The Healing of Jesus

For Christ he was both Man and God;

as God by death our sins hath bought.

Oh Christ he was both God and Man:

the man felt fear and frost and pain.

            ~            ~            ~

A dusty road then Jesus trod

with sandals only was he shod

He felt a touch upon his clothes,

and lo alarm within him rose.

Noli me tangere

He sensed a touch upon his clout,

and felt some virtue going out.

He spied the people on the path,

and turned to them a face of wrath.

"Who touched me?" cried the Christ aloud

and sternly stared among the crowd.

No answer came.  His face was black.

The chosen and the mass fell back.

His men exchanged uneasy look.

Then one of them arose and spoke.

"O master, see the pressing throng,

so close ye move  the crowd among,

jostled, chivvied, begged of, budged --

Can ye then ask  who you hath touched?"

Behold, from out the crowd there stepped

a woman trembling, knelt and wept.

"Lord, that was I, who without leave

reached out, for that I did believe

a touch might heal   what physic's leech

lo these twelve year  had failed to reach."

He stares at her; and gasps;  he sees

her faith has healed her of disease.

Renewed she stands there, washed and pure.

Nor none but faith has wrought the cure.

 

He moans to know  the power he hath:

behold the faithful, healed by faith!

His eyes roll back, he starts to sway,

and silently  begins to pray.

"With men I read and teach thy Word,

and with them pray, `Who art thou, Lord?'

Yet now I raise another cry

O Lord my God, tell: Who am I ?"

The answer came; we draw the veil.

What then was said  man cannot tell.

            ~            ~            ~

Then round about, the crowd felt peace,

and knew that one was touched with grace.

He gazed on her with eyes so mild.

"Thy faith hath healed thee; go, my child."

~

(For additional epiphany, click here: )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwzOXzZWUik

Paradox (for Lent)

"Riddle this me, a thing that's three,
 and yet is only one."
"That is the blessed Trinity,
Father, Ghost, and Son."

"How then a man who dropped and died,
yet walks upon the mold?"
"That is the resurrected Christ,
of whom that tale is told."

"What then of him  who penned the prayer,
yet has forgotten faith?"
"Great God, that wretched man am I;
Help thou mine unbelief."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[For a treatise on the Trinity by Murphy the penitent detective, click here.]

Debts versus Trespasses

Each morning in public school, from primary through junior high, we began the day with the Lord’s Prayer.   Jew and Gentile, churched and unchurched, we all -- we each -- recited it with folded hands.

Our Father, who art in Heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,  on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us, this day, our daily bread; 

and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

(It went on for a couple of lines more, which add nothing and are out of keeping with the terse efficiency of the rest of the prayer.   I regularly omit them when praying alone;  and was delighted to learn subsequently  that they are apparently not original, but a later addition.)

This healthy exercise was later abolished by the PC Police, as being damaging to non-Christians (though the content of the prayer, as distinguished from its provenience, is not specifically Christian).  

Well, was it?  I am in a position to testify to one case at any rate, since I came from a family of lapsed Unitarians and did not attend church.

It was not damaging in the least.  The recitation was a quiet, thoughtful time;  it was an experience in community with one’s classmates,  like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (has that been abolished too, as discriminating against illegal immigrants and  people clinging to dual citizenship?)  On most days, in those safe and pleasant but intellectually mediocre pre-Sputnik public schoolrooms, it was our sole contact with anything loftier than the ABC’s, or with any style of language antedating “Hound Dog” (1956).

*

For a mini-movie

of madness and salvation,

click here:

The Penitent and the Impenitent Thief

*

The first hint that there might be any rift within the lute, came at a family summer camp when I was around nine.   We all stood outdoors in a large circle, and the head of the camp, a proper white-haired woman, lead us in the prayer.  Before we began, she stipulated:  “Let’s say it with tresspasses, and not …. the other.”   I had no idea what she meant by this mysterious unspoken “other”, and would not for some years more, but her faint frown and pursed lips are with me yet.

