Images that it is perhaps best not to use in modern sermons, no 238435.

[tree_and_leaf]

From sermon 71 in the St Georgener Predigten in the Rieder edition (1908, MTU 10), on the joys of heaven, translation mine.

"(God) shares Himself so fully with the souls that they do not desire anything other that what they have, that is God, the highest (or: excessive) good. Now you should know that Our Lord has two breasts from which the souls in heaven suck both delight and joy: that is, His pure humanity and His lovely divinity. He moves the soul from one breast to the other: if she want milk, He gives her the breast of his humanity; if she want wine and honey, He gives her the breast of His sweet divinity. Of which the prophet has said, 'Open your mouth that you may suck your fill'."

Um, yeah. (Also, what on earth is kipper win?)

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Interesting... It's not that it doesn't work as metaphor, because it's a nice clear image. It's just. Um.

Assuming the kippers to be in English, can you provide some sort of context? The OED is not helping me.

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

My Lexer gives me an own, whole lemma for kipper-wîn! I'm so impressed.

kipper-wîn: stm. cyprischer wein.

Two other entries could make sense as well, depending on the context:

kîp, -bes stm. (md. kîf) scheltendes, zänkisches leidenschaftliches wesen, eifer, trotz, widersetzlichkeit (âne kîp ohne streit, unzweifelhaft, in wahrheit); wettstreit.

kipper stm. nicht rittermässiger kämpfer.

Don't know a damned thing about German, or sermons.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Wine, however....

Commanderia (otherwise Commandaria). Cyprus has been famous for it since the Crusades. A sweet dessert wine, similar to Malmsey or some Madeiras. Hugh Johnson cd tell you rather more.

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

I am amazed by the erudition of your flist!

I know nothing of wine or German, though I'm familiar with metaphors in sermons that seem to wander off from where the preacher intended sometwhere between his mouth and their ears.

But I do have the name of the suprisingly naked nun (and wasn't that a fun google search!) from the BBC's Mediaeval Mind programme. I think, based on what I heard from the programme and slight googling, that is was Angela of Foligno. There's something about her here (http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1998/italian-html/Morrison,%20Molly.htm), in the unlikely event she's new to you.

[ms-wanderlust.livejournal.com]

I swear to God, the day someone writes a worship song based around those words is the day I leave the church. Really.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Back Then it was OK to use breasts for food, wasn't it? Can't have that sort of shenanigans in this day and age. No one wants to think about breasts like that, do they? I mean, ew. And as for God having them - well, that's stupid. Everyone knows God's a bloke, right? And breasts are for blokes to look at. And other stuff.

So how far has feminism come since the middle ages, precisely...? It does work as a metaphor, though I'm not sure about the different breasts having different flavours; as far as I'm aware milk's milk, whichever side it comes from, and the difference lies in whether it's foremilk or hindmilk.