Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
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This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit
Collabora
Productivity a subsidiary of Collabora focusing on LibreOffice support and
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Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Failing that, there are all manner of interesting things to read on
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feed.
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legacy html
- To NCC in the morning, leaving J. in bed, did creche. Christine
for lunch. Slept a little, out to baptism class at Dan & Michelle's.
- Played with the family, building towers & knocking them over
for some considerable time to much merriment; lovely.
- Gordon
sermon on
John 1 - "The word".
- Kirkegaard's parable: a wealthy & powerful King fell
in love with a common woman - and wanted to declare his love &
for her to love him - several strategies:
- The direct approach - turning up at her humble
cottage with impressive retinue, dazzling crown, stunning
wealth; announce his love & surely utterly overwhelm
her. If by some miracle she should respond with affection,
in the aftermath - neither could ever be sure whether it
was the King whom she loved, or the wealth & promise
of great privilege.
- A 2nd strategy - approach in pretence/disguise,
arrive as a beggar - woe her - hope she responded in love.
In the end, no better - she in love with a begger - a
disguise would have to throw off; a deception, he was the
King.
- A 3rd alternative - elevate her to himself:
arrange (by some secret benefaction) to bestow on her fabulous
wealth - raise her to true nobility; then he would approach
her & hope she would respond in kind. The danger of this:
imply that as a humble maiden, she was not good enough - when
the opposite was true: it was as a humble maiden that he loved
her.
- A 4th & final strategy - the only way that
would succeed; do that which for any King would be unthinkable,
he would descend from his throne, empty himself of all his
wealth & privilege. In this way identify with her - not
by pretending to be poor - but by actually becoming poor.
Would share her lot, her suffering, her poverty - he would
take the initiative and become truly equal to her - if in
that way he would be able to secure her heartfelt love.
- Kirkegaard writes "for this is the unfathomable nature of
incarnate love; that it desires equality with the beloved, not merely
in jest, but in earnest & in truth." In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... The Word
became flesh and dwelt amongst us ... we have seen his glory, the glory
of the One & Only who came from the Father - full of Grace &
truth
- Some of the context to John: of 4, this gospel inspired
by far the most hymns, very familiar indeed, many read it as their
first book of scripture. John has a very selective approach eg.
reports only 7 signs/miracles that Jesus performed.
- Very easy Greek, total vocabulary - 1014 words (including
the various forms of 'and') the whole palette to paint his entire
gospel; 878 verses.
- John often portrayed with an eagle - the 10k feet
overview of the gospel. Concious that the facts had been laid out
by the previous gospels - was inspired to write a spiritual gospel,
packed into simple sentences. No-where mentions Jesus' birth,
sermon on the mount, ethical teachings, no parables, etc.
- He assumes you already know all kinds of facts; John
fills in the holes. tells the earlier period of the overlap with
John the Baptist. Explains loose ends from the Gospel of Mark
eg. the destruction/re-building of the temple in 3 days.
- Lengthy & amusing expose of the broken research
behind Dan-Brown, both at the level of art-history: eg. clearly
ignoring Da-Vinchi's own treatise on painting, and the inherent
'types' therein; why John in the 'faithful student/disciple' type
appears with no beard & long hair etc. by type of 13 figures,
all 12 apostles there, including Judas; etc.
- Also - at the level of ecclesiastical history - John's
gospel there from the begginning - written by an apostle, tons of
allusions to John from Didache, Ignatious (110AD), Mid C2 - Justin
Martyr quites John 3 eg. Indeed the oldest copy of any part of the
NT: John Ryland papyrus - ~130AD - is a copy of the Gospel of John:
Ch 18; other early copies for Egypt - attesting to it's prevelance
etc. Cf. Dan's favorites - from much later, from isolated gnostic
sects etc. Dan Brown - a gripping work of fiction - based on fiction.
- J. ill, bed early.
My content in this blog and associated images / data under
images/ and data/ directories are (usually)
created by me and (unless obviously labelled otherwise) are licensed under
the public domain, and/or if that doesn't float your boat a CC0
license. I encourage linking back (of course) to help people decide for
themselves, in context, in the battle for ideas, and I love fixes /
improvements / corrections by private mail.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE,
Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International),
or anyone else.
It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@collabora.com)
