The U.S. government estimates 60,000 immigrant children this year. There are over 300,000 churches in America, most of them hewing to a mission of spreading some kind of good news. What good news? Salvation. The coming kingdom. A God whose will, we pray, be done on earth as it is in heaven.And what is his will? That’s not for me to say, but it is for me to ask, and for you to ask. It’s for us to ask, and then to listen. Are we listening, we who spend millions to travel overseas carrying the Gospel to the lost, now that God is sending tens of thousands of them our way?
I know there are geopolitical practicalities that transcend the priorities of my stupid bleeding heart, but 300,000 churches and 60,000 children.
What if, instead of greeting the federal agents with protest signs, we greeted them with petitions? Give us these children. We will feed them, we will clothe them, we will give them shelter. We will teach them and we will pray over them. Their parents, God help them, sent them away, and now here we stand to make good on the faith or hope or desperation in which those mothers and fathers sent them forth. Give us these children, and we will find a way. We will show mercy, because while we can scarcely agree between ourselves on anything else, we agree that the kingdom of heaven includes a hand stretched out in love.
It’s utterly impractical, I know. But how have we done so far, Christians, with practicality? For Christ’s sake, let’s not be known for our practicality
Serafini
When it comes to collecting, I’m most persistent about tracking down artwork by Luigi Serafini. It has been a constant presence in my life for almost a decade, and I’ve spent hours digging and digging to find his work tucked away under rocks and in obscure corners - especially for an American who doesn’t speak a word of Italian.So, one of my alerts alerted me to this book series, about which I know nothing except that Serafini contributed illustrations. I contacted the publisher asking for more info, and in the course of emailing about my collecting habit, he asked if I wanted him to get Serafini to sign my copies. Lucky break, right? Well, what I didn’t expect was full-page inscriptions bearing my name, rendered in Serafini’s made-up language from the Codex Seraphinianus. I was literally short of breath when I opened these books and realized what I had. That’s pretty much the moment every collector lives for.
The books are very nice, too - the illustrations are printed on textured paper that is heavier than the rest of the pages, and most of these images are new to me, which is a bonus as well.
York Minster
Up close and personalI made these images today and they are quite special. The expressive medieval faces - and a pair of hands - are part of the stained-glass “Great East Windows” at York Minster and they date from 1408. Not many people have seen these details from this close, for the simple reason that they are normally positioned twenty meters or so above ground level. Except for now. They are presently being restored and thus taken down, one segment at the time, to be treated by experts. Visiting the cathedral gets you face to face - literally if you want - with these 700-year-old individuals. It is sensational to see them the way the artisans did when they made them, especially knowing they will soon be out of reach again, perhaps for centuries to come.
Pics (my own): York Cathedral, restoration exhibition.
Goethe, Chromatics
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Chromatics, Goethe’s Farbenlehre, 1810. Published by Cotta, Tübingen. The complete book: Via Linda Hall Library, Kansas.
[gallery] chancepress:
When it comes to collecting, I’m most persistent about tracking down artwork by Luigi Serafini. It has been a constant presence in my life for almost a decade, and I’ve spent hours digging and digging to find his work tucked away under rocks and in obscure corners - especially for an American who doesn’t speak a word of Italian.So, one of my alerts alerted me to this book series, about which I know nothing except that Serafini contributed illustrations. I contacted the publisher asking for more info, and in the course of emailing about my collecting habit, he asked if I wanted him to get Serafini to sign my copies. Lucky break, right? Well, what I didn’t expect was full-page inscriptions bearing my name, rendered in Serafini’s made-up language from the Codex Seraphinianus. I was literally short of breath when I opened these books and realized what I had. That’s pretty much the moment every collector lives for.
The books are very nice, too - the illustrations are printed on textured paper that is heavier than the rest of the pages, and most of these images are new to me, which is a bonus as well.
[gallery] erikkwakkel:
Up close and personalI made these images today and they are quite special. The expressive medieval faces - and a pair of hands - are part of the stained-glass “Great East Windows” at York Minster and they date from 1408. Not many people have seen these details from this close, for the simple reason that they are normally positioned twenty meters or so above ground level. Except for now. They are presently being restored and thus taken down, one segment at the time, to be treated by experts. Visiting the cathedral gets you face to face - literally if you want - with these 700-year-old individuals. It is sensational to see them the way the artisans did when they made them, especially knowing they will soon be out of reach again, perhaps for centuries to come.
Pics (my own): York Cathedral, restoration exhibition.
[gallery] goodmemory:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Chromatics, Goethe’s Farbenlehre, 1810. Published by Cotta, Tübingen. The complete book: Via Linda Hall Library, Kansas.
The real story is that modern technology and social media make us a much more oral society than we once were. Naturally poetry will be delivered more through the ear than through the eye—just as it was for most of human history, and still is in most of the world’s 6,000 languages, only about a hundred of which are written in any real way.And it doesn’t help that modern poetry is often intentionally something other than comfort food. Without rhyme or regular meter, embracing ambiguity and often deeply individualistic, much of it almost willfully transcends the bounds of popular taste. Lamenting that America doesn’t cherish poetry like this is like wondering why Milton Babbitt, Thomas Pynchon and Ornette Coleman aren’t common coin.