The Blackberry Walk

It's 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep - time for an article. Recently, I've been watching a lot of Time Team. Despite knowing about the show as a child, and watching it on occasion, I never really appreciated it for what it was: the glorification of the British autist. Like many other shows from the naughties like Robot Wars or Scrapheap challenge, truly eccentric Brits, who in any other country would not make television, let alone celebrity, embody the greatest kind of niche specialised passion. But a specific moment in a recent episode has stuck with me. Near a neolithic flint mine, they find a hole bored into a chiselled chalk floor of filed with flint. The team suspect it was some kind of alter where they gave flint as a kind of offering to give thanks for the flint. Whether or not this explanation carries water - and I suspect not, it being the strange project of anthropologist to chalk every find up to ritual - I found the sentiment very interesting. Giving thanks is not just something done passively, or contemplatively: it's something which is demonstrated through sacrifice. The fact that the term agape has entered modern usage is almost a travesty. The Latin west has always used the Latin word caritas, seen in English as 'charity', but that this word has lost its meaning to many outside of cases like 'a charitable interpretation' is sad beyond belief. Charity - for I shall be using its original definition - is a kind of selfless love; but that's a kind of rigid parroted definition, moreso it's to act for someone else without expecting a quid pro quo. The quid pro quo is the enemy of charity, since you can't act for someone else when the expectation of reciprocation is your selfish motive. Sacrifice in the ancient world was built upon a kind of quid pro quo. You built an idol for a god to inhabit; you give offerings to the idol; and in return for the offerings, the god performs a wish of yours, like bringing rain, or good harvest. Returning to Time Team, they explained the giving of flint as if it were a charitable act, rather than a kind of quid pro quo to the flint gods; giving our knowledge of written pagan worship from sources, would it not make more sense to explain the phenomenon as burying flint back in the earth, as an exchange for the flint gods to provide future excavations with more flint?¹ The assumption Time Team make that sacrifice is done out of charity is a kind of Christian projection. God made the earth, sister of man, for man's sake; man being God's greatest creation, given free will in order to experience love. For charity can only be experienced through free will, rather than by the binding contract of the quid pro quo. Man must invigorate himself to recognise the charity of the world around him, of the people around him, of the Creator, in order to recognise the Good. Once you experience divine charity - as what happened to me in a mystical experience lasting a couple days a few years back - you feel a great guilt. I remember then feeling guilty over the smallest of things, like not dusting my belongings, or not properly cleaning myself, feeling indebted for either the possessions on my shelf or my body. Divine charity feels, as Anselm put it, like a debt you can't repay; but as I've argued, the language of economics, business, and deals is misguided. Rather, when experiencing the divine charity of the everyday, when you senses aren't gummed up to it, one can't help but want to reciprocate. This isn't a quid pro quo where an external pressure is placed to repay a debt, but rather a kind of inner impulsion to return the kindness given to you out of your own volition. It is important to note that all non-Pharisaic morality is downstream of this desire to repay divine charity. What is the sacrifice that must be made then? Well, there is no sacrifice to God. The final contract is to end contracts. When experiencing charity, the desire to reciprocate charity in kind is no sacrifice, but rather common sense, and natural. The quid pro quo relationship is a kind of corrupted form of the charity relationship - the true state man was designed to inhabit. To live by the teaching of Christ is the end of sacrifice. For to live by daily bread is to not place expectations upon future returns. 1. I don't mean to say the flint god wants more flint - he probably has enough. But a parallel can be seen to agriculture, where a small amount of seed is 'sacrificed' to the ground for the sake of future grain; whilst here some flint is sacrificed to the ground for future success in mining.