A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter I

imago Dei

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Image of God; the theological concept that humans are created in God's likeness, granting inherent dignity.

Detailed Definition
Imago Dei, "image of God," describes the theological claim that humans are created in divine likeness, bearing God's image. In poetry, this phrase grounds human dignity in divine source, suggesting that persons possess sacred worth. Poets invoke it when defending human value, when insisting on equal dignity, or when exploring what divine likeness might mean. The concept raises questions about whether the image persists despite sin, whether all humans equally bear it, what capacities it includes. It appears in religious verse and poems about human worth, where speakers ground claims about dignity, rights, or sacred status in this theological premise, arguing that because humans image God, they merit reverence and cannot be treated as mere objects.
Example
Example in poetry:
A religious poem invokes "imago Dei—we bear God's image, which grants us dignity"; Contemporary verse uses it when defending human worth: "Imago Dei means every person is sacred"; A poem about equality employs the phrase: "Imago Dei: all bear the divine image"; Verse about human rights uses "imago Dei" as theological ground; A metapoetic reflection might question "What does imago Dei mean if we're capable of such cruelty?"; Poets insisting on dignity invoke "imago Dei": "Created in the image of God"
Additional Notes
Imago Dei describes theological claim that humans are created in God's image, bearing divine likeness. Genesis 1:27 establishes the concept, which grounds human dignity in divine source. Poets invoke imago Dei when defending human value, when insisting on equal dignity, when exploring what divine likeness might mean. Related to debates about what capacities constitute the image—reason, creativity, moral sense, capacity for relationship. Useful for understanding religious poetry, verse about human worth, poems arguing that persons possess sacred status. The concept raises questions about whether the image persists despite sin, whether all humans equally bear it, whether certain acts can efface or diminish it. Contemporary poets use imago Dei when grounding claims about dignity, rights, or inherent worth in theological premise, arguing that because humans image God, they merit reverence, cannot be treated as mere objects or means. The phrase represents attempt to ground ethics in metaphysics, to derive ought from is.
Also Known As
image of God
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