Michael Jackson, C.S. Lewis, & 'the face of God'

"When I look at a child I see the face of God" said Michael Jackson in an interview in which he recommended his 'Childhood' music video for understanding his Weltanschauung:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVJscGa5vbc

A Psalm attributed to King David (Septuagint #23, Masoretic #24) says, "This is the generation seeking him, seeking the face of the God of Jacob." (my 'nekkid' translation)

C.S. Lewis wrote in 'The Weight of Glory': "if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object,... In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you --- the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and we cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that settled the matter.... The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not IN them, it only came THROUGH them, and what came through them was longing. These things ... are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." C.S. Lewis speaks more to this mystique in his autobiographical book 'Surprised By Joy' and in various published letters. "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence [that is, 'the face'] of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito." as Lewis wrote in his 'Letters to Malcolm'.

http://planetnarnia.wordpress.com/about/

Hesychasm and the 'Jesus Prayer'

Isn't the 'Light' the same in both the Quaker and Hesychastic traditions?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocian_Fathers


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers

Chronological Snobbery

So what's the good word,you say? Well,'chronological snobbery' is

a mighty fine one to consider.

It was a fine gift to our generation of novelty and change seekers

from the astute creator of the world of Narnia; viz., C.S. Lewis.

Can those who are blinded by their chronological snobbery produce

a sound fiscal policy? Or a better world?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery

ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟN

Abenteuer im Wunderland

Hearkening to political gobsheen?

Plato : σωφρόνως γε οἰκοῦσα πόλις εὖ ἂν οἰκοῖτο : A state with habits of self-control would be well governed.

President John Adams : his gnomes

President John Adams was the first US Vice President (1789-1797), during the presidency of George Washington, and the second US President (1797-1801)



"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."



"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people."



"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak."



"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing."



"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."



"The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea."



"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams

ΒΙΟΣ (BIOS) & ΖΩΗ (ZWH)

Richard Chenevix Trench, in his 1880 tome on Greek synonyms, tells us that both English and Latin are impoverished by not having words more precise than 'life' and 'vita', Ancient Greek in its Attic and Koine dialects having the contrasting synonyms βίος 'bios' and ζωή'zwh'. For an Anglican archbishop, he was surprisingly free of party-line blinkers; blinkers being the equine tack that limits the vision of draft horses so as to keep them conforming to the driver's will. Political parties seem to exert a similar control of their true believers through less obvious devices. 'Readings' perhaps?

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i33/33b00601.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Chenevix_Trench

Memo to Ted Mathys

Lieber Ted,

I've been finding The Spoils a damn fine read,

and already I feel a bibliogenic lust for s'more

before the eternal returning of der Uebermann.

http://www.coffeehousepress.org/thespoils.asp

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20599

ROMAE DIES NATALIS

Romans celebrate the City's 2762nd birthday.

http://eternallycool.net/category/birthday/

http://eternallycool.net/

Disciples at Emmaus Recognizing their Master, Back from Hell

from a 1602 Painting by Michelangelo da Caravaggio, who took care to show Jesus' shadow

