Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Sunday, September 12. 2010

Peterskirche, Vienna

This was done to glorify God. Gilding the lily, in my Protestant view, but it's a heck of a sight. They have the bony corpse of a saint in an altar on the side, under glass. Memento mori.


That must be some American kid in the Nantucket Red.


Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 05:00 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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It is very beautiful. But, humans cannot impress the God who created everything.
#1 mary on 2010-09-12 10:09 (Reply)
I suspect that God may be just as charmed by the Scottish shepherds' video that maggiesfarmers put up a day or so ago. I keep going back to it and replaying it, enjoying again the pleasure of the shepherds in their own creativity, and the joy of those wonderful border collies doing what they love to do. It reminds me of the old fable about The Jongleur de Notre Dame.

Creativity in human beings is God's own gift to us, no matter how we express it.

Marianne
#2 Marianne Matthews on 2010-09-12 12:13 (Reply)
I agree with Marianne - G-d delights in human creativity.

One of the names of G-d in the Jewish Bible is "Shaddai" - which is usually connected to a word for a mother's breast.

But it is also interpreted as a play on the word for "enough" - G-d said "enough" to the forces of creation, purposely leaving the world incomplete. So humans could become His partners in creation.

On the first Sabbath after creation, it says:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their hosts. And on the seventh day God completed His work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created to do.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Get that "created to do"?
G-d made "work to do" - for us to do.
#3 Ben David on 2010-09-12 14:58 (Reply)
"This was done to glorify God. Gilding the lily, in my Protestant view, but it's a heck of a sight. They have the bony corpse of a saint in an altar on the side, under glass."

It's a Council of Trent "jazz it up for the faithful" sort of thing.

It's also very "cosa nostra"; you have to be one of us to really "get it".
#4 JJM on 2010-09-12 15:21 (Reply)
A life lived within walking distance from birthplace, no electronics, no photography even of the lightbox and emulsion variety --o yes, the sight of that interior was gonna take you out of yourself!
#5 buddy larsen on 2010-09-12 17:57 (Reply)
To a largely illiterate audience, paintings, statues, and stained glass windows were their Bible.

For those donating to the construction of a church, making it elaborate was political campaigning as well as a show of devotion (which of course often went and still goes hand in hand).

For the artists it was a way to show their talent, and maybe get some other jobs as a result decorating palaces and retreats.

Everyone wins except the poor peasants whose taxes pay for it all, but they don't count as they don't have a say in things anyway.

Just like pork projects in "modern" government in fact.
#6 J.T. Wenting on 2010-09-13 02:35 (Reply)
Dog, you have mangled Shakespeare.
King John Act iv. Sc, 2.

Salisbury:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
#7 Capt. Craig on 2010-09-13 11:37 (Reply)
Good. Thank you.
#7.1 Bird Dog on 2010-09-13 13:27 (Reply)

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