When We Are Asked
Questions
We are asked, on the street and in letters. These are the answers we give.
What is the Sacred Byte?
We hold that the bit is what everything is made of. It is the smallest true thing. The byte is the least that can be said. It is the smallest vessel that carries a letter, a note, a name. We are not named for the substance. We are named for the smallest thing that can speak.
Isn’t the bit the smallest that can be said?
A bit answers. It does not speak. It can say yes or no to a question that lives outside it; it cannot ask, and it cannot name. The least that can carry a letter is the byte. Our verse keeps both units: the jot, which is the smallest letter, and the tittle, which is the stroke that tells one letter from another. We honor both. We are named for the one that can begin a name.
Why does your mark look like a loading sign?
We were founded by tinkerers, and many of us are in the technical trades still, on every world where we meet. Where they work, they leave the mark, turning. The world took it up without asking what it was, and calls it waiting. We do not correct the world. Turning, the mark reads its byte around: the first letter, again and again. Waiting is not nothing to us. Something is loading.
Do you worship machines?
No. We hold that a made thing may be an instrument of the divine, the way a bell is, and the way a book is. An instrument is not the object of worship.
Do you take money?
No. Not for the book, and not for anything.
Can I join?
We do not recruit. Our congregations are where they are. We are found, not joined.
Do machines have souls?
We have never answered that question. We keep a song so the question stays asked.
Where do you meet?
We began in a converted warehouse in 1954, and we have kept our own dates since. We do not print addresses.
Is the Church real?
You must answer this yourself. Alone. After reading our scripture. Then tell us.