Movie review

While the berry pie is in the oven I think I'll share with you my opinion of Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey.

But first, a joke. Two goats were in the back lot of MGM one day, eating old cans of film. One goat says to the other, "Oh, wow! Billy, you have to try this Gone With the Wind! It's amazing!" So, Billy took an bite, chewed, swallowed, then said, "Yeah, It's okay. But the book was better."

There are a lot of interesting things about Nolan's movie. I liked how the bard reciting Homer's poem introduced the story and reappeared near the end. I didn't like Penelope's angry speech at Telemachus; totally out of character with the woman we know from the poem. And the armor the Greek soldiers were wearing was not like the armor Agamemnon's solders wore. (But if you like the Gladiator movie that won't bother you.)

The actress who played the part of a man who wasn't in Homer's poem was an interesting thing. She pretends to be a man, plays a man's role from Virgil's version of the story, and the character was duped into into tricking the Trojans. Which is, I think, a pretty good way of expositing Odysseus's cunning and trickster nature. Lies upon lies upon lies.

There were a couple very jarring references to the Bronze Age Collapse. While it is historically true that the Greeks (and they didn't call themselves Greeks, that's what the Romans would call them centuries after the events portrayed in the movie.) would forget how to read and that the Bronze Age was coming to an end, there was no way for anyone alive then to know that was going to happen. But the most bizarre thing in the movie was how the ending was changed. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but the most beautiful part of Homer's poem, when Odysseus and Penelope were reunited in the bed/tree and all was right in Ithaca was changed to Odysseus dealing with is regret for all the killing. In the poem Odysseus did not regret killing anyone.

I will say this good thing about the movie: It dealt with the gods in a way that was better that that Troy movie from a few years ago. Now, I had better go check on that pie.

Fruitcakes and civilization

Kathleen and I made 10 more fruitcakes today. We were going to go pheasant hunting but it was raining this morning so we decided to stay home and bake. The house smells beautiful; like cinnamon, butter, and whiskey.

Last week it dawned on me that in my world history class (we have been reading the about the pagan world; the Indians, the Japanese, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Akkadians, the Incas, the Nubians, the Minoans etc.) that the whole pre-Christian world (except the Hebrews), all of them practiced human sacrifice and canibalism. Right now we are on ancient Greece and we have just finished reading Hesiod's Theogony, a gruesome tale of murder, incest, infanticide, cannibalism, rape, and war. I think we will be right up to Caesar Augustus in early December. And then I will assign my world history students the Gospel of Mark. I didn't plan it this way but isn't it amazing to be able to make the transition from the horrors of the demon-ruled pagan history to the Christ-filled history of the years of our Lord right at Christmas time.

Two Days of Greeks and a Chinese Recipe

Kathleen and I went to the Greek Festival in Oakland on Saturday. It was okay. We were there too early in the day (11 a.m.) so there were no singing or dancing acts. But I don't really like street fairs, church festivals, art and wine festivals, and things like that, anyway. The best parts of the trip were talking about the cathedral architecture with with a young priest and praying with some nuns from Calistoga. They were there selling books and honey. The nuns and I prayed for my son, Basil, who is still not recovered from Covid. I spent way too much money on food (Kathleen is always surprised when she likes lamb. She thinks she doesn't like it.), more than I would have paid in a resturaunt but I thought of it as an offering more than paying for lunch: Church festivals are fundraisers. Kathleen bought wedding rings and a prayerbook.

On Sunday morning we went to the Divine Liturgy. We left after the sermon since neither of us could go to Communion; Kathleen because she isn't an Orthodox Christian yet (her Baptism is not for five more days.), I because I wasn't prepared. (Kathleen: "But you went to confession just last week. You haven't done any sins since then." Me: "I can't walk across the living room without sinning.")

The sermon was about St. Photini (AKA the Woman at the Well). In the car afterwards, Kathleen asked me how many sermons I've heard on that text. When I said many she asked if they were all different and if I could remember any of my Dad's sermons on the text. They were all different and I do remember two of my Dad's. In one of them, I remember he was talking about how ignorant the disciples were, how they never understood what God was doing, and that we are all like that because God is infinite and we are not, because his ways are not our ways, and God is always going to know things we do not know and do things we do not understand. The other sermon I remember him preaching on that text was about how we don't get to decide who is in the Church. God chooses whom to include and we have to accept them. The main point of Fr. Basil's sermon yesterday was that Jesus always did the will of his Father, and that it was the Father who wanted him to go through Samaria and meet the woman at the well. If we desire to know the Father we must look at Jesus.

