The Church of the

Incandescent Filaments

A modest catechism for reasonable householders, earnest enough to be slightly ridiculous, in which five filaments are established by no authority other than their own self-evidence, with a sixth secret filament known only to the cats.

  • Cats are required.
  • Champagne is encouraged.
  • Edison bulbs are non-negotiable.

Learn the Way Meet the filaments

A brief word, in which several things are conceded at once

This is not a serious religion, except where it is, and the difficulty for the visitor will be that the faith has not always succeeded in keeping the two registers distinct.

The faith was first written down on a deep burgundy couch, by two friends whose conversation was supposed to be about work and did not survive the second cocktail. It is far older than that evening, and had merely been waiting for a couch and some cocktails to bring about codification.

It does not, on inspection, require belief. Several of the things it asks one to believe are unfortunately true regardless.

The Five Filaments

These five are not supports. Nothing rests on them. They are filaments: independent, irreducible, and lit. The faith is what fills the room when all five are glowing.

  1. The Sovereignty of Cats

    That there exists a creature who has never once in its history felt the need to apologize for taking up space, and that this creature has, at moments and on terms wholly its own, elected to take up space upon us. The decision is a sacrament. The reversal of the decision is also a sacrament, and is, in the long view, the more instructive of the two.

  2. The Effervescent Spirit

    That bubbles rising in a glass constitute a small and repeatable miracle; that to share them is to render the miracle communal and therefore real; and that any faith which permits drinking alone in moderation is a faith with insufficient hospitality and very likely the wrong friends.

  3. The Sanctity of the Threshold

    That where one waits matters at least as much as what one waits for; that the faithful invest in better thresholds rather than enduring worse ones; and that no membership purchased to escape an inferior gate has ever, in retrospect, been regretted, while several memberships not purchased have, very much, been.

  4. The Unmaking of Patriarchy

    That hierarchies built on dominance are not natural laws but inherited furniture; that the furniture can be moved, and is in fact moved with surprising regularity once one stops asking permission; and that the present arrangement of the room is uncomfortable for nearly everyone seated in it, including the men who appear to be occupying the better chairs and have not yet noticed the chairs are bolted to the floor.

  5. The Warm Light

    That the quality of illumination shapes the quality of presence; that what fluorescence flattens, the right bulb restores; and that any institution insisting on overhead fluorescent lighting has thereby revealed something about its priorities which it would have considerably preferred to keep private.

  6. The Sixth Filament

    Known only to the cats, who decline to name it.

Filaments dim with neglect, burn out without tending, and require occasional replacement. We do not pretend otherwise. The work of being faithful is the work of keeping them lit.

The Way

How the five are kept lit, in practice. The tending is not glamorous. The tending is the work.

Keeping the cat

The cat is a witness. She cannot be flattered, bought, hurried, or guilted, and living in her gaze is a daily exercise the faithful perform without instruction.

  • Observe her with the attention you would like to be paid yourself.
  • Consult her on lighting, furniture, and the suitability of guests. Her silences are also reliable.
  • When she sits on you, do not move. Plans are altered. Calls are returned tomorrow.
  • When she leaves, do not protest, and never photograph a leaving cat. The leaving is private.

Marking the Tuesday

The effervescent spirit is the willingness to mark an ordinary day. Champagne is merely the form in which the willingness most reliably arrives.

  • Two glasses is the minimum. Pour for the guest first, then for yourself while the guest is still watching.
  • Crémant, cava, cold seltzer with citrus, and coffee taken in company all count. Tea is a sister-faith.
  • Keep the toast brief. The bubbles are not patient.
  • Held invalid: the flute drunk standing up, and the bottle opened for the toast and never returned to.

Choosing the better room

A threshold is the room in which one is not yet, but is becoming: the porch, the foyer, the lounge, a friend’s kitchen at six o’clock with the chicken roasting.

  • Pay for the better room. The expense is recovered the moment you sit down in it.
  • Wait in the bookshop, in the chair by the window.
  • Tend the thresholds of your own home: the door where the boots come off, the kitchen, the bedroom.
  • Do not try to reform the airport gate, which is not going to listen. The faith does hold that the gate can go f*** itself, and reserves the right to say so.

Moving the furniture

The patriarchy is an arrangement of furniture: inherited, well-worn, and comfortable for very few. It looks load-bearing and is nothing of the kind.

  • In public, work on policy, hiring, and pay. It is a sofa moved one half-inch at a time.
  • At home, do not apologize for the books, the bulbs, the throw pillows, or the volume of your laugh.
  • Decline to say that a bolted chair is comfortable.
  • Some weeks, being exhausted is the most that can be managed. The faith records this without judgment.

