The Windkey and the Lamplighter

It’s Advent again (where did the year go?) and since I didn’t manage to record any new Advent carols for you all, I will republish my series of the O Antiphons. I’ll come back and add to this post every day, rather than posting N times with no new content. Unless I have new content, but you can judge for yourself how likely that is…

December 17: O Sapienta
December 18: O Adonai
December 19: O Radix Jesse
December 20: O Clavis David
December 21: O Oriens
December 22: O Rex Gentium
December 23: O Emmanuel

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From the Gospel of our President and Savior Barack Obama according to his Apostle Media.

This year’s Passover Haggadah was pretty well received. The host said it was “polished,” and others commented that it “had nice flow.” I’m now comfortable making it generally available. The Mercurial repository is at http://evenmere.org/hg/Haggadot/. You can probably check out a copy to look at with hg clone http://evenmere.org/hg/Haggadot/.

This year I experimented with direct representation of Hebrew. In the past I’ve used embedded graphics, but they never look quite right. Now I’ve found a good source of properly-spelled Hebrew like the following:

?מַה נִּשְּׁתַּנָה הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת

I had a few complaints about the placement of vowel points under narrow characters, but nobody seemed to have actual trouble reading it. I borrowed and copied and learned from many sources in assembling this document. I hope others benefit from this document in the same way

I found this post at Sense of Events a very informative, intellectual, and moving account of the events that occurred (according to some calendars) ~2000 years ago this last weekend. Just thought I’d pass it along while I’m working on organizing my own thoughts for original reflections on a bunch of topics.

Last night, as part of my church’s Lenten observances, we walked a seven-circuit labyrinth. The one we walked is temporary—along the same design as the two built into the floor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, but only seven instead of eleven circuits, and marked in blue ink onto a white tarpaulin spread out over the floor.

The labyrinth experience itself was interesting—we had about 30 people walking simultaneously, so though it was nearly empty when I entered, it was quite full and we had people passing each other as I was winding my way out. (You enter and exit the labyrinth by the same path.) I enjoyed the clockwork-like, intricate dance of my fellow-travelers, both during my walk and after I left. However, that was not my favorite part.

My favorite part was the words I encountered when I got to the center. The vicar who organized borrowing this labyrinth from our Synod had left a bible open to Psalm 139 and 140 in the center. I’m not sure what text she intended to leave out, but one verse particularly spoke to me:

Psalm 139:14 - I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

I held that phrase, “fearfully and wonderfully made” all through my exit from the labyrinth, and looked it up while waiting for the rest of our group to finish in the KJV that I have on my PalmPilot. (What, doesn’t everyone keep a Bible in their pocket?) I later learned that not all translations have that same poetry, though this Hebrew/English Bible does. I need to learn to read Hebrew, I suppose, but in the mean time I’ll just hold on to the KJV’s poetry and relish the imagery that it grants me.

Marcus Borg is speaking this weekend at Boston University. He is the author of Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, which I reviewed last year, and many others.  He’s been invited by the Episcopal Diocese of Boston.  This is the same denomination that recently had a priest ordained as an imam, and that recently advocated a system of split family law for Britain.

I’m going to hear him speak; I found the book stimulated many good arguments. I hope to have some more afterwards.  I invite you to join me.  Registration is required.