Episode #46
Adam can't find a helper among animals because they're too similar. Like him, they're formed from the ground as living souls. To be fully good, he needs a helper who will raise him from his original, animal-like, earthy condition. He needs a transfiguring companion.
“You are hereby warned that any movement on your part not explicitly endorsed by verbal authorization on my part may pose a direct physical risk to you, as well as consequential psychological and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such a risk.” There is a little speaker on his belt, simultaneously all this into Spanish and Japanese.
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
May you today achieve the focused spiritual elevation of a toddler peeling an orange.
gm
— Matt Bateman (@mbateman) January 19, 2022
may you today achieve the focused spiritual elevation of a toddler peeling an orange pic.twitter.com/I7o0AjIWVu
Matt Bateman
“Common sense says that things (like rocks or lions) are not signs, but that words (like “rocks” or “lions”) are. The medieval Christian worldview says that things are also signs, since God created them according to his wisdom (i.e., the divine Ideas, which are one in his Logos or [mental] Word). They are different ways in which the infinite perfection of God can be imitated by finite creatures. Everything in the world symbolizes something in God. E.g., rocks point to God in their solidity and reliability, lions by their royalty, roses by their beauty. The medievals often said that God wrote two books: Scripture and nature. Seeing nature as a set of symbols requires not cleverness or calculation but an imaginative and intuitive art of sign “reading,” like reading a symbolic poem, an art that was easy before the fall into sin.”
Peter Kreeft, Socrates’ Children volume 2 (on St. Bonaventure’s metaphysics)
The Benedictional of St Æthelwold (London, British Library, Add MS 49598) is a 10th-century illuminated benedictional, the most important surviving work of the Anglo-Saxon Winchester School of illumination. It contains the various pontifical blessings used during Mass on the differing days of the ecclesiastical year, along with a form for blessing the candles used during the Feast of the Purification. The manuscript was written by the monk Godeman at the request of Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester.