Daily Primer — August 23, Boone - North Carolina
Each day you will be given:
A Florilegium entry
A Daily Prayer
and a Night Prayer.
A Florilegium entry
A Daily Prayer
and a Night Prayer.
The Knockskull Epistles - Letter 1 — Pilgrimage
Augbeetle,
I am delighted to learn from the placement office that you have landed a position in the lowerarchy of our Father’s government — namely a coveted position in the Department of Pilgrimage Prevention (DPP). I trust that you know already that several of the lowest and most despised demons in our Father’s government began their careers in that very department. I and the rest of the faculty are expecting really sinister things from you. Who knows, in time perhaps you will return to us and be joined to us in the forging of new tempters.
Our researchers are tracking a resurgence of interest among our patients in the spiritual practice of pilgrimage, and this has caused unpleasant reverberations to careen up from the throne of our Father below. Never since the time the humans call the Middle Ages has our work been so threatened by pilgrimage and that is why we are deploying our best and brightest young tempters to the DPP. We must put your position to our best use, and I thought that it would be wise for me to provide you counsel as you begin your duties. Though the placement office has shown remarkable confidence in your capacity for evil by demoting you to such a position straight out of school, you are nevertheless inexperienced in the art of tempting, and I feel I must guide you as you begin misguiding others.
What our Father below desires is that our patients have no faith in the Enemy at all — but if they have faith we minions are tasked to be sure that it remains a domesticated faith. I mean that in several ways: 1) tame animals, 2) a creature fond of the comforts of and perceived securities of home life. These silly creatures, with their limited view and their very limited experience, even sometimes imagine that they have domesticated the Enemy! They do not have that direct access, which we, unfortunately cannot avoid as pure spirits, to the wild and feral Enemy who is free to choose how to respond to every moment. They cannot fully appreciate how maddening it is that the Enemy simply refuses to be logical and predictable. The Enemy claims that every creature’s needs are so unique and that the Enemy’s love for each creature is so idiosyncratic that allowances must be made outside the confines of strict logical deduction. Our Father below has voiced his gravest dissatisfaction with the Enemy’s refusal to act consistently — but to no avail. Ah . . . but I digress.
Domestication and pilgrimage — that is what I desire to write about today. It is critical that you understand the threat which pilgrimage represents to the kind of domesticated faith which is the aim of every truly despicable tempter. We desire a faith which is “tame.” That is, we desire that if our patients have any faith at all - that it be lukewarm and ineffectual. That it be inanimate without any real energy or zeal. We think of these creatures as animals destined for slaughter and consumption, and for our purpose the more phlegmatic and predictable their faith the better.
The Enemy views these creatures not as food for consumption but as children in need of parenting. It is the Enemy’s aim to adopt these creatures and include them as members of the household of God. They have only to be committed members of the family, following the rules of the house to fully benefit from the lessons the Enemy would teach them. Your pilgrim’s “faith” amounts to the simple choice of trusting that the Enemy is benevolently inclined toward him and living in an appropriate gratitude for that benevolence. However, faith understood in this way often has the effect over time of producing in these creatures the worst sort of fiery resolve and selfless action. The Enemy encourages these traits because they are, in miniature, the sorts of attributes one finds in the Enemy.
Our untamed Enemy who is able to love all creatures without the constraints of partiality hopes that these creatures, who are sons and daughters, also will be undomesticated as they live out the implications of their love and trust of the Enemy. We, on the other hand, want their faith (if they must have it) to be a dispassionate faith — something which poses no danger to any of the systems of oppression which we have carefully designed over millennia. If we must, we let our patients dabble at faith, but we must misguide them carefully so that going through the motions of devotion to the Enemy and his causes never spills over into any real resolve to be transformed into a child of the Enemy who lives in, and according to the rules of, the household of faith.
We also want our patients to be home-bound in all of the most sinister ways. We want them to be nationalist — imagining that their country deserves to be exempt from the confines of compassion for and justice among other nations. We want them to embrace xenophobia — always fearful of the “other,” and assuming the worst in anyone they do not already know. Truly sinister tempters will take this very far, leading their patients to perceive in the different languages, dances, foods, and arts of another not a witness to the breadth and depth of the Enemy’s creative genius (which is what the Enemy will lead them to see if we are not careful), but as a threat to their own ways of speaking, eating, and living. The illogical aim of the Enemy is that these creatures be as diverse as possible, while remaining one people. They are not only to recognize one another’s uniqueness but are to celebrate that they are one — though not all alike. As you know this flaunting of individuality within unity is a direct offense to the uniformity imposed by our Father below.