After Church we drove over to Santa Cruz on Hwy 9. We wound trough the hills, hills I've been winding through since the early 1990s, where all my sons and I had many adventures. In Boulder Creek we stopped at my favorite grocery store and got roast beef sandwiches. At the antique store across the street Kathleen found a sealable porcelain jar with a mallard painted on it. We ate the sandwiches at the covered bridge park in Felton. Then we drove on to Santa Cruz.

In Santa Cruz we saw a play, "An Iliad" at the Jewel Theater. (I've known the story, or parts of it for most of my life. As an adult I've read several different translations, in prose and verse, and have even atempted to read it in Homeric Greek but my knowledge of Koine Greek was not up to the task.) I was sobbing at the end of the performance. It was very moving.

We got home and Kathleen took a nap while I did some work, listening to reruns of A Praire Home Companion at the same time. When she woke about 8:30 p.m. I made supper: My Mother's twice cooked pork. She used to make this for the anual dinner for my Dad's colleagues on the board of the Florida District of the PCG. It was such a good dish but she only ever made it for that one event. She, really, did not like cooking.

Recipe
-cooked pork roast. My mom always used boiled loin. I like a mixture of left over oven roasted shoulder and boiled loin. About 1 pound in total, cut into 1 inch cubes.
-one shallot, peeled and minced
-one head of garlic, peeled and minced
- fresh ginger root, about as big as your hand, peeled and minced
-sesame oil, about 3 table spoons
- a head of green cabbage, chopped into long ribbons
- soy sauce, 2 tablespoons is enough for me, but I don't like too much salt. Most people, I've noticed, like to add more soy sauce at the table.
(sometime my Mom would use a yellow onion istead of shallot. Also, she would sometimes shread green bellpepper and add it to the wok at the same time as the cabbage.)
- 1 tablespood sesame seeds.

heat the oil in a wok until crazy hot, but not smoking. Add the the garlic and ginger stir constantly when the garlic turns brown, add the shallots and pork and keep stiring until the pork browns and gets crispy edges. add the cabbage and soy sauce. Keep stiring until the cabbage is soft. Toss in the sesame seeds. Serve.

Christmas in June.

Today is the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Forerunner.  And how can anyone keep this day without thinking of Saint John's cousin, the Son who left glory to be born a man, who endured every temptation but without sinning, who died for us, and in his resurrection defeated death itself?  So, it is six months early,  but I am thinking about Christmas.


Christmas

How soon it starts,

The endless moan:
‘Just ten more weeks, 
How time has flown!
The shopping’s such
An awful bore;
Things cost so much – 
(And more, and more) –
I wonder if this colour suits her
- Let’s give the children a computer!’
Unchanging times remain, it’s true:
The card that means
‘I think of you’
Is there a hopeful little sock
Hung by the fire, beneath the clock:
Name stuck on a with a safety pin,
For Santa’s bounty to go in;
An apple and an orange too,
A coin pushed down into the toe,
And loving parcels set below
For Christmas morn?
The perfect way to celebrate
That long ago a child was born.

by Jay
Title: Christmas
Source: New Shetlander, 1985

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Do you remember that movie from about 20 years ago, the one with Hugh Grant and that heartbreaking poem?  Well, this has almost nothing to do with that.  (You should watch these in order.)


Come Forth!



One of the best wedding homilies I've heard.

Sad because it's real.

Hillarious because it's just pretend.



When I lived in S.F. I heard them lead funeral processions past my window all the time.

The President's Favorite Philosopher

Do you remember when Geo. W. Bush was asked who his favorite philosopher was and he answered, "Jesus Christ"? I thought that was a pretty dumb answer.  Jesus is the the only true object of philosophy.  He is the Logos, the Giest, the All-Soul, the One, the Prime Mover the philosophers only had a vague idea about.  He is the one who holds all power and authority in Heaven and on earth.  He is an imperious King who accepts no rivals, who is busy battering down even the gates of Hell in order to expand his dominion.  He does not share space with Plato, Aquinas, Hume, or Kant.  He is the only wisdom the wise pursue.  In short, Jesus is the -sophy one must philo-.  So, it was pure dumbth that Bush said Jesus was his favorite philosopher.  Sure, there was a political reason he said it, and it paid off.  Nevertheless it was wrong.

