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whatdoesshedotothem · 2 years

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Tuesday 15 October 1833

8 20

1 20

a little German - found letter from my aunt Shibden on my breakfast table dated Tuesday the 1st inst. all well and good enough business-news but my aunt has got a bad ankle - the skin broke and discharges deal (‘white matter’) a good and she suffers much from it, but Mr Sunderland gives hopes of it - tho’ he does not dare heal it, for fear of bad consequences - perhaps my poor aunt will have this open sore as long as she lives - the Brighouse road turnpike interest, it seems, cannot be paid off - it must be funded and then interest to be paid on the whole in future - Eh bien! be it so – Washington has, at last, settled with Mrs. Walsh and her son, and bought all the ground cut off from the Sour milk hall land by the new Godley road for £160 at 6d. per yard = 6400 yards – I am very glad of it – W- has had a letter from Mr. Lister to say, it would not be convenient for him to have a lawsuit

SH:7/ML/E/16/0123

with the Misses Walker of Walterclough – foolish enough de sa part to write at all to W- about it, after my saying that I would pay the expense and charge him nothing, but merely take the water rent towards payment – the Lower water business is before counsel – Jonathan Mallinson has got good water to his house from a new spring found under the new road – more water got to the Shibden reservoir by opening out old drains – my [aunt] paid £36.15.0 to Miss Hebden the other day for taking Charlotte Booth for 3 years – the girl was to go to her as last Monday week the 7th instant – John Bottomley has foolishly given Green leave to go along the new road on his (Green’s) saying I had given him leave – my poor aunt should send them all to Washington - Miss Walker writes to her aunt of returning tho’ she had not mentioned it to Mrs Sutherland on account of her Mrs S-’s not being well - why have I not heard from Mrs S-? a few lines after finishing the letter to stay Mr Sunderland just had called and thought the ankle going on well - breakfast at 11 - Brioche from Lady Harriet with a little note to say she had paid 3 marks for it which I might send back by the servant or pay herself! wrote note of thanks and enclosing the 3 marks - wrote also to Mr Browne - ‘Miss Lister presents her compliments to Mr Browne and regrets very much being in the country when he was so good to call on Friday. Finding that being presented at court might make her winter here more agreeable, Miss Lister would be glad to have her audience before the Queen’s birthday - Miss Lister is very much obliged for the bible and testament for which she will be glad to pay the bible society when she has the pleasure of seeing Mr Browne’ - ‘Peter Brown Esquire H.B. M.S. chargé d’affaires’ - wrote the above of today and out at 1 - threatening rain - turned back for 10 minutes - then out again - at Comtesse Blucher’s at 1 25 for ½ hour rained as I got there and all the time and all the way back - home at 2 ¼ - going to have an audience of one of the princess at 7 this evening - I to be at the Blucher’s at 8 and go with them to the Swedish and Dutch ministers - think they did not want me this morning but very civil wont go again in a morning in a hurry - wrote 3 pages large sized sheet to my aunt - chit chat - sorry about her ankle - anxious to hear from her - can write and have an answer every month - mention my 2 days in the country to see Roskilde and slept at Madame Rosenkrantz’s - widow of the late Danish prime minister, born a princess of Russia - a charming person - mornings and evenings cold - F about 46° between 6 and 7 am in the country - shall not stir much from Copenhagen till I can regularly begin my travels again - then at middle of page 2 began with business - ‘I wonder at your telling me the Brighouse road had proposed to pay off the arrears of interest - it is all very well whether it can or not - leave the matter to Washington - he will do what is right - I am very glad he has settled with Mrs Walsh and her son, and bought the land - as soon as he gets possession tell him to move back again the bit of walling that was obliged to be taken down, but to put it in a straight line right across the Greensward, where he will remember I wished to have it at first, and where the line will be shortest - the more stuff they had from Halifax into that hole, the better - but Washington will know all about it - and tell John to sow acorns all over (as thick as he can) the piece of ground between Greenwoods’ field and the Godley road up to the wall Washington will put across the top - Let acorns be sown, too, on all the bare pieces of bankment in Trough of Bolland wood, and plenty in the Conery wood - John will know all about this’ - glad arbutuses do well and some Spanish chesnuts are come up - ask if none of the acorns in the walk and wheat field are come up, and how the white clover looks - Mr Lister had no occasion to write to Washington about a lawsuit being inconvenient - foolish to do so - but my aunt to take no notice of it -‘Mr Parker will do what is right - I shall perhaps hear from him before I write - he will have to tell me the opinion about the upper brea water etc but it will do by and by, as I do not mean to do anything more at present about that water’ - glad Jonathan Mallinson has got water from a spring formed in the new road - not time to turn to my book but no doubt Miss Hebden right about the sum agreed upon £36.15.0 for taking Charlotte Booth for 3 years - hope she will do well - ‘how is her scholarship?’ - right not to give her money - a little present at Xmas enough - right in Miss Hebden to get her a seat at church - ‘I am vexed at John Bottomley - I gave no leave to anybody unless to such as should pay £5 a year and help to repair the road, all which was mentioned to Washington - it is Washington who is to order all these matters. John Bottomley must inquire of him what is to be done, and not go pothering you - do tell Washington to speak to John, and see that the road is not used by anybody but the tenants, until an agreement is first made by Washington with a person who wants the road - I give no leave without Washington’s knowing of it - or what would be the use of a steward? people would be forever saying, I had said this and that - I am glad you sent to inquire after Miss Walker - always give my kind regards to her’ - not yet written to IN- or Mrs Norcliffe but think of it daily - ‘I shall make a point of answering Mariana’s letters as immediately as possible - she has my best wishes as well as yours for her future happiness - I am quite reconciled - Providence orders all things wisely; and I am thankful - everything goes on quite well with me here, and I myself am quite well’ - said I should hope to hear from my aunt every month and should write as often - dinner at 5 ½ in ½ hour - read over my letter and sent it down (for the post) at 6 ½ to ‘Mrs Lister Shibden hall Halifax, York England’ - dressed - off to comtesse Blucher’s at 8 - took up her and Miss Ferrall and went to the Dutch ministers’ - Madame and her 2 daughters and M.... the Danish Prime minister? with his gold star and white ribbed, came in - tea - staid an hour - then to Madame Falson’s for ½ hour till 9 25 to the Swedish ministers’ (pronounced Okescheeld) she and her sister Mademoiselle Oxholm Dame d’honneur to princess Charlotte and ourselves the only ladies - several gentlemen, comte Blucher among the rest - playing cards - Madame Okescheeld a very charming agreeable person, pale, and ladylike, and interesting, with a consumptive cough - her sister Mademoiselle Oxholm, too, plenty to say for herself and civil and agreeable -talked of English gaucheries and shyness - and some English ladies did in society what ladies of no other nation would dare to do - very agreeable evening - set down Comtesse B- and Miss Ferrall and at home at 11 ¾ - dullish morning F56° at 8 20am. but from about 12 ¼ rainy damp disagreeable day and rather windy

rainy evening too – F56° now at 12 ¾ tonight – every[body] had their stoves lighted and the rooms warm -

note from Lady Harriet by Thomas this morning – has got me a barrel of anchovies 1Th.4m.0sch.

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rachelrai604 · 10 months

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Week 4

10.08.23

The Creative Communities

Who are the local and global creatives, designers, illustrators, and photographers that you want to connect with?

Tyrone Ohia

McCarthy Studio

Catherine Griffiths

George Haijian

Emil Ruder

Communities Shown In Lecture:

Natalie Robertson - Photographer

Rosanna Raymond

Emil McAvoy

Cecilia Faumuina

Bede Bennett

Ezra Baldwin

Cherise Cheung

Curiosity Cabinet:

"Cabinets of curiosities, sometimes known as 'wonder rooms,' are modest collections of exceptional things that, like modern museums, aimed to categorise and convey stories about the natural world's wonders and oddities."

Stefan Dam

2. Eiji Watanabe

3. Johnson Witehira

4. Studio Von Morgen

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Von Morgen (@studiovonmorgen)

instagram

5. Hannah Jensen

6. Mark Newsom

7. Nelly Nadav

8. George Haijan

9. Tyrone Ohia

10. Cambio

https://www.cambio.website/

Possible Collections:

Passport

Bible

Church

Indian / Western Money

Childhood Photos

Punjabi Suit

Punjabi Shoes

Punjabi Jewellery

Journals

Indian Cutlery

Clock / Watch

Candle

Tufting Mat

Bag

Street Sign

Teddy Bear

Dried Flowers

Pens

Drawing Tablet

Headphones

My 20 objects all relate back to me whether it be culturally, spiritually and objects I cherish. There is not a particular theme I am looking at but by putting everything together, the three main themes and messages I realised was actually mainly around my values and morals. For example, my bible and journal play a big role in my identify as a creative.

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childofchrist1983 · 2 years

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Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. - Luke 10:36-37 KJV

Several years ago, while in Copenhagen, Denmark on vacation, a woman heard a story that gives new meaning to the answer regarding the question mentioned in this very Bible passage.

We have all heard of the atrocities of the Holocaust and its tragedies, but many have never heard the remarkable story of this nation. There is a little fishing village which is a suburb of Copenhagen that opened its arms to the Danish Jews during this terrible time. The fishermen let it be known that if you showed up in the village at the appointed time, you would be evacuated to safety. In this way, 95% of Danish Jews escaped deportation and execution. This in itself is enough to show their concern for their neighbors. But there was more.

After the war, when the people returned home to Denmark, they returned to their jobs, their homes, their properties which had been cared for and kept safe by their Christian neighbors. It makes one consider how often we go out of my way for a friend, let alone others we may not know. It makes one ponder how well we live out God's command to "love thy neighbor as thyself".

Would we have been as generous as the Danes under those extreme circumstances? Could we be that generous today? Do we know our neighbors well enough to tell when they might be in trouble? These are questions that we will ponder long after the pictures are looked at, the vacation stories have been told, the souvenirs given away. The experiences we encounter, one can only hope will make them a better person, one who doesn't pass by or look the other way when a neighbor or stranger is in need.

We have not always been a good neighbor to those around us. Too often, our priorities and preferences have kept us from sharing the LORD our God's light and love. May He give us eyes to see others through His Holy Spirt, so that we may be prepared to offer kindness as well as help whenever and wherever it is needed. May the LORD our God and Father in Heaven help us to stay diligent and obedient and help us to guard our hearts in Him and His Word daily, May He help us to remain faithful and full of excitement to do our duty to Him and for His glorious return and our reunion in Heaven as well as all that awaits us there. May we never forget to thank the LORD our God and our Creator and Father in Heaven for all this and everything He does and has done for us! May we never forget who He is, nor forget who we are in Christ and that God is always with us! What a mighty God we serve! What a Savior this is! What a wonderful Lord, God, Savior and King we have in Jesus Christ! What a loving Father we have found in the Almighty God! What a wonderful God we serve! His will be done!

Thanks and glory be to God! Blessed be the name of the LORD! Hallelujah and Amen!

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clairebeauchampfan · 3 years

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When bullshitting history distorts the REAL truth and weakens your cause, however righteous

Saw this post today

Did you think this figure was real? Do you think people who truly want justice for Native Americans have a responsibility to tell ‘the truth’ without gross, blatant distortions of the ‘historical fact’?

Don’t get me wrong; the United States (and the whole of the Caribbean and Latin America) witnessed terrible acts of genocide against Native Americans, committed by people who thought of themselves as Christians but acted in an un-Christian manner, especially when they found themselves in mortal peril (and if you think things were bad on the Western Plains in the 1870s, read up about Argentina’s war of extermination against Native Americans, the ‘Conquest of the Desert’, in the same decade) Sadly religious teaching to ‘love your enemy’ and ‘thou shalt not kill’ goes out the window when lives, money and property are at stake, whether your are a Christian, a Muslim, a humanist, or even - as we’ve seen in Myanmar/Burma , a Buddhist. Or, again as we have recently seen in Canada, when right-minded Christian people thought they were absolutely doing the right thing but ended up doing the entirely wrong thing.

Let’s look though at some facts though about the ‘slaughter’ claimed above.

