Thursday, July 29, 2004
I'm Back Again
I'm back again. I'll probably write in here for a week then disappear again. That's OK. But this time I'll try not to alienate any of my friends. Wait. I guess there's no danger of that because I don't have any anymore. Well I have one, but he got a new girlfriend, so I probably won't see him again. Oh well. I'll try to find some interesting things to write about, which won't be easy because my life is uneventful these days. I'm kind of in a rut. (Kind of?) I do the same things all the time. Well, not exactly the same things. But mostly. Anyway, we'll see what happens.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Night With Theresa
I had quite a mad night, an eventful night last Friday night. Anders had invited me over so I took my bicycle to work and rode over there at the end of the workday. He's staying at his boss's place in Redfern again. He used to live in the swimming pool there a while back. He's not in the swimming pool anymore, but sort of building a little room out the back of the house (it's quite a mad, strange house..) So I went out there and we played some CDs and had some ciders, and played the drums (he recently bought a drumkit. It's great, I've always wanted to play drums. I'm getting pretty good at it.) We were slowly getting happier and sillier. Then he asked me if I didn't mind his girl friend (Cheryl) coming over, I said, "Hell no, that's alright." She's Aboriginal - a big, Gothic-looking Aboriginal woman. She's a social worker and lives down in Nowra but regularly comes into the city to visit friends/family in Redfern I think. So she was OK, and interesting to talk to, for the most part. Then Theresa came over. I'd met her once before there. Theresa is, uh, it's probably too simple to cal her mad, although she kind of is. It's also hard to follow what she's talking about, but I found her fascinating. Actually, I really fell under her spell. Anders and Cheryl were in another part of the house, and all of a sudden Theresa and I were hugging each other. I told her I wanted to kiss her. I must have been quite drunk by that time. I guess she didn't want to get into the kissing stuff, but that was OK. I just remember thinking, "Well, she's holding me and can feel my body, I'm probably not as big and muscular as she had hoped." Or something like that. We sat down, then got up and hugged some more. It was very strange. Soon after that Anders and Cheryl returned and everything went back to normal. It was about 4.30am by that time so I decided I had better get going home, so I announced to everybody that I was going. In fact, Theresa left at that time too, and got in her car ready to drive away. I pedalled off on my bicycle, all over the street. I kept looking back to see if Theresa was driving up, and I was kind of glad I made it to the end of the street before she drove up that far. I turned the corner and pedalled homewards, having to close one eye, I was really seeing double. I swear I almost hit half a dozen poles on the way home. I had to slow right down a few times, that's how drunk I was. It was cold too, but I was more worried about hitting something. Well, I got home safely and went straight to bed and fell asleep immediately.
Monday, April 12, 2004
Easter Story
Since it's Easter, and tonight I read this wonderful Easter story by Chekhov, I wanted to share it.
The Student by Anton Chekhov
AT first the weather was fine and still. The thrushes were calling, and in the swamps close by something alive droned pitifully with a sound like blowing into an empty bottle. A snipe flew by, and the shot aimed at it rang out with a gay, resounding note in the spring air. But when it began to get dark in the forest a cold, penetrating wind blew inappropriately from the east, and everything sank into silence. Needles of ice stretched across the pools, and it felt cheerless, remote, and lonely in the forest. There was a whiff of winter.
Ivan Velikopolsky, the son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was deserted and peculiarly gloomy. The only light was one gleaming in the widows' gardens near the river; the village, over three miles away, and everything in the distance all round was plunged in the cold evening mist. The student remembered that, as he went out from the house, his mother was sitting barefoot on the floor in the entry, cleaning the samovar, while his father lay on the stove coughing; as it was Good Friday nothing had been cooked, and the student was terribly hungry. And now, shrinking from the cold, he thought that just such a wind had blown in the days of Rurik and in the time of Ivan the Terrible and Peter, and in their time there had been just the same desperate poverty and hunger, the same thatched roofs with holes in them, ignorance, misery, the same desolation around, the same darkness, the same feeling of oppression -- all these had existed, did exist, and would exist, and the lapse of a thousand years would make life no better. And he did not want to go home.
The gardens were called the widows' because they were kept by two widows, mother and daughter. A camp fire was burning brightly with a crackling sound, throwing out light far around on the ploughed earth. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, fat old woman in a man's coat, was standing by and looking thoughtfully into the fire; her daughter Lukerya, a little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face, was sitting on the ground, washing a caldron and spoons. Apparently they had just had supper. There was a sound of men's voices; it was the labourers watering their horses at the river.
