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[ by Charles Cameron — a second, off-the-cuff Sunday Surprise this week ]
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Here’s your basic DoubleQuotes-formatted pair of images — Rembrandt‘s Nightwatch which you’re probably familiar with in the top panel, and Bill Benzon‘s Night Light Standing Guard which I believe he only posted today:

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Consider the differences.. then, and now.

I wanted them in DoubleQuotes format to make the comparison clear — but here are larger versions of the two images, still in sizes this blog column can handle:

and:

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But for a really detailed digital looksee, click on these two links, and then if you’d like, click again for maximum magnification, very possibly too large to fit a computer screen & requiring some scrolling to catch significant detail:

Rembrandt, The Night Watch

Benzon, Night Light Standing Guard

Even better, you could befriend and visit Benzon, and view the Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Either there, or by some other means, you and I and Benzon and Rembrandt should commune. As Emerson wrote:

The world is young: the former great men call to us affectionately.

[ by Charles Cameron — Washington Post, meet Pravmir ]
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Putin and the Patriarch: a Christian Jihad in al-Sham!

I was prepping this for yesterday’s post, saving relevant articles in their own little folder, but got sleepy before actually writing this business up, and today’s Washingtomn Post does the job better than I could have, so you can go read The Christian zeal behind Russia’s war in Syria to get the basics.

Most striking feature of that story, ICYMI, is this tweet:

Russian Orthodox priest blesses a Russian military base using an icon of Stalin. HT @vorobyov pic.twitter.com/bWKnLE1nTk

— James (@historyboy77) June 18, 2015

I’m not sure whether that’s a Russian base “facing” Syria or Ukraine — the WaPo seems to have illustrations of both, which is a tad confusing — but an icon of Stalin?

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Aside from the base and its purposes, however, it’s worth noting that Pravmir in late June discussed How the Church to respond to the attempts to make the image similar to the icons of Stalin? (lacking Russian, I have to go with Google Translate’s translation), and that Archpriest Alexander Saltykova explained:

The Church has responded to the recent actions A. Prokhanov, as well as before it meets a number of similar cases involving attempts to write psevdoikony of Stalin and Lenin, Hitler and such historical figures.

So Saratov archdiocese called the action A. Prokhanov “blatant provocation”. His attempts to organize a “religious worship” “psevdoikony depicting IV Stalin’s “cause” regret and resentment. ”

It is also recalled that the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church “has repeatedly emphasized,” that “canonization persecutor of the Church and the organizer of the bloody mass repression impossible” and “The very idea is absurd.”

See also:

Saratov archdiocese apologized to the believers of the ceremony with the icon of Stalin

Saratov archdiocese called a provocation action of the writer, the founder of the “Izborsk club” Alexander Prokhanov. Thus, members of the clergy have commented on the incident at the air base in Engels, where the priest was consecrated by order made izbortsev icon of “Our Lady Sovereign”, which is surrounded by Soviet marshals depicted Generalissimo Joseph Stalin.

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Seems there’s a little more to this story than meets the Washington Post eye.

I’ll be interested to see what John Schindler makes of this, and also welcome comments from any others interested in Russia and or Orthodoxy reading here..

[ by Charles Cameron — a comparative mapping of time and eternity? ]
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From my POV, this image is superb:

It demonstrates both the experience of the human chess player, who cannot in general play by a “brute force” method since the tree of choices exceeds his neuronal capacity, and the rational experience of the brute force method, illuminated in the case of a problem small enough in scale for artful representation.

And part of what’s interesting — wonderful — here is the fact that the chess board is graphically far less beautiful, I dare to say, than the representation of the corresponding tree of choices.

And it reminds me of nothing so much as Mark Lombardi‘s fine art “conspiracy” graphs, like this one:

— taken from Lombardi’s book, Global Networks, in which the artist draws the networks of influence surrounding eg oil and war in the Middle East — and which I’m sure can be found with a little effort for less than the $234.63 atvwhich Amazon currently offers a used paperback copy.

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With thanks to Adam Elkus for pointing me to this concise icon of the Garden of Forking Paths.

[ by Charles Cameron — ointment and fly, and how one thing leads to another ]
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Reading..

Not exactly trigger happy! Norwegian police fired just two shots last year, both harmless http://t.co/TdDDWfcmca pic.twitter.com/gBDm2uhgfd

— The Local Norway (@TheLocalNorway) July 7, 2015

and..

@rabiasquared Norway's biggest hotel owner Petter Stordalen has said his hotels will house 1000 refugees – for free. pic.twitter.com/vtcOmi25yW

— Stephan Hansen (@hansenstephan1) September 8, 2015

in rapid succession on my twitterfeed the other day, I’ve been thinking of my Norwegian friend, the artist Jan Valentin Saether..

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What else?

Ah yes, Anders Behring Breivik, the black dot in the white swoosh of the Tai-Chih symbol — and I’m beginning to get the impression the ripples are spreading:

The Guardian, Why are anti-immigration parties so strong in the Nordic states?

August: Vocativ, E.U.’s Right-Wing Parties Surging Thanks To Migrant Crisis

September: NY Times, Migrant Influx May Give Europe’s Far Right a Lift

Curious fact:

Even in 2011, the year of the Utøya terror attacks, the Norwegian police only fired one shot.

[ by Charles Cameron — my title is taken from the book of Job — known to Islam as the prophet Ayyub — chapter 38 verse 7 ]
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Let’s begin with Qur’an 22. 40:

I can deeply appreciate a perspective as respectful as this.

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Consequently, I am even more deeply saddened when the Islamic State tears down the crosses atop churches —

than I am when the Chinese do the same exact thing..

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And I’d suggest that the phrase “were it not that Allah checks the people, some by means of others, there would have been demolished monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques” as indicating that those who check / repel / drive back those others who demolish such places of worship, do so in accordance with the divine will..

Here, members of the Islamic State bulldoze a monastery..

Such acts, then, should be checked, prevented, surely, by those who honor the Qur’an.

The question that remains is how best to accomplish this.

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Likewise, there is the phrase about “monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of Allah is much mentioned”..

Apparently, the “name of Allah” was “much mentioned” in monasteries and churches at the time of the Prophet, and we may therefore wonder why Malaysian Muslims would wish to ban the use of that name by Christians —

— when as KL Chan pointed out in his recent LapidoMedia post Do Muslims have a monopoly on the word Allah? — even if we ignore the clear evidence of the Qur’an itself,

One of the oldest evidences of Christian use of the word ‘Allah’ can be found in a Bible translation from 1514.

That’s two years after Michaelangelo finished painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and three years before Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral.

As Usama Hasan says, it’s a fiasco.

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Sources:

BibleGateway, Job 38.7,

Qur’anic Arabic corpus, Qur’an 22.40

Legatum Institute, China arrests Christians

Christian Today, Isis militants desecrate Iraqi church

Daily Mirror, ISIS Jihadists using a bulldozer

Perry, Malaysia Top Court

Usama Hasan, #Malaysia #Allah fiasco