The population of the Pre-Colombian Americas as a whole, that is North America, Central and South America, is best estimated at around 60 million, of which 3.8 million lived in the United States and Canada (it takes an awful lot of space to support hunter-gatherer communities, even those who additionally grew squashes, beans and corn). See

(https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-31/european-colonization-americas-killed-10-percent-world-population-and-caused)

and

https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0289.htm

By 1650, only 30 years after the Mayflower, but 158 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the native population of the whole of the Americas was estimated to have reduced to six millions (!) Whilst many tens, even hundreds of thousands were undoubtedly ‘slaughtered’ by European invaders (slaughtered in the sense of killed by act of war, or murder, or to stretch the meaning of the word, being worked to death in plantations and mines) , the vast majority (some estimates put as high as 90% of the population) tragically succumbed to disease. , So even if European settlers had just come to trade, as many did, rther thqn settle, the Native American population had no immunity or defence against smallpox, measles, flu and other diseases introduced from Europe (tribes such as the Mandan and the Minnetaree were almost wiped out by a new disease, Asian cholera, in the 1840s, which had swept Europe before arriving in the States.). Whilst there are indeed a few recorded instances of deliberate spreading of smallpox by infected blankets, the fact is that the vast majority of Native Americans were not ‘slaughtered’ by Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish or English settlers, any more than hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Europeans were ‘slaughtered’ by Native Americans giving them syphyllis. Or millions of Europeans were ‘slaughtered’ by Mongols bringing the ‘Black Death’ to Europe by way of the Crimea, wiping out up to 90% of the population in some places and perhaps a third of the population of Europe. Or millions of people around the world are today being deliberately ‘slaughtered’ with Covid in an act of genocide by the Chinese - whatever the Far Right might claim.

But perhaps the author of this poster can’t handle the truth, let alone the historical facts. I suspect he/ she/they are a White property owner (s) , or the guilt-ridden son or daughter of White property owners in the United States. Are they prepared to stand by their principles, back up their righteous indignation with deeds and not words, and surrender their, or their parents’ house and land without compensation back to the original owners, the nearest surviving Native Americans, or at least pay them a market rental over and above the rental they pay their existing Landlord.?

(Unless of course they live in Manhattan, which was purchased from the original owners fair and square in what realors call an ‘unimproved’ state, as is well documented.)

No? Not prepared to impoverish themselves to right an historical wrong? As canting an hypocrite as any of those bible-bashing, gun toting Christian settlers whose actions they so deplore but yet they so richly benefit from today? But, they’re very welcome to come back to Europe and join all the canting hypocrites here. And at least here they’ll get a free health service.

#genocide native americans

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graphite-and-chiffon · 4 years

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You would find her in a Polaroid picture

Bastion was the oldest of three. He had two younger sisters, Aline and Alma, and one younger brother, August. His mother was french, and his father was Danish, though all the children had grown up in Copenhagen. In fact, they all still lived there. Except for Bastion. His mother had taught him to sew. He’d been bored one day, and sat down with her while she sewed a new dress for his sister, and had decided to help her. He’d caught on fast. Soon enough, he’d been making clothes himself. A new jacket for himself, a dress for his sisters, trousers for August. Then things had been put on hold when he turned 17, until he married. Once he married, he could do what he loved again.

His parents has picked his bride when he was still a child, though. Well...his father had. She was a year older than him, and from old money. Her name was Ida, and she was sweet at first. But when he started college, she got bitter. She wasn’t happy when they had to move to Paris, or when he took up a minor modelling career while he tried to build his own brand. They’d moved to California at some point, and she’d made friends, and been happy. For a time. But then she’d sent him to the hospital. She had hit him in the back of the head with a copy of the bible that her mother had gifted them on their wedding day before throwing a vase at him, which had shattered and cut his cheek. It’d healed well, though. Some stitches and aftercare, and he was fine.

He’d petitioned for divorce eventually, when he had to start consistently wearing sunglasses and long sleeves out of the house, even when the weather didn’t call for them. They granted it happily when pictures were submitted. Black eye, busted lip...an xray of a fractured rib. The press had had a field day, posting all about the messy divorce. But he’d gotten over it in time, and there was less stigma attached to him, since he’d been the victim. All the stigma was placed on her. He had started getting invites a year or so after to presentations, auctions, everything that showed off eligible girls for marriage. Or ownership. The one he’d gotten recently had been for a young lady with a pretty name. He couldn’t pronounce it...But then Will’s new wife had given him the same invite and shown him the girl. Pretty...So he decided he might go...He was settled at a table in the club garden, checking her instagram. He’d already followed her, deciding he didn’t mind seeing more of her.

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lordeasriel · 3 years

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Whether or not Charles Cape is truly an ally of OS, he raises an interesting idea: there must surely be a number of "believers" in the organization who are simply opposed to the magisterium for political or theological reasons. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on if there are any other OS members in the books who are likely christian, just not in a conventional magisterium way. Personally I could see Godwin and maybe Nugent.

Oh, the chances of a great deal of Oakley Street being Christian are very high, so I wouldn’t be surprised if more of them opposed the Magisterium for thinking they misrepresented their views of the religion. I can Godwin being a christian woman, not a fervent believer, but she certainly would be the sort of woman who believed in God and went to Church on Sundays and had a cross necklace, for sure. She is a practical woman, so she wouldn’t let these beliefs get in the way of her sharp mind, but I can see her as a catholi, easily; it probably became a more recurrent thing after her son and husband passed away (we don’t know but I got the feeling she is all alone now, so maybe being more faithful or more church-inclined was her way of trying to get closer to them.

Nugent I think would be more of a christian by convenience. He is definitely a man who fears God, and he does everything he does keeping in mind that if there is a Heaven, he will be punished and rewarded accordingly and he can live with that. As a politician and a Privy Council member, I imagine that being a Christian by baptism, at the very least, would be considered a common sense thing. He would probably attend Church every now and again, and mostly be bored as he is more inclined to hate the Magisterium as a whole than Godwin is, in my opinion. But I can see him believing in God and being very angry with God over the bullshit the Magisterium does in His Name.

Other faithful members I can think of are Bud and Anita Schlesinger; they’re more like Godwin too; probably attended Church most Sundays, but they prefer the smaller churches, with less of a grandieur feel about them. As New Danish, I think that their relationship with Christianity is different than the European members of Oakley Street. I personally think that the Americas are less policed by the Magisterium due to the distance issues, so how Christianity spread there is fairly different than how England behaves or the rest of Europe do. I think Anita and Bud are more focused on the celebratory aspects of the Church; Christianity for them is cooking stuff for Easter, and Christmas, and finding solace in the wisdom of the Bible they were taught as children. It’s more about the rebirth and renovation other than the punishment and deprivation messages of Christianity - which the latter seem to be more of the focus in European Christianity.

I think Hannah Relf was probably was a believer in God, but she didn’t care so much about the rituals of the Church, which may cause her to be seen as an atheist here and there. She probably attended Church every now and again, mostly out of habit, and she would probably get bored for many of the sermons that she felt weren’t interesting - she’d probably be more interested in New Testament stuff, probably messages about knowledge and kindness and common courtesy - but she probably just attended Church because it was something people did, especially in St. Sophia’s. Most of the colleges had chapels, and while I can see Jordan not having many religious men due to them all thinking they were atheists and better than everyone else for it lmao St. Sophia’s is different because it’s a girls’ college, and most of these girls attend there so they can be on route to finding a proper husband, so common social stuff would be usual in their routine, like going to the church on Sundays and so on. So I can see Hannah attending on Easter, and maybe the Christmas Eve night or the morning after, but her belief is not reliant on ritual.

And the Al-Kaisy couple probably were also Christian. They are said to look like they were North-African, and I’m torn between this because I can’t tell if this meant to describe them physically or if Philman meant geographically, but either way I’m going with geographically because I think it would make sense regardless (Dr. Al-Kaisy has an accent in the audiobook, but I’m also cautious of that because they don’t explain the decision behind accents and all that, so this is hardly canon, but I take it because I like Michael Sheen’s narration a lot). As a I said, being North-African means they probably came from either a colony or a former colony (It’s tricky knowing what is what in Lyra’s world, thank you for nothing Philman lmao), which means that Christianity was probably enforced on their country and that could be in many ways. Usually former colonies have a very fanatical, fervent take on religion, especially because the Church took advantage of these people being abused and oppressed, and they just made things ten times worse, but this depends on where you’re from and when the colony period ended and a lot more than just Evil Church + Colonialism = Fanatics. But, I think the Al-Kaisy couple is very likely Christian, Yasmin probably more of a believer than her husband. I can see her attending Church and being more inclined towards faith, wearing religious jewelry, and so on. She is more cautious and fearful than the rest of the Oakley Street people at her home, and I can see how being part of a shady group like that would wear her down, especially if she believes strongly in God and Sin. Adnan would not be a strong believer; if you asked him if he believed in God, he’d probably say yes, but he is also a Scholar, and like Hannah he would be more interested in the historical value of religion than in the message itself. Whatever rituals he would participate, would probably just to satisfy his faithful wife.

After I wrote all of that - and I’m sorry about the length lmao - I feel the need to say, that like most things, I believe that Faith is very fluid, much like I described the people above. And the Magisterium is very tricky, because it has so many different variant of religious branches that I can see some people saying they’re Christian meaning group A, but other people saying they aren’t True Christians because they don’t follow group B and so on. At their core, they can all be Christian, but they are non-conventional, like you pointed out. I think that of the above, Yasmin Al-Kaisy would be the one closer to convention (aside from Charles Capes, of course, but he is like. A priest lmao) but I also think about how she isn’t European and how perhaps the Magisterium group that had a bigger hold on her country may not have been the same as the Church of England and how that would affect how people saw her. The least conventional is probably Nugent, I think.

Thank you so much for this ask, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I hadn’t know how to put it into words. I hope this at least answers you ask, cause I usually go on a tangent ashjhashjkash Sorry for the big, long post!

#asks #hdm meta: religion #hdm meta: oakley street #thank u for the ask!#this was fun to write!!!#oakley street #long post #Anonymous

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abidingingodsgraceministries · 3 years

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BEWARE AND BE AWARE OF THE NEW AGE BELIEFS!! 🙌💯👏 —MORE OF SATAN'S DECEPTION! —END TIMES —ONE WORLD —GREAT RESET —NEW WORLD ORDER [NWO].! Stay Alert and Aware At All Times!!

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Sadly, MANY People [Non-Belivers & Believers] In General, Including MANY [Countless] Christians, Partake In It, Condone It, Support It, Defend It, Etc.. and See NO Harm, BUT, They DON'T KNOW That It IS a DECEPTION OF THE ENEMY. The Enemy Uses This Belief To Release his demons in the Destruction Of a Persons Life, Etc...

HAVE YOU BEEN FOOLED BY NEW AGE BELIEFS ?!???

Provided Below, Is An Interesting Article, We Hope Y'all Read It and Gain Some Insight From It. We Highly Recommend and Suggest, That You ALL Do Some Real Truthful and Factual DEEP Research! Dig Deep and Look Into It, Fervently Praying Without Ceasing For The Lord God Almighty' Discernment, Guidance, Truth, and Direction, Etc.. Read and Study Scripture and Test Everything To Scripture! [Link For The Article, Is Provided Below, At The Very End Of This Post].

Remember Y'all, God' Ways and Truth Is Much Better, Higher and Different Than Our Own. We Are To LEAN On HIM and HIS WILL, HIS WORD, HIS TRUTH, HIS WAYS, HIS COMMANDMENTS, and HIS UNDERSTANDING; and NOT On Our Own!

It Seriously Doesn't Matter What We Want.. What We Think.. How We Feel.. How We Perceive and View Things, Etc..It Just DOESN'T Matter!

At The End Of The Day, The ONLY Thing That DOES MATTER, IS WHAT THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY SAID AND SAYS, WHAT THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY WANTS, THINKS, FEELS, COMMANDS, Etc..

Y'all, It's ALL About The LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, and That's It. NOT About Us!

LIVE FOR CHRIST. LIVE HIS WORD. LIVE HIS COMMANDMENTS. LIVE HIS WAYS. LIVE HIS TRUTH. LIVE YOUR FAITH and BELIEF(S) IN THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY!

If You Or Someone You Know.. Someone You Love and Care About, Has Partaken In.. OR.. Still [Is] Does Partake In —NEW AGE BELIEFS and PRACTICES, —Then Please Do NOT Hesitate, and Contact Us Immediately, Via E-Mail: [email protected] Or Via Any Other Contact Methods, Etc.. Let Us Help. Reach Out To Us [@AbidingInGodsGraceMinistries], Or Reach Out To Anyone Who Can Actually Help and Knows The Truth.

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[P.S. Please Share This Everywhere and With Everyone, To Help Others and To Help Support, Educate and Bring Awareness To All. —Share This and ALL Our (Other) Content, To Help Fight The Good Fight Of Faith and To Spread The Word, Ways, Commandments, and Truth.. Of The Lord God Almighty].