"Here you have winter back again," said the student, going up to the camp fire. "Good evening."
Vasilisa started, but at once recognized him and smiled cordially.
"I did not know you; God bless you," she said.
"You'll be rich."
They talked. Vasilisa, a woman of experience, who had been in service with the gentry, first as a wet-nurse, afterwards as a children's nurse, expressed herself with refinement, and a soft, sedate smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village peasant woman, who had been beaten by her husband, simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing, and she had a strange expression like that of a deaf mute.
"At just such a fire the Apostle Peter warmed himself," said the student, stretching out his hands to the fire, "so it must have been cold then, too. Ah, what a terrible night it must have been, granny! An utterly dismal long night!"
He looked round at the darkness, shook his head abruptly and asked:
"No doubt you have been at the reading of the Twelve Gospels?"
"Yes, I have," answered Vasilisa.
"If you remember at the Last Supper Peter said to Jesus, 'I am ready to go with Thee into darkness and unto death.' And our Lord answered him thus: 'I say unto thee, Peter, before the cock croweth thou wilt have denied Me thrice.' After the supper Jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and prayed, and poor Peter was weary in spirit and faint, his eyelids were heavy and he could not struggle against sleep. He fell asleep. Then you heard how Judas the same night kissed Jesus and betrayed Him to His tormentors. They took Him bound to the high priest and beat Him, while Peter, exhausted, worn out with misery and alarm, hardly awake, you know, feeling that something awful was just going to happen on earth, followed behind. . . . He loved Jesus passionately, intensely, and now he saw from far off how He was beaten. . ."
Lukerya left the spoons and fixed an immovable stare upon the student.
"They came to the high priest's," he went on; "they began to question Jesus, and meantime the labourers made a fire in the yard as it was cold, and warmed themselves. Peter, too, stood with them near the fire and warmed himself as I am doing. A woman, seeing him, said: 'He was with Jesus, too' -- that is as much as to say that he, too, should be taken to be questioned. And all the labourers that were standing near the fire must have looked sourly and suspiciously at him, because he was confused and said: 'I don't know Him.' A little while after again someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said: 'Thou, too, art one of them,' but again he denied it. And for the third time someone turned to him: 'Why, did I not see thee with Him in the garden to-day?' For the third time he denied it. And immediately after that time the cock crowed, and Peter, looking from afar off at Jesus, remembered the words He had said to him in the evening. . . . He remembered, he came to himself, went out of the yard and wept bitterly -- bitterly. In the Gospel it is written: 'He went out and wept bitterly.' I imagine it: the still, still, dark, dark garden, and in the stillness, faintly audible, smothered sobbing. . ."
T he student sighed and sank into thought. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly gave a gulp, big tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she screened her face from the fire with her sleeve as though ashamed of her tears, and Lukerya, staring immovably at the student, flushed crimson, and her expression became strained and heavy like that of someone enduring intense pain.
The labourers came back from the river, and one of them riding a horse was quite near, and the light from the fire quivered upon him. The student said good-night to the widows and went on. And again the darkness was about him and his fingers began to be numb. A cruel wind was blowing, winter really had come back and it did not feel as though Easter would be the day after to-morrow.
Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: since she had shed tears all that had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must have some relation to her. . . .
He looked round. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no figures could be seen near it now. The student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present -- to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people. The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul.
And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a minute to take breath. "The past," he thought, "is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another." And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.
When he crossed the river by the ferry boat and afterwards, mounting the hill, looked at his village and towards the west where the cold crimson sunset lay a narrow streak of light, he thought that truth and beauty which had guided human life there in the garden and in the yard of the high priest had continued without interruption to this day, and had evidently always been the chief thing in human life and in all earthly life, indeed; and the feeling of youth, health, vigour -- he was only twenty-two -- and the inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvellous, and full of lofty meaning.
[Note 1: Where Vasilisa says "I did not know you; God Bless you. You'll be rich." - according to an old Russian superstition, a person not immediately recognised by face or voice is destined to become rich.]
[Note 2: Where Velikopolsky mentions the "Twelve Gospels" - A composite reading of twelve passages from the four Gospels describing the Crucifixion is part of the matins of Holy Friday, sometimes referred to simply as "the Twelve Gospels." The student gives his own summary of some of the readings in what follows.]