But there is more, if we tempters are doing our work well, the habits and impulses of the most rabid forms of nationalism and xenophobia will be woven into the practice of our patient’s faith. Instead of saying, “In God we trust” and meaning by that “We trust that God is the source for everything worth having and that our government and our nation are (at best) stewards holding in trust a land and a people which properly belong to God,” properly misguided patients will mean, “We trust that God is uniquely on our side in all international disputes and that we can count on God to fight with our armies and vanquish our enemies because the claims and aspirations of our nation are synonymous with the claims and aspirations of God.” It will not take long for the flags of nations to enter the holy places of worship and the voices of both pastors and politicians to begin attaching the name of the Enemy to all-manner of petty agendas. That is exactly the kind of faith we want our patients to have!
This is why the resurgence in the spiritual discipline of pilgrimage is such a danger. When one of our patients becomes a pilgrim and sets out on an intentional journey of self-reflection and discovery, our cause is immediately imperiled. Pilgrims expect that if they find the Enemy at all it will be in the person of a stranger. They journey with the expressed purpose of seeking to find the Enemy among people with habits which seem strange to them — and in distant places too. They anticipate that the inevitable surprises and inconveniences which are part of every journey to a place unknown are not, as we would have them believe, the result of the inferiority of others, but rather are opportunities for the pilgrim to ask, “How is God speaking to me in this moment?” I could go on for many pages. The impulse to set out as a pilgrim seeking to find the Enemy in the wide world of others is a great threat to our aims as tempters, and we must deploy every available asset to render these pilgrimages ineffectual if we can.
Woo your patient with the comforts of home. Entice them with thoughts of safety and security among people they already know and like. Fill their head with anxiety about a hundred potential perils they might encounter should they leave their “father’s house, their kindred, their country, to go to the place where the Enemy is leading them.”
Write to me, Augbeetle, and tell me to whom have you been assigned. Give me all the relevant information in your next letter and we will begin to devise our stratagem.
In Depravity — Knockskull
Augbeetle,
I am delighted to learn from the placement office that you have landed a position in the lowerarchy of our Father’s government — namely a coveted position in the Department of Pilgrimage Prevention (DPP). I trust that you know already that several of the lowest and most despised demons in our Father’s government began their careers in that very department. I and the rest of the faculty are expecting really sinister things from you. Who knows, in time perhaps you will return to us and be joined to us in the forging of new tempters.
Our researchers are tracking a resurgence of interest among our patients in the spiritual practice of pilgrimage, and this has caused unpleasant reverberations to careen up from the throne of our Father below. Never since the time the humans call the Middle Ages has our work been so threatened by pilgrimage and that is why we are deploying our best and brightest young tempters to the DPP. We must put your position to our best use, and I thought that it would be wise for me to provide you counsel as you begin your duties. Though the placement office has shown remarkable confidence in your capacity for evil by demoting you to such a position straight out of school, you are nevertheless inexperienced in the art of tempting, and I feel I must guide you as you begin misguiding others.
What our Father below desires is that our patients have no faith in the Enemy at all — but if they have faith we minions are tasked to be sure that it remains a domesticated faith. I mean that in several ways: 1) tame animals, 2) a creature fond of the comforts of and perceived securities of home life. These silly creatures, with their limited view and their very limited experience, even sometimes imagine that they have domesticated the Enemy! They do not have that direct access, which we, unfortunately cannot avoid as pure spirits, to the wild and feral Enemy who is free to choose how to respond to every moment. They cannot fully appreciate how maddening it is that the Enemy simply refuses to be logical and predictable. The Enemy claims that every creature’s needs are so unique and that the Enemy’s love for each creature is so idiosyncratic that allowances must be made outside the confines of strict logical deduction. Our Father below has voiced his gravest dissatisfaction with the Enemy’s refusal to act consistently — but to no avail. Ah . . . but I digress.
Domestication and pilgrimage — that is what I desire to write about today. It is critical that you understand the threat which pilgrimage represents to the kind of domesticated faith which is the aim of every truly despicable tempter. We desire a faith which is “tame.” That is, we desire that if our patients have any faith at all - that it be lukewarm and ineffectual. That it be inanimate without any real energy or zeal. We think of these creatures as animals destined for slaughter and consumption, and for our purpose the more phlegmatic and predictable their faith the better.