[P.S. FOLLOW @AbidingInGodsGraceMinistries —On ALL Social Media Sites, For, Daily Christian Content, Daily Devotionals, Current Events and Information, Sound Doctrine Teachings, Biblical Principles and Values, Bible Studies, Prayers, Prayer Requests, Prayer Warriors, Etc.., + So Much More! —Make Sure Y'all LIKE • FOLLOW • SUBSCRIBE • JOIN —To ALL Of Our Official Social Media Pages/Channels/Groups/Etc.. SHARE ALL Content, and INVITE (ADD) ALL Your Family, Friends, Loved Ones, Co-Workers, Etc.. To LIKE and FOLLOW (Etc..) Us On ALL Social Media Sites and To JOIN Our Official Groups, Etc..]

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 2 years

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Højsangen 8:6 Lad mig være så tæt på dig, som var jeg stemplet på dit hjerte, eller sad som en ring på din arm. For kærligheden er stærk som døden, lidenskaben er uimodståelig som dødsriget selv: den brænder med voldsomme flammer, som ikke kan slukkes.

(Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.) — Song of Solomon 8:6 | Bibelen på hverdagsdansk (BPH) Bibelen på hverdagsdansk (Danish New Living Bible) Copyright © 2002, 2006 by Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide. Cross References: Numbers 5:14; Proverbs 6:34; Isaiah 49:16; Jeremiah 22:24; Haggai 2:23

#love #heart #death #Song of Solomon 8:6 #Old Testament #BPH #Bibelen på hverdagsdansk #Danish New Living Bible #Biblica Inc.

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tree-language · 4 years

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Tolkien, Jung, and The Paradox of Language

Tolkien has claimed that the stories of Middle Earth were not invented by him, but rather inherited by him, told to him by the Elves, and he was merely recounting what existed independently in the Realms of Faerie. The problem, however, is the extent to which Tolkien borrowed from existing mythology and languages to build his world of Middle Earth. Even the name of the land itself comes from the Norse Midgard. By deriving character names from existing languages, such as Sauron, from the Anglo-Saxon root "searu", meaning "treachery", he has undermined the credibility of his argument that they exist independent of his role as creator. Perhaps he might claim that he has given them pseudonyms in order to translate their names into a form that we can understand, however given Tolkien's understanding about the power of words, and the magic in a name, this does not hold up. Since Tolkien has been so thoroughly studied and written about, as a man, scholar, author and visionary, I am sure this paradox has not been lost on many commentators. The reason I am compelled to give it attention here is that I am grappling with my own journey of words. Unlike Tolkien, I am not fluent in many languages, nor am I knowledgeable in the intricacies of syntax, phrasing, or the melodies of dialects. So when I began to develop my own mythic language, I soon abandoned the idea of basing my words on previously existing tongues, in favor of a more independent, individualistic and intuitive approach. I allowed the words to come to me through pure inspiration, and resisted any words which seemed to similar to existing ones I was familiar with. Of course, some of my words had already been established, and others may have unintentionally reflected my unconscious predilections, but the point was to free myself up, to be open to whatever bubbled from my subconscious and not to impose too much intentional derivation. When I first named the land of Terad Mir, I had taken the obvious path of using the Latin word "terra" for earth, but I later decided to switch it around, so that "mir" was the word for earth, and "terad" meant "horizon". I was able to construct it with the root word "ter" meaning "far" and "adh" meaning "separation". This gave the enhanced meaning of the horizon as the mythic separation between Earth and Sky. Now, having the word "mir" meaning "earth" still provided for an interesting dilemma, because it is such as simple, and therefore, common construct that already has many meanings. In English it could refer to a Russian Village, in German it means "me", in Romansch it means "wall", derived from the Latin "murus". I discovered that the Serbs, Croats and Slavs have inherited the word "mir" from Proto-Slavic, to mean "peace", but it also means "world". So even in switching the words, I still ended up unintentionally reflecting existing patterns of human language. In further research, I learned about the Merriam people, from Murray Island off the northern tip of Australia. For them the word "mir" means "word" or "language", and they call their island "Mer". Interestingly, I had originally been drawn to the French word "mer" meaning "ocean", derived from the Latin "mere", from which we also get "mermaid". I decided to use the word "mer" for the goddess, and the feminine principle of nature. I must have overlooked the obvious fact that "mere" also means "mother" in Old French, derived from the Latin "mater". Furthermore, I couldn't resist using the word "mar" for the sea, which is clearly similar to the Latin "mare" which is still used in Italian for the sea. Middle and Old French use word "mare" to mean "lake", "sea" or "pool", derived from the Proto-Germanic word "mari", and the Proto-Indo-European "mori", meaning "marsh". There is also the High German "meri" for "lake" or "sea", which has become "meer" in German, and "mere" in Old English means "pond" or "pool", still used today. Interestingly, Venetion and Catalan use the word "mare" for "mother", deriving it from the Latin "mater". In English the word "mare" refers to a female horse, from the Old Norse "merr". In Old English "mare" means "evil spirit", which gives us "nightmare", from Proto-Germanic "maron", and the Proto-Indo-European "mor" meaning "feminine evil spirit". This is reflected in the names of Morgana (Morgan le Fey), the sorceress of Arthurian legend, and Morrígain, the Old Irish elf queen. Tolkien's use of the Old English word "morthor", meaning "murder" in naming Mordor. There is also the Danish use of "mare" to mean "succubus" or "incubus" from the Old Norse "mara". In Maltese, "mara" means "woman" derived from the Phoenecian "imara", and it can also mean "rodent", "rabbit", "danger", "hand" or "finger" in various languages. Clearly I have entered into a tangled web of interrelated etymology that can be difficult to navigate for a novice such as myself. Even someone so well-versed in languages as Tolkien could not resolve the contradictory nature of words. Ironically, the diversity of languages that are disappearing from the world at such a rapid rate, that Tolkien's own invented languages stand a better chance of being preserved that those of living peoples. So what is my aim in pursuing this treacherous passtime? Do I hope to somehow improve on what others have done before me? Am I merely adding one more unnecessary dictionary of invented words to the list? The only honest answer that I can give is that I am compelled by some unknown inner force within me which demands expression. In this respect I am in good company, for both Tolkien and Jung have claimed a similar defense for their obsessions. Thus I humbly commit to the unenviable task of laboring in the shadows of giants, without much hope that my effort are of any use other than some sort of personal exorcism. Along the way I have discovered some interesting themes that were latent and only beginning to emerge in the writings of Jung and Tolkien, and this is the idea of the persecuted feminine principle. As we have discovered with the root word of "mare", which led us from "mother" to "evil spirit", the demonizing women is entrenched in our language, going back many generations, through many cultures around the world. Jung sought to give a more nuanced view of the shadow side of the feminine through his development of the idea of the "anima", from Eve, to Helen, to Mary, to Sophia. Tolkien attemped to elevate the roles of women as the equals to their male counterparts, such as Luthien was to Beren, or to a lesser extent as Arwen was to Aragorn. Galadriel is co-ruler of Lothlorien with her husband Celeborn, and she seems to have a more significant role in the story. Tolkien also made Eowyn into a brave warrior woman, reminiscent of the Amazons from Greek mythology. Ultimately, however, both Jung Tolkien were both raised in a patriarchal system, and immersed in a world dominated by men and saturated with male thinking. In spite of their attempts to find a more nuanced perspective, it is clear from their lives and their writings that the male perspective dominates. What is interesting to me is that the entire ethos of my story of the Far Lands was built on the idea of the goddess being overwhelmed by a male conqueror, and the interrelation between language, and the written word in particular, with patriarchy. This was reinforced after I read "The Alphabet and the Goddess" by Leonard Shlain. There is no doubt that a goddess revival movement is now in full swing, having lurched forward during the sixities, along with the embrace of Wicca and New Age theology, a revival of interest in Lilith and the lost books of the Bible, as well as the role of Mary Magdelene. This seems to have culminated in the more recent popularity of "The Da Vinci Code" which completed the mythologizing of a new perspective on the feminine principle. I do not feel that I have anything of substance to add to this movement, however I am compelled to participate, driven by my personal experiences of having strong and loving relationships with my mother, wife, and sisters. I also have an intuitive sense that my own feminine self, my anima, could do with some harmonizing, being faced with the conflicts of my masculine urges, and finding myself still embedded in a male dominated society that continues to objectify women and relegate them to the dual roles of virgin or harlot. I wish to unify my own soul, and therefore must continue on this journey of self revelation and unification.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

A Brief History of English Literature

Nasrullah Mambrol

2 years ago

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This is the most abridged notes on History of English Literature. To download the content in pdf click on the following link

A Brief History of English Literature PDF

CHAPTER 1

OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form of English. The period is a long one and it is generally considered that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100. Many of the poems of the period are pagan, in particular Widsith and Beowulf.

The greatest English poem, Beowulf is the first English epic. The author of Beowulf is anonymous. It is a story of a brave young man Beowulf in 3182 lines. In this epic poem, Beowulf sails to Denmark with a band of warriors to save the King of Denmark, Hrothgar. Beowulf saves Danish King Hrothgar from a terrible monster called Grendel. The mother of Grendel who sought vengeance for the death of her son was also killed by Beowulf. Beowulf was rewarded and became King. After a prosperous reign of some forty years, Beowulf slays a dragon but in the fight he himself receives a mortal wound and dies. The poem concludes with the funeral ceremonies in honour of the dead hero. Though the poem Beowulf is little interesting to contemporary readers, it is a very important poem in the Old English period because it gives an interesting picture of the life and practices of old days.

The difficulty encountered in reading Old English Literature lies in the fact that the language is very different from that of today. There was no rhyme in Old English poems. Instead they used alliteration.

Besides Beowulf, there are many other Old English poems. Widsith, Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Wife’s Lament, Husband’s Message, Christ and Satan, Daniel, Andreas, Guthlac, The Dream of the Rood, The Battle of Maldon etc. are some of the examples.

Two important figures in Old English poetry are Cynewulf and Caedmon. Cynewulf wrote religious poems and the four poems, Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, Christ and Elene are always credited with him. Caedmon is famous for his Hymn.

Alfred enriched Old English prose with his translations especially Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Aelfric is another important prose writer during Old English period. He is famous for his Grammar, Homilies and Lives of the Saints.Aelfric’s prose is natural and easy and is very often alliterative.

CHAPTER 2

Middle English Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer

Poet Geoffrey Chaucer was born circa 1340 in London, England. In 1357 he became a public servant to Countess Elizabeth of Ulster and continued in that capacity with the British court throughout his lifetime. The Canterbury Tales became his best known and most acclaimed work. He died in 1400 and was the first to be buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner.

Chaucer’s first major work was ‘The Book of the Duchess’, an elegy for the first wife of his patron John of Gaunt. Other works include ‘Parlement of Foules’, ‘The Legend of Good Women’ and ‘Troilus and Criseyde’. In 1387, he began his most famous work, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, in which a diverse group of people recount stories to pass the time on a pilgrimage to Canterbury.

William Langland, (born c. 1330—died c. 1400), presumed author of one of the greatest examples of Middle English alliterative poetry, generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegorical work with a complex variety of religious themes. One of the major achievements of Piers Plowman is that it translates the language and conceptions of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by the layman. In general, the language of the poem is simple and colloquial, but some of the author’s imagery is powerful and direct.

Morality plays, Miracle plays, and Interlude

Morality play is an allegorical drama popular in Europe especially during the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the characters personify moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or youth) and in which moral lessons are taught. Morality plays typically contain a protagonist who represents either humanity as a whole or a smaller social structure. Supporting characters are personifications of good and evil. This alignment of characters provides the play’s audience with moral guidance. Morality plays are the result of the dominant belief of the time period, that humans had a certain amount of control over their post-death fate while they were on earth. Example is Everyman.

Miracle plays (mystery plays) were stories taken from the Bible. Each play had four or five different scenes or acts. The priests and monks were the actors. Each scene or act was preformed at a different place in town and the people moved from one stage to the next to watch the play. The play usually ended outside the church so that the people would go to church and hear a sermon after watching the play.

Another kind of play, the Interlude was performed at court or at “great houses” by professional minstrels or amateurs at intervals between some other entertainment, such as a banquet, or preceding or following a play, or between acts. John Heywood, one of the most famous interlude writers, brought the genre to perfection in his Four P-s

CHAPTER 3

ELIZABEHAN POETRY AND PROSE

After the death of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400, a century has gone without great literary outputs. This period is known as Barren Age of literature.