Cappadocian Fathers

Θεὸς Θεοῖς ἑνούμενος ( from the Speech on the Theophany )
" Ὢ τῆς καινῆς μίξεως ὢ τῆς παραδόξου κράσεως ὁ ὢν γίνεται καὶ ὁ ἄκτιστος κτίζεται καὶ ὁ ἀχώρητος χωρεῖται διὰ μέσης ψυχῆς νοερᾶς μεσιτευούσης θεότητι καὶ σαρκὸς παχύτητι. Καὶ ὁ πλουτίζων πτωχεύει, πτωχεύει γὰρ τὴν ἐμὴν σάρκα͵ ἵν΄ ἐγὼ πλουτήσω τὴν αὐτοῦ θεότητα. Καὶ ὁ πλήρης κενοῦται, κενοῦται γὰρ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ δόξης ἐπὶ μικρόν͵ ἵν΄ ἐγὼ τῆς ἐκείνου μεταλάβω πληρώσεως. Τίς ὁ πλοῦτος τῆς ἀγαθότητος; Τί τὸ περὶ ἐμὲ τοῦτο μυστήριον; Μετέλαβον τῆς εἰκόνος καὶ οὐκ ἐφύλαξα· μεταλαμβάνει τῆς ἐμῆς σαρκός͵ ἵνα καὶ τὴν εἰκόνα σώσῃ καὶ τὴν σάρκα ἀθανατίσῃ. Δευτέραν κοινωνεῖ κοινωνίαν͵ πολὺ τῆς προτέρας παραδοξοτέραν· ὅσῳ τότε μὲν τοῦ κρείττονος μετέδωκε͵ νῦν δὲ μεταλαμβάνει τοῦ χείρονος. Τοῦτο τοῦ προτέρου θεοειδέστερον, τοῦτο τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσιν ὑψηλότερον. "
http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/gregory-theologian.asp Bilingual Anthology (English by the side of Attic Greek)

""O new commingling; O strange conjunction; the Self-Existent comes into being, the Uncreate is created, That which cannot be contained is contained, by the intervention of an intellectual soul, mediating between the Deity and the corporeity of the flesh. And He Who gives riches becomes poor, for He assumes the poverty of my flesh, that I may assume the richness of His Godhead. He that is full empties Himself, for He empties Himself of His glory for a short while, that I may have a share in His Fulness. What is the riches of His Goodness? What is this mystery that is around me? I had a share in the image; I did not keep it; He partakes of my flesh that He may both save the image and make the flesh immortal. He communicates a second Communion far more marvellous than the first, inasmuch as then He imparted the better Nature, whereas now Himself partakes of the worse. This is more godlike than the former action, this is loftier in the eyes of all men of understanding.""
[Official 'Church of Greece' translation]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_of_Nazianzus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_of_Nyssa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_the_Great

V Gemina & Digamma

"" ...Quintilian in various places (e. g., Institutio Oratoria 1.4.8, 1.7.26, 12.10.29) discusses the "Aeolic letter" or "Aeolic digammon", which is his
term for the sound in words like "seruus" and "ceruus".
At one point, he refers to the doubled "u" in such words as "u gemina", and, since the "w" is essentially the same letters, though used differently, perhaps this
would do as a Latin name for "w"."" 12 April 2009
Terrence Lockyer, Johannesburg, South Africa

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/quintilian/quintilian.institutio9.shtml Latin text

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/9A*.html#1 English translation

Is the 'V gemina' perhaps comparable to the Greek 'digamma' ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digamma

Quintilian also recommends the use of figures (which he prefers to call tropes) 'for they add force and grace to things.'
"nam et vim rebus adiciunt et gratiam praestant." [Institutio Oratoria IX, 1]

Devil to Pay

"What's that you say, Mr. Citizen?

Is it old Mr. Debbil we must pay?"


"Don't you know damnation pays everyman's scores? ...We knew we should have the Devil to pay one time or another, and now you see, like honest men, we have pawned our Souls for the whole Reckoning." Thomas Brown, Letters From the Dead to the Living, 1707.


http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/devil-to-pay.html


QVIDAM IMPERIVM FREQVENS PETEBANT ACQVE VIROS LIBEROS OPPRIMERE CVPIEBANT

Apollo Purifies Orestes of Matricidal Guilt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes_(mythology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clytemnestra

Recalling a 1984 Beijing Dawning

The gibbous old alma bent to her broom as

Sweep : Sweep : Sweep : Amah sweeps up

Dust into billowing Dust into reddening Dust

Right in the Red Dawn of another rising Day

Messallina (17/20-48 A.D)

Marble sculpture, circa 45 A.D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messalina

The 'wolf-girl' and empress immortalized by writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, and Robert Graves.

