brief comment on Islam

The Death of Musa, 14th-century Iranian manuscript.

I'm very busy, as usual, but I wanted to bring everyone's attention to a good Speaking of Faith program called "Reflections of a British Muslim Extremist." It's an interview with Ed Husain, who, as the program notes state,

was seduced, at the age of 16, by revolutionary Islamist ideals that flourished at the heart of educated British culture. Yet he later shrank back from radicalism after coming close to a murder and watching people he loved become suicide bombers. He dug deeper into Islamic spirituality, and now offers a fresh and daring perspective on the way forward.

Husain's insights are very instructive. One of the points he made touched on something that I have been thinking about for awhile, which is the huge resource for change that is American Islam:

Ms. Tippett: Tell me what you discovered that really did change your life at this later point, as an adult, what you discovered in Islam.

Mr. Husain: Much of this goes back, I must say, to American Muslim influences in that you've got fascinating scholars such as Imam Hamza Yusuf Hanson from California who I was exposed to here in Britain in the late 1990s. In him and in others, I saw Muslims who were Westerners, who were American, who were English-speaking, who were intelligent and deeply erudite and connected to a sense of prophetic Islam, connecting themselves right back to the prophet Mohammed. And they embodied that persona of compassion, of justice, of love, of humanity, and it was really getting more and more sort of involved and close to people like Imam Hanson and others here in Britain that helped me intellectually come to terms with Islam, away from Islamism, the political ideology, and more importantly, discover a spiritual tradition that sits comfortably with other spiritual traditions and looking at human beings as just that, as fellow human beings, and it's not our duty to judge others and ultimately it's them and their relationship with God. It's having that inner sense of relationship with God that manifests in your actions on the outside that I personally found worked for me. I'm not suggesting this is a panacea for everyone, but it's something that worked for me, and it very much set at home with my parents and my family and friends.

Ms. Tippett: I wonder if you have a sense of why the North American Muslim experience is so different from the experience you had as a British Muslim?

Mr. Husain: My impression is that it's the fact that you have a very strong national identity that people who, as you say, fresh off the boat can come and sign up to something in America.

Ms. Tippett: And the fact that identity is more porous somehow?

Mr. Husain: Yeah, it's there. It's palpable. The American Muslims are deeply patriotic and deeply proud of being American and being Muslim. Here, we don't have that. You'd be hard pressed to find Muslims in the north of England saying that they're British Muslims. It just doesn't happen.

Ms. Tippett: So there's a different kind of foundation that new generations of North American Muslims are building on, um-hum.

Mr. Husain: Well, exactly, yes, and you see that. I mean, take, for example, the large conferences you have in America among American Muslims. I think one of the motions that was passed was that the Jewish synagogues in America were twin with Muslim mosques. Phenomenal.

Ms. Tippett: Right. The Islamic Society of North America.

Mr. Husain: Yes, exactly. ISNA conference. That's a fascinating example from which not just Europeans, but also Arab Muslims can learn in terms of maintaining positive ties between different faiths. Try suggesting something like that to the British Muslim Council here. Almost impossible. Only after six years of kicking and screaming have they decided to attend Holocaust Memorial Day. I mean, that's what we're up against. It's a good marrying up of English anti-Semitism, which is very much hush-hush, which is still out there, and then that's married up with that being very vocal from among certain sections of the Muslim community.

The creativity that a number of American Muslim have shown in reconciling an authentic approach to their religion with their American and Western identity could be a huge force for smoothing out the confrontation between the West and the Islamic world. Unfortunately, there seem to be too many people in the US that enjoy having a clearly-defined enemy so much that they refuse to let go of their misinformed prejudices. So a religion of one billion people with 1,500 years of history, two major divisions and countless numbers of schools is distilled into one simplistic formula that, to its detractors, is corrupt and violent by nature. Uninformed bigots
never tire of informing us about the danger of Islam. American Islamic groups such as CAIR are regularly demonized. Here at Columbia, the McCarthyite troglodyte David Horowitz held an event called "Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week" (imagine an event critical of the Israeli right wing called "Judeo-Fascist Awareness Week"? How well would that fly? Or an event aimed to raise awareness of how many Christians are fascist, except, of course, "the good ones"). Charlatans and lunatics command thousands of dollars in speaking fees and appear on CNN and (of course) FOX as "terrorism experts."

Of course, I don't underestimate the danger of Islamist terrorism nor do I consider that cultural differences between Muslim countries and the West are easily bridged. Still, when it is time to decide what Islam is, perhaps we should listen to the Muslims. Not Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the ones who aren't shouting so much, people like Ed Husain. The bigots will say that he doesn't represent real Islam, which is presumptuous --of course, non-Catholics have told me I'm not a good Catholic because I don't agree 100% with the pope on every issue. Putting one billion people in the same basket seems both foolish and dangerous to me.

radio sententia -- gran ganga

A bit of the eighties in Madrid. From Pedro Almodovar's Labyrinth of Passions:



"Calamares por aqui, boquerones por alla... Aaaaaaaaahhh..."

my uncle Gary weighs in...

... on the Bush legacy:

international support: it's not just Kenya

Medieval Japanese nuns.












But what do the people in Obama, Japan think?





The girls from Obama today.

Krugman's out of control

Alfonso II of Asturias, who has nothing to do with this post.