Eventually I heard the version “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”.  It sounded strange (and now has an unwelcome resonance, in this subprime age of mass welshing, both at the individual and the national level).   I looked at the Latin, and sure enough:  debita nostra.   But then the Latin is simply one translation of the Gospel Greek.  And that in turn is a translation of whatever it was that Jesus said:  and Jesus spoke Aramaic.

*

For illumination, I turned to my learnèd friend and spiritual advisor, Dr. Massey.

The Greek opheilemata (and verb) means more literally "debts." But it can also mean "trespasses." There is a perfectly good word for sin -- hamartia -- which, along with the Hebew root OUA, etymologically meant "to miss the mark with an arrow".

Matthew has forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. But Luke has forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors.

This shows us that Matthew is the original text and even Luke didn't understand it.

Jesus uses the example of forgiving debts as an example of how we should forgive one another (Matt 18).

But why does the prayer use debt instead of sin?

I'm not sure that any authoritative answer exists.

I'm tempted to say that this may all go back to an infelicitous translation into Greek from an original Aramaic statement. Perhaps the same is true of the equally puzzling "Lead us not into Temptation."

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

For our book-length semantic investigation,

in Arabic and the European languages,

click here

For further observations from Dr. Massey, concerning Biblical translation, click here. 

This morning’s gleanings from the political pooper-scooper

Massive assault takes down key terrorist:

http://www.kpho.com/news/27272012/detail.html

Your tax dollars at work

Shadowy Giant Entity Spying on its Citizens:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

Not your tax dollars, this time.

A democratic election in sub-Saharan Africa, conducted without violence, the result certified by a wide range of international observers.  But le président sortant  refuse de sortir.

This one would be on the front page, if newspapers had six or seven front pages:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/up-to-1-million-flee-in-fear-of-civil-war-in-ivory-coast-buses-backed-up-at-border/2011/03/25/AFLU6TVB_story.html

Oddly, WaPo has its own bylined article on the subject this morning, but it is almost impossible to find on its Web site.  I found this by googling the name of the reporter:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hundreds-of-thousands-have-fled-fighting-in-ivory-coast-un-says/2011/03/25/AFzNBIZB_story.html

"Only suckers pay taxes":

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?src=me&ref=homepage

This one’s puzzling, from the standpoint of political psychology.  You would imagine that GE -- which can pretty much structure its balance sheet any way it wants -- would carefully arrange to pay at least some token US taxes, so as to deny the New York Times the headline that it pays none.    This is beyond brazen:  part and parcel of the new ethos of greed without shame.

Workers, meet you in Tahrir Square.

That Wacky WaPo

Front-page headline, 13 March 2011 Washington Post:

In assault case, anxious parents recognize ‘dark side of autism’

There’s a bright side?

~ ~ ~

Front-page headline, 14 March 2011 Washington Post:

As kids get bigger, car seat tests fall behind

A brief moment passed before I realized what they meant.

In normal informal usage, bigger, used of kids, means ‘older, more mature’:  “You’re a big boy now.”  But the Post means:  fatter.  Yet dares not say it.

~ ~ ~

Photo caption, 20 March 2011 Washington Post: :

This item cannot be printed in a wholesome family blog like this one,  but readers over the age of 18 can read it here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/step-toward-plea-in-leslie-johnson-case/2011/03/25/AFrqsfYB_story.html

(If they’ve cleaned up their act by the time you read it, the original wording probably survives in the Readers’ Comments section.)

Let’s nip this one in the bud

Donald Rumsfeld popularized the syntactic quirk of framing a simple statement in the form of a question which one answers oneself:  “Is the cat on the mat?  Yes, definitely.”   Initially this may have been a rhetorical move to drown genuine pointed questions from reporters in a bog of pseudo-questions, along the lines of:

Reporter:  “Why did you refuse to supply up-armored Humvees to the troops?”

Rummy:  “Were mistakes made? Certainly.  By Democrats, by Republicans, by liberals, by the media in general.  Is the war effort producing results?  Yes, daily.”

But eventually it became a linguistic tic -- one quite in keeping with the self-absorbed life of potentates dwelling in a bubble.   The public failed to fight back with withering and unrelenting scorn, and now the virus has spread among the population at large.

