"Trying to get into a meditative mindset despite being around other people. I find this challenging! There's a burden of meaning—"time to have a meaningful experience"—and I end up performing what I think I'm supposed to be doing instead of just having an interior experience. So I was trying to get out of that, and just do the thing." (source)

"I find a kindred heart in anyone who yearns to journey outward from the self-isolating skull-cave of mental projections and fantasies into the sunlit realm where real things are allowed to be really real, as the Zen Buddhists do" (source)

the flower is more than your meaningful experience of it.

the flower is more than your inability to have a meaningful experience of it.

notes: st. therese is called the little flower

"If we don’t know how to love what’s right in front of us, then we don’t know how to see what is. So, we must start with a stone!" (source)

(context)

we talk a lot about the shift to overprotectiveness and anxiety in parenting

a shift to "safetyism" that has eroded a culture of play in wild and risky places

but i think that we can't encourage parents to let their kids play in rivers and scrapyards

unless we're willing to forgive people for letting someone get hurt

nobody wants to lose their kid, or be the parent who lost their kid

we can't condemn anxiety while also being severely punishing of the making of careless mistakes

there is no play, no exploration, without forgiveness (of others, of ourselves)

prepare the way of the lord

the way of the lord is the via dolorosa

following in the tradition of @emilie_in_montreal deleting her twitter after witnesing the solar eclipse,

i want to try "journalling" about my recent wandering with my emotions (over the past three years) or so

to confess, i'm very hesitant about this, because my relationship to my emotional/mental health is not as linear as lines of prose may convey.

furthermore, my memory is shot through with holes. i cannot guarantee that these memories capture things as they were; they capture things as they are now.

ah well

i fucking love lesser-known religions

• askreddit post 1
• askreddit post 2
• askreddit post 3
• askreddit post 4

i love thinking about mandaeism and a life of john the baptist which escapes and eludes being captured by the gospel account.

i love remembering that the world is so wide and weird and wild. that every smooth surface is full of crags and holes and worms when you look closely.

i love being a christian, but there is something so boring about christian supremacy and exclusivism (allegiance to a way when you don't know of any other way is no allegiance)

it's not your responsibility (nor is it in your ability) to fix yourself.

however, we are given the opportunity to participate in our becoming.

older brother syndrome: "there isn't enough. i must protect what i deserve."

younger brother syndrome: "there is more than enough, and it's mine for the taking."

both brothers have an immature relationship with abundance, and more than that, a lacking relationship with the giver of abundance.

life and love as justice and play

justice = our responsibility to reckon and make good

play = our desire to recklessly enjoy what is good

justice = the defanging of danger

play = frolicking with danger

~~~~

a reading list:
• In Defence of Fun: Pastoral Care of Young People and the Seriousness of Fun
• A Theology of Play: Learning to Enjoy Life as God Intended
• The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality
• THEOLOGY AND PLAY: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL.
• Religion as Play: Pentecostalism as a Theological Type

~~~~~

my interest is not only in a defense of fun and frivolousness in themselves, however. my interest is in the possibility of identifying play with leviathan. in psalm 104, leviathan is the great play-er.

"And yet, [fun] experiences often have a darker side to them. Thrill rides ... may be scary and physically demanding. Games routinely involve us in pretending to commit unspeakable acts such as butchering others. And the works we encounter in theatres and galleries may challenge, confront and even outrage us. So perhaps fun is not so frivolous after all? Maybe fun inevitably encompasses a ‘dark side’ as a vital, even necessary, part of the entertainment." (Discomfort—The Dark Side of Fun)

play is haunted by leviathans, by tohu va-bohu, by dangers, by irresponsibilities, by transgressions, by that which is "beyond good and evil."

~~~~

play is the dionysian playmate to the apollonian principle of justice. both have their place in life.

often, we have justice without play and play without justice. playless justice refers to over-responsibility, over-seriousness, and an inability to tolerate the wild and its whims. it does not suffer fools. meanwhile, justiceless play refers to laughter, fun, and desire which goes on getting its way, leaving destruction in its path. it makes messes and refuses to clean them up.

playless justice is overzealous activists ignoring that desire is desire, while justiceless play is gamergaters ignoring that fun is not above reproach.

playless justice is the older brother in the parable, while justiceless play is the younger. the father loves them both and is calling both home.

