Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Start

Eye of Horus
Acoustics
Abilene
Guitar
Psalm 62:11
"God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God."
Containing the herd 
Containing the Herd
"You are what you heard."
Chess: "Abilene" "acoustics" "guitar"  "Start" "Eye of Horus"

Psalm 62:11-12


When David says in Psalm 62:11, "God has spoken once, twice . . .," He is using a Hebrew idiom that means, "I have heard this repeatedly." Practically, it means God's will always decides the outcome of whatever is in dispute, whatever hangs in the balance. Who can resist Him?
We need to look more closely at the word "power," or as some translations read, "strength." Power is defined in The Reader's Digest Oxford Complete Word Finder as "having the ability to act, influence" and "a particular faculty of body or mind, capability." This usage opens another exciting avenue, taking the meaning of power from mere brute, overwhelming force into such qualities as the powers of love, intellect, wisdom, understanding, vision, logic, energy, eloquence, wealth, authority, privilege, prerogative, control, mastery, persuasion, forgiveness, and so on into every area of activity.
Is there any kind of need in which God is not superior to any alternate source we could seek out to provide help? In Psalm 62, David suggests that, when we need help in time of trouble, why not just go right to the top? Is not our Father willing to provide these things for us?
Then in verse 12, David adds yet another quality of our powerful God that we need to consider. God not only renders to every one according to his deeds, implying punishment, but He is also merciful—in fact, the very pinnacle of love! Even His sometimes-painful correction is an act of love.
The entire psalm briefly and generally explains why we should trust God: To those who believe, no one is more qualified and trustworthy. Broadly, David is saying that God's power and willingness to act according to His purpose is the very foundation of a believer's practical application of his faith in Him.
There is far more to God being the Source of the powers that we need to serve Him and become prepared for His Kingdom. He has made available many powers, ones that we may take for granted yet have nevertheless been provided for our benefit.
Recall that the Israelites sang in Exodus 15:2, "The Lord is my strength." In a poetic way, they meant that we do not have strength, but God does, and He uses it for our benefit. God has not called the wise of this world (I Corinthians 1:26), but on the other hand, Jesus Christ lives in us, and He is the power of God and the wisdom of God (I Corinthians 1:24). He is our High Priest, who has the responsibility before God to lead us prepared into the Kingdom.
The concept of strength or power has many facets that we have not yet explored. Deuteronomy 8:11, 14, 16-18 says:
Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today . . . when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; . . . who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—then you say in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth." And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
That wealth is power is an easily recognized concept. "Wealth" is used in this context to represent all evidences of prosperity and well-being. We tend to think of wealth in terms of material things like the size and location of our home, the cost of our automobile, or the fashionableness of our clothing. However, there is more to prosperity than material goods.
The concept developed in this passage also includes qualities like good health, sound-mindedness, and the level and breadth of our education—elements common to prosperous cultures. It includes things such as understanding and having the opportunity to perceive what is happening in this world from a godly point of view. All of these and many more are powers available to us. In other words, "wealth" is not limited to material things. It includes our health, the disposition in which we live our lives, the liberties we enjoy, and the opportunities available to have those things whether or not we have actually taken advantage of them.
For example, Solomon said, "Of making many books there is no end" (Ecclesiastes 12:12). The tremendous volume of information available in books is beyond our comprehension. Of course, not all the power contained in this information is good, but God has made it available.
In addition, God can prosper us by giving us favor in the eyes of others. He opens doors to bring us goodwill because power belongs to Him, and He uses it as it pleases Him. No potential help is beyond His power!
In many cases, these things come to us as byproducts of His fulfillment of promises He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Are we using them, and if not, why not? God's fulfilling of His promises provides us with potentially valuable experiences, which are lavished on us simply because we live in an Israelitish nation. Each nation of modern Israel has its own peculiar wealth of beauty. Most of us have noticed and compared the barrenness of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq on television with the fruitfulness of our nations. This beauty, along with its productivity and liberties, are included in the concept of "wealth."
He provides these things and uses them to benefit us at all times because it pleases Him to do so. Powers are not always given because we please Him. Deuteronomy 8 is a warning against pride. We must humble ourselves, never forgetting that we are created and that we live by the gifts He provides. Remember, Jesus says, "Without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). This awesome statement is made by the One described by Paul as "upholding all things by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus means, in reference to God's purpose, that we could do nothing spiritually without what He adds to our labors. Yet, these verses also tell us where to go to receive the help that we perceive we need.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Power Belongs to God (Part One)

