The leaders of Friendship Church and I spent eight hours today working on strategic planning. It was an exciting and absorbing experience and I feel blessed to be the pastor of such a great congregation!
A little bit of this and that...
Articles like this one from the UK, apart from their substance, always entertain me. We and the Brits really are two peoples separated by a common language.
This particular article sent me scurrying for my dictionary. What exactly do such words as mooted, coruscating, and shambolic mean?
Both mooted and shambolic appear to be British slang terms. The meaning of the first is unclear to me, although it may be rooted in the word moot, used of meetings or, of course, to refer to an irrelevant legal or debating point.
When one is shambolic, it means to be in shambles.
Coruscating, a word that appears in our American dictionaries, is the giving off of sparkles of light.
Could my UK readers enlighten and correct me on any of this?
Articles from the UK also often find me delighting in names which, to my American ears and eyes, seem almost comic (i.e., Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Lord Tebbit, and Darius Guppy). The latter name certainly seems appropriate for someone involved in fishy business. (It seems that Johnson's full name even seemed a bit hilarious to the Guardian reporter who wrote this piece.)
Whatever the merits or ultimate disposition of Mr. Johnson's situation, this article reads like one of those quoted from the newspaper in a Sherlock Holmes' story. All of which proves that Holmes' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wasn't as creative as I thought he was when I first read his stories back in my junior high school days. Even today, more than a century after Queen Victoria's reign ended, British journalism uses colorful language and covers colorful characters.
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If Pakistan and India are this close to working out a peace agreement over Kashmir, shouldn't we also have hope for the possibilities of peace between Palestine and Israel? One can certainly pray for that end!
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Tomorrow, I'll be posting my Sunday morning message and I hope, some other things. So, please feel free to drop by then. Feel free also, to explore the other 340+ posts you'll find here and to give me your feedback. God bless!
2 comments:
American poet Ogden Nash actually used the word coruscating in the poem "My child is phlegmatic - Anxious Parent" He wrote...
"Are you concerned that your child is not a flashing, coruscating gem?
Don't you know that the only peace this world can give lies not in flame but in phlegm?"
Douglas
dbass@stthomas.edu
http://beliefseekingunderstanding.patriotforum.org
Douglas:
I love the lines from Ogden Nash's poem which you cite. Nash is one of my son's favorites and he loves reading Nash's impish and insightful poems to me.
The thoughts Nash expresses in the lines you cite should be a comfort to parents who are afraid of their children being "normal." Distrtibution at little league games and elementary school open houses would be a good idea. (But only if accompanied by a footnote defining "coruscating.")
Speaking of that word, although a brilliant American humorist/poet used it, I doubt that I'll find "coruscating" anywhere in my copy of the Cincinnati Enquirer tomorrow morning. It isn't that there is nothing coruscating around here. It's just that unlike the Supreme Court justice and pornography, we wouldn't know it if we saw it.
Thanks for coming to my blog. I'll be going to yours as well!
Mark
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