~~~~

life and love as justice = the law, the prophets

life and love as play = the writings (e.g., song of songs, ecclesiastes, job)

it's interesting that the new testament represents the triumph of justice over play (to me, it's much more serious and much less wild). revelation = the final triumph of the garden and city over the leviathan's sea. nevertheless, there is still a place for desire, now rightly ordered (22:17).

two weeks ago, i went down the mister rogers rabbit hole

some notes:

• i find it interesting how both mister rogers and jesus are often watered down in pop culture into a generic niceness. as melissa florer-bixler knows, jesus is not nice. yet both rogers and jesus can be, in fact, quite demanding and imposing figures.
• it's also interesting how the role of the children's corner is often neglected in the popular hagiography. before the neighbourhood, there was the corner, hosted by josie carey from 1953 to 1961. on this show, rogers did not appear on camera; he would only play puppets and write songs. eight years! not to mention that what came after this was not the neighbourhood, but a precursor which ran from 1963 to 1967. four years! twelve years on television before the neighbourhood was born. sometimes, things take time.
• to add onto that point, rogers' wife joanne byrd also did not want him to be known as a saint. saints are put on a pedestal all by themselves, whereas rogers had a partner in josie carey, a teacher in margaret mcfarland, and a role model in his grandfather. we will not learn everything from rogers' life and biography until we learn how to write the biography of communities and scenes. in other words, how can we zoom out of remarkable individuals and see the communities which sustained them? as henrik karlsson says, "exceptional people grow up in exceptional milieus." imagine if we could commemorate exceptional milieus.

after around seven months of very regular posting, it's interesting and a little strange to now not have so many thoughts that i want to blog through.

some hypotheses about why this is happening:

• just plain ol' moving through seasons of interests
• anxiety because the number of ppl following this site has somehow been growing (hi to anyone who follows me, for some reason??)
• i don't really know what's worth saying or thinking. i'm a little tired of thinking sometimes

three readings on the end of our power:

• a.j. swoboda on our inability to walk through walls
• atkin on our body as wilderness
• oldfield on getting things wrong as creative

the opposite of life is explanation.

i am grateful for disagreements.

having to clarify my thought for someone who disagrees with me surely makes my ideas come alive.

for example, i now think that the idealism vs. pragmatism/realism debate is missing the point (or it is at least incomplete).

ironically, the whole debates is itself idealistic (in the sense of being anti-materialistic), in the sense of prioritizing ideas over material realities.

when i say that i am an idealist, i mean that i proudly wear the label when people call me an idealist.

which people call me because i am an anti-capitalist.

i actually do not care about pursuing radical ideals. i actually do not care about the attitude we should have bout what is possible.

what i believe is this: capitalism is the problem, and we cannot end capitalism through capitalism.

we cannot fix capitalism. capitalism isn't broken; it's working perfectly to do what it's designed to do.

and if the state exists to protect property rights and the economy, and if the state is held hostage by capitalist interests, we cannot work within the government to bring about the world we want to see. we may better things somewhat. but if you join a military to promote peace, don't be surprised if war wins.

there is no world i want where capitalism survives. and that means that every path forward, for me must involve the abolition of capitalism.

idealistic action to get there? great. pragmatic strategy to get there? great.

i don't want a better world. i want the end of capitalism.

• i am compelled by this story of the god of israel
• whom the ancient israelites testified to be the holy creator god
• on a mission to rescue everyone and reconcile all things into relationship with himself.
• this god, or so the story goes, wants to do this through partner-relationships with "called-out" humans (called covenants)
• but none of the partners were faithful to the relationship, until god became his own relationship-partner, as jesus.
• and as such, through his life, crucifixion, and resurrection, jesus announces and embodies the in-breaking of the peaceable common-love and humble kingdom of god.
• jesus effects this kingdom through pouring out god's spirit onto human beings, transforming them into his image, enabling them to be his body.
• and so, there are no heroes (but one, if that); there is a story-testimony, there is a saving and holy father who wants us home, there is a saving and victorious brother who is the way home, there is a saving and empowering spirit who calls us home.
• there is the building and righting of loving relationships and there is mercy and there is humility, over the long haul.
• and one day, there won't be any death, or mourning, or crying, or pain.
• humans will once again live in relationship with god, and god with them. and we shall reign forever and ever.
• maranatha (come quickly, king jesus)

in acts 2, peter preaches for 7 minutes and 3000 people are baptized.

prior to this sermon, the holy spirit had come upon the apostles after they pray for 10 days.

prior to this waiting, the apostles had been formed through jesus' ministry of 3 & 1/2 years.

prior to this ministry, jesus had been growing in wisdom and stature for 30 years.

30 years for 3 1/2 years for 10 days for 7 minutes for 3000 souls.

