Reverence

Peasant Times-Dispatch Issue 15

Nov 15, 2023

Hello Again!

Dear Readers,

Before I get into todays issue of the Peasant Times-Dispatch, we’ve got a couple new things begun, and more on the way!

Hambone

posted Autumn Vibes in the second issue of Prove All Things, his series where he shares entertainment he has ‘proven’ for his young family. He teased a potential post on Studio Ghibli, so if you want to see that check out his article and tell him you’re interested!

Season 2 of the podcast, The Peasant’s Apprentice continued with the second episode, “Get Used To Losing”. I was not as happy with this episode—I couldn’t find the train of thought that I was after, but I got it out and it included a lot of interesting nuggets for thought, and people seem to have enjoyed it!

Thank you as always for reading and joining us every month!

An Anecdote About Community Effects

I heard an anecdote a long long time ago about a study in traffic. It was really informative and it stuck with me this long, but for the life of me I haven’t been able to find it again. Someone better at googling can fact check me.

There was a study done about behavior in traffic. The normal pattern for a heavy traffic highway is to scoot forward for a moment, then stop and wait a bit. There’s ‘beats’ and the chain of cars slinkys forward.

To ameliorate the traffic, the study performed this experiment. One person in traffic tried to average out the beats of traffic. when things inched forward, the driver maintained an average speed. When things stopped, the driver hadn’t arrived yet so tried to keep moving until the cars in front resumed moving—by going the average speed of traffic, the driver never had to stop.

A surprising effect was discovered. The stop-n-go nature of traffic was eliminated. People around this car started driving the average speed as well. cars behind realized they didn’t have to stop either and slowly but surely this one driver influenced the whole pattern of traffic until a steady flow of cars resumed.

You Are That Car

Your behavior works the same way, for good or ill. You can choose to create stop and go traffic by slamming on the brakes. You can choose to go along with stop and go traffic by stopping and going. You can choose to ameliorate the traffic by aiming for the average speed. You can make decisions that affect the community, by choosing to behave differently. This applies to more than just traffic. Your choices to be virtuous or non virtuous. Your choices to be friendly or unfriendly. America has “Cold Streets” as I saw

Walther Cantu

talking about in Notes. We can decide to keep the streets cold, or go along with it. All of these things are things we have influence over.

Reverence For God

I think I’ve already talked about the fact that we should choose to be reverent for holy nouns. Here I want to talk about a specific application.

Non Catholics may not be aware that there is something popularly known as “Liturgy Wars” in the Catholic Church. I don’t aim to take a stand on this here or get deeply into what the Liturgy Wars entails. Suffice it to say that there are two kinds of Liturgies you can experience if you go to a Catholic Mass. A Traditional, Latin liturgy; or a vernacular, English liturgy. The Traditional one is called the “TLM” or “Traditional Latin Mass”. The English is called the “Novus Ordo”, “N.O.” or “New Mass”.

The general argument is that one is objectively better to the other, and the other objectively harms the faithful by not being as good as the other.

Here’s the thing. Many of you have probably heard the latin cliche: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi: The law of Prayer is the Law of belief, is the law of life. Said another way: the way we pray, is the way we believe, is the way we live. These three “laws” are interconnected and we can choose how we engage with them, the same way a driver can slam on the brakes, go with the flow, or try to make a positive difference.

Let’s say you go to a Mass that some consider less good. What if you treated that Mass with the utmost of reverence and respect, you poured your heart and soul from the pew into seeing and experiencing God’s presence in the Eucharist. What if you got to Mass early to pray quietly, and sat quietly despite a noisy congregation before Mass began? What if you stayed after Mass to pray quietly before the Lord’s tabernacle? What if you tried to be a friend of Jesus at a Mass where, rightly or not, some believe Jesus has few friends?

People will see. People will notice. People will start to behave differently. This actually happens. People notice when you behave differently.

The Peasant cannot control other people, the Peasant can only control himself. We can control how we pray, how we believe, and how we live. Not included in that cliche is any comment on liturgy. While liturgy is a prayer, does it force us to behave reverently if we wish to behave irreverently? No. We must bring our best, most reverent selves before the Lord, and try to be as good a friend to Him from the pews as we can, wherever we find Him, whatever else may be going on.

You can change the Church from the ground up, just by being an example. Don’t look for the Church to make it easy or required. Choose it voluntarily, and make it an offering, and watch what happens.

Thank you for reading! God bless you all!

Ad Jesum Per Mariam