Easter reflections
Apr. 12th, 2020 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It’s been a strange way to celebrate my first Easter as a practicing Christian. There’s definitely some elements that I’m very sad to have missed out on, not least my confirmation which I have to accept may be some considerable distance away yet. It would have been lovely to observe the Easter vigil in church and I do miss the celebration of mass in a beautiful setting, particularly of course participating in the sacrament.
However it hasn’t all been bad. Our rector has been diligent about live-streaming mass each day which has meant that my day has still had a liturgical shape to it. A background in the Western occult tradition means that I’m very comfortable with the idea of worship as an individual pursuit, I’m arguably more comfortable with that than the practice of public worship. Without the distraction of other people around me I’ve been able to engage more internally with the liturgy and with the symbolic representations of the words and gestures of the celebrant. Again this is something that a background in ritual magic makes somewhat easier to manage.
The discipline of Lent has been a definite positive. I chose to give up alcohol for the duration and for the last 52 days I have, barring two lapses, remained entirely sober. It’s been tough, I do like a drink, but I’m pleased to discover that offering things up to Christ is easier for me than giving things up because it seems like a good idea. I don’t much care about myself, not in a dramatic way, I’m just moderately indifferent to the idea of my own suffering or death. This makes personal development tricky because I don’t have much of an emotional attachment to the outcomes. Lent has allowed me to take a significant break from alcohol for the first time in a while and I’m hoping that I can carry on developing a healthier relationship with booze right after I finish the giant bottle of vodka I bought to celebrate.
All things considered it’s been a very fine first Easter and I think the sense of separation between myself and the church has reminded me strongly that ceremony is only ever a means to an end, even the Eucharist. The desert fathers who innovated the role of the Christian hermit were able to find in solitude a deep personal relationship with The Divine absent the structures of liturgy which were, in case, still inchoate in the third century. All religious practices are, in essence, what Foucault termed technologies of self. They begin and end with the self but they are not purely solipsistic since technologies are, by their very nature, agents of change. They either create, promote, slow, or arrest something measurable. I think in my observance of this Easter season I can measure changes both external and internal that bring me closer to the one thing I seek above all other things; peace.
However it hasn’t all been bad. Our rector has been diligent about live-streaming mass each day which has meant that my day has still had a liturgical shape to it. A background in the Western occult tradition means that I’m very comfortable with the idea of worship as an individual pursuit, I’m arguably more comfortable with that than the practice of public worship. Without the distraction of other people around me I’ve been able to engage more internally with the liturgy and with the symbolic representations of the words and gestures of the celebrant. Again this is something that a background in ritual magic makes somewhat easier to manage.
The discipline of Lent has been a definite positive. I chose to give up alcohol for the duration and for the last 52 days I have, barring two lapses, remained entirely sober. It’s been tough, I do like a drink, but I’m pleased to discover that offering things up to Christ is easier for me than giving things up because it seems like a good idea. I don’t much care about myself, not in a dramatic way, I’m just moderately indifferent to the idea of my own suffering or death. This makes personal development tricky because I don’t have much of an emotional attachment to the outcomes. Lent has allowed me to take a significant break from alcohol for the first time in a while and I’m hoping that I can carry on developing a healthier relationship with booze right after I finish the giant bottle of vodka I bought to celebrate.
All things considered it’s been a very fine first Easter and I think the sense of separation between myself and the church has reminded me strongly that ceremony is only ever a means to an end, even the Eucharist. The desert fathers who innovated the role of the Christian hermit were able to find in solitude a deep personal relationship with The Divine absent the structures of liturgy which were, in case, still inchoate in the third century. All religious practices are, in essence, what Foucault termed technologies of self. They begin and end with the self but they are not purely solipsistic since technologies are, by their very nature, agents of change. They either create, promote, slow, or arrest something measurable. I think in my observance of this Easter season I can measure changes both external and internal that bring me closer to the one thing I seek above all other things; peace.