I Might Still Be A Christian

[Image by James Reid from

The Life of Christ In Woodcuts]

I Might Still Be A Christian

About a year ago I started

calling myself “Christian-adjacent”

Some of my friends were like

“I have no idea what that means”

I don’t know what it means either but 

I could say the same for Christianity itself 

Yet somehow I felt this tug to distance myself

from all the creeds & crusty old doctrines

not to mention all the cranky judgers

at church with all their petty agendas 

even if I was still endlessly wrestling 

with the love-talk & the cross

In Anne Lamott’s conversion narrative in

“Traveling Mercies” she talks about her lineage

with parents who were secular hipsters 

with friends who were stoned hippies

California leftists all of them & with such a crowd 

calling yourself a Christian is just plain awkward

She resisted at first the call that Jesus placed on her 

because frankly it wasn’t cool & who would believe her

I think I have resembled Anne Lamott my 

entire adult life but in this regard especially

I still remember when Sunfrog got sober he encountered an illuminated 

Jesus & joined AA & some friends just frankly thought I was joking or

maybe needing medication 

more than revelation 

Earlier this summer I saw that a favorite religious author

Brian McLaren was making the podcast circuit again 

oh -- he must be peddling a new book 

this one is called “Do I Stay Christian?”

& deep inside my body my spirit-brain was

clamoring “why are you asking that now”

I already deconstructed -- don’t you read my blog?

I already left religion -- sort of & a second time

but of course we all know why he was asking it now

because MAGA Trumpists tried to chase us all

out of church if not out of Tennessee or 

the south if not out of America entirely 

but more importantly there is this utterly 

annoying absolutely intoxicating possibly invented 

maybe completely made-up story of Jesus that keeps 

creeping back into my thoughts without my consent

Come on now you might know what I am talking about the 

Holy Spirit has no boundaries or respect for my agnostic side

Prefers not to take “no” for answer when

You already said “yes” a hundred times before

So here we are in my monthly weekly daily midlife 

existential crisis where I admit the godawful truth

that I cannot live with church &

I cannot live without it & 

besides you may think I’m a backsliding heretic

but whoever heard of anyone being unbaptized 

I could not live without God even if I tried 

yes because God is as real as life itself is & 

like Ashley Cleveland sang

“I Need Jesus” & there’s more:

as a retired pastor & I agreed on a phone call that

while organized religion may be a net bad in the world 

it has still been a net good in our lives even if it is

just some approximation of faith that some

Christian scholars once dubbed “therapeutic deism”

I frankly prefer some framework of the divine

in my life rather than not & because the religion 

of my lineage & of my youth feels radically more

authentic than any of the delicious alternatives

that I have explored & frankly perhaps I understand

what some studies say: “Participating in spiritual practices may be 

a protective factor for a range of health & well-being outcomes”

I have to admit not just my genuine interspirituality but

that the Christianity at the core of my being speaks to me

in the voice of Jesus in the voice of scripture in the voice 

of protesters & in the broken bread & juice or wine & even 

in the voice of the radical 

theologians who have come before

& I also have to admit: I love the brimming yumminess of the

Whitmanian multitudes spilling over the edges of our existence 

so that I can include Buddha & Laozi & tree spirits & 

fairies & unicorns & The Force & Tarot Cards & the I-Ching

& sacred Mama Earth & mutual aid & anarchism 

& my beloved Unitarian Universalists even as

I walk this undeniable Jesus path with all its 

consequences of crosses & enemy love 

So like the shock of the first cup of coffee before the

first light of dawn I have to admit it this morning that

I might still be a Christian 

The Path

 the path before me
just another open window
just the hungry mouth
of the gaping sky