William has written about how much Paul Krugman has been attacking Obama for Clinton's benefit, but today he has gone off the deep end. He begins by stoking old Democratic feelings by appealing to the classic hero and the classic villain:

In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

He goes on to say how he worries about division turning the Democratic party into "Nixonland." Of course, it's true that we've seen the race card pulled, threats of terrorism to inspire fear, and a desire to change the rules halfway through the race in Michigan, Florida, and Nevada, and all of this behavior is perfectly Nixonian. Still, who does Krugman see as the culprit?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

I respect Krugman, but he must be smoking too much dope at this point. I think any one example of the Clinton's race-baiting can be explained away as misinterpreted (and of course he only refers to one), but you really have to have some blinders on not to see the whole set as calculated. The same thing goes for every low road the Clinton campaign has taken to counter Obama's success. To turn around and use the adjective "Nixonian" to describe Obama supporters is a twisting of reality that approaches doublespeak. I also think both Hillary and Obama have personalities and stories that raise a great deal of passion, much more than our last couple of Democratic nominees (Gore has developed a personality now that was not evident in 2000). Supporters of both candidates are truly inspired by them, and that's not a bad thing. By referring to a "cult of personality" and then bringing up "Operation Flight Suit," Krugman not only explicitly compares Obama to George Bush (!), but to Josef Stalin (!!!!). Paul Krugman is dangerously approaching an Ann Coulter style of "journalism," and that's way beneath him.

UPDATE: Almost immediately after I posted this, I checked sitemeter and saw that someone at Princeton had came by, connected to the site from a search on "Paul Krugman -- NY Times." I don't know if it was one of Prof. Krugman's students or the man himself, and as I said I do respect Krugman a great deal. I even share with him some of his reservations about Obama's health plan. Still, I think he did stoop low with this column. I checked out some of the other links on the search page, and it's interesting how emotional this is getting for supporters of both candidates. It makes me wonder what Krugman meant by "supporters of Obama" in his column. Most of the problems I have with statements supporting Hillary Clinton against Obama come from Hillary herself, her husband, from people in her campaign, or from people close enough to the Clinton campaign that it's hard to imagine their talking points were not vetted (I'm thinking about remarks made by Andrew Cuomo or Bob Kerrey, or the op-ed in the Times by Gloria Steinem). As far as other comments go, like the crazed rant against Ted Kennedy by Marcia Pappas of NY-NOW, who knows? I'm not sure it's fair to blame the Clinton campaign for those. I would like to know what supporters Krugman is talking about.

On my run through blogs concerning this column, it was interesting to see that there were people excoriating Krugman and others praising him. A comparison to Frank Rich's Sunday column came up a couple of times, which was either denounced as trash by pro-Hillary bloggers or held up as the good to Krugman's bad by Obamamites (I personally tend towards the latter opinion). One thing that surprised me was one pro-Hillary blogger who talked about how Obama's race-baiting was despicably low. Look -- the LBJ/MLK comment could have been misunderstood (though it was horribly insensitive to civil rights activists, black and white, who literally put their lives on the line during the Civil Rights movement, something that Krugman just does not get), and Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" comment may have been taken out of context (though once again, there is an insensitivity issue here), but there were just too many racial references coming out of the Clinton camp for it to be random. They introduced race into the campaign to brand Obama as the candidate for (and only for) the African-American population. That is wrong, and as one Clinton surrogate might put it, they can't "shuck and jive" their way out of it.

DOUBLE UPDATE:
This column by Jason Linkins makes a couple of good points about Krugman's column: 1) he does not substantiate his claims in anyway, and 2) although it is true that some of the press has taken some nasty pot shots at Hillary Clinton, Obama's campaign has nothing to do with that. A side note: Linkins talks about how his wife has a problem with the chants of "Yes, we can." My wife, Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis (who is a fervent Obama supporter) couldn't help pointing out that the crowds at Obama's speeches chanting "we want change" sounded a bit too much like "Imhotep... Imhotep... Imhotep..."

(Although to tell the truth, just watching Obama's speeches on TV, I find the energy of the crowds almost as exciting as his speeches -- the energy of the "we" that Obama always talks about, as opposed to the "I" that Hillary tends to use).

friday varia

Psalter Mappamundi, 1225.

Lent: ChurchYear.net has a reading plan, with texts, of Church Fathers for Lent. There's a longer version and a shorter version.

Sports: The Mets have signed Johan Santana. The Utah Jazz beat their division rival Denver in overtime, and have now won ten in a row. Hope springs eternal.

Politics: John McCain appears to have the GOP nomination in his pocket. He is not an ideal candidate. A Time poll show him losing to Obama, but by a thin margin, and tied with Hillary. I still think Obama is the stronger candidate against McCain, but it's very early to see how the general election will play out. Conservatives have a huge problem with him even though he has been sucking up to him. Many of them are so intransigent that they may not vote for him, even against Hillary. Democrats should remind the independents who apparently still see him as a "maverick" that he has flip-flopped tremendously in order to get his party's nomination. They should ask him which John McCain he is: the liberal (!) that the right sees, or the man who is trying to appeal to people so ideologically blinded that they cheer when Bush tells them, now that the country is slipping into recession and mired down in two badly-managed wars, that they must vote Republican because "Prosperity and peace are in the balance."

Wise Guys: For those nostalgic for the Sopranos, read about the huge Cosa Nostra bust in New York and Sicily. The best part? The nicknames:

They included the Gambino family’s acting boss, John D’Amico, 73, who is known as Jackie the Nose, and underboss, Domenico Cefalu, 61, who is known as Greaseball, and the consigliere, Joseph Corozzo, who is known as JoJo, the officials said.

This is the internet age , so you can get your own Mafia nickname. Mine is "The Blossom."

Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words:














Bada bing, indeed.

S & C endorses: Barack Obama

Okay, I know everyone has been waiting for this. John Edwards and Bill Richardson have been calling me, saying they're waiting for S & C to make an endorsement before they make theirs. So here goes...

Please, please vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday if you have a primary in your state.

I had been torn between Obama and Edwards. Obama's policies do not always go far enough in the progressive direction for me. I prefer both the Edwards and the Clinton health care plans to Obama's. I am concerned that Obama might be too conciliatory to stand up to Republicans who are too accustomed to having their. Edwards is out now, though, and the choice for Democrats is down to two.

Hillary Clinton is intelligent, knowledgeable, and determined. She would make a better president than any of the candidates from the GOP. Many of those who oppose her do for the wrong reasons. Still, the way she has run her campaign has shown a disturbing lack of integrity. The use of surrogates to inject questions of race into the campaign, her attempts to change the rules halfway through the game, and the continuing misrepresentation of Obama's views and statements are far too close to the kind of politics employed by Karl Rove.

There are other issues that are important -- Hillary's connections to big business, her support of the Kyle-Lieberman amendment, and her inability to explain her vote on authorizing the Iraq war to name a few. Even putting these aside, Hillary has serious electability problems, especially against John McCain. Frank Rich has pointed out the dangerous shadow of Bill Clinton over Hillary, which seems even worse now that the Borat affair has been revealed. Hillary Clinton could also mobilize right wing voters who otherwise would be too demoralized to leave home on election day.

If John McCain wins the Republican nomination, which seems likely at this point, his aura of "integrity" will stand in sharp contrast to Hillary. I don't think that's fair, especially since I think McCain has sold his soul to advance his candidacy in the GOP, pandering to groups on the far right that are dangerous and that he previously denounced. Still, the press will continue to portray him as the "maverick," and it will convince a lot of independent voters. McCain would be a disaster as president. This is a man who has promised more wars, claimed that a hundred-year occupation of Iraq is acceptable to him, and tastelessly joked about bombing Iran. At a time of recession, he admits not understanding economics. McCain's approach to stimulating the economy is similar to George Bush's -- tax cuts. If he is more interested in reducing the deficit than Bush, as he claims, and he's paying for all of his wars, the only alternative is brutal spending cuts on social programs, infrastructure, and education, further widening the gap between the rich and the rest of us in this country.

So, back to Obama. The important question that is raised by his candidacy is that of substance. It's all very good to talk about change and hope, but don't we need more than talk? Yes, of course, and Obama has his policy ideas which are on his website -- some, not all, don't go far enough for me (e.g., his ideas on Iraq and his health care proposal). Like many other people, however, it's the intangible excitement around his campaign that gets my attention. Is that shallow? I don't know. I do believe, however, that Obama was right in the New Hampshire debate when he said, "words do inspire." Words and expressions like "if you're not with us, you're against us," "axis of evil," and "terrorist" have been very powerful over the past seven years. I think one of Hillary's low points was when, Giuliani-style, she invoked the threat of a terrorist attack to support her candidacy. I am tired of politics of fear and divisiveness, and for all my doubts, Obama can electrify me. He won't solve all the country's problems, but it's time for a change of style. If you have a few minutes, watch his victory speech in South Carolina:



Not bad, huh?

By the way, thanks to Kevin for many of the links. I highly recommend his blog, Ghost in the Machine, for those following this election.

Vote Obama on Tuesday, please.

feast of St Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas, "the big fella."

Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus, one of the great minds of the Middle Ages and patron of us academics and teachers. As I am a busy academic and teacher, I will just leave you with St. Thomas' great Prayer Before Study (English following the Latin), from the Thesaurus Precum Latinarum.

CREATOR ineffabilis, qui de thesauris sapientiae tuae tres Angelorum hierarchias designasti et eas super caelum empyreum miro ordine collocasti atque universi partes elegantissime distribuisti: Tu, inquam, qui verus fons luminis et sapientiae diceris ac supereminens principium, infundere digneris super intellectus mei tenebras tuae radium claritatis, duplices, in quibus natus sum, a me removens tenebras, peccatum scilicet et ignorantiam. Tu, qui linguas infantium facis disertas, linguam meam erudias atque in labiis meis gratiam tuae benedictionis infundas. Da mihi intelligendi acumen, retinendi capacitatem, addiscendi modum et facilitatem, interpretandi subtilitatem, loquendi gratiam copiosam. Ingressum instruas, progressum dirigas, egressum compleas. Tu, qui es verus Deus et homo, qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O INFINITE Creator, who in the riches of Thy wisdom didst appoint three hierarchies of Angels and didst set them in wondrous order over the highest heavens, and who didst apportion the elements of the world most wisely: do Thou, who art in truth the fountain of light and wisdom, deign to shed upon the darkness of my understanding the rays of Thine infinite brightness, and remove far from me the twofold darkness in which I was born, namely, sin and ignorance. Do Thou, who givest speech to the tongues of little children, instruct my tongue and pour into my lips the grace of Thy benediction. Give me keenness of apprehension, capacity for remembering, method and ease in learning, insight-in interpretation, and copious eloquence in speech. Instruct my beginning, direct my progress, and set Thy seal upon the finished work, Thou, who art true God and true Man, who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.

radio sententia -- new nick cave and the bad seeds

A new Nick Cave album will come out on March 3rd. Here's the first video, "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!":

Here's Nick Cave on Lazarus, from the website:

"Ever since I can remember hearing the Lazarus story, when I was a kid, you know, back in church, I was disturbed and worried by it. Traumatized, actually. We are all, of course, in awe of the greatest of Christ's miracles - raising a man from the dead - but I couldn't help but wonder how Lazarus felt about it. As a child it gave me the creeps, to be honest. I've taken Lazarus and stuck him in New York City, in order to give the song, a hip, contemporary feel. I was also thinking about Harry Houdini who spent a lot of his life trying to debunk the spiritualists who were cashing in on the bereaved. He believed there was nothing going on beyond the grave. He was the second greatest escapologist, Harry was, Lazarus, of course, being the greatest. I wanted to create a kind of vehicle, a medium, for Houdini to speak to us if he so desires, you know, from beyond the grave. Sometimes, late at night, if you listen to the song hard enough, you can hear his voice and the sad clanking of his chains. "I don't know what it is but there is definitely something going on upstairs", he seems to be saying. It is, most of all, an elegy to the New York City of the 70's."

