After yesterday's funeral, one of the mourners discovered she had lost her poppy and began to search for it.  Whilst I thought this was a bit excessive, it clearly mattered to her, and I was pleased when she found it.  She explained that each year she kept her poppy to put on the Christmas tree, recalling a young man from our village (to whom she was, presumably, related) who died in Iraq nearly three years ago: this year there would be three poppies.

A powerful, but quiet remembering.  Not overwrought or mawkish, just a red flower nestling amidst tinsel and fairylights as a relative remembers.  I was reminded of the words in Matthew's gospel as Mary received a gift of myrrh: 'a sword will pierce your heart also.' I imagined a shudder running through her young woman's body as new life and hope were already tinged with death and fear.

I am sure that the woman who rescued her lost poppy, and carefully smoothed its battered petals, will enjoy her Christmas celebrations; I am struck by the simple symbols of remembering that will prevent it being a denial of the realities of the broken world into which a Saviour is born.

I made it to the end of the Heidegger chapter!  Hurray.  At that point I opted to call it a day, and save Gadamer for my text reading slot.

Towards the end of the chapter, I found a sentence that was worth pondering, both in relation to biblical hermeneutics and hermeneutics of historical artefacts:

'Prior to every interpretation, the hermeneutical manifests itself as "the bearing of message and tidings."'

Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, New Have, Yale University Press, 1994 p. 104

citing Heidegger, On the way to Language tr. Peter D Hertz, New York, 1971 p. 29

Whilst not every 'message' or 'tiding' is 'good news,' and there presumably can be kakangelion (is there such a word?) as well as euangelion, this simple phrase seems to point to something important in interpretation - that it is concerned with releasing/realising the message (meaning and doing perhaps) of a text (or object, film, image, piece of music, set of data, etc).

Hermeneutics as euangelion - as gospel - liberating the message of hope - seems a good thing.  Maybe it balances, in a good way, the ubiquitous 'hermeneutic of suspicion' I have heard of to the point of tedium.