Easter Egg #01/02
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Hours before CoB’s performance at The Secret Garden Party in July 2022, I was called into a ‘discussion’ between a senior member of CoB’s clergy and two festival goers. Our brilliant compere, the comedian Andrew O’Neill was, every so often, dutifully mentioning that a ritualised money burning would take place later that evening.
A very beautiful young couple — I don’t remember their names but let’s call them Sebastian and Persephone — were deeply offended by the idea. They’d decided to berate His Holiness TockyTom, Archbishop of Toxteth, just outside our performance tent. The heat of the discussion had piqued the interest of a member of the security team. I was called in and introduced. I reassured the hovering security that all would be well.
“Are you actually going to burn real money here, tonight?” Sebastian asked, pointedly.
I told the couple who we were and that we’d be offering people the chance to burn their money. I explained it was a ritual sacrifice and that we’d try to make it as profound, intimate and sacred as possible. And we hoped that the words, music and movement in the preceding Service would both enlighten and excite in equal measure.
“I get it. I get it”, Sebastian kept telling me. He really didn’t.
“But this isn’t the way to protest,” he said, reinforcing his misunderstanding.
It was clear that the universe loved Persephone. She was a blessed one and she reflected the light that shone on her right back into the world.
“Do YOU give to charity? she asked, as if concerned not primarily for the charities and their causes but rather for my own lost soul.
I said, “Yes”. But also suggested that giving a few quid to charity wasn’t the solution to the urgent and fatal systemic issues we face.
I encouraged them to come back for the Service and Ritual later, to see and hear things for themselves. They declined. Sebastian offered the following admonition as they departed.
“You know people already think we’re privileged at this festival [ vi. ]. This will make us look really bad!”
And with that final comment he’d absolutely nailed it.
Burning money ‘looks’ bad. Of course it does!
It’s the desecration of a sacred totem. Our lives are moulded by the money we have or the money we don’t have. Being witness to its active renunciation is bound to provoke a reaction.
My take on the spectrum of reactions is that the emotions, feelings and thoughts expressed around the destruction of money have their roots in cognitive dissonance. In an inability to assimilate or make sense of what one is seeing.
Money is venerated through our actions. If we are not actively pursuing it through business then we are trying to extract value from every last penny. And yet in speech we decry money’s influence. Saying ‘they’re not in it for the money’ defines a morally good and proper person.
Watching it burn causes a collision between our real-world experience of money and our inner-world idealisation of our relationship with it. It’s hard to make sense of these contradictions. Perhaps because actions speak louder than words, most often it’s our veneration of money that wins through. It’s easier to simply reject the deliberate destruction of money as an outrageous and immoral absurdity.
To stand against this, then — to engage in the ritualised destruction of money as a form of sacrifice — requires a degree of courage. ‘Looking bad’ has often been the price of ‘doing good’.
And not to do good for fear of ‘looking bad’ is a path no-one should willingly follow.
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