Showing posts with label essence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essence. Show all posts

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Have

9.15.19
Alexis Bledel

Have
Mercy
怜悯 
Liánmǐn
どうかご慈悲を
Dō ka go jihi o
ps.51
Miserere

Have mercy on me according to your love. 
Grant me compassion from above.

Wash me from the wickedness of violence and cruelty. 
Cleanse me from the evil of tyranny, terrorism and usury.

Allow me the freedom to think, learn, organize, speak,
write, 
assemble, petition, work, play and worship for happiness with what's for my peak. 

Give me a vote to support due process in law for justice. 
Protect my right to defense for what's just about us. 

Education is the best asset for my social role.
Conservative reform for government is my greatest goal. 

I know my transgression. 
The memory of false impression 
helps me to find a better way than violent aggression. 

I look for a better way than what was wrong 
with what didn't belong for long 
in the last play along to grow strong. 

Autocratic authority by liberal rule 
is not the path to redemption as the tool 
for building an economy for the people as the vestibule.

Reveal divine will through design 
as shown in nature to my mind. 

Put your law within my heart.
Let the right to life run to the final part.

Cast me not away from your presence.
Let my prayers take me to the truth of your divine essence.

Do not bring disaster on your community.
They have been working to build opportunity.

This group has been dedicated to establishing a state
that remembers your promise of inheritance as great.

The remarkable thing about the allegiance of this people
is the devotion to defense against the threat of attacks that are lethal.

The commitment to build national security
deterred the risk of destruction that was building in their immaturity.

The time has come for your joy.
Beauty and reason will be employed.

I am grateful to Christ Jesus as the teacher who taught me with his instruction.
I was deceived by my lack of belief in faith with love as defense against self-destruction.

The inside track will till fertility.
The soil will hide the seed's virility.
Hurricane Lily

The hurricane lily goes dormant in spring.
The flower blooms in September when it's time to sing.

The runner runs to feel agility.
The driver drives to wield tactility.

There will be great joy for those who repent from the lack of concern for security.
They will join the stability that comes with the generation of growth in maturity.

Purgation includes expiation in relation to the divine
to find the way to the jade of the jewel with this mind of mine.  

Socialism demands the defense of liberal expenditure
as though the competitor were the cause of the global rise in temperature.

Wash me from the wickedness of violence and cruelty.
Cleanse me from the evil of tyranny, terrorism and usury.

Create a clean heart within me.
Reveal the truth to help me see.

Have mercy on me according to your love.
Grant me compassion from above.

---------------------------

あなたの愛に応じて私を憐れませてください。
Anata no ai ni ōjite watashi o awarema sete kudasai.
Have mercy on me according to your love.

Grant me compassion from above.
Ue kara omoiyari o ataete keihatsu pai.
上から思いやりを与えて啓発パイ。

--------------------------

51 Miserere mei, Deus
Have mercy on me, Light

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness;
in your great compassion blot out my offenses.

2 Wash me through and through from my wickedness
and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
.
4 Against you only have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight.

5 And so you are justified when you speak
and upright in your judgment.

6 Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth,
a sinner from my mother's womb.

7 For behold, you look for truth deep within me,
and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

8 Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure;
wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

9 Make me hear of joy and gladness,
that the body you have broken may rejoice.

10 Hide your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquities.
11 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

12 Cast me not away from your presence
and take not your holy Spirit from me.

13 Give me the joy of your saving help again
and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.

------------------------

Exodus 32:12

'Why should the Egyptians say, "It is with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth?" Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, "I will multiply your descendents like the stars of heaven and all this land that I have promised I will give to  your descendents. They will inherit it forever."'

The LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

------------------------

Do not bring disaster on your community.
They have been working to build opportunity.

This group has been dedicated to establishing a state
that remembers your promise of inheritance as great.

The remarkable thing about the allegiance of this people
is the devotion to defense against the threat of attacks that are lethal.

The commitment to build national security
deterred the risk of destruction that was building in their immaturity.

=================

1 Timothy 1:12-14

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me. He judged me faithful and appointed me to his service even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of violence. I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

------------------------

I am grateful to Christ Jesus as the teacher who taught me with his instruction.
I was deceived by my lack of belief in faith with love as defense against self-destruction.

=================

Luke 15:6-7

'When he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying "Rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost." Just so, I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.'

------------------------

There will be great joy for those who repent from the lack of concern for security.
They will join the stability that comes with the generation of growth in maturity.

=================

Mystical Experience

Catherine of Genoa
b. 1447 Genoa, Italy
d. 9.15.1510 Genoa, Italy

Catherine of Genoa was an Italian mystic and social worker in the Roman Catholic Church.
She wrote the Spiritual Dialogue and a Treatise on Purgatory. She is noted as an authority regarding the doctrine of purgatory.

She is remembered for her work among the sick and the poor. She served the sick during the plague which ravaged Genoa in 1497 and 1501.

She was a member of the noble Fieschi family.  Her fame outside her native city is connected with the publication in 1551 of the book known in English as the Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa.

She and her teaching were the subject of Baron Friedrich von Hügel's classic work The Mystical Element of Religion (1908).

Genoa

The city of Genoa is located between the Apennine Mountains and the Ligurian Sea.

The Apennine are a mountain range of parallel smaller chains extending about 1,200 km (750 mi) along the length of peninsular Italy. They join with the Ligurian Alps at Altare in the northwest.

The Ligurian is part of the Mediterranean Sea between the Italian Riviera (Liguria) and the island of Corsica.

Genoa is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria. It is the sixth-largest city in Italy.

The port is located on the Gulf of Genoa in the Ligurian Sea. It has historically been one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean.  it is currently the busiest in Italy.

It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Niccolò Paganini and Grimaldo Canella, founder of the House of Grimaldi, among others.

 The Bank of Saint George was founded in 1407. It is among the oldest in the world and has played an important role in the city's prosperity since the middle of the 15th century.

The port established  itself as the merchant capital of the newly established Republic of Genoa in 1005 and maintaining its autonomy until 1797.

The capital struggled to rule itself. Many inner conflicts among the nobility weakened the Republic. The inability to rule itself caused the state to put themselves twice under French rule. Once was in 1391. It happened again in 1458.

The Black Death hit Genoa hard in 1348 and contributed to its decline.

Caterina Fieschi Adorno

Catherine's parents were Jacopo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro. Both were of noble Italian birth.  Two popes, Innocent IV and Adrian V, had been of the Fieschi family. Jacopo himself became Viceroy of Naples.

The family were Guelphs. They were in the faction that supported the pope. The Ghibellines were for the Roman emperor

Catherine was the last of 5 children. She was born in 1447. She was described as an extraordinary child who was gifted in prayer and devotion to Christ. She wished to enter a convent when about 13.

Her sister, Limbania, was an Augustinian nun. The nuns to whom her confessor applied refused her on account of her youth. She put aside the idea without any further attempt.

Her father died when she was young. She was married to the young Genoese nobleman, Giuliano Adorno, at 16. Giuliano had returned to Genoa after several experiences in the area of trade and in the military world.

