The Blackberry Walk

Bit of a religious post today for Holy Week, haven't written one in a while. I may work in STEM, distorting results, but I treat my workplace as a microcosm of society. Topics of conversation, opinions, interests, for all these I see my office as normative. If some new Netflix show is being discussed around the office, I presume everyone outside of the office is talking about it too. And one thing I see time and time again being talked about, as odd as this may sound, are the tenets of Islam. This may come as a shock. My workplace is formed of mostly white middle-class millennials: the furthest one could get from Islam, one would think. But no, time and time again, I hear those white middle-class millennials asking about Muslim beliefs and practices, not in a 'gotcha' way about the treatment of women, but a genuine curiosity in something different from them. Rest assured: the way these questions are asked gives no suggestion that they'd be interested in joining the Mohammedans; rather they ask with that crypto-Orientalist tone which is today so common. Why, I continue to wonder, are they so interested in Islam? The answer given when I quizzed a colleague on this is that it's something different, something unique. He knows all about Christianity, he said. Naturally, he knew very little. But even when I've been asked about my faith (for the record, I don't evangelise at work), they've seemed uninterested. Christianity in the eyes of the many is a stale thing without much flavour, and I feel that for many only through complete alienation from the faith in youth, as had been the case for myself, will there be a widespread movement back into the church. But I feel there's something else. In Islam there are certain cultural practices, like Ramadan, which are seen as genuinely impressive - which they are. It is impressive not to eat nor drink from sunrise to sunset, and this feat is respected by all. Asceticism is found across the world because it is impressive; and when a man achieves impressive feats, one wonders what or who gave him the strength of will to overcome his inner drives to self-preservation and relaxation. Christianity in its earliest years was a master of this. You hear of St. Symeon the Stylite who lived atop a pillar for thirty-six years; of the many hermit saints who had vows of solitude; of the Benedictine monastics who lived lives of great rigour and order, permitting no moments of folly: these are the men who brought the masses to faith. They were all pretty cool. Even regular Christians: the Romans saw Christian monogamy, men having sex only within marriage, to be an absurd sacrifice to have to make, when in Rome it was so common to have slaves at your beck and call. In those days, that sacrifice took took the form of state persecution. These feats are all impressive, but in modern Christianity are uncommon. Perhaps this spiritual flabbiness is why people don't see Christianity as the path forward. By their fruit ye shall know them. So this Holy Week, I've been doing a Lenten fast. This entails essentially a vegan diet¹: no meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs. Nothing which comes from an animal is allowed. Eating in such a way changes how you think, I reckon; it is as if without these rich foods in one's diet, one begins to feel a little grave, calmer, and perhaps more lucid in disposition. I can see how the vegans get used to such a mindset, and why so many cultures like the Jains in India see such a diet as holy. Aldous Huxley, of Brave New World fame, has quite an odd theory on the Lenten fast. He wrote in his essay Heaven and Hell that the Lenten fast was designed to induce vitamin deficiencies in Mediaeval peasants with the aim of bringing about hallucinogenic states of consciousness come Easter. Though this is of course scientism hogwash, there is a kind of metaphorical truth in what he's saying; by fasting, we are reaching a holier state by removing the rich foods which give us vitality, and entering a deeper state of mind. There is though another important result of fasting I've discovered: I really can't wait for Easter to come. In a recent article, I wrote briefly about liturgical tricks, where I specifically contrasted the thick incense of an Orthodox liturgy against the emotional music and lighting of an American megachurch. The thing is, both are trying to make you feel something, and it feels a bit like they're tricking you. Familiar forms of worship feel right: the church organ isn't trying to trick me into feeling something; in my church I'm simply experiencing the Holy Ghost, not being moved emotionally by the senses! Holding this position is hard. Hard because in our universalist world where the traditions of the world are set out for us on a buffet, it becomes hard to hold to any form of particularism; and hard because a Reddit atheist will say that it's just your mind playing tricks on you. I know from introspection that a certain note played in the liturgy is liable to make me choke up a little, this is quite consistent. Either I believe the Holy Ghost enlivens me with faith in that moment, or I believe it's emotionalism. Maybe the Reddit atheist is right, maybe it is in this case my mind. But in no way does this undermine the value of faith. I firmly believe that inspiring beauty, beauty that moves people to action, is one of the most important goals of the liturgy and of Christianity. Christ wanted us to follow Him, love Him, and obey His commandments, and through worship this is exactly what is inspired in us.² Through the liturgy we are moved and made to feel emotions in the same way a play may make you feel emotions, only in the play the actors are being watched whereas in the liturgy you are an acting participant. I'll draw out a little trichotomy, a trichotomy which I intend to discuss more in future articles. This, for me, is the real bedrock of epistemology. The trichotomy is this: propositional understanding, symbolic understanding, and ritual understanding, those listed in ascending order of power. To briefly outline, propositional understanding involves words and sentences, a way of understanding which is detached and analytical, like reading a scientific journal; symbolic understanding involves symbols, metaphors, and observation, like watching a film; and ritual understanding is something participated in, something experienced and not watched from the sidelines, much like a church liturgy. The church, in bringing believers through her gates, operates on each of these levels of understanding. Theology and sermons act as the propositional wing, Christ understood through philosophising and application of Christ's teaching