On Monday morning I had a touch of food poisoning and I think it was from the caramel peanut butter.
I continued trying to figure out the chords for “Entre l'âme et l'amour” (Between Love and Spirit) by Serge Gainsbourg using the extract of the middle of the song that’s on Apple Music. Since I can’t play one section over and over it makes it very difficult for me to work out the chords. The third and fourth verses should have the same chords but I keep hearing them differently since I can’t repeat a given section to get it right.
I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the third of four sessions. I’ve started plugging the cable into the lower jack of my amp and it’s been sounding better. I didn’t get any static or sudden changes in volume this time.
I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast.
I worked on my final essay:
“My Lord the Lamb, who knew my need / Took me in marriage graciously / Crowned me, that now my joys exceed / The sum of days that e'er shall be” (414-417).
“Are you the queen of heaven blue / … We know in grace that Mary grew / … What maid could now her crown outdo /…?”
Of Mary she says she is the “‘Gracious Queen,' that maiden prayed / With face upturned, and kneeling low / Matchless Mother and fairest Maid” (434-436). But then she adds, “The court of the kingdom of God alive / By nature holds one special thing / That all who may therein arrive / Of all that realm is queen or king” (446-449). In line 435 Pearl clearly puts herself beneath Mary while at the same time declaring both she and Mary are queens and that all souls who legitimately arrive in the kingdom of god are queens or kings. The word “queen” then becomes generic when applied to anyone in Heaven besides Mary. Everyone is a queen but do they perform the functions of a queen? If all they are required to do is orbit around the lamb of god then calling them queens is merely a title to indicate that they are equals at the height of human achievement. In Medieval times from our mortal perspective no woman could be higher than a queen and so to call all the members of god’s court queens and kings becomes just another word for “citizens”. They are only queens from a mortal perspective in that they are above mortal humans.
“For she is Queen of heavenly grace / 'By heavenly grace, so says Saint Paul / In Jesus Christ we all are one / … So every Christian soul withal / Lives as one part of God's own Son” (457-459, 462-463). If Mary is queen of Heavenly Grace and if that grace is how citizens of heaven are parts of the body of Christ, clearly Mary is above this union of Christ’s body parts as she is the cause of that union. No body part is equal to the whole and so to be queens and kings within god’s body with nothing below in rank but those who do not live in heaven, the titles of king and queen become irrelevant within that realm and are only a goal of mortals.
I weighed 87.6 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. I didn’t wear a scarf this time but I was still a little too warm. I could have gone without my motorcycle jacket or with the jacket but with no hoody underneath.
I weighed 86.4 kilos at 17:24.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:18.
I worked on making notes on the Medieval poem “Pearl” until bedtime:
“You lived not two years in our land” (483). Pearl was a toddler when she died and yet is now a maiden and a bride of Christ.
“Set all of' them upon a row / And let them each their penny gain / … And then the first men did complain / And said that they had laboured sore / These worked but one hour; that is plain / We think we should be given more” (545-546, 549-552). The penny was the promised wage and it is an employers right to do what they want with their money after giving their employees what was promised. He could have just as easily given each man standing idle a penny as charity and the workers would have no legitimate complaint. Also in a sense they all worked equally for the money since standing around in the heat is often harder than being engaged in physical effort. This does not really work as an analogy to explain why everyone in heaven is a queen. A penny has value for each of the men in the vineyard story. Being a queen is meaningless in heaven except from the perspective of a mortal who wants to get to heaven to become a queen. But also more than her analogy her simple statement that, “Sufficient grace have the innocent” (601) explains her achieving rank in heaven ahead of others who became queens after much spiritual labour.
“Lo, centred on my breast it stood / … Forsake this mad world, as you should / And buy this pearl without a spot” (740, 743-744). She is telling him to now seek a higher form of pearl, which is what she represented while alive in her innocence.
“My peerless Lamb, amending all / Said she, 'designed what I should be” (757-758). She explains how she could have died as a two year old girl and exist in Heaven as a young woman.
“Wives of the Lamb in joy we're made / One hundred and forty-four thousand strong” (785-786). But in lines 448-449 she says, “That all who may therein arrive / Of all that realm is queen or king”. Either not every queen is a bride of Christ or St. John did not expect more than 144,000 females to make it into Heaven. If there were only a thousand Christians in John’s lifetime then 144,000 female Christians would perhaps have seemed astronomical. But then she says, “And every soul without a stain / Is to that Lamb a wife by right” (845-846). She had previously said there are kings and queens among the souls that arrive and yet now she declares that all of those souls are the wives of the Lamb. This must mean that all genders are brides of Christ. Then again, “The Lamb most noble at the head / Of full one hundred thousand maids / With four and forty thousand spread” (868-870). These wives appear to be all maidens after all. Are the kings made female?
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