Dread Zeppelin on the feast of St Anthony

I never said that under no circumstances would I enjoy a Led Zeppelin song,

New Hampshire

A twelfth-century miniature that has absolutely nothing to do with last night's primary election in New Hampshire.

Well, it certainly is a season of surprises. I suggest that until November we stop listening when the professional bloviators in the media tell us something is a sure thing. Hillary was finished, nothing could stop Obama. Well... Still, it's important to see that she only won by two percentage points in a state she was supposed to win anyway, and that she and Obama both came out of it with the same number of delegates.

There has been a fair amount of discussion at William's and Jeff's about the primaries and the candidates. I still feel closest to Edwards, but I don't see him going very far at this point. Perhaps he could surprise us in South Carolina, but if he doesn't I'd rather see the voters who are concerned about Hillary put their weight behind Obama.

For the record, I will vote for Hillary if she does get the nomination, but not terribly happily. If nothing else, I'm tired of the Bush-Clinton alteration -- do you realize that 18-year-old voters in this election were born under Bush I? I could list the other problems I have with Hillary, but Kevin has done so very well already here (though I feel more sympathetic to Edwards' populism than he does).

One thing I have noticed in talking to people is how much this nomination is about personality and our reactions to personality. For example, William and I have differed with Crystal about Edwards' sincerity. Each of us has tirelessly explained why we like him or not, but in the end it comes down to a gut feeling that really can't be debated. It's the same with Hillary. I personally don't see her as soulless and fake as some people do (though I wonder about her opportune show of emotion this weekend), but I do feel (emphasis on the word "feel") that she lacks vision and that her brand of politics is too divisive and cutthroat. On policy, I'm probably closest to Kucinich, though I see that it is unlikely that he could implement it and impossible that he could be elected. I prefer the Clinton and Edwards health-care plans to Obama's, and Richardson's approach to foreign policy. Still, Obama's speech after winning Iowa really moved me. My brain says it's all just pretty words, what about his policies, will he be too conciliatory to people who are willing to eat him for breakfast... but still, maybe there is something to what he said in last weekend's debate:

And, you know, so, the truth is, actually, words do inspire, words do help people get involved, words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power. Because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, "Yes, we can," and that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

Getting away from the politics of fear is something I think we're all longing for. I'm about ready to throw my weight behind Obama.

In the meantime, it's interesting to see the breakdown of NH voters. Once again, wealthier and better-educated people like Obama more. Less well-off people are not responding to Edwards' populist message. Clinton and Edwards both did better than Obama among people who said they voted for the candidate "who cares for people like me." Very oddly, Clinton, the most hawkish of the Dems, did best among those who wanted troops to be withdrawn immediately from Iraq, whereas Obama did overwhelming well with those who want troops to stay in Iraq "as long as they're needed." On the religious breakdown, Obama and Clinton did equally well among Protestant voters, but Clinton dominated among Catholic voters with 44%, and Edwards did better with Catholics than with any other religious denomination, getting support of 24%. There are more interesting tidbits there, take a look at it.

On to Nevada.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Feast of St Dominic of Silos

Santo Domingo de Silos, by Bartolome Bermejo, fifteenth century.

Today is the feast of St. Dominic of Silos -- not to be confused with St. Dominic of Guzman, the founder of the Dominican Order. Dominic was the eleventh-century abbot of the monastery of Silos in the province of Burgos. The monastery is famous for its Romanesque cloister and chart-topping singing monks. There is a connection with the other Dominic, as described by the Franciscans at American Catholic:

Our saint today, Dominic of Silos was born in Spain around the year 1000 into a peasant family. As a young boy he spent time in the fields, where he welcomed the solitude. He became a Benedictine priest and served in numerous leadership positions. Following a dispute with the king over property, Dominic and two other monks were exiled. They established a new monastery in what at first seemed an unpromising location. Under Dominic’s leadership, however, it became one of the most famous houses in Spain. Many healings were reported there.

About 100 years after Dominic’s death, a young woman made a pilgrimage to his tomb. There Dominic of Silos appeared to her and assured her that she would bear another son. The woman was Joan of Aza, and the son she bore grew up to be the "other" Dominic—the one who founded the Dominicans.

For many years thereafter, the staff used by St. Dominic of Silos was brought to the royal palace whenever a queen of Spain was in labor. The practice ended in 1931.

Abbot Dominic was part of the reforming spirit of the eleventh century. He was the subject of an extensive Latin vita written around 1100 by a French monk named Grimaldus and another in Spanish verse by the great thirteenth-century poet Gonzalo de Berceo. The monastery, originally dedicated to St. Sebastian, was renamed for its most famous abbot soon after his death. The monks there have dedicated themselves to the quality of their Gregorian Chant and have become quite famous. You can listen to some samples at their website.

I will leave you with a youtube video with some great footage of the cloister:

eight meme

Alfonso VIII of Castile.

I have been tagged by William and retagged by Talmida, so here is my "eight" meme.






