Prague

-
Morag and I went to Prague last weekend. We went as guests of the Prague Unitarian Church, to help celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Prague congregation. Prague is a charming city - even my philistine eyes can see that - but it is full of tiny squares which make it impossible to negotiate for those (like me) who have no sense of direction. Fortunately, our hotel was only seconds away from the church and only minutes away from the astronomical clock, which was built no later than 1410 and is a wonder to behold.


We went to the Salvador Dali exhibition and I was particularly struck by his painting Fighting over a Dandelion, which just about sums up many of the conflicts throughout human history.


There's a tiny museum devoted to Johannes Kepler, and it honours Kepler the astrologer as well as Kepler the astronomer. Most people don't realise that he had a collection of over 800 horoscopes and wrote that, for all its imperfections, astrology 'compelled his unwilling belief'.


His horoscope shows Neptune rising in Gemini, giving him something of a mystical bent, and his astronomical-astrological interests are indicated by the conjunction of Mercury and Uranus in Capricorn. Unfortunately, Kepler wouldn't know about either Uranus or Neptune! Here are two versions of his chart - one in the old style 'square' format (which Kepler himself used) and in the more conventional circular style.




The Unitarian Church is not a beautiful building, but it couldn't be more centrally situated. It is on Karlova Street, just seconds away from the Charles Bridge and thousands pass it every day. Charles Bridge is full of highly entertaining buskers (we bought a DVD of a trad jazz band) and portrait painters.

On Sunday morning Morag and I attended the 90th birthday celebrations of the congregation, along with Rev. Mark Shiels (who leads the English speaking Unitarians in worship twice per month), Rev. Steve Dick, representing the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists,  Rev. Eric Cherry from the UUA, and a woman called Freya, representing German Unitarians. Dozens of 'virtual greetings' had been sent from all over the Unitarian world, and these were on display. The service itself was extraordinary. It was a 'flower communion', to honour Norbert Capek, the Czech Unitarian minister who devised the ceremony, and who died in Dachau in 1942. A large choir, half of which were Unitarians, and a group of musicians, sang and played a 'mass' which had been specially written for the occasion by the church's musical director. This was filmed and will no doubt be on the web soon. The sermon, which concerned 'tending one's own garden', was delivered in Czech by the minister, Rev. Petr Somjsky and an English translation was read by Rev. Mark Shiels. A splendid occasion. Morag and I felt very privileged to be invited.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Magic Numbers: 72 and 432

-
Image
THE TIMES THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’ The man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. (Emerson) I n The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , we read about a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings who build a huge computer called Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. And the answer it comes up with is 42. [i]   Numerous theories have been advanced as to why the author, Douglas Adams, chose this number but Adams himself said that he chose it purely at random, because ‘it is a completely ordinary number, … in fact it’s the sort of number you could without any fear introduce to your parents.’ [ii] The authors of the Bible also seem to have favourite numbers but these are hardly arbitrary. The numbers 7 and 12 are almost certainly related to the seven ‘planets’
Read more

Odysseus, Jesus, Eurycleia, and the Woman with the Alabaster Jar

-
Image
We are all familiar with the fact that the Gospels regularly refer to the Jewish scriptures (what we disparagingly call the Old Testament) but it is not so well known that they contain references to the literature of Greece. Some time ago I posted a piece on the way that the story of the death of John the Baptist in Mark’s Gospel reflects a passage from the Greek historian Herodotus (see blog on 12th October 2012), and today I want to point out how the story of the woman who anoints Jesus before his death echoes a passage from Homer’s Odyssey . Eurycleia washes Odysseus's feet             When Odysseus returns to Ithaca, he comes disguised as a beggar and spends some time at the house of Eumaeus, the swineherd. Still disguised, he goes to his palace where he meets Penelope, his wife, whom he hasn’t seen for 20 years. She instructs Odysseus’s old nurse, Eurycleia, to bathe and anoint him. While bathing him, Eurycleia recognises the scar on Odysseus’s thigh and realis
Read more

Why are all the prominent atheists born under Aries?

-
Image
Some years ago, when I was writing a piece called ‘How to Write an Anti-God Book’, I was amused to find that the two most confrontational atheistic voices of the time – Richard Dawkins in Britain and Daniel Dennett in America – were both born under the zodiacal sign Aries. Dawkins was born on 26 th March and Dennett on 28 th March. Then, in 2007, Christopher Hitchens entered the fray with his God is Not Great . Hitchens was born on 13 th April. Around the same time A.C Grayling published Against All Gods , and I wasn’t at all surprised to find that he was born on 3 rd April. That’s four out of four. However, the birth date of one top American atheist eluded me. Sam Harris, whose book The End of Faith , published in 2004, was in the New York Times bestseller list for 33 weeks, had always refused to ‘discuss personal details such as where he lives, where he grew up, or what his parents do professionally, citing security concerns’ (Wikipedia), so I couldn’t find his birthday. Unt
Read more