7 minutes takes 30 years to grow.

surprises, disappointments, and interruptions are all different words for the same kind of event.

the main difference is one's capacity for openness and gratitude.

another definition of wildermess:

"...cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken.

wildermess takes the forms of thorn and thistle which come up as we work the ground.

this is life outside the garden.

wildermess tempers utopian thinking. just because life has conflicts, grief, and exhaustion does not mean there is a problem.

there is a world beyond getting our way as we will it now.

~~~~

where the conservatives would conclude that suffering is therefore necessary, i would say that the answer lies in a reframing.

we musn't measure ourselves against a utopic bliss of easy trouble-free comfort.

rather, we measure ourselves against whether our society is lending strength to those in affliction.

we seek not the end of suffering, not the end of the curse (at least not now), nor to live life free from unruly wildermess, thorns, and thistles.

but to bring healing to those who suffer, strength of heart to those who toil under the curse, and dancing amid the thorns.

fix our eyes on peace and justice in the fray. suffering qua injustice, not suffering qua suffering.

henri nouwen...

...you get it

it always takes me such a long time to recognize that i'm afraid

i was afraid today

little JJ, how can i face you now? how can i hold you now?

four substack articles about being here

• singing is not therapy - yatharth
• frustration and the art of motorcycle maintenance - jesse crossen
• the tree manifesto - simon ohler
• what i wish someone had told me about starting a meditation practice - sasha chapin

"THE GOOD IS MORE THAN X" is more than "X IS NOT GOOD"

in other words, the good may be "a more excellent way" than X (1 corinthians 12), but that does not mean x is bad or unnecessary or wrong. just... incomplete.

a theology of gracious concessions ("but if you don't"): brad jersak on 1 corinthians 7

related: "but if you can't" in the didache

in summary: not a binary between right and wrong, beneficial and destructive; rather, a spectrum of the good, towards increasing completeness (wholeness)

bonhoeffer: "God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly ... He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure."

"Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it." (related article by chase replogle)

"If we do not give thanks daily for the [actual] Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ." (related article by zach puthoff)

~~~~

"I Love Mankind...It's People I Can't Stand " (related multi-part blog series by richard beck)

dostoevsky:"...love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action ... But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.”

~~~~

love = gratitude for interruptions, disappointment, the otherness of the other; windows into grace

where you are now is the place god meets you. you need only to turn aside to see.

the infinite creator god has decisively entered into the universe through the human, jesus of nazareth

in him, the infinite god and human nature are reconciled. he carried an infinite life and love into death, crucified as a criminal under pontius pilate

note: i'm missing a part about rescue from sin here (oops)

but death could not hold him, and he shattered death open from the inside. he lived, though he died.

and this is the announcement: he reigns now as the forever king, reconciling all things under heaven to the love of the infinite god

and those who swear their allegiance to him shall have part in the world to come; they will live in him, even though they die

~~~~

"a peaceable common-love and a humble kingdom"

1. peaceable = inclined towards peace and peacemaking (shalom)

(reconciliation, wholeness, rest)

peace within the self, right relationships between individuals, between groups, between species (ecological), with all created beings (cosmic)

it's a stretch, but shalom means a whole self; enoughness for our fragmented, divided, and disconnected hearts.

2. common-love = a play on commonwealth (a political community founded on the public welfare)

common = shared; interdependent; belonging equally to or held by all in question (acts 2:44-45; acts 4:32); a just arrangement

the commons - land that was not private property, but instead managed by all for the needs of all (granted common rights: the right to graze, to fish, to take wood according to need)

"in it together" - collaboration, not competition; gotong-royong, not isolation

love = power in solidarity; delighting in the sheer existence and flourishing of the beloved; patient and kind action; seeing as god sees, to be led to where the infinite erupts into our finite world; to see and seek a world where we live and flourish together

as bonhoeffer says, the community has no basis other than the god who is love, the love that is god

(agape, ahava, hesed, etc.) - not love in the abstract; love as revealed through god's character and saving power in scriptures and in history

love in action (not love in dreams): to love these people in this moment

love: of god, of neighbour, of self, of enemy

common-love = a commons bound by love (the communism of love

3. humble = an accurate recognition of one's limitations vis-a-vis the infinity and mystery of the other

etymology: from latin humilis, low, lowly; from humus, ground, earth, soil (grounded, rooted)

synonyms: curious, non-presumptuous, non-aggrandizing, gentle, patient, grateful, interdependent

wildermess = the recognition that our sovereign power is never final, our projects (on every level) will always be interrupted by an unruly, recalcitrant, free-spirited (beloved) other which eludes our discipline

micah 6:8 - "walk humbly with your god" - life as utterly dependent on YHWH's creative and saving action; YHWH as the subject of our grammars

we are not leaders in charge, but disciples who follow

4. kingdom = kingdom of god

not an empire, not a bureaucracy, but the rule of a king (a person)

the rule is not a law, but a person

power and virtue exemplified in the character of a person (the anointed king jesus), not a principle

we are a king's subjects, we belong to him

we are a king's sons and daughters and children, we belong to him

(humble king)dom - but this king is not like the worldly kings; to rule is to serve one's enemies (matthew 11:29)