The Student by Anton Chekhov
AT first the weather was fine and still. The thrushes were calling, and in the swamps close by something alive droned pitifully with a sound like blowing into an empty bottle. A snipe flew by, and the shot aimed at it rang out with a gay, resounding note in the spring air. But when it began to get dark in the forest a cold, penetrating wind blew inappropriately from the east, and everything sank into silence. Needles of ice stretched across the pools, and it felt cheerless, remote, and lonely in the forest. There was a whiff of winter.
Ivan Velikopolsky, the son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy, returning home from shooting, walked all the time by the path in the water-side meadow. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was deserted and peculiarly gloomy. The only light was one gleaming in the widows' gardens near the river; the village, over three miles away, and everything in the distance all round was plunged in the cold evening mist. The student remembered that, as he went out from the house, his mother was sitting barefoot on the floor in the entry, cleaning the samovar, while his father lay on the stove coughing; as it was Good Friday nothing had been cooked, and the student was terribly hungry. And now, shrinking from the cold, he thought that just such a wind had blown in the days of Rurik and in the time of Ivan the Terrible and Peter, and in their time there had been just the same desperate poverty and hunger, the same thatched roofs with holes in them, ignorance, misery, the same desolation around, the same darkness, the same feeling of oppression -- all these had existed, did exist, and would exist, and the lapse of a thousand years would make life no better. And he did not want to go home.
The gardens were called the widows' because they were kept by two widows, mother and daughter. A camp fire was burning brightly with a crackling sound, throwing out light far around on the ploughed earth. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, fat old woman in a man's coat, was standing by and looking thoughtfully into the fire; her daughter Lukerya, a little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face, was sitting on the ground, washing a caldron and spoons. Apparently they had just had supper. There was a sound of men's voices; it was the labourers watering their horses at the river.
"Here you have winter back again," said the student, going up to the camp fire. "Good evening."
Vasilisa started, but at once recognized him and smiled cordially.
"I did not know you; God bless you," she said.
"You'll be rich."
They talked. Vasilisa, a woman of experience, who had been in service with the gentry, first as a wet-nurse, afterwards as a children's nurse, expressed herself with refinement, and a soft, sedate smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village peasant woman, who had been beaten by her husband, simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing, and she had a strange expression like that of a deaf mute.
"At just such a fire the Apostle Peter warmed himself," said the student, stretching out his hands to the fire, "so it must have been cold then, too. Ah, what a terrible night it must have been, granny! An utterly dismal long night!"
He looked round at the darkness, shook his head abruptly and asked:
"No doubt you have been at the reading of the Twelve Gospels?"
"Yes, I have," answered Vasilisa.
"If you remember at the Last Supper Peter said to Jesus, 'I am ready to go with Thee into darkness and unto death.' And our Lord answered him thus: 'I say unto thee, Peter, before the cock croweth thou wilt have denied Me thrice.' After the supper Jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and prayed, and poor Peter was weary in spirit and faint, his eyelids were heavy and he could not struggle against sleep. He fell asleep. Then you heard how Judas the same night kissed Jesus and betrayed Him to His tormentors. They took Him bound to the high priest and beat Him, while Peter, exhausted, worn out with misery and alarm, hardly awake, you know, feeling that something awful was just going to happen on earth, followed behind. . . . He loved Jesus passionately, intensely, and now he saw from far off how He was beaten. . ."
Lukerya left the spoons and fixed an immovable stare upon the student.
"They came to the high priest's," he went on; "they began to question Jesus, and meantime the labourers made a fire in the yard as it was cold, and warmed themselves. Peter, too, stood with them near the fire and warmed himself as I am doing. A woman, seeing him, said: 'He was with Jesus, too' -- that is as much as to say that he, too, should be taken to be questioned. And all the labourers that were standing near the fire must have looked sourly and suspiciously at him, because he was confused and said: 'I don't know Him.' A little while after again someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said: 'Thou, too, art one of them,' but again he denied it. And for the third time someone turned to him: 'Why, did I not see thee with Him in the garden to-day?' For the third time he denied it. And immediately after that time the cock crowed, and Peter, looking from afar off at Jesus, remembered the words He had said to him in the evening. . . . He remembered, he came to himself, went out of the yard and wept bitterly -- bitterly. In the Gospel it is written: 'He went out and wept bitterly.' I imagine it: the still, still, dark, dark garden, and in the stillness, faintly audible, smothered sobbing. . ."
