Daily Primer — August 25, 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.
Augbeetle,
Given your obvious incompetence I have determined to take upon myself some duties which naturally should belong to you, lest your maladroit actions imperil my own position. I assure you — you will pay for your ineptitude in due time! Until then let us take up the content of your most recent missive. In it you mention your pilgrim’s angst about the imperfections in his efforts at the discipline of being a pilgrim. He intends to be a particular kind of person and finds that he is unable to follow through. He intends to avoid being another kind of person and finds to his despair that he is precisely the kind of person he loathes. We must make good use of this. I weary of the need to point out the following — you should have learned it well at the demonary — but I no longer trust that you are the student I thought you to be, so let me remind you that this predicament in which your pilgrim finds himself is an old one which we have been using to trap them for millennia. It is even captured in the writings of the Enemy’s book:
Rom. 7:15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate . . . 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. [NRSV]
As I said, I have taken it upon myself to do some work which properly belongs to you. Watch and learn, young minion. I have spent considerable time reviewing your pilgrim’s journal entries and his letters to mentors. Had you taken the effort to do this yourself you would have noticed a persistent inclination to confuse perfection with faithfulness. And further, he has a particular way of defining “perfection” which is potentially of great use to us. Your pilgrim thinks of “perfection” as something consistent, symmetrical, constant, unchanging, and universal. He is aiming at the ideal forms of Plato and aspiring to reach some version of himself which is timeless and heavenly. He is constantly surprised by the discovery that he is a creature “in-process,” though how he can sustain this sense of surprise in the face of a lifetime of change only the Enemy could know.
You must exploit his naiveté about this. Use his reveries about his childhood and skew them out of focus so that he recalls those episodes as simple and real and “perfect.” Let him fixate on the triumphs of his mentors and assume that those moments of glory and success were the permanent state of affairs in the lives of those he admires. Entice him with reveries of his past happiness or with dreams about his own future glory, and use these visions to lead him to a very simple and immutable idea of what his perfect life might be. We want him to establish in his mind an unyielding and merciless definition of perfect faithfulness, and then we can set about the pleasant work of using his own ideas of perfect faith to spiritually bludgeon him. Given what I read in his journals, even you should find this task easy to accomplish.
At all costs you must hide from his consciousness the fundamental principal which the Enemy has woven into the fabric of all creation — that all the Enemy has made grows according to a logic inscrutable to us and to the kind of perfection Plato has taught your pilgrim. All creation, including your pilgrim whether he realizes it or not, is theotropic. It naturally grows toward its Creator like a flower reaching for the sun. The Enemy has made your pilgrim to be “perfect” in his own idiosyncratic way. He cannot be “faithful” in the way his mentors were faithful any more than one tree can be a faithful tree by trying to grow in perfect imitation of the tree beside it. Each is perfectly a tree by simply being what it is. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of this in his concept of “inscape.” So be sure that your pilgrim never discovers Hopkins — or, for that matter, any poet. It is the poets who have a long history of revealing the very things we wish to keep concealed.
If your pilgrim ever realizes that his vacillations:
† between earnest following of the Enemy and duplicity of heart;
† between courageous discipleship and fearful retreat from the costs of that discipleship;
† between magnanimous living and parsimonious greed
are all like a tidal ebb and flow in a lifetime of growth — we will be in peril of loosing him. So keep him focussed on that particular notion of perfection which will abuse him and shield him from any impulse toward mercy and patience in his journey of faith. Work this angle until my next correspondence and do not forget to make your report back to me on progress.
In Depravity — Knockskull
Given your obvious incompetence I have determined to take upon myself some duties which naturally should belong to you, lest your maladroit actions imperil my own position. I assure you — you will pay for your ineptitude in due time! Until then let us take up the content of your most recent missive. In it you mention your pilgrim’s angst about the imperfections in his efforts at the discipline of being a pilgrim. He intends to be a particular kind of person and finds that he is unable to follow through. He intends to avoid being another kind of person and finds to his despair that he is precisely the kind of person he loathes. We must make good use of this. I weary of the need to point out the following — you should have learned it well at the demonary — but I no longer trust that you are the student I thought you to be, so let me remind you that this predicament in which your pilgrim finds himself is an old one which we have been using to trap them for millennia. It is even captured in the writings of the Enemy’s book:
Rom. 7:15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate . . . 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. [NRSV]
As I said, I have taken it upon myself to do some work which properly belongs to you. Watch and learn, young minion. I have spent considerable time reviewing your pilgrim’s journal entries and his letters to mentors. Had you taken the effort to do this yourself you would have noticed a persistent inclination to confuse perfection with faithfulness. And further, he has a particular way of defining “perfection” which is potentially of great use to us. Your pilgrim thinks of “perfection” as something consistent, symmetrical, constant, unchanging, and universal. He is aiming at the ideal forms of Plato and aspiring to reach some version of himself which is timeless and heavenly. He is constantly surprised by the discovery that he is a creature “in-process,” though how he can sustain this sense of surprise in the face of a lifetime of change only the Enemy could know.
