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In this fable from India, a sly little insect teaches a jackdaw that all that glisters is not necessarily edible.
William Cowper’s ‘The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm’ told how a glow-worm persuaded a hungry bird to spare his life because light and song complement each other so beautifully. In the following Indian fable by Ramaswami Raju (playwright, London barrister and Oxford professor of Telugu), the hard-pressed glow-worm does not have such dainty material to work with.
Picture: © Forza, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Posted May 13 2022
278
Back in the 6th century, Mary was consumed by an addiction so compulsive that she would use and discard anyone to satisfy it.
St Mary of Egypt was a hermit of the Holy Land who made such an impression on England that Abbot Elfric (?955-?1022) left us a lengthy sermon on her extraordinary life. Her story remained a favourite long after the Norman Conquest, and the following account comes from a Martyrology customarily read out in Syon Abbey (long vanished, a victim of the Reformation) and printed in 1526.
Picture: © Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.5. Source.
Posted May 11 2022
279
Pliny was only about nine when his uncle left to go and help rescue the terrified townspeople of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
On August 24th, 70, Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples began to erupt. Pliny, a nine-year-old boy doing his homework in nearby Miseno, watched his uncle Pliny, the admiral, sail off to the disaster zone; later he learnt that Uncle Pliny had parted from the other boats to go and rescue Senator Pomponianus in Stabiae.
Picture: Photo by NASA, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted May 8 2022
280
John’s enduring influence is evident today in the rich sights and sounds of Christian liturgy.
St John Damascene (676-749) was Syrian monk and a contemporary of our own St Bede, both of them highly respected scholars with a deep love for Church music. John left us an exposition of Christian theology of enduring importance throughout east and west; he compiled a wealth of hymns, collects and prayers; and he saved Christian iconography everywhere from the hands of extremists.
Picture: Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted May 6 2022
281
John Wesley urged the medical profession (and his fellow clergy) to remember that drugs are not the answer to every sickness.
On Saturday May 12th, 1759, John Wesley was in Whitehaven, on the coast of Cumbria. That evening, he left himself a reminder in his daily Journal never to try to get there via the coast road: the inland trip by Kendal and Keswick was longer but quicker. He then fell to musing on a lady he had spoken to recently, who suffered from a persistent stomach ailment.
Picture: By William Hamilton (1751–1801), via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: ? Public domain.. Source.
Posted May 5 2022
282
When farmhand and lay preacher George Loveless was convicted of conspiracy, both charge and sentence made the country gasp.
In October 1833, after his wages had been slashed almost by half, George Loveless of Tolpuddle in Dorset, a farm labourer and father of five, formed a Friendly Society to support struggling families and to remind employers of their moral obligations. The following March, George and five others found themselves up before the Bench in Dorchester under the obscure Unlawful Oaths Act (1797).
Picture: © Roger Templeman, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted May 3 2022