T he student sighed and sank into thought. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly gave a gulp, big tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she screened her face from the fire with her sleeve as though ashamed of her tears, and Lukerya, staring immovably at the student, flushed crimson, and her expression became strained and heavy like that of someone enduring intense pain.
The labourers came back from the river, and one of them riding a horse was quite near, and the light from the fire quivered upon him. The student said good-night to the widows and went on. And again the darkness was about him and his fingers began to be numb. A cruel wind was blowing, winter really had come back and it did not feel as though Easter would be the day after to-morrow.
Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: since she had shed tears all that had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must have some relation to her. . . .
He looked round. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no figures could be seen near it now. The student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present -- to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people. The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul.
And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a minute to take breath. "The past," he thought, "is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another." And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.
When he crossed the river by the ferry boat and afterwards, mounting the hill, looked at his village and towards the west where the cold crimson sunset lay a narrow streak of light, he thought that truth and beauty which had guided human life there in the garden and in the yard of the high priest had continued without interruption to this day, and had evidently always been the chief thing in human life and in all earthly life, indeed; and the feeling of youth, health, vigour -- he was only twenty-two -- and the inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvellous, and full of lofty meaning.
[Note 1: Where Vasilisa says "I did not know you; God Bless you. You'll be rich." - according to an old Russian superstition, a person not immediately recognised by face or voice is destined to become rich.]
[Note 2: Where Velikopolsky mentions the "Twelve Gospels" - A composite reading of twelve passages from the four Gospels describing the Crucifixion is part of the matins of Holy Friday, sometimes referred to simply as "the Twelve Gospels." The student gives his own summary of some of the readings in what follows.]
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Bug Killer
I was in my bathroom and saw a couple of *water cockroaches* - they're not the regular ones, like I see trying to zip across my kitchen floor, they're different. They only hang around the bathroom, in the shower, or when they're still real tiny, in and around the sink.
Last year they first appeared, this little one that ran around my bathroom sink. The first time I saw it I must have been drunk because I looked at it for a long time, watching it closely. It must have detected my presence, but it didn't run right out of sight - it ran a little way in one direction, then another. It seemed pretty stupid, this poor simple little bug trying to get away, but with no idea, which made me feel something for it, and how could I possibly harm it?
So I let it be.
Night after night when I went in there, I would see this little guy running around my bathroom sink, get up close to it and talk to it. Yes. I'd talk to it. It ran this way and that, trying to hide under a sliver of soap, which was completely transparent. He (maybe it was a she, how would I know?) was my little bathroom sink pal. To him, I was God. I had power over whether he lived or died. Most people, I imagined, would kill it immediately and think nothing of it. I chose to let him live.
Well, I think he disappeared or something, for a while, then later I discovered what may have been him, but considerably larger, and now running around my shower. And he had started a family. There was another big one like him - his wife, I guess - and a bunch of kids.
I massacred the entire family in the space of a minute.
I don't abide *chemical weapons* - I've always found the idea of spraying bugs with a can too easy. You can spray a lethal cloud of bug poison and walk away, removing yourself from the act of dealing death. If I'm going to kill a bug it will be up close and personal. You see, I don't feel good about killing bugs, even cockroaches... well sometimes I like killing cockroaches, but not always. Most of the time I wish I didn't have to. Anyway, killing this little bug family in this way made me feel bad about killing them, which is what I probably needed to feel. One can argue that they are on one's *turf*, or they're just bugs, but to me those arguments don't carry much weight. I just wish I could ask them to move out. Or I wish that I could somehow co-exist with them, but I can't. I can't stand the idea of seeing these bugs zipping around my shower.
The truth is, now that I think about it, that little bastard migrated to the shower stall before starting his family and I would carefully avoid stepping on him or letting him go down the drain when I had a shower. I did that. I went out of my way to protect him.
So, that was last year, last summer. This brings us to now - this summer, and the little shower bugs are back. I saw a big one last night and killed it - grabbed some toilet paper and mashed it, tossed it into the toilet, and flushed. Tonight, just a little while ago, I saw two of them. I killed them both and flushed them. But I felt so bad about it I had to write it down, and since I've been on holidays so haven't had a chance to write, and tonight I finally get a chance to write, this bathroom bug-killing incident happened, so you're the one I unload my guilt on.
