And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, Joan of Arc. She saw visions of things. Some today might consider her delusional, mentally ill, not right in the head. Anyone would think there was something loony about having an Invisible Magic Friend. But those who burned her at the stake simply considered her heretical, and besides, on the wrong side by fighting against greater England.
What better inspiration for British National Service.
https://mega.nz/file/Ayk0hCYB#Rfk-Crf7-zLyYw1ik43eCJap4r-tUlIED892BrQ3g1c
Platitude of the Day 
The Leonard Cohen song “Joan of Arc” is well worth a listen, particularly the version sung as a duet with Jennifer Warnes (from her album Famous Blue Raincoat, a collection of Leonard Cohen songs, including the first ever recorded version of “First We Take Manhattan”).
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Joan of Arc was executed 593 years ago today.
Joan of Arc inspired one group of Frogs in conflict against another one, which happened to support the English. She was captured, tried and burned by the second group, the Burgundians.
Joan of Arc is the patron saint of France, a nation which maintains a strict separation of church and state, and which tries its best to preserve its principles of secularism.
I am sceptical about the Tories’ sudden realisation of the importance of national service, in the middle of an election campaign. But I don’t think that even they would think it a good idea to invoke the shade of La Pucelle in support of this off-the-cuff proposal.
Meanwhile, are we to take it that CofE speakers on TftD are going to follow the example of their Jewish, Sikh and Hindu colleagues, and base their homilies on Big Religious Festivals and Holy Persons’ Days?
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In the Smiths’ song Big Mouth Strikes again I originally heard the lyric that should be “And now I know how Joan of Arc felt, As the flames rose to her Roman nose and her hearing aid started to melt,” as “As the flames rose the her Roman nose and her hairy legs started to melt.”
In the pantheon of Morrissey’s lyrics I suggest that “Her hairy legs started to melt” is just as good a lyric as “Her hearing aid started to melt” if not actually better seeing as neither the Sony walkman or hearing aids were invented at the time Joan lived, whereas hairy legs were probably very common among French females of her era.
I think this goes to show that ancient stories handed down by oral traditions can hardly be trusted as reliable given the likelihood that someone will have misheard one of the lines and created a wholly new meaning to what was intended in the original, supposedly divine, story.
According to Hurley, Joan of Arc gave her life for “something that she truly believed”. But what if she truly believed in something that was just an incorrectly repeated version of something misheard over 1000 years before? If that were true then what a waste of a life.
And that is the story of Christianity.
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Would it not be just too exquisite if the whole theistic religion nonsense could be shown to be based on a mondegreen?
Richard W
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Isn’t the whole Virgin Birth thing based on a mistranslation?
Stonyground.
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Original Hebrew, in Isaiah 7: ‘Almah’ – young woman.
Greek translation: ‘Parthenos’ – virgin.
And if anyone takes the trouble to look up Isaiah 7, they will find that the original tale has nothing whatsoever to do with what was claimed to have happened several hundred years later.
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Actually being born of a virgin was practically a sine qua non of ancient gods and heroes. Ra and Quetzalcoatl spring to mind. Siegfried on the other hand was born of brother-sister incest. Makes the Archers storylines look a bit mundane, I feel.
Richard W
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