the path ahead as I escape religion

as I run from the pulpit through the doors

onto the gravel street & straight to

the mountains or the creek

here we go down this path

with a pack of grief & lots of grub

as many snacks as we can pack

into this hobo satchel 

every seeker is a friend to these

tracks these weeds that sky

from the day we are born

until the day we die

I cannot really retrace my steps 

even as I want to reread books

got too many words but 

forgot all the hooks

but the walls of church are

crumbling behind me the death

of god or faith or what I don’t know

because Jesus is still a rebel

to whom I might listen as I listen

to the water keepers & earth defenders

as I listen to the workers organizing &

the junkies getting clean & drunks getting dry

& the people flying signs or trespassing in tents or

writing codes with their misconduct 

to explode the myths with new ones 

we write new stories unravel old fabric to stitch new 

still a devotional distraction & powerless surrender 

to immersion in the radical mystery 

seek to understand new weird things

as much as old weird history   

i am grateful to be lost again

unfound from straightjackets of salvation &

discourses on damnation that defy or deny

this sacred reality of nondual liberation

a (post) christian against the cross

 image - Facebook post about nationalist Easter cakes in Russia and Ukraine.
[I have been corresponding via Messenger & following on FB a couple people in Kviv, Ukraine. Via a repost on one of their pages, I saw these Easter cakes. One set of cakes celebrate the Azov batallion, the other the Z army. One nationalism vs another, Ukraine vs Russia. On Easter. Still trying to let all that sink in. But even the folks in Russian & Ukraine posting in reply found humor. The original post said we cannot be brothers, but several in reply said, "Because we are sisters."]

I am in an email back-and-forth with an old friend, who was a mentor when I was younger. In debating the war, I said something about how offensive it is that the Ukrainian government symbol is an Iron Cross. He said it is not an Iron Cross. I don't have permission to show what he said, but here is my reply to his reply.

“Do you think when Jesus comes back, he's really going to want to look at a cross?” - Bill Hicks

Christians, out of anyone, ought to understand what an utterly offensive and problematic symbol the cross is. Some sophisticated theologians grapple with this, sometimes it is called the scandal of the cross. 

If we are to believe any of the legends, the early Christians were an anti-imperial decolonized bunch of mystic misfits. If we are to believe the stories, emperor Constantine corrupted the ragtag religion and marched behind the cross. Constantine believed that God intervened in a military battle to help make him a victor. The cross as a popular Christian symbol is post-Constantine. 

The militaristic or nationalistic use of the cross doesn’t have to be overtly Nazi to be disgusting. See to people who actually love Jesus, not the many many counterfeits (maybe my version is the real counterfeit, who knows) don’t celebrate the cross. If we wear it, it is a solemn subversive dissociative reminder of the imperial tragedy that is central to our religious story.

My radical lineage in the church is inherently pacifist, in some ways also anarchist. From a mystic anarchist perspective, participation in the Beloved Community or “kindom” of God, this membership prohibits allegiance to any flag or participation in any army. 

Our pal Nietzche hated Christians for what he perceived as their/our drugged self-hatred. He compared Christ to the narcotic of drink/alcohol. He went further:

“Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched . . .it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation.”

By contrast, theologian John Caputo embraces what he calls weak theology, the anarchic weakness, the utterly powerless non-coercive power of the cross. Thinking with Caputo, we will take the botched and corrupted weakness heaped on us by the Nietzches of the world, then lean into it. This is why the people I admire in my tradition (Catholic workers and the like) are always hanging around the incarcerated killers, homeless drunks, unsavory hooligans all. 

Last weekend was orthodox Easter, now despite the Pope and me calling for a truce, the war rages on. But that did not stop Ukrianians from having Azov Easter cakes or the Russians from having Z easter cakes. One nationalism against another. 

A Rant & Lament for Rev. John Shuck (RIP) & for us All

 

My friend John Shuck died of Covid last year. He was also an outspoken Covid skeptic and anti-mandate anti-mask anti-vaxer. For some folks, that is all you need to know to stop reading now. But for others, perhaps you might join me in this reflective rant and strangely hopeful lament. As much as I want to make a loving tribute to John, his death has occasioned some hard reflections within myself. 

