By Francis W. Porretto
March, 23 2008
You might be surprised to hear that each Sunday morning, before I set out upon the day's Rumination, I read through a number of older ones to see if there are any themes therein that need a fuller treatment. The answer is usually yes, indeed, yet far more often than not I wind up pursuing some relatively new topic, which my eagerness to explore the reaches of faith forbids me to neglect.
So, let's see: Zoroastrianism, just war theory, the discretionary nature of Christ's Passion, the shortage of left-handed starters, why the Rangers can't seem to make it into the Stanley Cup playoffs without a major injury to a star player...naah! Let's talk about blogging!
I've been writing for the Web since about 1998. Eternity Road is the third site I've operated. The previous ones were the late but fondly remembered Palace Of Reason and a smaller, largely unknown site hosted by Yahoo! GeoCities. Over the course of the decade behind me, I've Web-published -- Weblished? -- more than three million words' worth of opinion articles, cultural commentary, political philosophy, short, medium, and long fiction, and assorted blather. I've often been asked, sometimes by myself, why I do it.
Well, why does anyone do it? In 1998 there were hardly any blogs; the neologisms "blog" and "blogger" had only just entered our colloquial lexicon. Three years ago, when Connie du Toit set up Eternity Road as an Expression Engine-powered site for me, there were approximately five million blogs. Today, according to Technorati, there are somewhere around forty million.
Normally, when N persons set out to do any arbitrary thing, they have at least N distinct reasons for doing so. My "outer" suspicion is that this is an exception -- that bloggers have a highly concentrated set of reasons for their pastime. My "inner" suspicion is that it's a set I share as well.
Blogging is a vehicle through which to reach others, whether to celebrate them, persuade them, caution them, scold them, or merely enjoy them.
Shall we have a big of course? Why else would anyone set down his ponderings in pixels for the public to peruse? But why is that something so many persons, a bare handful of us articulate enough to order breakfast at Denny's without tripping over our own tongues, should want to do?
That's a question without a "logical" answer. It appears that we're simply made that way. Damned few persons really prefer the life solitary. Even those of us amply supplied with family and friends seem to want as wide a circle of acquaintances as we can possibly contrive. If you've ever wondered how a tavern can sell beer at $4 per 12-ounce bottle when the same bottle costs less than a dollar at the wholesale suds emporium, there's your answer. It's not about the booze; it's about shooting the breeze with people you hardly know.
I do this specifically because it allows me to convey my thoughts to persons I'd otherwise never have had the opportunity to engage. It helps to sustain my sense of connection to the rest of Mankind. Perhaps equally important, it allows me to tell myself in some degree of sincerity that my value to others goes beyond my material productivity. The vehicle of blogging both connects me with others and assists me in maintaining adequate self-regard; it holds out the possibility, however slight, that my removal from the world would not instantaneously end my influence upon it.
Your mileage may vary...but somehow, I don't think it does. At least, not by much.
A vehicle is something that will assist you in getting from where you are to somewhere else you'd like to go. Our physical vehicles are for use in crossing the distance between two points in space; we often use them to take us to vistas we'd never otherwise have experienced. Our artistic vehicles allow us to explore otherwise inaccessible realms of wonder and emotion. Our spiritual vehicles -- worship, prayer, meditation, other forms of devotion -- aid us in bridging the gap between mundane existence and the realm beyond.
Here the deliver’d Saints enjoy the boon
Of life, and what they sow’d beneath the Moon
In tears, at BABYLON’s unhallow’d stream,
Where long they mourn’d o’er SALEM’s sacred spoils,
They reap above, the price of all their toils,
And sing with grateful voice the noble theme.There He, whose just hands hold the golden key
That opes the palace of Eternity,
Enjoys, with MOSES and EMMANUEL’s Choir,
The vict’ries of the Faith; and those who, led
By holy PAUL and BOANERGES, bled,
Are amply paid by Heav’n’s eternal Sire.[Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, Canto XXIII, stanzas XXVII, XXVIII]
If you've been reading these Ruminations for long, you hardly need to be told how greatly I value the solemn ceremonies of the Church to which I am an allegiant. What occasionally depresses me is how many communicants appear not to enjoy them but rather endure them. No small number of Christians attend Sunday services out of the sense of obligation...sometimes out of fear of being talked about should they cease to be seen in church regularly. The ceremony can't mean much to someone who participates in that frame of mind. Nor can it do much for him of a positive nature. He's there to avert a feared unpleasantness, not to garner the grace that flows from the Eucharist and our communion with Christ.
