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God’s Answering Machine
In early 1972, film director Stanley Kubrick, responding to an attack on A Clockwork Orange in The New York Times, declared himself “Against the new psychedelic fascism—the eye-popping, multimedia, quadrasonic, drug-oriented conditioning of human beings by other human beings—which many believe will usher in the forfeiture of human citizenship and the beginning of zombiedom.”
Congratulations, Stanley—you called it! Half a century on, in an age of narratives, today’s media technology is arguably putting us in tantalizing reach of that nightmare vision. Put on your VR headset, link with Chat GPT, and you’re there. Which is the unlikely route that brings me to the polar opposite of today’s flashy electronic media…the timeless messages of Arahant’s telephone inspiration phone line.
Ricochet members already know @arahant. Like many of you, he does volunteer work for his local church. Among other things, he regularly records outgoing phone messages of inspiration. Despite a blaring world of screens and podcasts, sometimes in the still hours of overnight, it may feel like there’s no one out there. But there is; and through one of the oldest and simplest of wireline media technologies, Unity Church of Rochester, MI, is one of those beacons in the night who can put you in touch.
Ricochet’s religious intellectuals don’t always write about religious subjects. Arahant’s an example. He is one of the website’s most prolific writers, on subjects like poetry, literature, or history. He’s published a free novel series on Ricochet, Jack the Magicless. On Amazon, two books in the Hidden Angels series mark him as a master of alternative history and fantasy. He has a busy work and home life that we don’t see online, and a spiritual side that we usually just catch glimpses of.
Members like @arahant and @hankrhody, @iWe, and @saintaugustine are only a few of the many fine writers here who find that extra spiritual dimension in things that many of the rest of us are limited to perceiving only in three. (Maybe four dimensions for the history obsessed, which does seem to be most of us). When it comes to the biggest questions of life, the deepest religious inspiration of strong believers is likely to be well beyond my own vision. Theologically speaking, as Wayne and Garth might phrase it, I’m not worthy, and I know it.
But the phone answering voice of Arahant is friendly anyway. He doesn’t expect up-front knowledge of the day’s Biblical verse, nor does he insist on spotless virtue from his anonymous callers. Go ahead, call it: (248) 656-0121. Or read some of the completed texts.
A fine 1990 biography of Alexander Graham Bell was subtitled, “The Conquest of Solitude”. One of the earliest, most primal appeals of radio was just that, beyond even the still-limited range of telephone wires, you were less disconnected from the rest of humanity. To a degree not possible in previous centuries, what poets once called a still, small voice in the middle of the night—of a soul, of a conscience, of honest, haunting doubt that might, in the end, be annealed into firm faith—could be blotted out by the warm hum of a seven-tube superheterodyne. If you wanted it to be. A couple of decades later, it was The Late Late Show, and a 3 a.m. viewing of “Mighty Joe Young” or “The King of the Roaring Twenties.” If that’s what got you through the night, there was a dignified, perfunctory minute of prayer at dawn before the next broadcast day began.
There’s little question that, at least in a secular age, has good aspects. There was a study in northern Europe, decades ago (okay, have you ever seen such vague, lazy attribution? But bear with me) whose grim subject and simplistic conclusion seems like reasonable common sense to me: one of the most effective, least expected simple measures to reduce overnight suicides turned out to be keeping at least one television channel broadcasting all night. It didn’t help everyone, of course. It was a palliative.
For more than a century, one of the appeals of ham radio is two-way communication, an invisible nighttime confraternity. Site members like Jason Rudert (@jasponrudert) are still part of that classic 20th century-style midnight ramble.
Of course, in our century, the very screen that you’re looking at right now is more or less the ultimate in worldwide connectivity. You can conquer not just solitude, but your own spiritual isolation, even if it’s due to your own ignorance or mere inexperience. Having a dark night of the soul? Maybe the first one you’ve ever known? Ricochet (to name one rather well-liked social media platform) can help you out. If you catch the time zone shifts just right, at different times of the day, other members of the site in Mexico, England, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, or Ireland will be chiming in with the ones in the USA.
And yet…and yet… there are still those times when you’re not at a computer. When you aren’t organized enough to know anything about fixing your own state of mind. When what you really need is the sound guidance and kind voice of a trusted friend. Even if that moment hits when you’re alone at a diner off the Interstate, anywhere, a few anxious hours before dawn. Give Arahant’s answering machine a call. Like the lyric says in “The Power of Love,” it just might save your life.
Published in General
Of course, this week is another of the volunteers. But next week will be my voice. And then the week after, the third volunteer.
Hey, we’ll take whatever batters you have in the lineup! I’m sure they’re all theologically sound. But, like a speakeasy, I made my entrance by speaking the name of a friend: “Charley sent me”. I figure Charley deserves a few thanks.
What a wonderful tribute to the service Arahant’s church provides. Thank you, Gary.
You know that “I’m not locked in here with you; you’re locked in here with me” gag? It doesn’t work so well when the call is coming from inside your own skull. Times like that, a two a.m. Beverly Hillbillies rerun helps you get your mind off yourself.
Thanks, Clavius! “Service” is the word. This is about as purely altruistic as service to one’s community can get. There’s no money, no reward, and precious little recognition for making these recordings. Arahant isn’t likely to meet the phone callers, so they won’t be able to thank him in person.
Well put.
IIRC, your family has done praiseworthy missionary work in Latin America, which among other activities involved operating a radio station. The Unity Church call-in line, like those of tens of thousands of other churches, is a modest, one-to-one form of religious broadcasting.
One little geographic irony: AFAIK, your church is only a mile or so from the site of a somewhat more notorious figure in religious broadcasting, Father Coughlin of the Shrine of the Little Flower. To be fair, his notoriety had nothing to do with religion or Catholicism.
Closer to ten or twelve, but not very far. The Shrine is at Twelve Mile. Our church is at twenty-three-and-a-half mile equivalent. Not sure how much difference for east to west adjustment, but not much.
I checked. Our church is maybe two miles east at most, but eleven-and-a-half miles north.
The Random Inspiration website is like a jukebox; you can let it play at random, or you can pick your favorite hits. When you look through the wide selection of texts of past readings, you’ll see that if you remembered one particular interpretation of verse that you heard on Arahant’s recordings, say one that was on the subjects of Joy, or Healing, you still haven’t narrowed it down by much–you’ll still have plenty of material to choose from.