To begin, John and I were not close by any means, but our paths crossed enough and amicably, that I call him friend. On many topics, I initially viewed him as a fellow traveler and kindred soul. When we met, he was a leftist atheist Presbyterian pastor from east Tennessee, who hosted a progressive podcast/talk radio show. Although I never identified as an atheist, I was always intrigued and impressed with atheist Christians, especially in my former PCUSA tradition, where we had a strong commitment to intellectual acuity, inclusion, and social justice.

It was a shared social justice commitment that brought John and I into each other’s orbits, through a small advocacy group called Presbyterian Voices for Justice (PV4J), where I served briefly as our national co-coordinator/chair. Soon after we met, he left a board position with PV4J and moved from east Tennessee to Portland. The west coast seemed like a good fit for him, but I continued to follow him on social media. I don’t have a specific moment when things shifted for him, but I know that he juggled personal and professional concerns with his political presence on social media. 

Once on his radio show, he hosted the authors of The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation, a book that proposed that the “accidental” death of Thomas Merton in 1968 may have been a murder. I found the interview so compelling, that I mentioned this theory in an essay I wrote about MLK and Merton for my fanzine Ordinary Space. One friend, after reading my piece, dismissed the Merton book out-of-hand and warned me to stay away from the conspiracy crowd.

As anyone who is following the arc of America knows, conspiracy theories have spawned more conspiracy theories into a spiral of crazy over the last several years. As our communities have dug themselves into warring culture-war camps, everything gets weaponized. For John Shuck, his passionate interest in the “9-11 truth movement,” for example, probably meant he was poised to get going as a covid skeptic. We are far from a reckoning with what these fractures and their attendant rabbit holes really mean for the long term political reality and consequential emotional tragedy for our families and friends.

Writing about this today requires me to make some confessions. I am at once a hopeless idealist optimist and a contrarian anti-authoritarian leftist. While I do not consider myself a conspiracist, I confess that I have dabbled in conspiracy theories. I do question the “dominant narrative” about certain topics, especially the extrajudicial assassinations of people like MLK or Malcolm X. In that light, I was immediately interested in the claims in the Merton book. 

Now, Covid was a turning point for me, when I realized without regret that for the first long while, I would mask in public, abide by social distancing by seeking a remote work arrangement, and get the vaccine without fear. But that was the first time in my life that I was quick to join the mainstream medical consensus about anything. To be clear, I am not a doctor or an ideological herbalist or naturalist. 

But I  have an anxiety about doctors and medicines and come from a hippy health food culture where I taught myself to chew raw garlic, eat spoonfuls of local honey, drink lots of water, and sip herbal tea for most common ailments. The covid vaccine seemed like a no-brainer for me for public health reasons, but I guess you could say, I had previously traveled in circles that were anti-vax adjacent. 

All this is to say that I should not jump to judgmental conclusions about friends in the “bodily autonomy” crowd when it comes to the Covid vaccine, including and especially in my social media relationship to John Shuck. Because I am already a hypocrite about too many things, and folks like this are probably going to recoil from kneejerk condemnations, maybe instead, maybe folks need prayers and compassion and persuasion from people like me who were previously skeptics, but chose to get the jab. 

Yet sometime in the last year (or so) before his passing, when I stumbled across John’s comments about Covid, I made a Facebook post “warning” folks about his passion against the mandates and masks etc. To be clear, I was pretty dismissive. He was clearly a rightwing wacko of the QAnon school, that is what I was thinking. The purpose of my post was not to call-out John per se, as much as to imply that my friends should block or unfollow him. Such are the emotions on social media and the boundaries we surround ourselves with, in the worlds of Trump and Biden and Qanon and covid.

To illustrate how extreme John Shuck had turned, he had once posted in support of Mt. Juliet hate-preacher Greg Locke, in strange solidarity I suppose, because of how anti-mask Locke was. Strange bedfellows from an atheist antiwar leftist like Shuck, who knows like I do, how hard it is to be on the social justice left in rural Tennessee, but okay.

