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 Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:08 pm Post subject: Gambling on God |
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Gambling on God:
Oscar and Lucinda
DVD
Based on the 1998 Booker prize winner
by Aussie Peter Carey
| Quote: | Lucinda: (after confessing various bets during a train ride she arranged expressly for the purpose) You have utterly absolved me?
Oscar (a man of the cloth who also enjoys a quick flutter): Where is the sin? We bet. It has all been passed down that there is a God. We bet our life on it. We calculate the odds, the return that we shall sit with the saints in Paradise. Our anxiety about our bet wakes us before dawn in a cold sweat and God sees us suffer. I cannot believe that such a God, whose fundamental requirement of us that we gamble our mortal souls - it's true that we stake everything on the fact of His existence - I cannot believe that such a God can look unkindly on a chap wagering a few quid on the likelihood of a dumb animal crossing the line first unless it might be considered a blaspheme to apply to a common pleasure that which is divine. Shall we play? |
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| Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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Treasures of the Uffizi
Hardcover
Edited by Abigail Asher
Crucifixion
tempera on panel, 67 x 93 cm
1457-59
By Andrea Mantegna
p. 22
| Quote: | Besides being gaming pieces, dice are symbols of fate, gambling, and chance. They represent Fortune personified and unmerited favor or preference. Dice often take the place of the ancient lots (stones, bones, or pieces of wood) which were cast in the same manner as dice are today. In addition to being used in gambling, these were often cast to determine a course of action and to decide who would perform certain duties or receive various goods. Usually lots were cast simply as a means of being fair without any intention of discerning the will of the gods. Proverbs relates, "Casting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart" (Prov 18:18).
After a city was taken, soldiers would often cast lots over the spoils of battle including the soon-to-be slaves (Oba 1:11; Nahum 3:10). In order to weaken captured nations, lots were cast to determine which of the captives would be killed, which would be taken into captivity, and which would remain in the land (Joel 3:3). In a similar manner, David made the Moabites lie on the ground while he measured them off with a piece of rope. Those who fell under the first two lengths of rope were put to death while those lying under the third length were allowed to live as Israel's servants (2 Sam 8:2). A city "on which no lot has fallen" is utterly destroyed (Ezek 24:6).
At the foot of the Cross, Roman soldiers cast lots to determine who would take the seamless robe which belonged to Christ (Mt 27:35; Mk 15:24; Lk 23:34; John 19:24). This was to fulfill the prophecy, "They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots" (Psa 22:18). This is a vivid image of the wicked forming their plots against the children of God (Joel 3:3).
In many cultures lots were cast as a means of making decisions with the assistance of the gods. In his Treatise on the Cardinal Virtues, Thomas Aquinas concludes that the casting of lots to decide a matter is not sinful as long as chance and not the power of demons is thought to control the action of the dice. This he terms "sortilege of allotment" and, since there are many examples in the Scriptures of righteous men acting upon the casting of lots, Aquinas reasons that it is not a vice to divide goods or duties by this means (Lev 16:8; Josh 7:14-15; 1 Chr 24:5; Neh 10:34). However, in most cases, the Holy Spirit will be our guide - a help which was not so readily available to the characters of the Old Testament (Summa Theologica v. 3). (Excerpt from the fascinating account, ChristStory Arma Christi, a post dated 1998 by Suzetta Tucker) |
More on gamblers from sunswept, musical Italia.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:57 am Post subject: |
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Hounds of Love
CD Audio
By Kate Bush
Listen
| Quote: | Running Up that Hill
If I only could, I’d be running up that hill.
If I only could, I’d be running up that hill.
It doesn’t hurt me.
Do you want to feel how it feels?
Do you want to know that it doesn’t hurt me?
Do you want to hear about the deal that I’m making?
You, it’s you and me.
And if I only could,
I’d make a deal with god,
And I’d get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building.
If I only could, oh...
You don’t want to hurt me,
But see how deep the bullet lies.
Unaware I’m tearing you asunder.
Ooh, there is thunder in our hearts.