Kappadokia and Roma with Joan Lewis

Today 'Joan's Rome' blog was added to our Links. Excellent pictures of the rugged terrain of Cappadocia with its many caves, crags [some resembling that "monstrous marvel" Polyphemous of Homer's Odyssey, IX:190ff] and the fairy chimneys are to be found in her 19 March post as well as the latest 'news of the Holy See'.

Explication of fairy chimneys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chimney

Holy See, Batman?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_See

Menander Monostichon 422

Ὁ μὴ δαρεὶς ἄνθρωπος οὐ παιδεύεται seems to get translated usually as "Male eruditur ille, qui non vapulat". I don't think that translation reflects the original Greek syntax very well. Smyth describes this syntax in his Greek Grammar (Harvard University Press, 1920) Sections 2280 and 2286. μὴ is used in the protasis because the "clause expresses something that is conceived or imagined ... the principle clause [apodosis] states the conclusion as a fact on the supposition that the protasis is true...."p.513

In light of his explanation, I render the monostichon in English as "If the man was not beaten, he is not educated" or "The man, who was not paddled, is not educated."

Isidore of Seville (560-636 A.D.)

Saint Isidore is one of the greatest cultural lamps of the dark ages, preserving the light of knowledge from ancient Greece and Rome.

A great encyclopaedist, scholar, and sage, his major treatise is The Etymologies, also known as The Origins.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Isidore_of_Seville

Prayer before logging onto the Internet:
http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Varia/SIsidore.html

George Herbert (1593 - 1633)

"JORDAN

"Who says that fictions only and false hair

Become a verse? Is there no truth in beauty?

Is all good structure in a winding stair?

May no lines pass, except they do their duty

Not to a true, but a painted chair?


"Is it no verse, except enchanted groves

And sudden arbors shadow coarse-spun lines?

Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?

Must all be veiled while he that reads divines,

Catching the sense at two removes?


"Shepherds are honest people: let them sing:

Riddle who list, for me, and pull for prime:

I envy no man's nightingale nor spring;

Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,

Who plainly say, My God, My King."


-- by George Herbert, 1593 - 1633

http://www.absolutelypoetry.com/author/george-herbert/jordan.html

http://www.archive.org/stream/herbertsworks02waltuoft/herbertsworks02waltuoft_djvu.txt


"MORTIFICATION


"How soon doth man decay!
When clothes are taken from a chest of sheets
To swaddle infants, whose young breath
Scarce knows the way ;
Those clouts are little winding sheets, [as in breech clouts]
Which do consign and send them unto death.


"When boyes go first to bed,
They step into their solitary graves;
Sleep binds them fast ; only their breath
Makes them not dead.
Successive nights, like rolling waves,
Convey them quickly, who are bound for death.


"When youth is frank and free,
And calls for musick, while his veins do swell,
All day exchanging mirth and breath
In company ;
That music ruminons to the knell, [ruminates? summons?]
Which shall befriend him at the houle of death.


"When man grows staid and wise,
Getting a houle and home, where he may move [house?]
Within the circle of his breath,
Schooling his eyes;
That dumb inclosure maketh love
Unto the coffin, that attends his death.


"When age grows low and weak,
Marking his grave, and thawing every year,
Till all do melt, and drown his breath
When he would speak ;
A chair or litter shows the biere [foreshadows or prefigures?]
Which shall convey him to the houle of death.


"Man, ere he is aware,
Hath put together a solemnity,
And drest his hearse, while he has breath
As yet to spare.
Yea, Lord, instruct us so to die
That all these dyings may be life in death."

-- by George Herbert, 1593 - 1633

also cf.: http://user.itl.net/~geraint/miscpoem.html

Dast anyone say 'dast'?

Dast anyone say 'dast'?

Yes indeed we do dast.

Let dastards blast, all

Though down we be cast

Nekkid to write this dast.


http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/10/nobody-dast-blame-this-man.html