Even though John died back in October 2021, I only learned about his death this week.  This week, I also have been called by otherwise progressive fellow-travelers a Putin-sympathizing Russian-bot because I oppose spending billions of our dollars and weapons in a blank check of unlimited lethal military aid to Ukraine, in our USA proxy war against Russia, a war that if escalated too far, could result in a full-scale nuclear war. I suspect that if John were still alive, he and I would agree about the human horrors of this useless, suspicious, unnecessary war. 

I could pontificate all day, about all the reasons why some of my neighbors have found what they perceive as solidarity and safe harbor in white Chrisitan nationalism. That somehow this camp also includes conspiracy theories, covid skepticism, and ideas about the “deep state” makes them an odd mix to me. But today, that they perceive of themselves as rebels and the Democrats as “the man” seems like a plausible theory. It is a new strange upside down world where liberals are conservative, and conservatives are radicals. But I will pause that analysis to say something else, which for me makes the main point of this rant and lament. 

Buddha or Christ-like compassion and coercion are incompatible. Coercion and compassion are incompatible, even without the Buddha or Jesus portion. What the compassion and empathy crowd have to admit is that we can weaponize good will against people we perceive as enemies of the good. 

As much as I am almost always in one and not the other ideological camp, neither my membership in that camp, nor the ideology itself, should be used to demonize or dehumanize the others. It shouldn’t take the death of an anti-vaxer conspiracist that I considered a friend for me to realize and remember that. But here we are.  

No matter how many times we cleanse or question our own motives, authoritarianism can creep in from the left or right. Authoritarianism is toxic and anti-compassion and destructive of voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. Anti-authoritarians who also espouse a Jesus-infused law of love don’t need to become cops in their heads or cops on social media or cops or bullies of any kind.

I was quick to judge John Shuck, as much as some of my fellow lefty Christians were, those of us who knew him before he became conspiracy-obsessed, I am sure. While I don’t condone the shrill outspoken anti-vax crowd around Covid for obvious health reasons, I have to humbly admit that this topic’s weaponization on “both sides” speaks to a deeper fracture in our souls and in our communities. If any of this or this last bit prompts some of my folks to shame or blame me for being soft on conspiracy or anti-vaxers, I can take it. 

As much as I am an abolitionist, feminist, an accomplice to trans and queer friends, an avowed anti-racist, I am also a failure at being a good member of the “liberal” or “progressive” crowd, especially as it partitions itself these days on social media. 

I fear that online trolling and harassment around political minutiae or an aggressive cancel culture are just soft, slippery, and sleazy forms of the carceral mentality that ultimately otherizes every possible “other,” that same mentality at its conclusive terminus places humans in cages, and justifies state sanctioned murder with wars or the death penalty.

[For more about what informs me about these topics, I cannot recommend enough the work of Clementine Morrigan, their fanzines and Instagram feeds, and their podcast F*#(#*g Cancelled.]  

As much as I speak out against anti-blackness and white-supremacy, I also see how banning members of the so-called “far right” from social media or boycotts of people like Joe Rogan are such serious “red herrings” from the authentic struggles to support low wage workers, unionize places like Amazon and Starbucks, to achieve universal healthcare and housing and income, to abolish rent and debt and wars and prisons and police and destroy predatory capitalism forever.

While I might agree with the underlying reasons for countless cancellations and free speech restrictions, they too often come from an emotionally wounded place that fails to rationally consider what history teaches us about how harmful the state and the secret police have always been to all forms of dissent. That is, while I might gleefully or tacitly approve of consequences for people on the far right, it is much more true that these malign and mendacious marginalizations have targeted, imprisoned, cancelled, and even murdered people on the left. 

I have another million reasons to tell you why I don’t care if you sing bad Jesus music on airplanes (to pluck a culture-war non-crisis of this week) or if you hate people that sing bad Jesus music on airplanes. I do care that we all have our basic needs met and foster difficult conversations with friends across the chasms of culture wars. In this season of Easter, in this time of fragile hope and desperation, I recommit myself to be slower to judge others or myself, especially their motives or sincerity and to seek peace and human solidarity that transcends the fractures and ideological divides in our world. 