8 Passions in my life:

Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis
Medieval History
Latin
Spain
Liturgy
Music
Cooking
Poetry


8 Things to do before I die:

Camino de Santiago
Return to Jerusalem
The Silk Road on camelback
See the Aurora borealis
Learn Greek
Roast a whole lamb in my yard
Finish my dissertation
Dine in Lyon and Bologna


8 Things I often say:

I'm so tired.
&%@+*&%!
Hot sauce and white sauce.
Amen.
I love you (see first entry of first list).
Have you done your homework?
Mishea,* let's take a nap.
Mitt Romney is a d*******g.


8 Books I read (or reread) recently:

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
The Historian
Antichrist
Snow Crash
The Clouds
Medea
The Iliad


8 Films that mean something to me:

Casablanca
Caro Diario
Intravista
The Road Home
Black Cat, White Cat
Galaxy Quest
The Night of the Hunter
Simple Men


8 Songs that mean something to me:

Pale Blue Eyes (The Velvet Underground)
A Love Supreme (John Coltrane) (what Garpu said)
Didi (Khaled)
Pe' Dispietto (Nuova Comagnia di Canto Popolare)
Any one of a number of Nick Cave songs
Any piece by Palestrina
You're Innocent When you Dream (Tom Waits)
It's All Right, Ma (Bob Dylan)


8 Living people I'd like to have as dinner guests:

Nanni Moretti
Nick Cave
Tom Waits
Seamus Heaney
Lauren Bacall
Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, SJ
Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ
A really good medium, because there are a lot of dead people I want there.


8 People I'm passing this on to:

Sandalstraps
Fayrouz
Brian
Gabriele
Ted
Kevin
mi primo
and whoever else wants to play...

*my cat

radio sententia -- Khaled

Very busy, but here is a song I love from the Algerian Rai singer Khaled. Dig the funky bass and the dude with the horns on his head.

thanksgiving

Despite the long lines at the turkey leg stands at medieval fairs, their were no turkeys in medieval Europe. Here is a bestiary illumination of a goose.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

first available photo

Photo credit: my uncle Ned.

art

A collaborative effort. Filius imperatricis pulcherrimae Africae occidentalis did Batman, I did the rest.

a bumper sticker I like

We're back

Mr. and Mrs. Moore, on the Charles Bridge in Prague.

my email to my senator

The Judgment of Solomon. English, thirteenth century.

Dear Senator Schumer,

Reading today about Mr. Mukasey's testimony before your committee, I was dismayed to see he shares some of the same misguided ideas about torture and presidential power being above the law that have led to some of the worse excesses of this administration. I am sure Mr. Mukasey is a fine man and I know you have spoken well about him in the past, but I urge you to vote against his confirmation and insist that the president nominate someone who is clear and passionate in his commitment to the balance of constitutional powers and the most basic human rights.

working working working

I'm still working too hard to post anything extensive, but here's an animated version of my favorite comic book, the Bayeux Tapestry:

You can make your own Bayeux Tapestry story here.

Also: although the BT is my favorite comic book, it does not feature my favorite superhero, Detective Chimp.

radio sententia -- Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo"

Still trying to keep my head above the ocean of work. In the meantime, I leave you a great video of an aria from Claudio Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" -- one of the first operas. It is conducted by one of my favorite early music directors and a mean viol da gamba player, Jordi Savall, and sung beautifully by his wife, Montserrat Figueras.

Oh, and the guy in the balcony with the drum and the beard is the coolest guy on earth.

UPDATE: As you can see, they won't let me show this on the blog. It's worth going to YouTube for. Here's the link.

Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross

According to sitemeter, people have been visiting s&c from all over the world (Malta, India, Ireland, Australia) looking for information on today's feast, and reading my post from last year. Cool.

radio sententia -- Estrella Morente

I discovered Estrella Morente after I moved back from Spain, although I was already familiar with her father's music. She is a great, soulful flamenco singer who is both very traditional and very individual in style. Here she is, accompanied, apparently, by some Portuguese musicians:



She's from Granada and is married to a bullfighter! That's hardcore!

This next song is one of my favorites. The video is just still photos:



The first flamenco singer I ever got into (I bought a cassette of his songs outside the Madrid bullring) was the great Pepe Marchena. I always found the delicacy of his voice and style to be extremely moving:

radio sententia -- Rasputina

I've started teaching and am working hard on my dissertation, so it's Homer and Fernando I all the time. I'm just going to let you know what I've been listening to lately. Rasputina is a cello-based rock group with an Edward Gorey feel. I think this video captures their style pretty well.

They also do some fun covers:

odd bedfellows

Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Toots Thielmans, David Sanborn, and Charlie Haden playing "Hey Joe," circa 1988.

tattoos -- give me your advice

A Coptic Christian in Ethiopia.

"Do not lacerate your bodies for the dead, and do not tattoo yourselves. I am the LORD."
-Leviticus 19:28

Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis and I are giving each other tattoos as wedding presents. Yes, I know about the prohibition in Leviticus, but hey, I also trim the hair of my beard, which is forbidden by the previous verse. Most commentaries on these commandments identify them as forbidding actions involved in specific Canaanite mourning practices. In the end, I think for Christians they go the way of the dietary restrictions also found in Leviticus. Since allergy keeps me from enjoying the permission to eat shrimp, getting a tattoo will have to be my consolation prize.

We decided that we would engrave on our rings messages to each other from the Song of Songs, in Latin. My ring will have "dilectus meus mihi et ego illi" -- "My lover belongs to me and I to him" [Songs 2:15]. Her small ring has only enough room for "tota pulchra es" -- "You are all-beautiful" [Songs 4:7]. We thought then we would each have a tattoo of a longer version of our message.