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Article from TLS

Better than Wagner

The Nibelungenlied is the grandmother of all medievalist fantasy and of superhero comics

There is not much about being human that one cannot learn from the Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs). This epic poem is the Northern European myth of power and revenge, distilling centuries of wisdom about psychology and politics into a simple but tragic story: the tale of Siegfried, a hero who comes to power purely through his own strength and daring, and is crushed by the political elite. His widow, Kriemhild, then takes on the members of the establishment who killed him, and step by step slaughters them all because they refuse to give up one of their own. The grandmother of all medievalist fantasy and of superhero comics, the Nibelungenlied has it all in terms of a gripping yarn, too: it gives you the treasure, the dragon, the most valiant knights, the most beautiful ladies, the invincible hero, the spectacular battles, the mysteries, the mermaids, and the dead.
If I have begun by shamelessly giving away the tragic ending in order to elicit interest, I am only copying one of the poem’s favourite techniques. The real thrill of the epic is not in finding out what happened, but how and why it happens – why a hero and an entire dynasty are brutally murdered. It probably started out as a way of explaining the near-extinction of the Germanic tribe of the Burgundians by Roman troops in the 430s, and was refined over centuries of oral storytelling before being finally written down around 1200. So first, why does Siegfried die? In short (and unfairly reducing the Nibelungenlied’s kaleidoscopic account), because he unsuccessfully stages something between a coup and a terrorist threat against the kingdom of the Burgundians. This kingdom, situated on the upper Rhine around Worms, not yet in the wine-growing region of modern France, is a well-run place, governed by King Gunther with the help of his two brothers and his adviser Hagen. (Their sister Kriemhild is not given much political say, but will claim it for herself later.) But then a young pretender – the bold Siegfried – strides in and demands all the Burgundians’ lands and possessions, on the grounds that he is physically more powerful than them. And so he is: he has famously fought and overcome the worst possible opponents – the terrible dragon and mighty dwarfs guarding the treasure of the mysterious people of the Nibelungs. This has made him physically invincible, too: bathing in the dragon’s blood renders his skin impenetrable, and he has won an invisibility cloak that lends him supernatural force.
There is nothing within this society’s conventions, based on inherited leadership, that it can do against the threat of pure violence. Like all societies, it is vulnerable to individuals who refuse to play by the rules. The kings manage to pacify Siegfried with rhetorical promises and by giving him the beautiful Kriemhild as his wife, but ultimately, there is no alternative to dispatching the autocratic intruder. Like most superheroes, Siegfried has one vulnerable spot: in this case, it is a patch between his shoulder blades (on which a lime leaf had fallen when he bathed in the dragon’s blood). It is his wife who, with the best intentions of protecting her husband, betrays this secret to Hagen. And Hagen does what he has to do to defend his country: he kills Siegfried, trying to make it look like an accident although everyone involved knows exactly what is going on.
But killing Siegfried has not at all eliminated the threat to the Burgundians (who, in an interesting instance of swapped identities, are for some reason from now on called Nibelungs). As Kriemhild takes it upon herself to avenge her husband, whom she had dearly loved, the poem’s psychological exploration of bereavement and aggression goes even deeper than its political analysis. Since Freud, we have come to regard grief as a temporary state to be overcome; remaining melancholically obsessed with the past is considered pathological. Freud observed that many bereaved people initially try to take in whomever they have lost as part of themselves: they might start wearing the dead person’s clothes or scent, or imitating typical gestures. But we expect that this physical stage of grief should be overcome as quickly as possibly through a conscious acknowledgement of the loss and moving on.
Freud, who has done so much to keep the ancient myths of Oedipus and Electra in public consciousness, never accorded their medieval equivalents a similar status, despite inheriting his first name from Siegfried’s father. (Scattered references make clear, however, that he was very familiar with the medieval tales, as were most of his patients. There is a lovely dream alluding to an Old Norse version of the legend, for instance: one of his patients, a medical practitioner himself, compares the stethoscope he uses to examine a female patient to the sword that Siegfried had laid between himself and Brunhild to prevent them from sleeping with each other when sharing a bed.) Had Freud based his theories on medieval legends, he might have been less critical of physical and protracted ways of grieving, like that of Kriemhild. When Siegfried dies, she takes his loss into her heart and becomes like him. But she has no intention of “getting over” him by acknowledging this bereavement and moving on. To her, that would be not only impossible, but also a betrayal. Remembering the dead to Kriemhild means physically holding on to them.