Just writing these words has made me want to call some friends, long-term friends that I have in my own community that I have stopped talking to because of “politics.” Trying to reconcile those friendships may be frustrating or impossible, but the tug of love and compassion in my heart are real. If I want everyone to be less dogmatic and hateful today about Russians, for example, I need to be less dogmatic and hateful about, gulp-ugh-spit, Republicans. 

Somehow I know that everything I have said here will be seen as too simplistic or too something: naive, idealistic, enabling, soft on my enemies. But somehow, also, I feel a deeper rumble, way deep down, that says I too have been too judgy, too toxic, too harsh, too ideological about too many things and that abiding human empathy, agape love, compassion, mutual aid, and solidarity, these values transcend it all. 

In one of his last blogs before his death, John Shuck wrote this: “These are dangerous times. They do not have to be fearful times. Fears will come up. They will arise. Our old foe, fear, will attack us and want to drive us. Love, Courage, and Joy are stronger than fear, when we give them control and let them drive our beliefs and actions.

Acting from Love, Courage, and Joy will result in actions that reflect our true selves. They will be beautiful actions whether or not they result in outcomes that will be convincing to others. But they will defeat the Monster in that the Monster will not control our true self. When we act from fear, the Monster controls us. When we act from Love, Courage, and Joy, the Monster cannot control us.”

 

Merton, Jesus, War, & More

 Notes from a Zoom To Gather unchurch Sunday thing on 3.27.2022
---
video from the message part of the gathering: https://youtu.be/T2mP0fzGtMk

Hebrews 2 - the Message

Since the One who saves and those who are saved have a common origin, Jesus doesn’t hesitate to treat them as family, saying,

I’ll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you;

I’ll join them in worship and praise to you.

Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says,

Even I live by placing my trust in God.

Louisville epiphany

It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. … This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. … I have the immense joy of being humyn, a member of a race in which God as Godself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the humyn condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

My remarks

As you all know, I have been struggling with my faith for at least the last two years. It’s been a season for me of what many call “Deconstruction.” Breaking up with a blowtorch & a chisel every infrastructure of doctrine, staring into the existential abyss looking for a new understanding of God. I have been dabbling in pantheism & animism, reading Rumi every day. As some of you know, I have been attending a Unitarian Universalist congregation here in Cookeville. But I just can’t seem to shake Jesus. 

When we talk about the better world that is possible, the new worlds that is always flowers bursting in the cracked sidewalk, the new world being born in the shell of the old, the old school Christian tendency is to call that real & dreamed, that already & not yet place, they call it the Kingdom of God or the reign of God. 

For years, I have been much more familiar & friendly to MLK’s paraphrase: the Beloved Community, a term Martin actually borrowed from Josiah Royce. So who is Jesus in the Beloved Community. Late last year I wrote a blog that Jesus really isn’t King, & that is a good thing. In the days since, I have started identifying as Christian-adjacent, finally surrendering to the spiritual-but-not-religious trajectory I had already been on for some time; but what is the place for Jesus in my new expansive ecumenical space?

I am not seeking new gods; in fact I am done with Gods altogether, at least in the toxic or coercive or codependent micromanaging authoritarian sense that too many power-hungry preachers & teachers prefer. So I had an epiphany reading Merton’s epiphany!

Jesus is our brother, our sibling, our colleague, our comrade, our fellow traveler & co-conspirator in the subversive nonviolent revolution. No thrones or titles required, only endless banquet tables & a radical redistribution of resources so all are fed. Maybe Jesus as sibling really is the new thing. No oaths or vows or promises required, just a baptism into this merry band of rabble. 

“The free choice of global suicide, made in desperation by the world’s leaders & ratified by the consent & cooperation of all their citizens, would be a moral evil second only to the Crucixion.” - Merton, from “Peace: Christian duties & perspectives”

If I am honest, I don’t think most Christians or churches believe or teach that the Crucifixion was a moral evil. I think too many teach a transactional cross, where a masochistic sadistic caricature of God simultaneously commits suicide & kills God’s son. In all the metrics of atonement theory, the cross is a bet & a bargain, with God, with the devil, with the future of all humanity. 