This is where I need your advice, oh loyal sententites. Where shall I get it? In what form? How many words? I'm thinking of either the upper arm or the shoulder. I'm more inclined to the former, because I want to be able to see it. If I put it on my arm, should it be a band or more like a paragraph? Should there be a frame?

Finally, how much should I put? I like this verse and the two following. Should I put all of it? Excerpts? Let me give you all three verses in Latin, then the Douay-Rheims translation (from the Latin), then the New American version:

[tota pulchra es] amica mea et macula non est in te//

veni de Libano sponsa veni de Libano veni coronaberis de capite Amana de vertice Sanir et Hermon de cubilibus leonum de montibus pardorum//

vulnerasti cor meum soror mea sponsa vulnerasti cor meum in uno oculorum tuorum et in uno crine colli tui

[Thou art all fair,] O my love, and there is not a spot in thee.//

Come from Libanus, my spouse, come from Libanus, come: thou shalt be crowned from the top of Amana, from the top of Sanir and Hermon, from the dens of the lions, from the mountains of the leopards.//

Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck. [D-R]

[You are all-beautiful,] my beloved,
and there is no blemish in you.//

Come from Lebanon, my bride,
come from Lebanon, come!
Descend from the top of Amana,
from the top of Senir and Hermon,
From the haunts of lions,
from the leopards' mountains.//

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes,
with one bead of your necklace. [NAB]

Let me hear what you think.

curses!

I couldn't really find the image I was looking for, but here's a really cool Lucas Cranach engraving of a werewolf, 1512.

A post on Wonkette led me to this article in the LA Times about the pastor and former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, Wiley S. Drake. Apparently, Drake used his church letterhead to endorse Mike Huckabee for president, and Americans United for Separation of Church State asked the IRS to investigate the church's tax status. Drake responded by asking his followers to use imprecatory prayer against two leaders of that organization -- specifically to pray that misfortune would come to them. He suggested Psalm 109, which includes the following:

When he is tried, let him be found guilty,
and may his prayers condemn him.

May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.

May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.

May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven from their ruined homes.

May a creditor seize all he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.

May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.

May his descendants be cut off,
their names blotted out from the next generation.

May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD;
may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.

May their sins always remain before the LORD,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Pretty strong stuff. Drake feels justified:

Drake said Wednesday he was "simply doing what God told me to do" by targeting Americans United officials Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming, whom he calls the "enemies of God."
"God says to pray imprecatory prayer against people who attack God's church," he said. "The Bible says that if anybody attacks God's people, David said this is what will happen to them."

It's hard to know where to begin to comment on this. The obvious point is that someone has to get Drake and people like him a copy of the New Testament and have them sit down and read it. His hubris strikes me as well -- getting his tax status investigated is an "attack" on God's church? Comparable to, say, the Diocletian Persecution? There's really no need to comment any further.

Except, of course, to say that the medievals always did these things better. I couldn't help thinking about Lester Little's book Benedictine Maledictions, about how Benedictine monks, faced with grave dangers and threats to life and property, developed liturgical curses, some of them involving a very elaborate ritual (here's a good review by Constance Bouchard). These curses were sophisticated and made sense given the context -- a far cry from Drake's approach.

rest in peace

Max Roach, 1924-2007.

Another cool video of the great jazz drummer:

oh dear...

Saint Roch and his dog.

How can someone who runs a dog-fighting ring be even more vile? Use kittens as bait. Good Lord...

Feast of St James

The oldest known representation of St James as a pilgrim on route to his own shrine, from the eleventh century. Note the cockle shell insignia.

Today is the feast of St James the Greater, known in Spain as Santiago el Mayor. His tomb in Compostela in the Northwestern region of Galicia has been an important pilgrimage site for well over a thousand years -- as important in the Middle Ages as Rome and Jerusalem. A bit of information: his story from the Golden Legend in Caxton's translation, and an interesting interactive site from UCLA on the Way of St James.

Imagine what it's like when weary pilgrims who have been walking for weeks under the unforgiving Spanish sun arrive at the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. Imagine how meaningful it is to them! Imagine how bad they smell! You need a lot of incense to cover that up, hence the Botafumeiro:

Akkadian

Stele of Naram-Sin, king of Akkad, celebrating his victory against the Lullubi from Zagros.







Via Talmida, the "Which Ancient Language are You?" test. My results:

Your Score: Akkadian

You scored

You are Akkadian, a blend of the incomprehensible symbols of the Sumerians with the unwritable sounds of the early Semitic peoples. However, the writing just doesn't suit the words and doesn't represent everything needed, so you end up a schizoid mess. Invented in Babylon, you're probably to blame for that tower story. However, crazy as you are, you're much loved and appreciated, and remain actively in use by records keepers long after schools have switched to other languages.

Link: The Which Ancient Language Are You Test written by imipak on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

feast of St Hank

St Henry II, the last of the Ottonians and the only emperor to be declared a saint, being crowned by Christ in a page from an illuminated imperial sacramentary.

As usual, I'm too damn busy to blog, even though so much worth commenting on has come out of the Vatican recently and I still have to respond to Talmida's meme. Fortunately, Crystal has two excellent posts on the motu proprio and the recent CDF document concerning other churches. I direct everyone to her blog.

As for Latin, traditionalists, etc., I direct you to an amusing old post of mine.

curious...

As always, too busy to blog, so I'm just posting this odd image -- a Bolshevik propaganda poster from 1920 showing Trotsky as St George, slaying the dragon of counter-revolution (note the capitalist top hat). Below, a Russian Icon of St George from the fourteenth century.

week full o' saints

Saints Cyril of Alexandria and Irenaeus of Lyons.