Even though there are many differences in their work, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey are often mentioned together. Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Sonnet in England whereas Surrey wrote the first blank verse in English.

Thomas Wyatt followed the Italian poet Petrarch to compose sonnets. In this form, the 14 lines rhyme abbaabba (8) + 2 or 3 rhymes in the last sex lines.

The Earl of Surrey’s blank verse is remarkable. Christopher Marlow, Sakespeare, Milton and many other writers made use of it.

Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets (1557) is the first printed anthology of English poetry. It contained 40 poems by Surrey and 96 by Wyatt. There were 135 by other authors. Some of these poems were fine, some childish.

In 1609, a collection of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets was printed. These sonnets were addressed to one “Mr. W.H.”. The most probable explanation of the identity of “W.H.” is that he was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

Other people mentioned in the sonnets are a girl, a rival poet, and a dark-eyed beauty. Shakespeare’s two long poems, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece are notable.

One of the most important poets of Elizabethan period is Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). He has been addressed “the poets’ poet”. His pastoral poem, The Shepeard’s Calendar (1579) is in 12 books, one for each month of the year. Spenser’s Amoretti, 88 Petrarchan sonnets clebrates his progress of love. The joy of his marriage with Elizabeth Boyle is expressed in his ode Epithalamion. His Prothalamion is written in honour of the double marriage of the daughters of the Earl of Worester. Spenser’s allegorical poem, The Faerie Queene is his greatest achievement. Spenser invented a special metre for The Faerie Queene. The verse has nine lines and the rhyme plan is ababbcbcc. This verse is known as the ‘Spenserian Stanza’.

Sir Philip Sidney is remembered for his prose romance, Arcadia. His critical essay Apology for Poetry, sonnet collection Astrophel and Stella are elegant.

Michael Drayton and Sir Walter Raleigh are other important poets of Elizabethan England. Famous Elizabethan dramatist Ben Jonson produced fine poems also.

The University Wits John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Robert Green, Christopher Marlow, and Thomas Nash also wrote good number of poems. John Lyly is most widely known as the author of prose romance entitled Euphues. The style Lyly used in his Euphues is known as Euphuism. The sentences are long and complicated. It is filled with tricks and alliteration. Large number of similes are brought in.

John Donne’s works add the beauty of Elizabethan literature. He was the chief figure of Metaphysical Poetry. Donne’s poems are noted for its originality and striking images and conceits. Satires, Songs and Sonnets, Elegies, The Flea, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, A Valediction: of weeping etc. are his famous works.

Sir Francis Bacon is a versatile genius of Elizabethan England. He is considered as the father of English essays. His Essays first appeared in 1597, the second edition in 1612 and the third edition in 1625. Besides essays, he wrote The Advancement of Learning, New Atlantis and History of Henry VII.

Bacon’s popular essays are Of Truth, Of Friendship, Of Love, Of Travel, Of Parents and Children, Of Marriage and Single Life, Of Anger, Of Revenge, Of Death, etc.

Ben Jonson’s essays are compiled in The Timber or Discoveries. His essays are aphoristic like those of Bacon. Jonson is considered as the father of English literary criticism.

Many attempts were carried out to translate Bible into English. After the death of John Wycliff, William Tyndale tried on this project. Coverdale carried on the work of Tyndale. The Authorized Version of Bible was published in 1611.

CHAPTER 4

ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

The English dramas have gone through great transformation in Elizabethan period. The chief literary glory of the Elizabethan age was its drama. The first regular English comedy was Ralph Roister Doister written by Nicholas Udall. Another comedy Gammar Gurton’s Needle is about the loss and the finding of a needle with which the old woman Gammar Gurton mends clothes.

The first English tragedy was Gorboduc, in blank verse. The first three acts of Gorboduc writtern by Thomas Norton and the other two by Thomas Sackville.

The University Wits contributed hugely for the growth of Elizabethan drama. The University Wits were young men associated with Oxford and Cambridge. They were fond of heroic themes. The most notable figures are Christopher Marlow, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Nash, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, and George Peele.

Christopher Marlow was the greatest of pre-Shakespearean dramatist. Marlow wrote only tragedies. His most famous works are Edward II, Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, The Massacre at Paris, and Doctor Faustus. Marlow popularized the blank verse. Ben Jonson called it “the mighty line of Marlow”.

Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy is a Senecan play. It resembles Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Its horrific plot gave the play a great and lasting popularity.

The greatest literary figure of English, William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon on April 26, 1564. He did odd jobs and left to London for a career. In London, he wrote plays for Lord Chamberlain’s company. Shakespeare’s plays can be classified as the following

1.The Early Comedies: in these immature plays the plots are not original. The characters are less finished and the style lacks the genius of Shakespeare. They are full of wit and word play. Of this type are The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

2.The English Histories: These plays show a rapid maturing of Shakespeare’s technique. His characterization has improved. The plays in this group are Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V.

3. The Mature Comedies: The jovial good humour of Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, the urban worldywise comedy of Touchstone in As You Like It, and the comic scenes in The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing etc. are full of vitality. They contain many comic situations.

4.The Sombre Plays: In this group are All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Trolius and Cressida. These plays show a cynical attitude to life and are realistic in plot.

5. The Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear are the climax of Shakespeare’s art. These plays stand supreme in intensity of emotion, depth of psychological insight, and power of style.

6. The Roman Plays: Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus etc. follow the great tragic period. Unlike Marlow, Shakespeare is relaxed in the intensity of tragedy.

7. The Last Plays: The notable last plays of Shakespeare are Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest.

The immense power and variety of Shakespeare’s work have led to the idea that one man cannot have written it all; yet it must be true that one man did. Thus Shakespeare remains as the greatest English dramatist even after four centuries of his death.

Other dramatist who flourished during the Elizabethan period is Ben Jonson. He introduced the “comedy of humours’’, which portrays the individual as dominated by one marked characteristic. He is best known for his Every Man in his Humour. Other important plays of Jonson are Every Man out of his Humour, Volpone or the Fox, and The Alchemist,

John Webster’s The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are important Elizabethan dramas. Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Heywood, Beaumont and Fletcher etc. are other noted Elizabethan playwrights.

CHAPTER 5

John Milton and His Time

John Milton (1608- 1674) was born in London and educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge. After leaving university, he studied at home. Milton was a great poet, polemic, pamphleteer, theologian, and parliamentarian. In 1643, Milton married a woman much younger than himself. She left Milton and did not return for two years. This unfortunate incident led Milton to write two strong pamphlets on divorce. The greatest of all his political writings is Areopagitica, a notable and impassioned plea for the liberty of the press.

Milton’s early poems include On Shakespeare, and On Arriving at the Age of Twenty-three. L’Allegro(the happy man and Il Penseroso (the sad man) two long narrative poems. Comus is a masque written by Milton when he was at Cambridge.

His pastoral elegy Lycidas is on his friend, Edward King who drowned to death on a voyage to Ireland. Milton’s one of the sonnets deals with the theme of his blindness.

Milton is remembered for his greatest epic poem Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost contained twelve books and published in 1677. Milton composed it in blank verse. Paradise Lost covers the rebellion of Satan(Lucifer) in heaven and his expulsion. Paradise Lost contains hundreds of remarkable lines. Milton coined many words in this poem.

Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are other two major poems of Milton.

Milton occupies a central position in English literature. He was a great Puritan and supported Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War. He wrote many pamphlet in support of parliament.

LYRIC POETS DURING MILTON’S PERIOD (THE CAVALIER POETS)

Milton’s period produced immense lyric poetry. These lyrical poets dealt chiefly with love and war.

Richard Lovelace’s Lucasta contains the best of his shorter pieces. His best known lyrics, such as To Althea, from Prison and To Lucasta, going in the Wars, are simple and sincere.

Sir John Suckling was a famous wit at court. His poems are generous and witty. His famous poem is Ballad upon a Wedding.

Robert Herrick wrote some fresh and passionate lyrics. Among his best known shorter poems are To Althea, To Julia, and Cherry Ripe.

Philip Massinger and John Ford produced some notable in this period.

Many prose writers flourished during Milton’s age. Sir Thomas Browne is the best prose writer of the period. His ReligioMedici is a curious mixture of religious faith and scientific skepticism. Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Errors is another important work.

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, Thomas Fuller’s The History of the Holy War are other important prose works during this period. Izaac Walton’s biography of John Donne is a very famous work of Milton’s period. His Compleat Angler discusses the art of river fishing.

CHAPTER 6

RESTORATION DRAMA AND PROSE

The Restoration of Charles II (1660) brought about a revolution in English literature. With the collapse of the Puritan Government there sprang up activities that had been so long suppressed. The Restoration encouraged levity in rules that often resulted in immoral and indecent plays.

John Dryden (1631-1700)

Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the Restoration. In his works, we have an excellent reflection of both the good and the bad tendencies of the age in which he lived. Before the Restoration, Dryden supported Oliver Cromwell. At the Restoration, Dryden changed his views and became loyal to Charles II. His poem Astrea Redux (1660) celebrated Charles II’s return.

Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis(Miracle Year) describes the terrors of Great Fire in London in 1666. Dryden appeared as the chief literary champion of the monarchy in his famous satirical allegory, Abasalom and Achitophel. John Dryden is now remembered for his greatest mock-heroic poem, Mac Flecknoe. Mac Flecknoe is a personal attack on his rival poet Thomas Shadwell.

Dryden’s other important poems are Religio Laici, and The Hind and the Panther.

John Dryden popularized heroic couplets in his dramas. Aurengaxebe, The Rival Ladies, The Conquest of Granada, Don Sebastian etc. are some of his famous plays.

His dramatic masterpiece is All for Love. Dryden polished the plot of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in his All for Love.

As a prose writer, Dryden’s work, An Essay on Dramatic Poesie is worth mentioning.

John Bunyan’s greatest allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Holy War,

Comedy of Manners

Restoration period produced a brilliant group of dramatists who made this age immortal in the history of English literature. These plays are hard and witty, comic and immoral. It was George Etheredge who introduced Comedy of Manners. His famous plays are She Would if She Could, The Man of Mode and Love in a Tub.

William Congreve is the greatest of Restoration comedy writers. His Love for Love, The Old Bachelor, The Way of the World and The Double Dealer are very popular.

William Wycherley is another important Restoration comedy playwright. His Country Wife, and Love in a Wood are notable plays.

Sir John Vanbrugh’s best three comedies are The Provoked Wife, The Relapse and The Confederacy.

CHAPTER 7

ENGLISH POETS, 1660-1798

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

Alexander Pope was the undisputed master of both prose and verse. Pope wrote many poems and mock-epics attacking his rival poets and social condition of England. His Dunciad is an attack on dullness. He wrote An Essay on Criticism (1711) in heroic couplets. In 1712, Pope pubished The Rape of the Lock, one of the most brilliant poems in English language. It is a mock-heroic poem dealing with the fight of two noble families.

An Essay on Man, Of the Characters of Women, and the translation of Illiad and Odyssey are his other major works.

Oliver Goldsmith wrote two popular poems in heroic couplets. They are The Traveller and The Deserted Village.

James Thompson is remembered for his long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes in his poem The Seasons. He wrote another important poem The Castle of Indolence.

Edward Young produced a large amount of literary work of variable quality. The Last Day, The Love of Fame, and The Force of Religion are some of them.

Robert Blair’s fame is chiefly dependent on his poem The Grave. It is a long blank verse poem of meditation on man’s morality.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is one of the greatest poets of English literature. His first poem was the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Then after years of revision, he published his famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Its popularity had been maintained to the present day. Other important poems of Thomas Gray are Ode on a Favourite Cat, The Bard and The Progress of Poesy.

William Blake (1757-1827) is both a great poet and artist. His two collections of short lyrics are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. His finest lyric is The Tiger.

Robert Burns is known as the national poet of Scotland. A Winter Night, O My Love is like a Red Red Rose, The Holy Fair etc. are some of his major poems.

William Cowper, William Collins, and William Shenstone are other notable poets before the Romanticism.

CHAPTER 8

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PROSE

DANIEL DEFOE (1659-1731)

Daniel Defoe wrote in bulk. His greatest work is the novel Robinson Crusoe. It is based on an actual event which took place during his time. Robinson Crusoe is considered to be one of the most popular novels in English language. He started a journal named The Review. His A Journal of the Plague Year deals with the Plague in London in 1665.

Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison worked together for many years. Richard Steele started the periodicals The Tatler, The Spectator, The Guardian, The English Man, and The Reader. Joseph Addison contributed in these periodicals and wrote columns. The imaginary character of Sir Roger de Coverley was very popular during the eighteenth century.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is one of the greatest satirists of English literature. His first noteworthy book was The Battle of the Books. A Tale of a Tubis a religious allegory like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. His longest and most famous work is Gulliver’s Travels. Another important work of Jonathan Swift is A Modest Proposal.

