Friday, September 26, 2008

26 Sep 1181 - Birthday of Francis of Assisi

Today is the birthday of Francis of Assisi.
As a teen, I read books about him. Biographies (particularly enjoying the book by Omer Englebert). The translation of the original "little flowers". Nikos Kazantzakis' amazing book on the life of Francis - the best of the lot, a lyrical, strange, tormented and yet beautiful account of the craziness of the little friar. I discovered John Michael Talbot's music because he was a Franciscan. I remember little of the time I watched the Franco Zeffirelli film "Brother Sun and Sister Moon" - coming after reading Kazantzakis, it did not leave much in my memory. Until finding video extracts from the film on YouTube, I did not realse that Donovan had contributed songs.

The video is embedded here - but if it does not play well for you (which is often the case with YouTube videos for me), download it and view using a FLV player. For downloading, I use DownloadHelper (an addon for Firefox), and GOM player for playback.



I liked Francis for his simplicity, his love of animals, his love of nature. The world needed him back in the 12th century. It still needs him today.

And tying nicely into the recent post, where I write about Death, sister of Dream (Morpheus) of the Endless in the Sandman series, is one of the verses from Francis' "Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon":
Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.

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