THE CHURCH
I
Once we come to realise
that the Church is paradise, then
we have a benchmark,
something by which everything -
everything - can be judged,
not, of course, by the Bishop,
the clergy, the functionaries,
the people who set the show up, but
by the show, which is always other
than the machinery (in those moments
when we are present).
So what is the everything
to be judged? Everything - for
example, political
organisation, war, family
life and entertainment - is a means
and this is the end, the end that
glorifies the means - this moment.
This is the house
and the family
and the army
and the cause
and the state.
This is the sum
total of the arts,
and, as for technology,
what can it pretend
(usefully) to be
but a means to address
problems that might otherwise
be obstacles
to going
to church
- the Church that is present
even when we
are far away,
going to where
we always were.
And that is why Alain de Benoist, basing
community on likeness, is so wrong.
Community is vertical, and,
once that is established
everything else
falls into place,
all the horizontalities, the
rock concerts, garden parties and
conspiracies, the collapse
of society.
I am not saying
that does not matter, but
once you've been there
you've been there,
now and forever
and to the ages of ages, Amen.
II
But the Church, of course, is a place
and Christ, you will tell me, is
a person, and the Qu'ran
is a book -
a place, a person and a book, but our place
and book is a person,
is indeed
the very definition of a person
- the first First Person,
inseparable into parts.
Our God is the Word,
the Spirit, the Tree of Life, which is
Paradise, the Church.
And the Tree of Life is
the Cross, which is why
we stand in the church looking glum
while our hearts
burn within us.
This is not a One
above the Many. This is
a Many that is One
but not the many. The tree
that speaks
of the Tree of Life
is not the Tree of Life.
Its being is its not being
the Tree of Life. Its well-
being is in speaking
of the Tree of Life. That tree
stands like you and me
in the church (when we,
of course,
stand in the Church).
Leaning up against
that Unity that is
other than itself
it catches fire
and is glorious
like the bush
that Moses saw,
or like the light that shone
from Moses' face, but that still
wasn't Moses.
The Light, the Book, the Church,
the Person, the Tree, the Cross
and Paradise and all of them
real, not images
of the One, all of them
distinct realities and yet
all of them One.
III
As it is by
not being God that we
are, so
it is my ambition now
to develop a shape
and thus to be,
and not to be
an endless
becoming.
To be is to be
something - something that
for the moment
is not me.
To be is to stand
in relation to something
other than me,
to be what I am not yet,
standing in the Church,
in front of the Cross,
in Paradise.