We're approaching the end of Ramon Llull Week, so get those Lullian blogposts up, everyone!

Meanwhile, we've had the feast days of a couple of important Church Fathers. Yesterday was the feast of St. Cyril of Alexandria. St Cyril could have competed with our beloved St Jerome as patron saint of grumpy old men, and in addition Cyril was a man of grumpy actions as much as of grumpy words. Alas, "tolerant" is not the best word to describe him. The Franciscans at americancatholic.org recognize those failings, but they also point out the importance of his writings on the divine and human natures of Christ, expressed in his "theme":

Only if it is one and the same Christ who is consubstantial with the Father and with men can he save us, for the meeting ground between God and man is the flesh of Christ. Only if this is God's own flesh can man come into contact with Christ's divinity through his humanity. Because of our kinship with the Word made flesh we are sons of God. The Eucharist consummates our kinship with the word, our communion with the Father, our sharing in the divine nature—there is very real contact between our body and that of the Word.

Today is the feast of St Irenaeus of Lyons, one of our earliest theologians, whose most famous work, Adversus Haereses helped to solidify both the canon and the meaning of early Christianity. The Franciscans have a nice commentary about him:

A deep and genuine concern for other people will remind us that the discovery of truth is not to be a victory for some and a defeat for others. Unless all can claim a share in that victory, truth itself will continue to be rejected by the losers, because it will be regarded as inseparable from the yoke of defeat. And so, confrontation, controversy and the like might yield to a genuine united search for God's truth and how it can best be served.

Now get your Llull on, everybody.

Happy Feast of Blessed Ramon Llull!

I have been too busy to post lately, but according to the Franciscans at americancatholic.org, today is the Feast of Blessed Ramon Llull (see long post below). Elsewhere I read that his feast day is June 30. Either way, have a Happy Ramon Llull Week!

UPDATE: It seems CowboyAngel at Zone is also in the Ramon Llull Week spirit, and has written an excellent post on the mystical world of thirteenth-century Spain. As a matter of fact, I dare everyone to write on Ramon Llull this week.

It's Ramon Llull Week!

Ramon Llull

Two manuscript pages from works of Ramon Llull, and his "Figure A" and "Figure T" from a printed edition.

I have been working quite a bit on the dissertation and have neglected the blog a bit, but I thought I might post a wee bit about the fascinating thirteenth-century mystic and philosopher, Ramon Llull. I wrote a paper about his Liber principiorum medicinae (Book of the principles of medicine -- LPM) for a history of medieval science class I took a couple of years ago, so I will just cut and paste a bit (footnotes available on demand):

Ramon Llull is a singular figure. Born in Majorca in 1232 or 1233, he spent the first thirty years of his life as a courtier of James the Conqueror. Around 1263 he had a series of visions that led him to dedicate his life to God, although he did not enter a religious order at that time. After his visions, he decided to serve God through martyrdom, “and to accomplish this by carrying out the task of converting to His worship and service the Saracens who in such numbers surrounded the Christians on all sides.” In addition to this, he felt “he would have to write a book, the best in the world, against the errors of the unbelievers.” To prepare himself, he spent ten years in Majorca studying a wide variety of subjects including Latin and Arabic.

When he felt ready, Llull began to write. Thanks to his long life (he lived until 1316) and astounding energy, Llull wrote at least 292 books in Latin, Catalan, and Arabic. He wrote novels, poetry, sermons, treatises on law, astrology, medicine and a widely-translated book on chivalry. Llull considered his most important work his Art, a vast systemization of the world that had as an aim the demonstration of the relationship of all of reality to a certain number of God’s attributes or “dignities:” goodness, greatness, power, wisdom, etc. This is the book (“the best in the world”) he referred to in the Vita coaetanea, although really it is a series of books, each a reworking of the Art. They include the Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem of ca. 1274, the Ars demonstrativa of 1283, the Ars inventiva veritatis of 1290, and the Ars generalis ultima of 1305-8. Many of his other books, including the Liber principiorum medicinae, are applications of the Art to specific fields.

Given the number of Llull’s works and the complexity of his ideas, it is very difficult to find one useful approach to studying his system. He reduces ideas to letter codes, such as A B C D, which may or may not signify the same thing from one book to another. In each work he defines his “alphabet” or code, usually with the aid of diagrams, and his warning at the beginning of the LPM is typical of warnings in many of his works: “These letters form the basis of the Art, and whoever does not know them cannot understand the Art.” The “alphabets,” however, change from work to work. In the Ars compendiosa inveniendo veritatem, the version of the Art written at the same time as the LPM, the letters B through K represent the various “dignities” of God, whereas A represents the unity of God. In the LPM, the letters change to represent the four qualities (A through D) and the sixteen possible combinations of those qualities (E through Y). The number of dignities changed as Llull refined his Art. He began with sixteen, and in other works there are ten, twelve, twenty, or nine. No wonder one critic spoke of “the severe ordeal of battling with Ramon Lull.”

It is very confusing, but very cool. What I like about Llull is that not only is he both a mathematician and a mystic, but that his mysticism is mathematical and his mathematics is mystical. Later alchemists were much interested in his work, and many of them wrote works that they attributed to him -- the Pseudo-Llullian works. In my paper I tried to explain how his Art works:

The Art is a method, a process to be used. It is based a number of figures that the reader is supposed to operate in a certain fashion, and through which “a man can find the truth in the fastest manner, and contemplate and know God and animate virtues and mortify vices.” These figures consist usually of wheels or boxes that show possible relations between different concepts. An examination of two of these figures can provide a simplified overview of how Llull’s Art functions.

