R.S. Thomas + Evensong 12.00-5.00pm September 21st At All Saints Princeton,NJ

“ANGLICAN WORDS AND MUSIC:
CELEBRATING R. S. THOMAS (1913-2000), PRIEST AND POET”

All Saints' South Room
12 noon           Light Lunch

12:30 - 1:45     Gordon Graham: 'The Anglican Tradition of Poetry', and overview with readings from the great Anglican poets, and
                        recordings of R. S. Thomas reading his poems

1:45 - 2:30       Conversations on poetry, facitiltated by Elly Sparks Brown  

2:30 - 2:45       Coffee break

2:45 - 3:45       John McEllhenny: 'R. S. Thomas as I knew him'

3:30 - 4:15       Jane Brady: Reflection on Thomas and his poetry

   
All Saints' Sanctuary

4:30 - 5:30         Choral Evensong, All Saints Choir, Director Tom Colao
                                 Introit
                                 Versicles and Responses
                                 Psalm
                                 Canticles
                                 Anthem: Paul Mealor  'Anthem for St. David of Wales' (World premier)
                                 Homily

5:30                   Wine reception


PARTICIPANTS

Jane T. Brady        
Jane T. Brady’s encounter with the writing of R.S. Thomas began during a month at Gladstone’s Library in Wales (Great Britain’s only prime ministerial library). In subsequent trips, she has visited three of the churches where R.S. Thomas served and engaged in conversations with people who knew him. Brady is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A. in history) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div. & Th.M.). Since 2007, she has served as Rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Pemberton NJ. Her prior career with the NJ Audubon Society has given her insight into R.S. Thomas’s love of birds and sense of place. 
Elly Sparks Brown
Elly Sparks Brown is the former rector of historic  Trinity Parish in Southern Maryland, the Diocese of Washington, D.C.  She has also taught in the Literature Department of The American  University in D.C. and the honors program at The University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Elly holds a M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary,  Alexandra, VA, a M.A. in English from The Catholic University of  America, D.C., and a B.A. in English from Seton Hill University,  Greensburg, PA., and earned an interdisciplinary Doctor of Ministry degree in theology, literature and visual art at Wesley Theological Seminary in  D.C in 1991.  She later served the Seminary for three years under a Luce grant  as Administrative Director of the Center for the Arts and Religion. She  is passionately interested in the relationship between the arts and  spirituality. Currently Vicar of Christ Church in Palmyra, NJ and visiting Professor of English at Rider University, she also leads adult forums, retreats and quiet days around the arts and spirituality .
Tom ColaoTom Colao has been Director of Music at All Saints' Episcopal Church Princeton since in 2010. He attended the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan, studying voice and choral conducting, before transferring to Westminster Choir College to pursue studies in organ and sacred music. While at Westminster, he sang as a member of Westminster Choir in addition to performances with the Choir as both a tenor and organ soloist. Prior to coming to All Saints’, Tom was Director of Music and Organist at St. James’ Church, Long Branch, NJ, where he conducted a professional choir and provided organ accompaniment for choral services on the church’s vintage three-manual pipe organ, and initiated the “Music at St. James” concert series. He maintains an active schedule as an accompanist, vocal coach, freelance conductor and recitalist, and has composed several liturgical and concert works for choir.
Gordon GrahamGordon Graham is Henry Luce II Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton Theological Seminary and an Anglican Priest. He has published extensively on the subject of religion and the arts, and his books include Philosophy of the Arts (Routledge, third edition 2005) and The Re-enchantment of the World: art versus religion (Oxford UP 2007, pb 2010). He has published plays and anthems on Christian themes, and is a regular columnist the Episcopal Journal.
John McElhennnyJohn G. McEllhenney is a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and the Theological School of Drew University, and has an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Albright College. A United Methodist pastor, he started to read the poetry of R. S. Thomas in the early 1970s. A decade later, he began gathering first and limited editions of Thomas’s works, along with periodicals containing his poems and secondary sources. McEllhenney’s Thomas collection is now part of the Special Collections of Drew University’s Library;an online catalog is accessible. McEllhenney visited Thomas in Wales in 1992, 1993, and 1994, and corresponded with him from 1991 until Thomas died, in 2000. He drew upon those personal contacts and his study of Thomas’s poems to write A Masterwork of Doubting-Belief: R. S. Thomas and His Poetry, which was published by Wipf & Stock in February 2013.

