I wonder what more anyone needs than watching the meteors streak overhead. Tiny grains of sand burning up in the skies are just brilliant (ho ho).
And that we can explain and predict them over thousands of years. Class. And beautiful beyond belief.
I wonder what more anyone needs than watching the meteors streak overhead. Tiny grains of sand burning up in the skies are just brilliant (ho ho).
And that we can explain and predict them over thousands of years. Class. And beautiful beyond belief.
They’re gorgeous. I’ve seen them from the Outer Hebrides, too, which was terrific.
As for belief, we humans are as those grains of sand, in universal time and space, our lives so bright to us and so brief. People explore belief in part because their big existential questions aren’t always answered by the beauty and predictability of the Perseids. When a neighbour lost their pregnancy at 6 months, although they aren’t churched, they still turned to the vicar for help, and he counselled them, was alongside, and conducted a service for them and for that little son they bore. Other people might just have said “well, it is what it is, at least the stars remain beautiful”, but even knowing they’re still lovely doesn’t make such a bereavement feel better. Even if there is no God, the vicar’s belief in such a being made it possible for him to be experienced and trustworthy enough to love and help these people when they needed it, from someone outside the circle of family and friends who were not themselves in a good position to give aid and succour.
None of that makes the Perseids less lovely, of course.
I am jealous of seeing them under light-free skies. We had a remarkably clear night, but still the London glow in the background.
Still, ten or so in an hour felt very good indeed.
You are spot on and nicely poetic as to our fleeting existences.
As to prescribing meteors as part of bereavement counseling, I’d find that unlikely.
The church certainly has a great set of rituals to help with closure around death, and I could see why people would choose them.
As per my previous comment, other closure options are available. Not necessarily as tried and tested, but still good.
In terms of the personal assistance, some may have turned to secular counselors to help them, others to friends and family. Some to all of these as well as their church community. Once again, the church is very good at this; maybe the best.
Just as journalism and newspaper advertisements became seemingly inextricably linked, so the church with many rites of passage. I strongly believe that both links are breaking down. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing in either case. It should be in our collective wit to keep the things we treasure while finding new structures to fund and deliver them.
I’m trying hard to imagine a secular delivery structure which could have the longevity and loyalty produced within the C of E, and nothing in history so far suggests it’s remotely likely; there’s no motivating factor other than “well, it’s nice to be nice” and “it’s good for the species to be nice”: although the genes for altruism clearly do find expression overall, it seems to me to be sometimes rather a near thing, historically. I give weight to Churchill being a theist, for example; our notions in the West of respect for individuals qua individuals is inextricably linked to our earlier Christian heritage which said that God valued every one of us as individuals, and that there was no distinction of persons, slave nor free, male nor female. That was radical thinking in its day and still is. The concept of a knowable God, or god (if you prefer) is also quite a radical concept; I’d rague that in terms of intellectual history, without redefining the un-knowable god as subject to personal, 1-to1 knowledge, we couldn’t have made the step to experimental science, as the forces of Nature, the fickle gods and goddesses and dryads and hamadryads, were all essentially unpredictable and unknowable forces.
But that’s another conversation!
When people find their backs are to the wall they often recreate the institutions of the church to fit new circumstances. We may be going through such a phase.
I am tempted to argue that the Christian church is itself simply in a progression from e.g. the early Sumerian moral codes and I’m sure they from something else. Yes, the Christian church has been pretty dominant in our society for 1,500 years, but that isn’t the major part when compared to the emergence of civil society. Could it morph into something else as happened when it emerged?
The emergence of civil society starts with the ordering of the universe, I reckon, from the Big Bang to the messy and wonderful edifice we have now, careering along whatever way it’s going (what a great ride!).
So in God’s time our civil society is still in the order of the Perseid shower, the merest flash in the pan. There’s always, every second, billions of yes/no decisions occurring and being made; whatever our beliefs, we are always saying Yes or No to what is good or optimal or least-worst according to our perception. The belief in a loving God conditions those choices as much as any other beliefs (in ‘justice’ or ‘compassion’ or ‘self-interest’ or ‘biological demands’ or ‘nature’). The church offers a multi-roomed structure in which some of those conditions are explored.
So, to answer your question, yes, it can morph: it’s a living church and therefore evolves. I’m very sure that the God I have in mind isn’t remotely threatened by human evolution in any sense or realm of our being (or else that wouldn’t /be/ God), which includes the church as much as genetics. Just as God isn’t really threatened by atheists – one of the best Christians in the wider sense I know is a complete atheist, and is an exemplar of ‘Just because he doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean God doesn’t believe in him’, which is the paradox of trust in the ultimate Great Whatever/Whoever.
[Tangentially, I had run into that Hari article elsewhere, and yes, poor chap, he is tilting at a straw man; I do wish journalists were … just *better*.]