Unthinkable Wings

Incidentally, today is the commemoration of Thomas Aquinas, probably my favourite theologian ever, partly because he's just straightforwardly brilliant*, and was never afraid to engage with secular learning and use it in the pursuit of truth, even when it looked like a challenge to faith, but also because, as a good Dominican, his theology is always connected to the preaching of the Gospel and the service of others, and to prayer - his last prayer, on his deathbed, was "I receive Thee, ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught..."

As well as being patron saint of theologians, academics, philosophers, book sellers, and pencil makers(!) he is, for some reason, invoked against lightening.

(Blessed Thomas, pray for us).


* "Tot miraculis, quot articulis" - there are as many miracles as there are articles - replied a Dominican at Thomas' canonisation trial to the Devil's Advocate's objection that Thomas had worked no miracles. While I don't agree with every conclusion Thomas came to, he is a superb reasoner and always worth engaging with.

Feast of S. Thomas Aquinas. Which makes me very happy, because Thomas is possibly my favourite theologian ever (it's him or Eckhart, but I have to admit that Thomas is probably more of an all-rounder).

O SALUTARIS Hostia
Quae caeli pandis ostium.
Bella premunt hostilia;
Da robur, fer auxilium.
Uni trinoque Domino
Sit sempiterna gloria:
Qui vitam sine termino,
Nobis donet in patria.

Amen.

O SAVING Victim opening wide
The gate of heaven to all below.
Our foes press on from every side;
Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.
To Thy great name be endless praise
Immortal Godhead, One in Three;
Oh, grant us endless length of days,
In our true native land with Thee.

Amen. (tr. E Caswall)

ETA Mgr Knox suggested that Aquinas invented the limerick - at least in terms of form (and allowing for the fact that you can't scan Latin quite like English):

Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio
Concupiscentae et libidinis exterminatio,
Caritatis et patientiae,
Humilitatis et obedientiae,
Omniumque virtutum augmentatio (used as the priestly post-communion thanksgiving in the old Breviary).

Which RJ Winkler suggested translating:

Extinguish concupiscent fires,
Eliminate lustful desires;
Give patience and love,
A plenitude of
What humble obeying requires.

I admit it's not very funny, but I've always felt Edward Lear was a bit over-rated, too....

(h/t godzdogz.op.org, the blog of the English Dominican Studentate. And yes, I see what they did there).

It's certainly too long so will need a bit of trimming, but: ( thoughts, people? )

People have to make up their minds and cannot keep waiting for ever for a sign from heaven, for a solution to the difficulty to fall into their laps... Postponed or belated decisions can be more sinful than wrong decisions made in faith and love... To believe means to decide.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1934, on the ecumenical movement, but it is more generally true, I think (it might also be taken as an epitaph on a number of basically decent contemporaries of Bonhoeffer, for instance).

I urge you to drop whatever you're doing, and read lareinenoire's Tenth Doctor and Martha fic, The Kynges Game; also available at AO3. In which the Doctor asks himself, why are there zombies wandering about London in 1529, and what has it got to do with the Royal Divorce? Featuring Anne Boleyn, Wolsey, and Thomas More being awesome.

Erudite and witty - highly recommended.

I've been doing a last bit of reference checking, having discovered that I was missing a reference to some Dominican hagiography. This has resulted in me spending the afternoon reading the Vitas Fratrum, a collection of anecdotes about the early days of the Dominican Order. There are a surprisingly large number of stories about Dominic changing water into wine, and an awful lot of ones about people being impressed by his cheerfulness in difficult circumstances (this is unusual in mediaeval hagiography, where there is a general tendency to think that smiling is vaguely dodgy). There is also a vaguely hilarious story about how he would make the rounds of the house at night, and tuck the brothers in if he thought they looked cold. (This, again, is an unusual motif).

More conventionally, we are told, he spent much time in prayer at night. I'm not sure why the following amuses me - apart from the wonderfully pragmatic Dominican attitude to rules - but it does:

"It was his custom to keep nightly watch in the church, and once while praying after the brothers had retired to rest, the devil showed himself under the guise of a friar praying before one of the altars. The blessed Dominic wondered at seeing him remain behind after the signal had been given, so he motioned with his hand for the brother to retire to rest, and the man bowed in return and withdrew. When matins was over he cautioned the brothers not to remain in the church once the signal had been given for retiring; nevertheless the pretended friar did the same thing a second and even a third night. On the third night St Dominic went up to him and rebuked him sharply... At this the devil cried out with great glee: "At last I have made you break your silence!" But the servant of God, seeing how he had been tricked, boldly replied, "Save your mirth for some better occasion, wretch, when it can perhaps profit you; and learn moreover that I am the master of this silence and can speak when I think fit to. You cannot hoodwink me on this score." Then the devil slunk away abashed...."
Vitas Fratrum, 2.15, trans Placid Conway.

I'm awfully behind the curve on this, but you were supposed to list 15 OTPs amd draw conclusions from them. Or were you supposed to let your flist do so? IDK.

Anyway, my conclusions are (i) I have a great tendency just to follow canon (though the fact that a pairing is canonical doesn't mean I'll necessarily be interested in it)
(ii) I like my romantic heroes, by and large, to be intellectual, but also to know one end of a sword from each other (metaphorically speaking)
(iii) I may also have a thing about older men and younger women (though this is not reflected in my own romantic history, such as it is). Although to an extent this may just reflect that in older fiction the men are always older than the women.
(iv) there are friendships which I find fascinating but that I don't see as sexual, so I made a separate heading for them.

( Ten ships, and five friendships )

Which is a cue for me to post one of my favourite hymns/ prayers, even if Patrick probably didn't write it himself. "S. Patrick's Breastplate" is, nevertheless, awesome. I love its vivid focus on the Incarnation and the fantastic evocation of the beauty and terror of the natural world (and, I must admit, I am very fond of the verse abut wizardry and heresy, even if you're unlikely to sing that in church much these days. I can't help feeling that's a mistake).

( The stable earth, the deep salt sea Around the old eternal rocks. )

I feel that I ought to point out to mina_de_malfois, and all her admirers, that today is the feast of the patron saint of her college, St Scholastica. Which out to be an excuse for a martini, or something...

On another note entirely, I have been having unregenerate fun with the create your own Harlequin romance plot!

Peter, adventurer and captain of the infamous ship Calypso and a renowned seducer of women, has just walked into the one tavern in all of the unknown reaches of Mars he should have avoided. For Harriet, his sworn enemy, is the brainy owner—and she has vengeance on her mind.

But before she can take her feisty revenge, she is captured by this rogue's kiss. Her only chance for retribution is to put her career as an award-winning writer on hold and stow away on his ship for a passionate adventure that will either kill them—or bring them together once and for all!

( Or how about: )

*is hit by intellectual oncoming train*

You can view the Christian concept of sanctity as a meme or memeplex (in the Dawkins sense, not the internet); not just the evolution of the complex, but the functions which holiness and the saints perform in affecting the beliefs and behaviour of believers (saints are at least partly there to create more saints, to put it crudely). What's more, I think it can even be made to work in a theologically satisfying way which doesn't sacrifice the importance of grace, because at times grace can work like the concepts with in a meme/ memeplex.

Why the devil didn't I think of that before? Especially as it's rather late to replan the thesis on that basis now... (and why am I struck by this while trying to throw something together for supervisor, who will probably think I'm thinking too theologically again?)

Of course, I may be fundamentally misunderstanding Dawkins' idea, but I must chase this up (and start with Drout's book on memes and tradition, since I'm not a biologist.) But I think there may be something to go at there.