JOAN OF ARC AND JEAN BAPTISTE!!
limit this to one page
ok so it's two pages at this point, its still a tad rambly but better
wir danken dir, gott, wir danken dir despite the mess
POINT ONE: WHY A UNIVERSITY FOR HAPPINESS?
so creating a university for happiness is a big undertaking!
Common sense would tell us that anyone who would attempt this gargantuan sort of project must have a pretty good reason--there must be a story behind all this, and a true story wants to be told on the silent earth.
Furthermore, anything worth doing is worth doing well as the saw goes
So, let's see.
POINT TWO: JOHN THE BAPTIST, MARTYR OF TRUTH AND PURITY
Wojtyla wrote "THE SPLENDOR OF TRUTH", and the truth does indeed shine with blazing splendor, but the truth is inevitably persecuted and often done away with.
It is perhaps fitting that on the feast of John the Baptist we reflect on the bloody beheading of this last and greatest of the prophets of I AM WHO AM, in other words, the prophets of BEING.
Jesus said, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John, which cries out for discussion as well.
John was on fire, he was that great "voce clamando in deserto" and he was bound to get himself in trouble, which he did.
The detail we don't often reflect on is, he was a martyr of purity: first jailed, then decapitated for telling off the king for sleeping with his sister in law--not blood incest but certainly bound to create tension in a family!
So when we say that sexual shennanigans are "harmless" we might be a bit off.
They often lead to acts of violence.
It is also worth noting that Johh himself had misconstrued the power of Christ: when Christ did not let him out of jail, he began to doubt the whole project--kind of like the Gabuzzo branch of the family.
In any event John should lead us to reflect on the art of announcing:
How are we actually supposed to get the good news out there without scandalizing people so greatly that they walk--or run-- away? Or worse yet, toss us in jail and chop off our heads?
POINT THREE: THE GREEN MAN.
Before we meet engelblau and uriel, lets meet the GREEN MAN.
ASIDE TO CHRISTIANS: Is the green man Gesu? Jesus who turns himself into the agricultural produce of wheat and grapes in order to offer the Eucharist, in other words, to thank the Giver, to return the favor to God for all the gifts of the earth.
If we appreciated our garden home, perhaps we would not so recklessly destroy it.
A catechism of angels and paradise maybe should begin slowly, with the garden and the green man.
The green man pictured here is from the times of King Arthur, before the English speaking world fought a deadly war over the Eucharist.
Especially now in 2020 with Corona Virus, climate change and "we can't breathe", it is worth reading "Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight" to understand the fraught relationship humans have had with nature since the exile from Eden.
POINT FOUR: THE ANGELS
We are glad to be a part of the Uriel University system and we extend the invitation to everyone.
An excess of joy led to a volcanic explosion of content on the website.
However, there is a method to the mess.
Everyone believes in Los Angeles, City of the Angels, but not everyone believes in actual angels.
Similarly, everyone believes that human beings have a mind, but psychological distress is a very difficult subject to actaully discuss.
It makes people very uncomfortable.
So, the idea of a university dedicated to healing human angst and promoting happiness, named "uriel university" or an admissions director named "engelblau" requires a bit of clarification.
Uriels' is a project of the Valanga di Vita, the coalescing of a desire to mobilize the vitality of human goodness in such a way that it does not veer off into violence.
Uriel University originally came to be as a dream, a remedy for the mental distress in our society that squelches the joy of the human spirit, is so expensive and causes so much sorrow and disaster.
This distress afflicts many school shooters and other troubled people, and disrupts the education and career plans of many others in a kind of collateral damage.
Schools should teach people to be kind, loving, and peaceful, they reasoned, so that this kind of tragedy can be mended and prevented.
and for that, they need to teach not only information, but wisdom.
Higher education and psychiatric care are often atrociously costly.
But like medicine, education is at its best when its resources are accessible to the greatest number of people.
Angel city was inspired by a new york dj amd a painting by Paul Klee.
Like Walter benjamin's famous interpretation of the New Angel as the Angel of History, we conceived of the LIstening angel as the musical guide into the Blue, and came up with "engelblau" the director of admissions.
Not everyone has heard of Paul klee or is familiar with "the listening angel".
Not everyone believes in angels, and in fact the history of education for hundreds of years has suffered from the separation of faith and reason.
But most of us except the extreme post modernists who believe everything is an illusion, believe in gardens because we have seen them.
Unfortunately, We have not treated the garden very well and all except the radical right agree that the earth is very sickly due to our mistreatment and recklessness.
The Christian faith takes both faith and reason into account, for Jesus said "blessed are they who have not seen and have believed", while St John said, "how can you love god whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother whom you do see?
In fact the Green Man is an ancient representation of the spiritual element in that untrammeled force of nature which we came to fear and distrust after we were exiled from paradise.