Saturday 19 May 2012

What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (2)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


20 May

Continuing the sketchy piece that was What did Jesus teach about bluebells ? (1), it can now be revealed that:

* We have learnt, from the recently discovered Garden-Centre Scrolls, that in the early days - perhaps misconstruing something that Jesus once said or did - followers of his teaching each started carrying around a pot of earth in which had been planted a clump of bluebells

* Since bluebells, in common with many plants, not only have (as The Book of Ecclesiastes¹ advises²) a season for flowering, but also tend to prefer shade, the meaning of the gesture - whatever could have been intended - was not, let us say, always apparent from the display in the pot

* Rationalizing it all, the pots were done away with, and emblems - or badges - depicting a flowering bluebell (or three) took their place

* Some say that, with the version with three bluebells, The Trinity was represented (although any theology of Three in One³ was not formulated until centuries later)

* It could just as easily have been any one of The Holy Family, a prefiguring of Peter's denials, or the women, numbering at least three, who were called Mary

* No more than this is known (until I trouble to make something else up, of course)



End-notes

¹ Parts of many works, in imitation of The Bible, have been called books, but do we know why they are so called? (Greek biblios)

² However, those who do not know it, should not construe this reference to imply that it is a pre-Christian gardening manual.

³ Which has also, curiously, long been a motto for a type of oil for use on bicycles. (Whatever oil one uses, and however one seeks to avoid getting it on one's clothes, the former's contact with the latter is almost always inimical to any attractiveness or cleanliness that they might have, besides which the odour of the oil is both unmistakable and largely ineradicable.)


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