Nov 24 2022 - Angels Sing

 

I get a quick sense of my generation (and age) when I search for a phrase.  Today's is "looking for angels".   What comes up is Skillet Looking for Angels - official music video and lyrics.  A mournful song about the woes of the world.    At the other end of the spectrum of angels is the long list of angel sightings, angel encounters and true stories, real pictures and videos.   The most recent fact-checked angel cloud sighting over Kyiv proves to be from around 2008.   But we so want angels with us in our lives.   The largest gathering of people dressed as angels is in the Guinness Book of Records.  There were 1,275 people gathered in Winnipeg on December 1st 2015.  There are sand angel records and snow angel records - 8,962 people flapping their arms and legs in unison on the State Capital grounds of North Dakota in 2007. I wonder about this after John Milton's Paradise Lost and the Angel escorting Adam and Eve from Paradise.  Where was the angel when they needed help?  Aren't angels supposed to be guardians not guards? Where to find the answer?  On Quora.  Lots of opinions and explanations are offered.  Here are the top two posts.  First from "Sherry Claire - Author has 798 answers and 858,500 views, and next from Dick Harfield with 25,700 answers and 68.8 Million answer views.   This is McLuhan's  global village now and here's the current approach to biblical questions with millions of people checking out the answers.   Just a few posts down comes Stu Lewis' answer - "Questions like this are sort of pointless. You could ask similar questions about any work of fiction or mythology. What if Gatsby had anticipated Wilson’s act of revenge and taken precautions rather than going for a swim? What if Hamlet had not been foolish enough to stab at the curtain before checking to be sure who was behind it? What if Macbeth had understood that a prophecty was bound to come true even if he sat back and waited for the inevitable rather than killing the king? The list is endless."    This is the John Street orchard on a winter foggy day a few years ago.  We've had a lot of mist and fog in the air this autumn and that makes for  beautiful sunrises in orange and peach tones.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 22 2022 - Angelology

 

I had thought Lutherans knew a lot about the Bible.  It was the foundation of the Lutheran Church -  Luther translated the Bible into German to make it accessible. And he found on reading the Bible studiously and carefully that many Roman Catholic practises were not rooted in the Bible.  He just wanted an evolution - not a  revolution with another Christian faith.  I don't recall Luther on angels or angelology.  That is a complicated arrangement of hierarchies of angels and their roles (primarily as messengers). But here is the quote from Luther himself: “That angels are with us is very sure, and no one should ever have doubted it,” Martin Luther states matter-of-factly to any Christian who would question or deny their existence. And it is felt by current day Lutheran scholars that at the time of the Reformation, Luther insisted on retaining Michaelmas as one of the principal feast days of Christ that the Church should celebrate (It is Michael and the Angels feast). On this day, Christians hear again “how the Lord used Michael and the angels to deliver His people from the accusations of Satan” (Collver III, 2011) and cast them out of heaven using the Word of Christ. Wikipedia in its Christian Angelology entry outlines the Christianity-devised hierarchies of angelic beings. The complicatedness of it all:  its hierarchies and complicated structures - there's a first sphere, second sphere and third sphere.  The First has Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.  The Second Sphere has Dominations or Lordships, Virtues and Powers of Authorities and the Third Sphere has Principalities or Rulers, Archangels and Angels.  These are all types of angels rather than concepts - and there seem to be many levels as well.   Both angels and hierarchies exist in many religions.  There's a Wikipedia entry for the Hierarchies of angels in various religions.   Even today, we have Guardian Angels as a common belief and the name angel is in the names of lots of organizations - think baseball. But then we don't really have angels in our social consciousness today.   I don't think that 50 angel-inspired names for your little one appeals.  I looked at the options  - they include Engel, Malach, Uriel for boys. And for girls:  Gotzone, Tien, Erelah.   Here are some wonderful angels - I am not sure where they were as this is quite a few years ago - either at a music studio entrance in Bloor Street West or at a community centre.  Angels with trumpets are said to be representing judgement day.     Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 21 2022 - Angels vs Celebrities on the Head of a Pin

 

