Kicked-off Advent with a study series on 12th century monk Bernard of Clairvaux's famous idea of 'three advents'":
“We
know His threefold coming: to
mankind, into mankind, and against mankind. To all He comes without distinction, but not so into all or against all. If you think
that I am inventing what I am saying about the middle coming, listen to the
Lord himself: 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and the Father will
love him, and we shall come to him.'”
In a sense, given Christ's ascension, there is a pattern of coming and going, followed by returning. If you're keeping count, several advents, and a departure. Bernard apparently had a profound, subjective experience of faith, which is reflected in his advent emphasis and many of his famous hymns, eg "Jesus the Very Thought of Thee."
In a sense, given Christ's ascension, there is a pattern of coming and going, followed by returning. If you're keeping count, several advents, and a departure. Bernard apparently had a profound, subjective experience of faith, which is reflected in his advent emphasis and many of his famous hymns, eg "Jesus the Very Thought of Thee."
*****
The general point is that Advent and Christmastide in church liturgical time is more about a season and direction than a specific day - ie a theology or world view, not a singular event - thus, the linear thrust of the advent calendar points to epiphany; a time when the Gentile magi disperse the good news to foreign lands. Parallel is the second great movement of time, in which a period of lenten testing leads to a season of Eastertide, culminating in Pentecost and the departure (ascension) of Christ and coming of the Holy Spirit. In a word, the birth of the church; both Epiphany and Pentecost more universal in scope and meaning.
*****
Put differently, modernity is not only about competing institutions (State vs church) or iconography or language, moving from sacred to secular, but different conceptions of time: 2014. Heisei 26, and liturgical advent all have competing understandings of where we currently are and where we're headed temporally speaking.
We were greeted by snow the next day! Michael approves.
The old
Carolyn's dad met us halfway in Springfield at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum just celebrating its 10th year.
A profoundly moving experience with a degree of dramatization just shy of a Disney-level of simulated fantasy, the museum delivered the narrative of slavery, highlighted (excaberated) by ongoing tensions in nearby Ferguson.
Artifacts, such as this beautiful Union drum and the bed Lincoln died in, on special loan from another musuem.
Former slaves enlisted in Union regiments, reminding of a civil war which launched the modern era in Japan where, in some ways, culturally speaking, the 'South' won. Former peasants, like these black slaves, became the new army, infuriating disenfranchised samurai, who were the professional military in feudal times.
