your randomness of the day

[lirazel]

Y'all, I have so many problems with Catholic theology and the institution of the Catholic church, but monks and nuns are consistently the best (like, seriously, if I was Catholic, I think I would make such a great nun).

Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts

New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

[You don't need to, really. A dull pencil is the worst.]

I am very cold.

That's a hard page and a weary work to write it.

Let the reader's voice honor the writer's pen.

[which I choose to read as: APPRECIATE ME, DAMMIT. I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO THIS.

This page has not been written very slowly.

[translation: forgive me my typos. Either that or it's sarcastic]

The parchment is hairy.

[Gross.]

The ink is thin.

Thank God, it will soon be dark.

Oh, my hand.

[I feel you, bro.]

Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake, get me a drink.

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.

[I will be using that phrase ALL THE TIME.]

While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.

[Frankly, that sounds like poetry.]

Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.

As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.

This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.’

And upupa_epops, if you would like to talk about LM Montgomery in the comments, I would approve of that most heartily.

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

For example that a bishop should stop living with his wife when he becomes a bishop

I don't recall anything like that all--I don't think that's in there (I grew up evangelical, so I know most of the Bible back and forth--evangelicals know their Bible, let me tell you. The stories I could tell you about the ways we memorize it!). The rules for bishops/elders require being the husband of one wife (so no polygamy), but there's nothing about anyone leaving their spouse. Except Jesus talking about anyone who won't abandon their family for him being unworthy of him, but that's not connected to any kind of church leadership.

Things that sometimes happen when you combine worshiping Virgin Mary with folk culture strike ME as idolatry, and I was brought up Catholic, so I'm used to things like crowned pictures.

Sure. And that sort of thing is precisely one of the things that I disagree with as far as theology goes.

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'm not going to argue; I might've taken this rule from some early Christian scriptures that aren't the Bible. I also know my Bible pretty well; trouble is, a good part of my knowledge comes from studying history, not from studying the Bible for religious purposes. So sometimes I mix up things that appear in the Bible with things that appear in what 2-3rd century Christian philosophers said. I was pretty sure that the passage about bishops who should stop sleeping with their wives actually happened in the same letter as the one about "the husband of one wife", but now I think I could've taken it from somewhere else entirely.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's a line about coming apart for a time and then coming back together, but I'm 99% sure there's nothing about stop-sleeping-with-them-forever. But I know less about the writing from the early Christian fathers, so I you're probably right about it coming from there.

And I didn't mean to be argumentative--totally wasn't my intention. Sorry if it came across that way!

[upupa-epops.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't mean it in a bad way! I meant that I'll take your word for it, and then I expressed it in a clumsy way, by using a direct translation from my language. Sorry for the confusion!

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Oh, you were fine! I reread my own comment and thought I was coming across bitchy. Glad to know we're neither of us offended!