But there's worse. "Cosmetic Christians," adults for whom religious observance is purely obligatory, often transmit that attitude to their children. Indeed, I can hardly believe they could avoid doing so. Kids pick up far more of their parents' attitudes and biases than we like to believe. The anti-religious tenor of our mass media exploits such raw material by deriding religious participation as empty ritual, form devoid of content, socially useful camouflage for the beast of infinite rapacity and cruelty that's really what Man is at his core.
I've said before that Christianity is not a religion for children, but for mature persons capable of calmly and soberly evaluating the Christian mythos and measuring the prescriptions of the Christian ethos against their grasp of human nature. I'll go on saying it until I die. A great part of the reason I hold to this is that the agency of corruption that turns most children against Christianity is the perverse behavior of adult Christians, their cosmetic-Christian parents prominent among them. Children are far more collectivistically inclined than adults -- that says a lot about the maturity level of left-liberals, when you think about it -- and thus are highly likely to absorb the "lesson" that religious attachment is merely a protective hypocrisy, behind whose veil we can abuse ourselves and one another as fully as we please.
Children in such circumstances never learn of the immense power of Christianity as a spiritual vehicle, a fully sound, unspeakably satisfying way to explore the realms of the spirit both within and without oneself. They turn to other, irrelevant or actively harmful doctrines and practices. Absurd Oriental and animistic creeds. Cults conjured out of fantasy. Sometimes, drugs and the associated delirium and dissolution.
Too much of this is the consequence of being compelled to religious practice by cosmetic-Christian parents. For just as Christianity is not for the immature, neither is it for the insincere. The former cannot operate the pedals; the latter tend to drive it off a cliff. Far better to be a candid agnostic or atheist, to live an otherwise morally upright life, and to allow your kids to reach their own religious convictions in their own time.
In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, just as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him; lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples the word. And as they went to tell his disciples, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said unto them, Be not afraid: go, tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. [Matthew 28:1-10]
A vehicle can have more than one function. Apart from getting us from one place to another, it can also be a means by which to test ourselves. Ask any NASCAR driver.
Today is, of course, Easter Sunday, on which day we commemorate the central miracle of the Christian narrative: the Resurrection of Jesus on the third day after His Passion and Crucifixion. The story of the Crucifixion is recounted in all four of the Gospels. It was witnessed by hundreds of Jews and Roman soldiers. The resurrected Christ revealed himself to hundreds more, about five hundred according to Saint Paul [I Corinthians 15:1-7], and continued to walk among men for some forty days afterward.
None of this is confirmed by non-Christian sources. That gives the doubter ample room to say it could all be just a pretty fantasy, just one more bit of if-only to stir the hearts and open the wallets of the credulous. A young colleague of mine, who knows of my convictions and appears disturbed that someone he regards highly should believe such a fairy tale, keeps repeating that the Gospel stories of Jesus's ministry, Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection are unconfirmed by other sources. It could be pure fiction, he says over and over to me. And indeed, it could.
But any chronicler who reported those events as observed facts would perforce become a Christian. It could not possibly have been otherwise, given the sequence described, which certified Jesus's death on the Cross and which testified to His subsequent appearance among men. In this sense, the story of the Resurrection is a test of our capacity for belief. He who accepts that the Resurrection really occurred as the Gospels tell it must accept the Christian faith: the only religious creed whose mythos tells of a God willing to die, not in combat with some other deity, but solely for His creatures' benefit and instruction.
The Resurrection is a vehicle in another sense as well: it provides the motive power we need to open us to the love of God and the prospect of eternal bliss. For all the events of the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ were prophesied, both by Jesus Himself and by the prophets of the centuries before Him. The Resurrection confirms the moral and ethical heart of the Judaic God-story, the edifice of monotheism upon which Western civilization is founded. He who accepts the Resurrection cannot help but be drenched by gratitude for the gift of life. He cannot doubt to Whom his thanks should be directed.
The Resurrection was a unique event, never to be repeated. But why should it need to be? Through the door opened by the Resurrection flows all the promise and potentiality of Man as a spiritual being: the possibility that each of us, by giving thanks to God for the gift of life, and by accepting the obligations and constraints laid upon us by our natures, might rise again, fully enlightened, our travels completed at last, to join in the unending Alleluia that will be sung on the Last Day.
May God bless and keep you all.
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