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"Give unto us beauty for ashes, and the oil of JOY for mourning, and the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness," -- Isaiah 61:3

05/01/00
clue=The Finland Station was where Lenin returned to Russia in 1917 after living the war years in exile. 
name=Josh

The Latin prayer at the beginning is the prayer for the introit used for the Feast of the Most Holy
Trinity.  A complete translation:

Blessed be the Holy Trinity, and undivided unity: we will give glory to Him, because He hath shown His mercy 
to us. Ps. O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Thy name in all the earth! V. Glory be to the Father, and to 
the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, 
world  without end. Amen.

clue:  if "po v_zdukha" on the airmail stamp is Russian, it's older than the spelling reform of 1918; 
but it could also be Bulgarian for all i know.

clue:  question:  what is the significance of the (unscheduled) on the
messages?  This seems to indicate some type of meeting.

clue:  The King's Indian seems to be a chess move.  I don't play chess but this site describes it:
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/Openings/sic10.html

clue:  Does anybody know the source of "Nothing that can be lost is worth possessing"?  Some of the most striking quotes are 
very hard to find.

clue:  Re: Near a Terminal's query. It seems to me that many of their "quotes" are variations on the original, and thus very
difficult to track down. Compare their phrase to this, from Boethius: "nothing which can be lost can be a supreme good." Not
exactly the same, but pretty close.

clue:  Does anybody know the source of "Nothing that can be lost is worth possessing"?  Some of the most striking quotes are 
very hard to find.

Hegel again.  Last one was Hegel as well.  More communism (Finland station).

Morphy, Alekhine, Karpov, and King's Indian are all chess references.
Morphy and Alekhine had a very aggressive playing style, Karpov less so.
Morphy was champion 1858-1859, Alekhine 1927-1935 and 1937-1946, Karpov 1975-1985.  No two of them lived at the
same time.
Morphy USA, Alekhing originally Russian but then French, Karpov USSR.  Are these geographical references
(USA+France 'confounds' USSR in/'via' India? - see also the airmail sticker in Russian and French)  Somebody
suggested a board or role-playing game?  Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (December 1979) -- but France/old Russia
does not fit??

"Nothing that can be lost is worth possessing" - variation on Mt 6:19-21:

"19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and
steal.  20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves
do not break in and steal.  21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "

Augsburg June 25, 1530: The Augsburg Confession is the first of the great Protestant Confessions. All orthodox
Lutheran church bodies base their teachings upon this treatise because they believe that it is a faithful to Word
of God.  More at

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/wittenberg-boc.html#ac

Captain Morgan is a rum and a mid-17 C pirate (see previous references to Carib.), but maybe we need to look at the
Freemasonry connection: http://www.utlm.org/booklist/titles/up025_expositionoffreemasonry.htm

clue:  The air-mail stamp is not in Russian. It's Bulgarian.

clue:  Following somebody else's suggestions I wonder if the different languages don't give geographic coordinates?  This is
another of the many instances where a disciplined group could keep the information to itself and the rest of us would be hard put
to decypher it.  I'm not sure anybody could which makes one splendid code.

Just thought I'd mention - though probably irrelevant.

Nothing that can be lost is worth possessing.

Not many people consider "nothing" to be a proper noun - as in - the blind can see it, the deaf can hear it, and
if you eat it, you'll die (nothing).

The Greek text between the swords says, "Life out of death."

Something caught my graphic artist's eye.  The two sword graphics are identical, but the blade on each sword is flipped
vertically, whereas the hilt is flipped horizontally.  I wonder why someone go to the trouble of doing it that way when it would be
easier to flip the whole thing horizontally.

3) The quote brings to mind _The Little Prince_ by St. Expury:  "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It
is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."  What this spiritual insight
might mean in this quest is anyone's guess.
4) The names of those meeting the train would seem to be aliases for those involved in this grand snipe hunt.

Concerning the greek phrase between the two swords - "zoe ek nekron" (pronounced zo-ay ehk nehk-rohn): I only know a slight
bit of greek and use it in studying the New Testament, but I analized this phrase as exaustively as I could.

zoe - feminine nomnative(subject) singular noun meaning "life", in the New Testament, usually the thriving perfect life that only
comes by existing in God's love and embracing that. Note : it appears that the stress mark over the eta character is tipped the
wrong way.

ek - preposition meaning "out of" or "from"

nekron - seems to be an adjective (meaning dead), but that makes no sense, so maybe the word "things" or "people" is implied as the
thing it describes. It is in genative plural case, and since the genative is the posessive case, the ek before it could just
intensify the posessiveness causing the two to be translated as "of the dead", "the dead's", "of dead things", or "dead things'".
Strictly, though, a preposition like ek requires a dative noun. The semi-circular mark over the omega should be, I think, like the
mark over the eta in zoe.

Altogether it says:

  "the life from the dead",
  "the life out of the dead",
  "the life of the dead",
  "the life from the dead things",
  "the life out of the dead things",
  "the life of the dead things",
  "the life from the dead people",
  "the life out of the dead people",
  "the life of the dead people",
  "the dead's life",
  "the dead things' life",
  "the dead people's life", or
  
any reasonable combination of the above


05.06.2006 / clue:  Andrew - 

I blogged here a few days ago and I need to correct a mistake I made in my comment. Concerning the gerrk text between the two
swords, the preposition "ek" does in fact take a genitive object, which is the case that "nekron" is in. So there is no
inconsistancy, "necron" should not be in dative; it should be in the genative case just as it is. My apologies for the error.

I don't think anyone's translated the Hegel: the entire sentence runs "This higher language, that of Tragedy, gathers
and keeps more closely together the dispersed and scattered moments of the inner essential world and the world of action."

It comes from the section of the Pbenomenology called "The Spiritual Work of Art."

I believe that Morphy was Catholic.

"Zoi ek nekron", literally means life from something dead. 

It refers to Romans 11: 15 where Paul says that Israel was blind not to see Christ as the long waited Messiah. 

"For if the rejection of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?"

I noticed that they were an awful lot of people wanting to point out what language that airmail sticker was in, but I
didn't see any offer an explanation.

Those elders among you may remember that a Bulgarian man was accused, almost certainly incorrectly, of participating in a failed
plot to assassinate John Paul II in 1981. 

Look again at the "quote" in 2).

Now no one seriously able to plan such a thing would talk about it in a college newspaper, but I think it's a way to draw
interest from like-minded nerds, however very few and far between they must have been.

New to the site, nonetheless intrigued. In response to Near The Terminal, i think that the line is from page 152 of The 
Journal of Albion Moonlight By Kenneth Patchen.

source; https://books.google.ca/books?id=aBf1uCnNLW8C&lpg=PA152&ots=6jK3V26MFr&dq=%22Nothing%20that%20can%20be%20lost%20is%20worth%20possessing%22&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q&f=false

Quotes similar to "A solution both elegant in its simplicity and devastating in its application" have been 
used when describing Fermat's Last Theorem, and is alleged "Marvelous Proof"

On this date in history (June 25, 1530), 487 years ago, the Augsburg Confession was presented by our Lutheran forefathers to Emperor Charles V.

Dr. Martin Luther, with a price on his head ever since his famous stand before the emperor at Worms in 1521, corresponded with the Lutheran princes and theologians from the Castle Coburg by a sort of pony-express arrangement.  This arrangement was meant to protect the great reformer.  Even Luther’s most powerful friends were not sure they could protect him outside the borders of Saxony.

Meanwhile, at Augsburg, Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, gave a clear expression of Luther’s Biblical teachings in a document signed by the pastors, princes and theologians of the Lutheran Reformation.

The Augsburg Confession set forth the clear teachings of the Bible – by grace alone – through faith in Christ alone – by Scripture alone.  It declared that the differences between Luther and Rome could not be settled by compromise, but only by a return to the Scriptures.  The break with Rome was now inevitable and would prove to be irreversible.

Sadly, after Luther died in 1546, Melanchthon lost his nerve.  He made some alterations to the wording of the Augsburg Confession in an attempt to unite the Lutheran and Swiss Reformed churches through compromise on such matters as the Real Presence of our Lord’s body and blood in Holy Communion.  (The Lutherans confessed that the true body and blood of Christ are really present in the sacrament; the Reformed said the bread and wine were mere symbols of the body and blood).

The genuine Lutherans rejected these changes and held fast to Luther’s pure teachings as expressed in the original document presented to the Emperor on June 25, 1530.

To this day, you may see some old Lutheran churches with the abbreviation U.A.C. on the cornerstone.  This stands for:  Unaltered Augsburg Confession.  This statement of faith, along with the other creeds or confessions of the Lutheran Church are included in The Book of Concord – 1580, also known as The Lutheran Confessions.

These confessions include:  The three universal creeds – the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, The Augsburg Confession, The Apology (Defense) of the Augsburg Confession, The Large & Small Catechisms of Dr. Martin Luther, The Smalcald Articles and The Formula of Concord. 

Our pastors and teachers pledge themselves at the outset of their ministries to teach in accordance with these Confessions because they are a correct expression of Bible teachings.  God grant us the faith and courage of our forefathers to resist the countless compromises of our own times and to stand firmly on the Scriptures.

 Tagged with Augsburg Confession, Bible, Dr. Martin Luther, Holy Communion, Lutheran Reformation, The Book of Concord
Rev. Roy W. Hefti
Rev. Roy W. Hefti