Radix, qui stas in signum populorum

For closure, I will update the issues mentioned in the last two posts. Our health insurance came through in due time. We didn’t actually need it. Two blessings there.

The car is finally out of the multiple shops after nearly a month, and we are driving it again. The insurance paid for the refurbished transmission, and we have some reason to hope it may last for the life of the car, which is young in years but advanced in mileage. More blessings there.

I have not been online much. A few reports of what seems to be Islamic violence have been in the news. One was a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, and one involved two Jewish professors shot at two different universities.

The liturgy is focused on the Advent of the Savior, a little child, and echoes of the future Second Coming. As always, the re-presentation, liturgically and sacramentally, is needed. I have decided to read through the Bible — I did it a couple of years ago through the well known Bible in a Year, but this time I’ve decided to read a chapter a day for the next 4-5 years. I read the two accounts of creation in Genesis and was struck again by something that probably has a scholarly term, if only I knew it. … a kind of chordal or choral element in Scripture — maybe polyphonic is a better way to describe it. The different parts speak to each other in different ways. It is frustrating to rationalists and fundamentalists, but it is integral.

Life seems like this too — and liturgy distills it. I have one of those 5-year journals that used to be a thing, though I haven’t really been able to make it work for me. But I like the principle of things building up on former things — I have a cascade of Advents, over 60 of them, each very different — a cascade of winters, and so on. Time seems to be sequential and it does have a forward progress, but it also has a circular, echoing aspect that is more like music than anything else, perhaps. Scriptures are in this kind of time that participates in eternity. Modern physical and social science has hardly even approached it conceptually, because it isn’t subsumed in quantification.