which he believed added mush intrinsic value to the value of the actual fighting. A good lesson about what's good for the spirit for every generation.
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Post by Séamus on Jun 18, 2023 9:02:52 GMT
The House of Savoy made news recently when Prince Emanuele Filiberto announced he would resign as head of the princely family in favour of a still-teenage daughter, citing the need for someone young and relevant in the role. Going by photos, he seems to look more young and relevant at 50 than I did at 20,but the resultant rare spotlight that they received gives a wider view of royal families that most people who live in (even Ireland) any country once influenced by constitutional monarchies, whether we want to remember it or not,might miss when focusing on somewhere like Britain where the roles, status and boundaries of royals are fairly systemized.
I recently finished Dostoevsky's The Idiot which has,unlike the author's two most famous novels,a love-triangle involving a Russian prince unknown and initially impoverished,with no family connections and who we see at the start hoping for employment,before the appearance of a legacy. The Russian Empire apparently had an overabundance of vice-regals. After the Karamazov Brothers,where the epileptic character is seen as twisted and malicious,I was wondering whether Prince Muishkin would persevere in his innocence until the end, thankfully Mr Fyodor redeemed himself in this regard.
The main theme that struck me in Crime and Punishment was the study of the protagonist's mental state. I found the main dynamic in Idiot to be the complexity that often exists in same-gender relationships- Parfen Rogojin is willing to kill Muishkin as a love-rival yet is somehow more capable of murdering the object- indeed the two scorned suitors end up in each other's embrace as one gets apprehended; Nastasia does and doesn't want to encourage marriage between the prince and the youngest of the Misses Prokofienvna, Lizabetha Prokofienvna had an extremely odd relationship with just about everybody.
As with a lot of novels about Russian society just before it's downfall,many things seem to resonate with us today:
"I have often noticed that our Liberals never allow other people to have an opinion of their own and immediately answer their opponents with abuse,if they do not have recourse to arguments of a still more unpleasant nature"
"Many of our young women have thought fit to cut their hair short,put on blue spectacles and call themselves nihilists. By doing this they have been able to persuade themselves, without further trouble,that they have acquired new convictions of their own"
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Post by Séamus on Jul 7, 2023 12:31:01 GMT
"Sadly many first generation (conservationist) biologists appeared to be willing to genuflect before the empty rhetoric of consuming yet saving wild nature at the same place and at the same time... an incident I witnessed at the front desk of my modestly priced hotel in Durban said it all. There stood a tall African man, in full Masai pastoralist regalia with a spear, beads and all, but also with two cell phones. He was yelling into them alternately, complaining loudly about not being booked into a better hotel befitting a renowned conservationist like him....a high ranking Indian forest officer, always nattily dressed in a jacket and tie back home, had turned up dressed like an ethnic Indian villager wearing a dhoti and sporting a brilliant turban...there were beautiful video clips of presently abundant tigers and other wildlife in Nagarahole,juxtaposed with images of villagers cultivating crops, weaving baskets and bottling wild honey, implying these activities had led to a resurgence of wildlife. There was even a line describing our own relocation project as 'genocide' being committed on the tribal people. I had just graduated from being a mere killer of tigers to a mass-murderer of humans"
I've just finished reading 'Among Tigers-Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats' 2023 K.Ullas Karanth,a scientist from India's western state of Karnataka, who has spent decades as a researcher and activist, mostly of tigers (several leopards were monitored also). The first chapters deal with his tagging and tracking research,he then goes further into a particular belief of his- that villagers living in national reserve areas should be given incentives to relocate; the last chapters describe a larger picture, including his own involvement in big organisations. He finishes off with his thoughts on tiger conservation bordering on philosophy. An atheist from a completely eastern background and setting (there's one fleeing mention of an abandoned building that once belonged to German missionary priests and one American associate volunteer was apparently a tremendous Guinness fan) yet, on anyone's page,his ponderings can only be called remarkably balanced.
Throughout, there are many complaints about politicians, public servants, Maoist groups, backhanders, the local media, international organisations. I was unaware of the last-mentioned's tendency to encourage rural populations to continue or commence indigenous-style lives in wildlife hotspots. Mr Karanth argues that development and infrastructure will inevitably make it's way into the areas if people continue living there. Not sure whether a 90s new-age spirit influenced the focus of some experts,but, far from being one with nature, K.Ullas argues that much will go wrong if while-collar experts promote a utopian tribal society without knowing all the facts- he himself had to drive a native honey-gatherer to the closest town after a sloth bear attack all but tore the man to shreds.
