[Magdalen] Unexpected Pleasure.

[Lynn Ronkainen]

With a motto like that they were a century before the rest of the world started to consider that concept!
Lynn

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 4, 2015, at 2:23 PM, H Angus <hangus at ctcn.net> wrote:

When I taught at Urbana College a couple decades ago, I sat in on a Hebrew class taught by a Swedenborgian minister, Dr. Dorothea Harvey. She became a good friend. Once she came in to class and said to us, "I'm sorry I don't have all your papers marked. We were very busy at church last night. We had a pot luck supper and an exorcism."

Obviously, she was playing the timing of her remarks for laughs, and she surely must have gotten one when she looked at our slack-jawed faces.

But she was entirely serious about the exorcism. There was a house someone in the church had rented, and strange noises and other oddities were happening in it. So they went and did the Swedenborgian version of an exorcism, which is not at all like the Catholic devil-and-hellfire-and demonic battling that anyone saw in the movie of that name. A Swedenborgian minister assumes that the ghost simply doesn't realize yet that it's dead. So the minister gently explains to the ghost that this isn't his/her place any more, and that it's time to turn around and look at the light, and go toward that. Jesus will meet the deceased person and lead him or her into the realms of light, which Swedenborgians believe to include lots and lots of wonderful things to learn. The minster will explain to the ghost that there are wondrous adventures and knowledge awaiting them (tired of him/her), they they need to go embracxe it.

Swedenborgians are/were very big on learning. Above the entrance to the college library in town is their motto: Nunc licet intellectualitur intrare in arecanum fidelii. (I'm sure I've misspelled some of the Latin.) It means, Now it is permitted to enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith.

Heather


----- Original Message -----
From: "Grace Cangialosi" <gracecan at gmail.com>
To: "magdalen" <magdalen at herberthouse.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2015 11:43:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Unexpected Pleasure.

Yes, that Unitarian connection occurred to me, too, though I don't know
much about the Swedenborgians.  think I'll check Beliefnet.

> On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 9:46 AM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> They were rather thick on the ground once upon a time. And their influence
> continues into our time through writers & artists like Balzac, the Jameses,
> Blake
> and Yeats, to name a few. Also the vision of the American impressionists.
> All that God-in-nature stuff didn't come to us via traditional
> Christianity.
> 
> Many people Bostonians think were Unitarians were actually Swedenborgians.
> I tend to think of them as proto-Unitarians.
> -M
> 
>> On Wednesday, March 4, 2015, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I'm clueless as well, Jay, but I thought it was interesting, as I knew
> she
>> was a person of faith.
>> 
>>>> On Mar 4, 2015, at 9:28 AM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com
>>> <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I didn't know that, Grace. I still have no clue what they believe, and



-- 
Grace Cangialosi
Ruckersville, VA

It's a good thing Mary didn't have to wait for a Doctrine of the
Incarnation
before she said "Yes" to God.