Differently Wired Brains
We left Oberammergau this morning and drove to the nearby Schloss Linderhof, the only one of his palaces that Ludwig II lived to see actually completed. It’s a small gem, surrounded by beautiful fountains and grounds and remarkably ornate inside. Unfortunately, the “Venus Grotto,” inspired by Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser, is closed for repairs until sometime in 2024.
I was especially interested to visit, once again, the Maurischer Kiosk or “Moorish Kiosk,” a small structure out on the extensive wooded and hilly grounds of the palace. It’s been a while. I commonly used it in my Islamic humanities classes to illustrate the fascination with “the Orient” that accompanied the introduction of translations of the Alf Layla wa Layla, the “Thousand and One Nights” or “Arabian Nights,” to Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by such scholars as Jean-Antoine Galland, Edward William Lane, and Sir Richard Burton. I seem to recall seeing somewhere that Ludwig II — who built all of his palaces in order to privately live out his fantasies about the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV at Versailles and about the romantic and heroic sagas of Richard Wagner’s operas — liked to dress up as an Arabian prince, go out to his “Moorish Kiosk,” and read from the Thousand and One Nights.
My attention was called today to this review of the Interpreter Foundation’s theatrical film Witnesses, which is now available both on DVD and via streaming. It was written by Mark Tensmeyer, an attorney in Texas, and published on the website of the Association for Mormon Letters. I might quibble here or there, but I think it’s a fair-minded review:
“Goodman “Witnesses” (Reviewed by Mark Tensmeyer)”
The failure of Witnesses to cover the Eight Witnesses (to say nothing of the informal or unofficial witnesses) in addition to the Three Witnesses, which is noted by the reviewer, has now been at least partially remedied (precisely according to prior plan) by Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon and will likely be addressed by our ongoing series of short witness-related video features.
One necessary correction: While Witnesses is distributed on DVD by Excel Entertainment, the film was not produced by Excel Entertainment.
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A few days back, on 10 June, I posted an item here entitled “Are Latter-day Saints immune to doing great evil?” I’ve just now noticed an obviously relevant item that appeared on 14 June on the website of Book of Mormon Central, a friendly sister organization to the Interpreter Foundation:
“Why Were Violent Acts like the Mountain Meadows Massacre Committed by Latter-day Saints?”
In this regard, I very much like this passage from a lecture that was given in New York City by the great British New Testament scholar (and former Anglican bishop) N. T. Wright:
“Humans are made to reflect God out into the world — and at the same time, to reflect the rest of the world back to the Creator in worship and praise.
“Let me explain. I’m an ancient historian by training. Once, when I was going through the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, it struck me that all the greatest statues of Roman emperors and their families they’ve got in that museum were found, not in Rome but in Turkey, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa: all over the place, in other words. In Rome, they knew who their emperor was. But out there in the provinces, the emperors put images of themselves so as to say to all the cities and countries over which they ruled, ‘This is who your boss is.’
“And the point about Genesis 1 is that the gracious God, who is as unlike a Roman emperor as you could wish him to be, has put into his world an image of himself called men and women made in his image to show his world what he is like. Tragically, we humans decided we would prefer to turn it around and reflect the world back to itself and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, as Saint Paul puts it. This has caused the image to be fractured and broken, distorting human rule over the world. But the point is that once we listen to those echoes of a voice [intimations of divinity that he has previously discussed] and once we are renewed and refreshed in listening to the story of Jesus, then we begin to be able to reflect the image once more.”
[N.T. Wright, in Eric Metaxas, ed., Life, God, and Other Small Topics: Conversations from Socrates in the City (New York: Plume/Penguin, 2011), 216.]
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In a time of deep political and social division, I — who am far more philosophically akin to Justice Clarence Thomas than to Justice Sonia Sotomayor — have really appreciated her kind words about him:
“Sotomayor on Thomas: ‘The One Justice in the Building That Literally Knows Every Employee’s Name”
Finally, I share an item — the first one in quite a while, for which I apologize; I’ve been busy and distracted — from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©:
“Once again, secular science commends a religious instinct and outlook (think compassion)”
And these two articles were also found in the vicinity of the Hitchens File:
“Church’s women leaders minister in Mexico, encourage faithfulness to Jesus Christ”
This last item comes from a folder that is directly adjacent to the Hitchens File:
“Socially Isolated People Have Differently Wired Brains”
Posted from Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria, Germany