Is there so much hate for the ones we love?
Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?
You, it’s you and me.
It’s you and me won’t be unhappy.
And if I only could,
I’d make a deal with god,
And I’d get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
Be running up that building,
Say, if I only could, oh...
You,
It’s you and me,
It’s you and me won’t be unhappy.
C’mon, baby, c’mon darling,
Let me steal this moment from you now.
C’mon, angel, c’mon, c’mon, darling,
Let’s exchange the experience, oh...
And if I only could,
I’d make a deal with god,
And I’d get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems.
And if I only could,
I’d make a deal with god,
And I’d get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems.
And if I only could,
I’d make a deal with god,
And I’d get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems.
If I only could
Be running up that hill
With no problems...
If I only could, I’d be running up that hill.
If I only could, I’d be running up that hill. |
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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Harper's Magazine
Magazine Subscription
The Spirit of Disobedience
An invitation to resistance
By Curtis White
April, 2006
| Quote: | | According to our leading wise men, the great contemporary moral and political question of the age is: Are we fundamentally a Christian or an Enlightenment culture? Boards of education and lawmakers in states like Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Missouri rock from election to election between advocacy of a Christian doctrine of "intelligent design" and a secular and scientific commitment to evolution...For instance, consider the case of the People of Colorado v. Harlan, in which a court threw out the sentence of a man who had been given the death penalty because jurors had consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The court argued that the jury should have avoided "extraneous prejudicial materials" such as newspaper articles, television programs - or, in this case, the Bible. Last year the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the decision, reasoning that "'Holy Scripture' has factual and legal import for many citizens" in that Colorado law expects jurors to make an "individual moral assessment" in deat h penalty cases. Aside from the obvious difficulty of consulting the Bible for unambiguous moral guidance (If you read Leviticus you get one answer; if you read Matthew you get another. String him up or turn the other cheek? Flip a coin?), what is truly astonishing here is the idea that the average citizen can make "individual moral assessments" without recourse to his or her religious beliefs. Not in this culture they couldn't. (From the opening paragraph at pg. 31) |
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| Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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Mohawk Saint
Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits
Hardcover
By Allan Greer
| Quote: | Passing through once-thriving native villages suddenly transformed into sick wards and charnel houses, the missionaries were desperate to baptize the dying. They sometimes tried to cure the ill, distributing sugar, raisins, and other medicinal substances, but their motives were frankly strategic, a matter of gaining the Indians' confidence and beating the devil-worshiping shamans at their own game. What really mattered was the harvest of souls. Every gravely ill Indian was, to a Jesuit, the prize in a contest with the highest possible stakes: either she would die outside the church and suffer eternal torment, or she would confess her sins, enter the fold, and live forever in perfect happiness. Because they knew from experience that healthy converts often strayed from the Christian path after they had been baptized, an outcome more deplorable than simple refusal of baptism, the Jesuits took special satisfaction in baptizing the moribund. Early in the history of the New France mission, Jean de Brebeuf spoke of feelings that would be echoed by other seventeenth-century Jesuits: "The joy that one feels when he has baptized an Indian who dies soon afterwards, and flies directly to Heaven to become an angel, certainly is a joy that surpasses anything that can be imagined...One would like to have the suffering of ten thousand tempests that he might help save one soul, since Jesus Christ for one soul would have willingly shed all his precious blood."
If dying adults were especially prized, dying infgants were even more so, for unlike their pagan parents, they were too young to have sinned. "This is the most certain fruit that we gather in this country," wrote a Jesuit among the unconverted Iroquois, "where it is desirable that the children should die before obtaining the use of their reason." Sick babies exercised an irresistible attraction over these missionaries, who sought them out wherever they went. However, the non-Christian parents of Tekakwitha's homeland were determined to keep them at bay. Unlike the Hurons, who were evangelized a generation earlier, the Iroquois did not necessarily believe that baptism caused death, but they did have the feeling that the missionaries wished to steal their children's souls. Perhaps they could sense something of the attitude of men who could write a sentence containing the chilling phrase, "It is desirable that the children should die." (Footnotes omitted)...(From the chapter entitled aptly enough, Beautiful Death, at pgs. 6-7) |
A fascinating, respectful account of Mohawks in early Kahnawake by a Frostback history prof from the University of Toronto who seems to knows his stuff and like it.