5. AND - unresolved tension between commons and kingdom; equality and submission

christ is the supreme cosmic king AND we shall all reign with him forever and ever (2 timothy 2:12; revelation 22:5)

to have one image is static; to have two images is animation

~~~~

"communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. we call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. the conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." (karl marx, the german ideology)

the peaceable common-love and humble kingdom is for us not an ideal state of affairs to be established. it is the free participation in the ongoing real movement of christ which makes all things new. the conditions of his movement result from the premises now in existence."

"god hates visionary dreaming ... he who loves his dream of a community more than the christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter." (dietrich bonhoeffer)

a call to nature

interrogating nature

interrogating nature 2

someone needs to find me an ecosocialist synthesis that is neither pro-civ in its imagination but also not haunted by retvrn rhetoric.

this is what i want to try to do with wildermess: wildermess assumes the goodness, and yet, non-finality of domestication.

currently reading through the gospel of mark.

it compels me somehow. it has a different energy.

keywords: power; the king come in secret; mysteries and non-understanding; dull disciples

i'm happy to pick up on the parallel betweeen mark's gospel and homer's odyssey regarding the diguised beggar-king rejected in his own homeland.

and even happier to discover that other scholars have picked up on this too (i.e., woo, i'm not just making it up!)

thank you to wolfythewitch for your beautiful homeric and biblical brainrot. wouldn'tve seen this without you.

there's so much in this gospel. definitely see why people call this gospel a mystery story, a gothic horror.

i love that this gospel allows us to just completely misunderstand everything and get things wrong. god works through our foolishness.

“for every direct actionist we need ten supporters” – margaret killjoy

(update: 4/2): "to weave and reweave the fabric of community is quiet, quotidian, Sisyphean work, but without it, revolution and liberation will never grow roots and bear fruit." - the spiral lab

mariame kaba's five-hundred-year clock; five-hundred-person movement

curiosity, non-judgment, patience, expansive attention, wildermess, and "being with the process"

= i don't know everything. my conclusion is only a slice of the reality. there is more here. there is more than i can see now. don't move on just yet.

~~~~

"there’s a moment where [Kenny Werner] confidently brings his entire hand down across multiple keys on the piano, which of course makes a big, discordant, jangly boom sound. And he says, “listen to how beautiful that sounds.” [...] it’s the judgement, the criticism that an individual brings to their work that kinda ruins it." (source)

“the thing that makes it sound good is your love and acceptance of it.” – Kenny Werner

~~~~

i am interested in this. i love this. i am not thinking about myself. i am getting out of the way. it's about this moment with these people. for the sheer pleasure of it.

~~~~

related?: there is a full life found in listening, washing dishes, and brushing teeth, and doing it again tomorrow.

thinking about goodhart's law

some reading: david manheim

a similar law: campbell's law

some notes:

• multiplicity, diversity, and noise. monoculture = vulnerability. polyculture = fecundity.
• what do you actually want? what are you optimizing for? poke the desire a little; it could turn out to be a proxy for what you actually want.
• goodhart's law for decision-makers: metrix and measures simplify complex reality. sometimes the goal is more complex than can be captured by the measure (be clear about what you want), and more unruly and slow-coming than can be captured by the measurement period (be patient).
• cathedrals take multiple generations, begun by builders who know the work will outlive them. anything worth doing will escape and outlive your life (there will always be more tooth brushing). the desire to finish something can be misguided (it can distort your goal). think about ten years, fifty years down the line. so let go. i.e, “you are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it (pirkei avot 2:21).”

there was once a pile of vegetables who wanted to become a man

the pile of vegetables went to a witch and asked the witch to transform him into a man

the witch said “of course, but for a price. the price is your soul”

the pile of vegetables thought to himself, “aha! well i am a pile of vegetables. I don’t have a soul, so i will come away with the upper hand”

so the vegetable pile became a man. and he swam in the river, he sat under the sun, he fought in wars, and he slept at night

years later, the witch came to his door. the man who was once vegetables was now living with his lover.

