Variations on gratitude
Variations on gratitude
A note on pledges, a question for wild Christians, and a few links
Three little sections, which bumped into a unifying theme as I wrote:
Pledges
Thank you everyone who has pledged to be a paid subscriber if I turn that function on. I didn’t anticipate you doing that, and appreciate it. For now, I’m thinking about it.
At the end of last year I had a four month gap in posting, and I’m not yet posting at the rate I was before. Given that level of consistency, I’m not really happy taking money, even if you’re happy giving it: especially as I know I’m going to be busy over next few weeks.
If I do switch on the paid function, I’ll keep the vast majority of posts free, apart from maybe an occasional short ‘bonus’ piece. In essence, the main benefit of paying would be incentivising me to spend more time writing newsletters, not exclusive access to them once they’re written.
Thank you. I’m happy to hear anyone’s thoughts in the comments.
A question for wild Christians
Paul Kingsnorth was this newsletter’s earliest and biggest booster. It was a gratuitous act, and I’m grateful.
His influence means Christians are well represented in my readership. I’ve written about my own falling away from the church, which I do not expect to be reversed; but I’m glad of my Christian readers. In comments here and elsewhere, you’ve given me a lot.
Paul recently wrote a piece called Wild Christianity. It’s excellent even by his standards; but it has left me with a question for those who, like Paul, are both Christian and believe that the arc of the times leads us towards an unprecedented disaster.
I agree about the arc of the times; but as a non-Christian, I read it as purely human disaster. Life is bigger than us, and will survive even if we don’t. Species have population surges, collapses, and extinctions. We’re not special.
My attitude is clearly not available to a Christian. There is no way to align the scriptures with the view that humans are just the same as any other species. That leads to my question:
Assuming that we are heading towards an unprecedented collapse of the current world order, is it possible for a Christian to interpret that as a merely ‘local’ event, like of rise and fall of empires, or is it fundamentally a question of eschatology?
Or to put it crudely, ‘Must wild Christianity be millenarian?’
I have no real stakes in this question, but I’m curious.
Links
I’m also grateful for the excellent writing I keep finding:
The Talking Skull by RG Miga
This is the third in a third part series; but it works alone, and this part is so damn good that it’d be criminal to link anywhere else:
‘I think it’s fair to say that—for a large and growing number of people—the Big Story about controlling the world has become narratively unsustainable. That is terrifying when left unmanaged. Hence the need for that myth work, the job of digging down into the strata of stories and setting new foundations.’
Fittingly, his fiction is excellent too.
Serving Tea To Nazis by Ian Leslie
An apt contrast between Nelson Mandela’s tactical engagement with enemies and the sad state of usual public debate.
‘I often see people deeming certain groups, or certain arguments, as beyond the democratic pale, and unworthy of engagement (they like to cite Popper’s paradox of tolerance). There are cases in which I agree with them, but more often, this position seems to be a way to avoid having to argue a case or to do any thinking at all. In those cases, I recall Mandela’s willingness to engage with actual white supremacists who wanted him dead.’
Review: The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen by Freddie deBoer
Freddie continues to be virtually the only person in the public sphere talking honestly about mental illness:
‘Every day that people with Ivy League degrees, laptop jobs, and ADHD nominate themselves as the face of mental illness, while others dismiss the prevalence of very ugly behaviors that very much do occur, is a day that the violent homeless schizophrenic person who needs our sympathy the most loses more and more of it. It’s a despicable reality’.
Our Knowledge of History Decays Over Time by Ben Landau-Taylor and Samo Burja
A moving and thoughtful meditation on the implications of forgetting for history as a discipline:
‘The march of entropy destroys witnesses, artifacts, scholarly records, and all other evidence of the past. Entire civilizations are lost.’
Brace, brace, comrades ... I'm letting go by Mike Hind
Mike lives up to his ‘Rarely Certain’ agenda by changing his mind in response to a reader’s feedback. It might seem a small thing, but I think it’s inspiring.
Picture: Swaledale Sheep and Lambs North Yorkshire Moors by Ambersky235 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Your question to 'Wild Christians' is a good one, very searching. I arrived in Christianity fairly recently, after a long sojourn through paganism, and I am still hovering on its stranger fringes for the most part. My attempt at an answer might seem slippery, but I came by it honestly: whatever the world is, as we know it, we are part of it; without us, it would not be 'the world', it would be something else. And I think that matters. It puts me in mind of the end of The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (a writer I thought I had outgrown but always end up coming back to): if the ceremonies are not observed, the sun will not rise. Instead, a ball of flaming gas will illuminate the globe. I am beginning to think that difference is more profound and less semantic than I initially assumed. If we live in a way which honours that difference, things might be better for all creation, and not just ourselves.
I used to believe that life would go on largely unaffected by the demise of humanity, and probably for the best. That belief is still in the process of shifting, and I lean heavily on the words and ideas of others to describe my thoughts while I am still finding my feet. I recently read Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta and it has helped me understand the concept - and reality - of humans as a custodial species, a role sustained by the practice of ceremony, which only we can fulfil. Of course, almost nobody believes this; of the few that do, almost nobody has the knowledge or memory of how to perform this role, how to live in this way. I certainly don't, but I am trying to learn what I can.
I am sure that someone better versed in theology than I am will find a way to express a more insightful and Christian version of these observations. All I can say is that the ritual framework of Christianity has been useful for me to navigate the spiritual reality of the experiences which have led me here.
As to your question about Christianity and the fate of humanity, there is an interesting short essay by C. S. Lewis titled 'Dogma and the Universe'. It is not long and worthy of being read entirely, but let me quote the relevant lines:
'As far as I understand the latter, Christianity is not wedded to an anthropocentric view of the universe as a whole. [...]
'It is, of course, the essence of Christianity that God loves man and for his sake became man and died. But that does not prove that man is the sole end of nature. In the parable, it was the one lost sheep that the shepherd went in search of: it was not the only sheep in the flock, and we are not told that it was the most valuable — save in so far as the most desperately in need has, while the need lasts, a peculiar value in the eyes of Love. The doctrine of the Incarnation would conflict with what we know of this vast universe only if we knew also that there were other rational species in it who had, like us, fallen, and who needed redemption in the same mode, and that they had not been vouchsafed it. But we know none of these things. It may be full of life that needs no redemption. It may be full of life that has been redeemed. It may be full of things quite other than life which satisfy the Divine Wisdom in fashions one cannot conceive. We are in no position to draw up maps of God’s psychology, and prescribe limits to His interests. [...]
The doctrines that God is love and that He delights in men, are positive doctrines, not limiting doctrines. He is not less than this. What more He may be, we do not know; we know only that He must be more than we can conceive. It is to be expected that His creation should be, in the main, unintelligible to us.
Christians themselves have been much to blame for the misunderstanding on these matters. They have a bad habit of talking as if revelation existed to gratify curiosity by illuminating all creation so that it becomes self-explanatory and all questions are answered. But revelation appears to me to be purely practical, to be addressed to the particular animal, Fallen Man, for the relief of his urgent necessities —- not to the spirit of inquiry in man for the gratification of his liberal curiosity.'