Now here is a new bleb that has appeared upon the body politic -- perhaps it is not yet too late to lance it.  I refer to the phrase,   “Well, again, …”

Presumably this phrase first reared its ugly rump in Congressional testimony.  There, indeed, “questions” get “asked” over and over again, not to elicit an answer, but to grandstand.  So the person giving testimony naturally tires of repeating himself, and might legitimately use that phrase.   But it has spread far outside that context.

As:   Robert Siegel of  NPR just now interviewed some twerp from the White House about our attack on Libya.  Opening greetings were exchanged;  Siegel asked a question;  and the gormless dwarf answered:  “Well, again, ….”.    Obviously there was no possibility of a legitimate use here;  the NPR audience was being introduced to this pygmy for the first time.   The troll went on to use the bastard phrase several further times in the course of the interview:  and it was interesting to note, that these weasel words usually introduced an evasion.   Thus they serve something of the function of Rumsfeld’s fake self-questions:   to scatter tinsel in the air and confuse the radar, in the pretense that we are all just going over old ground, the reporter’s question was uninteresting, the listener might just as well tune out.

We hereby heap scorn upon that wretched shrunken munchkin and all his ilk.   Perhaps this changeling “Well, again….” may yet be strangled in the cradle, with its own umbilical cord.

Lenten reflections

For some reason, I cannot offer these directly yet.
But you might check out the reflections of the penitent private detective:

Stripes
Wounds
Trinity

Arms and the Man

A notable feature of the Yemeni resistance has been the relatively peaceful and disciplined behavior of the protestors, in a land  alas not known for either discipline or peace.    Particularly noteworthy is that the protestors have been, for the most part, unarmed -- this in one of the most democratically armed countries on earth.   They have faced armed government thugs  weaponless -- by choice and not necessity.

That statement might seem to be belied  by images you may have seen  of tribesmen milling around Taghyir Square with an alarmingly large dagger at the front of their belt.  This is the jambiya(**), the traditional wide-bladed curved weapon.  Its use is principally ceremonial, not for real fighting.   Sometimes they are almost comically large and impractical.  More care is lavished on the belt and on the handle (rhinoceros horn is especially prized [***]) than on the blade.  The latter, on some cheap ones I’ve seen, might serve to cut butter -- but not if it had been in the fridge.   The tribesmen left their real weapons at home.

So far as it goes, this augurs well for the (inshallah) post-Saleh era.  The principle challenge to the nation -- dwindling water resources (and the qat plant that sucks them up) -- cannot be solved by force of arms.

(**) Normally so spelled in English , though underlyingly it is janbiya (then pronounced with anticipatory assimilation), as witnessed by the plural, janaabi.
[***] The most highly prized are made from the horn of a unicorn:  but these have not been seen since the time of Solomon.

~ ~ ~

Another hopeful sign:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/middleeast/24tribes.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

Each Yemeni tribe is concerned  with defending its own territory, and its own members.   But this is not on the level of “my tribesman right or wrong”.  There is a long and carefully crafted tradition of mediation and reparation.   Indeed, by comparison with our own legal system, it has certain points of advantage. A system, less of laws  than of justice, you might say;  though like all things here below, imperfectly implemented.

So I don’t think that, once Saleh is gone, there would necessarily be civil war.   My general impression -- admittedly, it is only that -- is that Yemenis are an exceptionally sweet-tempered people. (Such is, indeed, their own self-impression:  al-yamaniyiin saaliyiin, as they say.) Rough around the edges, and many current deficiencies, but with a core of good nature that will serve them well once they take their destiny into their own hands.

God be with them.

~    ~     ~

[Update 4 IV 2011]
As always, the protesters were totally unarmed...

تعز
The scene today in Ta`izz (gas)
More from today in Ta`izz

[5 IV 11]
“The regime has surprised us with this extent of killing,” parliament member Mohammed Muqbil al-Hamiri told the al-Jazeera television network. “I don’t think the people will do anything other than come out with bare chests to drain the government of all its ammunition.”
Uncannily reminiscent of the Christians in the Colosseum.

[29 IV 11]
Infographie au sujet des sit-ins pacifiques