Words. 12.13

 Words Twice a Week            12.13

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

Answer to last week’s challenge – the quintessential Mack the Knife was sung by Bobby Darin.  But you knew that, didn’t you.

A few days from the church calendar -

Dec 14  John of the Cross  John was ordained as a priest in 1567. He subsequently thought about joining the strict Carthusian Order, which appealed to him because of its practice of solitary and silent contemplation.  He met and worked with Teresa of Avila as she was

founding the Carmelite order.  He then decided to found a Carmelite order and house for friars  in Duruelo.  On the day it was established, Nov 28, 1586, he changed his name from “John of St. Matthias” (which he had taken when he first joined the Carmelites) to “John of the Cross.”  (In the movie A Thousand Clowns

the little boy “tries out” each potential name change by getting a new library card!)  He was a mystic and is one of the Doctors of the Church.  Sometime between 1574 and 1577, while praying in a loft overlooking the sanctuary in the Monastery of the Incarnation in Ávila, John had a vision of the crucified Christ, which led him to create his drawing of Christ on the cross "from
above".  Some people suggest this drawing inspired the artist Salvador Dalí's 1951 work Christ of Saint John of the Cross.

Dec 16  Ralph Adams Cram and Richard Upjohn  They were architects.  Wait a minute – architects?  Yup – they designed a bunch of churches, many if not most of them for Episcopal congregations, often in Gothic Revival style.  Cram designed The Church of St John the
Divine in New York.  He also designed a residence called The House of the Rising Sun.  (Not that one!).  

Dec 17  Dorothy Sayers   That’s right – she wrote mystery stories - Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, Parker Pyme, Montague Egg, and others.  She is credited with the phrase “It pays to advertise.”  She also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy.   She also wrote some books “explaining” the Christian faith, similar to CSLewis’s Mere Christianity.  She was a colleague of Lewis and JRR Tolkien.  She also wrote a radio play of the life of Jesus called The Man Born to be King.

And a few from the world/earth calendar -

Dec 14

+Roald Amundson reached the South Pole in 1911.  On this day in 1958, the Soviets reached

something called “the South Pole of Inaccessibility”.  Basically, the hardest spot to get to in Antarctica. This is me reaching the exact center of the Northwest hemisphere, 45N-90W. It's outside of Wausau, WI.

+ George Washington died in 1799.  I have really struggled with this – back in May I stumbled across this quote from Washington to General John Sullivan ordering the destruction of Native Americans..  And it’s kind of like once you know it you can’t “un-know it”.  So – spoiler alert – this is a really troublesome quote.  Skip over it if you don’t want your image of Washington tarnished a bit.  He ordered, “The six nations of Indians are to be attacked, the immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more...that the Indian country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed”

Dec 15

+ Jan Vermeer died in 1675.  WPJones comments that “As a master of light, his still lifes are solitary figures rendered sacred in such elemental daily acts as pouring milk.”

+ The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, the 21st amendment (ending prohibition) in 1933.

+ Basketball was invented in 1891.  Apparently the score of the first game was 1-0.

+ Native American leader Sitting Null was killed/assassinated in 1890

+ It’s the birthday of Friedensreich Hundertwasser

.  This guy was really something – he was a painter, an architect, and ecologist.  He designed stamps for the UN and a variety of
countries.  He said the straight line was the downfall of civilization!  Wait a minute – he was an architect.  We were in one of his apartment houses in Vienna – the walls were crooked, the floors had waves, some apartments had trees growing out the windows.  It was wonderful – I guess until you tripped and fell!  You can check out more about him on his website.  If you look around, you can buy tilting mugs and all kinds of things.

Dec 16

+ The Boston Tea Party happened in 1773 – a day for “a cuppa”?

+ Jane Austen was born in 1775, Margaret Mead was born in 1901

+ Col Sanders died in 1980 – a day for an 8-piece bucket?

Dec 17

+ first powered flight by the Wright Bros in 1903.  A day to fly somewhere?  (I don’t think so.)

+ It’s Beethoven’s birthday.  We must have some Christmas music by Beethoven around here somewhere.

Dec 18

+ The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery (1865)

+ The Nutcracker premiered in 1892.  Apparently it did not get good reviews and was not really popular until the middle of the 20th century.

Dec 19

+ In 1972 Apollo 17 returned to earth from the moon.  It was the last time humans were on the moon.  

Dec 20

+ The Louisiana Purchase completed in 1803; the US invaded Panama in 1989.

+ Sacagawea died in 1812, John Steinbeck in 1968

And a short piece from Henri Houwen to take us into the week.  I don’t know when he wrote this, but it certainly seems appropriate for these days -

The situation in our world is frightening, and many people experience deep anxieties. More than ever we will be tested in our faith. I hope and pray that the Lord will deepen our faith during these weeks of Advent and will fill us with peace and joy, which belong to his kingdom. Hope is not optimism and I pray that we all will be able to live hopefully in the midst of our apocalyptic time. We have a promise and God is faithful to his promise even when we are doubtful and fearful. As Paul says: “Our hope is not deceptive because the Holy Spirit has already been poured into us” (Romans 5:5).

I especially like the observation that “hope is not optimism”.

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