Their conjugal life was not easy. Her husband's character was worldly in affection for games of chance. They didn't produce children. She felt induced to lead a life that lacked serenity. She had a feeling of profound emptiness after 10 years of marriage. She prayed to remain sick in bed for 3 months.

She received a conversion experience as an answer.  Catherine went to the church of St. Benedict and to the monastery of Our Lady of Graces for confession on March 20, 1473.

She wrote that she was wounded in heart by the knowledge of the life she had led and the goodness of God. She did not stay to finish her confession.

She went home and entered a remote room to weep and pray. She received the sense of the immense love of God. She had a vision of Jesus bent beneath the cross. She understood that he suffered so those who suffered pain from discrimination might feel loved.

She entered into a life of profound union by faith with constant prayer and the daily reception of Communion. It was unusual for laity to receive the sacrament so often.

She sought to be taught by God with the nourishment from prayer and the eucharist for 25 years. She did not become dependent upon the priest in confession. She did not become a monastic.

The place of her ascent to mystical peaks was Pammatone Hospital, the largest hospital complex in Genoa, of which she was director.

She lived an active existence despite the depth of her inner life. A group of followers, disciples and collaborators formed around her. They felt edified by her faith and charity. Her husband was won over as well. He became a Third Order Franciscan and moved into the hospital to help his wife.

The plague hit Genoa in 1493. It was reported that it killed up to 80% of the community. Her husband died in 1497.

She resigned her position as director, although she continued working full time until 1499, when her health began to fail. She finally accepted a priest as her spiritual guide during this time. He was her successor as the head of the hospital. He would later write her biography.

She wrote the Spiritual Dialog and Treatise on Purgatory in the 10 years before her death.
Purgatory was not a place located in the bowels of the earth for her. It was an inner fire for purification. It was a movement toward full communion in the kingdom of heaven.

She died in Genoa in 1510.

Elements of Religion

The elements of religion according to Hugel are mystical, intellectual and institutional. The three work to keep religion alive and relevant. Mysticism could never be the whole of religion.

It is personal in a primitive and monotheistic way insofar as it avoids the errors of superstition and hostility, but it holds the institutional and intellectual parts in question.

Catherine used her mysticism to support that which was right about the intellectual and institutional parts. 

Hugel was engaged in theological discussions with a diverse group of scholars associated with the Modernist controversy at the start of the 20th century.

The modernists shared a belief that science had raised new questions for religious faith that undermined naïve suppositions that believers could rely purely on dogmatic authority as a source of truth.

His scholarly concerns included the relationship of Christianity to history, ecumenism, mysticism, the philosophy of religion and the rejection of much of the immanentism in nineteenth-century theology.

The anti-dogmatic position neglected to acknowledge the value that Trinitarian and Christological instruction held with respect for theology. This antagonism supported the liberal position in theology and political philosophy.

Catherine Fieschi
S. 凯瑟琳菲斯基
T. 凱瑟琳菲斯基

凯  Kai  victory             凱  gai         victory song          Ka   きゃ   キャ        Kae  캐  casserole 
瑟  se    harp                 瑟  shitsu     large koto              sa    さ        サ            seo  서  book         
琳  lin    jade                 琳  rin          jewel                     rin  りん    リン         lin    린  Lynn     
菲  Fei   poor                菲   hi           thin                        Fi    ふぃ   フィ         Pi     피  blood   
斯  si      this                 斯   shi         this                         e     え        エ             swi   쉬  wee       
基  ji       base                基  ki           fundamentals         su   す        ス                       
                                                                                         ki    き        キ                                           
-----------------------------

Purgation includes expiation in relation to the divine
to find the way to the jade of the jewel with this mind of mine.

=================

wiki Catherine of Genoa
Franciscan Media: Catherine of Genoa
Lectionary: Catherine of Genoa
Commentary: Treatise on Purgatory
Papal Podcast: Catherine of Genoa
Benedict XVI: Text St. Catherine of Genoa
wiki The Mystical Element of Religion
wiki Genoa
New Advent Encyclopedia: Catherine of Genoa
wiki Guelphs and Ghibellines

Tolerance

David Stove
b. 9.15.1927 Moree, New South Wales, Australia
d. 6.2.1994    Mulgoa, New South Wales

David Charles Stove was an Australian philosopher who argued against socialism. He was for logical probability and rational induction in reason.

Stove criticized the irrationalism that infested the modern philosophy of science. The relativist and “social constructivist” views that were current in the sociology of science and postmodernist humanities departments depicted  modern science as no better (or worse) than voodoo or astrology or reading chicken entrails. The view was made to look like the majority opinion.

Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend were irrationalists in the philosophy of science. They denied that there was reason to believe in any theory of science. There has been no significant accumulation of relevant knowledge in recent centuries according to the position.

Stove came to be known for his opposition to socialism in college departments in Australia. The socialists made their demands the basis for making decisions for higher education. It ran contrary to the consideration of benefit in reasonable administration.

The argument against socialism seeks to reduce the detrimental affect of socialist analysis on administrative decisions, but argument against it is not enough. Socialism was a derivative of liberal politics. That means that there is another tier to be considered in the argument against non-representative judgment.

The reduction of consideration in the legitimate range of choice for representative policy in democratic society is the area of concern for political organization whether it is in republic or kingdom.

Liberals have been tolerant of socialism because the focus on the role of industrial organization on political leadership has placed their 'power' in government over industry, the middle class and the poor.

They have resorted to populist factionalism in media representation as though it were a representation of democracy. They don't promote representation. They attack it in conservative forms.

Professionalism as a product of education has suffered as a result. While Stove was critical of Popper and his error in science and economics, he wasn't critical enough of liberalism.

The aggressive error of liberalism has to be challenged for the benefit of conservative reform.

Moree, New South Wales
 

Moree is a town in northern New South Wales.

New South Wales is in the southeastern part of Australia. It sits on the banks of the May may River. The name comes from an Aboriginal word meaning "long springs."

The land is a plains region. It has been used for agriculture. The town is not heavily populated. The 2016 census numbers the population at about 7,400 people.

The first constable arrived and a police station was set up in 1865. The first church (Wesleyan) was built in 1867 when the town had a population of 43.

Agriculture emerged as a thriving industry on the fertile flood plains. Banking began in 1876 and the first local newspaper was set up in 1881. The population had grown to 295.

The Great Artesian Basin which sits under Moree was tapped in 1895. The basin yields over thirteen megalitres of water every day, but was proved unsuitable to provide enough water for the agriculture.

The railway line and service from Sydney arrived in 1897. Floods in the area caused numerous washouts of the railway in January 1910. An unknown number of livestock were drowned and at least four people drowned.

A flood cut the township in two in January 1946. Several hundred homes were flooded. The water damaged the power station and caused a black out. Roads and railway lines were damaged.

Moree railway station is situated on the Mungindi line, 665 kilometres (413 mi) from Sydney. It marks the northernmost point of passenger service on the line.

David Stove

David Stove was born in Moree, New South Wales on September 15, 1927.

His parents were Robert James Stove, schoolteacher, and his wife Ida Maude, née Hill. He was the fifth surviving child.