Last year they first appeared, this little one that ran around my bathroom sink. The first time I saw it I must have been drunk because I looked at it for a long time, watching it closely. It must have detected my presence, but it didn't run right out of sight - it ran a little way in one direction, then another. It seemed pretty stupid, this poor simple little bug trying to get away, but with no idea, which made me feel something for it, and how could I possibly harm it?
So I let it be.
Night after night when I went in there, I would see this little guy running around my bathroom sink, get up close to it and talk to it. Yes. I'd talk to it. It ran this way and that, trying to hide under a sliver of soap, which was completely transparent. He (maybe it was a she, how would I know?) was my little bathroom sink pal. To him, I was God. I had power over whether he lived or died. Most people, I imagined, would kill it immediately and think nothing of it. I chose to let him live.
Well, I think he disappeared or something, for a while, then later I discovered what may have been him, but considerably larger, and now running around my shower. And he had started a family. There was another big one like him - his wife, I guess - and a bunch of kids.
I massacred the entire family in the space of a minute.
I don't abide *chemical weapons* - I've always found the idea of spraying bugs with a can too easy. You can spray a lethal cloud of bug poison and walk away, removing yourself from the act of dealing death. If I'm going to kill a bug it will be up close and personal. You see, I don't feel good about killing bugs, even cockroaches... well sometimes I like killing cockroaches, but not always. Most of the time I wish I didn't have to. Anyway, killing this little bug family in this way made me feel bad about killing them, which is what I probably needed to feel. One can argue that they are on one's *turf*, or they're just bugs, but to me those arguments don't carry much weight. I just wish I could ask them to move out. Or I wish that I could somehow co-exist with them, but I can't. I can't stand the idea of seeing these bugs zipping around my shower.
The truth is, now that I think about it, that little bastard migrated to the shower stall before starting his family and I would carefully avoid stepping on him or letting him go down the drain when I had a shower. I did that. I went out of my way to protect him.
So, that was last year, last summer. This brings us to now - this summer, and the little shower bugs are back. I saw a big one last night and killed it - grabbed some toilet paper and mashed it, tossed it into the toilet, and flushed. Tonight, just a little while ago, I saw two of them. I killed them both and flushed them. But I felt so bad about it I had to write it down, and since I've been on holidays so haven't had a chance to write, and tonight I finally get a chance to write, this bathroom bug-killing incident happened, so you're the one I unload my guilt on.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Impossible Something
I've been a bit of a hermit lately anyway, and probably not very sociable. Aside from work, the only person I hang out with is my pal Anders.
I've eased up on the religious fervour, too. It's too complicated to go into, but I'll just say that I doubt very much if Christians have a monopoly on Eternal Salvation. I just follow the voices in my head, so to speak, and now they're telling me to play Animal Crossing every day.
Yes, a monk's habit! Maybe not so appropriate anymore, however. Where do you buy those things anyway? You know, when I would go and visit Steve and Antoinette - get off at Punchbowl station and walk to their place at Greenacre, I'd walk past this monastery. I'd always stare hard at it, all around and see if I could see any of those monks, but I never did.
A weird thing happened tonight - this cute Asian girl from next door asked me to help her out because she had locked herself out. I had to cross over to her balcony from my balcony - putting myself in danger one storey above the ground. Then I had to open her window to unlock the door but I needed a milk crate to stand on, so I asked her to get one from my kitchen, where I keep empty bottles - she kept saying she couldn't find it, so I had to get back across the balcony and get it, then get back over to her balcony. It was crazy, man. She said "Oh! My place is messy!" I felt like saying "Don't worry about that my dear, just pray that I don't fall and break my damn neck!" So, I got in and unlocked her place and it was a happy ending. She's moving out, she told me. Well, I thought, there she goes... In this kind of circumstance I have a fantasy where she says "Please stay for a coffee! I like you a lot!" or some equally impossible something, but that never happens. That's just my fantasy.
I've eased up on the religious fervour, too. It's too complicated to go into, but I'll just say that I doubt very much if Christians have a monopoly on Eternal Salvation. I just follow the voices in my head, so to speak, and now they're telling me to play Animal Crossing every day.
Yes, a monk's habit! Maybe not so appropriate anymore, however. Where do you buy those things anyway? You know, when I would go and visit Steve and Antoinette - get off at Punchbowl station and walk to their place at Greenacre, I'd walk past this monastery. I'd always stare hard at it, all around and see if I could see any of those monks, but I never did.
