First Week of Advent: Expecting Emmanuel

Last Sunday we learned that God promised right from the garden of Eden to provide a bridge over the chasm Adam and Eve put between humans and their holy Creator and for the pride they unleashed in all our hearts. Since we long to be closer to Him, we wait for this solution, our Savior, Jesus.

Monday, our hibiscus bloomed! I had put it outside in the sunshine all summer. Ever hoping for blooms and figuring if hibiscus bushes bloom in winter in Florida, certainly our little plant would be loving our summer sun, I frequently checked it for buds. July. Nothing. August. Rien. September. Nada. October. Still no buds. But when I brought it inside in November, I noted what seemed to be five (FIVE!) tiny buds. They take their sweet time unfurling, which prolongs the anticipation. Monday’s flower was the third in recent weeks. Two more to go.

Tuesday I took Mom a little jar of Robert’s pot roast, another jar of cousin Margie’s cranberry-pear-orange relish, and carrot-parsnip soup. Mom said she thought the soup needed cinnamon. It did need something, but I’d not used cinnamon because it didn’t seem to go with parsnip. And I’d altered the recipe to include parsnip because I know Mom likes it, and I’d gone to two grocery stores to find a parsnip that wasn’t desiccated. Truth be told, what I thought the soup needed was no parsnip (haha). Mom came up with the idea of adding cilantro, which appealed to her palate. Looking forward to finding a new carrot soup recipe!

Wednesday and Thursday, I sought caffeine, then rest after a frustrating, sleepless night, Robert had his last kidney stone blasted to smithereens, and I made pumpkin-squash soup before my October farmers market pumpkin and butternut squash withered away. I have no photos of coffee, kidney stones, or stringy squash innards. Physical malaise and maladies and rotting veggies—thanks a lot, Adam and Eve. Someday God will redeem all that.

Friday I set up my grandma’s crèche, and Robert installed the electric “star.” In the spirit of Advent, I probably shouldn’t have put the baby Jesus there until December 25. But I find comfort in seeing Him there now because ADVENT PLOT SPOILER ALERT: Jesus has already come and closed the gap for people who want God’s grace and truth in their lives. And I could happily spend the next three weeks being touched by the shepherd kneeling to worship his Shepherd, to anticipate Emmanuel, heaven come to earth.

Borrowing the last line of each O Little Town of Bethlehem stanza:

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!

Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. Psalm 62:5

 

Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King ~ my review

Although we may think extreme sports and stunts, spectator violence, hazing, and inventors’ pitches to the Shark Tank belong to this current age, they are not new. In the 1400s men boasted how many men in a row they could leap over; they conspired to play humiliating tricks on others; and executions were popular public spectacles. And certainly professional competition, trade secrets, and mean jealousies are not new either. One need only peruse Ross King’s book, Brunelleschi’s Dome, to read story after story detailing the competitive business and personalities of the early-1400s construction of Florence, Italy’s famous Il Duomo, dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Brunelleschi’s Dome is subtitled How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, and that is the point of all the engineering statistics, architectural challenges, and personal stories. Between 1420 and 1436, Brunelleschi constructed the world’s first octagonal dome without interior wooden supports or external buttresses. At 376 feet high and almost 150 feet in diameter, Il Duomo remained the largest dome in the world for more than 400 years. Trained as a goldsmith, untrained as engineer or architect, Brunelleschi was clearly a genius, albeit a stubborn, hot-headed, secretive one.

To construct such a dome, he had to invent machines, methods, and safety measures. His ox-hoist invention succeeded, but not all his inventions did. For design of a ship to transport marble on the Arno River from Pisa to Florence, Brunelleschi was given the world’s first-ever patent for invention. The ship was called Il Badalone, or The Monster, and it sank with its valuable cargo not even halfway to Florence. Brunelleschi lost the equivalent of ten years of his salary in this disaster.

Ross King details many ingenious designs of the day as well as much political intrigue. Filippo Brunelleschi’s archrival was Lorenzo Ghiberti, but he had other adversaries in various competitions for prestigious artistic and architectural contracts. I found discussion of other projects by Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Giotto interesting, as well as literary cross-references, such as Brunelleschi’s study of Dante, Boccaccio’s devoting one of his Decameron tales to Giotto’s appearance, Manetti’s 1480s biography Life of Brunelleschi, and others.

Just as Greek essayist Plutarch had criticized an emperor’s palace, and Roman authors Pliny and Frontinus had blasted the Seven Wonders of the World as foolish displays of wealth, Ross King brings up the possibility of critics claiming biblical Tower of Babel motives for builders of Il Duomo. Were Florentines trying to reach God in heaven in their own power? King says the fall of the Tower of Babel “is likewise an architectural version of the Fall of Man.” [page 101] King cites Il Duomo’s most likely critic, Leon Battista Alberti, who had called Egypt’s Pyramids “monstrous” and “insane,” as instead, praising Brunelleschi. “Alberti justifies the gigantic dimensions of the dome because they reveal both evidence of man’s God-given power to invent and the superiority of Florentine commerce and culture.” [page 102]

Florence’s system engendering fierce political competition for architectural projects certainly mirrors aspects of society today. This fascinated me. Technical engineering measurements, physics principles, and such, bogged me down a bit. That Brunelleschi, a master goldsmith, probably researched ancient Roman ruins to self-educate in engineering is a delight-inspiring proposal. Sociological information about plagues, wars, workers’ habits and threats, and the role of the Catholic Church set an interesting backdrop for the high drama of Brunelleschi’s many challenges. Ross King has footnoted and indexed his account. Considering how well-documented the book is, I was dismayed to find little mention of Brunelleschi’s relationship with his patron Cosimo de’ Medici, perhaps because he was in exile from Florence during most of the dome’s construction. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading this book for an appreciation of man’s ingenuity and civilization’s progress. I hope to someday appreciate Brunelleschi’s magnificent dome in person.