He went to Newcastle Boys’ High School where he excelled in running and was captain of the school track team.

He attended the University of Sydney (BA, 1950) and graduated with first-class honors in moral and political philosophy.

He was strongly influenced by the Challis professor of philosophy John Anderson.

Anderson founded the empirical brand of philosophy known as Australian realism. The central claim was that "whatever exists … is real".  That which is real is spatial and temporal in a situation or occurrence that is on the same level of reality as anything else that exists.

Any object is a fact. Every fact is situated in a complex situation. There are no simple ideas, no atomic facts, no objects which cannot be, as it were, expanded into facts.

All situations exist independently of knowledge of them. All entities are caused. Ethics is concerned with establishing and describing that which is good. It is a positive science. It is not abstractly detached from reality.

Anderson's insistence on unceasing inquiry and criticism became central to the intellectual principles of the university's Libertarian Society. This group supplanted the Free Thought Society in the early 1950's. It provided a philosophic platform for the much broader subculture known as "the Push" throughout the 1960's.

The movement was against socialism, yet he was a defender of free speech. He was critical of the Australian government's bans on certain political publications (1928). People could talk about socialism, but concession to the demands of Marxist ideology was not to be granted.

Stove was appointed a teaching fellow at the University of Sydney in 1951. He became a lecturer in philosophy at the New South Wales University of Technology (later the University of New South Wales) in 1952.

He married Jessie Amelia Leahy, a biochemist on 4 November 1959 at the registrar general’s office. The next year he returned to the University of Sydney.  He was promoted to senior lecturer in 1963 and associate professor in 1974. He would teach there until his retirement in 1987.

Stove was alarmed by the spread of radical left-wing ideas on campus in the early 1970's especially in his own department. He strongly resisted the introduction of courses in Marxism-Leninism and feminism with his colleague David Armstrong, the Challis professor of philosophy.

The subjects went ahead. The dispute resulted in a split in the department. Stove and Armstrong joined a new department of traditional and modern philosophy (colloquially ‘T & M’). Stove headed the department in 1981 and 1982. The left wing department was troubled by political schism. Stove felt that T & M was a perfect environment for serious work.

His work in philosophy mostly concerned the problem of induction. He argued that inference from the observed to the unobserved was justified for purely logical reasons in Probability and Hume’s Inductive Scepticism (1973) and The Rationality of Induction (1986).

There exists a probabilistic kind of logic which renders ‘The next swan is white’ probable, though not certain, on the evidence that all swans so far observed have been white.

His more polemical philosophical work included Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists (1982). The work accused leading philosophers of science such as Sir Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn of undermining, rather than as they claimed, defending science.

Popper had concluded in his massive The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934) that science could never establish truth.  Stove compared the conclusion to the one that had been made by the fox in Aesop's fable.

The fox had decided that the grapes must be sour, because he could not reach them. Stove added that to make the comparison complete, the sly creature would have gone on to write a long book on the progress of viticulture.

He wrote 'A Farewill to Arts' in protest to the spread of postmodernist varieties of left wing thought in 1986. He described the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney as a disaster area.

This disaster was like an area that had been ravaged by flood, a badly leaking nuclear reactor or an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in cattle. His complaint was that Marxism, semiotics and feminism were being used to favor the employment of women on the faculty.

His opinion was that logically probable deduction and simple induction were the path to truth. Common sense has to be applied in practical reason for realism to work.

He was witty and irreverent in expression, but principled in thought. He was pessimistic in that he found no consolation in religion or hope for political progress.

He found some comfort in classical music, old books and nature. He enjoyed planting trees at his rural property at Mulgoa. He also liked cricket and rugby league.

He was a heavy smoker. He contracted oesophageal cancer.

He committed suicide on 1 or 2 June 1994 at Mulgoa after a period of depression following severe treatment for the disease.

While his criticism of socialism was warranted, his conservatism was pessimistic. He did not admit to room for the stable management of reform.

-----------------------

David Stove
S. 大卫斯托夫
T. 大衛斯托夫

大 Da       great              大 dai        large                   De   で     デ          De  데  place             
卫 wei     health              衛  ei        defense                bi    びっ  ビッ      i    이  this             
斯  Si         this               斯  shi       this                      Do   ど      ド        bi     비  ratio           
托  tuo      support          托   taku    requesting           su    す    ス          deu  드  de             
夫  fu        husband         夫  fu         husband              to    と-   ト-        Seu   스  s                           
                                                                                      bu    ぶ    ブ         to     토  sat     
                                                                                                                    beu  브 bro                 
-----------------------

Socialism demands the defense of liberal expenditure
as though the competitor were the cause of the global rise in temperature.

=================

wiki David Stove
James Franklin: Sydney Philosophy Disturbance
Bio David Charles Stove

Friday, August 9, 2019

Restore

8.20


Restore
Fortune
恢复财富 
Huīfù cáifù
回復フォーチュン 
Kaifuku fōchun
ps126
Restituere fortuna

When leadership restored fortune,
we were like those who received our portion.

We felt like those who dream while still awake.
There was the distinct feeling that this fortune wasn't fake.

Our mouth was filled with laughter.
It was like starting again after a climatic chapter.

The rider and the fighter were twins in the sky.
They fought for the standard to know how and why.

They released many captives from the burden of plight.
The captives were freed with the capacity for flight.

Courage watched leadership rise with his word.
Reason was challenged to struggle with the absurd.

The hunter drank in the storm faint though it had been.
He stalked the prey that he had yet to win.

The rider rested with his horse
in the investigation of the state of the forest.

Wildness preceded the primitive me.
Food and water have been granted to proceed.

Our tongues lifted sound above vocal cords.
Our joy was profound. Our bliss was adored.

Restore fortune with the cosmic sorter for order.
Grow us flowers plentiful as stars in the heavenly quarters.

Give us fertility instead of ashes.
Let water pour down while the lightening crashes.

Let oil be squeezed from olives or vegetables.
Let want be appeased, not made palid or miserable.

Let the mantle of praise lift up the weakness of spirit.
Feel the energy of love before you hear or go near it.

Augurs of chance read spirits instead of birds.
Test your statements for the truth of the words.

Righteousness is based on faith with grace.
Redemption with Christ places destiny over fate.

Great things have been done for us in the strength of this time.
The length of light grows as sublimely prime.

Let love be as genuine
as lessons drawn from the benign within.

Hate what is evil
as the retrieval 
of the primevally penal.

Love one another with mutual affection.
Let the joy of your smile show for detection.

Outdo one another in showing honor. 
The proper offer can win a sponsor. 

Those who managed labor throughout the last year
made a memory to transcend the feeling of fear.

Celebrate the presence of the essential essence.
Gratitude for service beats sacrifice as penance.

Those who sowed seed with the toil of their tears
will reap joy with the music of love in the heavenly spheres.

The deluge washed the mass of seashells.
Polish was added to the shine of cells
and bells.

Those who went weeping to water their seeds
will return with shoulders of sheaves to fulfill basic needs.

This voice is like that of the cry in the darkness
unbroken in facing the strength of the starkness.