More First Nations gambles and gamblers.
More on the legality of Kahnawake's Internet gambling operations.
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
A Short Novel and Three Short Stories
Hardcover
By Truman Capote
| Quote: | "My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are" -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone -- "just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."
This is our last Christmas together.
Life separates us. Those Who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go. (From A Christmas Memory at pgs. 176-177) |
Holly Golightly remains one of maybe two fictional female characters in the history of literature a woman might actually want to be. Truman Capote, the last truly great American story teller. We miss him every day.
Crap movie adaptation of the book saved by Henry Mancini's lovely score:
Breakfast at Tiffany's
DVD
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:14 am Post subject: |
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The Irish Times
Top-notch daily trombone
On God's green earth
US evangelicals are split between
thos who claim 'dominion' over the
planet and those who want to save
it from global warming - and the
fight is getting dirty.
By Sean O'Driscoll
Oct. 28/06
p. 9
| Quote: | | Last week, (Rev. E. Calvin) Beisner (theology professor at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who helped organize anti-environmental opposition into a group called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, some of whose member groups have strong links to the Exxon Mobil Corporation) appeared on a Public Broadcasting Service documentary entitled, Is God Green? to denounce Rev. (Rchard) Ciznik (vice-president of governmental affairs for the 30-million-strong National Association of Evangelicals) and the environmental movement. |
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| Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:06 am Post subject: |
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Road-side Dog
Hardcover
By Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by the author and Robert Haas
| Quote: | The gods of ancient Greece were capricious. Human fates depended upon their will, yet humans had a hard time trying to guess what would win the gods' favor, what would provoke their anger.
...Considering that the Creator of the universe had already lost much of His authority in the eighteenth century, when He was magnanimously granted the title of the Great Clockmaker who, once having put machinery in motion, did not meddle with its functioning; considering that the terrible suffering of people in the ensuing centuries, provoked by wars and genocide, made interventions by Providence seem even less probable; considering, finally, that the human mind learned to link the notion of scienfitic truth with empirical proof -- cosmologists attempting to find out how the universe came into being carefully avoided any ideas that would suggest their affiliation with religion. Some scientists, though, wondering at the precision of the laws governing matter after the Big Bang, were not loath to postulate the existence of powerful intelligences which act in a manner incomprehensible to us, possibly for their own amusement. One of these men of science, Sebastian Kuo, even expressed the opinion that our universe might be their experiment based upon quantum mechanics, or even a simulation. His book, however - which, he himself concedes, is on the border of science fiction - has for its primary subject our life on earth and examines the highly enigmatic role in it of chance and coincidence. We are inclined - goes the argument - to intuit a logic behind events which we can almost grasp, yet it eludes us and we are sentenced to ignorance again. Should we not imagine two teams, endowed with intelligence inaccessible to us, engaged in a sort of game of chess, using us as if we were symbols in a computer? This would explain glimpses of logic in our personal histories, so that we are inclined sometimes to believe in Fatum, when a sudden departure from regularity occurs, when obviously another hand has entrered the game. What the Greeks told themselves about the gods' councils, loves, and mutual entities, on which the adventures of mortals depended, was clever, for it proved - reasons the scientist - that they had an intuitive grasp of the distance separating our will from a higher sort of calculation, indifferent to our desires and laments. (From Olympians' Games at pgs. 167-169) |
More on the elegant intellectual meanderings of Polish gambles.
More gambling scientists.
More gambling sci-fi. |
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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The Midnight Verdict
Paperback
By Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney
| Quote: | Orpheus called for Hymen and Hymen came
Robed in saffron like a saffron flame
Leaping across tremendous airy zones
To reach the land of the Ciconians.
