Like many British people, I am "a bit obsessed" with the Battle of Britain; in that I never tire of reading and viewing media about those months of 1940.
Part of this is a boyish fascination with the aircraft, the pilots, the air services, the nation's mood and response etc. On any given day, I am more likely than not to be reading a pilot's memoir, or another historical study of this time.
But, unlike most people, I am also prone to think about the spiritual or inner side of the BoB. This was, I believe, crucial to the success of the defence - in context esepcially of the counter-example of France and its stunningly fast capitulation, in which resistance was undermined by a national mood of confusion, incoherence, and despair.
I regard the Battle of Britain as the last time that the group mind of the British people was powerfully and positively motivated.
Since 1940, the group mind has sometimes been positive and feeble, sometimes powerful and negative - but never both good and strong in the way of the BoB.
And I do not believe it ever shall be again - indeed the group mind has all-but disintegrated; as is inevitable when overwhelmingly-most people (including most religious people) are materialist by their fundamental assumptions.
Even when people believe in God; God's role is relegated to materialist goals and methods (socio-politics); even when people believe in the spiritual, the spirit is seen in terms of its physical effects (this-worldly benefits and harms).
Yet I do experience a good and positive group mind of Britain (or Britain's spiriual basis - Albion); and since this is not coming from the mass of people, from the mortal Men of the nation; my assumption is that instead this group mind is located in the resurrected Dead; and also in the non-human beings of the nation - in the consciousness of some of the animals, plants, and landscapes.
So people here-and-now can be inspired, energized, and motivated by the group mind of Albion - even now; but on an individual level, and by means of direct contact with other minds that are not living mortal humans.
This superficially seems weird, but it also seems experientially true.
6 comments:
That is a brilliant insight: that in virtue of their mutual incorporation – their living coinherence – all the living souls, all the spirits, who ever partook it, whether or not we might meet them here on Earth, constitute and maintain the life of their nation; and that we who do now live on Earth can be inspired by our communion with the whole company of such compatriot spirits, can participate with them in our nation, and so contribute to the life of the nation something of our own lives. It is a tremendously reassuring thought.
That is an extension and generalization of the ecclesial doctrine of the Mystical Body of the Church, “which is the blessed company of all faithful people,” both now living on Earth and forever living in Heaven. That Mystical Body is the Communion of Saints, and includes the angels; so that the preface of the Sanctus invites the congregation to join with the choirs of angels in singing that hymn:
"And so, with Angels and Archangels, with Thrones and Dominions, and with all the hosts and Powers of heaven, we sing the hymn of your glory, as without end we acclaim: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth; pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua; Hosanna in excelsis."
Chesterton was working in the same spirit when in chapter 4 of his Orthodoxy he wrote of Tradition as the democracy of the dead:
"Tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. ... Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father."
@Kristor - Glad you liked it!
Yes, it seems quite in harmony with Catholic understanding; although the Evangelical side of Protestantism has usually been adamant that there can be no relationship between the still living and the dead, such that prayers for the dead are not featured in church, and discouraged in private.
This seems to derive from Paul's description of the deceased who have been saved apparently lying in an inert sleep until the judgement day and second coming. This is given more weight than the scriptural references such as the Good Thief, or Jesus himself, where resurrection seems to follow immediately after death. Protestants tend in practice to regard Paul as the highest theological authority.
My own conviction is that resurrection can (if the dead so choose, as I intend to!) follow "immediately" after death, and that the (some of the) resurrected dead and the living can be in direct and unmediated contact. I think that the main reason and method of this is mutual love - and that love can also develop post-mortally, between living and "dead".
The thing I have to keep remembering about the relations between the Heavens and our world – or between them and Purgatory, if indeed Purgatory is a world, properly so called – is that there is no reason to think that times in other worlds pass in conformity with time in our own. Lewis lays great emphasis on this in the Narnia books: the whole history of the Narnian cosmos transpires within a single living generation in Earthly time (the lives of Digory and Polly).
So, Dismas might experience 10K years of some state in between corporeal death and corporeal resurrection, and yet those 10K years of experience might seem to us to pass in a moment. Indeed, there are indications in the visions of some of the saints that time in Purgatory not only does not pass in conformity with the passage of our time, but that it does not even work the same way it does in ours; so that, perhaps, 10K years of purgatorial suffering could pass – could be suffered – in a single subjective instant.
The Apocalypse of John revealed to an apostle that his own name was already a foundation of the Heavenly City. He was somehow both still alive on Patmos and already enthroned in Heaven, at the same moment of our time.
So, this might be yet another instance of the “both + and” approach of Christianity to many questions – such as, archetypally, the “both + and” of the hypostatic union of God and Man in Jesus.
@Kristor - Well, I don't believe that purgatory is real, or that the author of the IV Gospel wrote Revelations, or that the hypostatic union is a coherent concept etc...
But that aside; yes, I'm sure that "time" can and often does pass differently duing mortal life and after. Just as happens in dreams, when a subjectively hours-, even days-, long dream may happen in minutes of waking time.
Yet, for there to be contact between the mortal and post-mortal, there must be a possibility of equalizing this, even if temporarily and briefly - rather as we can interact meaningfully with animals that probably experience time at a very different rate than humans.
Yes. If world A is to have an effect in world B, it must do so at some temporal locus of B, in which case that temporal locus of B would *also* be a temporal locus of A. The timelines of the two worlds would intersect.
But if worlds can interact – if, e.g., our prayers can affect those who have died to this world, or vice versa, or if angels can appear here from Heaven, or Jesus can ascend corporeally to Heaven, with future consequences both for our world and for Heaven – then are not the post-mortem world and our world, being causally interactive – being, i.e., to some degree *coinherent* – therefore *really the same world*? How to parse that?
We could answer that they are as it were realms within a meta-world, in rather the way that the Norse thought Asgard and Midgard are different mutually communicable realms of a meta-world. We could answer also that perhaps this world is as it were included in Heaven, as subsidiary thereto, the way that the world of The Tempest is included in ours. Those alternatives are not incompatible. They might both be true. And there may be other alternative ways to think about the relations among worlds.
@Kristor - This is a non-problem from my metaphysical assumptions.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=time+beings
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