This is a WONDERFUL episode. Makes me wish I was still doing "Friday
School"!
NETFLIX "Easy" Prodigal Daughter (Season #2 Episode #6 2017) - IMDb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7695360/
If only this were just a parody of our history instead of local and contemporary.
"Does no one else think this is insane?" Salvation through a food pantry :)
"On the whole, I do not find Christians outside of the catacombs sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense or the waking god may draw us out to whence we can never return" - Annie Dillard
I admire the mad Christians of the American south meeting Sundays in the middle of a plague. "Our faith requires it, our duty demands it, and no law or government can prohibit it." I admire the ultra-orthodox Jews of Brooklyn gathering for Passover in the middle of a pandemic. "The Torah protects us and saves us."
Most of us belong to non-essential churches.
In spite of our attempts to resurrect the "Jesus movement" (does no one believe a word of it?), we are known more for our religious aesthetic and an emphasis on self-care. So, like museums, theaters, and gymnasiums, we are closed. The early catacomb Christians, writes Diarmaid Macculloch, familiar with sacrifice, were noteworthy in that they cared for the poor and buried the dead. We like to discuss the poor and the sick and the dead. Stay safe.
I admire the mad Christians and the ultra-Orthodox. They still believe in the magic. Their assemblies pass judgement on a failed culture. We do not much value community. Community is part of their cult. We are isolated and cocooned now. We were isolated and cocooned then.
Their dying stands in an odd, ideologically inverted solidarity with the "essential" poor, with the old and sick, those who must always live huddled in their shelters with diminished and imperfect resources. You can't buy toilet paper or cleaning products with SNAP/EBT. Two liters of soda is always cheaper than a quart of milk. Health tests and treatments are always hard to obtain.
I am embarrassed that we are non-essential.
The sleeping god may awake some day and take offense. The waking god may draw us out to whence we can never return.
