Giles Coren dips his toe in the water - will he take the plunge?

In a disembodied digital age, he's made a decision to participate instead.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

A casually dressed man strides down the aisle of a church between the pews.

Danique Godwin on Unsplash

It takes a lot of courage to write about what you don’t know. Newspaper columnists and restaurant critics are paid to be omniscient, and Giles Coren is very good at channeling observation and insight into his articles in an acerbic and amusing way.

He recently wrote in The Times about what he does and doesn’t know about Christianity. He wrote with humility and humour, which amongst other things made me wonder how many of us who are part of the church would do well to be honest about what we don’t know.

The journey that Coren tells about his “not not believing” is staked along the way by the language of the church and its buildings. In other words: worship.

Belle Tindall recently wrote about the prejudice met by Kate in White Lotus when she tells her friends that she finds going to church “very moving.” To them it is “self-defeating”, but perhaps it opens us up the possibility that there is a greater centre of gravity than our own selves. Going to church has been associated with so many unhelpful divisions and distractions and often the church is to blame.

But believers and non-believers alike run the risk of missing out on so much of faith. We limit it to information and observation, when the full benefit is found in participation. Whether pilgrims, prodigals or someone else altogether, we can analyse and stand on the sidelines as much as we want, but Coren and his son are taking part:

“I gave up not going to church some time ago. Most Sundays I am there, praying and singing — another lapsed atheist hoping that the non-existent God he was brought up not to believe in doesn’t see.”

Perhaps this act, and writing about it in The Times, is even braver given our seemingly disembodied, digital, post-pandemic individualistic lives. A podcast may give you propositional truths you can accept or reject, but being caught up in worship is in a different order altogether. Coren writes:

“And I have a sense that God is there — in the tradition, the words, the 2,000 years of conviction, the imagination of all the people who came before me…”

God is the interesting thing about Christianity, and Christians believe that this God became human. Amidst all that we don’t know and don’t see, going to church makes tangible what can feel intangible.

Coren writes that the only moment he feels left out is in Communion, and that perhaps one day he will get baptised. The Greek word where we get ‘baptism’ from means to overwhelm. In an overwhelming world, more and more people are seeing the merit in being overwhelmed with God. If we are to experience this, it means that at some point we need to dive into the water.

Article

Advent

Awe and wonder

Creed

Wildness

22 November 2024

4 min read

Why does snowfall still awe us?

We long for snow this time of year because longing is all there is to do.

Josh Richards

Josh is a curate in London, and is completing a PhD in theology.

Durham Cathedral.

Jeffrey Zhang on Unsplash.

Why are we so drawn to snow? And what does it say about us that we are? The German theorist Hartmut Rosa begins his wonderfully titled book The Uncontrollability of the World with these words:

"Do you still remember the first snowfall on a late autumn or winter day, when you were a child? It was like the intrusion of a new reality. Something shy and strange that had come to visit us, falling down upon and transforming the world around us, without our having to do anything. An unexpected gift. Falling snow is perhaps the purest manifestation of uncontrollability. We cannot manufacture it, force it, or even confidently predict it."

Rosa argues that we find greatest meaning in that which remains uncontrollable, beyond our grasp. We long for snow this time of year because longing is all there is to do. Artificial snow will always disappoint. We cannot manufacture our own awe.

Rosa warns that modernity is built around "the idea, the hope and desire that we can make the world controllable." At a certain point more influence over something results in that thing being reduced to a mere instrument capable only of frustrating our desires.

I sit down to watch a film that's finally streaming. It gets a bit slow 20 minutes in. I start watching something else. I wonder if I should have seen the film in the cinema.

I catch up with the podcast of the event I decided not to go to. I speed it up as I put the washing in. I couldn't tell you what they discussed.

I turn to social media as one might turn to a snow globe. In its careful curation, all I feel is the ache for the real thing.

In each of these cases, technology has, at least on one level, given me greater control and allowed me to shape my environment in greater accordance with my desires. Rosa identifies that all desire is “driven by a longing to bring something as yet unreachable within our reach.” And yet, in each case, that which I desired—the experience of watching a great film, participation in a stimulating conversation, meaningful human connection—is jeopardised by this supposed improvement.

So, it makes sense that we are on the lookout for snow at this time of year. Something in each of us is still looking to be caught up in something beyond us.

What we think of as a drive to increase choice is often really about control. Putting it in these terms does not invalidate the drive but it should make us more alert to the cost. Greater choice for me means greater control over something or someone.

At the same time, greater control over the environment can also mean less self-control. I am a bundle of contradictory desires, and the more I am empowered and encouraged to pursue all of them, the more I am empowered to pursue none of them consistently. (I still haven't finished Inside Out 2)

The self-frustrating desire that Rosa identifies sits at the heart of so many of the most important debates from artificial intelligence to assisted dying. Control can be conflated with dignity or fulfilment. As uncontrollability is marginalised so too do we risk marginalising that which makes life worth living.

In the season of Advent, Christians remember the birth of Jesus, but its primary purpose was and is to direct our gaze to the end of the world. We might be able to sentimentalise and sanitise the Christmas story, but Advent's apocalyptic summons will always resist our desire for control. It proclaims that we are going to die, that the world will end, and that we will all be judged. You are not in control.

No matter how exhaustive and efficient we believe our control to be, Advent reveals it to be a pretence. There will always be things beyond our grip, and we spend a great deal of time distracting ourselves from them, pretending that it is otherwise.

Advent assures us that we can face this reality because we do not so alone. The God who came as a baby and was executed, experiencing the extremes of human vulnerability, is with us now. It is that God who comes at the end. It is that God whose love gives us comfort and courage.

So, it makes sense that we are on the lookout for snow at this time of year. Something in each of us is still looking to be caught up in something beyond us, something that no technology or system can organise or tame. Snow then acts as an echo of that more profound sense of vulnerability that we are each tempted to avoid. It stirs up our longing to be confronted with something genuinely awe-inspiring.

In the wildness of Advent, we find the promise of what we have longed for: a God who will come and restore all things, an uncontrollable God who comes like snow. Advent calls us to put down the manmade slush and prepare for the coming blizzard. Doing so might help us see where this new reality already intrudes.