At first, when reading about the tracking research, I thought that the amount of territory needed for each beast was dishearteningly large- some collared animals fought their way to over 30sq.km in territory- but he still insists that India can host both it's human population and growing economy and increase it's tiger population by several thousand.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Jul 7, 2023 14:45:02 GMT
He does sound reasonable. I was not aware that people were encouraging this pastoral interaction with endangered animals.
Sometimes I think it would be better if we all lived in the most compact little settlements as possible, even if they had to be clusters of skyscrapers, and letting the wilderness bloom.
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Post by Séamus on Jul 23, 2023 2:40:53 GMT
Spain seems to be the latest country that will achieve a conservative tilt, politically.
I recently finished The Priest Hunters, The True Story Of Ireland's Bounty Hunters, Colin C Murphy, 2013, about the renewed penal code of the William and Anne period; for those who didn't know about him it might come as an historical surprise that one of the most successful persecutors of Catholic priests of the era was John Garzia,a Spaniard, whose nationality served as a complete cover as he infiltrated the mass centres. His story is of special interest to Dubliners due to his infiltration of the original Adam and Eve chapel. Garzia was unusual also in dying a peaceful death and persevering as an active protestant, even after moving to America.
The author tried to give a freshness to his account, which seems extremely scholarly, by concentrating on the great protection that many protestant gentry and judiciary gave Catholic priests and their supporters and detailing the vigilante reprisals from the populace that often came with priest hunting. The most notorious,Sean naSagart, may have been, the book surmises,stabbed to death by the very priest he was persuing.
I often reflect at the completely changed attitude between today and in my childhood (and older) when everyone would randomly suggest that such-and-such fellow could become a priest- the challenges are now so difficult that it almost seems that there's no infantry but only an SAS as some countries have, no one would ever say this randomly. And yet in the era described in the book,where priests were SAS enough- officially licensed but de facto outlawed, one was even regularly sleeping in a roll of turf- there was no shortage of vocation, remembering that they would have been maligned by polite society as anarchists then, just as priests are often associated with child perversion today....it's worth the reflection.
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Post by Séamus on Aug 16, 2023 9:26:02 GMT
"'Thank you for the Christmas card.', wrote the Attorney General of Kenya, Charles Njonjo to Eric Balson in 1972. 'It's just so regrettable that there are so many officers of the Game Department involved in this racket- you mention seventeen in Tanzania and it is my guess that there must be approximately the same number in Kenya'."
Yesterday I finished Blood Ivory- The Massacre Of The African Elephant (Robin Brown 2008, reprinted 2021). It's a strange book in some ways. The writer,a white-African who often produced nature shows for British television, concentrates much on history, starting from Solomon,who he literally believes did import ivory from southern Africa as the 'Kings books' of the Old Testament relates...through to the centuries of the slave trade- which Mr Brown believes would never have reached the proportions it did if not for the importance of African elephant ivory... to the colonial period- while Brown reiterates what some conservatives point out today:that the slavery of native Africans had it's genesis in the cultures of Muslim-Arabs and the Africans themselves, Europeans jumping on the bandwagon, he,however, castigates the white colonisers for their modernised and excessive hunting.... to the independence era, which he largely lived through himself, exposing a corrupted and illegal ivory trade, particularly in Kenya under Jomo KenyattaI which apparently reduced numbers to near extinction, under a 70s&80s no poaching policy.
I don't know if it was just my reading of it that made some parts of the book appear self-contradictory,with things like estimates of elephant population seeming to change by the paragraph (flitting backwards and forwards to the 1960s and 70s possibly added confusion also) and Mr Robin's ambivalence towards the usefulness of tourism and culling, likewise chopping and changing throughout.
One common theme among boots-on-ground conservationists that I've read is the antagonisms that they all have towards multinational conservation corporations who they insist control,or try to control,from western metropolis,without complete understanding of everything involved. The end thrust of this particular book is ultimately a question which is asked about many of today's problems, from drugs to alcohol to prostitution: should ivory,should 'bush meat',should animal population controls be regulated and kept theoretically behind the line rather than outlawed by allegedly unenforceable blanket bans?