The only way in which she can envisage overcoming her loss is also corporal: by passing the loss to somebody else. As if there were only one pain, she thinks she can get rid of her grief by inflicting it on the perpetrators. This is behind her desire for revenge: rather than the psychoanalytical “talking cure”, the only cure for Kriemhild is hurting somebody else. Kriemhild succeeds, to an extent: she remarries Attila the Hun (here called Etzel), the most powerful man on earth, just so that she can exact her revenge. Many years later, she invites her brothers to a feast, and then demands that they hand Hagen over to her. When they refuse to do so, she has them killed in ever more gruesome stages, finally having her brother King Gunther executed, and decapitating Hagen herself. But the Nibelungenlied would not be the Nibelungenlied if this were a straightforward success. Rather than finally moving on, Kriemhild herself is now “hewn to pieces” for having, as a woman, dispatched the valiant warrior Hagen in such an undignified way.
This magnificent story, crudely summarized here, is now brought to an English-speaking audience in a new translation by Cyril Edwards, the most faithful to date to the Nibelungenlied (which is of course in itself not the original form of the myth). In 1836, Heinrich Heine wonderfully encapsulated its style: “It is a language of stone, and its verses are like slabs of rhyme. Here and there, from the cracks, red flowers burst like blood-drops, or long ivy hangs down like green tears”. Unlike the romances about King Arthur and his knights written around the same time, the Nibelungenlied makes no efforts at an appealing, flowing narrative style. Instead, its aesthetics resemble those of a film by Quentin Tarantino: one impressive scene after the other, held together not so much by logical continuity as by memorable vignettes of violence, pain and some unexpected beauty and humour.
Edwards manages to retain the chunky quality of the original, in his short sentences, set side by side without the help of conjunctions in determining their relation to one another. This works quite well because modern English is still so close to medieval German – they belong to the same language family, as if as nephew and aunt. Translations, however, have to be true not only to the source text but also to the target audience. While Edwards’s surpasses Burton Raffel’s sloppy 2006 verse translation in every way (beauty as well as truth to the source in terms of style and accuracy), it is not as reader-friendly as the existing standard translation by A. T. Hatto. Although Hatto’s work is now forty-six years old, its somewhat old-fashioned style suits the medieval text well, and its readability remains unsurpassed even in modern German translations. Just compare the way in which Siegfried is introduced in both versions. Hatto, like a good bricklayer, had joined the slabs of the German text into a smooth narrative:
Down the Rhine, in the splendid, far-famed city of Xanten in the Netherlands, there grew up a royal prince, a gallant knight named Siegfried, son of Siegmund and Sieglind.
Edwards keeps the dry wall of slabs:
There grew up in the Netherlands at that time a noble king’s son, whose father was called Sigmunt, his mother Siglint. This was in a prosperous citadel, well known far and wide, low down by the Rhine – it was called Xanten. Sivrit was the name of that bold, worthy knight.
There is of course something to be said for either approach. Edwards’s faithful translation, like the Nibelungenlied itself, can get tiresome in his invocation of the characters’ excellent qualities – everyone is so noble, bold, strong, mighty, beautiful and brave that one longs for variations. The short sentences make for a disjointed style in both Middle High German and modern English. Edwards’s decision to retain the original syntax as far as possible is not quite as intrusive as in his translation of the romance Parzival, as the syntax here is simpler, but it leads to odd turns of phrase such as “it is told us” for “we are told”. Hatto, on the other hand, smoothes out much of the crude, in-your-face style of the Nibelungenlied. For a taste of the original style in English, Edwards’s is now the best translation; for a taste of the original story, it is still Hatto’s.
Like Hatto’s Penguin translation, this Oxford World’s Classics version is a cheap paperback for a wide market (presumably, largely students), but with quite scholarly additional materials and notes. Edwards’s comments do not represent the latest research, but serve their purpose and are of course more up-to-date than Hatto’s. The volume is thoroughly edited, though Oxford University Press managed to duplicate a page of the self-advertisements in the back. Students and academics looking for the translation of a particular passage will thank the editors for referencing the stanza numbers in the margins.
The Nibelungenlied cannot be discussed without mentioning its nationalist appropriation in Germany, by the Romantics, Wagner’s Ring cycle, Fritz Lang’s 1924 silent film, the Nazis and many others; and Edwards duly mentions them in the notes. Since the Romantics “discovered” the poem in the second half of the eighteenth century, it has been styled as a national epic – despite the fact that versions of it clearly existed in various forms across Northern Europe and are still available, for instance, in Icelandic, Swedish and Norwegian texts and carvings.