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is very much famous for his Dictionary (1755). The Vanity of Human Wishes is a longish poem by him. Johnson started a paper named The Rambler. His The Lives of the Poets introduces fifty-two poets including Donne, Dryden, Pope, Milton, and Gray. Most of the information about Johnson is taken from his friend James Boswell’s biography Life of Samuel Johnson.

Edward Gibbon is famous for the great historical work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His Autobiography contains valuable material concerning his life.

Edmund Burke is one of the masters of English prose. He was a great orator also. His speech On American Taxation is very famous. Revolution in France and A Letter to a Noble Lord are his notable pamphlets.

The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Earl of Chesterfield, Thomas Gray and Cowper are good prose works in Eighteenth century literature.

The Birth of English Novel

The English novel proper was born about the middle of the eighteenth century. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) is considered as the father of English novel. He published his first novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded in 1740. This novel is written in the form of letters. Thus Pamela is an ‘epistolary novel’. The character Pamela is a poor and virtuous woman who marries a wicked man and afterwards reforms her husband. Richardson’s next novel Clarissa Harlowe was also constructed in the form of letters. Many critics consider Clarissa as Richardson’s masterpiece. Clarissa is the beautiful daughter of a severe father who wants her to marry against her will. Clarissa is a very long novel.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) is another important novelist. He published Joseph Andrews in 1742. Joseph Andrews laughs at Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. His greatest novel is Tom Jones. Henry Fielding’s last novel is Amelia.

Tobias Smollett wrote a ‘picaresque novel’ titled The Adventures of Roderick Random. His other novels are The Adventures of Ferdinand and Humphry Clinker.

Laurence Sterne is now remembered for his masterpiece Tristram Shandy which was published in 1760. Another important work of Laurence Sterne is A Sentimental journey through France and Italy. These novels are unique in English literature. Sterne blends humour and pathos in his works.

Horace Walpole is famous both as a letter writer and novelist. His one and only novel The Castle of Otranto deals with the horrific and supernatural theme.

Other ‘terror novelists’ include William Beckford and Mrs Ann Radcliffe.

CHAPTER 9

EARLY NINTEENTH CENTURY POETS (THE ROMANTICS)

The main stream of poetry in the eighteenth century had been orderly and polished, without much feeling for nature. The publication of the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 came as a shock. The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the beginning of the romantic age. They together with Southey are known as the Lake Poets, because they liked the Lake district in England and lived in it.

William Wordsworth ((1770-1850) was the poet of nature. In the preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. He defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions”. His views on poetical style are the most revolutionary.

In his early career as a poet, Wordsworth wrote poems like An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. The Prelude is the record of his development as a poet. It is a philosophical poem. He wrote some of the best lyric poems in the English language like The Solitary Reaper, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Ode on the Itimations of Immorality, Resolution and Independence etc. Tintern Abbey is one of the greatest poems of Wordsworth.

Samuel Tylor Coleridge (1772-1814) wrote four poems for The Lyrical Ballads. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the most noteworthy. Kubla Khan, Christabel, Dejection an Ode, Frost at Midnight etc. are other important poems. Biographia Literaria is his most valuable prose work. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare are equally important.

Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was based on his travels. Don Juan ranks as one of the greatest of satirical poems. The Vision of Judgmentis a fine political satire in English.

PB Shelley (1792-1822) was a revolutionary figure of Romantic period. When Shelley was studying at Oxford, he wrote the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism which caused his expulsion from the university. Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam and Alastor are his early poems. Prometheus Unbound is a combination of the lyric and the drama. Shelley wrote some of the sweetest English lyrics like To a Skylark, The Cloud, To Night etc. Of his many odes, the most remarkable is Ode to the West Wind. Adonais is an elegy on the death of John Keats.

John Keats (1795-1821) is another great Romantic poet who wrote some excellent poems in his short period of life. His Isabella deals with the murder of a lady’s lover by her two wicked brothers. The unfinished epic poem Hyperion is modelled on Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Eve of St Agnes is regarded as his finest narrative poem. The story of Lamia is taken from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Endymion, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn are very famous. His Letters give give a clear insight into his mind and artistic development.

Robert Southey is a minor Romantic poet. His poems, which are of great bulk, include Joan of Arc, Thalaba, and The Holly-tree. 4

CHAPTER 10

LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY POETS (Victorian Poets)

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) is a chief figure of later nineteenth century poetry. His volume of Poems contain notable poems like The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters, Ulysses, Morte d’ Arthur.The story ofMorte d’ Arthur is based on Thomas Malory’s poemMorte d’ Arthur. In Memoriam(1850) caused a great stir when it first appeared. It is a very long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s college friend, who died at Vienna in 1833. In Memoriam is the most deeply emotional, and probably the greatest poetry he ever produced. Maud and Other Poems was received with amazement by the public. Idylls of the King, Enoch Arden, Haroldetc. are his other works.

Robert Browning (1812-89) is an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic monologues made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. He popularized ‘dramatic monologue’. The Ring and the Book is an epic-length poem in which he justifies the ways of God to humanity Browning is popularly known by his shorter poems, such as Porphyria’s Lover, Rabbi Ben Ezra, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin. He married Elizabeth Barrett, another famous poet during the Victorian period. Fra Lippo Lippi Andrea Del Sarto and My Last Duchess are famous dramatic monologues.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School. Arnold is sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning.

Arnold valued natural scenery for its peace and permanence in contrast with the ceaseless change of human things. His descriptions are often picturesque, and marked by striking similes. Thyrsis, Dover Beach and The Scholar Gipsy are his notable poems.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator in the late nineteenth century England. Rossotti’s poems were criticized as belonging to the ‘Fleshy School’ of poetry. Rossetti wrote about nature with his eyes on it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wife of Robert Browning wrote some excellent poems in her volume of Sonnets from the Portuguese.

AC Swinburne followed the style of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne’s famous poems works are Poems and Ballads and tristram of Lyonesse.

Edward Fitzgerald translated the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald’s translation is loose and did not stick too closely to the original.

Rudyard Kipling and Francis Thompson also wrote some good poems during the later nineteenth century.

Chapter 11

Nineteenth Century Novelists (Victorian Novelists)

Jane Austen 1775-1817 is one of the greatest novelists of nineteenth century English literature. Her first novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) deals with the life of middle class people. The style is smooth and charming. Her second novel Sense and Sensibility followed the same general lines of Pride and Prejudice. Northanger Abbey, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion are some of the other famous works. Jane Austen’s plots are skillfully constructed. Her characters are developed with minuteness and accuracy.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is considered as one of the greatest English novelists. Dickens has contributed some evergreen characters to English literature. He was a busy successful novelist during his lifetime. The Pickwick Papers and Sketches by Boz are two early novels. Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby , David Copperfield, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are some of the most famous novels of Charles Dickens. No English novelists excel Dickens in the multiplicity of his characters and situations. He creates a whole world people for the readers. He sketched both lower and middle class people in London.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta and sent to England for education. William Thackeray is now chiefly remembered for his novel The Vanity Fair. While Dickens was in full tide of his success, Thackeray was struggling through neglect and contempt to recognition. Thackeray’s genius blossomed slowly. Thackeray’s characters are fearless and rough. He protested against the feeble characters of his time. The Rose and the Ring, Rebecca and Rowena, and The Four Georges are some of his works.

The Brontës

Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were the daughters of an Irish clergy man Patrick Brontë, who held a living in Yorkshire. Charlotte Brontë’s first novel, The Professor failed to find a publisher and only appeared after her death. Jane Eyre is her greatest novel. the plot is weak and melodramatic. This was followed by Shirley and Villette. Her plots are overcharged and she is largely restricted to her own experiments.

Emily Brontë wrote less than Charlottë. Her one and only novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is unique in English literature. It is the passionate love story of Heathcliff and Catherine.

Anne Bronte’s two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are much inferior to those of her sisters, for she lacks nearly all their power and intensity.

George Eliot (1819-1880) is the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans. Adam Bede was her first novel. Her next novel, The Mill on the Floss is partly autobiographical. Silas Marner is a shorter novel which gives excellent pictures of village life. Romola, Middle March and Daniel Deronda are other works of George Eliot.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) published his first work Desperate Remedies anonymously. Under the Greenwood Tree, one of the lightest and most appealing of his novels established him as a writer. It was set in the rural area he was soon to make famous as Wessex. Far From the Madding Crowd is a tragi-comedy set in Wessex. The rural background of the story is an integral part of the novel, which reveals the emotional depths which underlie rustic life. The novel, The Return of the Native is a study of man’s helplessness before the mighty Fate. The Mayor of Casterbridge also deals with the theme of Man versus Destiny. Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure aroused the hostility of conventional readers due to their frank handling of sex and religion. At the beginning Tess of the D’Urbervilles was rejected by the publishers. The outcry with the publication of Jude the Obscure led Hardy in disgust to abandon novel writing. Thomas Hardy’s characters are mostly men and women living close to the soil.

Mary Shelley, the wife of Romantic poet PB Shelley is now remembered as a writer of her famous novel of terror, Frankestein. Frankestein can be regarded as the first attempt at science fiction. The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s another work.

Edgar Allan Poe was a master of Mystery stories. Poe’s powerful description of astonishing and unusual events has the attraction of terrible things. Some of his major works are The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Mystery of Red Death.

Besides poetry collections like The Lady of the Last Ministrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake,and The Lord of the Isles, Sir Walter Scottproduced enormous number of novels. Waverly, Old Mortality, The Black Dwarf, The Pirate, and Kenilworth are some of them. He was too haste in writing novels and this led to the careless, imperfect stories. He has a great place in the field of historical novels.

Frederick Marryat’s sea novels were popular in the nineteenth century. His earliest novel was The Naval Officer. All his best books deal with the sea. Marryat has a considerable gift for plain narrative and his humour is entertaining. Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful and Japhet in Search of His Father are some of his famous works.

R.L. Stevenson’s The Treasure Island, George Meredith’s The Egoist, Edward Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, Charles Reade’s Mask and Faces, Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, Joseph Conard’s Lord Jim, Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The Scarlet Letter etc. are some of other famous works of nineteenth century English literature.

Chapter 12

Other Nineteenth Century Prose

Charles Lamb is one of the greatest essayists of nineteenth century. Lamb started his career as a poet but is now remembered for his well-known Essays of Elia. His essays are unequal in English. He is so sensitive and so strong. Besides Essays of Elia, other famous essays are Dream Children and Tales from Shakespeare. His wife, Mary Lamb also wrote some significant essays.

William Hazlitt’s reputation chiefly rests on his lectures and essays on literary and general subjects. His lectures, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, The English Poets and The English Comic Writers are important.

Thomas De Quincey’s famous work is Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It is written in the manner of dreams. His Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets contain some good chapters on Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Thomas Carlyle is another prose writer of nineteenth century. His works consisted of translations, essays, and biographies. Of these the best are his translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, his The Life of Schiller, and his essays on Robert Burns and Walter Scott.

Thomas Macaulay (Lord Macaulay) wrote extensively. He contributed for The Encyclopedia of Britannica and The Edinburgh Review. His History of England is filled with numerous and picturesque details.

Charles Darwin is one of the greatest names in modern science. He devoted almost wholly to biological and allied studies. His chief works are The Voyage of the Beagle, Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man.

John Ruskin’s works are of immense volume and complexity. His longest book is Modern Painters. The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice expound his views on artistic matters. Unto this Last is a series of articles on political economy.

Samuel Butler, the grandson of Dr. Samuel Butler was inspired by the Darwinian theory of evolution. Evolution Old and New, Unconcious Memory, Essays on Life, Art and Science, The Way of All Flesh etc. rank him as one of the greatest prose writers of ninteenth century. He was an acute and original thinker. He exposed all kinds of reliogious, political, and social shams and hypocrisies of his period.

Besides being a great poet, Mathew Arnold also excelled as an essayist. His prose works are large in bulk and wide in range. Of them all his critical essays are probably of the greatest value. Essays in Criticism, Culture and Anarchy, and Literature and Dogma have permanent value.

Lewis Carroll, another prose writer of ninteenth century is now remembered for her immortal work, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Ever since its publication, this novel continues to be popular among both the children and adult readers.