You bear fruit when you glorify our Father
in a way that shows your sense of honor.

Give as you have made up your mind to afford.
Cheerful giving is benefit that you define for accord.

God provides blessing in cheerfulness.
The feeling reproduces peer coolness. 

You are loved by the Son
when your will is aligned with the divine one.

The Father will honor the production of value
in accord with benefit for the public cachou.

Abide in this love by the power of the Spirit.
The real presence of the divine essence will let you draw near it.  

Restore our fortune. Transform the harm of the past.
Let us have our portion. Give us confidence to last.

Making continual reparation for misdeeds from the past
isn't a policy that will make fortune last.

Liberals made the public pay for legal reform,
then they make us pay for damage caused by the storm
from the reform.

----------------------------

Psalm 126
In convertendo
When

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
then were we like those who dream.
2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
3 Then they said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."
4 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are glad indeed.
5 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses of the Negev.
6 Those who sowed with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
7 Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed,
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

-------------------------

2 Corinth. 9:7-8

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver.  He is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance that by always having enough of everything you may share abundantly in every good work.

-------------------------

Give as you have made up your mind to afford.
Cheerful giving is benefit that you define for accord.

God provides blessing in cheerfulness.
The feeling reproduces peer coolness.

==================

John 12:26

Whoever serves me must follow me. Where I am, there will my servant be. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

-------------------------

The Father will honor the production of value
in accord with benefit for the public cachou.

==================

Accountability

The second letter of Valerian to Rome in 258 CE allows for the execution of Laurence to be dated.

The events that preceded the report of the persecution shed light on the historical situation. There was a crisis in leadership in the third century that contributed to the persecution of Christians as an anti-Roman sect in Rome.

Septimus Severus
(193-211 CE)

The Severan Dynasty ruled the Roman Empire between 193 and 235. The dynasty was founded by the general, Septimus Severus. He rose to power as the victor of the 193-7 Civil War.

Severus increased the pay and benefits for the military. A soldier’s pay was raised from 300 to 500 denarii annually. The increase in pay was overdue, but the size of the armed force was increased to meet the challenges from beyond the borders of the empire.

The value of the currency was debased by adding less precious metal to the coinage to pay for the change. This was an initial debasement. It set a precedent for later emperors.

Roman forts were primarily military bases, but they were also home to the troops who garrisoned them. The forts also housed a retinue of dependents and camp-followers.

All had to be fed and clothed. Since the soldiers’ relatively high rates of pay gave them considerable purchasing power, the forts were provided with a wide range of goods and services.

Severus weakened the role of the emperor by playing to the military. He had almost doubled the pay. The position increased dependence on the loyalty of the army.

The emperor had always relied on the support of the military to one degree or another, but courting the military became more pronounced.

The right of succession would be replaced by a competition among military leaders after the end of the Severan Dynasty. The danger didn’t become apparent until  after the death of the last emperor of the dynasty, Alexander.

The Severan dynasty was disturbed by unstable family relations and constant political turmoil. Each of the Severan emperors was killed during a campaign or was assassinated.

Septimius Severus had his Praetorian Prefect executed in 205. He was killed in a campaign in Britain in 211. He was succeeded by his sons Caracalla and Geta.

They had been appointed as Caesars when Septimius was Augustus. His sons reigned under the influence of their mother, Julia Domna.

Geta was assassinated by order of Caracalla in 211. Caracalla became the Augustus. He was assassinated by a Praetorian Guard while enroute to campaign against the Parthians in 217. 

Macrinus was the Prefect of the Guard who conspired to assassinate Caracalla. He was not Severan. He was declared Augustus after the assassination. His reign was short. He was executed after he lost a battle with Elagabalus in 218.

Elagabalus was persuaded to accept his young cousin Severus as Caesar. Alexander was popular with the troops.

Elagabalus behaved as a transgender. Objections to his behavior increased. Elagabalus removed the title of Caesar from his cousin. The Praetorian Guard staged a mutiny to assassinate him in 222.

Severus Alexander
(207-235 CE)

When Alexander had just turned thirteen on March 6, 222, a rumor went around the city among the troops that he had been killed.

The eighteen year old Elagabalus and his mother were both taken from the palace, dragged through the streets, killed and thrown in the Tiber river by the Praetorian Guard. Alexander Severus was proclaimed the Augustus.

He ruled from the age of fourteen under the influence of his mother, Julia Avita Mamaea. Alexander restored the moderation that characterized the rule of Septimius Severus to an extent.

The rising strength of the Sasanian Empire (226-651) heralded the greatest challenge that Rome faced in the 3d century, but German tribes invaded Gaul. This created a different front to fight.
Alexander had lost the respect of his troops at twenty seven years of age. He was overthrown during the war in 235.

The troubles of the Severan Dynasty foreshadowed the Crisis of the Third Century. It was one of the last lineages of the Principate founded by Augustus. The death of Alexander was the epochal event that started the crisis.

A number of rebellious generals and counter-claimants created a succession of short reigns by military emperors who presided over governmental chaos, civil war, general instability and economic disruption. Maximiunus Thrax was the first of a series of emperors who ruled on average only 2 to 3 years.

The “Barracks Emperors” is a term coined by later historians referring to the Roman emperors who came from and were raised to power by the army.

The system of hereditary succession was displaced by the choice of an emperor by the military based on his popularity with the troops, generosity toward the military and his ability to produce immediate and discernible results. When any of these criteria were not met, especially the last, he was assassinated and replaced by another.

Between the reign of Alexander Severus and that of Diocletian, there were over 20 emperors who rose and fell in fairly swift succession. This type of rule ended fifty years later when the Emperor Diocletian split the Eastern and Western Empires.

Valerian
(253-260)

Valerian had a longer than average rule. His lasted about seven years. He made his son Gallienus Caesar and co-emperor.  Fighting on northern and eastern fronts generated internal strife. Affairs in Europe went from bad to worse early in his reign. The whole west fell into disorder.

Relations with the northern tribesmen had never been stable enough to remove their being called barbari. The relations weren’t always violent either.

Rome maintained the upper hand over hostility by a combination of diplomacy and warfare. They promoted leadership among the various tribes by means of gifts and subsidies. Sometimes food supplies and military aid were offered.

Climate changes and a rise in sea levels ruined the agriculture of what is now the Low Countries. Tribes were forced to relocate to find food.

Archaeological evidence shows that vigorous, warlike tribesmen moved into the more peaceful lands to the north-west of the empire at about the same time. The abandonment of a wide area that was previously settled and agricultural wealth was precipitated.

Antioch had fallen into the hands of a Sassanid vassal in the east. Armenia was occupied by Shapur I. Valerian and Gallienus split the problems of the empire between them. The son took the northwest. The father went east to face the Persian threat.

Valerian was elected Consul Ordinarius in 254, 255 and 257. He had recovered Antioch and returned the province of Syria to Roman control. The following year the Goths ravaged Asia Minor.