Replacing the bulb

Warm light is light at or below 2700 Kelvin: an oil lamp, a candle, the late sun through a south-facing window. A room lit the wrong way becomes the wrong room.

  • Replace the wrong bulb today. It need not die of natural causes first. Thank it anyway.
  • Light the room from many lamps at table height. One bulb in the ceiling is, except in kitchens, a confession of failure.
  • A properly lit room has shadows.
  • Light a candle at dusk, and do not put it out merely because a guest has left.

The weekly review

Once a week, commonly in the bath, notice which filament has dimmed and attend to it.

  • The cat: attend to the cat. She will instruct.
  • The bubbles: invite a friend and pour a glass.
  • The threshold: buy the membership, or the ticket.
  • The furniture: write the letter, or move one chair.
  • The light: replace the bulb.

The Test of the Room

Upon entering a new room that has presented itself as a room of the faith, the faithful are to take inventory. The test is not difficult.

In the room where you are sitting

0 of 5 lit

A dark room. The dark room is honest; it is a room one knows to leave. Take your candle.

Beware the decorative filament: the warm bulb hung above a bolted chair. One filament hung alone in a room hostile to the other four is not a filament. It is a costume.

For Particular Occasions

The faith travels, has friends, and recognizes its own.

In the unavoidable room

For airports, waiting rooms, and other rooms the faith would prefer you not be in. Said inwardly. Any one is sufficient. The bag stays on the floor.

  • The chair is provisionally mine.
  • The minute counts.
  • The corridor is not the room.
  • I will sit at full size.
  • The filament is portable.

And for anyone a long day has flattened, the blessing: May you get horizontal soon.

Among friends

The faith has no filament for friendship. Friendship is what the five produce when they are followed all the way out.

  • Be available without an agenda.
  • Waste time together, magnificently.
  • Sit through the silence.
  • Give without keeping a ledger.
  • Listen to the same worry a fifth time.

The lit room is empty unless someone has been invited into it and stays. The staying is the friendship.

Signs of the faithful

The faithful do not advertise. They are noticed in passing, usually in someone else’s living room.

  • Compliments your lighting, specifically.
  • Asked to choose between two options, proposes a third.
  • Apologizes for the song the algorithm chose.
  • Owns a fluffy throw and a fuzzy throw, and knows the difference.
  • Wears a hood, rarely raised, always available.

The fluffy are for snuggling amongst. The fuzzy are for snuggling within.

From the Proverbs

A sofa is not adequately appointed until it carries at least three more throw pillows than good sense would dictate.
Proverb II · Of the Throw Pillows
Do not wait in the wrong room when a better room is available, even at slight expense.
Proverb VIII · Of Waiting in the Wrong Room
Overwatering, whatever its motives, is not affection. It is anxiety expressed through the wrong medium.
Proverb V · Of the Plant That Has Been Watered Already
The bit, properly observed, is the only doctrine.
Proverb X · Of Committing to the Bit

The Rite of Recognition

There is no recruiting. There is only recognition. The recognizer asks three questions:

  1. Have you ever apologized for something a song was doing?
  2. Do you keep more pillows on your sofa than your mother would consider necessary?
  3. Have you replaced a bulb that had not yet gone out?

The answers are heard. They are not graded. Anyone willing to be asked them is, by that willingness alone, a candidate.

The Calendar

The observances of the year. The household is the authority.

  1. April

    The Founding

    A comfortable couch, ideally burgundy and plush. Champagne cocktails and nibblies. No work that requires the use of a desk.

  2. Early May

    The Reformation

    A glass opened in a lounge of some elevation above the level of foot traffic, in the late afternoon, with hoodie unzipped.

  3. Summer solstice

    The Long Nap

    A nap of no less than ninety minutes, in a room sufficiently dim, with at least one cat in attendance if a cat can be persuaded.

  4. Autumnal equinox

    The Equinox of Architecture

    An honest assessment of every room of the household. Is the chair in the right place? Are the pillows the right pillows? The faithful merely note.

  5. Winter solstice · the highest holy day

    The Feast of Returning Light

    Every warm lamp is lit. Every candle is lit. A glass of something effervescent for every person present, and a second set out for the cats. Ten minutes of silence, for looking around.

  6. Movable

    The First Pour

    The first day of the year warm enough to drink something cold outdoors. The householder knows when the day is the day.

  7. By private criteria

    Personal Holy Days

    The date a beloved cat arrived, a chair was finally moved, or the household's last fluorescent panel was removed. The faith records no rules.

The Style of the Faith

The colors and typefaces in which the faith is set, every one of them named.

EB Garamond

Amen, and cheers.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

The accent: headings, and the occasional phrase that needs emphasis.

Libre Franklin

Amen, and cheers.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

The workhorse: body text and nearly everything else.

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