saving the planet - NOT

Myth: we have to save the earth. Frankly, the earth doesn't need to be saved. Nature doesn't give a hoot if human beings are here or not. The planet has survived cataclysmic and catastrophic changes for millions upon millions of years. Over that time, it is widely believed, 99 percent of all species have come and gone while the planet has remained. Saving the environment is really about saving our environment - making it safe for ourselves, our children, and the world as we know it. If more people saw the issue as one of saving themselves, we would probably see increased motivation and commitment to actually do so. - Robert M. Lilienfeld (1953-) management consultant and author and William L. Rathje (1945-) archaeologist and author

on law

Good men must not obey the laws too well. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) _
Essays_ writer and philosopher q.awad

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. - Plato q.awad

In a democracy, laws are the agreed upon boundaries between each person's rights and a formal expression of each person's responsibilities. - pup

Law will be simplified [over the next century]. Lawyers will have diminished, and their fees will have been vastly curtailed. - Junius Henri Browne, 1893, journalist q.Laura Lee _The Futurist_

Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. - Solon q.awad

One law for the lion and ox is oppression. - William Blake (1757-1827) poet, engraver, and painter

We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. - Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944) q.marsha1945@AUSTIN.RR.COM

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. - Benjamin Disraeli (1804Dec21-1881) q.marsha1945@AUSTIN.RR.COM uga2009Dec21

1. Laws are society's common sense, written down for the stupid.
2. The stupid refuse to read. Thank you for choosing to read.
- q.Chagatai Khan

for my son

While we were on field-training exercises at Fort Hood TX, our unit was inspected by a very critical senior officer. At the end of the training cycle, we were asked to submit a written evaluation of the inspector. One buddy's statement perfectly summed up our sentiments:

He's the only officer I have ever known who can strut while sitting down.

- Col. Ralph Sims (Ret.) q._Reader's Digest_Humor In Uniform_

for jason the builder, tweeter and the grandkids

a bit of local history

for andrea

see no.5

complementarity

the more philosophical version of the quantum mechanics uncertainty principle

During a lecture on his principle of complementarity, Neils Bohr said that, for every measurable quantity, there is a complementary measurable quantity such that the more precisely one knows one of the quantities, the less precisely they know the other. He was asked from the audience, "Then what is complementary to Truth?" His immediate response was, "Clarity."

for all mothers

Before I was a Mom,

I made and ate hot meals.

I had unstained clothing.

I had quiet conversations on the phone.

Before I was a Mom,

I slept as late as I wanted.

I never worried about how late I got into bed.

I brushed my hair and my teeth everyday.

Before I was a Mom,

I cleaned my house each day.

I never tripped over toys.

I never forgot words to lullabies.

Before I was a Mom,

I didn't worry whether or not my plants were poisonous.

I never thought about immunizations.

Before I was a Mom, I had never been . . .

puked on

pooped on

spit on

chewed on

peed on

or pinched by tiny fingers.

Before I was a Mom,

I had complete control of my mind, thoughts and body.

I slept all night.

Before I was a Mom,

I never held down a screaming child so that doctors could do tests or give shots.

I never looked into teary eyes and cried.

I never got gloriously happy over a simple grin.

I never sat up late hours at night watching a baby sleep.

Before I was a Mom,

I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn't want to put it down.

I never felt my heart break into a million pieces when I couldn't stop the hurt.

I never knew that something so small could affect my life so much.

I never knew that I could love someone so much.

I never knew I would love being a Mom.

Before I was a Mom,

I didn't know the feeling of having my heart outside my body.

I didn't know how special it could feel to feed a hungry baby.

I didn't know that bond between a Mother and her child.

I didn't know that something so small could make me feel so important.

I had never gotten up in the middle of the night every 10 minutes to make sure all was okay.

Before I was a Mom, I had never known . . .

the warmth

the joy

the love

the heartache

the wonderment

or the satisfaction of being a Mom.

I didn't know I was capable of feeling so much . . . before I was a Mom.

She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed. (Prv 31:27-28a)

May God's richest blessings be with each of you mothers.

response - what is holy/sacred

The face of Francis is holy, not sacred. An unfortunate perpetuation of the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane continues to be used in art criticism (and many other places as well) when dealing with Christianity.... But what “sacred” means, in contrast to “profane” (that which lies outside the temple and is purely of this world), is “something set apart” in relation to the divine. It is separate, by some form of consecration, for religious usage. - stimulus - Dimensions of the Holy

I am trying to get my head around the distinction he makes between holy and sacred.

I do not find my grandchildren to be holy, but I do think of them as being sacred - creations of God bearing the finger prints of God. I say the same of the trees surrounding my house.

Merriam-Webster does not appear to support me in this: holy sacred

stimulus - Dimensions of the Holy

Sacred Spanish art at the National Gallery

Describing Jesus and his disciples as they go up to Jerusalem, Mark the Evangelist writes: “Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid” (10:32). That coupling of amazement and fear, according to Rudolf Otto in his classic The Idea of the Holy (1919), is the essence of human experience of the divine or numinous. When God appears to human beings, it is, in Otto’s memorable phrase, as mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a holy mystery that awakens both fear and fascination. There are, of course, a variety of ways the experience can be expressed—as humbling and exalting, as awe and embrace, as deepened desire yet remorseful recoil. The experience can lead to tears of consolation or the desert of immense distance, both beyond words.

