Happy All Hallow's Eve/ Halloween/ Reformation Day

In honor of the day...or something...I submit to you a pumpkin carving website. I got it from Julia W., who got it from Layla; and Sahlain Anteth got it from me, and sent it to Noa, Briane, and Kelsey. I lost track of it after that. But it's such a splendid little rounds-maker I just had to share it more.

Update on the Origen icon

I inquired of the Oracle--i.e. Dr. Smith--and this is his take on the icon of Origen.


The icon is of Origen. It is a Greek icon and so calls him Saint Origen, though the Western church does not recognize him as a saint because of the condemnation of his Christological views at the Second Council of Constantinople (553, two centuries after his death).

The scroll signifies a holy writer (Origen was a prolific biblical exegete even if theologically shaky at points). The nimbus (gold dinner plate behind his head) indicates a saint, but the flame is peculiar. Usually it shows up in icons of the Pentecost where it represents the Holy Ghost. Here it represents religious zeal (intellectual zeal), perhaps, or (inaccurately) martyrdom (since an ancient account has Origen suffered during the Decian persecution; he died later, though).

The cup contains the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in His Blood. I don't know why this particular feature would be associated with Origen. What I've read doesn't deal with the sacraments at all.

A fun question. Let me know if anyone of my hypotheses is wide of the mark. I am certainly no expert on iconography.

Fortune cookie fortune of the day

This gem is from my fortune-cookie-fortune wall here at the office.

"Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned."

Query: If fate has assigned it, how could you depart even if you wanted to? Doesn't fate affect our wills too?

And I adore the word order. It's so English-as-a-second-language.

Poems

Pablo Neruda: "Ode to Salt." I've never read much Neruda, and what I have read generally creeped me out. But this I liked. It's a little surreal, and mournful, mournful. I think Neruda is like Chesterton in his love of things. The poets are not strangely silent on the subject of salt.

Dorothy Parker: "Penelope." Parker's got wit and a point. Her poems remind me of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She may be my favorite new poet (new to me, that is!). I also liked her "Sanctuary."

Elizabeth Bishop: "Sestina." It's a slightly dismal sestina, but sestinas are worth reading anyway. :-)

Creativity, in various forms

I rather think I posted about artist Makoto Fujimura some time ago, but today I came across a longish speech on art and the church and monsters and imagination, also by him. It's quite good. The title sounds rather like "Dawning of the Age of Aquarius," but try not to worry about that. :-)

And you may not yet have seen an article from the National Review Online on "Harry Potter and the Art of Dying Well;" I hadn't, but I rather liked it. It isn't the full story. It didn't mention Dumbledore and Snape's rather questionable approach to killing, but I appreciated its perspective.

The horror, the horror

At least he was interesting... if heretical... and trippy...
You're Origen!

http://www.fathersofthechurch.com/quiz/

First snow

Good things come when it snows.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-ting-a-ling too...

We had a few half-hearted flurries last Wednesday. I saw the clouds and sniffed the air, and thought it looked like snow, but figured it was too early. But the next morning they told me we got some anyway.

But the fire inside's delightful, and since we've no place to go...

We had a whole afternoon of the white stuff yesterday. It was a Sunday--hurray!--and Dad and I stayed home and enjoyed ourselves. We built a roaring fire and shared a big pot of Blumenthal Special Roast coffee, and I made pinto beans and cornbread for dinner. There was a ball game on, and a Scrabble game (which Dad won by three points, grr!), and a lovely pile of books. I spent time on Iona with a modern pilgrim and in the court of Louis XV with Madame de Pompadour, which was a combination.

The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through white and drifted snow...

Mom and the sister came home from Grandma's yesterday and arrived in time for the fire and a batch of brownies (thank you, soror mea) and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

Then Jonathan called. It would have been lovely weather for a sleigh ride, here; but where he was, it was a perfect night for sitting in the gazebo and watching the stars over the lake. But a phone call is a good thing to receive in the snow, whichever end the snow is at, and one can hope for a white New Year.

Just like the ones I used to know, where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow...

This morning dawned (very late, it being this time of year) blue and cold. The ground was just frozen at my house, but as I drove up the hill, I found a thin white frosting that thickened into a ruffly layer over everything. And now the sun is up properly, and the eaves have all turned into slim flashing waterfalls, and the yellow leaves on the willow opposite are shaking themselves, much as to say, "What was that?"

In the meadow we can build a snowman, and pretend that he is Parson Brown...

To Narnia and the north

I'm sitting at my computer, back to a window, and I can see in my monitor a reflection. It's of a sunlit wooden pillar, and the shadow of a pine branch is waving on it, blown by the same wind as its parent tree. I love watching the reflection of a shadow.

It reminds me a bit of Narnia. When Digory planted the golden apple in his front yard in England, you remember, often the daughter tree would sway on calm nights, out of friendliness for its home garden where there was a high wind.

Last night at church a little boy was watching a big yellow backhoe dig a trench. He and his dad and I looked out the kitchen window and saw it scoop, dump, back up, and scoop again. We got to talking: what if the trench went to Narnia? And what if we could follow it, swim along it, or even float down it?

There's something glorious about a little boy and a construction site. He watched the machine dig with the intensity ordinarily reserved for Deep Magic. They really are fascinating, though I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been with him. So I suppose it makes sense to think of it digging to Narnia--or the Northern Frontier, which was the other possibility. Why not?

Farsi of the day

This Farsi word is one I tripped over in the dictionary when I was actually looking for "barghy" (electricity). But this one, "bargardandan," tickled me. It means "to upset." That so works.

"You really shouldn't have bargardandi the cat."

Farsi of the day

Today's Farsi is "gerba," meaning "cat." I illustrated. :-)