STEP, a new free Bible Study Resource (beta version)

Tyndale House Cambridge Launches Beta-version of Scripture Tools for Every Person (STEP), a new free Bible study resource. 24 July  2013, CAMBRIDGE, UK Today the STEP development team of Tyndale House Cambridge launched the Beta-test version of a new free Bible study resource at www.StepBible.org. STEP software is designed especially for teachers and preachers who don’t have access to resources such as Tyndale House Library, which specialises in the biblical text, interpretation, languages and biblical historical background and is a leading research institution for Biblical Studies. The web-based program, which will soon also be downloadable for PCs and Macs, will aid users who lack resources, or who have to rely only on smartphones or outmoded computers. About STEP The project began when STEP director Dr David Instone-Brewer created the Tyndale Toolbarfor his own use. It became popular among researchers at Tyndale House and is now used by thousands of people across the globe. The Beta launch of STEP invites users to try out the new tools and give suggestions for improvement. "STEP represents the most comprehensive yet user friendly tool for Bible Study I have seen in over 35 years of research," said Dr Wesley B. Rose. Tim Bulkeley, a contributor to the project, said "I wish I was just starting to teach in Kinshasa now, with STEP and a smart phone. Students would find learning Hebrew and Greek, to read the Bible directly, so much easier." Almost a hundred volunteers worldwide have contributed to this work, including 75 who helped to align the ESV, used with the kind permission of Crossway, with the underlying Greek and Hebrew. All their work will now be freely available for other software projects. There are many exciting features in the pipeline for others to get involved with. Try it out at www.StepBible.org.

How to be in the presence of Jesus

is the title of a piece I wrote for Daily Episcopalian published today. It was a sermon preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Castine, Maine this past Sunday July 21st, 2013. 

Margalit Fox on Alice Kober and the decipherment of Linear B

In The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox (Ecco, 2013), the work of Alice Kober in deciphering Linear B is described. Margalit Fox is a senior staff writer for the NY Times. Her book is summarized here in the Daily Telegraph. Matti Friedman in the NY Times reviewed the book recently here and part of the review states:

Ms. Fox makes a case for Kober, the “unprepossessing” daughter of Hungarian immigrants, as the story’s hero. Her thick glasses, unstylish hair and prim mouth belied the “snap and rigor of her mind, the ferocity of her determination, and the unimpeachable rationality of her method,” Ms. Fox writes. Kober dedicated her life to solving the riddle, laboring at her dining table in Brooklyn, “ever-present cigarette at hand.” She never married, and her extensive correspondence, we learn, contains a total of two mentions of a social life.

There was hardly time. To aid her quest, she learned Chinese, Akkadian, Persian, Hittite and Basque, among other tongues, and eventually prepared no fewer than 180,000 index cards as she struggled to develop a system that would allow her to crack what Ms. Fox calls a “locked-room mystery” — deciphering an unknown script that an unknown society used to write an unknown language. A Linear B scholar was operating in a “linguistic terra incognita with neither map nor compass at hand.” Without a guide like the Rosetta stone (the multilingual inscription that finally allowed scholars to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs) the task was thought to be all but impossible.

That it turned out not to be is a testament to what the human brain, or at least the rare human brain, is capable of. In explaining the problem and eventual solution, Ms. Fox makes the complexities of linguistic scholarship accessible...

Margalit Fox describes her book as a six year project here. She maintains that Kober's work was "all but lost" and that her book is an antidote to "British male triumphalism." However, Fox's book is also reviewed by Jonathan Lopez in the WSJ on May 16th more critically: 

Unfortunately, Ms. Fox's claims about the neglect of Kober's legacy are exaggerated to the point of being misleading. "The Story of Archaeological Decipherment" (1975), by the British classicist Maurice Pope, is an authoritative survey of hieroglyphics, cuneiform and other ancient scripts decoded by modern researchers. Chapter Nine is devoted to the Knossos tablets and is titled "Kober, Ventris and Linear B"—amply demonstrating that Kober is neither unknown nor unsung in the standard histories. The very first (and still the best) book on the subject, "The Decipherment of Linear B" (1958), by Michael Ventris's friend and collaborator, the Cambridge University classics professor John Chadwick—Ventris himself died in an auto accident in 1956—clearly states that "Kober would have taken a leading part in the events of later years, had she been spared; she alone of the earlier investigators was pursuing the track which led Ventris ultimately to the solution of the problem."