when the witch asked him for his soul, the man laughed in the witch’s face. “You have nothing to collect!”

but alas, of course all those years of crunching in the snow, of feeling the wind against his face, and making love had given him a soul

how could it have not?

so the man had to give away his soul to the witch

and he once again became a pile of vegetables

it is said that travellers asked the pile of vegetables whether he felt foolish

and he said “no”

and the field grown from the compost made from that pile of vegetables still stands there to this day

the end.

just finished reading invisible cities by italo calvino.

now i am thinking about babel and arcadia.

about fey and uncertainty. about bricks laid in the wilderness.

unrelated: i am also following roads into pastoral science fiction.

context: 1-2am, 2/7

[11:12 AM] pastoralpunk: i drove someone home with my sister and i broke down crying haha

weeeeeeeeeeeee

[11:13 AM] ko: whymst

[11:13 AM] pastoralpunk: they didnt understand why i was afraid of the mortifying ordeal of being known

i was trying to explain how i feel, fear of rejection and being unwanted

like the feeling that i cant win someone over and be important to them

and i guess at some point it just triggered the emotion

[11:22 AM] like i dont really know if its about wanting more relationships than it is about feeling lonely and disconnected and rejected

and trying to seek out connection

and feeling like being likeable and being important/close to others is the only secure form of connection

why are spiritual gurus childless men?

(example 1)

(example 2)

but a virtuous life is expressed in being interrupted, washing dishes, raising kids, and conflict.

our image of the spiritual guru is a childless man.

i am interested in what childless women and parents (women and men) have to say about the spirit-led life.

as a christian, this is the heart of advice:

• relax
• seek the god who is pursuing you
• listen to him and let him hold everything of you
• go, trusting him

the rest of advice is just commentary on what each particular person needs to be able to get there and the constraints along their way home

the things we affirm readily

the knowledge we accept readily

these are important, but they are the stuff we already know

reinforcement, we might say

the greatest potential lies, therefore, is in the things we don't (know how to) value

to love a stranger, to love an enemy

p.s. do the thing that is below you

• assume things will go wrong (unplanned)
• assume that the wildermess will be unruly
• assume that "mistakes" will be made
• we need to know that, even so, we will be okay (the help of god, the help of others, and the help of ourselves)
• (03/04: lack and loss are not the end of the story; change is happening)
• this is why the "problem of evil" really boils down to two vulnerable questions: does anyone care about me when i'm hurt? can anyone help me when i'm hurt?
• our worldview (imo) spins on this axis. optimism and pessimism spins on this axis. growth mindset and fixed mindset spins on this axis. this is not about which mindset is better or worse to have; just an observation that optimism (when it's not a coping mechanism) rests on a fundamental trust that there is enough good to overcome the bad.
• the way out of the charybdis and scylla of denialism and doomerism is "hoping against hope." i still have to learn this. it's slow.

all humans need:

• possum
• blessing
• provisions
• belonging
• pleasure
• boundaries
• communion

source: genesis 1-2

possum is a latin word related to the english words power, potency, and possibility.

to me, the concept of possum is the basis of the modern concept of safety needs.

to have safety means not being dis-empowered.

sunset becomes a ghost

you cannot hold on

but grip the steering wheel just a little more

can you feel your fingers tickle the pores in the leather?

below birds passing, you are still now

friend, you here are part of the wonder

tl;dr: you don't need to systematize the finding of walking sticks

you only need three questions to be a leftist:

if there is a problem, ask: "why?" (example)

if a reactionary defends the status quo, ask: "for whom?" and "how long?" (example)

please

let the strong inherit the earth

and let those who mourn have nothing

i am too tired for anything more than being mean

i am too tired for wellness

those who find it easy should testify.

those who find it difficult should teach.

"seek first to understand, then to be understood."

when is that "then" coming?

it's funny.

the people who have understood me most, i have never needed to try to understand.

some notes:

sources: "the sufferer's wisdom" (ellen davis), "destiny not fate" (walter brueggemann), "the one in whom all things hang together: bureaucracy and the christian life" (myles werntz)