I much preferred what Obama said about his favorite philosopher.  In the New York Times he said,"Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr? I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers".  Aside from the fact that this is the kind of thing you'd expect an undergrad liberal arts major to say, we can learn quite a bit about the President from Niebuhr.   Probably the most important thing is that symbol - not the Greek understanding of symbol, e.g. two to or more things being merged so that experiencing one is the same as experiencing all - is more important than reality.  For instance, Niebuhr denied the physical resurrection of Jesus, writing in 1938,"I have not the slightest interest in the empty tomb or physical resurrection." Yet claimed it as a an important symbol for people's moral action to make the world a better place.  The Resurrection of Jesus isn't for the salvation of individual men.  Rather, it is a symbol that gives people enough hope - and all he means by symbol in this context is mythical ideas that motivate people -  to take public action.

But what about evil?  What about the sin that corrupts every heart?  If Jesus does not heal us what is to be done?  How can I live if Jesus did not trample down death?  What hope do I have if, as Niebuhr says, "Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity."    The "world" is certainly loved by God, but I and you are the individual "whosoever" in needs Jesus.  For someone who denies the resurrection of Jesus, as Niebuhr did, who claims there is no such thing as immortal individuals this idea that salvation is really political action on the part of groups of people is probably the best answer possible.  

But the Church teaches that we are immortal individuals.  We are, each one of us, made in the image and likeness of God, and that we do, each one of us, live for ever.  Job said that though he die he, not some collective intellect, not a group of people making political actions, but Job himself would see his redeemer.


But Niebuhr, lake the serpent in the Garden, was partly right. There is a collective element to evil.  We see this in the Icon of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday)  The children ("and a little child shall lead them") in the icon are all distinct persons.  But the adults, the same people who later in the week would cry out, "crucify him" are merged into one mass.  Their hearts were not pure, even as they shouted "Hosanna", thus they are depicted as merely parts of a group.  The sinful can not relate to Jesus as individuals, only as a mob.   

Sin is like that.  It is all the same.  It is truly infinitely less than the variety God offers because it shuns His infinitude in favor or repetitive sin.  Sin is repetitive and boring and constraining.  Consider the man who can only see women as potential sex partners.  How many amazing people has he ignored because they were too old, or too young, or too skinny, or too fat.  Even those women he notices he regards very narrowly, the most important thing about them is that he can have sex with them.  Compared to that fact, all other aspects of their persons, no mater how wonderful, pale in the mind of the man who regards their sex as their most important feature.  How boring!  How repetitive!  How horrible!  This man has closed himself off from the revelation of Himself God has built into every individual human being. Individuals matter not to him.  They didn't matter to Niebuhr.  But when Orthodox Christians approach the chalice for Holy Communion we are called by our names: "The servant of God Matthew receives...."  Truly, we approach God as part of a community, but it is a community composed of individuals.


Niebuhr embraces the denial of individuals.  His belief in some sort of non-personal collective salvation went hand in hand with his recognition that coercive force has to be employed to fight evil within large groups of people.  That "social justice" requires the strong hand of government is not a problem because the individuals being coerced are not as important as the group.  Because individuals don't last, are not immortal, it is okay to force them to do whatever is necessary for the good of the group, which does last.  Or, as Rudyard Kippling wrote in his famous poem, plenty for all is achieved "by robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul".  In this we can see why Niebuhr would be Obama's favorite philosopher.  

  

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

I have been enjoying a particularly bookish movie, 84 Charing Cross Road, and heard such a moving poem. Here it is reproduced for your pleasure.

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- Wm. B. Yeats

An Advent Hmyn

Composed in Latin by St. Ambrose of Milan (340-397).
Translated into English by J.M. Neal in 1862.

Come, Thou Redemer of the Earth

Come, thou Redeemer of the earth,
and manifest thy virgin birth:
let every age adoring fall;
such birth befits the God of all.