You decide.

Pompeii in peril

The BBC reports on the perilous state of Pompeii, a World Heritage site, including recent collapses at the House of the Gladiators due to heavy rain. 

Same-sex desire & gender identity at the British Museum

Under "topics to explore" is "Same-Sex desire & gender identity" on the British Museum website. If you are around, there's a lecture on June 28th:

Lecture
A little gay history

Friday 28 June,
18.30–19.30
Stevenson Lecture Theatre
Tickets £5
Members/Concessions £3

Book online 

Phone +44 (0)20 7323 8181
Ticket Desk in Great Court

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Richard Parkinson, British Museum, discusses a recently published British Museum project on the history of same-sex desire.

The talk will explore issues raised by objects in the collection, ranging from ancient Egyptian papyri to modern gay love scenes filmed in the Museum, to ask a question that concerns us all: how easily can we recognise love in history?

In collaboration with Write Queer London.

Robin Lane Fox: "Alexander & the Gods" at the Hellenic Society

Judith Bingham's Hymn to St Paul

is on Choral Evensong from St Paul's Cathedral on BBC Radio 3 for 7 days. Here's more information about the composer Judith Bingham and from the BBC. 

"The Boxer at Rest" on view at the Met June 1-July 15th

One of the great masterpieces of Hellenistic sculpture is making a brief visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Made sometime between the late fourth and the second century B.C., this life-size bronze depicts a battered and weary athlete resting after a fight. The work is astonishing both for the gripping realism of the anatomy and the touching pathos of the expression.

Zenobia, Empress of Palmyra

Discussion on the BBC Radio programme In Our Time on Zenobia, (240 – c. 275 Greek: Ζηνοβία Aramaic: בת זבי Bat-Zabbai Arabic: الزباء al-Zabbā’) intellectual military leader of Palmyra b. 240 CE who became Empress of the Palmyrene Empire in the Middle East which she extended to Ankara in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Egypt, the Holy Land to the Euphrates. Palmyra appears in the Bible as Tadmore (2 Chron 8:4; 1 Kings 9:17), fortified by Solomon. 

With Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at King's College, London; Kate Cooper, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Manchester and Richard Stoneman, Visiting Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Exeter. 

Prof Kate Cooper has some fascinating reflections after the programme: 

One of the most fascinating questions about Zenobia is what she thought she was doing.  Was the establishment of her empire intended as a revolt against Rome, as many believe? Or was she simply, like so many after her, trying to bring peace to the Middle East?

Roman Weapons and Armour in Water as a Religious Ritual

Classical accounts, the presence of specific water deities, and the archaeology of Celtic groups in Britain and Gaul suggest that soldiers stationed in the western Roman provinces witnessed and eventually adopted a strong religious tradition of water veneration, whereby individuals dedicated valuable military gear in water. Unlike the Celtic material, Roman helmets far exceed swords, and the highest concentration of Roman gear is found along the Rhine River, the frontier between Rome and Germany.

The hybrid Romano-Celtic deities and the similar practices in the deposition of arms and armor in water paints an interesting picture of Roman and Celtic religion and interaction from the first century B.C.E. to first century C.E. The religious practices of the Roman army did not take over and replace native Celtic forms nor did Celtic religion remain the same. The Roman practice of offering military gear in water was a result of Celtic interaction. The purpose and belief systems behind such a tradition varied across time and space. Celtic culture saw water as a life force, key to wellbeing and fertility. It is impossible to determine if Roman soldiers who dedicated their gear perceived water or their newly adopted ritual in the same way. Although generally, in practice, the Roman and Celtic traditions concerning water appears similar, different cultural and ideological backgrounds gave the ritual a distinctively different meaning.     

2011 Brandon Olsen article, Anthrojournal