Guess who woke up a bit before 7 AM and began setting up the
Christmas tree at 7 AM?
Yep. Me. It did me good.
Boy, that's a lot of work!
Of course I would get all done, and
our main window shade DIRECTLY behind the
Christmas tree would break and I had to move the
WHOLE quick-unplug-the-lights tree.
Sigh.
But it's back in place now
(without a window shade to pull down behind it)...
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Mr Husband drove me down town (in our NJ town)
so I could get my boots (they were being repaired)
and (I asked) he picked me up some lentil soup for dinner!
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Pilgrim: I think what you were referring to is this person
which poem did she mention?
So neat that there are so many valuable
resources to think upon!
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This week was good but tiring,
hard but worth it.
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We are staying local for church DV and resting.
I need to go to NYC next week
and I need to rest up!
***
Tomorrow I hope to finish the Thanksgiving cleanup
(still a few things to wash) and finish the Christmas
decorating.... of course I got most of it done today,
Thank God.
***
May God bless and keep you all,
dear readers and many blog friends!
8 comments:
Thank you Elizabeth. Actually, I was looking for her blog and found it, "A clerk of Oxford".
Very interesting stuff. Your tree makes me smile. I needed that!
Yes, that’s her. I’m not sure if Rod got this from her blog or Patreon, but since he’s made it public, as part of recommending subscribing to her, it’s out there. I quote Rod:
Her translation of these stanzas:
But let us leave our disputations,
And believe in him who made all things.
We cannot prove by any reason
How he was born, who redeemed us all;
But, whole in our intention,
Let us worship him in heart and thought,
For he may turn nature upside-down,
Who made all nature out of nothing.
When all our books are brought out,
And all our clerkly skill,
And all our wits are sought all through,
We still pass as a fantasy.
Of fantasy is all our faring,
Old and young and all together.
But let us make merry and put by care,
And worship God while we are here;
Spend our goods and spare little,
And let each man encourage another to be cheerful
Think how we came here entirely bare.
Our way wends on, we know not where.
Pray we that the Prince who has no peer
May take us wholly to his mercy,
And keep our conscience clear,
For this world is but fantasy.
By this example you may understand:
A great tree grows out of the ground,
And the earth is not a tiny bit diminished,
Although the tree is tall, big and round.
The tree will still be rooted there
When old age has brought down his kindred;
Though there were three such trees rooted there,
The earth will not be enlarged by any degree.
Thus wax and wane man, horse, and hound,
From nothing to nothing from hence we fly,
And here we stay but a little while;
This world is but fantasy.
(Blogger limited the length, so continued here.)
Rod again:
Isn’t that beautiful? Parker’s commentary includes this passage:
This poem has been in my mind lately, partly because I find a bit of medieval wisdom poetry helps a lot when everything is so unrelentingly sad. So many, many good things have gone in the past few months and they're probably never coming back, so it's genuinely useful to be reminded that always and everywhere, 'wo is ende of worldes wele'. Of course. What else is to be expected? Something about this particular poem's emphasis on 'fantasy' also seems an apt way of describing our strange 'new normal', where the virtual world, absent and insubstantial, is supposed to take the place of so many of the forms of tangible human contact we once knew and relied on. The fantasy of the virtual world creates the illusion of bringing people before us, but the moment the screen goes black they vanish into nothingness, much swifter than the flight of a bird. You're still alone in an empty room. And if virtual life isn't that, it's social media, with its hate and anger and violence, lurching from one crisis to the next, full of people utterly unwilling to extend kindness or understanding to strangers when they can shout at them instead. That's fantasye as phantom, nightmare. For me, real-life contact with other human beings is ordinarily what stops all that from becoming overwhelming, and makes it flee away like a bad dream. Often, one little friendly interaction with a stranger on the bus or in a shop has been enough to give me hope that most people aren't really be as awful as they seem on the internet. But that's gone; those harmless interactions are impossible now. Smiling faces are hidden, life's little grace notes of sympathy are silenced, while the howling roar of virtual rage goes on louder than ever. Well, that too isn't really new, but just the same endless wrangling which this poem warns against. 'Each side thinks the others rave'... A horrible new normal all this may be, but there's nothing new under the sun.
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End of quote.
The historian Tom Holland recommended subscribing to Eleanor Parker’s Patreon, and Rod Dreher has been reading Tom Holland recently. Holland was not a Christian, but came to see what a great positive impact Christianity has had on the world, and I think he’s been attending services.
Paul Kingsnorth, who Rod has also been reading, has been on a pilgrimage along the path of environmentalism. He has given up on the possibility of saving the planet, and thinks we need to do what we can to survive what’s coming. He is becoming more interested in Christianity.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.“ T.S. Eliot
I love all the Christmasy goodness! I have a little tree and several creches that I look forward to getting out. Thanks for all the inspiration! God bless you guys and your home! :)
This is for 'Pilgrim' commenting above. Do YOU have a blog?
Your place is looking lovely. You probably got the last few things done today and now to relax and enjoy it.
Hi Mary,
I had two but stopped working on them when I got concerned about privacy and the tone of online Twitter, over the past six months or so.
Also, the things I was mostly thinking about were “unbloggable,” family things. Maybe that’s changed a little, and I should try again, on the safe margins.
I’ll change the privacy setting, and you can click through.
:-)
Hi Pilgrim: You are just the BEST to let me view your blogs. They are so interesting. Most especially the sketches/watercolors. Sorta' up my alley. God bless and be safe.
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