A weird thing happened tonight - this cute Asian girl from next door asked me to help her out because she had locked herself out. I had to cross over to her balcony from my balcony - putting myself in danger one storey above the ground. Then I had to open her window to unlock the door but I needed a milk crate to stand on, so I asked her to get one from my kitchen, where I keep empty bottles - she kept saying she couldn't find it, so I had to get back across the balcony and get it, then get back over to her balcony. It was crazy, man. She said "Oh! My place is messy!" I felt like saying "Don't worry about that my dear, just pray that I don't fall and break my damn neck!" So, I got in and unlocked her place and it was a happy ending. She's moving out, she told me. Well, I thought, there she goes... In this kind of circumstance I have a fantasy where she says "Please stay for a coffee! I like you a lot!" or some equally impossible something, but that never happens. That's just my fantasy.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Monopoly of Faith
As I wrote about in a recent post (see *First Millenium Popes* below, October 7), the popes around the end of the first millenium were miserably corrupt. Fat cats in purple robes studded with blinding arrays of priceless gems, rolling around shag pile rugs with the finest foods oozing from their piggish jaws, in ecstasies of gluttony. They told the masses that it was only through them and their secret knowledge and intimacy with God that the common *bogmen* had any chance of entering the pearly gates of Heaven. Their immensely bloated bulks moved laboriously through the masses, demanding money from the sick and near-death, the extreme poor, that they may purchase their way into paradise; a sure escape from this miserable earthly existence.
It was in these times, around 1378, that a man named John Wycliffe challenged the popes and the Church’s authority with the simple, but explosive, assertion that no bishop, no clergyman and no pope had the power to save a man’s soul, or to grant the keys to Heaven. The Church – these popes and their hierarchy – had the monopoly on Salvation and it was only through them that one could be saved. The Bible was only known in Latin, and only the fat cats of the Church knew Latin and thus had a monopoly on the Word of God, and indeed Christ’s Word. Wycliffe wanted to translate the Bible into English so that the common man could read it, and this posed the greatest threat to the fat cats of the Church because this would essentially strip the power from them: “The Church had no desire to share the secrets of its trade. Its monopoly of faith was bolstered by its near monopoly of Latin. The common people were dependent on the clergy to interpret the gospel for them, and the Church feared that an English version would reduce its prestige and open its dogmas to question.” ...
“Wycliffe died of a stroke at Lutterworth on New Year’s Eve, 1384, some eight years before the translation of the Vulgate into the English dialect of the Midlands was completed. Although it was largely the work of his followers, he was its inspiration, and its rendering from dusty Latin into vivid prose gave the English their first direct contact with the word of God in their own language” ...
“The impact of the translated Scripture was strong and immediate. It was said that a man would give a cartload of hay for a few handwritten pages of St Paul, and the Church took vigorous steps to suppress both the English Bible and Wycliffe’s following.” ...
"Fresh translations, and the use of any made “in the times of John Wyclif or since”, were forbidden in 1407. Wycliffe’s translation made the Scriptures the “property of the masses,” noted Knighton, a leading observer of the day, and the Bible was now “more open to the laity, and even to women who were able to read, than formerly it had been even to the scholarly and most learned of the clergy.” Knighton did not find this admirable. To him it meant that “the Gospel pearl is thrown before swine and trodden underfoot . . . and become a joke, and this precious gem of the clergy has been turned into the sport of the laity. . . “
[quotes from *The Faith: A History of Christianity* by Brian Moynahan (Pimlico, 2003)]
It was in these times, around 1378, that a man named John Wycliffe challenged the popes and the Church’s authority with the simple, but explosive, assertion that no bishop, no clergyman and no pope had the power to save a man’s soul, or to grant the keys to Heaven. The Church – these popes and their hierarchy – had the monopoly on Salvation and it was only through them that one could be saved. The Bible was only known in Latin, and only the fat cats of the Church knew Latin and thus had a monopoly on the Word of God, and indeed Christ’s Word. Wycliffe wanted to translate the Bible into English so that the common man could read it, and this posed the greatest threat to the fat cats of the Church because this would essentially strip the power from them: “The Church had no desire to share the secrets of its trade. Its monopoly of faith was bolstered by its near monopoly of Latin. The common people were dependent on the clergy to interpret the gospel for them, and the Church feared that an English version would reduce its prestige and open its dogmas to question.” ...
