Electric January: MLK

This is an additional post for Electric January, in order to honour the life, work, Christianity and humanity of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to highlight some of the reasons for his untimely death.

As many of you may already know, Dr. King understood that his life was in danger, but he continued, fearless, working for justice.  He knew–and we are tasked with knowing–that what he fought for was contrary to the ease and comfort of the oppressor.  He was the oppressed and he fought for the oppressed.  He stood for the marginalized and the poor, just as Jesus did, and he was not afraid to speak out both in defense of his ethic or against those who opposed him.

When he was sent to prison–as were so many who fought for civil rights, Black rights, and dignity–he wrote this letter.  It is not a rousing speech the way ‘I have a dream’ is rousing, but it rouses the heart to contrition, nonetheless.

I share here the Letter from Birmingham Jail, written by Dr. King in provided by The Christian Century.    

Photo from website Unsplash.

Ash Wednesday 2

The following are excerpts from the Ash Wednesday service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Snohomish, Washington:

Let us now bow down before the Lord.

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent

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Blow the trumpet in Zion;

sound the alarm on my holy mountain!

…sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people.

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The Lord is full of compassion and mercy,

slow to anger and of great kindness.

For as the heavens are high above the earth

so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.

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We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.

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So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

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Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.

We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength.

Accept our repentance, O Lord. 

Accomplish in us the work of your salvation/That we may show forth your glory in the world.

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Joel 2:1 & 15

2 Corinthians 5:20

Matthew 6:1 & 21

 

Manuscript

Formally, a manuscript is a hand-written document, and an illuminated manuscript is a handwritten document decorated in or with precious metals, such as gold or sparkling jewels. But the informal measure of a manuscript tends toward something altogether different.  Somewhat akin to my passion for books before my History of the Book class and the formal, true, illuminated passion I now possess, is the difference between what the general populace thinks a manuscript is and what it really is–its nuance, its depth, its ability to cause obsession.  That is now my lot, thanks to the University of Nottingham School of English.

Who knew?  Really, I guess I did.  I just never acknowledged it to an extent that led me to study so profusely and profoundly and so productively.  I have always liked–nay, loved, I have loved–books and all kinds of paper.  I have loved inks and texts, scripts, bindings, impressed leathers (a recent discovery, but a love nonetheless), manual production, for as long as I can remember, in one way or form or another.  Whether it was snipping sheets of paper into tiny rectangles in order to staple them back together again in a crudely bound form, or that collection of quills, pen nibs, sealing wax and inks in my middle desk-drawer and this fetish I’ve cultivated for touching the cotton stock at the art store.  I am hooked.

Hooked, I tell you.  And according to my brilliant tutor, Joanna Martin, that’s the least of it.  An all-out obsession (as noted above) awaits.  I do not intend to staunch it.

This is what drives my days, these days:

This blog: The British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts Blog

And these websites: National Archives Paleography & Medieval Writing

And words like the one above: paleography, and colophon, and miniscule and minim, and minium and rubrication and codex and codices.  And Chaucer, for whom I have only until now had a sort of passing respect, is climbing in importance. So are people whose names I will never know, but who penned or fabricated or outlined or decorated the beauties I pore over.

Today I realized that this is what I want to do.  I want to study manuscripts.  I am 40 years old and it took me all this time to get my sh*t together to figure this out.  So, off I go then, to describe the Gothic Textura, to learn how it differed from the Anglicana script (and all of its variations).  Delightful.