But what if the cross was just the electric chair of its era. What if the cross is as I have been told by historical theologians more well-read than me, a terminal torture technique to intimidate subversives & seal submission to empire. 

If the cross is an evil of the magnitude that Merton describes, it is recognition of the execution, of the lynching, of the authority-sanctioned brutal killing that crucifixions in the first century are reported to have been. 

For me this last month, the war has been reconverting.

From the whispers on the news of an imminent invasion, to waking up to Putin’s creepy announcement on Thursday, February 24th, to seeing the cruelty & the carnage of a full scale air & ground invasion & the continued human cost as the war enters its second month.

My frail & fragile & probably futile searching for hope, it can grasp for hot takes on hot war & cold war, but might also seek solace outside the steady chatter of the commentariat. 

---

More from Merton

from “Peace: Christian Duties & Perspectives”

Politics pretends to use all this force as its servant, to harness it for social purposes, for the “good of [humanity].” The intention is certainly good. The technological development of power in our time is certainly a challenge, but that does not make it essentially evil. On the contrary, it can be and should be a very great good. In actual fact, however, the furious speed with which our technological world is plunging toward disaster is evidence that no one is any longer fully in control --and this includes the political leaders.

A simple study of the steps which led to the dropping of the first A-bomb on Hiroshima is devastating evidence of the way well-meaning men, the scientists and leaders of a victorious nation, were guided step by step, without realizing it, by the inscrutable yet simple “logic of events” to fire the shot that was to make the cold war inevitable and prepare the way inexorably for World War III. This they did purely and simply because they thought in all sincerity that the bomb was the simplest and most merciful way of ending World II and perhaps all wars, forever.

The tragedy of our time is then not so much the malice of the wicked as the helpful futility even of the best intentions of “the good.” We have war-makers, war criminals, indeed. But we ourselves, in our very best efforts for peace, find ourselves maneuvered unconsciously into positions where we too can act as criminals. For there can be no doubt that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, though not fully deliberate crimes, nevertheless crimes. And who was responsible? No one. Or “history.” We cannot go on playing with nuclear fire and shrugging off the results as history. 

--

It is well understood on both sides that atomic war is purely and simply massive and indiscriminate destruction of targets chosen not for thie military significance alone, but for their importance in a calculated project of terror and annihiliation.

Three (anti)war poems penned on the first Ash Wednesday of World War Three

 

Three (anti)war poems

penned on the first 

Ash Wednesday 

of World War Three

1.

I am old enough to remember 

two invasions of Iraq 

1991 & 2003 under two different Bushes 

to be a true peacenik in America

is for nobody to ever have your back

peaceniks 

forever get   

called a coward

a traitor 

a sissy

a punk 

so when I dunk on this topic 

let me clear 

this is not out of fear

I claim no moral position 

not America number one

nor hippy with flowers in a gun 

not making memes of president Zalenskyy

none of this is any fun 

it’s only been a week but I have been floored

by liberals cheering for war

first we saw it on the cable news

commentators drooling like they drunk on booze

come on Biden what you gonna do

liberals cheering for war

maybe liberals cheering for war

never had the FBI come knocking on their door

don’t have neighbors phoning them death threats

for calling out local racists or January 6th attackers

or you know just regular Americans always bragging

about every kind of weapon they own 

doomsday preppers

soldiers of fortune 

trigger-happy ex-cops 

for every man is

his own killing machine

am I the only one triggered by people

in this right-wing fever dream 

I am just one sleepless woke hippy 

trying to stay on the beam

of not drinking the cocktail of revenge

the way you post pictures of civilian soldiers

then tell me you are not just another

liberal cheering for war 

liberals cheering for war

deny there were ever racists in Ukraine

okay then we can also deny that the 

former President’s boy ever did cocaine

but really this poem has nothing to do with blame

yet rather questioning every aspect of this 

ratcheted-up delirious war game 

not cheering for war is also 

not cheering for Putin

some still remember

better red than dead 

or was it dead than red

re-runs of the Day After Tomorrow 

dancing in your head

some of us remember this tape from the 1980s

nuclear bombs would send us all to Hades

but some of you thought the cold war had faded

until we woke up one February day

to learn about tanks & troops & 

again those nukes

autocrats & heroes & kooks 

high time I remember how to pray

2. 