Such an experience of mingled awe and enchantment arises as one enters “The Sacred Made Real,” an exhibition of 17th-century Spanish painting and sculpture currently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Somewhat abbreviated from an earlier installation in London’s National Gallery, the show offers stellar examples of two types of art, one two-dimensional, the other three-dimensional, which are generally shown separately but here enter into revealing conversation.

During the Catholic Reformation, the artists of Spain’s Golden Age developed an intense realism to stir and even shock viewers with stark, emotional and often anguished presentations of Christ, the Virgin and the saints. Several of the era’s greatest painters are represented in the current exhibition, including Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego Velázquez. They are matched by less well-known sculptors like Juan Martínez Montañés and Pedro de Mena.

No pairing of works more vividly represents the interaction of painterly and sculptural interests than two versions of the Immaculate Conception (see pg. 17), one a sculpture attributed to Montañés (c. 1620), the other an early painting by Velázquez (1618-19). Both depict the Virgin slightly larger than life-size, according to the Book of Revelation’s description of “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1-2). Together they exemplify a typology developed by Baroque artists in 17th-century Seville: a naturalistic young girl takes all her dignity from her clothing and surroundings.

Velázquez places his Mary, with her broad face and full cheeks, against an inky night sky, whose billowing white clouds give cosmic dimension to her swirling blue mantle. (She may have been modeled on Juana Pacheco, the daughter of Velázquez’s master, Francisco Pacheco, whom the painter married.) At her feet are symbols suggesting her purity—a temple, a fountain, a palm tree. The sculptural effect is striking, and Velázquez may well have studied an earlier Immaculate Conception by Montañés.

The Montañés Virgin evokes a similar serenity. But additional majesty at-taches to the figure through the tunic decorated with pale flowers under a black cloak enriched with effulgent golden arabesques. Delightfully, the angels at her feet and on the pedestal seem neither awestruck nor prayerful but simply happy to be there.

You can stand before these two wondrous works, beguiled by the lovely faces, imagining the inner grace of each figure, drawn into the mystery of innocence enduring all experience, transported to another time and still sensing a deeper root in your own.

Art that enthralls begets other art that enthralls, and nearby are three interpretations of St. Francis of Assisi that could define the word. Zurbarán’s mid-career masterpiece, “Saint Francis Standing in Ecstasy” (c. 1640), from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, shows the saint anachronistically in the habit of the reformed branch of his order, the Capuchins, his hands folded in sleeves and his face looking heavenward, the whole figure lit by a suggestion of candlelight. (Legend has it that when his tomb was opened before Pope Nicholas V in 1449, the saint’s body was found in exactly this position, miraculously preserved.) Next to the larger-than-life-size painting is the half-life-size, polychromed statue of “Saint Francis Standing in Ecstasy” (1663) by Mena, which may have been inspired by the Zurbarán. A celebrated object of veneration by pilgrims, the piece has never before left the Cathedral of Toledo.

Next to it is one of the greatest of all representations of prayer: Zurbarán’s “Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation” (1635-39), from London’s National Gallery. You can enter the darkness with Francis as he kneels silent and enraptured, a skull cradled in his exquisitely painted hands. Light falls over your left shoulder onto his right shoulder. Looking up toward his face, you realize that you do not see his eyes, deep in the shadow of his cowl, but only his handsome nose and parted lips. No words come, to him or you, no motion, no desire to be anywhere but here. The presence of God suffuses this image of the poorest and perhaps most beloved of all the followers of Christ.

Your eye moves across the canvas, from the strong hands with the slight indication of the stigmata on his right hand, to the tattered robe, down the plumb-line of the cord falling from his waist, over to the folds that cover his feet and knees, up again to the holy face. The figure is almost entirely on the right side of the painting, yet it balances because the coarse white of the habit at Francis’s right arm pulls the figure to the left and gives it a pulsing stasis, an insistent silent presence. You wish the gallery were empty so that you could kneel.

The face of Francis is holy, not sacred. An unfortunate perpetuation of the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane continues to be used in art criticism (and many other places as well) when dealing with Christianity. It was, for example, the cause of considerable conceptual confusion at a major exhibition on religion in art two years ago at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, “Les traces du sacré.” But what “sacred” means, in contrast to “profane” (that which lies outside the temple and is purely of this world), is “something set apart” in relation to the divine. It is separate, by some form of consecration, for religious usage.

But for a faith that confesses God’s living among us and enduring for us death itself in Christ, our human world is no longer a realm apart but, rather, radically God’s own. Its story and ours have come to be because the holy mystery of God graciously chooses to create a story that will be God’s own, the story of God’s holiness enfleshed in human holiness and suffering for it. Of all the words that might speak less deficiently of the God beyond all language, it is “holiness” that best accompanies “love.” And so the representations of Christ and Mary and the saints that are magnificently brought together at the National Gallery might be said to be sacred, as art or music or dance in a church might be said to be. But the human beings represented by the art are holy, because the God of holiness has dwelt in them through God’s own Spirit—and always will.

- Leo J. O’Donovan SJ (president emeritus of Georgetown University)

http://www.americamagazine.org/