Undersigned concerted effort
To take it’s course and illustriously scribble enchanting syllables
Actively intended, thwart
Thus, series of actions advancing
Thirsty, stranded in the desert
Snails are firing
Love’s dart
Void of simple rituals
Terraced alongwith the painters’s palette
‘The Letter’ (undated) by Federico Zandomeneghi © Alamy; private collection
The 19th-century Italian impressionist Federico Zandomeneghi was an admirer of the work of American painter Mary Cassatt, whose work often focused on the quotidian intimacies of women’s lives. Zandomeneghi painted several depictions of women and children in the middle of their daily routines, a number of which were of women reading or writing letters, each painting suggesting a certain emotion or mood of the letter bearer. – ENUMA OKORO
https://www.ft.com/content/4f2d732b-348f-4463-9587-add5fa38b189
File:Hand Pinted Kintsugi Pottery Bowl.jpg
File Talk
This piece uses Kintsugi: the Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, taking breakage, joining the cracked pieces and highlighting the beautiful lines of imperfection
Who knows the ways of God and how He sets out to work. No one can explain the things God decides or understand his ways. The Lord revealed His Way to Moses. Everything continues through him and for him. Yet we are reminded that the more we know Him, the more we love Him. So we learn that Brokenness is one of the many qualifications for someone to be used by God. God’s words are powerful and direct, he says:
I will bring the one third through the fire; I will refine them as one refines silver, and I will test them as one tests gold. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them; I will say, “They are my people,” and they will say, “The Lord is my God.” Zech 13:9
The priceless treasure we hold in earthenware jars belong to God – The splendid power held within.
Nothing is wasted with God.
When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” – John 6:12
Using broken pieces, crumbs and fragments, God works a miracle. Baskets and baskets of food were collected
The disciples were joyous- there was more than enough.
Kevin D. Miles & Wendy Schaefer-Miles collaborative husband and wife team. Painting beautiful Neo Impressionistic Realism of landscapes and figures in oils from their travels. A Celebration of Nature.
Landscaping sacred places
Adam and Eve first began
Jesus’ final hours
admired and known by his global followers is widely regarded as the intellectual leader of Jewish Orthodoxy in the United States.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik was born into a family of rabbis and in 1931 received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Berlin. In 1932, he moved to Boston where he lived for the remainder of his life while also spending a great deal of time teaching in New York City. Rabbi Soloveitchik (1903-1993), the towering intellectual figure of Modern Orthodoxy, ordained almost 2,000 rabbis over four decades of teaching at Yeshiva private University.
His grandfather and father, emphasized a thorough analysis of Talmud, and it is in this way that Rav Soloveitchik studied and taught his own students. First published in 1965 in the Orthodox Jewish Journal, “Tradition”, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s essay, “The Lonely Man of Faith” has become a much-studied exploration of the nature of religious life.
While set in the framework and specifics of Jewish Orthodoxy, through the questions the book poses it does however reaches a broader audience within any faith tradition. From the reviews which I’ve read so far, the essay is pertinent for the secular world as well.
According to the reader Robin Friedmam The book explores at some length the different natures between the two Adams. […]develops his dilemmas by drawing a distinction between the two versions of the creation of Adam found in the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis.
Adam 1, developed in the first account, shows man in his dignity and majesty. In this account, man rules over the natural world and develops art and culture through use of his intelligence. Woman, created at the same time as man, joins him as a partner in the pragmatic subdual of nature.
Adam 2, in contrast, develops from loneliness. He is in need of redemption from the outset. When Adam 2 realizes he is alone, God creates woman from his rib. Adam 2 is in search of God and intimacy as opposed to, say, the business partner model of Adam 1. Adam 2 comes to know God, at least in the Jewish context, through prophecy and prayer and to the formation of a covenant between God and man as set out in the Torah. Soloveitchik stresses that Adam 1 and Adam 2 are aspects of the same person and of humanity. The divergent goals and approaches of Adam 1 and Adam 2 are both divinely created.
In New Testament Scripture the destiny of the human race is told as the tale of two “types” of men—the first man, Adam, and the new Adam, Jesus (see 1 Corinthians 15:21–22; 45–59). Paul’s argument in the Epistle is built on a series of contrasts between “one” or “one person” and “the many” or “all.” By one person’s disobedience, sin and condemnation entered the world, and death came to reign over all. By the obedience of another one, grace abounded, all were justified, and life came to reign for all.
The loneliness of the man of faith derives from the loneliness of Adam 2 at first but it goes deeper. The loneliness derives from the conflict between the two natures of man and from the efforts of the “man of faith” to live both in the worlds of Adam 1 and 2. In the reading of the essay one finds that The Rav gives a positive endorsement of scientific progress.
Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague, made low with degrading helplessness, could not lay claim to dignity. Only the man who builds hospitals, discover therapeutic techniques, and save lives are blessed with dignity…. The brute is helpless and therefore not dignified. Civilized man has gained control of nature and has become in certain aspects her master, and with his mastery he has attained dignity as well. His mastery has made it possible for him to act in accordance with his responsibility. Adam the first is aggressive, bold and victory-minded. The cosmos will not destroy us.
