Saturday

4 March 2017

— birds getting frisky at the feeders

Good Morning All,

When I get up on the Net to do the historical-events-of-the-day up there, I invariably admonish myself to stick to the matters at hand. In other words, no surfing when I get curious about something. I am happy to report, I obey myself roughly half the time.

Today, though, was not one of those days. How could it be, starting off as it did with a couple of juicy martyrdoms. So, to answer your second question first, yes, Wenceslaus I is the very one in the Christmas Carol Good King Wenceslaus, always one of my favorites. His relics were not the junk left in his garage after his brother murdered him, but were what remained of his skeleton. The “translation of the relics” does not mean what I thought, namely as what Swazi witchdoctors did, “roll the bones” to predict the future; rather his bones were moved from a less holy to a more holy place.

Saint Adrian of Nicomedia was something else again. Under Emperor Maximian, he was at age twenty-eight a Herculean guard and head of the praetorium in Nicomedia. Talk about having it made in the shade. One fine day while presiding over the torture of a band of Christians, he asked them in a casual, conversational manner what reward they expected to receive from God. According to 1 Corinthians 2:9, one of them—clearly a would-be poet—answered: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

So, ask yourself, if you were old Adrian what would you now do? I am guessing that if you have most of the cards in your deck and most of the sandwiches in your picnic basket, you would not immediately confess your faith, resulting in you yourself being sent to the slammer for a while, before you were charcoal-broiled at the stake.

I do readily confess that I think a lot of the Jesus written about in the Gospels, though I’m not anything like a fan of what that bloviating old pervert Paul wrote about Him later on. Jesus and Lincoln and Huck’s Jim are three of the people who I’d like to meet in heaven in the extremely unlikely event such a place exists. As such, I try to avoid doing things that would disappoint them in me.

As for Christianity itself, or what it became after Paul started in on it and after all the zealots and wing-nuts since have been trying to finish it off, well, I don’t know. People like Saint Adrian certainly take Christianity into the realms of mystery well beyond my practical mind’s understanding.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron