Not Your Average Joe

Pastor Terry Mackey speaks on LIFE. The Lord, Family & being the Pastor of one of the largest churches in Phoenix Arizona. My Pastor & 1st Family are the Best!! What a true blessing from the Good Lord above!! The Lord Did IT!!

What a joy & honor to interview Our 1st Lady Lynn Mackey of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Phoenix AZ. She dropped some nuggets of family trust & faith in the Lord. She is Beautiful inside & out. I thank the Lord for sending the Mackey Family.

Dante the pilgrim continues to rest on the first small ledge that runs around Mount Purgatory. Here, he and Virgil first discuss astronomy--or why the sun is in on his left (or "wrong") in this hemisphere. Virgil seems to end the discussion (in the last episode of this podcast) with a sneer: "If you're smart enough to figure this out."Indeed, the pilgrim is! In fact, he does Virgil one better. He summarizes the "science" far better than Virgil can. And Dante the pilgrim shifts the discussion to geography, which then Virgil oddly shifts to morality, one-upping the pilgrim to show who's really in charge.Join me, Mark Scarbrough, for this episode about a passage from PURGATORIO which is perhaps the crystallization of Dante's technique: misdirection as ultimately the way forward.Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:[01:27] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto IV, lines 76 - 96. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or drop a comment, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.[03:14] Dante the pilgrim restates Virgil's argument about the sun's position. Except the pilgrim changes the argument a bit.[06:41] Is there irony here? Dante the pilgrim is better able to explain the sun's position with a more straightforward restatement of the "science."[08:16] Dante the pilgrim then shifts the discussion from astronomy to geography. Virgil, then, does him one better and shifts the discussion of geography to morality.[11:21] Why does Virgil shift the discussion to moral allegory? Because of his wisdom? Or because of his limits?[13:36] Virgil is forced to admit his ignorance and so takes another drubbing in a string of them in the early cantos of PURGATORIO.[16:23] Rereading the entire sequence on the first small ledge of Mount Purgatory: PURGATORIO, Canto IV, lines 52 - 96.

Settled under the tomb of a heretic pope, Dante-the-pilgrim hears Virgil's first take on the nature of lowest hell: malice, injury, the heart of evil itself, all bound up in force and fraud.Mappamundi? No! Mappa-inferno! Virgil's geography of hell will take up most of the rest of this canto and provide us with an unparalleled glimpse into the poet's thinking about the nature of evil. Or is it a glimpse into Virgil's thinking?Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I rest with the pilgrim and listen to Virgil explain the road ahead.Here are the segments of this episode:[00:55] My English translation of this passage from INFERNO: Canto XI, lines 16 - 27.[01:49] How did we get here? A brief look back through the plot to this moment.[03:10] What is the significance of Canto XI? Might there by a medieval numerology running under even the numbers of the cantos?[05:06] An explication of the passage, line by line, with particularly emphasis on two words: "injustice" and "malice," apparently the keys to understanding the lowest parts of hell, the worst of human behavior.[12:40] My first larger question based on this passage: How do you rediscover the texts that meant so much to you in an earlier part of your life?[17:43] My second larger question: Why does Virgil feel the need to map hell for the pilgrim (and us)?