PAUL (A.) AND I LIKE THE SIGN

And did you know?

136 members of Congress who are millionaires have voiced opposition to President Obama's Buffett Rule (list HERE - pdf.)

From Daily Kos.

THUS THE HORNS ON MOSES

Michelangelo Buonarroti - Moses - San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

A good many years ago, during my visit to San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, I remember how stunned I was when I came upon the magnificent, enormous (over seven and a half feet tall, and he is sitting down!) sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo. I was taken by surprise either because I did not know the statue was in the church or because I did not know of its size. And then, Moses with horns? I recall my puzzlement over the horns. I believe I was alone, with no one to ask about the horns, and I never sought more information. Now I know, thanks to Diarmaid MacCulloch in his excellent tour de force, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

Medieval Western Christianity knew the Bible almost exclusively through the Vulgate, the fourth-century Latin translation made by Jerome. Humanist excavations now went behind the Vulgate text to the Tanakh and its principal Greek translation, the Septuagint. Jerome had done his considerable best to re-examine the Hebrew text behind the Septuagint, nevertheless, faults remained. Some of the mistranslations in the Old Testament were more comic than important. One of the most curious was at Exodus 34, where the Hebrew describes Moses' face as shining when he came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Jerome, mistaking particles of Hebrew, had turned this into a description of Moses wearing a pair of horns - and so the Lawgiver is frequently depicted in Christian art, long after humanists had gleefully removed the horns from the text of Exodus. They are sported by Michelangelo's great sculptured Moese now in the Roman church of San Pietro in Vincoli ('Saint Peter in Chains')....

MacCullough breaks his very serious history with anecdotes such as the quote above, which keep the story moving along at a good pace. Here's another snippet from the author's account of the humanist scholar, Erasmus, which I found quite amusing:

Erasmus would never travel very far east of the Rhine, although he was frequently prepared to risk the English Channel. Instead, people came to Erasmus as devotees. He constructed a salon of the imagination, embracing the entire continent in a constant flow of letters to hundreds of correspondents, some of whom he never met face to face. Erasmus should be declared the patron saint of networkers, as well as of freelance writers.

A 'salon of the imagination'. Is that not wonderful writing? And think of it! Bloggers now have a patron saint.

Oh, read the book! It's long, and it's taking me a while, but it's well worth the time and effort.

Image from Wikipedia.

WANGARI MAATHAI - 'I WILL BE A HUMMINGBIRD'

From the New York Times:

NAIROBI, Kenya — Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist who began a movement to reforest her country by paying poor women a few shillings to plant trees and who went on to become the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, died here on Sunday. She was 71.

The cause was cancer, said her organization, the Green Belt Movement. Kenyan news outlets said that she had been treated for ovarian cancer in the past year and that she had been in a hospital for at least a week before she died.

Dr. Maathai, one of the most widely respected women on the continent, played many roles — environmentalist, feminist, politician, professor, rabble-rouser, human rights advocate and head of the Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977. Its mission was to plant trees across Kenya to fight erosion and to create firewood for fuel and jobs for women.

Each of us is the better for the wonderful work and shining example of Wangari Maathai.

Into your hands, O Lord, we commend your servant Wangari Maathai, our dear sister, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and most merciful Father, asking that she may be precious in your sight: through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

H/T to Ann Fontaine at What the Tide Brings In.

STORY OF THE DAY - FAST FORWARD

Fast forwarding through her messages
hoping to hear from old boyfriends who
finally realize the treasure they've
thrown away.

Ah yes, I remember it well. I did just that with one ex-boyfriend long before there were answering machines. Back then, it was waiting for the phone to ring and hoping I'd be home when the call came....which it never did.

From StoryPeople.

ARE YOU SURPRISED?

Stolen from a Facebook friend.

BRAVO, BISHOP ALAN, FROM ACROSS THE POND

Bishop Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham in the Church of England, wrote a fine post about bullying in the church titled Bullying of and by clergy: a way ahead?.

It seems to me, along with some comments earlier this month, that everyone knows what bullying is, and when they feel bullied, but the description needs to be in terms of the behaviour that has to change. If we don't do that the onus stays in the wrong place, and things will never improve. The vast majority of claims I have drilled into dissolve into mutual recrimination. So I have to say that the perception of "bullying" boils down to a symptom of organisational malaise, the abuse of power.

We need procedures in place, as for whistleblowing, available to individuals; but this is not enough.

The key to progress is to have a public framework describing the proper use of power against which all behaviour can be measured.

Such a framework makes any anomaly look like an anomaly, rather than just a random incidence of "shit happens."

Much of what Bishop Alan says could apply to any church, not only to the Church of England, but especially to hierarchical churches. And bullying goes both ways, even in hierarchical churches.

Bullying is very much about the abuse of power, the exercise of power in unacceptable ways. The focus must to be on examining behavior and measuring behavior against objective standards.

One final frontier remains, however. Church culture, deferential, hierarchical and often inclined to hypocrisy, breeds an alignment gap between aspiration and active accountability at the top. The Church is full of good intentions but some bishops, forgive me for saying but it's the truth, fear and loathe that kind of open accountability. Confronted recently with a proposed standard policy on appointments, out poured reasons why this was an impossible bureaucratic imposition to clip their wings. Ironically, much practice is consistent with what was proposed, and the law will probably carry my Lords kicking and screaming where they don't want to go.

In my humble opinion, the words above are so very true and are those of a courageous bishop. Bishop Alan quite often goes boldly where other bishops fear to tread. When we met over dinner while I was in England, I asked him, only half-jokingly, if he was content with his status as a suffragan for the rest of his service as a bishop. I do wonder if, because of his willingness to openly and publicly tackle subjects that few bishops are willing to take on, his advancement in the church might suffer. I hope and pray not.

BRAVE LITTLE CAT

Thanks to Roger at Facebook.

STORY OF THE DAY - FOG PEOPLE

There are your fog people & your sun
people, he said. I said I wasn't sure
which kind I was. He nodded. Fog'll do
that to you, he said

From StoryPeople.

I love this story.

SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON

Last night, or rather this morning, just before I woke up, I dreamed that I was staying in an apartment in London, where my sister, Gayle, and her family were living at the time. Their children were still young. The time was near for me to return home, and I was gathering my belongings together and trying to work out whether I had time to cram in a couple of activities, like going to a play or visiting a museum before I left, but I was having such difficulty organizing my stuff that nothing like that seemed possible, which frustrated me quite a bit in my dream.

When I awakened, I thought my sister was still alive, and then I realized that she was gone. Bummer! What a start to the day. I have tears in my eyes as I type these words.

Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

The photo above is of Gayle during our trip to London a good many years ago. We were visiting the Tower.

I KNOW YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE

A man went to Africa to do some game hunting. While there, he hired a boy to accompany him as his guide. Soon, a large flock of birds flew overhead and the hunter took aim.

The guide grabbed his arm and said "Oh,no! These are foo birds and to shoot one means terrible things will happen to you! The man figured that was only a superstition of the locals and shot one down. Then the rest of the flock returned and pooped all over him.

He hollered at the boy, "I must have some water right away to wash this mess off."

The boy said "Oh no! To wash the crap of the foo bird off means sudden death immediately!"

Again the hunter ignored his advice, found water and got cleaned off.

Sure enough he dropped dead then and there.

The moral of this story is "If the foo shits, wear it."

The joke above, which I heard many years ago, is one of my favorites of all time. Of course, it's best when you first hear it. I've told it many times, but not everyone thinks it's funny. Since I heard the joke, I hardly ever say, 'If the shoe fits....'