What is Cary’s Almanac? Part 3

The importance of being in season

This is the last of three blogs in three days about what you’re going to find here over the coming year. A normal weekly service will resume next week.

A dairy farm, but wow, look at those trees. Isn’t God’s creation stunning? Photo by Veronica White on Unsplash

I was born and raised on a farm, a job that could not be more dependent on the changing seasons, the weather and the climate. I discovered through my father-in-law that the changing of the seasons affects everything. He worked in the shoe business. The weather determines what we buy and when. Often, entire seasons of shoes would be unsold because the weather had remained hot or cold or wet for several weeks longer than expected.

The changing seasons affect all areas of our lives, even though the effects are often minimised by the wonders of electrical lighting, refrigeration and central heating.

Humanity may have increased its dominion over nature, as we have been told to do by God, but we should not wish to minimise seasonal variety and flatten out nature. The seasons are an essential part of God’s design. We read about that in the very foundational chapter of all scripture:

 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years…” (Genesis 1:14)

Cologne Cathedral Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

Marking Time

The liturgical calendar of the Church of England is not some superstitious way of keeping time in a society which did not have reliable clocks. It is a way of reflecting God’s glory and our obedience.

The Church and the monasteries were obsessed with the time, dates, stars and seasons since they wished to ensure that Easter was celebrated on the correct day. They developed ancient, mechanical clocks to regulate their prayer. Elaborate star charts were drawn up and pored over.

It is from this tradition that we get almanacs of constellations, tide times and information of use to farmers, merchants, housewives and sailors: the people. As a member of the laity, I am very much one of those.

Undoubtedly interest in star charts can teeter over into occultism. We need to be careful here. Polymath and clergyman, John Dee consulted the stars in order to establish a propitious day on which Queen Elizabeth the First should be crowned. This was at her request. Dee went on to attempt communication with angels whom he believed would enable him to succeed in the art of alchemy. He was, at best, deceived by fraudsters in this pursuit of hidden knowledge, if not by demonic forces, which also seems highly likely to me.

Nonetheless, dates are important. A society that cannot worship God on the days that He has specified in the ways that He has specified will not last long. To me, at least, it feels like we are only just about getting away with it, or running on the fumes of our forebears.

The Agony of Choice

The liturgical calendar, then, gives us something that our society is craving: structure. We think we want more choice, but we don’t. You can have anything anytime. You can watch anything anytime. You can go anywhere anytime. And you can believe anything you want. The constant availability of options is proving to be agonising and anxiety-inducing.

That yearning for order is increasingly apparent. Listen to recent converts to Christianity – and I recommend this interview by Justin Brierley with writers Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw – and you will hear that they are not attracted to the ‘rational evangelical church’ that takes the intellectual battle to the new atheists, or what’s left of them. Nor do they favour the ‘emotionally attuned charismatic church’ which will help you be a better and kinder you. Kingsnorth and Shaw wanted to be part of something bigger, more mystical and more historic. They both ended up in the Eastern Orthodox Church which – incidentally – does not make it easy to join.

Kingsnorth and Shaw may be outliers, older men having a mid-life crisis. Maybe that’s me too. But one cannot ignore the fact that younger men are flocking to online gurus like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tait, looking for rules to live by. When Andrew Tait got religion, which did he choose? Anglicanism? Orthodoxy? No. He chose Islam.

What All This Means

This year, at least, I plan to use the liturgical calendar to frame as much history, scripture and weirdness in each article as I can. Seasons and feast days will be the overall frame and structure. I already made a start last week with the post about Twelfth Night. I mentioned my daughter was making a Galette Des Rois. Well, here it is:

My wife got the bit with the coin and so wore the crown. Pic by me, which explains a lot.

The next blog will be about the season of Epiphany. Because I was running this series of three blogs, I missed out writing about the incredibly divisive Archbishop Laud, who is commemorated by the Church of England on Wednesday 10th. Maybe that will be in the book.

Oh yes, there’s going to be a book

The result of writing about seasons, history, scripture, high days, holidays and the weird will be Cary’s Almanac. I hope it will become a beautiful hardbacked limited-edition book that you will be able to pre-order or buy towards the end of the year. But we can get to that in the autumn, which will swing around before you know it. Great. I love the autumn.

So, that’s the plan for this blog for 2024 and maybe beyond. I thought you’d like to know.

Don’t Give Me Money

Not yet, anyway. If you’d like to support his blog – and if you’ve read this far, you might be inclined to – please consider buying Cary’s Almanac when it is printed. It will be published by me since I can’t afford to publish another book via a mainstream publisher. I’ll show you the maths some other time.

I don’t plan to have paid tiers or paywalls for this Substack. I should be focussing on my day job of screenwriting and earning a living through that. And I don’t want the extra commitment and pressure of ‘bonus content’ behind a paywall.

The best way to support blog is by spreading the word. Why not share posts with friends? Probably not this one, though. Maybe the next one about Epiphany. You could put a link on social media, but why not email a link to a post to someone you think might enjoy it? It could form the basis of an actual conversation. Worth a shot.