Ceres, Goddess of Agriculture
Ceres, the Goddess of Agriculture, was removed from the Statehouse dome one week ago. She was carved of wood in 1938 and is rotting. A new Ceres will be sculpted and placed, by Foliage season. Meanwhile, the dome will get a new coat of 14K gold paint.
I'm so glad I took these photos at the March For Our Lives on March 24th!
At the time I didn't know she had only 9 more days to be standing there.
via Reddit
It look like her crown is lightning rods.
ReplyDeleteUnicorns of the Intellectual Right[Click] Paul Krugman
Trump’s politics of outrage is failing him[Click] E. J. Dione Jr. [Washington Post] Includes some interesting factoids.
—Alan
Yes, verily! Ben Franklin would approve. See the photo I have added out front!!
DeleteAnd check this out. Great photos of Ceres being lowered and checked over.
http://am1170theanswer.com/news/national/vermonts-statehouse-goddess-statue-removed-worry-over-rot
"Facebook on Monday will begin alerting the 87 million users whose data may have been harvested by Cambridge Analytica.
ReplyDelete"The company plans to post a link at the top of users' news feeds that will allow them to see which apps are connected to their Facebook accounts and what information those apps are permitted to see."
http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/09/technology/business/mark-zuckerberg-capitol-hill/index.html
It's not yet the middle of April, so I shouldn't be surprised we got about a half-inch of snow overnight. But that's probably the last snow storm of the winter. Supposed to warm up mid-week.
ReplyDeleteTrump is losing older white educated voters.[Click]
ReplyDeleteRepublicans Focus on Retaining Senate Control[Click] Redirecting resources from House to Senate races—figure they will do better in largely rural states where Trump did well—exactly the places targeted by Chinese retaliatory tariffs (should the trade war develop).
How Russia Could Steal Our Next Election[Click] Paper systems are far more resilient than computerized systems. Automated tabulations can be done on isolated equipment. In many developed countries vote tabulations are still done by hand, and in a timely manner; but the US seems to have more complicated ballots.
Trump Complaints About GOP Could Hurt Party In The Midterms[Click]
Indy Senate GOP Primary Veers Towards Three-Car Pileup[Click]
Fox News Oopsie![Click] Fox News inadvertently posted a graphic showing it trails other cable news networks in trustworthiness.
—Alan
The search warrant for Cohen’s office was on the basis of information from Mueller, presumably approved by Rosenstein. It would have been approved by the US Attorney for New York, who was appointed by Trump, and approved by a federal judge. The U.S. Attorney’s Manual says prosecutors “are expected to take the least intrusive approach consistent with vigorous and effective law enforcement when evidence is sought from an attorney actively engaged in the practice of law.” If an FBI raid is “the least intrusive,” this must be a doozy.
ReplyDeleteIn other(?) matters,
Mueller Looks at Ukrainian’s $150K Payment to Trump
April 9, 2018 By Taegan Goddard
“The special counsel is investigating a payment made to President Trump’s foundation by a Ukrainian steel magnate for a talk during the campaign… as part of a broader examination of streams of foreign money to Mr. Trump and his associates in the years leading up to the election,” the New York Times reports.
“Michael Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer whose office and hotel room were raided on Monday in an apparently unrelated case, solicited the donation.”
I shouldn’t be surprised if Trump does something extreme to distract attention…
—Alan
BOY, HOWDY! Could this be what is going on?[Click] It seems to make sense.
Delete—Alan
One shudders to think what! God have mercy on us all!
DeleteFrom the editor of talkingpointsmemo.com in a lead-in to column behind the paywall:
Delete"This is simply a hunch. But I don’t buy the suggestion that these raids today are about the Stormy Daniels case – not mainly, certainly not solely. The purported crimes simply lack the magnitude to require such aggressive action or tangling with privileged lawyer-client communication. They also lack the urgency."
OK, that seems reasonable. BUT IF NOT THAT, THEN WHAT?!
Alan
My recollection seems to have been incorrect.
ReplyDelete--Alan
Is it possible that Chinese trade retaliation will be fast enough and severe enough to turn red states at least purple? Or, will farmers understand and remain loyal to Cheato-in-Chief?
ReplyDeleteAre the Chinese and the Russians working together to screw up our elections and, if so, do they want to throw them Republican or Democratic? I'm getting very confused about who's doing what for whom.
Listener, the other day you mentioned Dance in the Desert. This evening I read it, or rather listened to it. Moved me to tears. Thanks for the recommendation.
ReplyDeleteListener, Christ’s suffering was not compelled by God, at any rate, not in the way you seem to mean.
ReplyDeleteAs creatures we cannot fully know or understand the Creator who is, per force, outside creation. We can conjecture that it was partly so we could come to know Him better that the Second Person became incarnate and entered creation as a living man; sort of a visual aid for backwards pupils. We are given to understand, though, that His main purpose in entering creation was to exercise His nature, His will, that is to love Mankind and draw us back to Him. That is usually phrased in terms of redeeming or ransoming, paying a price as for a prisoner or slave. That is, after all, a concept readily comprehensible to the people of the finite place and time into which He was incarnated. The act by which He accomplished this ‘redemption’ is usually framed in terms of obedience and submission to the authority of a superior, also a concept familiar to the people of that time.
There are several problems with these formulations, of which I’ll focus on one here; namely, the idea of obedience or submission. Obedience and submission are generally conceived of as responding to an outside power, under the influence of coercion, fear or sometimes love. The problem with this view is that, in the case of the Second Person, there is no outside power, nor is there any coercion. The First, Second and Third Persons are triune, coeval and coequal, each unique yet all essential, inseparable parts of one whole. Recall St. Patrick’s analogy with the shamrock. He couldn’t have found a more felicitous way of explaining the mystery of the Trinity. To paraphrase the well-known expression: All in One and One in All.