• keywords: unruly, untameable, mystery, wild, riotous
• the patient urgency of justice
• i am not interested in masters (or managers), but outlaws
• unruly and disorderly characters: e.g., yotsuba (children), fiona (roaming); recalcitrant to prosocial moralism and agreeableness
• the summertime metropolis inside me
• the opposite of "to love" is "to use"
• shoshin
• nadasdy's indeterminancy + haraway's unruly fungus
• melissa florer-bixler: "heresy [names] the doctrines that cleared up mystery too quickly ... too easy and too neat. Heresy cuts away the knots, replacing them with the appearance of order. Heresies turn God into an idea we can manipulate with our good deeds or our intellect or our power." + rowan williams on heresy
• "Within the economy of God’s creation, this kind of fecundity—this kind of unruliness of stories and complex actors—is the rule. Because the thing about fecundity is that you don’t exactly know what it’s going to do. To order something well, there is an acknowledgment of freedom, and that any order will happen in and through the fullness of what people are, not in spite of it." (myles werntz)
• to be overwhelmed, to be at a loss
• confounds final calculations, sums that don't add up
• "much of gardening is a war against nature so if you want to attract wildlife, the secret is to garden less" (source) + myles werntz's "truth from power
• it is too easy and too neat to simply promote surrendering to the wildermess, to give up power. this is yet another (subtle) way of domesticating the wildermess. there is no innocent life. we inevitably will tamper with the wildermess and try to use it. to try to abstain entirely is only to deny our own internal wildermess. "creatures such as us can be free of the blurring Fitch wants us to abjure" + "but what we need is not a purer model of power but the ongoing bonds of forgiveness" (werntz)

faith without works is dead (james 2).

works w/o justice is dead (isaiah 58).

justice w/o mercy is dead (james 2; hosea 6).

mercy w/o freedom is dead (genesis 3; luke 15:11-32).

freedom w/o love is dead (1 corinthians 10).

love without faith is dead (1 john 2).

christ is alive.

it always strikes me that the father of the prodigal son allows his son to leave home.

there is no possible good answer to the one suffering from the problem of evil.

to reiterate, if my post sounds like an apologia for suffering, feel free to ignore the whole thing. suffering has little purpose other than to be healed.

the free-will defense fails. it sounds narcissistic. "god allows suffering because it is the price of giving people free will." "why free will?" "because god wanted people to freely choose whether to love him or not." "at the cost of billions of people of suffering?" "yep."

but let's try another reading of the free will defense, a more political one.

on raising humans to be better

two posts that i think are saying the same thing:

richard beck's "the grace of disillusionment"

myles werntz's "truth from power

and both of these intersect with what bonhoeffer is talking about the real Christian community.

idealism is, let's say, an impulse to strain out the bad parts of the soup, to make the soup "clearer."

our idealism for our community is good, but it can also lead us to fail to accept and love our human neighbours whenever they can't live up to it.

myles werntz writes that: "But what we need is not a purer model of power but the ongoing bonds of forgiveness. We must assume that we will in fact harm one another, at least in unintended ways. We must not assume that we can somehow put off 'power over' altogether."

we musn't hope to "upgrade" each other, whether ourselves or our neighbour — believing that this would fix things (once and for all), such that we can bypass conflict and the need for forgiveness entirely.

"upgrading" and "technical fixes" can prevent us from seeing the image of god already in one another, in our strengths and our failures. paul writes: "put up with one another" (colossians 3:13). we will get it wrong, we will make mistakes, we will always have to put up with one another.

expect people to change (even hope for it, maybe); don't expect to change them.

there can be no other object for our love other than "this moment, with these people." (andrew root)

once there was a plant that hid from the light to prove it could grow in the dark.

related to a previous post: "12/29 - domination"

some lessons from genesis 3, the parable of the prodigal son, and god's character:

• allow people to make their choices
• teach people to make good choices
• allow and accommodate the outcome of peoples's choices (though, hold them accountable to justice)
• help people when they make bad choices
• love people throughout

all else is commentary.

context

note to self:

things don't have to be final to be valuable

do things that aren't the final word; make things that don't express the final word. do things that fail to represent the infinite in a complete way.

a public record of snapshots, mistakes, and how you've grown is equally valuable.

of course, as always, "doing things without finality is easy, just be born with secure attachment"

p.s. i wonder if this is why shitty doodles are often "better" than laborious polished pieces, insofar as they seem to resonate with people more? there is value to the shitty doodle. there is value to the complex idea or feeling being summarized over fragmentary DMs rather than a polished essay or blogpost.

holism ought not lose sight of antagonism.

aleksandr solzhenitsyn wrote that:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

funny how we all know this saying, but we're never told that solzhenitsyn was an "arch-reactionary" monarchist who romanticized pre-revolutonary tsarist russia.

note: i should really write something about the circulation of "self-authenticating sayings" in reactionary thought.

solzhenitsyn also says that "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts."

he adds that "since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions of history: they destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of good as well). And they take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more."

it's not that solzhenitsyn is wrong about the line between good and evil. surely we ought to take out the log in our eye before we condemn others.