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Post by Séamus on Aug 18, 2023 12:26:32 GMT
"Let me conceal nothing: I went to Lisieux as a sceptic,I read this book,and I trembled in my turn with admiration and with deep emotion. This is the real miracle. There are souls so powerful that they can really create the object of their desire. One cannot approach them without being carried away on the wings of their desire"
Ed Sheeran's recently-completed private chapel/reflection space is supposedly inspired by Celtic tower design. There's probably a bit of Le Corbusier's Notre-Dame du Haut influence too,going by the images- but at least we see here a spark of society's longing for the transcendent. I recently finished reading, for the second time in my life, Written In Heaven-The Making Of A Saint, written in 1937 by a then-protestant American lady Frances Parkinson Keyes. It says much about the saint's profile in the art Deco era that something successful like this could be published for a general audience- I know for a fact that it was reprinted after the Second World War as the copy I came across as a 20year old had a revised and prolonged preface, written after Mrs Keyes' reception,which includes mention of the destruction of Abbaye Des Bénédictines,the Martin girls' school, where the authoress stayed while writing, during the war,an event she believes she foresaw in a dream.
Extraordinary in itself that so many things in so many volumes can have been written about so short a life- this one stands out for it's different angles- her minute description of school life at the Benedictine Sisters was a natural result of her writing environment; despite Thérèse's education there being short,it makes up a quarter,at least,of her biography. Ex-students were obviously interviewed:"Hélène Doise remembered to this day...the sun, streaming in through the mullioned windows behind her,falling full on her golden hair" ;there are interesting paragraphs about a noble mother and daughter who both joined this Benedictine monastery, gentle Mère Ste.Placid (the daughter) was as much a favourite teacher for the saint as for the other girls. The more austere mother, Mère Ste.Chantalle was less lovable but no less graceful: "their carriage was so arresting that merely to see them enter the choir was to be conscious of their distinction and dignity". Amazing how mesmerised Americans can be with royals and vice regals. The cutlery used at school dinners is described in detail.
Mrs Parkinson Keyes,unlike many theological trained critics,found St Thérèse's poetry and artistic decoration to be tasteful and skilled;she puts her own thoughts into the dying nun writing her memoirs: "only another writer can realise the hardships which she faced,for only a writer knows how fragile is the form of thought....it is only in long hours when one is undisturbed and unharassed that creative work can be done..no special time had been put aside for (Sr Therese's) undertaking...the inexorable rules of the convent set the time when she must rise and when she must go to bed;and in any event,these gave her barely enough sleep...how could she write when her other duties called her out of her cell? How she compose when she was half frantic with fatigue?"
Frances' personal recommendation for writing: "a comfortable chair,a commodious desk, the right light....gallons of black coffee and,not infrequently!, many things much stronger than coffee". Little wonder that Story Of A Soul was such a cause of wonder.
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Post by Séamus on Sept 4, 2023 3:16:55 GMT
"The expeditions [of Friar Andrew of Longjumeau] to Tartary were uniformly uncomfortable...a full ten leagues of riding a day after they left Antioch. There is a curiously modern ring to the plaints of the friars that the Tartars deliberately misunderstood them. The Khan,for example,treated the famous scarlet and gold chapel tent as a tribute which King Louis had paid him, acknowledging his sovereignty" St Dominic's Family,Sr Mary Jean Dorcy op
I happened to be reading the earlier sections of this book as His Holiness visited Mongolia. I'm not sure if extreme interfaith meeting will do much beyond ticking a public relations box;more uplifting was his visit to an elderly lady's traditional tent-home to view the cooking utensils and other folk objects. A following light could easily be shone at an Irish cottage or Australian/North American gold prospector's colonial home.
Earlier than Andrew of Longjumeau, "Pope Innocent IV had sent out a Franciscan expedition in 1245,a small group headed by a remarkable man,John de Plano Carpini. The circumstances of the case made this one of the most remarkable missionary journeys in history,though no tangible results could be seen immediately. The pope decided to a Dominican group by way of Paris and the silk route...the Khan's reply [through Dominicans Anselm,Simon of St.Quentin, Alexander and Alberic] is still to be seen in the Vatican archives,mute witness of the difficulty of dealings between peoples with different codes of behaviour" ibid
One thing that strikes me about the early entries in the book are many (to secular) unknowns under the giant shadow of Dominic- for much talk today of a 'listening church' he seems to have been a genuine listener- happy to give the approbation to the ideas of others;even the white scapular came through the inspiration of a largely-forgotten Friar. A second thing is just how widespread the early influence was- in the light of Pope Francis' interest in the case of fellow-Jesuit Ven.Matteo Ricci,it would seem a pity that men like Fr Andrew and the companions of Anselm who made earlier journeys to the East are not remembered also.
