Perhaps not as
fanciful as first thought...

St. Nicholas' remains were removed from his burial place at Myra and reinterred at Bari, in Italy in 1087 AD. There are conflicting stories of how this came to be.

In one story, the mortal remains of the Saint were rescued by heroic "sailors" fearing the tomb at Myra would be desecrated by Alp Arslan and the Seljuk Turks following their victory over the Byzantine forces in the Battle of Manzikert.

In another, it was "pirates" from Bari who took advantage of the confused political situation, beat the monks and stole from them what amounted to highly portable goods designed for later resale in the west. In either case - rescue or theft - the bones came back to Bari and a basilica was built over them.

In the 1950's the crypt where they were interred required considerable repairs. The bones were removed for a short period of time during the work and Luigi Martino, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bari, was asked to catalogue the remains and to take a series of detailed photographs and measurements of the skull.

One of his successors at the University in more recent years handed the photographs and measurements to an anthropologist at Manchester University who, using the latest forensic technology, reconstructed the face in the same way that she would have done for the police searching out the identity of a person following the discovery of physical remains.

Such close scientific work is presumably necessary because, as we all know, the eye of faith is a fanciful thing.

And yet the results (above) bear a remarkable resemblence to one of the 11th Century depictions of St Nicholas.

One which they'd had on the wall all along.

Winter Part Deux

We've had a nice couple of days but today the snow kicked in again.

I'm in town today, at my desk at New College, trying to revise and it's by no means certain that I'll find a bus going back to Penicuik which is worse than this. Mrs Rabbit took a bus back from work in the very early afternoon and the driver was saying this would be the last.

I might be banging on the bishop's door tonight asking him where he keeps the whisky.

David Hume was looking a little put out at being barefoot and clad only in a toga. His friend Adam Smith down the way looked no happier and was hoping that the "Invisible Hand" might somehow sweep a little snow off his brow.

Happy St Nicholas of Myra Day!

This picture, hanging in the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg, represents but one of the many interventions St Nicholas of Myra made in the lives of people at a point of dire necessity.

He was, shall we say, more of an activist than a contemplative.

Good St Nicholas of Myra link HERE.

Pause for Thought

BBC Radio 2
Saturday, December 4th, 2010

When a trench was dug through the ancient hill fort at Megiddo in Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century it revealed 26 individual layers of settlement separated by what were called “destruction layers”. New cities were built on old ruins. From the top you can look out over the Jezreel Valley and imagine the armies massing out there. You can imagine the fear which must have gripped the defenders - at least 26 times.

I could go through a family photo album with somebody of my father’s generation and he would point to pictures which represented moments in his family history when it appeared that the end was nigh. Hopes and plans had been dashed. Efforts had come to naught. He might have felt, at various moments, as if he lived in the shadow of impending doom. When you’re in the midst of it, it feels like the end of the world. You can’t visualize what life afterwards will look like.

If you walk down through the steep tunnel into the heart of the hill fort at Tel Megiddo you see a remarkable thing. You walk by a spring of water, captured and enclosed thousands of years ago by the hill fort – a free flowing spring - the original reason why Neolithic people first chose this little hill to live on.

More often than not you’ll see a small frog perched there by the edge of the water. In such dry and inhospitable surroundings baked by the sun and blown by the wind it’s the last thing you’d expect. But they’ve been there all along.

There’ll be a healthy dose of “end of the world language” in the Scripture readings in Church throughout the Advent season. It helps, though, to flip ahead a few pages and remind yourself that there are both books and history which follow. The germ of something good survives and resurfaces later. Life, with its testament to God’s abiding presence through history, hope and promise survives and endures.

Solomon and Ahab, have come and gone. So have Pharoah Thutmose III and the Canaanite Confederacy, the Ottoman Turks and General Allenby.

The frogs have seen them all off
----

An audio link is available for a limited time HERE. PFT begins at 0:21.41 - a little ways along the audio bar.

The Bishop will arrive!

Our Bishop is paying us a visit at St Mungo's and St James on Sunday morning. Two baptisms of children "of riper years" and a confirmation (our Stewart) will take place on Sunday at St Mungo's, West Linton at 10:00 a.m. There's an opportunity to meet Brian and Lissa over a bacon butty at 9:15. At St James', Penicuik there will be four confirmations (three teenagers and an adult) and one Reaffirmation of Faith by an adult. I'm anticipating that our 11:00 service will begin ten to fifteen minutes late. A stand-up buffet will follow in the Church Hall.

The preparation has been done, the service has been rehearsed with the young people. They know what they're to do and say.

I hear rumblings of food being prepared in copious quantities.

Problem is the snow.

The bishop's trip to a neighbouring congregation was cancelled last week due to the inclement weather.

This is not to be the case here.

We have two landrovers on call - one to transport the Bishop and his wife Lissa from Edinburgh and another to transport an organist and her husband from Peniicuik to West Linton.

Our numbers may be a little depleted - I hope not too depleted. 18 people trudged up the hill through the snow in boots and hats for choir practise last night looking like Newfoundland fishermen. It can be done. It will be done! We are a doughty lot here outside the Edinburgh Bypass.

Where others succumb we will thrive! We will get our bishop here by hook or by crook.