Shapur I
(240-270)

Ardashir was an Iranian prince descended from Sasan. It is from Sasan that the Sassanids took their name. He had established himself as Shahanshah, 'king of kings' by 226 CE

His declared intention was to restore the ancient Persian empire to its former glory. He was willing to push his borders westwards into Roman-controlled territories.  His son and successor, Shapur, followed these aggressive expansionist policies. This meant trouble for Rome.

Shapur was the second Shanhanshah of the Sasanian Empire. His rule was marked by successful military and political struggles in the northeastern regions and the Caucasus.

Monotheism grew in popularity during his reign. His support for Zoroastrianism caused a rise in the position of the clergy. His religious tolerance accelerated the spread of Manichaeanism and Christianity in Persia. He is also noted in Jewish tradition.

Persecution of Christians under Valerian
(257-260)

Valerian sent two letters to the Senate while fighting the Persians. The letters ordered that firm steps be taken against Christians. The first was sent in 257. It commanded that Christian clergy perform sacrifices to the Roman gods or face banishment.

The second was sent the following year. It ordered that all senators and equites perform acts of worship to the Roman gods. The penalty for failure to do so was the loss of title and property. The letter stipulated that any who refused would be executed.

Matrons would also lose property and suffer banishment. Civil servants and members of the Imperial household who would not burn incense to worship the gods would be reduced to slavery and sent to work on the Imperial estates. The letter indicates that Christians were well established at the time. Some held high positions.

Prudent was executed at Narbonne in 257. Others were executed in Rome in 258. These included Pope Sixtus II (Aug 6), Romanus Ostiarius (Aug 9), Lawrence (Aug 10) and Eugenia (Dec 25).

Others were executed in different locations. Denis was killed in Paris.  Pontius was killed in Cimiez (near Nice, France). Patroclus was executed at Troyes. Fructuosus was martyred at Tarragona. The decree was rescinded in 260 when Valerian’s son, Gallienus became Emperor in 260. 

The life of Deacon Lawrence claims that he was tortured on an iron grid in the third century. Was he tortured in an effort to force capitulation to the emperor’s decree? The answer depends upon whether he was a Roman citizen or not.

Social Class in Ancient Rome

Status was hierarchical. There were multiple social hierarchies that overlapped. An individual’s position was relative. One might be higher or lower than others.

The status of freeborn Romans during the Republic was established by ancestry.

A citizen was born a plebian or a patrician. The Optimates wanted to retain status according to birth. The Populares wanted to allow plebians to move up. Julius Caesar came from a family that had been plebian.

Census counted rank (ordo) based on wealth and political privilege. The senatorial and equestrian ranks were elevated above the ordinary citizen.  Honor was ascribed for effort. A self-made man established his family as nobilis (noble). There were noble plebians.

The different grades of citizenship had varying rights and privileges. Men who lived in towns outside of Rome in municipia or colonies might hold citizenship, but lack the right to vote. Free born Roman women were citizens, but could not vote or hold political office.

Peregini were distinguished from barbari (the barbarians) and slaves. Slaves were often enslaved as a spoil of war. They were taken from a conquered tribe and put in a position of servitude. They were legally defined as property.

Peregrinus was the term used during the early Roman empire from 30 BCE to 212 CE. The subject was free and provincial insofar as he was not regarded as a hostile non-citizen. These were the largest number in the census of the Empire’s inhabitants in the 1st and 2d centuries CE.

Slaves were considered property and had no rights under Roman law. There were rights that offered slaves more protection than an animal. Slaves who had been manumitted were freedmen (liberti). They enjoyed the same legal rights and protections as free born citizens.

Roman society was patriarchal. The male head of the household (paterfamilias) held legal power and privilege. He was given jurisdiction (patria potestas) over all the members of his familia. His wife, adult sons, married daughters, dependent relatives and slaves were regarded as family.

The word patronus is derived from pater (father). It was another way in which Roman society was organized into hierarchical groups.

Clientela also functioned in the system of overlapping social networks. A patron could be the client of a socially superior or more powerful patron. A client could have multiple patrons. 

Laurence

The name Laurence is derived from the Latin Laurentius. This literally means laurelled. The name suggests a type of person who excelled in competition. He could have been one of any number who were executed for refusal to worship Roman gods.

Laurence (or Lawrence) was chief of the seven deacons of the congregation at Rome. These seven men were like Stephen and his companions (Acts 6:1-6). They were put in charge of administering the church budget, particularly with regard to the care of the poor.

The emperor Valerian began a persecution aimed chiefly at the clergy and the laity of the upper classes in 257. Church property was confiscated and meetings of Christians were forbidden.

The bishop of Rome, Sixtus II, and most of his clergy were executed on 7 August 258. There is early testimony that Bishop Sixtus and his deacons were not led away to execution, but were summarily beheaded on the scene of their arrest.

Laurence was the archdeacon of Rome. He was the distributor of alms and the “keeper of the treasuries of the church.”  When Pope Sixtus II and four deacons were beheaded on August 6, Laurence was left as the ranking Church official in Rome.

When he was summoned to bring the treasure of the Church to the tribunal, he placed all the money at his disposal in the hands of trustworthy stewards.

He assembled the sick, the aged, the poor, the widows and orphans of the congregation. He presented them to the prefect and said, "These are the treasures of the Church." The enraged prefect ordered him to be roasted alive on a gridiron.

The detail is significant with respect for authenticity. Stories of martyrdom were circulated to celebrate the bravery of Christians who refused to worship the gods of antiquity. Certain details were included in order to question the literal truth.

If it was generally known that that were no iron grids in Rome large enough for the task of torturing a person by placing him on it, the message was intended to suggest that non-citizens could be tortured for failing to comply with an imperial edict to worship the gods in a public ceremony.

The story about Pope Sixtus was an indication that the letter from Valerian stated that the Senate could execute anyone and to take the property of those who failed to offer sacrifice in accordance with the edict.

The execution of Laurence is commemorated on the 10th of August.

The meteor shower that follows the passage of the Swift-Tuttle comet was known in the middle ages as the ‘burning tears of St. Lawrence’ because they appear at the same time as his feast.

Was the deacon Laurence tortured on a grid of iron prior to his execution?

Modern Iron Grid for Bar-B-Que Cooking
 
Roman Pots and Iron Grid 1st c. CE Scotland

Roman Pot, Utensils and Iron Grid

The images available on Google don’t indicate that there was a grill large enough to torture a human. The case for the literal frying of Laurence doesn’t look good.

One author has proposed that the story about his being roasted was an error in transcription. The usual phrase to describe a martyr’s death in Latin had dropped the ‘p.’

The phrase ‘passus est’ means ‘he suffered.’  When the first letter is dropped, it reads ‘assus est’. It means ‘he roasted.’

------------------------

The speedy retreat of Shapur's troops from Antioch caused Valerian to pursue the Persians to Edessa, but they were defeated by the Persians.  Valerian, along with the Roman army that was left, was captured by Shapur and sent away into Pars.

Valerian was the first Roman emperor to be captured as a prisoner of war. This caused shock and disillusionment. He died as their prisoner. His body was stuffed after his death and displayed in the Persian court for visiting dignitaries according to some reports.

