Vila i frid, mormor

(mormor Maj somnade in 3 juni i Uppsala. dikten är skriven av Oscar Levertin och så sent som i höstas hörde jag henne, 94 år gammal, recitera den ur sitt berömda minne. Nu har hon funnit sitt Ithaka.)

Jag drömt som främling på en främmad strand
Gud vet hur många år.
Nu vill jag hem. Jag redan lagt från land,
i silkesseglet stormen slår.
Framåt mot obefarna vattendrag
förbi Herakles' stoder
mot fjärran ö i blå arkipelag
jag vridit skeppets roder.

Där ligger solskenslyst i havets mitt
mitt Ithaka, den ö,
där fruktträdsvalven evigt lysa vitt
och dyningarna dö
i säven som en mattad aftonsång
från kärleksdomnad lyra,
dit, vore färden än så hård och lång,
vill jag min farkost styra.

Där stå det vita, marmorsvala hus,
i vilket jag vill bo.
Där silverpoppeln har det högtidssus,
som hägnar med sin ro.
Ack, världens vägar, jag är trött på dem!
Jag hör det dunkla kravet
mot längtans Ithaka, mitt hjärtats hem,
min vita ö i havet.

På hemfärd stadd jag lyssnar så förstrött
på livets lust och larm
som på en man, som av en slump mig mött
och håller fast min arm.
I bröder, än jag går som en bland er,
men ren mot slag som smekning
med avskedsstundens gåtfullhet jag ler.
Jag har gjort upp min räkning.

Blott starkare förnimmer jag var dag
den manande musik,
som eko är av kvällens böljeslag
emot min hemös vik.
Jag drömmer lutad över skeppets toft.
I skum delfiner skalkas,
än syns ej ön, men luftens mandeldoft
förtäljer, att jag nalkas.

Så vill jag bära allt, vad än en man
kan bära utav ve,
ty ett jag vet, ej evigt räcka kan
mitt hjärtas odyssé.
Min sorgs, min glädjes skiljemynt—allt glöms
som mull i mull begravet,
när skeppet når sitt Ithaka, sin dröms
vårvita ö i havet.

Glad Påsk!

The Lord's descent into the underworld

(From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday)

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Musee des Beaux Arts

W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

1940

(via David Michael, years ago it seems)

testar om google-buzz plockar upp det här

testing testing

Emmanuel, igen

Johannesakademin

känner ni till Johannesakademin? det är en plats för fördjupning och studier vid Nya slottet Bjärka-Säby som erbjuder många spännande kurser.

kolla in programmet inför våren. Det ser riktigt bra ut.

det finns även en blogg med kontinuerlig information om verksamheten.

skrivet i sten

Bor man i öknen får man ta vad man har. Här ovan ser ni en sten med tre textavsnitt från en bok av Evagrius som någon munk har skrivit av (svårt att säga när men nånstans på 4-500 talet) . Dessa är några av de få bevis på översättning av hans texter till koptiska som vi har.

I modern engelsk översättning låter texterna som munken fick med sig på sin sten så här:

"'Cursed be the one who makes an image and puts it in hiding' (Deut. 27: 15). The same is true for the one who has the passion of avarice, for the former worships a useless piece of base metal; the latter carries around in his mind the fantasy of wealth."
(8 Thoughts 3.14)

"The gentleness of a man is remembered by God (cf.Ps. 131: i), and a soul without anger becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Christ reclines his head on a patient spirit (cf.Matt. 8:20), and an intellect at peace becomes a shelter for the Holy Trinity.

Foxes find shelter in the resentful soul, and beasts make their lairs in a troubled heart.

A distinguished person avoids a shameful inn, and God avoids a resentful heart."

(8 Thought 4.11-14)

"If you are fleeing Laban the Syrian, flee in secret and do not trust his promise to escort you, for through those means whereby he said he would escort you, he shall restrain you. For in escorting you with musicians, flutes, and drums, he contrives to pull back the fleeing mind by beguiling it with the sound of music and by dissipating its moral resolve with the harmony of the melody (Gen. 31: 20-7)."

(8 Thought 8.22)

+Bertil Gärtner (1924-2009)

(via joel)

O Come O Come Emmanuel - Sufjan Stevens [Adventmusik]

tryckkonst - new and old

FireFly Letterpress from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.

Bokvärlden håller på att förändras drastiskt. tyvärr är det stort motstånd bland mäktiga människor i vårt land mot projekt som Google-books.

Men det finns andra tjänster som ni inte får missa. T.ex. The Internet Archive där man kan ladda ner tusentals böcker som inte längre är copyright-skyddade.

Sen har vi tjänster som Lulu.com där man kan få sina pdf-filer tryckta i väldigt bra kvalité. Här kan ni se en bok som jag skapat med hjälp av en pdf från Gbooks: Stephen Bar Sudaili - the Syrian Mystic

I Sverige har vi ju även tjänsten Vulkan, men det verkar som man bara kan skapa A5-böcker där, vilket gör det lite mindre idealt för antikvariska pdf-filer.

Pop corn in slow motion

via @samuelvarg

Ljungblahd och Franklin. sjukt bra.

Dagen.se: Samuel Ljungblahd - vanilla soul Kirk Franklin from dagen on Vimeo.

Lilliputtarna firar mässa

(i Santiago de Compostela)

Rivers of Babylon (från Mad Men)

lego-sushi

från ffffound

colbert och 'civil religion' (via @joelsh)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Symbol-Minded
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

från joel

Om det var Gud - Tomas Andersson Wij

berättelser

"Romanen kan fungera som ett filosofiskt verktyg, inte genom att producera teorier utan genom sin förmåga att få oss att bättre förstå tillvarons gåtfulla sidor. I romanen håller författaren fram en provkarta av varianter på mänskliga erfarenheter och reaktioner. Tillvarons alla nyanser uppenbaras för oss, inte genom livet men genom litteraturen. Vi läser de stora romanerna, eftersom de läser oss, skriver Finkielkraut."

från en understreckare i SvD häromdagen.

mobiluppladdningstest

att älska på fel sätt

"Augustine says, desire for objects that are cut free from their source and their end in God is ultimately the desire for nothing. Because choice itself is the only good, because desire is the only thing objectively desirable, desire becomes a desire for nothing. In Augustine’s vision of the great chain of being, all things that exist are good, but only insofar as they participate in God, the source of their being and the source of all good. To pursue the lower things on the chain of being for their own sake, to forget their source and their final end, is to sever the link that holds them in being, at which point they begin to slide back into the nothingness from which the creatio ex nihilo summoned them. For Augustine, sin is committed when 'in consequence of an immoderate urge towards those things at the bottom end of the scale of good, we abandon the higher and supreme goods, that is you, Lord God, and your truth and your law.' This is not just a matter of wanting too much; it is a matter of wanting without any idea why we want what we want. To desire with no good other than desire itself is to desire arbitrarily. To desire with no telos, no connection to the objective end of desire, is to desire nothing and to become nothing. 'I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things of your creation. I was dust going to dust.'"

William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed, 13-14.