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English Script Request

maiphuonghaha
Complete / 489 Words
by renga 0:00 - 2:53

You are listening to a program from BBC Radio Four.

"Anne Atkins, the novelist and columnist, good morning to you."

"Good morning, Nick. Saint Bridget's Day, the first of spring in the old Irish calendar. The festival of Imbolc. In the belly, or womb, the quickening of the soil, the light returning to Earth, heralded by Bridget's symbol of fire, just as Christians light candles at Candlemass tomorrow to welcome the light of the world. From today, virgin fields could be ploughed and impregnated and professional matchmakers bring couples together to wed at Shrove Tuesday before the long abstinence of Lent. And this year, Saint Bridget's Day of the Irish embassy will celebrate the creativity of women; actors, poets, musicians, architects, scientists, artists, all women filling the embassy to present their work. Born to an aristocratic father and slave mother, the young Bridget was generous to a fault, giving away so many of her father's provisions, the story goes, that he offered her as bride to the King. While the men discussed terms, she gave her father's valuable sword away, so the King said she was too good for him and he would never command her obedience. Another version described her as so determined not to wed she gouged out an eye to ruin her legendary beauty. Her name, shared with the ancient Irish goddess, and so the old festival became the new Catholic saint's day. Like Artemis or Diana, she seems full of oxymorons, virginity and fertility, paganism and Christianity, history and myth. One half gorgeous, the other hideous. Thus, as Professor Angela Burke of the University College Dublin will explain at the Irish embassy this afternoon, door-keeper Bridget like two-faced Janus looks both ways to the old and the new. Researching my first book, on Christianity and gender, I was intigued by apparent paradoxes in God. The character of Jesus embodying traits we think of as masculine and feminine, angry enough to scourge the temple, compassionate enough to weep for friends, strong enough to withstand torture, gentle enough to love little children, tough enough to eat nothing for forty days, practical enough to cook breakfast. Like the creator God himself, the rock who gave birth to us and comforts us like a mother, the father who teaches us and fashioned us from clay like a potter. Life brought forth by opposites, male and female, day and night, sun and rain, the cold of winter and warmth of spring, all essential for generation and growth. The catalyst for creativity, sorrow and joy, inspiration and perspiration, self-belief and self-criticism, humour out of darkest pain. Last autumn, the How To Academy hosted psychologist Susan David, author of The Fascinating Emotional Agility. Contradictions can confuse and disconcert, but we don't need to fight them, nor solve them, nor even understand them, we can enjoy and embrace them as the harbingers of life."

"That was Thought for the Day with Anne Atkins."

Comments

maiphuonghaha
April 10, 2018

Thank you so much, Renga!

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