to the everyday. Much of the content of the Epistles fit into this category also - through not all of it. The Epistles can be symbolic in their language. The Gospels, though, being a narrative are highly symbolic³, each narrative of Christ inexhaustible in its interpretation. And despite the countless great minds who've dwelt upon the cross over the millennia, have we really gotten much further than scratching the surface in our understanding? Ritual reality, then, is found in the liturgy. You are singing, crossing yourself, kneeling, giving the piece, taking the Eucharist: this is where the story of Christ is made present. Through the liturgy and its cycle, you experience and live within the great story which underpins reality, and gain appreciation and gratitude for Christ's salvific sacrifice. There are two main liturgies, the Sunday liturgy and the liturgical calendar. For the sake of brevity, I'll deal only with the Sunday liturgy - maybe I'll save the liturgical calendar for another time. The Sunday liturgy is modelled on Holy Week and the events therein. It begins with Palm Sunday, where the cross is brought into the church by a procession;⁴ this is of course Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on an ass, and then his entry into the Temple. Then there is a time for teaching. Just as Christ taught in the Temple for much of Holy Week, so does the liturgy, with a reading from an Epistle or the Old Testament, followed by a reading from the Gospels. Then, entering the second half of the Sunday liturgy, the Last Supper is remembered, and the body and blood of Christ is held up and consecrated just following the events of Maundy Thursday. There is here a kind of apotheosis - maybe not the right word for the context - wherein the Host and Chalice are held up and responded to with a Great Amen. The mood then suddenly darkens as the congregation sit and say the Lord's Prayer. This, I believe, is Christ praying in the garden of Gethsemane, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done" (Luke 22:42). The Host is then broken to be shared, this breaking being Christ's death on the cross; this is then followed by the Agnus Dei, mourning the Passover sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God. There is a period now of silence and reflection, waiting to receive the Eucharist. This is Holy Saturday - the day in the liturgical calendar I'm now writing, where there is an emptiness in Christ's death, and a listlessness as to what to do. Then through the Eucharist you participate in Christ's Resurrection as the first fruit of the Resurrection of all mankind, concluding the service. Some say the church has gone ""woke""; and there is some credence in this, no doubt. But whatever strange new theory is being propounded from the pulpit or belief whispered through the laity, we are bound first and foremost by the liturgy, for the liturgy is ancient and unchanging. The story of Christ as told in the Gospels is experienced and felt through the liturgy, through active participation in the Passion narrative. Simply reading and learning isn't enough: St. Paul calls us to wear Christ⁵ in order to become like Him. Transformation comes through the ritual reality of the liturgy. Faith is a loaded word. For centuries, its understanding has been diluted down and diluted down into just 'believing'; so long as you believe in Christ, nothing else matters. Many have lost their faith because of this understanding. If faith is just believing in God - something which the scientific worldview does its utmost to make unbelievable - why live according to Christ's commandments? What's the point if all one must do is proclaim that Christ is God? Why even go to church? Such thoughts echo in many. But in what many consider to be one of the strangest events of Holy Week, that being the cursing of the fig tree on Holy Monday, we see clearly what faith is. The fig tree is cursed for not bearing fruit, for by its fruit ye shall know it; and unless faith in Christ and following Christ bears fruit, He will not recognise you. Faith is like faithfulness to one's spouse: it is a contract wherein in exchange for ever-lasting life in paradise, we must keep His commandments and beg His forgiveness when we sin for not upholding our end. In short, we are called to live like Christ, and not only believe in Him. The Christian life is shown through action. So often I hear of people being turned off by Christianity for the same reason that Christ cursed the Pharisees, that being hypocrisy. The way in which your life is lived at once points to holiness and also to evangelism. Better, I reckon, that accosting people on the streets with pamphlets, is to live in a way which honours Christ and is transformed through the liturgy in His image. It is for Christianity to be physical and in the world, not for the sake of being seen, for standing in visible places to be seen praying is what the Pharisees were chastised for, but as religious practice so that devotion to the Faith can be seen. Just as the Muslims do with Ramadan, we too shall be called to acts, without fears of acts righteousness, for it is through setting ourselves apart from the world⁶ in such a way that bears fruit which makes Christianity attractive. 1. Veganism, I would content, is a form of the Lenten fast gone rogue. Veganism finds its spiritual predecessor in Seventh-Day Adventists, of which Mr Kellogg of cornflakes fame was a member. Mr Kellogg, as any Reddit factoid collector will tell you, also had a prescribed yogurt enema to prevent masturbation. As was the way for Seventh-Day Adventists. Cornflakes were meant to be eaten with water, not milk, because Mr Kellogg and other Seventh-Day Adventists also had a Lenten diet all-year round, just like the Vegans. Both Seventh-Day Adventists and veganism are American holiness movements with no respect for the fact that every fast needs a feast. 2. Inspire, in-spire, to breath into us. Holy Spirit, spiritus is Latin for breath. Something to munch on. 3. Please don't misunderstand, by symbolic I don't, as many do, mean metaphorical and didn't happen: think of symbolism as an emergent quality of real life, rather than something eisegetically impressed upon the world. And I do mean this ontologically. 4. There is rich symbolism here wherein the church is the Temple. For instance, there is a Menorah of candles in the high altar which is the Holy Place of the Temple. The middle candle of the Menorah is a crucifix because Christ is the ever-lasting light of the Temple - quite a contrast to the second temple Miracle of the Oil after the Maccabean restoration. 5. Gal. 3:27 6. The Hebrew for holiness is qodesh, which means to set apart.