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lezliefaithwade · 4 years

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David & Goliath

My grandfather, on my Mother's side, immigrated to Canada from Italy in the 1950's. For years I thought I was Italian until one day my Mother explained that her real father (who was Danish) had died when she was seven and that Ralph was actually my grandmother's “companion”. At seven I had no idea what a "companion" was, nor did I care. All that mattered was whether I would inherit his talent for cooking and gardening. As a child, Italy seemed like a mythical land filled with beautiful palaces and amazing desserts.

When I finally had the opportunity to visit the land of my grandfather's birth, I made it a point to seek out all the places I'd heard about as a child. So, it was, that while I was in Florence, standing in front of the statue of David I was suddenly reminded of an episode in grade 9 when for three solid weeks I was bullied by a fellow student three times my size who I believed would destroy me.

In the Old Testament, the story goes that David, who is just a boy, takes down the 6'9" Goliath with nothing but a sling shot after King Saul, supposedly over 6' himself, is too afraid to challenge the giant on his own.

As I stood there examining the statue, I couldn't help wondering why Michelangelo had sculpted the boy to be so huge when Goliath was the giant? At 17 feet, David stands three times larger than an average man. Is his size a metaphor for his bravery?

Growing up, I never considered whether I was brave or not until the summer before my thirteenth birthday when my parent's separation marked me (at least in my mind) as an oddity. I was the first one I knew of to come from a broken home, and to me, this was a truly embarrassing fact. I was ashamed of what I perceived to be a major failure on the part of my parents, and worried that everyone would think less of me because of it. I wanted my family to be idyllic and though they were far from that, at least while we were all under the same roof, I could pretend. To save myself the embarrassment and shame of having to explain to kids I knew why I was no longer living at my old house on Belmont, and instead in an ugly apartment building across town, I opted to attend an all girl’s Catholic high school where no one knew me. For almost three months, I lied about where I lived. I pretended the apartment building I walked to every evening after school was where I babysat someone's kid. I never let on that my parents weren't together or that I was struggling with the reality that they were headed for divorce.

Catholic girl's schools, I soon discovered, harboured two types of young women. Those who longed for small classroom education among a female community of likeminded individuals, and those whose parents were forcing them to attend a school they hoped would reform them. Possibly attending Catholic school was a last resort ordered by the court. In any case, I was soon the target of gang terrorism brought about by answering questions in class – namely in English where I seemed to excel in understanding Shakespeare. Somewhere between The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet I became the object of abuse. Short and obnoxious, I was an easy target for a small but imposing group of girls who were significantly bigger and louder. The leader of this particular gang of delinquents was an overbearing, unusually tall girl named Susan Podansky. Susan had thick brown curly hair and a large set of yellow teeth that filled her face when she smiled. Not that her smiles were warm and generous. When Susan smiled, there was foreboding in the air. She reminded me of the witch in Hansel and Gretel licking her chops as she prepared to eat everything in her wake. Her neck was thick, her hands were large and her voice was low. “Guess who’s going to die tonight?” she’d whisper in my ear as I scurried from Math class to Science. The whole time I was dissecting my frog I imagined my innards splayed across the grass beyond the school.

It occurs to me now, many years later and infinitely wiser, that there was nowhere for Susan and her gang to actually pommel me. The school was small and well supervised and the yard was too. Unless their aim was to be caught, there was no way they could beat me up and get away with it. At the time, this logic escaped me. Instead I cowered in classrooms, stayed late for extra help in things I was already excelling at, and volunteered for everything from library duty to bible study. If something needed to be scrubbed, painted, sorted or filed, I signed myself up.

There were rumours going around about Susan and her gang. They set fire to garbage cans. They stole from variety stores. One of them had a friend who’d been decapitated on the roller coaster at Crystal Beach. Each story was more shocking than the one before. What started out as careful avoidance, turned into full blown terror.

Ironically, I’d known Susan in grades 3 and 4 when I had attended Holy Family elementary. I was not Catholic, but the school was close to our house and my mother deemed it more convenient than the public school that was a good deal further away. My parents were never concerned about what rubbed off on us. During the day I learned about the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost and after school my mother played Rock and Roll albums and allowed me to read, Mad Magazine, and Creepy comics. Susan had been in my class back then. She was already bigger than the rest of us, but harmless. Once she even invited me to her house. I remember her mother was pleasant enough as she cooked something in the kitchen that smelled foreign and delicious. Most of the kids at Holy Family were Irish or Italian, but Susan was Polish. To me that made her exotic. But then again, I was the daughter of Wasps attending a Catholic school. Everything was exotic to me. In the two years we shared a classroom at elementary school, we’d never clashed. In fact, in a childish act of solidarity, we both called Mrs. Flint, a substitute teacher, Mrs. Flintstone and were called to the office. We were equally contrite and that was the end of that. What prompted this new vitriol, aside from a seemingly innocent love for Shakespeare, I’ll never know. Whatever it was, her threatening demeanour was scary and all consuming.

At home, my mother couldn’t help but notice that I was at school later than usual. I’d enter the hallway out of breath, eat dinner, then retreat to bed. After a week of this she coaxed the truth out of me with cupcakes and before I knew what I’d said, she was on the warpath. This was exactly what I didn’t want. I’d been warned by Susan that if I snitched on her, she’d make my life even more miserable. I begged my mother to leave it alone, but she was determined. My mother had lived with an abusive step-father for a time before Ralph, and bullying wasn’t something she tolerated.

The next day I was called down to Sister Rita Mary’s office where two seats were arranged in front of her desk. I could see from half a mile away that large head of messy hair belonging to Susan. I timidly entered and sat down next to her. Sister Rita Mary smiled, “It’s come to my attention that there has been some nuisance between the two of you.”

Nuisance? Between the two of us? I could see where this was heading.

“It’s my belief that you just don’t know each other well enough, so my solution to this misunderstanding is to arrange for you to sit next to each other in all of your classes from now on.” Then, with a smile on her face she dismissed us from her office and closed the door.

Susan grinned, “This oughta be fun,” she announced. “Guess who’s gonna have a funeral?” And then she galumphed off to class.

Sitting beside Susan was excruciating. In math she broke my pencils. In English she poured ink on my assignment. But it was art class where she really crossed the line. I’d been working on a painting for several weeks and had almost completed my masterpiece when she and her gang “accidentally” spilled paint all over the canvas. “Oh, sorry!” she feigned, and then left me to absorb what had just happened while the teacher insisted I stay and clean up the mess.

Two other girls in my class – Vicki and Sarah shook their heads in disgust. “This can’t continue.” they stated. “That girl has to be stopped.”

“I agree,” I muttered as I crawled about the class on my knees cleaning tempra paint off the floor, “But how?”

That afternoon at lunchtime the three of us hunkered down at a table in the cafeteria to eat. No sooner had we settled when Susan came bounding over, knocked my tray off the table proclaiming me a moron and warning, “Better watch yourself tonight.”

I could feel my face flush and the bile rise in my mouth. I’d learned one thing from comic books, and that was how things were never what they seemed. The meek were often strong. The strong were often scared and bullies could be undermined. Before I knew it, Sarah was standing.

“What did you say?” she asked her.

For a moment I saw Susan blanch. She was shocked. This was unexpected. All she could manage to say was, “What?”

“You heard her, " Vicki demanded, also now standing. They looked like two Davids' to Susan's Goliath.

"What's wrong with the baby?" Susan taunted, "Needs other people to stand up for her?"

"No," I said rising to my feet, "I can stand up for myself."

She hesitated. Everyone was looking at us. Even the lunchroom nun was staring in disbelief.

“You'd better watch yourself.” Susan growled just low enough for my table to hear.

“Or what?” I asked

Susan just stared at me.

“Or what?” I repeated, “You’ll kill me? Beat me up? Hit me? Bury me? Why wait until tonight? Come on. Get it over with. Do it. Come on. You want to hit me? Hit me.” I was on a roll. Words were ammunition from my slingshot and I was on the attack. Next thing I knew, Vicki and Sarah chimed in.

“Yeah,” they echoed, “You wanna fight? Let’s fight.”

Susan blinked. The cafeteria was eerily quiet. All eyes were on us.

“You’re not worth it,” Susan grunted, as she backed out of the lunchroom alone. And that, was the end of that.

For a moment, I felt 6' tall knowing that I had faced my biggest fear and somehow come out the better for it.

Vicki turned to me, "One Goliath down." she smiled. "Listen, I'm having a sleep-over this Friday. Ask your parents if you can come?"

This was the moment. If I could stand up to Susan, I would finally have the courage to say, "Just have to ask my Mom. My folks are separated."

I waited for the judgement that never came. Instead she simply said, "Cool. I'm adopted. Come by at 7:00."

#bullying #girl power #catholic school

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dustydahlin · 4 years

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What is a Disciple - Your New Identity in Christ!

John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Subject: A look at our Identity as a Disciple of Jesus Christ. What being called a disciple reveals about God and what expectation it holds for us.

“Once upon a time there was a fire in a small town. The fire brigade rushed to the scene, but the firemen were unable to get through to the burning building. The problem was the crowd of people who had gathered not to watch but to help put out the fire. They all knew the fire chief well – their children had climbed over his fire engines during excursions to the fire station, and the friendliness of the fire chief was legendary. So, when a fire broke out, the people rushed out to help their beloved fire chief.

Unfortunately, the townsfolk were seeking to extinguish this raging inferno with water pistols! They’d all stand there, from time to time squirting their pistol into the fire while making casual conversation.

The fire chief couldn’t contain himself. He started screaming at the townsfolk. ‘What do you think you’re doing? What on earth do you think you’re going to achieve with those water pistols?!’

The people realized the urgency of the situation. How they wanted to help the fire chief. So, they started squirting more. ‘Come on,’ they encouraged each other, ‘We can all do better, can’t we?’ Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt.

Exasperated the fire chief yells again. ‘Get out of here. You're achieving nothing except hindering us from doing what needs to be done. We need firemen who are ready to give everything they’ve got to put out this fire, people willing even to lay their lives on the line. This is not the place for token contributions’”

(This story was originally told by Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He was urging us to realize that discipleship to Christ means much more than token levels of support to the church and God’s mission in the world. It calls for wholehearted and total life commitment).

Being a disciple of Jesus is much more, perhaps, than what we have considered in the western world. We have new-believer and discipleship classes where Christians can learn the essential doctrines of the Bible. We have entire courses (which can be purchased at discount rates) to help us learn what is in Scripture, how to read and interpret our Holy Text, and how to intellectually process what is “most important” to our lives. Discipleship, today, has almost exclusively become an intellectual exercise. This cerebral pursuit is how most healthy churches view the concept of discipleship.

In some unhealthy circles, like the shepherding movement, discipleship has become an excuse for “leaders” to demand obedience to any and all their demands. This has been grotesquely considered where a “pastor/preacher” has ALL authority to require submission to their words and their will. Here, discipleship is used to manipulate people. It can be easy to see how this is not discipleship. But the reality is neither of the above examples fits with the historical/cultural understanding of discipleship. By the time Jesus had called his disciples, discipleship looked very different.

During Jesus’ day, discipleship included a rigorous, three-phase process. This is what it looked like:

Phase 1: Starting at 6 years of age (until they were about 12), Jewish children underwent a process called “Bet Sefer.” This was the beginning of formal education within the Jewish Community. In this phase, six-year-old boys and girls “would go to the synagogue and... [teachers] would greet you with a slate and he would put a dollop of honey on the slate and then he would remove the ancient scroll of the Torah. As you sat speechless and in awe, the rabbi would have you taste the honey on your slate and tell you that the Torah is sweeter than the honeycomb” (Koinonia Institute). Being simultaneously introduced to the Torah and the sweet taste of honey is said to leave a lasting impression on these children. From that moment forward, they would not only learn to read the Torah, but they would be required to memorize it.

Phase 2 was called “Bet Midrash.” From the ages of 13-15, those “who were deemed worthy to continue their educational pursuits went on to study (and memorize) the entire Tanach, as well as learn the family trade.” This was just as strict and rigorous as the first phase. These children would be placed under a lot of pressure to perform and achieve to the best of their abilities. If, and only if, a child had proved himself worthy, the teacher would select him for the next phase of discipleship.

Phase 3 was called “Bet Talmud.” After the most elite and gifted boys had been deemed to pass Bet Midrash, they then had to stand out enough to be invited by a rabbi to be his “talmidim” (or disciple). In this phase, from ages 15-30, “They would literally follow in the dust of their rabbi - desiring to emulate him in ALL of his mannerisms. They would eat the same food in exactly the same way as their rabbi. They would go to sleep and awake the same way as their rabbi and... they would learn to study Torah and understand God the exact same way as their rabbi.” This phase of Jewish discipleship moved the individual from just learning to being and doing. Being a talmidim was a HUGE honor and privilege that only the best could hope for. After much learning, a 15-year-old boy would finally learn to “walk the walk.” The disciple would live with their rabbi, dine with their rabbi, talk like their rabbi, and do everything their rabbi would do. Their goal, essentially, was to think and talk and be just like their rabbi.