A used book of ‘The Lonely Man of Faith’ could cost you under R700. It is worth the price. This is a thoughtful, poignant book that I had the opportunity to read almost by chance. I am far removed from Orthodox Judaism. The book describes dilemmas that many individuals will find familiar. While the textual analysis is Jewish, the problems are universal. Among other things, I found Soloveitchik’s book an antidote to overly topical, overly politicized discussion in religious thought and in other kinds of thinking about the human condition. There is much to be learned from this book by “people of faith” regardless of whether that faith is theologically or even religiously based.
– Robin Friedman
The sages said: ‘If you are told there is wisdom amongst the nations, believe it.’
The wicked tyrant Quintus Tineius Rufus, also known as Turnus Rufus the Evil in Jewish sources was a senator and provincial governor under the Roman Empire, once asked Rabbi Akiva
‘Which is the more beautiful—God’s work or man’s?’
Rabbi Akiva replied, ‘The works of human beings.’
Rufus asked, ‘Behold the heavens and the earth – can human beings make anything like them?’
Rabbi Akiva replied, ‘Do not bring an argument from things which are altogether beyond human capacity. Speak only of things which human beings can do.’
Rufus replied, ‘Why do you circumcise your children?’
Rabbi Akiva said, ‘I knew this was the point of your question, that is why I pre-empted you and said that the works of human beings are more pleasing than those of God.’
Daniel Ridgway Knight
Rabbi Akiva then had ears of wheat, and cakes brought out, and said,
‘These are the work of God and those the work of human beings. Are the cakes not more agreeable than the ears of wheat?”
A few years after he stepped down from the consulship, Rufus was appointed consular legate of Judaea, during which time he is said to have ordered the execution of the Jewish leader Rabbi Akiva in Caesarea
At the fireplace
We both been there, – thoughtfully-
In the silence
Kylian Mbappé the third highest paid athlete in the world may be moving to Real Madrid when his seven year long contract with the French Team -PSG – comes to and end in June. On Sunday he will play his last match for Paris St. Germaine.
Is how Johanne Cullen describes herself. The artist was born in Quebec City.
She Graduated in Fine Arts at University of Quebec in Montreal.
She still lives and works in Montreal
“Délire,” 2022
Oil on canvas
72 x 48 in
I’ve never read a story about a writer who wrote a book about a bookshelf, have you? What are your thoughts about this painting. I’m trying to imagine the hours it took to meticulously paint theses books almost exactly to their original illustrated covers. Art, reading and writing embracing each other in this little masterpiece. I’m thinking of Thumbelina right now and what would her thoughts be about the enormous, delirious, fairy hugging this bookshelf. What are your thoughts. Can you recognise some of the books you have read?
Burning Flag! – Tdawnhughes
Im standing watching as the flag burns,
Remembering our twist and turns.
Our love is no more,
My heart left sorrowful and sore.
I’m sorry for the flag that burns today,
But what else can i do or say.
The flag reached its end, like me,
But now i see clearly, do you see?
I said i love yous,
And you said them too.
What happened,? We are like the burning flag,
I guess we had too many lags!
This is the end for the…
BURNING FLAG!!!
This is a tenet of all great religions
Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale where he has taught since 1982.
Published March 3, 1999 Stephen L Carter authored a book titled Civility. Belonging to the etiquette of democracy the author submits something very wrong has happened to civility. When he turned 11 years old, his father moved the family to a white neighborhood in Washington. That was 1966 during a time when America deeply afflicted by segregation and blatant racism. Sitting on the porch with his siblings he was overcome by those fearful stories of white America. Not one single person who passed by greeted them or even gave them a glance of recognition.
As these thoughts gripped him that he knew that they would never like them a white woman returning home passed by on the otherside of the road, she turned to them with a broad smile and said, ‘Welcome!’ Disappearing into her house, she would return with a tray filled with drinks, cheesecake and jam sandwiches for them. Living in a white neighborhood in Washington, over the years Stephen would learn to admire much about the woman across the street. Later in his book Civility in which he laments that civility is disintegrating because we have forgotten the obligations we owe to each other, and are awash instead in a sea of self-indulgence he would mention the lady – Sara Kestenbaum- who welcome him and his siblings into the neighborhood he feared. He mentions that she was a religious Jew. ‘In the Jewish tradition’, he notes, such civility is called ‘hessed’ – the doing of acts of kindness. Civility, he adds, ‘itself maybe seen as part of hessed‘: a single act of genuine and unassuming civility can change a life forever.
Theologians define hessed as covenant love – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Love as Deed)
Neither liberals nor conservatives can help us much, Carter explains, because each political movement, in a different way, exemplifies what has become the principal value of modern America: that what matters most is not the needs or hopes of others, but simply getting what we want.
wsarwmzansipens 