Indiana U Press has a sale on books. Last day is today. For example, this book is on sale for $13.50. Apologies for the shameless self-promotion!

Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer's next newsletter promises to send along a download link to an ancient Egyptian Christian hymn if you sign up. The whole project is fascinating. Next year they are releasing a documentary, I believe.

Reaching for words: the Lord's Prayer

The New York Times has a piece about the recovery of speech by poet Marie Ponsot after a stroke.  At first, she cannot recall what she does not know. But she starts with the English version. When she can't recall that she moves to the familiar French one but can only remember the first three words. Suddenly  the Latin version of the entire prayer pops into her head. She tries to translate it back into English without success. Suddenly it arrives.
 

Was remembering the Pater Noster that night in the hospital a moment of awakening? Ms. Ponsot grinned, perhaps at another unduly fancy thought.
“It allowed me,” she said, “to go to sleep.” 

Stave off mental decrepitude and memorize another version of the Lord's Prayer!

Short holiday break

I'm on holiday with my mother in Ireland for two weeks. Since I'm fortunate enough to be part of a 2010 Wabash course for theological faculty teaching online for the rest of June and part of July, I'll be doing homework online when not out walking or birdwatching. I'll sign back on in July...

Mark's Gospel read by Peter Wickham (NIV)

St Mark's Press has released a CD of Mark's Gospel being read by Peter Wickham. The blurb: This is the real thing, untweaked, written circa AD65 by a close friend of St Peter, Jesus's key disciple.

Monday June 7th-June 10th: The Power of Mary + Update

Forthcoming from BBC Radio 4 next Monday June 7th at 3.45pm:
Mary is the most important woman in world religion, a cult figure in the Catholic Church who relates to the big questions in our lives - sex, politics and religion. She is a symbol of maternity, hope, faith, superstition, feminism and beauty. She arouses both fervent devotion and deep scepticism.
Presenter Rosie Goldsmith, who has a life-long fascination with the Virgin Mary, asks why she is so important in today's world and whether this Modern Mary is a force for good or bad. She explores the origins of Mary and asks how this one woman can be not only a model of submissive womanhood but also a feminist icon and a Jungian female archetype.
She talks with Richard Dawkins, Ann Widdecombe, Marina Warner author of Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary and Miri Rubin author of Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary about why they believe in or reject Mary. She visits the shrine of Our Lady in Walsingham and meets a group of children who tell us simply that she's the most beautiful woman in the world.


Update: The first programme has three cameo appearances from Miri Rubin (focusing on the 12th and 13th Century wherein Mary is re-invented in western Christianity) and goes to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, "alive and buzzing with pilgrims." Ann Widdecombe opines that Mary has a role for women today in her unexpected pregnancy and uncomfortable place of birth. Mary the woman also watches her son die. Marina Warner, the author of a thirty year old book on Mary published in 1976, is interviewed. The myth of Mary has not disappeared. Miri Rubin proposes that interest in women in the 21st C is connected with the sustained interest in Mary.

Other programmes for the rest of the week include:

1. 8 Jun 2010 15:45–16:00 BBC Radio 4 (FM only) Mary in Religion   A pregnant Muslim student at Oxford enthuses about Mary's mother role.
2. 9 Jun 2010 15:45–16:00 Mary in Politics Rosie asks whether modern Mary is a progressive or reactionary figure in society.
3. 10 Jun 2010 15:45–16:00 Mary in Art   Rosie Goldsmith investigates the power of Mary as a subject of art.

Essays for Joanne McWilliam to be published July 1st, 2010

Contributors are sending in proofs in the next fortnight and the book is due to be published on July 1st. Mine will be done today.

May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

Australian Broadcasting Company: Family Values this coming Sunday!

All being well, I'll be one of three people in a discussion of Family Values looking at the Bible this coming Sunday night on a program called Sunday Nights on Australian Public Radio. It looks as though the program can be accessed through the above website link after the event. Other participants in the discussion will be Dr Nicolas Tonti-Phillipini, a Catholic bio-ethicist, and the Rev, Dr Charles Sherlock, an Anglican Priest who has been a member of a panel convened by the ABC to prepare a report on the family.

Update: the sound quality is not very good but the program is there fwiw!

"Praying with Mary" begins on Monday of next week.

Here is a overview:

• On Monday we will consider Prophecy and Witness including the traditions about Miriam in the Hebrew Bible and Mary of Bethany in John's Gospel
• On Tuesday we will discuss mystical union, particularly John 20
• Wednesday will be given over to consideration of the motifs of Repentance, Weeping and Lament
• Thursday will include consideration of Contemplation and other intellectual activities of Mary
•  Friday will include discussions of Mary as Theotokos and context of the Council of Ephesus and a look at Mary in popular culture.

Since it is a practicum, we will be spending time each day in exercises of prayer and contemplation using the rosary and traditional Mary prayers. We will say or listen to the Magnificat daily in different musical settings. We will visit the Metropolitan Museum on Wednesday to look at Marian works of art in the early Christian, Byzantine and Medieval galleries. We will eat together each day. It will be an exciting week and I am very much looking forward to it! For online registration, click on the link above or here.

Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art

Peter Watts reviews the new exhibit on Magnificent Maps at the British Library for the New Statesman. He explains that the exhibit shows that, historically, maps were not objective, but designed to project the thoughts, motives and fears of those who created or commissioned them. Such maps were captivating works of art and were displayed on the walls of great houses and palaces, next to paintings and sculptures. Their heyday was between 1580 and 1780, after which Enlightenment ideas took hold, determining that maps had value only if they were geographically accurate. This belief held for centuries.

Maps are often about the ownership of space. Rachel Campbell Johnson in the Times says:
This is a show to be interpreted at a deep cultural level. The more closely you examine the objects, the more you find yourself embroiled in the ambitions and intrigues of their subtle worlds. Maps, this show argues, are as much to do with philosophy as geography. They are not two-dimensional pictures of the world but windows on to a subtle and complex world view. 

For a modern example, see Stephen Walter's The Island (2008) i.e. London satirizing a view of the city as an island using a range of symbols, for example, to find a place to have a good drink or see a beautiful view. This is a map for Londoners and perhaps tourists.

Does everyone know Jonathan Z. Smith's 1993 book Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions? Some of it is available here. Smith argues that mental maps of the cosmos follow particular patterns.

An imperial map ordains that everything should have its proper place within its proper domain, and “guarantees meaning and value through structures of congruity and conformity” (p. 292). This kind of map is the one most familiar to religious studies e.g. in the work of Mircea Eliade on sacred space. Smith considers that the development of scribal elites in the ancient world attest to the presence of this world-view as their work on behalf of cultic and monarchic institutions served to identify temples as sacred centers around which the rest of the world had to organize itself. In their world view the  monarch is the divinely sanctioned political/religious authority.

Living in New York City is one of the joys of my life and this week has been exceptional. The Monet exhibit of late works is half a block from our apartment at 522 West 21st Street,
New York, NY 10011--Hours: Mon-Sat 10-6 until June 26th.

From the press release: The exhibition begins with a selection of early Nymphéas that were first shown in 1909 at the Galerie Durand-Ruel to great critical acclaim. From these delicate, poetic paintings follow the more experimental post-1914 paintings, which were never exhibited during the artist's lifetime. Aggressively rendered with broad brushwork and unusual color combinations these late paintings stand in marked contrast to the more refined 1909 works, attesting to the modernity of Monet's expanded vision.