however, the universal capacity of all beings for both good and evil distracts from the reality that there is another line: the line dividing "power over others to use them for oneself" and "no-power." this line passes between states, between classes AND through every human heart. we're not talking about expelling evil but struggling against tangible material oppression. a person can be both virutous and vicious AND also be clearly on the side of the line that has power over others.

what about the line dividing "to place trust in seizing power for oneself" and "to surrender in trust to the good?" this line is more ambiguous (the oppressed may certainly aim to seize power), but even so, it reveals that one side has seized more power historically, and the other side has historically needed to surrender.

notes on a theology of sight:

• philippians 2:4 "look to the interests of others" (source: transforming church conflict, p.34)
• "turn your eyes away"; sin is not looking at the thing we shouldn't do, sin is not looking at the thing we should do. (source: secular christ podcast, s1e8)
• what would jesus see?

am wondering if theology of sight is 1) dominated by white gaze and 2) ableist. can sight be retold as something more whole, less cartesian subject-y?

tl;dr: don't always try to skip over the ugly stage. it's okay to "think like a child" when you are a child (metaphorically)."

i may consciously reject the myth of the heroic soldier, but i realize that even when i was young i have embodied what i call the "false sage."

the false sage is the impulse to "be mature for your age," to skip past the naivete and errors and impropriety of youth entirely.

if rudimentary models of atoms are the stuff of children, false sages seek to skip straight to the advanced stuff.

context

some would say "we don't need another hero." i generally agree, but maxims (and language itself) are lossy; it's reasonable that in some contexts, we would need something that looks like what we'd call heroism.

have no fidelity to the cult of the hero.

god, love, and community will save us in the end, by means of empowering grace.

"Negativity is a fact of life. Sometimes empathy isn’t what’s needed. Sometimes self-absorption is required to create good art. Sometimes we need catty people to tell the ugly truth. Sometimes hand-holding positivity is just a lie. Sometimes insisting on being “good” and “healthy” all the time is an exhausting way of ignoring our darker impulses. Sometimes elitism preserves high-quality practices. Sometimes we just want to be mean because it’s honest to our experience. Sometimes we shouldn’t care about disrupting others’ good moods if it means we’re being authentic to ours. Sometimes hatred is the truth." (source)

"nothing is a waste if you learn from it" (source)

"everything belongs."(source)

few things are inherently good or bad in absolute terms. for everything, there is a season (everything, any given thing, may be good or bad according to its context). discernment of this is both our highest test and our greatest temptation.

what we consider good may be bad if it is without love (1 corinthians 13). what we consider bad may be good if it is redeemed in love (jesus' crucifixion). there is a time and place for everything, good and bad. everything is only good sometimes. everything is bad only sometimes.

what matters is that nothing is "waste" if we can learn from it (if we can learn where and how it belongs in order for it to benefit universal flourishing).

the question, at its heart, is therefore: what do we need in order to be able to "learn from it?" what supports do we need to grow into a "growth mindset" where everything (potentially) belongs?

(update: 1/28) surrender it to god, surrender it to god, surrender it all.

a healing, transformation, and resurrection society:

not a society where nothing bad happens

where bodies never break

where lives never fall apart

where no one ever loses their way

where no one suffers;

but a society where people have everything they need to heal and transform

where broken bodies are given the time to mend

where failures are given the space to be restored

where prodigals are given the way back home

where suffering people are given enough to lean on

not the prevention of death but the certainty that it'll be transformed by resurrection

our aim is common flourishing and a flourishing commons

currently noticing how everywhere the metaphor of exercise and practice is

"[x] is like a muscle."

"no pain, no gain."

i've always been pretty bad at exercise, which might explain things.

i feel like i've always leaned closer to the energy of "flow," of "non-doing."

as people always point out, flow and non-doing are not passive (far from it!). the basketball player in the zone is not doing nothing, but their activity is spontaneous.

of course, it takes a lot of "exercise" and "practice" to get into a flow state in the first place.

but i wonder if we take for granted how much of life is like exercise.

related to a post from 11/13, titled "difference."

it probably turns out that a lot of my "issues" come down to a poor theory of mind

i.e., underestimating others' agency; seeing myself as a "source" or "origin" rather than a recipient

branching paths/timelines are scary. it's scary to think about how some very good thing or very bad thing happening now is the expression resulting from a past choice, itself resulting from a past choice, resulting from a past choice, and so on, all of which could have occurred otherwise.

analysis paralysis is at its heart the fear of having to make a difference. we know that every decision we make makes a difference for us and can make a difference for others' lives, even years down the road. how can we know that the difference we're making is the best difference we can make?