“Wycliffe died of a stroke at Lutterworth on New Year’s Eve, 1384, some eight years before the translation of the Vulgate into the English dialect of the Midlands was completed. Although it was largely the work of his followers, he was its inspiration, and its rendering from dusty Latin into vivid prose gave the English their first direct contact with the word of God in their own language” ...
“The impact of the translated Scripture was strong and immediate. It was said that a man would give a cartload of hay for a few handwritten pages of St Paul, and the Church took vigorous steps to suppress both the English Bible and Wycliffe’s following.” ...
"Fresh translations, and the use of any made “in the times of John Wyclif or since”, were forbidden in 1407. Wycliffe’s translation made the Scriptures the “property of the masses,” noted Knighton, a leading observer of the day, and the Bible was now “more open to the laity, and even to women who were able to read, than formerly it had been even to the scholarly and most learned of the clergy.” Knighton did not find this admirable. To him it meant that “the Gospel pearl is thrown before swine and trodden underfoot . . . and become a joke, and this precious gem of the clergy has been turned into the sport of the laity. . . “
[quotes from *The Faith: A History of Christianity* by Brian Moynahan (Pimlico, 2003)]
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Stations of the Cross
I've heard this term *Stations of the Cross* now and again, that it was something Catholics did, and I'd wonder what it meant. Well, tonight while reading about St Francis of Assisi (the Franciscans made popular the Stations of the Cross) I finally found out what it means:
"Pilgrims in Jerusalem had long followed Christ's final journey from Pilate's house to Calvary, pausing to pray at the site, or Station, of each incident of the Passion. The Franciscans devised a devotion based on pictures or carvings of the incidents, which, arranged on the walls of churches, enabled congregations to reflect and pray at each Station. This has been followed during Lent and Passiontide from medieval times, although the final choice of fourteen Stations was not made until the nineteenth century. They are: Christ's condemnation to death; his weighing down with the cross; his first fall; his meeting with his mother; the bearing of the cross by Simon of Cyrene; the mopping of Christ's face by Veronica; his second fall; his meeting with the women of Jerusalem; his third fall; the stripping of his garments; the nailing to the cross; his death on the cross; the taking down of his body from the cross; and the laying of his body in the tomb."
- from *The Faith: A History of Christianity* by Brian Moynahan
Natural Born Inquisitor
That was interesting to me, but this chapter is even more fascinating because it illustrates both the compassion and cruelty that can exist in *people of faith*.
St Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzman both created an order of friars in the early 1200s (the Franciscans and the Dominicans). They both believed in absolute poverty. Their friars walked in the world begging for alms rather than remain cloistered in the contemplative tranquility of a monastery. "Neither man spared himself; they died within five years of each other, and both were swiftly canonised". However these two men were polar opposites; Francis was compassionate and devoted his life to helping lepers (who at that time were utterly shunned and outcast); Dominic was the cruel hunter and torturer of heretics; a "natural born inquisitor".
"Pilgrims in Jerusalem had long followed Christ's final journey from Pilate's house to Calvary, pausing to pray at the site, or Station, of each incident of the Passion. The Franciscans devised a devotion based on pictures or carvings of the incidents, which, arranged on the walls of churches, enabled congregations to reflect and pray at each Station. This has been followed during Lent and Passiontide from medieval times, although the final choice of fourteen Stations was not made until the nineteenth century. They are: Christ's condemnation to death; his weighing down with the cross; his first fall; his meeting with his mother; the bearing of the cross by Simon of Cyrene; the mopping of Christ's face by Veronica; his second fall; his meeting with the women of Jerusalem; his third fall; the stripping of his garments; the nailing to the cross; his death on the cross; the taking down of his body from the cross; and the laying of his body in the tomb."
- from *The Faith: A History of Christianity* by Brian Moynahan
Natural Born Inquisitor
That was interesting to me, but this chapter is even more fascinating because it illustrates both the compassion and cruelty that can exist in *people of faith*.
St Francis of Assisi and Dominic de Guzman both created an order of friars in the early 1200s (the Franciscans and the Dominicans). They both believed in absolute poverty. Their friars walked in the world begging for alms rather than remain cloistered in the contemplative tranquility of a monastery. "Neither man spared himself; they died within five years of each other, and both were swiftly canonised". However these two men were polar opposites; Francis was compassionate and devoted his life to helping lepers (who at that time were utterly shunned and outcast); Dominic was the cruel hunter and torturer of heretics; a "natural born inquisitor".
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