remember how to read multiple sources

not just re-post that old silly picture

of a shirtless dictator who likes to ride horses 

not bragging that the one side of any conflict is

automatically right yet neither diminishing those

who hide in a basement shelter night after night

every human has blood that courses through her veins

every parent of soldiers dead remembers their names

listening to the protesters resisting arrest in the streets of Moscow

listening to a pacifist from Kyiv adding perspective on Democracy Now

mandatory conscription for every man 

don’t worry somebody watching from home

will figure out a way to tell you this

was always part of God’s plan 

understanding why some right-wingers 

who were cheering for Russia are suddenly silent

scratching my head at the left-wingers 

who are tongue-tied to call-out or condemn Russia

everything in life 

is not a hot-take on Twitter 

I know after Covid how much we like 

to sit at our screens & fritter 

But maybe get up for a walk 

Call your mom

Plan a night out dancing

Even if you need to call a babysitter 

don’t put words in my mouth I am not about 

to “blame NATO” but if sensible

foreign-policy wonks with decades of study are saying that 

expanding a military alliance in a time of peace has now 

brought the entire planet to its atomic knees maybe 

we should pause before posting that romantic screed

about a war for democracy itself 

I know you’ve seen that in your feed

war-profiteers & weapons manufacturers 

have something to do with how this thing

magically went from 12 to 30 look 

we are talking about war it is always dirty 

& if the cold war was really over 

why were countries joining in

1999 or 2004 or 2009 or 2017 

& I bet you couldn’t name them all 

if it were on a quiz so 

you better get on Google to start looking 

everyone who left Russia is grateful 

for that flight they were prescient in booking 

see people rarely want to ask why we even have armies

missiles tanks warships military aircraft rockets bombs

say out loud the part about the profits for

Boeing Raytheon or Lockheed Martin

who wants to ask why we even have war

a product where patriarchy meets anxiety in the marketplace of greed

food & housing & clean air & fresh drinking water

even love & art & music these are what we need

why we really need countries 

with all these borders

what kind of scarcity brain 

leads to all these hoarders

technology used to travel 

to distant planets 

or murder absolutely everything even 

if that is not how you planned it

don’t even get me started with

all the End Times branding

if there is an apocalypse fever 

the churches they fanned it 

3.

War is a special

booze for little 

girls or boys 

to learn how to get

high first with sticks

then plastic guns

then video games 

war is supposedly 

a selfless sacrifice to 

give your 

life meaning 

like Jesus but better 

so when the entire

globe is quickly 

careening past the

climate change

point of no return

& it is clear the 

billionaires never

really gave a shit

about ending poverty

or pollution 

admit that war

is a kind of solution

a distraction of action

from all the other inaction

don’t take too much

from this poetic mess

I am just a morning 

writer spitting this desperate

plea decidedly lost 

from membership in 

any faction 

Confessions After Listening To The Conspirituality Podcast

 

[According to their own description, what is the Conspirituality podcast:

“A weekly study of converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.”] https://conspirituality.net

Preface

The following attempt at an epic poem comes in response to the mentally shattering experiences I had while listening to the Conspiritualiy podcast, explained above. Though I am now several episodes into my re-acquaintance with this excellent podcast (which started but was abandoned right after 1-6-21), the shaking shock first occurred with episode #86: “Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q.” 

This callout & takedown on Charles Eisenstein was so needed & done with clarity & compassion. 

Eisenstein seems to have some ideas adjacent to thought that I had previously found helpful, such as Zerzan, Sahlins, Daniel Quinn, Graeber, etc, but it is actually something else entirely. Heck, we all like good origin stories.

