Tag Archives: medieval

Aureole

Aureole: (n) a circle of light or brightness surrounding something, especially as depicted in art around the head or body of a person represented as holy.

I will freely admit to you that I have no scientific backing for my conclusions. These findings of mine are solely based upon years and years of observation of dictionary with letter Ahuman behavior.

There are three things that people will not accept from other folks:

  1. Arrogance.

We may even temporarily concede that certain people are “talented enough” that they have the right to be prideful, but we are simultaneously privately hoping they stumble and fall.

  1. Intolerance.

Even though we accept a certain amount of this nasty stuff in ourselves, we will not permit others to express this kind of fussiness and closed-minded approach with the world around them.

  1. Making the same dumb mistakes over and over again.

How many times can you say “I’m sorry” before people start hearing, “I’m pathetic”?

I bring these up to you because the Medieval artists began to place halos and aureoles around the heads of saints and angels–and especially Jesus of Nazareth.

I assume they felt this was an offering of respect for their good deeds or divinity.

But in the process they have taken a God who purposely became human and insisted that He be a human who was perfect–and a God.

It’s like turning to the Almighty and saying, “Your idea about becoming human like us was really stupid. We like people who wear hats that look like lightbulbs.”

I will tell you this–Jesus has no appeal to anybody when he’s proclaimed to be perfect.

  • We hate perfect people,
  • We plot their destruction.
  • We come up with pranks to make them look inept.

Likewise, Jesus does not have market when you insist he was a Jewish prophet for the Jewish people who was intolerant of Gentiles.

And Jesus does not have the ability to reach the world if his religion makes the same dumb mistakes over and over again that every religion has made.

So if you don’t mind, I would rather you remove the aureole from Jesus’ crown and have a more realistic representation.

How about a fly buzzing his head?

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Attire

Attire: (n) clothes, especially fine or formal ones.dictionary with letter A

I’ve only owned one house in my life.

It was a big one. The master bedroom had a huge walk-in closet.

Caught up in the vanity of the moment, I felt it was my duty to fill this enclosure with various costumes, clothing choices and attire which I could walk in and choose from daily as “lord of my manor.”

So I purchased garments, and some were given to me as gifts.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that each and every week, I was only wearing about three or four different outfits–repeatedly. The rest of the clothes were dangling from hangers like ugly gargoyles on a medieval castle.

They were fixtures. Matter of fact, some of them collected dust.

In the midst of this comedy of collection, I had a realization.

My mind went back twenty years earlier, when I found myself doing a gig in a small Kentucky town. (I was so grateful for the opportunity to share my talents and to have anyone listen to me that I chose to ignore the fact that the community had fewer than 500 people, and that the building’s foundation was crumbling.)

Arriving at this latest opportunity, I realized I only had two outfits from which to choose. One of them was a powder blue leisure suit which I had worn too often and was certainly a bit grimy. The other outfit was clean, but because I didn’t have a belt, the pants kept sliding down, threatening to disappear, producing disgrace.

So torn between my attire, I first put on the pants without a belt, only to discover that it was very annoying to keep pulling them up. So right before the show began, I slid into a back room and put on my somewhat filthy, powder-blue leisure suit.

In that moment I made a decision about my attire:

Always better to be a little soiled than “unfoiled.”

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Armadillo

dictionary with letter A

Armadillo: (n) a nocturnal omnivorous mammal that has large claws for digging and a body covered in bony plates. Armadillos are native to the south central US and Central and South America.

Along with crocodiles and spiders, armadillos clearly remind us that our world is ancient and was once occupied by really scary creatures.

Even though these animals are now much smaller and have a shrunken fear factor, you can certainly comprehend that in their heyday, they must have turned a head or two.

Matter of fact, the first time I saw an armadillo in the middle of the road while driving through Texas, I pulled over and stared at it for a while.

In some ways it looks like a knight in unshining armor. A really ugly knight, mind you.

Rather than seeming to be something natural, the bony plates on the outside of the body look like some kid placed them as a joke on his pet dog and then released the puppy into the wild, and stood behind a cactus and laughed.

The armadillo is also kind of like the pineapple of the animal kingdom. Even though the fruit inside the pineapple is really quite sumptuous, the outside looks like it was constructed by a medieval tinsman.

So it always causes me to reflect on the great debate between creation and evolution.

I will have to admit, if God made all of these creatures at the same time, He certainly had to be on some sort of heavenly acid trip.

And if evolution is completely accurate, it’s difficult to comprehend why the armadillo survived and the stegosaurus ended up in the pits.

So for me, I land somewhere betwixt: envisioning a God who used evolution to create, and a Creator who even to this day, continues to evolve.

 

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Afar

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAfar: (adv.) at or to a distance: e.g. our hero traveled afar

Here is a word that exists just so we can truly appreciate the value of being near. After all, anything we would really want “afar” is not really worthy of being discussed, is it? And if we’re actually going to travel, clarifying it by using a medieval term like “afar” seems a bit pretentious, if not culturally gross.

Yes, it’s another one of those words which, if we actually utter it, when it comes out of our mouth, it sounds like we’re posing for a painting, hopefully being admired by onlookers for our continental use of the King’s speak.

I feel sorry for “afar.”

Maybe it deserves better. Maybe it should be admired for having four letters and balancing two vowels and two consonants. (Yet how often would such an award of appreciation be available?)

I’m afraid “afar” suffers from what most of us do: it is too old and when it tries to insert itself into contemporary situations, looks a trifle ridiculous.

So here’s to the word “afar,” which quite honestly, from this point on … will need to follow its own obvious advice.