Templar Edification

I find it difficult to imagine anything quite so countercultural as the sabbath. In the Hebrew Scriptures, God commands the people of Israel to hallow the seventh day of the week, and neither to do nor to allow any labor during that period from sundown to sundown. Sabbath observance is to be the mark of His people, even more so than circumcision. By setting this time apart, they set themselves apart. Sabbath observance, mind you, deals not with laziness or with simple entertainments. The sabbath is a time for learning and for prayer. It’s when we remind ourselves that we are not merely beasts of burden, but human beings, possessing an innate dignity far more precious than whatever we can accomplish or produce. Sabbath is a time to be, rather than to do. Leisure, in our society, has become something of a lost art. We live not as responsible citizens of a republic, but as consumers; with a worth based not on the Image of God but on our purchases, preferences, and politics. How much money...

I have a melancholic disposition. I don’t mean that in the modern sense of sad and vaguely depressing, but in the medieval sense of melancholic as introverted and thoughtful. Rowling readers might term it Ravenclaw. Books have been my portals to worlds of endless learning ever since my youth, and when silence seeps into my bones it provides to me a wondrous rejuvenation. My grandparents’ property abutted an old church and graveyard, ancient by American standards, with headstones dating back to the 1600s. We used to take walks amongst the monuments, deciphering their weathered engravings, some fallen over like loosened teeth. We would read the inscriptions and imagine their stories. My grandparents rest there now too. I’ve always been drawn to liminal spaces, those borderlands betwixt past and present, man and nature, Christian and pagan, life and death. Autumn of course is perfect for that, with holidays like Halloween. I never was much of a hunter myself, but I understand why people l...