as nix says in their blogpost: "Every choice holds ripple effects: meeting one person in a particular time and particular place can change your entire life trajectory, and you only need to meet one or two right people or do one or two right things. Take the pressure off of doing everything perfectly and instead focus on the areas with most surface area/leverage."

i think that the anxiety of freedom is at its heart an underestimation of others' agency. if every choice holds ripple effects, this doesn't have to be scary when we think about how everyone else's choices also holds ripple effects.

we can't expect ourselves to make perfect choices when the terrain is rippling and changing beneath our feet every second as eight billion other people make their choices. the branching paths are constantly twisting; the trajectory of our lives are not only the sum of our choices, but the sum of everything, everywhere, all at once.

rather than being responsible over the trajectory of our lives, let us instead be "response-able." rather than try to thread a needle through the optimal path, let's look up from our lives and see everything else. let's see the water rippling with possibility, and let's swim over to wherever looks fun. and let's go from there.

our world is fire and burnt flesh.

it is ice worms and heaving stomachs.

it is urchins and ragged edges falling into infinity.

saving this for later:

• grothendieck
• p. 50, greenwood, michael christie

(update: 1/17) there's something here about lone radicals

as andreas malm says: "I can do [illegal, militant activism] only as part of a collective of people who do something that they have decided on together."

hypocrisy is not the prerogative of the individual; it is the work of the collective.

chat, i figured it out:

when people give advice in the form of "do [x]," it helps me to understand that advice in the form of "be the kind of person who can do [x]."

e.g., touch grass; don't procrastinate (start earlier); be on time; meditate; exercise; worry less; practice gratitude; love yourself

all this advice is good, but when we focus narrowly on how to do [x], we may beat ourselves up when we're unable to do so (and miss what's actually happening)

let's follow the train of thought: when we fail to start doing these things consistently, we conclude that we're defective; we're unable to make good choices, we lack willpower and determination, etc.

therefore, the advice at its root: "be the kind of person who can make good choices," "be the kind of person who has willpower and determination"

sounds absurd? that means we're now starting in the right place

note: my working theory is that this root advice is not actually so absurd when you consider richard bartlett's saying that "everything that lives grows inside something else". all living being grows within a supportive context (good soil, good light, good grace).

the issue is no longer limited to "making bad choices" and "lack of willpower." yes, these are still important. but it's also worth considering what kind of environment allows for the growth of a kind of person who can make good choices. what would it actually take for us to grow into people who make good choices?

conclusion: there's a lot of advice out there. when advice disappoints, we ought to blame not ourselves or the advice, but the truth to which it points: "it's good to be the kind of person who can do this. be that kind of person."

update (03/05): "What matters is that, through certain against-the-grain actions, of giving thanks, we become people who are grateful. [...] This is what distinguishes gratitude (as a virtue, part of our character) from the act of giving thanks (something we summon up when the occasion arises, or on Thursdays in November). It’s the end of the train, not the beginning. Put differently, you’re not required to be grateful, or even thankful, for a bad nights’ sleep. Or grouchy children. Or cancer." (myles werntz)

becoming a kind of person > the performance of our actions. becoming a grateful person is the end of the train. but what's the traintracks?

happy new year! :D

just a few notes, since i have nothing much to say:

• i just put up a survey on IG, and i am both surprised that other people feel it to be very hard to be okay, and surprised that other people feel it to be very easy to be okay.
• i am making it to the end of gabor maté's the myth of normal and i am finding the ayahuasca and spirituality turn unsurprising, but a bit disappointing. perhaps i am too mockingbird-pilled and disillusioned with TPOT. still, nadine burke harris' concept of "incremental milestones that need to happen over thirty or forty years' time" is very helpful. thirty or forty years!! i don't even think on the timescale of a single year. perhaps good things grow over years.
• just off of that previous point, i think we need to become more conversant with agricultural images. it's a false dichotomy to argue that either 1) be patient even if you don't see visible growth, since growth is slow, or that 2) being told to be patient is an excuse to justify ineffective programs that don't actually help us grow. good growth should bear fruit. if we think agriculturally, we know that great trees take decades to mature, but at the same time, there are characteristic milestones that we can use to monitor the tree's growth even in the earliest stages of its life. by comparison, we shouldn't expect maturity to come quickly, but we should be able to discern the hidden signs that their maturation is going well or poorly (even if the person themselves is still very, very green, and their fruit underripe). what are those hidden signs? idk.
• (update: 2/7) to read: how to read a tree by tristan gooley