When I think of what we have lost as a society this past year, two buildings spring immediately to mind - a pub and a church - symbols of a world which seems sadly to have vanished. The church is the Holy Name on Oxford Rd, Manchester (above), c.1995 when I used to go every day - a midweek Solemn Mass, Palestrina in the choir loft, candles glowing, incense billowing, kneeling before the Logos with three hundred others as the bells ring out at the Consecration, a feeling of unity and connection - not just with my peers, but with the Communion of Saints and the whole angelic host.
The pub is The Briton's Protection (below), just up the road in town - warm, intimate surroundings, the buzz of conversation, the give and take of banter and debate as ideas (on a good night) fizz back and forth across the table. This is the heart and soul of the City, that Civitas Dei which St. Augustine and Charles Williams championed and of which our earthly cities are a reflection and a stepping stone.
Both church and pub should, on paper, return as before, but the game's not played on paper, it's played on grass, and my sense is that the micro-managerial forces which have gained so much ground in 2020 will be reluctant to let such spontaneous, untrammelled, unmediated collective access to the Divine and the best of the human happen so easily and naturally again. Too unpredictable. Too unruly. Not at all 'safe.'
Ersatz, largely online solutions will be peddled and accepted out of necessity, but these will come to nothing in the long-run. They will founder on the rocks of reality because they have no anchor in human nature and are tethered to an unstable morass of shifting, free-floating illusion. True connection, with both God and man, is hard-wired into us, and the church and pub represent those deep, eternal European archetypes - the sacred and the secular, the Pope and the Emperor, the crown and mitre, crook and flail, etc - the twin pillars on which our civilisation is built.
These two poles cannot be easily or lightly dismissed. They cannot be dismissed at all, in fact, unles this is what the Great Reset is really all about - changing us at a deep and fundamental level so that these primal, archaic symbols can never return. It would be interesting, would it not, if this was the actual, unspoken aim of the restrictions we are currently enduring. Even then, failure would still be its portion, just as it was for the NICE in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength and their anti-natural, anti-Divine machinations.
Truth alone is real and truth alone will win. Falsehood withers in its gaze. Like the Balrog faced down by Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, it cannot pass. No matter how tarnished that mark of truth becomes inside us, it cannot be obliterated or cancelled out. It is the Secret Fire, the Flame Imperishable that Iluvatar, to stay with Tolkien, planted at the core of the universe on the morning of creation. He made men and women partakers in that mystery, and the pub and the church, despite their seeming incongruity and even insignificance, are outgrowths and expressions of that holy gift. They are always present because they are always true and they will come into our lives again without a doubt, resurgent like the phoenix.
The future is unwritten, as Joe Strummer of The Clash once said. Have faith in God, therefore, faith in those around you, faith in yourself, and faith in the indelible stamp of truth inscribed by Iluvatar upon your heart.
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ReplyDeleteRe. real human interaction vs. digital substitutes. I wonder sometimes whether the physical universe is an index of the spiritual meta-verse, such that physical closeness enables spiritual closeness. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteJohn, do you think that 'the End Times' (just supposing this is where we are) 'must' play out as prophesized in the Bible?
ReplyDeleteOr do you think we can change the 'fate' of the world by intercessory prayer? Because I have felt strongly compelled, for some time, to pray for God's intervention - for the sake of all the children...so that they don't have to experience any further disturbing events (or worsening ones).
@Epimethus - Yes, I think that's true and very important. Christianity is a profoundly incarnational religion. Matter is holy. So physical, material contact is thereby made sacred. As I suggest in the post, our connections with each other - especially in somewhere like a pub, which is a place set apart for precicely that purpose - make us participants in that 'Civitas Dei', which is itself a reflection of that Heavenly City described by St. John in the Apocalypse. We come close to the Divine in expressing our shared humanity in this way. I do honestly believe that taking this away from us is one of the darker spiritual motives driving this mania for restrictions.
ReplyDelete@Carol - No, I don't think the End Times are set in stone. I know many who do think that, however. In the Catholic world I see people combining scriptural prophecy with private revelation to produce timelines and charts of events which are preordained to happen on a certain order, and so on. In Protestantism, we often see a tendency to reduce the whole eschatological drama to a map of the Middle East.
Whenever the denomination, I think this attitude makes us passive spectators and also absolves us of having to do anything constructive because what's going to happen has already been written in advance. I just don't think God's like that. He expects more of us. He doesn't want us to be just hunkering down until He comes again. And what will he say to us when He does? That we sat on our hands and stopped trying to build the Kingdom? It's no good, in my view, just going on and on about how bad things are. We've got to make the spiritual and imaginative effort to tune into the transfigured world that's coming to us from beyond the wall of time. That's the eschatological, Eucharistic future that's really driving things - the 'deeper magic from before the dawn of time', which is so much stronger and deeper and more real than the 'deep magic from the dawn of time' being employed at the moment by the princes of this world. They're the past. They just don't know it yet.
That's not to say that things are going to be a breeze until then. Most likely not. I tend to agree with the Traditionalist school of thought, which claims that we're in the very late stage now of a long invilutuve process, which is going to end one day with an almighty crash and collapse. But within this decline, as Tolkien saw very clearly, God is always there to respond to our prayers and good works, and he will not hesitate to grant us periods of revival and renewal (even if they're only temporary in the grand scheme of things) if that's what He sees fit. God has even the power, if He wants to use it, to rip us the laws of his own universe and bring about the future golden age right now and just dispense with the rest of this dark age we're living through.
The job of a prophet is to flag up to people that if we turn away from God then bad things will happen. That's what they did in the Old Testament and it's what more contemporary prophets like Alexander Solzhenitsyn have done as well. We need to listen to them and act in what they tell us. I don't think any true prophet would claim that we're strapped to the burning wheel of fate. That's a counsel of despair, in my view, and the very opposite of what God wants from us. The darker the sky, the brighter the stars should shine. That's how I see it.
Thanks to you both.
Thank you John! I know you have a very busy life, so I really appreciate your taking the time to compose such a thorough (and quite lovely) response!
ReplyDeleteI feel a deep resonance with what you wrote here:
"It's no good, in my view, just going on and on about how bad things are. We've got to make the spiritual and imaginative effort to tune into the transfigured world that's coming to us from beyond the wall of time. That's the eschatological, Eucharistic future that's really driving things - the 'deeper magic from before the dawn of time', which is so much stronger and deeper and more real than the 'deep magic from the dawn of time' being employed at the moment by the princes of this world."
Every time you bring up the book, "That Hideous Strength", I get the same feeling as in reading the above, and as well a feeling of....oh, I don't know....it's a sort of 'niggling' at my intuition...as if The Holy Spirit is trying to tell me something...
I suppose it could be as simple as the idea that a group of like minded/like spirited people on the internet are, in a way, a community akin to the "St. Anne's" group in the book and might well be meant to play a part in God's eschatological plans.
Well - it looks silly written out like that!
Anyway, thank you again - no need to respond to this ;^)