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This is all so very sad and so typical of Eastern Christians, whose knowledge of the true history of the Church has been corrupted by Hellenistic philosophy and indeed by the primitive language in which it was born.

As we in the West all know, the holy period was brought to Glastonbury in Britain by Joseph of Arimethea. St. Joseph then built the Lingua Basilica to house the holy period, where it was buried under the ambo. The secret of its location was passed down from abbess to abbess of the Order of Periodic Virgins. Once a year the virgins would secretly celebrate the Feast of the Period. The feast was punctuated by the solemn combining of the period and the comma, which brought a prolonged pause over the virgins and the ecstasy of the uncreated Word filled their hearts.

The location of the holy period was eventually revealed to Merlin, who retrieved it and gave it to Arthur. Arthur made a solemn promise only to use the period at a moment of great need. This moment came when Britain was about to be overwhelmed by the evil Saxons. Arthur then lifted the period high above his head and spoke the words of terminus. Thus the Saxon invasions were brought to a complete stop.

Some visiting monks from Mt. Athos could not, however, believe that an uneducated Celtic peasant could exercise such power. They began to spread the terrible lie that the words of terminus were in fact insufficient for the defeat of the Saxons, that Arthur had secretly followed the words with an invocation of the mysterious ellipsis. But what do ancient Greek-speakers know about punctuation? The period needs no help from any other form of grammatical agency!

Once crowned as king of the Britains, Arthur was confronted with a terrible decision. Should he return the holy period to the Virgins of Glastonbury, or should he release the period into the world? Merlin was no longer present to guide him, and so on his own authority, under the infallible inspiration of the ground of all grammatical being, Arthur made his momentous decision. After long fasting and prayer, he solemnly declared that neither nation nor Church could keep such punctuating power to itself. The period must transcend all culture, all nations, all ethnic identities, all languages. The period was thus published throughout Britain--and so the gift and power of punctuation was released into the civilized world and the written cosmos was reborn.

Hence we see that the Celtic Church is ultimately responsible for true eloquence and meaningful writing. Without the holy period, we would find ourselves back in the days of the barbarians, when one could never know when a sentence begins and when it ends. The Anglican Communion, heir of the Celtic Church through the faithful traditioning of periodic communication, holds dear to her heart this memory of the holy period. Yet she is still ignored by the other great ecclesial communities, both East and West. They depend so completely upon her and yet they cast her out as heretic.

Perhaps this is why the interminable debates of the Orthodox and Catholic churches seem to have no ending, no cessation, no conclusion. Until these two great churches finally repent and acknowledge the true origins of the period, until they acknowledge that the universal linguistic jurisdiction of Camelot is now embodied in the see of Canterbury, until they recognize that the successors of St. Augustine are the divinely ordained stewards of the period, they will never know the blessing and peace that only true punctuation can bring.

*

Dear Friends,

I guess nothing is simple in a Church that is divded up into chunks, by geography, language, culture, nationality, etc. But is isn't complicated, either.

The division is between the simple single period, which is commonly used as a demarcation of the end of something, for example:

BLAH.



And the complex triple period, which is commonly used to indicate something that goes on and on, although the author does not write it down, because he knows it really doesn't amount to a hill of beans, because no one will pay attention anyway. For example:

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH . . .



It does have its uses, however. For example:

The problem with our Church is . . .

The Bishop doesn't know . . .

The Church I don't go to is . . .

Those ______ people are always . . .


You may fill in the above with your own pet peeves and/or unending nonconclusions. :rolleyes:


I guess it is neither simple nor complicated,
but it does go on and on and on and . . .


John
Pilgrim and Odd Duck

No, Slovaks call it the Uh.

Dear-to-Christ Lemko Rusyn,

It appears that you are right! I certainly could not remember ever hearing that river called Uh but the existence of place name like "Vysok� nad Uhom" and "Pavlovce nad Uhom" prove that it is indeed Uh.

Do you agree that Rusins call it Uzh or do we go by that old song "Ot Ungvara..." and hence hold on to Ung?

More and more I can't trust my memory for some things...

Tony

Pretty soon somebody is going to say that the period proceeds from the colon AND the semicolon... nothing but pure craziness.

Tony,

I don't know if this has any bearing on what the average Rusyn called it, but I'm sure you've seen some old liturgical books printed in "Ungvar" (written in Cyrillic, of course).

-Dave

Hence the celebrated triple period and one signifying a politically correct inconclusive conclusion arrived at ecumenically in dialogue facilitated by the remaining periodic virgins....

Steve

Ahem, Inawe/Steve, if I may point out, you ended your statement with FOUR periods!
What are we to think?!
Was this an ode to the glories of punctuation, or a flippant disregard for tradition?!

Dear Communion of Saints,

Just a renewed restatement of the traditional celebrated triple period plus one! Must be a Latin thing.... :rolleyes:

Steve

An ecumenical attempt to incorporate both traditions in one posting? Not FOUR periods, but rather ONE period, followed by the THREE that proceeded from the ONE?
:p :rolleyes:

Dear-to-Christ Dave,

Yes I have sen that.

Tony

I have a copy of the Dobej Izbornik from the early 1900s which is a curious version of Old Slavonic transliterated into Hungarian rather than Cyrillic alphabet.

How interesting Subdeacon Randolph...where did you find a treasure like that? Think I could see it sometime? Maybe we could have dinner some evening soon? Don

The Izbornik was given graciously by my dear friend Don who seems to find the most incredible things...Mnohaya Lita!