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How to signal you are a Random Layperson*: wear some f#@king history!


I’m with Mary. And Milo!



*How do you know that you are a Random Layperson? You read Fencing Bear!


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Cosmic Egg

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The Trinity in the Unity, and The Cosmic Egg Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias , II.ii and I.iii Rüdesheim/Eibingen, Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Hildegard, MS 1, fols. 47r and 14r Act I, scene i  1 A band of crystal lit with heaven’s fire burst o’er the earth and flashed across the plain, reverberating through the raining pyre of stories sung in cities built by Cain. A pinioned cloud danced rings around the flame, its cooing harmonized with chords of grace. A deep base note encoded love reclaimed from kingdom’s fall of mankind’s ancient race. The resonating wings revealed a clouded face.   2 The pigeon ether undulated free, an orchestra of feathers white as frost. The wingéd loom descended on the sea; from light it spun a subatomic cross. Bright feathers knit atomic Helios, while oscillating sparks set fire to quills. Reverberating wings turned light to dust. The looming man from loom that seemed to trill emerged in flesh from cloud of sapphire-blue beryl.   3 The chorus swelle...
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The Forge of Tolkien

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I first read The Lord of the Rings  when I was eleven. My mother gave me the boxed set (see above) for Christmas, and I read all four books in one trip to our grandparents’ house by New Year’s. Imagine my 11-year-old self struggling with the hobbits across Middle-earth as my mother drove us across the middle of America from Kentucky to Texas (and back again), and you will get some sense of the effect that it had on me. Of all the things that drew me to become a medieval historian, reading (and re-reading, and re-reading, and re-reading) Tolkien is at the top of the list, although it took me decades to admit it. Tolkien lived in my imagination somewhere between stories I remembered reading as a child and my first (magical) visit to England with a school trip in high school—not really real, certainly not the stuff of serious scholarship. Latin and Chartres drew me to study the history of medieval Christianity, not elves, hobbits and dwarves. Or so I told myself. And then...
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Big Bear and the Trinitarians

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It was just supposed to be an interview... A conversation between brothers who have both been on the front lines of the culture war. But then came the quiz... ...with all the answers tending towards one sacred number. At which point the true purpose of the meeting was made clear. “This isn’t an interview.” “This is an intervention.” Milo invites three Catholic intellectuals into a livestream with the Big Bear to talk about the Trinity. Who walks out first?! For wisdom is more active than all active things; and reacheth everywhere, by reason of her purity.  For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emmanation of the glory of the Almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness. —Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-26 And the moral of the story is...? You decide! Preview on YouTube Full episode on Friday Night’s All Right at Censored.TV Unauthor...
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President Obama is a bully and a show-off who thinks that he is the only one who knows how to make tough decisions. Governor Romney has a pleasant voice and kind eyes, and he listens when other people are talking.
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Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version

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Welcome to my Random Laypersons ! Welcome to the VFM, welcome to the Dread Ilk, welcome to the Reprehensibles, welcome to the Unauthorized , and welcome to the Bears!  This is the History Course you have been waiting for!  Or, rather, it will be, as soon as I get some feedback from you. I was greatly encouraged when Vox asked you the other night about whether you would be interested in such a course and so many of you said, “Yes—as long as it is real  history!” As Fencing Bear would put it, “ Three cheers !”  We are thinking about having a video a week, starting this summer.  The first question that I have is about format. What kind of format would make for a good course online?  What I do not want is to have these videos simply be lectures, the canonical professor-talks-while-the-students-doze lectures you get in the movies before the professor starts encouraging the students to stand on their desks.   I wan...
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