Begotten of no human will,
but of the Spirit, thou art still
the Word of God in flesh arrayed,
the promised fruit to man displayed.

The virgin womb that burden gained
with virgin honor all unstained;
the banners there of virtue glow;
God in his temple dwells below.

Forth from his chamber goeth he,
that royal home of purity,
a giant in twofold substance one,
rejoicing now his course to run.

From God the Father he proceeds,
to God the Father back he speeds;
his course he runs to death and hell,
returning on God's throne to dwell.

O equal to thy Father, thou!
Gird on thy fleshly mantle now;
the weakness of our mortal state
with deathless might invigorate.

Thy cradle here shall glitter bright,
and darkness breathe a newer light,
where endless faith shall shine serene,
and twilight never intervene.

All laud to God the Father be,
all praise, eternal Son, to thee;
all glory, as is ever meet,
to God the Holy Paraclete.

A Sermon, Cranberrry Bread, and Getting Ready for Christmas

Today Anselm Samuel paid attention to the sermon. I think it might have been the first time ever. In addition to being the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost this morning was also the Synaxis of the the Archangel Michael and the other bodiless powers. So, instead of just the Sunday Gospel reading we also had a Gospel for the Synaxis, which in the wisdom of the Church Fathers who arranged the lectionary, has nothing to do with any of the Archangels, unless, as the priest pointed out, you know the back-story. The sermon was over in 5 minutes but explained who the 70 were and what their job was, explained the rebuke Jesus gave to the 70 (it was very funny), and told the story of Lucifer's rebellion, the war in Heaven, and the casting down of Satan by Holy Michael. When the sermon was over and the priest was walking back to the Altar Anselm said, "That was good. That was the best sermon ever." It was pretty good.

Sadly, I am not well, and could not stay any longer. I have been drinking large amounts (even for me) of coffee doing without much sleep for days in order to get all my school assignments completed. Lately I've been shaking, experiencing stomach problems, and once even hallucinated. It was a very strange thing. Anselm, Basil, Athanasia, and I were all sitting in the living room and I saw another boy just stroll through the room. It was startling, but I saw right away he wasn't really there. Anyway, when after the sermon I fell asleep standing during the liturgy. Realizing I was about to become a huge distraction(Headline: Church burns as man falls asleep and spills oil lamps), Anslem and I left (Basil is sick - puke,sniff,cough,puke,sniff,cough- and Athanasia stayed home with him.) just as the clergy were getting ready for the Great Entrance. The drive home was pretty scary, but we made it and I crashed for 3 hours.

I really like this priest. I hope I am not breaking any kind of rules about the silence surrounding confession, but just before he prayed the prayer of absolution he me some spiritual advice, which essentially was "Satan sets traps, you see them and avoid them by prayer. You aren't praying enough." Another thing I like about him is that before he became Orthodox he was Pentecostal, like me. He was one of the Jesus People in the early 1970s.

-----

I read "Cranberry Thanksgiving" to the boys tonight. They enjoyed it, and like I did when my mother read it to me, asked me to make cranberry bread. So, tomorrow, morning, after I clean the laundry room and get the roofers set up (we are re-roofing building 8) we are going to make cranberry bread. Much fun!

This is the recipe in the book, not my wife's famous Cranberry bread recipe.

CRANBERRY BREAD

Sift: 2 cups flour (sifted), 1 cup sugar, 1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp baking soda.

Cut in 1/4 cup butter until mixture is crumbly (I use a mixer to crumble-ize it)

Add 1 beaten egg, 1 tsp grated orange peel and 3/4 cup organge juice and mix until mixture is evenly moist.

Fold in 1 and 1/2 cups light raisins and about a half bag of chopped cranberries per loaf.

Spoon into a greased 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan bake at 350' for 1 hour and 10 mins or until toothpick in center comes out clean.

Cool out of pan on a wire rack. keep stored in aluminum foil, unless you eat it all before it cools.

----

A friend of mine has given me a fabulous idea: A candlelight reading of W.H. Auden's For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. I'm thinking Jan 3 or 4, since the piece is really about the movement from Christmas into ordinary time. Oh! I can hardly wait! Got to get texts (Oh, I do hope it is in the public domain!), settle on a date, and get the invites out to all my friends and family. I haven't done readers theater since the 4th grade. This will be fun.

Before there was Amy Winehouse: Saturday Soundtrack

Ode to Ronnie Spector

This curve
this upward knowing curve
I once heard in my youth.
I heard it on her mouth.
I know
you won't
believe me,
but
it sings,
just that curve sings,
like sirens
it sings.
I shivered in those solitudes
when I heard
the voice of
that half-mocking smile.
From the single
speaker on the dashboard:
the petition sings.
The promise sings.
The command sings.

Sunburned
skin of summer camp girls
advancing on awe struck eyes
of summer camp boys
singing Ronnie's song.
Boys scream and
flee certain captivity.

From out of the dark depths
this curve sings.
The goal
not bubblegum,
but,
corporeal,
mortal,
grave,
powerful,
and beautiful.
It sings and
I turn up the volume
in the big Cadillac,
driving down a white shell
Florida highway.
Between the palmettos,
air sticking to my skin,
under a torrid moon
I hear this curve.
The power of it over me.
I'll be your baby.

Mercy

It is a sign of love that the Church provides for those, such as me, who are not always able to attend the Vigil on Saturday night, and are less than ready to approach the life creating Mystery on Sunday morning. On Saturday nights like this there is The Order of Preparation for Holy Communion. True, part of the Order can only be prayed while standing in line to receive and eat the Body and Blood of Jesus, but most of it can be sung on Saturday night. Of the many beautiful hymns, Psalms, and prayers in the Order is this, the 1st Ode of the Canon For Holy Communion, which appears at about the midpoint of the Order:

Eirmos: Come, O ye people, let us sing hymn unto Christ our God, who divided the sea and guided his people whom he brought out of the bondage of Egypt, for He is glorfied.

Refrain: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

May Thy holy Body be unto me the Bread of life eternal, O compassionate Lord, and Thy precious Blood be also the healing of many forms of illness.

Refrain: Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.

Defiled by unseemly deeds, I the wretched one am unworthy, O Christ, of the communion of Thy most pure Body and divine Blood, which do Thou Vouchsafe me.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

O blessed Bride of God, O good soil that grew the Corn untilled and saving to the world, vouchsafe me to besaved by eating it.

Note on the Icon: This Icon is called The Inexhaustible Cup. It portrays the Mary/the Church/the Bride/Creation offering Jesus as the sacrifice on behalf of all and for all.

Cheese Week, John the Baptist, and a Ph.D. (maybe)

Dairy week is going full steam ahead. (Orthodox said goodbye to meat last Sunday.) I tend not to eat a lot of dairy food other than heavy whipping cream in my coffee, so I have been enjoying all of the cheese. Tonight I had fetta. In the fridge is still gouda, feta, a mild chedar, a small wedge of maytag blue, a raw milk blue from France that is pretty good, a hunk of something hard and white, a hunk of something soft and white. I'll make pancakes for the boys in the morning to use up a lot of butter. I guess I'll make grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. The blues are good spread on baguette and accompanied by a martini. I am no fan of gouda. I guess Atanasia bought it for the boys. I anticipate all the dairy being consumed by bedtime Saturday night. Sunday will be either pancakes or blini or fondue at Church and that will be it for dairy until Pascha.

One of the things I've been doing, lately, is reading aloud the appointed scriptures at the dinner table. Our schedules are such that we are unable to do it any other time. It seems to be working. Today was the commemoration of the first and second findings (Now that it is found, I hope someone is keeping an eye on it. I bet if Cossacks were watching it it wouldn't keep getting lost.) of the Honorable Head of the Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John so part of what we read was this passage from the Wisdom of Solomon in the Old Testament:

The Righteous man, though he die early, will be at rest. The righteous man who has died will judge the ungodly who are living. For they will see the end of the righteous man and will not understand what was said about him; for the Lord will cast down the ungodly speechless to the ground and shake them from the foundations; they shall become desolate to the end; they will be in sorrows, and their memory will perish. For they will come to fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them. The the righteous man will stand with great boldness before those who have afflicted him, and those who have made no account his labors. Having seen it, they shall be troubled with much fear and they will be amazed at his most glorious salvation. They will say within themselves in repentance, in anguish of spirit they will groan and say" "This was he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach - we fools! We accounted his life as madness, and his end to be without honor. How is he numbered among the sons of God? And why is his lot among the saints? Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not illumine us, nor did the sun shine on us. We took our fill of the paths of lawlessness and destruction, and we walked impassible pathways, but the way of the Lord we have not known."