The Enemy views these creatures not as food for consumption but as children in need of parenting. It is the Enemy’s aim to adopt these creatures and include them as members of the household of God. They have only to be committed members of the family, following the rules of the house to fully benefit from the lessons the Enemy would teach them. Your pilgrim’s “faith” amounts to the simple choice of trusting that the Enemy is benevolently inclined toward him and living in an appropriate gratitude for that benevolence. However, faith understood in this way often has the effect over time of producing in these creatures the worst sort of fiery resolve and selfless action. The Enemy encourages these traits because they are, in miniature, the sorts of attributes one finds in the Enemy.
Our untamed Enemy who is able to love all creatures without the constraints of partiality hopes that these creatures, who are sons and daughters, also will be undomesticated as they live out the implications of their love and trust of the Enemy. We, on the other hand, want their faith (if they must have it) to be a dispassionate faith — something which poses no danger to any of the systems of oppression which we have carefully designed over millennia. If we must, we let our patients dabble at faith, but we must misguide them carefully so that going through the motions of devotion to the Enemy and his causes never spills over into any real resolve to be transformed into a child of the Enemy who lives in, and according to the rules of, the household of faith.
We also want our patients to be home-bound in all of the most sinister ways. We want them to be nationalist — imagining that their country deserves to be exempt from the confines of compassion for and justice among other nations. We want them to embrace xenophobia — always fearful of the “other,” and assuming the worst in anyone they do not already know. Truly sinister tempters will take this very far, leading their patients to perceive in the different languages, dances, foods, and arts of another not a witness to the breadth and depth of the Enemy’s creative genius (which is what the Enemy will lead them to see if we are not careful), but as a threat to their own ways of speaking, eating, and living. The illogical aim of the Enemy is that these creatures be as diverse as possible, while remaining one people. They are not only to recognize one another’s uniqueness but are to celebrate that they are one — though not all alike. As you know this flaunting of individuality within unity is a direct offense to the uniformity imposed by our Father below.
But there is more, if we tempters are doing our work well, the habits and impulses of the most rabid forms of nationalism and xenophobia will be woven into the practice of our patient’s faith. Instead of saying, “In God we trust” and meaning by that “We trust that God is the source for everything worth having and that our government and our nation are (at best) stewards holding in trust a land and a people which properly belong to God,” properly misguided patients will mean, “We trust that God is uniquely on our side in all international disputes and that we can count on God to fight with our armies and vanquish our enemies because the claims and aspirations of our nation are synonymous with the claims and aspirations of God.” It will not take long for the flags of nations to enter the holy places of worship and the voices of both pastors and politicians to begin attaching the name of the Enemy to all-manner of petty agendas. That is exactly the kind of faith we want our patients to have!
This is why the resurgence in the spiritual discipline of pilgrimage is such a danger. When one of our patients becomes a pilgrim and sets out on an intentional journey of self-reflection and discovery, our cause is immediately imperiled. Pilgrims expect that if they find the Enemy at all it will be in the person of a stranger. They journey with the expressed purpose of seeking to find the Enemy among people with habits which seem strange to them — and in distant places too. They anticipate that the inevitable surprises and inconveniences which are part of every journey to a place unknown are not, as we would have them believe, the result of the inferiority of others, but rather are opportunities for the pilgrim to ask, “How is God speaking to me in this moment?” I could go on for many pages. The impulse to set out as a pilgrim seeking to find the Enemy in the wide world of others is a great threat to our aims as tempters, and we must deploy every available asset to render these pilgrimages ineffectual if we can.
Woo your patient with the comforts of home. Entice them with thoughts of safety and security among people they already know and like. Fill their head with anxiety about a hundred potential perils they might encounter should they leave their “father’s house, their kindred, their country, to go to the place where the Enemy is leading them.”
Write to me, Augbeetle, and tell me to whom have you been assigned. Give me all the relevant information in your next letter and we will begin to devise our stratagem.
