Weekend Update 6/18

“The truth is out there”?

Here at Come See Something Beautiful, we are always behind when it comes to cultural conversations—I mean, we’ve got a temple to build—but it’s getting hard to ignore the back-and-forth about UFOs.

Oops. That’s UAPs.

Of course, in the last century, Father Seraphim Rose, in his very popular book, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, insisted that “the multifarious demonic manifestations of Orthodox literature have been adapted to the mythology of outer space; nothing more”—and, in his opinion, it’s the demons who are doing the adapting.

Orthodox Substacker Rod Dreher agrees with Father Seraphim. Recently, he wrote that, these Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena “are probably demons, or at least demonic in nature (meaning, spiritual beings aligned to evil), even if not demons, strictly speaking.”

Fellow Orthodox Substacker Father Addison Hodges Hart is more circumspect. He has expressed doubt “that either category—i.e., ‘aliens’ or ‘demons’—can be applied to the phenomena with any rational or religious certitude.”

Of course, none of us here at CSSB have time for putting together official positions on these sorts of trending topics—we’ve got a temple to build, after all—but if we did have time to put together an official position, we’d probably be closer to Father Hart than to Mr. Dreher or Father Seraphim.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Of course, it’s one of the great all-time bad guys in one of the great all-time sci-fi movies who utters that line (and we’ll pause while you read that sentence again in your best James Earl Jones voice; c’mon, you know you want to).

Which is more than a bit ironic, because that’s exactly how a lot of folks react if you aren’t completely on board with the whole UFOs—sorry!—UAPs as fallen angels, Nephilim, demons, and, y’know, this intergalactic-predatory-thingy.

In fact, there’s probably quite a few of you out there who are really worried that we aren’t taking all this seriously enough.

‘Cause, hey, these could be some, like, genuinely, super-duper evil beings, and we’re fooling around with images like this

“The devil…the proud spirit…cannot endure to be mocked.”

That’s an observation from St Thomas More; it’s also one of the quotations Professor C.S. Lewis uses at the beginning of his classic book The Screwtape Letters, and it’s a basic principle that we should remember in all our dealings with anything evil.

So, if these U-Whatevers do turn out to be wicked powers or principalities, then we’re way ahead of them—and we won’t even need an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator—and, absolutely, if you want to re-read that product description while channeling Mel Blanc, knock yourself out.

Because our To-Infinity-and-Beyond Civil Defense Plan is to just read those Naughty Space ‘Nauts some Vogon poetry.

And now that we’ve got AI, who needs Vogons anyway?

But seriously…

Since we’ve brought up Professor Lewis, we should also admit to the possibility that these Unidentified creatures might actually be, y’know, good. Like the Eldila in Out of the Silent Planet:

“In the most abstract terms, it might be summed up by saying that the surface of the island was subject to tiny variations of light and shade which no change in the sky accounted for… Like the silvery noises in the air, these footsteps of light were shy of observation. Where he looked hardest they were least to be seen: on the edges of his field of vision they came crowding as though a complex arrangement of them were there in progress. To attend to any one of them was to make it invisible, and the minute brightness seemed often to have just left the spot where his eyes fell. He had no doubt that he was 'seeing' – as much as he ever would see – the Eldila.”

The Eldila are Lewis’ take on the hosts of heaven. So, what will we do if we encounter some of those luminous creatures?

Remember?

We’ve got a temple to build.

So, we’ll just ask them to do what we always ask you to do.

First of all, we’ll invite them to join us in offering the Akathist for a New Temple each week (PDF/video).

Second, we’ll ask them to restack this post and send it to everyone they know (that should increase our reader rates!) and take out a Paid Subscription to this ‘Stack.

Third, we’ll invite them to purchase some Come See Something Beautiful clothing and commission an image of a departed eldilic pet for the Calming Room of our new temple (which should make that whole Noah’s Ark themed room really, really interesting).

Finally, we’ll encourage them to make a direct donation to our Building Fund (which means we’ll have to look into expanding our ability to handle an abundance of different cosmic currencies, but, hey, we’ll figure it out).

And, yeah, I know: We did say earlier that, here at CSSB we don’t have time to put together an official position on all this space stuff, but, while we were pounding out this post, we realized that, when it comes to our thoughts on this matter, ‘Old Blue Eyes’ already said it better than any of us could.

So hit it, Frank.