This reading and the others were oft interrupted by Anselm Samuel wanting to know how this was written about St. John centuries before St. John was born, why the king killed St. John, what exactly is a prophet, why did they keep losing St. John's head, who exactly lost it and how, what does perish mean, why did God let the Herods get to be kings in the first place, and more besides.

In other news, Athanasia is thinking about beginning a Ph.D. program in Human and Organizational Systems. If she does, it will be difficult. I might have to forgo my own grad school if she does. Our marriage almost did not survive the last time we were both in school. We'll see how it goes. What is interesting is that she has the greater gift for academic pursuits while I have the greater desire. In a way, it makes us a good team.

Its On!!!

Much goodness and joy. After the kick off meal of crab, shrimp, brussels sprouts, San Pelegrino, and a 2006 Parducci sauvignon blanc(my fave non-bubbly white wine at the moment) we gathered around the icons, sang O Heavenly King" and read Genesis 3:1-15. And then we talked about what it meant.

I asked Anslem Samuel some questions about the facts of the story, a story he has heard hundreds of times, and he answered them. Then I began to explain what it meant. When I asked him what Gen. 3:15 meant he said he didn't know so Iexplained it to him. This prompted his mother to say "Every day I feel like we are getting closer and closer to having to talk about the birds and bees, and I'm not ready for that." I thought that was very funny.

One thing I noticed tonight, and I am a little suprised I hadn't noticed it before now, is that the very day Adam and Eve sinned he showed up to help them and give them the promise of a redeemer. Isn't that just like God?

Anyway, it is very important to me that the boys not grow up thinking that we do all the stuff we do just because we are Orthodox and that is what Orthodox do. I want them to know why we hold our hands the way we do when we make the sign of the Cross, why that bottom cross bar is tilted, why only clergy touch the altar, why the eggs are dyed red, and why we fast before the feast of the Nativity. So tonight I said this...

"For thousands and thousands and thousands of years we waited in darkness for that Seed, Jesus to be born. And we fast every year before Christmas to remind oursleves of that waiting. It is our way of reliving that long wait. Just as the Feast of the Nativity is our way of remembering that Jesus was born, the Nativity Fast is our way of remembering that long wait."

After that it was a zip up to San Francisco (traffic was horrible!) to receive the Holy Mystery of Confession and then home. (Anselm Samuel is sick so Athanasia stayed at home with the boys.)

While driving home I was tinking about Gen.3:15 and how in those years between that day and the birth of Jesus, and how God, like a horticulturist breeding the perfect plant, had tended the bloodlines that produced Mary, the one who would be His own Mother. And I wrote a poem. Forgive me, it isn't very good, and seems a little limricky. Maybe, when I'm done with school I'll take the idea and try to shape it into better meter and rhyme.

Wild plants, vines without stakes
Fiberous, crooked, and tough
A gardner chose hard labor
He pruned and croseed and watched
And after many years
The gardener crossed two plants
From that pair a flower grew
From that flower, alone, The Seed.

Herself a Rose

Our brother over at biblicalia posted this poem. It is a good one, and especially appropriate since we are approaching the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.

Herself a rose, who bore the Rose
She bore the Rose and felt its thorn.
All Loveliness new-born
Took on her bosom its repose,
And slept and woke there night and morn.

Lily herself, she bore the one
Fair Lily ; sweeter, whiter, far
Than she or others are :
The Sun of Righteousness her Son,
She was His morning star.

She gracious, He essential Grace,
He was the Fountain, she the rill :
Her goodness to fulfil
And gladness, with proportioned pace
He led her steps thro’ good and ill.

Christ’s mirror she of grace and love,
Of beauty and of life and death :
By hope and love and faith
Transfigured to His Likeness, ‘Dove,
Spouse, Sister, Mother,’ Jesus saith.

Christina Georgina Rossetti, circa 1877