The central figure is “Figure A.” It is a wheel which has as a center the letter A, representing God. It is surrounded by 16 camerae, chambers, representing “the sixteen Virtues; however we do not say they are ‘cardinal’ virtues, nor ‘theological’ nor ‘accidental,’ but rather essential virtues.” These “virtues,” referred to in Llull’s other works as “dignities”, are the following: goodness, magnitude, eternity, power, wisdom, will, virtue, truth, glory, perfection, justice, largess, mercy, humility, dominion, and patience. Each dignity has its own letter in the Latin alphabet from B to R, and Llull always refers to the letter, not to the word. The camerae are connected by a web of lines that represent all the possible binary combinations of the dignities, for the operation Llull expects of the reader involves combining these concepts: “from which [sixteen dignities] are formed 120 chambers, through which the lovers of this art can achieve knowledge of God and pose and solve questions through necessary reasons.”

These dignities, “the instruments of God’s creative activity, the causes and archetypes of all created perfection,” are the center of Llull’s system. Through them, everything is related to God. It is possible that Llull got his dignities from Arabic theology, or from Augustine’s list of the divine attributes in De trinitate, from the Jewish Cabala, or from the De divinis nominibus of Pseudo-Dionysus via John Scotus Erigena. Wherever he found them, he used them to develop a system that is at once very dynamic and mechanistic. Not only can these dignities be combined with each other, but they can be combined with the fifteen concepts arranged in the five triangles of another figure, “Figure T.” The concepts in figures “A” and “T” would later be known as the “absolute” and “relative” principals of the Art. Each triangle of figure “T” consists of two concepts that can be considered in some way opposites, balanced by a mediating third term. Thus “beginning” and “end” are mediated by “middle,” and “majority” and “minority” are mediated by “equality.” These relative principals are the means through which “the Dignities mutually communicate their natures and diffuse them throughout all creation.” Llull calculates the number of combinations in figure “T” as 115.

Even leaving out the five other figures in the Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem, it is easy to see both how complex and how mechanical the system is. In a later version of the Art, Lull even proposed a figure that only consisted of three sets of concentric wheels marked B through K for the absolute and relative principals. One wheel was fixed and the other two could be moved so that the practitioner of the Art could make his or her own combinations. Thus by combining figures “A” and “T,” he or she could posit, for example, “the beginning of the virtue of greatness,” or “the equality of the wisdom of glory.” This substitution of symbols for concept and the subsequent exhaustive combination of them has led some to see Llull as a precursor of modern symbolic logic and computer science.

This is a very simplified description of how the Art functions, but what exactly is the Art and what purpose does it serve? What does Llull mean by “finding truth?” One of its purposes, to judge by the title of the 1283 version, Ars demonstrativa, is to demonstrate how all aspects of reality are interconnected and function in a similar analogical manner. As R. D. F. Pring-Mill puts it, “Basically, the Art works by relating all areas of knowledge (including the religious field) directly back to the manifestation of God’s ‘Dignities’ in the universe, and then proceeding to argue its way analogically up and down the ‘ladder of being.,’” Much of this has to do with conversion of unbelievers, which Llull saw as his particular mission. The purpose of this book was, as stated in the Vita, to be “against the errors of unbelievers.” The Art presupposes “as an axiomatic point of departure, both the monotheistic vision of the Godhead which was common to the Jewish, Moslem, and Christian faiths, and their common acceptance of broadly Neo-Platonic exemplarist world-picture.”

The Art is also a manual for exploration. It is, as Anthony Bonner points out, a technique—“ars” was the usual scholastic translation for the Greek techne. Llull set out building blocks for the apprentice of his art and expected that anyone could be the master of it after a year’s study. It could be applied to any field and any field could be applied to it, it was just a matter of plugging in data to the machine. In one book on astrology and medicine, Lull recognizes that his information could be faulty, but not his Art:

Again I excuse myself, since I do not know
whether it is true that Aries is hot and dry . . .
but I suppose that it is so, according to what
the ancients said, which had been seen by
them through experience. And if it is true, what
I say about the stars is necessarily true,
since I say this artificially through the
Ars generalis, and the Art is infallible.

His Art was, after all, a product of divine illumination. It was a mystical gift of a structure that could be applied to all things. If it seems that Llull is writing on many levels at any given time, it is because for him nothing is outside the Art, and nothing is disconnected from the great chain of being. Everything Llull writes about refers ultimately to the transcendent categories of the dignities. The Art can be applied to the physical world, but its center is in the metaphysical world. For Llull, there is no dramatic separation between them.

For more on Llull, check out the Centre de Documentació Ramon Llull at the University of Barcelona (in several languages, including English), or this page, by an apparent modern-day Llullian, that includes several of his works in English and even a free downloadable program that allows you to use Llull's figures on your computer. Llull's foremost translator in English Anthony Bonner has distilled his great and expensive two volume anthology of Llull's writing into an affordable paperback, Doctor Illuminatus. It's fun stuff.

IPAO, BSW cum laude

Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis, with el menda. Mater imperatricis pulcherrimae Africae occidentalis is in the background, to the the left. Photo: Filius imperatricis pulcherrimae Africae occidentalis.

A week and a half ago, Imperatrix pulcherrima Africae occidentalis graduated from Adelphi University cum laude, and with Greek honors, a Bachelor of Social Work. Despite a number of difficulties, her persistence and her dedication to her calling allowed her to overcome an amazing amount of slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and I am more proud of her than I can say. She is my hero.

After the ceremony we went to a restaurant in Queens, and I enjoyed a most excellent Ecuadorian goat stew.