------------------

When Septimius Severus almost doubled the wage for the common soldier at the same time that he increased the size of armed force, it stressed the Roman treasury. The soldiers circulated more coin into the economy, but they also felt an empowerment to assassinate any emperor who did not meet their demands.

The authority of the emperor was not officially acknowledged by the Senate unless he was elected consul. Consuls had a one year non-repeatable term limit during the period of the Republic.
Septimius imperiled imperial authority for his dynasty and Barracks emperors who followed them. He reduced the ability to command to a concession to popularity among the troops.

This situation contributed to the resolve of Valerian to designate leading Christians as non-Roman in order to take their property after execution. The imperial Polytheistic faith was reduced to fatalism by the precipitation of war and the death penalty.

When Christian monotheism threatened to do the same thing with the reintroduction of the slave trade after the Renaissance, the association of fate with the Roman faith was increased. The Protestant Reformation protested indulgences as a core deficiency in the intent to expand the Roman Empire around the globe with slavery.

Salvation by faith in the grace of God with the authority of sola scriptura was promoted as an implicit renunciation of the papal support for the slave trade in the alliance with the Spanish Hapsburgs. Slavery was not explicitly protested due to the threat from the expansion of the Ottoman empire.

The Peace of Westphalia supported the selection of the Protestant or Catholic denominations by the princes to oppose the expansion of the empire with the slave trade. German kingdoms would eventually unite into the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The empire became a functional republic with Bismarck. It became a socialist republic after World War I had been lost to the British and her allies. It wasn’t declared as an atheist state as with the Soviet Republic, but it was characterized by anti-Semitic policy.

The economy was not capitalist. It was socialist with concession to the demands of industry that served the purpose of imperial republican expansion. An intent to conquer the whole globe was indicated. It was a totalitarian intent.

Valerian
wiki Emperor Valerian
Social Class in Ancient Rome
wiki Social Class in Ancient Rome
Third Century Crisis
wiki Third Century Crisis
Ancient History: Third Century Crisis
Shapur I
wiki Shapur Roman POW's
Sasanian Empire
wiki Sasanian Empire
Second Roman War
wiki Shapur Second Roman War
St. Lawrence of Rome
Roman Catholic St. Lawrence
Lectionary Laurence
wiki St. Lawrence
Roman Religion
Oxford Roman Religion
Capitalism
Huffpost: Capitalism and Socialism
Covey Respons-ability
Socialism
Socialism Culture War

Friday, July 19, 2019

Restore

7.20.19

Restore
Fortune
恢复财富 
Huīfù cáifù
回復フォーチュン 
Kaifuku fōchun
ps126
Restituere fortuna

When leadership restored fortune,
we were like those who received our portion.

We felt like those who dream while still awake.
There was the distinct feeling that this fortune wasn't fake.

Our mouth was filled with laughter.
It was like starting again after a climatic chapter.

The rider and the fighter were twins in the sky.
They fought for the standard to know how and why.

They released many captives from the burden of plight.
The captives were freed with the capacity for flight.

Courage watched leadership rise with his word.
Reason was challenged to struggle with the absurd.

The hunter drank in the storm faint though it had been.
He stalked the prey that he had yet to win.

The rider rested with his horse
in the investigation of the state of the forest.

Wildness preceded the primitive me.
Food and water have been granted to proceed.

The beauty of the course was swirled in stone.
She was dedicated to serve people like God alone. 

Our tongues lifted sound above vocal cords.
Our joy was profound. Our bliss was adored.

Restore fortune with the cosmic sorter for order.
Grow us flowers plentiful as stars in the heavenly quarters.

Give us fertility instead of ashes.
Let water pour down while the lightening crashes.

Let oil be squeezed from olives or vegetables.
Let want be appeased, not made palid or miserable.

Let the mantle of praise lift up the weakness of spirit.
Feel the energy of love before you hear or go near it.

Augurs of chance read spirits instead of birds.
Test your statements for the truth of the words.

Righteousness is based on faith with grace.
Redemption with Christ places destiny over fate.

Great things have been done for us in the strength of this time.
The length of light grows as sublimely prime.

Let love be as genuine
as lessons drawn from the benign within.

Hate what is evil
as the retrieval 
of the primeval penal.

Love one another with mutual affection.
Let the joy of your smile show for detection.

Outdo one another in showing honor. 
The proper offer can win a sponsor. 

Those who managed labor throughout the last year
made a memory to transcend the feeling of fear.

Celebrate the presence of the essential essence.
Gratitude for service beats sacrifice as penance.

Those who sowed seed with the toil of their tears
will reap joy with the music of love in the heavenly spheres.

The deluge washed the mass of seashells.
Polish was added to the shine of cells
and bells.

Those who went weeping to water their seeds
will return with shoulders of sheaves to fulfill basic needs.

This voice is like that of the cry in the darkness
unbroken in facing the strength of the starkness.

You bear fruit when you glorify our Father
in a way that shows your sense of honor.

You are loved by the Son
when your will is aligned with the divine one.

Abide in this love by the power of the Spirit.
The real presence of the divine essence will let you draw near it.  

Restore our fortune. Transform the harm of the past.
Let us have our portion. Give us confidence to last.

Making continual reparation for misdeeds from the past
isn't a policy that will make fortune last.

Liberals made the public pay for legal reform,
then they tax more for damage caused by the storm
from the reform.

----------------------------

Psalm 126
In convertendo
When

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, *
then were we like those who dream.
2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
3 Then they said among the nations, *
"The Lord has done great things for them."
4 The Lord has done great things for us, *
and we are glad indeed.
5 Restore our fortunes, O Lord, *
like the watercourses of the Negev.
6 Those who sowed with tears *
will reap with songs of joy.
7 Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

-------------------------

Romans 12:9-10
Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

-------------------------

Let love be as genuine
as lessons drawn from the benign within.
Hate what is evil
as the retrieval
of the primevally penal.
Love one another with mutual affection.
Let the joy of your smile show for detection.
Outdo one another in showing honor.
The proper offer can win a sponsor.

==================
John 15: 8-9
My Father is glorified when you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.

-------------------------

You bear fruit when you glorify our Father
in a way that shows your sense of honor.
You are loved by the Son
when your will is aligned with the divine one.
Abide in this love by the power of the Spirit.
The real presence of the divine essence will let you draw near it.

==================

Blazing Torch

Maria Skobtsova
b. 12.20.1891 Riga, Latvia
d. 3.31.1945 Ravensbruck, Germany

She was known as Mother Maria or Mary of Paris. She was married twice. Skobtsova is her second married name.

Maria was a Russian noblewoman, poet, nun and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She has been canonized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
She was born in Riga, Latvia in the Russian empire in the latter part of the 19th century.

Riga

Riga is the capital of Latvia. It is the largest city in the country. It is also the larger than the largest city in Estonia or Lithuania.

The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava River. The bay separates Latvia from Estonia. The inlet is connected to the Baltic Sea.

The Daugava River flows from the Valdai Hills in Russia through Belarus and Latvia. The total length of the river is 1.020 km (630 mi.) of which 325 km (202 mi.) are in Russia.

Riga had been a member of the Hanseatic League. The league was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe.

