Monday, April 09, 2012
Haiku winners!
Wow! Friday brought out so much talent. I spent a while savoring Renee's haikus, trying to figure out who she was describing. I was deeply moved, too, by Alice Baird's poem about her daughter, Katherine Darmer:
Beautiful daughter,
Vibrant, vital, passionate.
Miss you more each day.
Evocative, too, was Seraphim's entry:
Smart, funny Carrie
Tough, passionate RRL
Deep thinker Craig A
Renee, eloquent
New Christine, kind, luminous
Wisest of all: Dad.
And what are seraphim? Here is what I found intriguing about this highest order of angels:
Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae offers a description of the nature of seraphs:
"The name 'Seraphim' does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name 'Seraphim' according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things.
"First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God.
"Secondly, the active force which is 'heat,' which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them wholly by their heat.
"Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they also perfectly enlighten others."
The seraphim took on a mystic role in Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1487), the epitome of Renaissance humanism. Pico took the fiery Seraphim—"they burn with the fire of charity"—as the highest models of human aspiration: "impatient of any second place, let us emulate dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing", the young Pico announced, in the first flush of optimistic confidence in the human capacity that is the coinage of the Renaissance. "In the light of intelligence, meditating upon the Creator in His work, and the work in its Creator, we shall be resplendent with the light of the Cherubim. If we burn with love for the Creator only, his consuming fire will quickly transform us into the flaming likeness of the Seraphim."
Beautiful daughter,
Vibrant, vital, passionate.
Miss you more each day.
Evocative, too, was Seraphim's entry:
Smart, funny Carrie
Tough, passionate RRL
Deep thinker Craig A
Renee, eloquent
New Christine, kind, luminous
Wisest of all: Dad.
And what are seraphim? Here is what I found intriguing about this highest order of angels:
Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae offers a description of the nature of seraphs:
"The name 'Seraphim' does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name 'Seraphim' according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things.
"First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God.
"Secondly, the active force which is 'heat,' which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them wholly by their heat.
"Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they also perfectly enlighten others."
The seraphim took on a mystic role in Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1487), the epitome of Renaissance humanism. Pico took the fiery Seraphim—"they burn with the fire of charity"—as the highest models of human aspiration: "impatient of any second place, let us emulate dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing", the young Pico announced, in the first flush of optimistic confidence in the human capacity that is the coinage of the Renaissance. "In the light of intelligence, meditating upon the Creator in His work, and the work in its Creator, we shall be resplendent with the light of the Cherubim. If we burn with love for the Creator only, his consuming fire will quickly transform us into the flaming likeness of the Seraphim."
Comments:
<< Home
Good choices. Did you recognize The Spanish Medievalist,New Christine,IPLawGuy,RRL,Susan,The Chief,tyd? I thought it would be more of a challenge if I did not name them specifically.
Post a Comment
<< Home