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Post by Séamus on Oct 8, 2023 8:58:36 GMT
I recently came across a piece by a travel journalist about an ad hoc French market held in Waterford. The hawkers had mostly come from Brittany. Reading his romantic description of browsing and sampling the cheese, chocolate and wine on one of Ireland's finer days, one couldn't help but wonder if it was one of the better arguments for the EU; I wouldn't know how to speculate how many small businesses could manage to trip across the Celtic Sea for a one-off occasion were the situation to be different.
Chesterton remarked in his famous article on Charlotte Brontë that she (it's presumed her sisters also) stood apart from the likes of Austen or Dickens by highlighting the dignity of ordinariness- he specified that Jane may have had little real experience of grand balls, likewise Charles of industrial slums. VILETTE, which I finished recently, took a step away from this- not only does Brontë's heroine attend gala events but a fictional European royal family (the setting seems based on French-speaking Belgium) were once attending also. It might be worth noting that the interaction between peoples of Europe in the 1800s was far from negligible- several Britons resided in the novel's very culturally-Continental setting.
Perhaps the part of Villette which ties in with Chesterton's ordinary-centricity theme is the that someone else got the man that Lucy first fell for;we're not even told whether she married her second love- it's sort of assumed that a relationship of some sort will ensure, whether they overcame religious barriers to marriage or whether one of them, the Catholic man or protestant woman, finally converted for this to happen, we're not actually told.
What I actually enjoyed was the sometimes-gothic view of Catholicism that Brontë depicts- recalling also her Irish background- dark, but dark with much beauty- a bit like entering an enchanted forest or the Amazon. Seems unlikely, though, that Lucy Snowe could have possibly only met up with one elderly priest in such a Roman Catholic environment, and he something as Belgian as a beguine chaplain. Written at a time of little ecumenical influence, Lucy had mostly good things to say about Pére Silas; her experience in the confessional during time of mental breakdown was mostly positive. Mr Paul may have been derided for being Jesuit-educated and influenced, but, in the end, it didn't prevent him being a beautiful and charitable soul when one gets to know him. Or fall in love with him as in Miss Snowe's case.
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Post by Séamus on Oct 26, 2023 0:05:43 GMT
"if I quote the comment on this dream which was made by an eminent, though not impeccable scholar R.A.S.Macalister: 'after his long experience of semi-starvation as a slave, his digestion was unequal to a surfeit of pork, with the consequence, normal in such cases, of a terrific nightmare which make a lasting impression on him'. From this comment we learn something about the digestion of R.A.S Macalister, but not much about Patrick's dreams"
I finished reading Who Was St Patrick?,1985, (E.A. Thompson of Nottingham University) yesterday. It was mostly a piece by piece dissection of the saint's two writings and a couple of other authentic contemporary documents that mentioned Ireland. Although erudite it was quite readable. He claims an important historical significance for Confessions and Letter To Coroticus (who he believes lived in Ireland, perhaps as a British outlaw)- no other semi-autobiographical work exists from western Europe from the Roman era.
Thompson claims that Patrick exaggerated both the amount of people that had been kidnapped with him in the famous raid and the sins that they commited- he argued that Patrick could not have possibly known whether each and every one of them deserved to be given to slavery for personal sin. I think the producer of 2000 tv film Patrick, the Irish legend has a good hypothesis for this- some people had returned to preChristian ritual and Patrick realised he shouldn't have joined them that fateful day as they were all rounded up to be given experience of pagan society in it's entirety.
Sometimes it's the artistes who get it right. It's probably a lesson for the western world today.
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Post by Séamus on Feb 2, 2024 6:15:26 GMT
Last night I finished The Land of Stones and Saints (1957) by American Catholic convert Frances Parkinson Keyes. She explains that she set out to spend time in Avila and write a St Teresa biography, but another definitive work had been published just before;and Vita Sackville-West had published a comparison of the two St Teresas before Mrs Parkinson Keyes had that opportunity. So she ended up writing a hagiography of holy persons from the region, Teresa of Avila at the centre,finishing with St Peter Baptist, who was the most prominent of the Nagasaki martyrs until the need for multiculturalism caused the Church to label the feast as 'Paul Miki and companions'.