So Hymen did attend the rites, but no
Good luck or cheer or salutations, no
Auspicious outcome was to come of that.
Instead, the torch he carried smoked and spat
And no matter how he fanned it wouldn't flare.
His eyes kept watering. And a worse disaster
Than could have been predicted came to pass
For as the bride went roaming through the grass
With all her naiads round her, she fell down.
A snake had bit her ankle. She was gone.
Orpheus mourned her in the world above,
Raving and astray, until his love
Compelled him down among the very shades.
He dared to venture on the Stygian roads
Among those shadow people, the many, many
Ghosts of the dead, to find Persephone
And the lord who rules the dismal land of Hades;
Then plucked the lyre-gut for its melodies
And sang in harmony: 'O founded powers
Who rule the underearth, this life of ours,
This mortal life we live in upper air
Will be returned to you. To you, therefore,
We may speak the whole truth and speak it out
As I do now, directly: I have not
Transgressed your gloomy borders just to see
The sights of Tartarus, nor to tie all three of the
three-necked monster's snake-snarled necks in one.
I crossed into your jurisdiction
Because my wife is here. The snake she stepped on
Poisoned her and cut her off too soon
And though I have tried to suffer on my own
And outlive loss, in the end Love won.
Whether or not you underpowers feel
The force of this god, Love, I cannot tell,
But surely he prevails down here as well
Unless that ancient story about hell
And its lord and a ravaged girl's not true.
Was it not Love that bound the two of you?
(Opening stanzas from Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X at pgs. 15-16) |
More on the 'ancient story' from Week 2, Lecture 2, generously spoon-fed by the University of Sheffield's liberal-minded English Dept. |
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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Cup of Gold
A Life of Sir Henry Morgan,
Buccaneer, with
Occasional Reference to History
Paperback
By John Steinbeck
| Quote: | "I know that I am defeated, Merlin, and there seems to be no help for it. Victory, luck, or whatever you wish to call it, appears to lie hidden in a chosen few as babies' teeth hide under the gums. Of late years this God has played a hard, calculating game with me. There have been moments when I thought he cheated."
Merlin spoke slowly:
"Once I played against a dear young god with goat's feet, and that game was the reason for my coming here. But then, I made the great concession and signed with sad laughter. Robert, I did not hear a long time past that you were roving in your mind? Surely William stopped by and told me you had grown insane. Did you not do reprehensible things in your rose garden?"
Robert smiled bitterly. "That was one of this God's tricks," he said. ... (-- pgs. 122-123) |
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| Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:42 am Post subject: |
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Birds Without Wings
Hardcover
By Louis de Bernieres
'
| Quote: | In those days we came to hear of many other countries that had never figured in our lives before. It was a rapid education, and many of us are still confused. We knew that our Christians were sometimes called 'Greeks', although we often called them 'dogs' or 'infidels', but in a manner that was a formality, or said with a smile, just as were their deprecatory terms for us. They would call us 'Turks' in order to insult us, at the time when we called ourselves 'Ottomans' or 'Osmanlis'. Later on it turned out that we really are 'Turks', and we bcame proud of it, as one does of new boots that are uncomfortable at first, but then settle into the feet and look exceedingly smart. Be that as it may, one day we discovered that there actually existed a country called 'Greece' that wanted to own this place, and do away with us, and take away our land. We knew of Russians before, because of other wars, but who were these Italians? Who were these other Frankish people? Suddenly we heard of people called 'German', and people called 'French', and of a place called Britain that had governed half the world without us knowing of it, but it was never explained to us why they had chosen to come and bring us hardship, starvation, bloodshed and lamentation, why they played with us and martyred our tranquility.
I blame these Frankish peoples, and I blame potentates and pashas whose names I will probably never know, and I blame men of God of both faiths, and I blame all those who gave their soldiers permission to behave like wolves and told them that it was necessary and noble. Because of what I accidentally did to my son Karatavuk, I was in my own small way one of these wolves, and I am now burned up by shame. In the long years of those wars here were too many who learned how to make their hearts boil with hatred, how to betray their neighbours, how to violate women, how to steal and dispossess, how to call upon God when they did the Devil's work, how to enrage and embitter themselves, and how to commit outrages even against children. Much of what was done was simply in revenge for identical atrocities, but I tell you now that even if guilt were a coat of sable, and the ground were deep in snow, I would rather freeze than wear it.
