My Imago Dei is "Soul-Certain"

Friday Takes on mourning cloaks, how we do have souls, heaven and hell, cross-dressing, how I found my piano money, and what a ridiculous time it is to be alive.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Happy Friday, Gentle Reader. I’m deeply grateful both for you and to have got this far in the week. An “attitude of gratitude” is what I say, on this gray and desultory morning. I have so much to do as I rush into the day, but I have caught together a few interesting, fun, silly, and stupid objets for your consideration.

Firstly

Today is the anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I and I thought this thread was quite interesting about the gradual abandonment of mourning cloaks:

The Burgon Society @burgonsoc

Drawings of the funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth I to Westminster Abbey, 28th April 1603 Principal and official mourners are shown wearing long black mourning cloaks with hoods drawn over their heads BL Add MS 35324 bl.uk/collection-ite…

Of course, as time went on, official mourning people wanted their fancier outfits to shine through the gloom of death, and so contented themselves with a mere shmear black sash. Still, it’s too bad that we can’t have this anymore, if only for the austere elegance of Christian grief. The gradual change must have coincided, I wouldn’t be surprised, with the cultural abandonment of Christian feelings about death and heaven and hell. It’s not just beautiful outfits that got lost, but the anchoring beauty of reality, of death contextualized and constrained by everlasting life.

Secondly

Which is excessively pertinent given this interesting, fairly silly long piece about how (the author is sure) there is no such thing as a soul. Here are some fun bits: