Gift: Turning a phrase

 Good Friday morning, good citizens of Christmastide.

Today is the 10th Day of Christmas. It's the day when every true love brings their true love ten lords a-leaping. These are, reportedly, a symbol of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Then again, to paraphrase Freud, maybe a leaping lord is just a leaping lord, unless, of course, you're a stereotypical gay man and then 10 leaping lords is a little glimpse of heaven.

Roman Catholics celebrate The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which commemorates the naming of the child Jesus; as recounted in the Gospel read on that day, "at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb."

There are lots of things on today's calendar of note. Today is the birthday of women's rights reformer and abolitionist, Lucretia (Coffin) Mott, one of the organizers of the Seneca Falls (New York) Convention of 1848.

Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church on this date in 1521. The church started formal proceedings against Luther in 1519 for his 95 Thesis. It took some time for the commission to agree on whether his writings were heretical or not. Eventually, they decided that Luther was indeed guilty of heresy, and Pope Leo X issued a bull giving him 60 days to recant. Luther reacted by throwing the bull on a bonfire, so the Pope excommunicated him.

I am amazed that no one has done more with that turn of phrase "throwing the bull on the bonfire". I like it almost as much as the British expression, which could have been said in response to Luther's throwing the bull on the bonfire, "Well, and that really set the cat amongst the pigeons." Watch for its appearance in a future sermon. You have been duly warned.

It was on this day in 1882 that the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde docked in New York. Customs asked him if he had anything to declare. Oscar Wilde replied, "Nothing but my genius."

Herman Melville, age 21, set sail aboard the whaling vessel Acushnet on this date in 1841 from the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, bound for the Pacific Ocean. He was at sea for four years, and his experiences gave him material for Moby-Dick, which begins, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."

Today is the birthday of J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien (1892). Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon and, later, English Language and Literature at Oxford University. One day, while grading exams, he discovered that a student had left one whole page in his examination booklet blank. Tolkien, for reasons unknown even to him, wrote on the page, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." This single line turned into a bedtime story that he told his children, and from there, a book: The Hobbit (1937).

Today, the New Congress will be sworn in which may take a while because the House of Representatives will first elect the Speaker of the House. The POTUS-elect has thrown his support behind the incumbent but gave him a lukewarm "Best of Luck!".

The math is complicated - he needs 218 votes but there are different possible scenarios as to how he might get there. The Democrats are 100% behind Hakeem Jeffries (that's 215 votes).

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) declared yesterday that he would not vote for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to serve another term under any circumstances, even if his fingernails were pulled out.

According to reports, there are at least 16 Republicans who have refused to commit to voting for Johnson. Massie, however, is the only Republican member in the House who has publicly stated that he will not vote for the current speaker.

The margin is so slim - reflecting the less than 1% win of the POTUS-elect (Note to the MAGA-DOGE faction: Definitely NOT a mandate) - that we could see a repeat of the 2023 Kevin McCarthy Show, which lasted 15 ballots over 4 days for 215 votes. McCarthy lasted 10 months.

Meanwhile, by practice, the House can conduct no business until it elects a Speaker, meaning the chamber will be paralyzed until it does so.

Welcome to The New Reality MAGA-DOGE Show, which features throwing bull on the fire and setting a cat amongst the pigeons.

See? Tole ya.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.