Are we more obsessed with celebrities now than in past times?  I expect so.  And that we consider them in a higher sphere of living than the rest of us.  "Celebrities are fascinating because they live in a parallel universe—one that looks and feels just like ours yet is light-years beyond our reach."  I wondered about whether this might be the case that we could debate celebrities on the head of a pin.  The original question is attributed to medieval times.  "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? " This is considered key to medieval scholarship.  It was "used to challenge medieval theologians."  Others say this expression is a past urban myth about the middle ages.  You can see many more medieval myths HERE. Things like the earth is flat, some medieval Pope instituted fasting from meant on Fridays to help the fishing industry of the Papal States, they burned millions of witches at stakes, and so on. And if we want a bit of entertainment, one article gives this ironic answer:  "Perhaps the final answer to this medieval conundrum lies in a casual remark made to Senate by the Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University, Professor Raoul Mortley "The answer is of course well known; fewer if fat, more if thin". (The Editor)"   Today the angel expression is a metaphor for unimportant intellectual debate while more important and urgent concerns accumulate.  Substituting celebrities for angels seems to make sense.

I was in Toronto yesterday dropping my brother off at Toronto Western Hospital for his knee surgery.  I didn't get any such motion blur pictures.  I did get to experience the very bad state of Toronto streets with winter's potholes.  It seemed like another universe to Niagara, given I haven't driven through Toronto's streets for two years. And how will today's experience go? We pick him up to take him home post operation with the knee in a less ambulatory state. Yesterday I wasn't allowed into the hospital to assist him with his bag and walker. Without any assistance, his bag was misplaced.  He didn't get it till much later in the day.  Let's see if they let me in today to retrieve him and the bag. It made me wonder how anyone actually gets out of a hospital during the Pandemic.   Maybe the question is how many discharged patients can dance on the head of a pin in a hospital? Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 22 2021 - Angels Heralding

 

Hark the Herald Angels Sing is a 1793 carol that the Classical FM Station is playing a lot.  That's because it is a wonderful song - a beautiful melody with great energy and vitality. The music was written by Felix Mendelssohn to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the introduction of the printing press. It was titled God is Light.  Mendelssohn expressly stated he wanted the tune to never be sung to sacred words. The authors of the carol/lyrics were Charles and John Wesley in 1793.  The carol was sung to various melodies until being married with Mendelssohn's tune in 1855 when it was adapted to the carol.    The Wesleys also had problems. Theirs was people revising the carol's "lyrics".  It started out with Hark how all the welkin rings.  Welkin means cloud, sky or heavens - and wasn't very common so the publisher changed it.  This is what the Wesleys thought of the change: “Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honor of reprinting many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome do to so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them, for they are really not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore, I must beg of them one of these two favors: either to let them stand just as they are, to take them for better for worse; or to add the true reading in the margin, or at the bottom of the page; that we may no longer be accountable either for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men.” So here we have Angels in the carol.  John Wesley was more notably known as the founder of the Methodist movement and wrote three sermons on angels, so did the inserted reference to angels offend him.   But they seem problematic - one source says they are mentioned 273 times in the Bible.    I wonder about them as I find all kinds of different "facts" about them.   Just take this item: how many angels have names? One source says that there are three named angels - Gabriel, Michael and Lucifer, aka Satan at Daniel 8:16, Luke 1:19 and Luke 1:26.  Gabriel is the angel who appears to Mary. Someone else puts them at Daniel 10:13 Michael, Daniel 9:21 for Gabriel,  Genesis 16:7-8 (for the Angel of the Lord) and finally, Job 1:6 for Satan. Then somewhere else there is Abaddon (Rev 9:11).   Another source says: "their names all end in “El” meaning they (according to Jewish thought) are direct messengers of the mind of God (El) so that Michael (he is is like God), Raphael (the healing of God), Gabriel (messenger of God), Uriel (light of God) are all aspects of God’s presence." So now there is Raphael and Uriel, too.  How many have names now? Check out 21 facts about angels  HERE. These are things like: What do they look like?  Are there female and male?  On the other hand, there are 5 facts, 7 facts, 10 facts, 25 facts and so on, to keep you entertained.   Here are three "heralding" angels - these were on Bloor Street West at the music studio entrance.