I probably wouldn't have realised just how important St Teresa is as a civil hero for the area before reading of her city square monument, which is inscribed with all the prominent historical figures that had come out of Avila at the time of it's installation and reading about the festivities of her feastday, which,according to the wiki article on the city, still take place.
One particular feature of her account of the Japanese martyrs startles a bit- far from these Christians being abandoned or alone in a non-Christian island, several Spaniards, Portugese, religious clergy and even a newly-appointed Bishop of the area were witnessing the torture- with varying attitudes, some made effort to save the martyrs, others simply observed and, for varying political reasons, may have been happy to see them go. France recently mourned the death of Jacques Delors,a Catholic who was an architect of the current EU. Reading this book set mostly in one province,the last chapter concerning Spanish and Portuguese missionaries in Japan and the Philippines perhaps even more so, suggests several questions about what Europe was historically about and what direction it takes today.
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Post by Tomas on Feb 2, 2024 8:15:21 GMT
Last night I finished The Land of Stones and Saints (1957) by American Catholic convert Frances Parkinson Keyes. She explains that she set out to spend time in Avila and write a St Teresa biography, but another definitive work had been published just before;and Vita Sackville-West had published a comparison of the two St Teresas before Mrs Parkinson Keyes had that opportunity. So she ended up writing a hagiography of holy persons from the region, Teresa of Avila at the centre,finishing with St Peter Baptist, who was the most prominent of the Nagasaki martyrs until the need for multiculturalism caused the Church to label the feast as 'Paul Miki and companions'. I probably wouldn't have realised just how important St Teresa is as a civil hero for the area before reading of her city square monument, which is inscribed with all the prominent historical figures that had come out of Avila at the time of it's installation and reading about the festivities of her feastday, which,according to the wiki article on the city, still take place. One particular feature of her account of the Japanese martyrs startles a bit- far from these Christians being abandoned or alone in a non-Christian island, several Spaniards, Portugese, religious clergy and even a newly-appointed Bishop of the area were witnessing the torture- with varying attitudes, some made effort to save the martyrs, others simply observed and, for varying political reasons, may have been happy to see them go. France recently mourned the death of Jacques Delors,a Catholic who was an architect of the current EU. Reading this book set mostly in one province,the last chapter concerning Spanish and Portuguese missionaries in Japan and the Philippines perhaps even more so, suggests several questions about what Europe was historically about and what direction it takes today. Wow, what interesting things about Avila. I was caught and happy reading this post indeed, and were just going on in good mood thinking in optimism, when the date of the book appeared. I had missed the year in brackets somehow so when I read the last line and looked up again to see how it sad 1957, not 2017 or such I had had in mind, then more grey filters came on again. But apart from that, an inspiring account of some few peoples impact!
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Post by Séamus on Mar 1, 2024 6:46:43 GMT
I have just finished a short,but nicely-illustrated, work, Birds of the Bible:A Guide For Bible Readers and Birdwatchers by Peter Goodfellow a Methodist preacher (originally 2013,jb.publishibg), perhaps appropriately just as animals in the Old Testament become a point of contention,with Lyle's Golden Syrup reimagining some of it's labels so as not to offend any lions with Samson's tale.
Goodfellow's book is an interesting mix, a combination of spiritual reflection and zoology, much speculation about indentification of species according to various translations, and updates on whether they're still to be seen there (modern pesticides seem to be the main decreasing factor.)
I had never noticed just how many passages deal with birds in a negative way- the longest list of birds in the Bible is actually a dietary regulation of what not to eat- depending on the scholar as many as four owls were cited,in fact owls appear to always have unpleasant connotations; birds of prey are usually mentioned in connection with war and curses; bird sounds in the prophetic books are portrayed as creepy,symbolic of isolation or doom. We know that eagles are often used in higher symbolism of course,but I was surprised to hear Mr Peter claim that only in Song of Songs is birdsong mentioned as something beautiful, in fact the very same cooing of the turtledove that the author romances about is defamed by Jeremiah.
I only really paid attention last night for the first time to a section of Jeremiah where he passed a message from the Lord to Baruch, who was obviously getting depressed and distressed at the time, that he was to carry on and be appreciative that he would himself get through the tumultuous times that Jerusalem was facing and had faced. A good indication that, no matter what, we should imbibe at times the beauty of birdsong.
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