But I do not blame merely myself, or the powerful, or my fellow Anatolians, or the savage Greeks. I also blame mischance. Destiny caresses the few, but molests the many, and finally every sheep will hang by its own foot on the butcher's hook, just as every grain of wheat arrives at the millstone, no matter where it grew.
... There are many of us here who say we are better off without the Christians who used to live here, but as for me, I miss the old life of my town, and I miss the Christians. Without them our life has less variety, and we are forgetting how to look at others and see ourselves. Also, since they took the icon of Mary Mother of Jesus with them, there are some who think that we have had less luck than we did before. (From Part I, The Prologue of Iskander the Potter, at pgs. 4-5) |
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| Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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The Very Best of the Pogues
Audio CD
Featuring The Sickbed of Cuchulainn by Shane MacGowan
The Sickbed of Cuchulainn on Youtube.com
| Quote: | The Sickbed of Cuchulainn
McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands
When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair
And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout
But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out
They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains
So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil's in the chair
You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl
There was lousy drunken bastards singing "Billy In The Bowl"
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church
Now you'll sing a song of liberty for blacks and paks and jocks
And they'll take you from this dump you're in and stick you in a box
Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground
But you'll stick your head back out and shout "We'll have another round"
At the graveside of Cuchulainn we'll kneel around and pray
And God is in His heaven, and Billy's down by the bay |
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| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:26 am Post subject: |
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Staying Alive
Real Poems for Unreal Times
Paperback
Edited by Bloodaxe founder Neil Astley
| Quote: | Journey of the Magi
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
T.S. Eliot
(-- pgs. 427-428) |
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 9:38 am Post subject: |
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From the Ultimate High-Stakes Gamble:
Faust
By our all-time favorite French composer, Charles Gounod
Featuring Swedish tenor Jussi Bjoerling
CD Audio
Here he is with Salut, demeure at YouTube.com.
| Quote: | Life's great mysteries will always remain unknowable. The workings of Nature, the essence of the Divine, will forever be just beyond our comprehension and control. But out of those mysteries can come revelations of truth, beauty and love. If we seek these, we shall endure, but if we ask for more, we risk losing everything. Faust, an aged and embittered seeker, desperately barters his soul to the Devil in return for youth and an impossible alchemy: the melding of his cynical heart with that of a chaste and innocent young woman, Marguerite. Tragically, by trying to have it all, he is lost and must watch powerlessly as he loses that which he most desires. In his final moments on earth, he sees the truth he ought to have heeded: a pure soul cannot be contained or contaminated, even by the forces of darkness.
Faust is the pinnacle of 19th century French opera, rich in characterization, dramatically exciting and exuberantly evocative of its rustic setting. The glories of Gounod's sensuous and sublimely melodic masterpiece are framed in a cutting-edge production that employs scale, perspective and geometry to stunning effect. (Winning sales pitch for this year's season by Vancouver Opera). |
We couldn't agree more.
| Quote: | The Life of Jung
Hardcover
By Ronald Hayman
| Quote: | | Browsing through his father's theological books for information about God, he found nothing helpful, but when his mother recommended Faust, he at last discovered a writer who took the devil seriously, though Goethe should not have let his hero gamble his soul away so frivolously. He deserved to be damned, and Mephistopheles should not have been tricked out of the soul he had won. The ending made evil seem innocuous. But the development of Jung's ideas was influenced by Goethe, who had studied the medieval alchemists and believed, as they did, that there were hidden human harmonies and interrelationships in all matter. (From Such a Wicked Thought, p. 25) |
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Jussi Bjoerling in Voice and Song
VHS
Free singing lesson by professional teacher David L. Jones
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3117#3117 |
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