A lot can be said about this. Especially because Jesus broke the mold. Jesus’s Talmidim were different. Instead of picking the honor-roll students, He chose the drop-outs. Except for Paul, NONE of Jesus’s disciples were qualified to be his talmidim. Most believe that all of Jesus’ 12 disciples were not good enough to have passed either Bet Safar or Bet Midrash. They failed. They had no hope of attaining to anything other than working the rest of their lives in their family’s trade.

Theological Implications

As we have been asking throughout this Identity Series, we still must ask, “what does this say about God?” Well... It is important to highlight that no works, merit, accomplishments, or vetting is required by our Rabbi! Unlike the strict system of discipleship of Jesus’ time, God’s system is one of grace and mercy. You do not have to be vetted. You do not have to be the best in the class. You do not need to have the most Instagram followers. You do not have to memorize the entire Old Testament. You do not need to have all the right answers. You do not need to be the smartest person in the room. You do not need to dazzle anyone. God’s system for selecting His disciples is by “grace through faith...”

Your past does not disqualify you from being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Your failures do not disqualify you. Your indiscretions, sins, race, gender, and shortcomings do not disqualify you from the love of God. You could have been a prostitute, a drug addict, a murderer, a homosexual, a gangster, or a preppy A+ student. In God’s economy, He chooses people to be His disciples based on his love and grace...

Eph. 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

John 8:31, “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.’”

This reveals God as a Rabbi – a teacher of people. When we bring the historical and cultural understanding of a disciple into view, this highlights a God that is personally involved in the holistic development of His people! This reveals relationship – a Rabbi with His talmidim relationship. Of our God, it illustrates His commitment to train, equip, help, instruct, and walk with His disciples...

It reveals a God who is present and personal! This is much deeper than a relationship between a teacher and his pupil. This is a relationship where our Holy Instructor lives every moment of the day with us!

A disciple would rarely be separated from his Rabbi. It may even be said that a Rabbi was the ever-present help to the disciple. The Rabbi would live with their disciples. He would do life with his disciples. He would dine with, walk with, talk with, and exist with His disciples. Jesus modeled this with His Talmidim. For about 3 years, Jesus rarely separated Himself from His disciples...

And this is how it is even today. John 16:7 states, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you.”

John 14: 25-26, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

Behind every Disciple of Christ, there is a gracious and merciful Teacher that is ever-present!

Practical Expectations

The second thing we should discuss is the practical expectations for a disciple of Christ. The first highlight of this particular designation is that of need. It should become apparent that being a disciple demonstrates the need for development. This identity statement is a revelation of the Believer’s very real and insurmountable need for instruction, coaching, counsel, and learning. Being a disciple is being wholly dependent upon our Heavenly Rabbi.

Unlike popular belief in the Western World, we are not self-sufficient. We are not independent. We are not islands to ourselves! Just because we live in an age of information - where we have access to libraries of good theology, incredible Pastors and Bible Teachers, a plethora of wonderful role models, and heads full of information – we are still disciples. We are still to consider ourselves desperately reliant upon God. We are to position ourselves, regularly, before God so that we may hear and obey His instruction.

Matt. 11:29, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

John 14:25-26, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

I stated above that being a disciple reveals an ever-present Teacher. It also means we need to make every effort to be present for our Counselor. We are living life in the presence of our Rabbi. Are we aware of it? Do we regularly stop and reflect upon the Word of God? Do we pray answer-conscience prayers? Have we trained ourselves to attentively listen and expect help from our God?

Finally, this identity statement requires us to “follow in the dust” of our Rabbi. Historically, being a talmidim requires much more than just knowledge. It demands the disciple to follow and imitate our Rabbi – Jesus. We are to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. We are to emulate the life, actions, and mission of our Messiah! We are to eat the way He ate. We are to walk the way He walked. We are love to the way he Loved.

Eph. 5:1-2, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus, here, is saying that if a disciple is known for imitating the life of his Rabbi, then we will be known as Christ’s disciples by emulating the radicle love of our Teacher. Jesus’ life and mission is radically characterized by love. We CANNOT claim to be His disciples if we do not follow His example.

Additional Resources:

The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament

Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words

Militant Thankfulness: An Essential Practice to Experiencing a Full Spiritual Life

#disciple #disciple of jesus #new identity in christ #new identity #biblical identity #what is a disciple #who is a disciple

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troybeecham · 5 years

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Today, the Church remembers Saint Margaret of Scotland (Scots: Saunt Magret, c. 1045 – 16 November 1093 AD), also known as Margaret of Wessex, English princess and a Scottish queen.

Ora pro nobis.

Margaret was born in exile in the Kingdom of Hungary She was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the shortly reigned and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon King of England. Margaret and her family returned to the Kingdom of England in 1057 AD, but fled to the Kingdom of Scotland following the Norman conquest of England in 1066 AD. By the end of 1070 AD, Margaret had married King Malcolm III of Scotland, becoming Queen of Scots.

Margaret was the daughter of the English prince Edward the Exile, and granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, King of England. After the Danish conquest of England in 1016 AD, King Canute the Great had the infant Edward exiled to the continent. He was taken first to the court of the Swedish king, Olof Skötkonung, and then to Kiev. As an adult, he travelled to Hungary, where in 1046 AD he supported the successful bid of King Andrew I for the Hungarian crown. King Andrew I was then also known as "Andrew the Catholic" for his extreme aversion to pagans and great loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church.

Still a child, she came to England with the rest of her family when her father, Edward the Exile, was recalled in 1057 as a possible successor to her great-uncle, the childless King Edward the Confessor. Whether from natural or sinister causes, her father died immediately after landing, and Margaret continued to reside at the English court where her brother, Edgar Ætheling, was considered a possible successor to the English throne. When Edward the Confessor died in January 1066, Harold Godwinson was selected as king, possibly because Edgar was considered too young. After Harold's defeat at the Battle of Hastings later that year, Edgar was proclaimed King of England, but when the Normans advanced on London, the Witenagemot presented Edgar to William the Conqueror, who took him to Normandy before returning him to England in 1068 AD, when Edgar, Margaret, Cristina, and their mother Agatha fled north to Northumbria, England.

According to tradition, the widowed Agatha decided to leave Northumbria, England with her children and return to the continent. However, a storm drove their ship north to the Kingdom of Scotland in 1068, where they sought the protection of King Malcolm III. The locus where it is believed that they landed is known today as St Margaret's Hope, near the village of North Queensferry, Fife, Scotland. Margaret's arrival in Scotland, after the failed revolt of the Northumbrian earls, has been heavily romanticized, though Symeon of Durham implied that her first meeting of Malcolm III may not have been until 1070, after William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North.

King Malcolm III was a widower with two sons, Donald and Duncan. He would have been attracted to marrying one of the few remaining members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family. The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret occurred in 1070 AD. Subsequently, Malcolm executed several invasions of Northumberland to support the claim of his new brother-in-law Edgar and to increase his own power. These, however, had little effect save the devastation of the County.

Margaret's biographer Turgot of Durham, Bishop of St. Andrew's, credits her with having a civilizing influence on her husband Malcolm by reading him narratives from the Bible. She instigated religious reform, striving to conform the worship and practices of the Church in Scotland to those of Rome. This she did on the inspiration and with the guidance of Lanfranc, a future Archbishop of Canterbury. She also worked to conform the practices of the Scottish Church to those of the continental Church, which she experienced in her childhood. Due to these achievements, she was considered an exemplar of the "just ruler", and moreover influenced her husband and children, especially her youngest son, the future King David I of Scotland, to be just and holy rulers.

"The chroniclers all agree in depicting Queen Margaret as a strong, pure, noble character, who had very great influence over her husband, and through him over Scottish history, especially in its ecclesiastical aspects. Her religion, which was genuine and intense, was of the newest Roman style; and to her are attributed a number of reforms by which the Church [in] Scotland was considerably modified from the insular and primitive type which down to her time it had exhibited. Among those expressly mentioned are a change in the manner of observing Lent, which thenceforward began as elsewhere on Ash Wednesday and not as previously on the following Monday, and the abolition of the old practice of observing Saturday (Sabbath), not Sunday, as the day of rest from labour. "The later editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica, however, as an example, the Eleventh Edition, remove Skene's opinion that Scottish Catholics formerly rested from work on Saturday, something for which there is no historical evidence. Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii, chap. 8, pp. 348–350, quotes from a contemporary document regarding Margaret's life, but his source says nothing at all of Saturday Sabbath observance, but rather says St. Margaret exhorted the Scots to cease their tendency "to neglect the due observance of the Lord's day."

She attended to charitable works, serving orphans and the poor every day before she ate and washing the feet of the poor in imitation of Christ. She rose at midnight every night to attend the liturgy. She successfully invited the Benedictine Order to establish a monastery in Dunfermline, Fife in 1072 AD, and established ferries at Queensferry and North Berwick to assist pilgrims journeying from south of the Firth of Forth to St. Andrew's in Fife. She used a cave on the banks of the Tower Burn in Dunfermline as a place of devotion and prayer. St. Margaret's Cave, now covered beneath a municipal car park, is open to the public. Among other deeds, Margaret also instigated the restoration of Iona Abbey in Scotland. She is also known to have interceded for the release of fellow English exiles who had been forced into serfdom by the Norman conquest of England.

Margaret was as pious privately as she was publicly. She spent much of her time in prayer, devotional reading, and ecclesiastical embroidery. This apparently had considerable effect on the more uncouth Malcolm, who was illiterate: he so admired her piety that he had her books decorated in gold and silver. One of these, a pocket gospel book with portraits of the Evangelists, is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.

Malcolm was apparently largely ignorant of the long-term effects of Margaret's endeavours, not being especially religious himself. He was content for her to pursue her reforms as she desired, which was a testament to the strength of and affection in their marriage.

Her husband Malcolm III, and their eldest son Edward, were killed in the Battle of Alnwick against the English on 13 November 1093 AD. Her son Edgar was left with the task of informing his mother of their deaths. Not yet 50 years old, Margaret died on 16 November 1093 AD, three days after the deaths of her husband and eldest son. The cause of death was reportedly grief. She was buried before the high altar in Dunfermline Abbey in Fife, Scotland.

O God, you called your servant Margaret to an earthly throne that she might advance your heavenly kingdom, and gave her zeal for your Church and love for-your people: Mercifully grant that we who commemorate her this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

#father troy beecham #christianity #troy beecham episcopal #father troy beecham episcopal #saints #jesus #god #salvation #peace

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chiseler · 5 years

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The Passion of the Bunny: “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” (1971)

Over the centuries, the leaders of the Christian Church have made a habit of screwing around with the calendar in order to piggyback their own holidays on top of popular and long-standing Pagan holidays, quietly co-opting the symbolism and rituals in the hopes of eventually diluting things to a point at which people forget all about that silly heathen nonsense. If they could somehow arrange to target the Pagan symbols directly at stupid children so people take them less seriously, all the better. Most of the time it worked like a charm. That’s why at Christmas we have trees and Yule logs and Santa and so many repurposed carols. Nobody even bothers to ask what the hell a Yule log is anymore. Something to do with Jesus, apparently.

When it came to Easter, though, they got even sneakier than usual. At first you might say, “Easter’s a celebration of the resurrection and the life, an affirmation of our faith and confirmation of the forgiveness of our sins. So what the fuck’s the bunny with the eggs doing in there?”

Well, in Pagan terms the coming of spring was marked by a celebration of rebirth and fertility. So the whole “rebirth/resurrection” thing is pretty clear, and as for fertility, well, we don’t say “fucks like a bunny” for nothing. And nothing fucks like a bunny quite like a bunny, so there you go, right?

But of course Church leaders couldn’t just leave it there, a symbol of unbridled whoop-it-up fornication alongside Jesus rising from the dead like that. It’s...unseemly.

So what they did, see, is turn that horny rabbit into a Surrogate Jesus. Call him the Easter Bunny (instead of, say, Sammy Spermshooter), target him at the kids and all your troubles are over. The Easter Bunny/Surrogate Jesus travels the world handing children chocolate images of himself (an ersatz communion, see?) and brightly colored hardboiled eggs (as, I dunno, maybe some obscure anti-abortion message), and though you may not save any 6-year-old souls, you’re at least prepping the little bastards for what’s to come.

Which brings us to the message of Here Comes Peter Cottontail. For years Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. had been mining beloved holidays for new and subtle ways to mess with kids’ minds with their creepy animated specials,. I thought Rudolph was bad enough, but with Peter Cottontail they really outdid themselves.

Here’s the set-up: All the Easter bunnies/Surrogate Jesuses live in April Valley, where the chief Easter Bunny (voiced by Danny Kaye) is getting ready to retire. He wants to finger Peter Cottontail (the inescapable Casey Kasem) as his successor, but a wicked, Satanic rabbit named Irontail (Vincent Price) wants the job too, and suggests a contest: whoever delivers the most eggs on Easter gets the job.

Irontail, see, has hated children ever since one little fucker in roller skates severed his tail, forcing him to wear a prosthetic. He only wants to be chief Easter bunny so he can exact revenge. Even seeing this as a kid when it first aired I admired and respected Irontail. His reasoning made sense to me then, and it makes sense to me now.

Anyway, Peter (as the Christ figure here) is at once lazy but burning with ambition. He desperately wants to be chief Easter Bunny for reasons that aren’t clear beyond simple power whoredom.. Yet ambitious as he is, the night before Easter he has a wild and drunken Last Supper that goes on until all hours, and as a result sleeps all through the big day. So fair and square mind you, in a perfectly democratic fashion, Irontail wins the appointment by handing out a single egg. During his inaugural speech he announces that from that point on instead of chocolate bunnies and chicks, they will be distributing chocolate tarantulas and octopuses. Why? Because he’s not a goddamn CANNIBAL, that’s why! (When I was a kid, the chocolate tarantulas were something else that put me decidedly in the Irontail camp. Communion symbology aside, I always thought it was weird the Easter Bunny would want us to eat versions of him. And tarantulas were cooler.)

Now Peter/Christ, upset that he (fairly) lost the competition and the appointment, does what any normal Son of God would do: he cheats.

With the assistance of a primitive time machine piloted by a worm named Antoine, Peter/Christ and his eggs travel clumsily back in time in an effort to re-live Easter and win the appointment. As they bounce from holiday to holiday through the calendar, Antoine sings to Peter/Christ: “People believe what their hearts tell their eyes/So if you can’t get it all together, improvise.”

Has there ever been a more lucid or accurate summation of faith? This is why people see the Virgin Mary in cheese danish and the image of Jesus on the sides of barns. So Peter/Christ starts to lie as well as cheat, by misrepresenting his eggs at each stop as Mother’s Day eggs, Fourth of July eggs, and Christmas Eggs. Forget about that whole “whoever hands out the most eggs on Easter” rule; he’s going to win by whatever means necessary. He’s the Son of God, dammit, and he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Along the way he suffers through the Passion, Rankin/Bass style: he’s rejected at every turn, he’s pelted with his own eggs, he’s robbed, he’s tormented by witches, and then he’s rejected some more. But does he learn anything as a result? Is his spirit purified?

His only friends along the way are Antoine and that other co-opted symbol, Santa. Not only does he not thank Santa after the old man saves the day—he ignores Antoine’s cries for help and abandons him in the snow in his mad rush toward ascension. What a lousy fucking piece of lapine shit he is. Beyond that, at every turn he leaves the eggs unprotected so they can easily be stolen (repeatedly) by Irontail or one of his minions, so he’s a big fucking idiot too, as well as a liar and an ingrate.

He finally wins of course (it’s the Bible after all) when Irontail turns all the eggs green and Peter/Christ hands them out to drunks on St. Pat’s Day.

He lied without gumption, he cheated, he stole an election Irontail had won fair and square, but he got the power he wanted. In the final scene of Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Easter arrives again meaning it’s time to deliver eggs and chocolate communion to all the children of the world (well, the Christian ones anyway). When the time comes for Peter/Christ to hit the road and get to work, he insists that everyone in April Valley come along and help him, because he’s a big fucking lazy asshole on top of everything else.

And that’s what Easter is all about.

by Jim Knipfel

#Jim Knipfel #The Chiseler #Here Comes Peter Cottontail

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ethicsustinvest · 5 years

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PODCAST: Top US ESG Companies, Solar Power Breakthrough, Investing Tip

Top 100 US ESG companies for 2019 by CR Magazine. Profitably invest in harmony with your spiritual or religious ideals. Solar power breakthrough—but investing in solar has its perils. A valuable investing tip that really works. Confused who’s best, Uber or Lyft? An analyst compares them. Vanguard launches actively managed ESD ETF. And more.

PODCAST: Top US ESG Companies, Solar Power Breakthrough, Investing Tip

Transcript & Links May 26, 2019

Hello, Ron Robins here. Welcome to my podcast Ethical & Sustainable Investing News to Profit By! for May 26, 2019. Presented by Investing for the Soul. investingforthesoul.com is your site for vital global ethical and sustainable investment resources.

Now to this podcast. And for any terms that are unfamiliar to you, simply Google them!

Also, you can find a full transcript, live links and often bonus material at my podcast page located at investingforthesoul.com/podcasts

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The first item to discuss is CR Magazine's 100 Best Corporate Citizens of 2019! CR Magazine reviewed 1,000 US companies for their ESG practices. Robbie Lock, a writer for 3BL Association, commenting on the research results wrote that “Owens Corning tops the ranking, followed by Intel, General Mills, Campbell Soup and HP Inc… Twenty-seven companies are new to the ranking in 2019 including Allstate, Delta Airlines and Mondelez International. Biggest gainers include Ball Corp., CBRE, Ford and Xylem, Inc.”

Mr. Lock provides further clarification as to how CR Magazine obtains the rankings. Quoting him again, he says, ”The 100 Best Corporate Citizens ranking uses 134 total corporate disclosure and performance factors in seven categories: climate change, employee relations, environment, finance, governance, human rights, and stakeholders and society.”

Also, that the, “There is no fee for companies to be assessed. To compile this ranking, information is obtained from publicly available resources only, rather than questionnaires or company submissions. Companies have the option to verify data collected for the ranking at no cost.” Close quote.

I like the idea that companies don’t pay to be included in the research and the data compiled is from publicly available sources.

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The 100 Best Corporate Citizens demonstrate various degrees of above average corporate ethics, and ethics is a central theme for those wanting to apply their spiritual or religious beliefs to investing. If you’re interested in applying spiritual or religious values to investing, Meredith Jones just published in MarketWatch a post that could be of interest to you. It’s titled, “Opinion: When your faith guides your investing decisions, can you still beat the stock market?” And she says the answer can be yes.

Ms. Jones reviews the leading ETFs and mutual funds for investors interested in Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian-Bible related ethics and principles.

For Catholics, she likes the Global X S&P 500 Catholic Values ETF, LKCM Aquinas Catholic Equity Fund, and the Ave Maria group of funds.

For those of Jewish persuasion, she says there’s only one for now and that’s the AMIDEX35 Israel Mutual Fund which invests in Israeli companies.

For Muslims, there’s the Imam Fund IMANX the Amana group of funds and ETFs listed on the London Stock Exchange including iShares MSCI World Islamic ETF ISWD and the iShares MSCI USA Islamic ETF ISUS.

And under the umbrella of Christian-Bible offerings, Ms. Jones reviews the Timothy Plan and Guidestone family of funds.

For links to these funds go to my podcast page for this edition at investingforthesoul.com/podcasts.

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In my last podcast, I introduced the research of Tim Nash at Corporate Knights. Well, he’s produced another research report that compares the pros and cons of investing in Uber or Lyft. You can read his full post under the title of Tim Nash’s sustainable stock showdown: Uber vs. Lyft.

Personally, I’m not keen on either company because I believe competition—not just between them but also other entrants including potentially motor vehicle manufacturers themselves—will force them to keep user prices low which will continue to severely restrict profits. Also, their environmental benefits are overplayed as I mentioned in my podcast of April 12.

Anyhow, this is what Mr. Nash says in conclusion, “I’d put Lyft ahead by a headlight in this week’s Sustainability Stock Showdown, but anyone that’s interested in investing in either stock should be ready to fasten their seat belts and brace for a bumpy ride.”

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One big area that I know might interest you is renewable energy. I have several items of news and information that I want to share with you concerning investing in this area.

The first thing you should know is that developments in new products are almost overwhelming. This industry has numerous innovative players and it’s very difficult to know who will eventually be a leader. Sure, you can buy renewable energy ETFs—and a good read on what to buy is an article that appeared recently on Nasdaq, titled, 5 Clean Energy ETFs to Buy for 2019.

But if you’re interested in individual companies, here’s what I’ve seen in the past two weeks.

The New York Times ran an excellent piece reviewing a Danish company called Orsted. They produce massive offshore wind turbines whose energy costs are rapidly declining while already being highly competitive with new natural-gas fired plants.

In solar power, there’s been a tremendous breakthrough in producing new solar panels that appear to be 20-25% more efficient than the best existing panels. A paper outlining the breakthrough appeared in ScienceDaily under the title, Breakthrough in new material to harness solar power. Who will manufacture, market and install such panels wasn’t mentioned.

Incidentally, these panels do have a downside—they contain some lead. I’m sure testing in rainy and humid environments will be needed and manufacturing processes and end-of-life disposal policies will be needed too, considering that most countries will want assurance about the safe removal of lead.

I did a detailed study on solar panel manufacturers a few years ago and discovered that the manufacturing processes themselves can be highly toxic. Furthermore, most countries had no end-of-life policies in place to deal with the safe disposal of the toxic components of solar panels—and that is deeply concerning!

It’s possible that the companies engaged in the manufacturing, marketing and installation of solar panels could at some point be hit with levies or fines in dealing with these issues.

At the time of my research, I was most impressed with SunPower and its environmental efforts.

So, one thing you might want to find out before investing in solar panel manufacturers is how they perform environmentally. A great resource for this is the Solar Power Scorecard produced by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. However, their last scorecard is a little dated and I’m hoping to see their new one soon.

Incidentally, Fox Business just reported on the huge growth of solar panel installation in the US in a post, titled, 2 Million U.S. Solar Installations Are Just the Start.

By the way, a tip for checking how investment analysts rate solar companies—or any companies for that matter—is simply to type into Google Search the name of the company followed by Reuters—the name of the media company—after it. Click search and then click the search item that says the company name and the text Reuters quote. Reuters will then bring-up a research report. Click on analysts in the links bar and you can see how analysts rate the stock of the company you’re researching.

By getting the information on how analysts rate the companies you’re interested in can be terrifically helpful in deciding which companies to invest in. It saves you a lot of time and effort. And this is exactly the kind of tip and help you get in my DIY Ethical-Sustainable Investing Pays Tutorial! This tutorial will be the most worthwhile 1-hour you’ll ever spend getting help with your investments!

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Some other exciting new developments that might interest you are the following.

Vanguard, one of the world’s largest fund companies, has launched its first actively managed ESG ETF, called the Global ESG Select Stock Fund (ticker VEIGX). It will officially begin trading on June 4. This is big as ETFs are mostly ‘passively’ managed, that is they pick a group of stocks typically based on an index, whereas active management means selling and buying different stocks as the managers see fit. In recent years passive investing has usually outperformed active investing. However, who knows what the future will bring.

Also, S&P Dow Jones, who have had ESG indices for many years is launching something new. They are launching ESG global indexes based on core regional and country benchmarks. What is especially interesting is that these indexes, and quoting their press release, provide “a return profile that's consistent with mainstream benchmarks that have been widely followed for years.”

As an aside, what you can do, where possible, is to review the indexes that interest you and see what companies are included in them. You can often get useful ideas for new companies to look at!

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So, these are my top news stories and tips for ethical and sustainable investors over the past two weeks.

Again, to get all the links or to read the transcript of this podcast and sometimes get additional information too, please go to investingforthesoul.com/podcasts and look for this edition.

And be sure to click the like and subscribe buttons in iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast. That way you can help promote not only this podcast but ethical and sustainable investing globally.

And remember, I’m here to help you grow in your investment success—and investing in opportunities that reflect your personal values!

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the content of this podcast or anything else investment related. I can’t say I’ll have all the answers for you and some answers I can’t give due to licensing restrictions. But where I can help I will.

Now, a big thank you for listening—and please click the share buttons to share this podcast with your friends and family.

Come again! My next podcast is scheduled for June 7. Bye for now!

Check out this episode!

#business #finance #ethical investing #sustainable investing #ESG #SRI #green bonds #socially responsible investing

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