You must exploit his naiveté about this. Use his reveries about his childhood and skew them out of focus so that he recalls those episodes as simple and real and “perfect.” Let him fixate on the triumphs of his mentors and assume that those moments of glory and success were the permanent state of affairs in the lives of those he admires. Entice him with reveries of his past happiness or with dreams about his own future glory, and use these visions to lead him to a very simple and immutable idea of what his perfect life might be. We want him to establish in his mind an unyielding and merciless definition of perfect faithfulness, and then we can set about the pleasant work of using his own ideas of perfect faith to spiritually bludgeon him. Given what I read in his journals, even you should find this task easy to accomplish.
At all costs you must hide from his consciousness the fundamental principal which the Enemy has woven into the fabric of all creation — that all the Enemy has made grows according to a logic inscrutable to us and to the kind of perfection Plato has taught your pilgrim. All creation, including your pilgrim whether he realizes it or not, is theotropic. It naturally grows toward its Creator like a flower reaching for the sun. The Enemy has made your pilgrim to be “perfect” in his own idiosyncratic way. He cannot be “faithful” in the way his mentors were faithful any more than one tree can be a faithful tree by trying to grow in perfect imitation of the tree beside it. Each is perfectly a tree by simply being what it is. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of this in his concept of “inscape.” So be sure that your pilgrim never discovers Hopkins — or, for that matter, any poet. It is the poets who have a long history of revealing the very things we wish to keep concealed.
If your pilgrim ever realizes that his vacillations:
† between earnest following of the Enemy and duplicity of heart;
† between courageous discipleship and fearful retreat from the costs of that discipleship;
† between magnanimous living and parsimonious greed
are all like a tidal ebb and flow in a lifetime of growth — we will be in peril of loosing him. So keep him focussed on that particular notion of perfection which will abuse him and shield him from any impulse toward mercy and patience in his journey of faith. Work this angle until my next correspondence and do not forget to make your report back to me on progress.
In Depravity — Knockskull
Letter Eleven of The Knockskull Epistles — 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.
We are among the builders,
we do silos and missile silos,
we do tall towers and large granaries,
we do pyramids and monuments and
steeples and high-rises,
we build because we are able,
because it looks good,
because it feels good,
because we have so
much stuff to store
we need bigger, better barns.
We make it tall and shiny and beautiful
only to discover that moth and rust consume, only to discover that shiny surface turns empty shell,
only to discover that storage is for goods
that melt and sour.
We end closer to empty-handed than we imagined.
As we are able we turn from our cities to you,
we turn from our successes to you,
we turn from our reason to you,
we turn from our power to you.
To you, to you, to you, to you,
our help is in no other
save in you alone.
You only, you enough, you in your generosity.
Whom have we in heaven but you?
There is nothing on earth
that we desire other than you.
Hear our trust and our thanks and our readiness to obey.
we do silos and missile silos,
we do tall towers and large granaries,
we do pyramids and monuments and
steeples and high-rises,
we build because we are able,
because it looks good,
because it feels good,
because we have so
much stuff to store
we need bigger, better barns.
We make it tall and shiny and beautiful
only to discover that moth and rust consume, only to discover that shiny surface turns empty shell,
only to discover that storage is for goods
that melt and sour.
We end closer to empty-handed than we imagined.
As we are able we turn from our cities to you,
we turn from our successes to you,
we turn from our reason to you,
we turn from our power to you.
To you, to you, to you, to you,
our help is in no other
save in you alone.
You only, you enough, you in your generosity.
Whom have we in heaven but you?
There is nothing on earth
that we desire other than you.
Hear our trust and our thanks and our readiness to obey.
Prayers for a Privileged People by Walter Brueggemann, pp. 19-20.
Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of your eye; hide us under the shadow of your wings.
Keep watch, dear Lord,
with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ;
give rest to the weary,
bless the dying,
soothe the suffering,
pity the afflicted,
shield the joyous;
and all for your love’s sake. Amen.
Keep watch, dear Lord,
with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ;
give rest to the weary,
bless the dying,
soothe the suffering,
pity the afflicted,
shield the joyous;
and all for your love’s sake. Amen.
adapted from Evening Prayer in The Book of Common Worship - Daily Prayer Edition, p. 41.