In Depravity — Knockskull
The Knockskull Epistles were a series of letters I wrote in the style of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters which purport to be between Knockskull, who is on faculty at a prestigious demonary, to one of his former students who has recently graduated with a Master of Infernal Interference degree. Augbeetle has been assigned to the Department of Pilgrimage Prevention and is wholly dedicated to the tempting of the pilgrims to whom he is assigned. — PHL
Florilegium is the Medieval Latin word for bouquet, or more literally flowers (flos, flor-) which are gathered (legere). The word florilegium was used to refer to a compilation of writings, often religious or philosophical. These florilegium are literary flowers—beautiful words/prayers/thoughts I have gathered. During my sabbatical they will give me something to ponder each day. — PHL.
The priest says, “Almighty God … from whom no secrets are hid.”
We rush to the next phrase but now linger there. We are rich conundrums of secrets,
we weave a pattern of lies in order to be
well thought of,
we engage in subterfuge about our truth.
We carry old secrets too painful to utter,
too shameful to acknowledge,
too burdensome to bear,
of failures we cannot undo,
of alienations we regret but cannot fix,
of grandiose exhibits we cannot curb.
And you know them.
You know them all.
And so we take a deep sigh in your presence,
no longer needing to pretend and
cover up and
deny.
We mostly do not have big sins to confess,
only modest shames that do not
fit our hoped-for selves.
And then we find that your knowing is more
powerful than our secrets.
You know and do not turn away,
and our secrets that seemed too powerful
are emptied of strength,
secrets that seemed too burdensome
are now less severe.
We marvel that when you find us out
you stay with us,
taking us seriously,
taking our secrets soberly,
but not ultimately,
overpowering our little failure
with your massive love
and abiding patience.
We long to be fully, honestly
exposed to your gaze of gentleness.
In the moment of your knowing
we are eased and lightened,
and we feel the surge of joy move in our bodies,
because we are not ours in cringing
but yours in communion.
We are yours and find the truth before you
makes us free for
wonder, love, and praise—and new life.
We rush to the next phrase but now linger there. We are rich conundrums of secrets,
we weave a pattern of lies in order to be
well thought of,
we engage in subterfuge about our truth.
We carry old secrets too painful to utter,
too shameful to acknowledge,
too burdensome to bear,
of failures we cannot undo,
of alienations we regret but cannot fix,
of grandiose exhibits we cannot curb.
And you know them.
You know them all.
And so we take a deep sigh in your presence,
no longer needing to pretend and
cover up and
deny.
We mostly do not have big sins to confess,
only modest shames that do not
fit our hoped-for selves.
And then we find that your knowing is more
powerful than our secrets.
You know and do not turn away,
and our secrets that seemed too powerful
are emptied of strength,
secrets that seemed too burdensome
are now less severe.
We marvel that when you find us out
you stay with us,
taking us seriously,
taking our secrets soberly,
but not ultimately,
overpowering our little failure
with your massive love
and abiding patience.
We long to be fully, honestly
exposed to your gaze of gentleness.
In the moment of your knowing
we are eased and lightened,
and we feel the surge of joy move in our bodies,
because we are not ours in cringing
but yours in communion.
We are yours and find the truth before you
makes us free for
wonder, love, and praise—and new life.
Prayers for a Privileged People by Walter Brueggemann, pp. 7-8
This night we lean forward out of the tomb and into the day of resurrection.
We acknowledge that much of our living looks more like dying:
† treading upon and desecrating the earth in ways that are not sustainable;
† treating those closest to us with less than Christ-like compassion;
† chasing after little gods who will not bless us.
For our many sins of commission and omission we look to you for mercy and ask that you would create in us new and clean hearts, capable of extending mercy to those who have injured us.
As the daylight fades and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the frenzy of our labor ceases, we entrust to you all that is incomplete and unfinished and yield outcomes to you who are both wise and merciful.
In your mercy, grant to us restful sleep and when our hour arrives, a peaceful death — in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We acknowledge that much of our living looks more like dying:
† treading upon and desecrating the earth in ways that are not sustainable;
† treating those closest to us with less than Christ-like compassion;
† chasing after little gods who will not bless us.
For our many sins of commission and omission we look to you for mercy and ask that you would create in us new and clean hearts, capable of extending mercy to those who have injured us.
As the daylight fades and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed and the frenzy of our labor ceases, we entrust to you all that is incomplete and unfinished and yield outcomes to you who are both wise and merciful.
In your mercy, grant to us restful sleep and when our hour arrives, a peaceful death — in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Liturgy of the Hours — PHL.