Believing
From Mount Hor the Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
Numbers 21:4-9
The Brazen Serpent
MICHELANGELO
Buonarroti
1511
Cappella
Sistina
Vatican
The scenes painted in the pendentives at the sides of prophet Jonah are characterized by the use of pronounced foreshortening. This is the case with the tangled group of Israelites who, in the scene of the Brazen Serpent, writhe in the throes of death, and, above all, with the crucified figure of Haman in the Punishment of Haman.
In the Brazen Serpent, the mass of bodies poisoned by the snakes occupies the whole of the right part, spreading toward the center. The survivors are grouped on the left, eyes and arms turned imploringly toward the salvafic image of the brazen serpent. The cruel punishment of the Israelites for having spoken against God and Moses occupies a large part of the pendentive, with bodies intertwined in an indescribable tangle. This presented the artist with an opportunity for virtuosic foreshortening and twisting of the bodies, and also depicting contorted, screaming faces. Much admired by Vasari, the group is a striking forerunner of the spectacular motifs that were, in the following decades, typical of the current of Mannerism comprising Giulio Romano and Vasari himself.
Representation in Art
The Israelites are depicted writhing on the ground, their limbs entwined by snakes. Moses, sometimes with Aaron, stands beside the brazen serpent. John's gospel furnishes the typological parallel: 'This Son of Man must be lifted up as the serpent was lifted up by Moses in the wilderness.' Medieval art juxtaposed the subject with the serpent in the Garden of Eden entwining the Tree of Knowledge. Both probably derive from an ancient and widespread fertility image, the 'asherah', associated with the worship of Astarte, which consisted of a snake and a tree representing respectively the male and female elements. King Hezekiah destroyed the asherah, by inference the one made by Moses, at a time when the Israelites were relapsing into idolatry (II Kings 18:4).
The presence and the identification of Moses in Michelangelo's fresco is debated.
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/m/michelan/3sistina/5spandre/10_4pe4.html
By doubting we are led to
question,
by questioning we arrive at
the truth.
~ Peter Abelard
The water in a vessel is
sparkling;
the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words
which are clear;
the great truth has great
silence.
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Abbi
and Chance Rose, Vicki’s great-nephew,
at
Red Rocks Park last Sunday.
At
Brunch, Vicki Hall and Chance compared their muscles.
Chance
also demonstrated another skill.
When
I told our Wednesday Breakfast Club about Chance and the spoon,
the
table was immediately challenged.
Danna
Cuin won for the longest, but John Evans was a close runner-up.
Tom
Newsom holding “Dragon Slayers” at our Wednesday Breakfast Club.
In
the background are six BIG former (1970s?) NFL players.
Five
of them were Broncos but, when we spoke with them,
I
didn’t recognize any of their names.
“Dragon
Slayers,” by Tom Newsom
Tom
entered this painting in a Fantasy Contest sponsored by Spectrum 22.
He
did not win the contest, but he ended up with a very nice painting!
Vicki
Hall and I celebrated her birthday on Thursday evening
at
Cafe Prague, in Morrison.
We
shared her wonderful tiramisu.
Joan
and Bruce Evashevski hosted our Spares and Pairs gathering on Friday evening.
Carolyn
Alexander wearing the lovely green top that Van Farnsworth gave me last year.
There are two ways to slide easily through life:
to believe everything or to doubt everything;
both ways save us from thinking.
~
Alfred Korbzybski
March 15, 2015 Fourth
Sunday in Lent
Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Just as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
"For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life.
"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."
John
3:14-21
Agnus Day, by
James Wetzstein
Agnus Day appears with the permission
of www.agnusday.org
*2 Corinthians 5:21 reads, “For our sake he made him to be
sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
From
a different source, yet the symbol of the caduceus is also
an emblem of healing.
Did you celebrate Pi Day?
·
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21