Tag Archives: Moses

Waiting 4: Miriam

Forty decades in the desert and we were worn down, weary from our weakness, despairing of doubt,catching past only in fragments like morning manna: a whiff of Egypt’s garlic, a vague floating thought of dangerslurking like crocodiles in the Nile.Some fragments heavied us with the burdens of their memories: water bursting angrily from rock,rebellions andContinue reading “Waiting 4: Miriam”

Testimony of Earth

For this demon who harms men and corrupts them is particularly anxious that his servants not gaze up to heaven but instead that they be bent over to the earth and make bricks inside themselves from clay. (Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses) At the moment of exhaling, he sanctified the clay he shapedContinue reading “Testimony of Earth”

“The thick darkness where God was”

This is what must first be given to the painting, a harmonious warmth, an abyss into which the eye sinks, a voiceless germination… (Paul Cézanne) How often is he shown with those horns of light, as though his head were itself full of the brightest luminescence and two cracks, two holes had formed inside his skullContinue reading ““The thick darkness where God was””

Catechism 8

(Detail from “Moses” by Rembrandt van Rijn) What is the law of God stated in the Ten Commandments? You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below – you shallContinue reading “Catechism 8”