Where are you going to be when you die? When the moment of your death arrives, are you going to be sitting in front of your television screen? Are you going to be kneeling before the altar? Are you going to be in church, wrapped up in the worship of God in the presence of all generations of his saints? Are you going to be sedated and speechless before the shrilling puppet show, your life a reflection of the cartoons? Which set of characters are you to be counted among – celebs or saints? Which is for you, the true liturgy of God by which all creation is remade and redeemed, or the counterfeit liturgy within which all life is faked? Which liturgy is yours? Which liturgy do you belong to?
As long as we consume this media output we offer our homage to the founders our media empires. We inhabit the world of their construction. We live on the reservation created by media and entertainment industries, in the safari park they have erected around us, made happy by confinement within the paddock assigned to our age-group. We might as well erect a little bust of each other of them and put them in the place of honour above the television. Of course each television and each screen displays the images and idols that show us what we want to be, while the voices tell us what we want to hear. Just as the Romans kept figurines of generic ancestors in alcoves and cabinets, so we enjoy figurines that flicker and move across the screen which each of us keeps before us, or behind which each of us hides. There we are content to live an ersatz life, lived through the perpetual of human types, each Punch-and-Judy show keeping us fixated and secure. We might as well offer our media masters a pinch of incense and venerate them as our progenitors, as the creators of all the possible outcomes conceivable for us, and so as the Fates. Unless you pray to the God who made you and gives you a voice, that is.
