Somewhere back in the years studied by paleontologists I was an accounting clerk in Southern California. I had dropped out of a doctoral program in Church history and was (barely) making my living with the juggling of debits and credits. To entertain myself and my beloved I would make at least one little cartoon a day on the 3x5 scratch sheets we had at our desks.
These cartoons featured my alter ego, Bori Bear. On more inspired days he might be snorkeling, ballooning, mountain climbing, or any of a number of adventurous things that I most certainly was not doing in my life. His basic mode, however, was wearing a T-shirt with a heart on it and looking like this:
Since I followed the Church calendar faithfully, I never missed a feast day (at least the ones on the Episcopal calendar plus a few Orthodox or Catholic ones). On many of those days I would depict the saint in question as a teddy bear like Bori. St Patrick might thus show up as a teddy bear in chasuble and miter, a crozier in one hand and snakes fleeing before his feet. Something like that. My favorites were the Beardonnas and there was a genuine piety underlying these seemingly silly sketches.When I got to Holy Innocents there was the dilemma: what to do with something as horrendous as the slaughter of children? I went for the harsh reality combined with the bliss of the victims in heaven. So we had dead teddy bears on lances with their spirits as putti looking down from heaven. It looked something like this (sketched last night).
My other half thought this was too gross for words. But, obviously, neither of us has ever forgotten it.And that is the tale of the beartoons and the Holy Innocents.
I do not make light of the offering of children to Moloch throughout the millennia. The way humans have sacrificed the innocent for the sake of power, lust, greed, etc. is beyond comprehension. The indifference to their misery, their deaths, their plight simply appalls.
MP, Mimi, JN1034, Fran and others have all posted eloquently on this. I borrow here the Orthodox prayers, taken from Ormonde.
Troparion (Tone 1)
O Lord and Lover of the human race,
through all the sufferings your saints endured for you,
we beseech and implore you:
heal all our pains and sufferings!
Kontakion (Tone 8)
When the King was born in Bethlehem,
wise men came from the East and brought him gifts.
They had been led by a star on high.
Herod became exceedingly angry
and harvested the infants like lamenting wheat,
and his kingdom came to an end.
May we work to eliminate cruelty to the defenseless, oppose tyranny, and learn mercy.
--the BB
4 comments:
Oh my Paul- such imagery. It is really brilliant and heartbreaking at once.
The tiny and the small are killed by the powerful, the large and those who wield their power with reckless and selfish minds and hands.
God help us all. Yet, each year- over and over and over, we get to celebrate the birth of the tiny baby who brings us salvation. And a few months later we remember the cross.
The dynamics of this are too potent for me to ignore and I know we all share something in that. Yet the world continues to shed the blood of the innocents as we see every day.
God bless you my brother and my friend.
That cartoon is twisted.
And, oddly marvelous. :-)
I seem to remember this cartoon from some years ago... Did you post it on your old blog or did I just see it somewhere else or did I receive a divine ursine vision?
Good question, Jane. Very few have seen the beartoons, so I really don't know. I just sketched these fresh but you may have seen originals.
Post a Comment