It grew from a few North German towns in the 1100’s. The league came to dominate Baltic maritime trade for 3 centuries along the coasts of Northern Europe.

Hansa territories stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages (1250-1500). Diminishment came slowly after 1450.

Hanse was the Old High German word for convoy. The word was applied to bands of merchants who traveled between the Hanseatic cities whether by land or sea.

The cities had their own legal system. They had their own armies for mutual protection and aid. The organization was not a state despite this. It could not be called a confederation of city-states. A small number of cities with the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.

The Livonian Order was formed from the Brothers of the Sword after their defeat in 1236 at the Battle of Schaulen. They had been incorporated into the Teutonic Knights and became known as the Livonian Order in 1237.

The Order had conquered Courland, Livonia and Semigallia between 1237 and 1290. They suffered a loss at the Battle of Turaida in 1296, but they managed to buy the Duchy of Estonia from King Valdemar IV of Denmark.

The Order managed to maintain an independent existence while the Teutonic Order fell into decline after the secularization of its Prussian territories by Albert of Brandenburg in 1525.

Riga became the object of foreign military, political, religious and economic aspirations as the influence of the Hanseatic League waned. The city accepted the Reformation in 1522. The power of the archbishops was ended.

Iconoclasts targeted a statue of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral to make a statement against religious icons. The statue was accused of being a witch. It was given a trial by water in the Daugava River. The statue floated so it was denounced as a witch and burnt at Kubsberg.

A varying coalition from Denmark-Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden and the Union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland fought for control of Old Livonia (Estonia and Latvia) with the tsardom of Russia in the Livonian War (1558-1583).

Riga was given the status of a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire for the 20 years with the demise of the Livonian Order during the war. The status ended with the Treaty of Drohiczyn in 1581.

Riga became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The treaty ended the war for the city.
The Polish-Swedish war (1621-1625) transferred the city to the rule of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, in 1621. He had intervened in the Thirty Years’ War to favor German Lutheran Protestantism. Riga withstood a siege by Russian forces during the Russo-Swedish War (1656-1658).

Riga was the largest city in Sweden until 1710. Tsar Peter the Great attacked the city in that year. Riga and other Livonian towns and gentry capitulated to Russia but largely retained their privileges. Russia emerged as the strongest northern power with the Treaty of Nystad in 1721.

The Baltic Germans in Riga had maintained a dominant position during the many centuries of war and changes of power in the Baltic. The population for the city was 42.9% German. German was the official language for administration until the installations of Russian in 1891 as the official language for the Baltic provinces by Tsar Alexander III. 

More Latvians moved to the city during the mid-19th century. The rise of the Latvian bourgeoisie made it the center for the Latvian National Awakening. The Riga Latvian Association was formed in 1866. The first national song festival was organized in 1873.

Maria Skobtsova

She was given the name Elizaveta Pilenko at birth. She was born into an upper class family in Riga, Latvia on December 20, 1891.

She was descended on her mother's side from the last governor of the Bastille, the Parisian prison destroyed during the French Revolution. Both parents were Russian Orthodox Christians.

The family moved to Anapa after her birth. Her father was elected the mayor of the town.

Their daughter was shaped by the values of the Christian culture. She had emptied her piggy band to contribute to the painting of an icon for a new church in Anapa.

She asked her mother if she was old enough to be a nun when she was 7. She asked permission to become a pilgrim traveling from shrine to shrine a year later.

Elizaveta was raised in a time when socialism was conflated with nationalism during rapid industrialization. When her father died she became an atheist. She felt that his death was unjust.

She fell into the belief that if there was not justice, then God did not exist. She decided that parents knew of this non-existence, but they kept it from their children.

There was a workers’ revolution in 1905 led by the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Her mother moved the family to St. Petersburg in 1906.

Elizaveta found herself in the country's political and cultural center. It was a hotbed for radical ideas and groups. She became part of radical literary circles that gathered around such symbolist poets as Alexander Blok. She first met the poet at age 15.

She found herself drawn to the left like many of her contemporaries, but she was disappointed with the radicals she encountered. All they did was talk. She was looking for heroic engagement. She wanted to do battle with the world to combat injustice even at the expense of her life.

She felt that her friends would talk about someone's death to explain approval or disapproval. They would show understanding throughout the night on a high level of abstraction until the sun were to rise and it was time for fried eggs. They would not understand that to die for the revolution was to feel "a rope around one's neck."

She married Dimitri Kuzmin-Karaviev in 1910. He was a Bolshevik and part of a community of poets, artists and writers. She later commented that it was a marriage born "more of pity than of love." She and her friends also talked theology in addition to politics and poetry.

Just as their political ideas had no connection at all to the lives of ordinary people, their theology floated far above the actual Church. The Church was an idea or a set of abstract values for many intellectuals. It was not a community in which one actually lives.

She thought that there was much they might have learned from an "old beggar woman hard at her Sunday prostrations in church."

She was actively involved in literary circles and wrote much poetry during this period of her life. Her first book, Scythian Shards, was a collection of poetry. Her marriage to Dimitri had ended by 1913.  Her first child, Gaiana, was born in the same year.

Her earlier attraction to Christ revived and deepened even when she still regarded herself as an atheist. She was attracted to him as heroic man as opposed to God incarnate.

Russia entered into World War I on August 1, 1914, when Germany declared war on it. Elizaveta returned to Anapa with her daughter when the war had started. Her religious life grew more intense.

She secretly wore lead weights sewn into a hidden belt as a way of reminding herself both "that Christ exists" and also to be more aware that minute-by-minute many people were suffering and dying in the war.

She found that she was being drawn toward the religious faith she had abandoned after her father's death. She prayed and read the Gospel and the lives of saints and concluded that the real need of the people was not for revolutionary theories but for faith. She wanted "to proclaim the simple word of God," she told Blok in a letter written in 1916.

She applied for admission to Saint Petersburg's Theological Academy of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery to study theology. The academy was an entirely male school at the time. The students were being prepared for ordination. The rector decided that she could be admitted despite the change in practice.

She was present in Saint Petersburg when Russia's Provisional Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917. She listened as Lenin's lieutenant, Leon Trotsky, dismissed people from her party at the Soviet Congress.  He said, "Your role is played out. Go where you belong, into history's garbage can!"

She came to see how hideously different actual revolution was from the dreams that had once filled the imagination of so many Russians. 

She was elected deputy mayor of the town of Anapa in 1918. When the White Army took control of Anapa, the mayor fled and she became mayor of the town. The White Army put her on trial for being a Bolshevik. She spoke in her defense in court that she would represent those who had a need for justice, red or white.

The judge was a former teacher of hers, Daniel Skobtsov. She was acquitted. She sought him out to thank him after the trial. Eventually they married.

The Skobtsovs fled to Georgia as the course of the civil war was turning in favor of the Bolsheviks.  She gave birth to a son, Yura, in 1920. They relocated to Yugoslavia a year later. She gave birth to Anastasia.

Their journey ended with their arrival in Paris in 1923 where to supplement their income she made dolls and painted silk scarves. She often worked ten or twelve hours a day.