The productive contradiction at the heart of the nationalist appropriation was that Germany identified both with Siegfried as an innocent victim of treachery and back-stabbing (this was a powerful narrative used to explain Germany’s defeat in the First World War), and with his killers, the Nibelungs/Burgundians, who heroically refuse to give up one of their own. This Nibelungentreue (loyalty of the Nibelungs) was often demanded by the Nazis. Far from discouraging identification, the fact that the characters are actually from Burgundy, Iceland and the Netherlands, rather than identified as German, allowed Germans to associate themselves with different sides as it suited. By casting both Siegfried and the Nibelungs as victims rather than perpetrators – despite their violence – Germans managed to maintain a positive if somewhat schizophrenic self-image.
More recent reworkings of this national myth in Germany portray a self-critical nation. Edwards mentions Uli Edel’s 2004 film Ring of the Nibelungs (also known as Sword of Xanten), which was broadcast on British television. This is a pan-European co-production which never once mentions Germany, and aims at an international market as a Tolkienian and Rowlingian fantasy tale. It shows the national hero traumatized and self-doubting, and vanquished by forces he never quite understands. In a veiled allegory of German experiences with their more recent past, this Siegfried has lost his identity because he cannot remember the war in which his parents died, and whether they were guilty or not. But as soon as he manages to remember and reclaim his heritage in a grandiose way, he becomes too powerful and is squashed. The fantasy of recovering a memory of a past that is not as horrible as expected is exposed as such; and despite his brief moment of grandeur, Siegfried remains an unconvincing and unsuccessful action hero.
Since then, the German comedian Tom Gerhardt has even more thoroughly debunked the national hero in the clever parody Siegfried (2005). The bumbling Siegfried here befriends a smart pig that keeps him out of trouble, conveniently allowing the death and revenge plots to be omitted. This actually renders many of the knight’s characteristics in the Nibelungenlied itself very well – his overbearing power, his naivety, his false friends, his unintentional aggression – but also allows a harmless, fluffy imagination of Germany without the doom and horror. In The Charlemagne Code (Die Jagd nach dem Schatz der Nibelungen, 2008), which rides the same bandwagon as The Da Vinci Code, the legend has been fully modernized and only serves as a backdrop for a contemporary treasure hunt.
Every culture gets the version of a legend it deserves. If Germany’s history, or at least its relationship to its medieval past, can be told as a history of the reception of the Nibelungenlied, what does it say about early twenty-first-century Britain that it has produced this translation? First, the fact that translator and publisher stress faithfulness to the “original” betrays a belief in texts as historical monuments rather than stories in flux that can be told and retold at any time; a faith in facts rather than wisdom. Curiously, Hatto’s freer translation is closer to the medieval spirit of the Nibelung legend, which, as the many medieval variants show, did not require slavish adherence to a previous version.
Besides, that Edwards’s is a prose rather than verse translation says something about the unflagging rise of prose as a narrative medium. At the time when the Nibelungenlied was written down, “prose literature” was pretty much a contradiction in terms. Fiction, even lengthy narratives, were written (and presumably told orally) with rhyme and rhythm; such artistic language was part of the pleasure. Moreover, many of these stories were sung (hence the modern title, Song of the Nibelungs; different medieval manuscripts actually label the tale The Book of Kriemhild or The Nibelungs’ Suffering; Edwards goes for the archaic Lay). The melody of the Nibelungenlied has not survived, but from similar songs, we can imagine what it sounded like. Particularly striking if rendered in music is the extra beat in the last (eighth) half-line of each stanza, which creates an emphatic full stop. This is often the punchline – in which either a joke or another violent act is delivered. For example, when Hagen kills Kriemhild and Etzel’s son at a banquet, the fact that this sparks off a battle among the guests is announced in one such final half-line:
Dô sluoc daz kint Ortlieben / Hagen der helt guot,
– x – x – x – / x – x – x
daz im gegen der hende / ame swerte vlôz daz bluot.
x – x – – x – / – – x – x – x
und daz der küneginne / daz houbet spranc in die schôz.
– x – x – x – / – x – x – – x
dô huop sich under degenen / ein mort vil grimmec unde grôz.
– x – x – x – – / – x – x – x – x
Edwards translates this as follows:
Then Hagen, the worthy hero, dealt the child Ortliep such a blow that the blood shot back along the sword up to his hand, and the boy’s head flew into the queen’s lap. Grim and massive slaughter began then among those knights.
Finally, that this is a World’s Classics edition reassuringly shows that there is still a wide English-speaking audience for world literature, at least in translation. The student-friendliness, however, indicates that a large part of this audience may now be found at universities. While stories of King Arthur, the grail and Robin Hood are commonplace parts of popular culture, the Nibelung legend is still little known in the anglophone world (except to Wagnerians). But a narrative of such splendour and importance deserves a wide audience outside the walls of the academy, too.


