Sunday 7 October 2012: Harvest Thanksgiving-The Screwtape Emails

My dear Wormwood,

 

Seventy years have passed since your uncle Screwtape picked up his pen to send you words of counsel. I suppose I ought to say that it feels like an eternity, but demons who inhabit everlasting fire know what eternity feels like, and it feels a good bit longer than seventy years. And now that I have picked up my pen I find that pens have largely been replaced by keyboards and letters by electronic communications. 'The Screwtape Emails'. It doesn't have quite the same ring.

 

I am writing in response to your difficulties with the tiresome people of St Peter's Eaton Square: the shiny, happy central Londoners who are so smugly pleased to describe themselves as a growing community, a vibrant community, and an inclusive community. I know, nephew Wormwood, I know. It makes my horns droop, too. What is to be done with a collection of people who are so confident and so competent, and who have rarely ever been more so than now? This year alone they have staged a blockbuster Jubilee Fete and hosted the mother of all pig roasts. They have run a cafe on their portico and launched a new Mission Action Plan.   They have begun the rebuilding of their school and hosted their bishop, their Lord Mayor, and a celebrated Paralympian. Now they are planning a gala autumn party, a parish pantomime, and a four-week exploration of Luke's Gospel. There is no end to what they are willing to do. They seem utterly formidable, utterly beyond our reach. Our Enemy once urged his scatter-brained companions to consider the lilies in the sublime effortlessness of their beauty. St Peter's Eaton Square looks like a field full of them: gorgeous, exotic, unique.

 

But do not despair, Wormwood, do not despair, for their moment of triumph can yet be our moment of triumph. Today at St Peter's they celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving. They will bring to church tins of baked beans, boxes of tea bags and, because their postcode is what it is, bottles of extra virgin olive oil. These will be given to the poor. It is all part of the same tiresome pattern. People at St Peter's are ceaselessly active. They do things. But you and I have something in common with the Enemy. And that is that we see them as they really are. Confident, of course; competent, definitely; active, certainly. The sun shines in SW1. But the sun always casts shadows. So they are also ridden with anxiety, crushed by fatigue, bruised by their relationships, disappointed in their hopes, and hurting bitterly. And all that, my dear nephew, gives us plenty to work with.

 

The more successful they seem the harder it is for them to acknowledge the shadows. They can raise £20,000 from a church fete, cook canapés to die for and plot strategies for their children's schooling that would shame Napoleon Bonaparte. How can they also be exhausted, stressed, and angry? The Enemy knows that they are, of course, and he loves them for it. That's the whole dreary point of the Enemy. He wants the disposable razors and the instant coffee. He wants their home-baked cakes, he wants their committee membership, he wants them to erect marquees and hand out hymn-books in church. But he also wants their weariness and their pain, their dysfunction and their dis-ease, their depression and their despair. The Enemy knows that lilies flower only briefly. He knows that for every luxuriously extravagant bloom, wondrous to gaze upon, there is a brown and shrivelled-up stick, excruciating to gaze upon. Being the Enemy he gazes upon both, knows them to be one and the same, and loves them nonetheless. And if he gets his way he will go on loving them until the dryness and the deadness and the lifelessness have been pruned away and glorious, abundant, eternal life springs up in its place.

 

It's a frankly appalling prospect, but, luckily for us, the people at St Peter's don't get it. They still believe that the only harvest that matters is the harvest of their success. They still believe that everything else is to be hidden away. I hope you'll understand the opportunity that this creates for us. Let them believe in the myth of their confidence and their competence. Let them believe that they are world-beaters. Let them believe that it's what they do rather than what they are that ultimately counts. Let them believe all that, and the poor fools have purchased a one-way ticket to destruction. How wonderful.

 

They must never know that it could be different. They must never know that the Enemy longs for it to be different. They must never know that they could do more than nod at him with a 'sorry God', 'please God', 'thank you God'. They must never know that they could stop, that they could be still. They must never know that they could look at themselves in the light that shines so blindingly from the Enemy's face. They must never know that if they did they would begin to discover who they really are - the cherished objects of unmerited, unconditional, everlasting love. But I'm not going to tell them that and neither - I am quite sure - are you.

 

With my most infernal regards, as ever,

 

Your affectionate uncle,

 

Screwtape.