A friend introduced her to the Russian Student Christian Movement, an Orthodox association founded in 1923. She attended lectures and other activities and felt herself coming back to life spiritually and intellectually.

Her daughter Anastasia died of influenza in 1926. Daniel and Elizaveta's marriage was falling apart. Yuri ended up living with Daniel. Elizaveta moved into central Paris to work more directly with those who were most in need.

She emerged from her mourning to dedicate herself to  be a mother to all who "need maternal care, assistance, or protection." She became a social worker and a writer of theology. Two volumes, Harvest of the Spirit, were published in 1927. She retold the lives of many saints.

She was appointed traveling secretary of the Russian Student Christian Movement in 1930. The work put her into daily contact with impoverished Russian refugees throughout France and neighboring countries. 

Her bishop encouraged her to take vows as a nun. She agreed only with the assurance that she would not have to live secluded from the world in a monastery. An ecclesiastical divorce was granted In 1932 with Daniel Skobtov's permission.

She took the name Maria with her monastic vows. Her confessor was Father Sergius Bulgakov. Mother Maria made a rented house in Paris her "convent." It was a place with an open door for refugees, the needy and the lonely.

It also soon became a center for intellectual and theological discussion. Fr. Dmitri Klepinin would be sent to be the chaplain of the house. Mother Maria combined the elements of service to the poor and theology together.

While Mother Maria could have fled Paris when the Germans were advancing, or even sought refuge in America, she would not budge. "If the Germans take Paris, I shall stay here with my old women. Where else could I send them?" She had no illusions about the Nazi threat. They represented a "new paganism" that brought in its wake disasters, upheavals, persecutions and wars.

The local authorities in Paris declared her house an official food distribution point, where volunteers sold at cost price whatever food Mother Maria could find.

Russian refugees were among the particular targets of the occupiers. A thousand were arrested in June 1941. Several close friends and collaborators of Mother Maria and Father Dimitri were taken. The leaders of the house launched an aid project for prisoners and their dependents.

Jews approached the house asking for baptismal certificates when the Nazis took Paris. Father Dimitri provided for them. A number of Jews came to stay with them. The house provided shelter and the 'parents' helped many to escape.

The house was closed down eventually. Mother Maria, Fr. Dimitri, Yuri and Sophia were all taken by the Gestapo.

Yura and Father Dimitri were deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany on December 16, 1943. The two were sent to Dora in 1944. Fr. Dimitri and Yuri both died at the prison camp there. 

Mother Maria was sent to the camp in Ravensbrück, Germany. Her work in the camp varied. There was a period when she was part of a team of women dragging a heavy iron roller about the camp's pathways for 12 hours a day. Her legs began to give way. She worked in a knitwear workshop later.

The concentration camp administrators further reduced food rations when the Red Army was approaching from the East. The population for each block was increased. 

Mother Maria accepted a pink card. The card was issued to any prisoner who wished to be excused from labor because of age or ill health. Those who had received such cards were transferred to what was called the Jugendlager or "youth camp." She chose hers in January 1945. 

The authorities said each person would have her own bed and abundant food. Mother Maria's transfer was on January 31. The food ration was further reduced. The hours spent standing for roll calls increased. Mother Maria survived five weeks before she was returned to the main camp on March 3.

It is reported that she was selected for the gas chambers Good Friday on March 30, 1945 and sent on Holy Saturday. An investigation by the International Red Cross refuted claims that prisoners were sent to the gas chamber in Nazi concentration camps. No evidence has been found to support the claim that people were executed as claimed.

The memory of Mother Maria is to be reverenced nonetheless. Survivors of the war who had known her would draw attention to the ideas, insights and activities of the unusual nun who had spent so many years coming to the aid of people in desperate straights. Her service to others during a period of adversity is worthy of admiration.

World War I was fought almost as an end to the existence of empire. There was more to be said against the competitiveness between existing empires as they struggled for dominance, but a number of empires were ended after the war.

Great Britain and Japan were small enough to escape the global association between empire and imperial expansion. Imperial expansion was identified with military force and covert movements for insurrection. Commercial enterprise was subordinate to the imperial power.

The republican revolution was extended to Russia and China as each government for the large nation was were pressed into a republic that was identified as communist. Communism was regarded as the Marxist form of socialism that was both large and extreme. It was extreme in the position against religion and the advocacy for a global socialist revolution.

World War II was a battle between different forms of socialism. Hitler and the Nazis reincarnated the next claim to empire in the form of a socialist republic that was run by the united interest between industrial and political leadership.

The axis powers were in league with industrial socialism in republican government as the means to promote alliance for civilization. Even tribal societies were expected to pick a side for who would represent their development into a civilized power.

Socialism for labor was associated with democracy by the theory of large numbers, but representation was limited to workers as though they were 'the people.' Labor was virtually absolute in the refusal to seek higher education for the promotion of production.

Management and the middle class were seen as the cause of the problem of income inequality. The value of higher education was reduced to something that existed largely on paper. Real societal existence had to be established by the force of uneducated demand.

Mother Maria came from an upper class family. She fell into atheism and socialist logic in reason after her father died when she was a teen. She began her return to faith with the emulation of Jesus as a heroic Christ who was willing to die for the cause of social justice.

This heroic Christ was worthy of reverence for his sense of sacrifice, but he wasn't revered as the Son of God. This said, he wasn't as reconstructed as the Jesus of liberation theology. This Jesus was willing to strap on automatic machine guns in order to liberate the people from the oppression of the industrial management of society.

Maria eventually dedicated herself to the service of the poor. It was Christ-like but she still had difficulties with socialist ties. The French associated the poor with unemployed labor. Her social service for them was aligned with republican socialism. It wasn't as extreme as communism, but it was still socialist.

She transcended partisan partiality in judgment in her dedication to serve the outcast in society. She did this during the rise of communism in Russia, in the Russian civil war after the Bolshevik Revolution, in France before and during World War II and later in the concentration camp in Germany.

This impartial judgment in the service of others was her great achievement as a Christian despite the virtually inescapable association with one form of socialism or another during her time.
 
Maria Skobtsova
S. 玛丽亚斯科特索娃
T. 瑪麗亞斯科特索娃

玛 Ma  agate              瑪 me    agate           Ma  ま   マ        Ma    마 hemp                             
丽 li    pretty              麗 rei      lovely           ri    り   リ         li       리 lee               
亚 ya   Asian              亞 a        rank              a    あ   ア         a       아 ah                     
斯 Si    this                 斯 shi      this              Su   す   ス        Seu    스 the                         
科 ke   rules               科 ka        course         ko  こ   コ          ko     코 nose           
特 te   special             特 toku   special        tso  つぉ ツォ  cheu 츠 tsu               
索 suo  to demand      索 saku    cord           wa  わ   ワ          so     소 small                           
娃 wa  doll                 娃 wa     beautiful                                 ba     바  bar   

-------------------------

The beauty of the course was swirled in stone.
She was dedicated to serve people like God alone.

==================

wiki Maria Skobstova
orthodox wiki Maria S
Lectionary Maria S
oca lives Maria S
wiki Riga