Cyril Edwards, translator and editor
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
The Lay of the Nibelungs
244pp. Oxford University Press. Paperback, £10.99 (US $14.95).
978 0 19 923854 5


Bettina Bildhauer is a lecturer in German at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Medieval Blood, published in 2006, and co-editor, with Anke Bernau, of Medieval Film, 2009.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

La Perla Negra

Plaga
Plague
Vending Machine
ATM
Coladera
Prov. 26:18 -19 
"As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death,
So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?"

Leaf insect
Chess: "plaga" "plague" "ATM" "vending machine" "luminosa" "Florence Nightingale""coladera" "sieve""bucket" "Black Pearl"

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Love and Quimera

Chimaera
"Catch 22"
Mount Moriah
Richard Isaacsen (Kaká)
Marmara Straight
Gen 22:13
"And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
Long Road Ahead
Gen 22:14  
"And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen."


Besos

 Richard Isaacsen (Kaká)

 
Chess: "Chimaera" "Kaká" "Mount Moriah" "Kilimanjaro" "Cerro Pan de Azúcar" "Estrecho de Mármara" "Catch 22"

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Coronado

Juan Santamaría
Vanity Fair
Thackeray
Coronado
Rom 5:12-17
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)

A little assistance please?
Chess: "Vasquez de Coronado" "Juan Santamaría" "Vanity Fair" "Thackeray"

Monday, July 12, 2010

Vanguardia / Retaguardia

Vanguardia : Retaguardia
Santo Domingo/ Hispaniola
Is. 42:8 
"I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images."






View down the valle
 View down the Valley
  
Chess: "Hispaniola" "Santo Domingo" "Vanguardia/Retaguardia"
The Rabbit Hunt, 1560
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, active by 1551, died 1569) Etching
8 7/16 x 11 3/8 in. (21.4 x 28.8 cm) Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1925 (25.2.11)
On the hillside of an expansive river valley, a hunter accompanied by his alert dog aims his crossbow at two rabbits below. Another man, carrying a spear, circles around the tree behind him. The image may relate to an old proverb that warns: "He who pursues two rabbits at once, will lose both." But the actions and purpose of the man with a spear are less clear and even ominous, demonstrating the kind of ambiguity common to Bruegel's work. Based on the artist's own drawing, The Rabbit Hunt was the only print executed by Bruegel himself. With the free and subtle graphic vocabulary of etching, a technique that involves drawing with a pointed tool through a ground on the printing plate, Bruegel was able to give the landscape a vivid sense of light and atmosphere. The image thus avoids the kind of rigid tones and strong outlines characteristic of most prints executed by other artists after Bruegel's designs, and anticipates the brilliant seasonal effects achieved by the master in his late painted landscapes.
Source: Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Rabbit Hunt (25.2.11) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art     Prov.25:28 "He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls."   Front Cover   Chess:
-Donde menos se espera salta la liebre -A Room in Rome - Amurallada (circuncisión) - Mound Builders
 Humor argentino (Liniers):
 

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Scope

Miranda
El Observatorio
Mat 6:33 
"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
My Golden Retriever Ditte enjoys the sunset
Chess: "Scope" "El Observatorio" "Miranda"

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Jabulani

Bolita
Tivoli
Holland
Matt. 5:13
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

Tivoli11 Tivoli Gardens, Italy  

Chess: "bolita" "Tivoli" "Holland" "Jabulani"




Monday, July 5, 2010

Manila

Traje de luces
Bullfighting
Philippines
Act 8:38 
"And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him."
 




Yellow-pine Chipmunks 
Playful Pals

Chess: "Bullfighting" "Manila" "traje de luces" "Philippines"