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Launch the Season

The Christmas candy cane is a wonderful thing.  How it got to being a symbol of Christ with white standing for the purity of Jesus Christ and the red stripes the blood he shed on the cross... that came well after candy canes were introduced. There is a folklore story of its origins and then there is verifiable evidence. Folklore has it that in 1670 in Cologne, Germany the choirmaster gave the children candy to keep them quiet. The crook was supposedly added to remember the shepherds.  Other stories are that the crook was added to make a J for Jesus.  The story goes that candy canes spread to other parts of Europe where they were handed out during reenactments of the Nativity. That is the folklore story. On the evidence side, straight sugar sticks were introduced at an exhibition in Massachusetts in 1837 and the first mention of candy canes in literature was in 1866. The Nursery monthly magazine had them associated with Christmas in 1874.  What about the barber pole and the similar red and white stripes? The barber pole had red and white during a time when barbers performed bloodletting and other medical procedures. The white colour represented bandages.  The blue represents less urgent services.   Sometimes the candy cane has been referred to as barber pole candy. I wonder how many candy canes are consumed each year? Each year about 1.76 billion candy canes are made and 90% are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What is the world's largest candy cane? It is 51 feet long - created by a Geneva chef in 2012. Is there a permanent candy cane statue in the U.S.? There is at Buffett's Candies - a giant candy cane is on display outside the factory in Albuquerque, NM.  Where are the giant candy canes on Fortnite? You can find one of the candy canes in the Wailing Woods, on the northeast of the map, overlooking the forest. If you go east of Shifty Shafts, there will be a candy cane waiting on a snowy hill. Can I tour a candy cane factory? Yes - go to Nelson's Candy Kitchen in Columbia Historic State Park, about two hours southeast of Sacramento. You can watch through the window every Saturday and Sunday in the early afternoon from the end of November through the weekend before Christmas. We have angels heralding the season in today's picture.

Ultimate Christmas Countdown Checklist

November is coming to a completion and before it ends the countdown to Christmas begins.  I was in the Dollarama this week buying odds and ends for the Fantasy of Trees display.  It opens tomorrow.  Dollarama is a frenzy of Christmas shopping.  All of these people have already considered their Christmas checklist.   Here's the realsimple.com list.  I fully enjoyed the first two steps.  First one makes a family plan and then one buys plane tickets.  It is as though that family plan was overwhelming and needed escape.   Make a family plan Are you heading to your in-laws’ house? Hosting everyone at yours? Sit down with family members and decide where you’ll be spending the holidays. Buy plane tickets If you’ll be flying somewhere, get your plane tickets as soon as possible. As we move further down the list at the beginning of November there is another checklist item in which people need to be directed to be 'earnest' about Christmas: Start Christmas shopping in earnest Yes, you may already be picking things up here and there, but the more you buy ahead, the better—especially if you’ll be mailing gifts. If you have big-ticket items (like electronics) that go on sale the day after Thanksgiving, you may want to brave the crowds on Black Friday—you could save substantially. We're not even near the middle of the list. As we get to one week before Christmas, we are instructed to carry out this next step.  I've followed the first two steps, so I would have already bought plane tickets to escape the Christmas mayhem, and now - one week before Christmas, my task is to deep clean my house. I am not sure what that means and it can't be pretty. Deep clean your house  You’ll enjoy those decorations even more if the floors are clean and the kitchen is organized. One important task: Clear out your refrigerator. Toss old leftovers to make room for big dishes and ingredients that’ll be piling up closer to the holiday. So there's a little insight from realsimple about the pressures of Christmas.  Enjoy Thanksgiving - the long, long holiday weekend!  Then hop over to the realsimple site and start checking off your Christmas list.  Today we have more images using the Flaming Pear india ink filter.   The concluding image is my reaction to the Christmas Countdown Checklist. All in good fun.

Wishing not Weeping

There are famous Angel Statues in Cemeteries.  The most famous is "Angel of Grief".  She has her own entry in Wikipedia.  There are replicas in Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Luxembourg, U.K. and U.S.  There's one in Montreal's Mt. Royal Park.  As I look through the U.S. listings, and there are many, where do I see one?  It is near Longwood Gardens at the Longwood Cemetery in Kennett Square. That makes it my next destination when we go to Longwood. However, a day trip would be to Rochester in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. Our Grimsby Angel, in comparison, is wishing and wanting, hoping and praying.

Angel Voices

I always look at cemeteries in search of angel statues.  They are remarkable and very interesting to photograph.  This one was in Strassburg, PA.

My nearby cemetery has a most unusual Japanese Maple tree that is twined around a headstone.  Everything about it looks like a human form, embracing the headstone.