To be continued
The problem is that in our created universe, at least in the five percent or so of “ordinary matter” where we live, things don’t work that way. We’re only three dimensional beings living in a unidirectional river of time. So, when the Second Person became Incarnate, He became bound and constrained by our constraints. It seemed as though He became separate from the other Persons. Really, though, He was no more nor less than the Trinity’s projection into creation. He took on the appearance of a human, because a tree or a butterfly or a rushing mountain stream would not be a suitable form for the purpose. He took on the appearance of a human male because humans are not usually hermaphroditic, and because, at the place and time He entered, a female form would not be suitable.
DeleteFollowing the tradition started by the poet of Genesis 1, He discussed God, the Trinity, as a creating, loving though sometimes disappointed or angry father. As such, He cast Himself in equally familiar terms as a loving and obedient son and the Third Person as a comforter. But this individuation is artificial for the benefit of our limited brains. The Father is the Son is the Holy Spirit. This is, so to speak, a multi-dimensional reality that we (or at any rate I) can put into words but cannot truly grasp.
TBC
Now, as I understand it, the nature of God is love. He created, not out of compulsion, but as one might say out of an outpouring of love, to have a thing outside of Himself that embodied love an that He could love. But part of the nature of God, the Trinity, and thus part of the nature of His creation is that He cannot coerce. Man, who is made in His image and likeness, is made to love. And yet, he is free to do the opposite. God cannot compel him. The Old Testament, indeed the whole of human history up until the Incarnation, seems a sad record of God offering the right way and the bulk of humanity persistently taking the wrong way.
DeleteThe Biblical tale of Adam and Eve, it seems to me, is a beautiful, tragic and surprisingly sophisticated attempt to explain why people are the way they are. An anthropomorphic (as most if not all early gods were) and benevolent (far less common) father-like god made Man and Woman and placed them in a garden, giving them everything they needed and, as it would seem, everything they could want. He placed just one seemingly arbitrary restriction on them, assuring them of an incomprehensible punishment if they broke the ban. They didn’t love God enough to trust Him, to forego the satisfaction of their own curiosity for love of Him. And because of that lack of trust and love, they became separated from Him.
Eventually, nearly all the people turned away from God, so He saved a handful of people, together with as much of the flora and fauna as possible, sent a flood to cleanse the earth, and started again. (Yes, I know Noah’s flood was local. Bear with me.) But that was much too violent. And, in any case, it didn’t seem to work as a deterrent. The people turned away from God again. Well, if you want something done right, do it yourself. So, God entered into His creation. As I’ve said, though, He is so to speak a multi-dimensional being; so we could only see the projection of Him that conformed to the limitations of this world.
He tried to show the right way. He fed the hungry, healed the sick and afflicted, taught the ignorant as well as those who longed for knowledge, comforted the suffering, befriended the friendless. He brought eternity into time by means of what we call miracles. But it just wasn’t working. He had to do something that would be meaningful to the rich and powerful as well as to the poor and inconsequential. And here’s the vital point. God’s will is for people to love Him, to conform to or be part of Him, to be saved and make our ultimate home in Heaven. That’s why He came to us, became one of us, to draw us back. In order to do that, he clearly thought it was necessary to die on the Cross, to rise again from the dead and to ascend into Heaven, humans being, as I said earlier, pretty dense. We can argue, I suppose, whether this strategy was wise or even really necessary, or whether it worked. According to the Gospels though, it happened.
TBC
And, here’s the point. Our Lord, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, is not separate from God the Father, the First Person of the Most Holy Trinity. The man Jesus was not compelled or coerced by anything outside Himself. He was compelled by His very nature, which is love, that same love we recognize as the Holy Spirit, to sacrifice His humanity, His hopes and dreams of a quiet life taking over his dad’s carpentry shop, marrying Mary Magdalene, living with her and their children and his mother, fulfilling the promise of a Jewish peasant in Roman Palestine. He was compelled precisely by who and what He was, which is to say God, which is to say love, to give up all that he was and all that he might have had in this world to save it, to draw it back to Himself. Do you remember what He said? “Greater love hath no man than this, that he give up his life for his friends.” And that’s what He did. Nothing nor nobody coerced him; He did it because that’s who and what He was.
DeleteHow except in degree is this different from a stranger throwing himself in front of a bullet and giving his life to save the person it was going to hit? How is it different from Fr. Kolbe [click] trading places with a stranger in the concentration camp? How is it different from someone willingly taking a loved one’s suffering or illness into herself. These things happen; these things are done by imperfect, fallen humans. Why is it hard to grasp that such a thing could be done by God?
Hi Cat. I'm not sure this blog is the best place for a deeply theological discussion. (At least it's not politics? Ha!)
DeleteYou wrote:
"Listener, Christ’s suffering was not compelled by God, at any rate, not in the way you seem to mean."
Goodness, I hope you did not deduce from anything *I* wrote that I thought in any way that God would have compelled suffering of any kind, including Christ's! I would have no interest in knowing that god, and I can say with some conviction that I have never met that god. But I have encountered a loving God who desired for Christ (and desires for all) long life and success.
If Trump were a Russian agent, would he not be acting as he has?
ReplyDeleteAlan
I maintain that it was not God the Father who required that God the Son must die (yet I tip my hat to the Garden of Gethsemane narrative). Rather, it was a natural consequence of the corruption in the Sanhedrin at the time, and the political manipulation by leaders of the faith who wanted Jesus out of the picture for their own purposes. (So maybe this is a political conversation after all.)
ReplyDeleteIf you have never watched the movie Jesus of Nazareth, I highly recommend it.