Warsaw (where I was when I wrote this post) is supposed to have had a basilisk<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Also a friendly mermaid<\/a> who is supposed to protect the city (although our guidebook cynically suggests that she hasn’t been seen when needed most):<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

On the grand coat of arms shown above, she is accompanied by the motto semper invicta<\/em> (“always undefeated”).\u00a0 However, this means something completely different for the Poles than it would for an imperialistic nation.<\/p>\n

The entire city of Warsaw has been sacked and all but destroyed several times, most recently when Hitler destroyed their monuments and over 85% of the buildings, killing or exiling nearly all of the inhabitants, in vengeance for the Warsaw Uprising<\/a>.\u00a0 A city which had once had 1.3 million inhabitants was reduced to a population of 1000.<\/p>\n

But the Varsovians just rebuilt as much as they could back exactly the way it used to be, so that it looks like an older European town even though almost all of it is actually post-WWII.\u00a0 Even under communism, they did not lose their sense of identity.\u00a0 It seems to be impossible to destroy a city that is loved this much.<\/p>\n

As the Lord says through his prophet Isaiah,<\/p>\n

“Afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
\nI will rebuild you with stones of turquoise,
\nyour foundations with lapis lazuli.
\nI will make your battlements of rubies,
\nyour gates of sparkling jewels,
\nand all your walls of precious stones.
\nAll your children will be taught by the Lord,
\nand great will be their peace.
\nIn righteousness you will be established:
\nTyranny will be far from you;
\nyou will have nothing to fear.
\nTerror will be far removed;
\nit will not come near you.
\nIf anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing;
\nwhoever attacks you will surrender to you.” (54:11-15)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These words were written of Jerusalem, but it resonates with the plight of every other afflicted and storm-battered city in the world.\u00a0 If there is even a single Pole in the New Jerusalem, nothing can prevent it from being rebuilt to be the New Warsaw as well!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warsaw (where I was when I wrote this post) is supposed to have had a basilisk: Also a friendly mermaid who is supposed to protect the city (although our guidebook cynically suggests that she hasn’t been seen when needed most): … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-links"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1326,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions\/1326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}