Just as I have seen Russell Brand completely derailed in the last couple years, as the podcast shows, Eisenstein has fallen into the Q-friendly anti-vax bromance of the too white influencer world. 

Friends, just because we sometimes feel the grumbles of spirit deep within, just because our intuition sometimes feels like a direct line to the divine, let's all always be willing to take a deep breath, to take a step back, to vet our visions with fellow travelers of good conscience. There is no magic pill!

Now as I write, I am listening to podcaster Matthew Remski deconstruct a white slam poet, & I feel a little too seen, perhaps a little bit shamed, but I want to confess this before I confess more, I have been writing poetry stuff like that for 30 years. But I certainly don’t share the Instagram-influencer, well-funded, self-help vibe of the person that Remski exposes.

Since we are all vulnerable, broken, in need of sustenance at this interval of pandemic fatigue &  social unrest, I certainly understand the underlying cravings that prompt people to seek these curated “peak experiences,” pricey they might be. Why not let them do their thing, like you with your books, records, & unquenchable live music habit? 

Beneath it all, I see something vapid & probably worse, the platforming of people who appear to expect their spiritual bypassing to protect them from Covid. The insidious intersection of this drift --from the apparently harmless hobbies of the hot-rich-professionals to something sickening & harmful in its oblivious proximity to the far-right conspiracy crowd. 

I know I need to develop & maintain a personal spiritual practice, communal connections with friends & comrades, & a direct tap to whatever source offers compassion, engaged activism but also detachment, radical empathy, & unconditional love. 

It’s been more than 18 months since I left a job as a rural Presbyterian pastor. Deconstructing from Christianity has been difficult enough, but now I realize that I never properly deconstructed from two decades of neopaganism & new age stuff that immediately preceded my reconversion to Christianity some 13 years ago. Perhaps it’s my jam to move from spiritual bypassing to spiritual bypassing. 

“Trust your feelings” - Obi Wan Kenobi

you are sitting in morning meditation

grateful for the time to breathe but 

fully present to the stinking thinking 

constant thoughts that chase 

your mindfulness deep into the 

nagging annoying unhealthy parts 

of your mind 

you are lost in the 

presence of the 

ever present one 

to keep look look looking 

for what you will never find

you remember the long car ride 

where you could not pay attention

you could not get out 

you had to listen to what seemed 

like days but was probably only 

hours or minutes of a lilting lecture 

about an advanced race of human-like 

extraterrestrials called the Anunnaki 

from Nibiru who are the missing link 

to humanity & our true evolution

but this didn’t end with the long car ride

you remember being handed books

blogs videos & more by one of the 

world’s leading proponents of a

global counter-cultural movement 

that combines New World Order conspiracy 

the truther movement & anti-globalization

with an extraterrestrial conspiracy subculture

you remember the marijuana-induced

freakouts about the light beings that 

lived outside your realm or the real

you recall the deep long listens to 

TOOL albums or Bill Hicks standups or

late sleepless nights listening 

to DIY DVDs you had ordered about

the supposed real story behind 9-11

you even published your own

pro-conspiracy rants in a 

legitimate publication & if you are

completely honest you are still very 

concerned about the deaths

of Martin Luther King 

Thomas Merton

Paul Wellstone to

name just a few

admit it

you have tarried in every variety

of treehugger apocalyptic

accelerationist catastrophist 

green pessimism that you could find

you don’t like modern medicine

you gobble garlic & honey 

whenever you have a cold 

you were anti-vax until this virus

what else do I need to confess

you remember that time 

more than twenty years ago

the student complained that 

you might be a gay lush witch

the letters that were written to the dean

the wording so desperate

the tone so mean

how many doors or portals were

passed through just looking for the real you

from cradle Christian to eclectic pagan

drifting down the theological cafeteria line

a plate heaping with delicacies that 

were once only accessible to royals

yet the alienation & anxiety & addiction

that fueled ever-yet more intense searches

or purges or puck-like urges something

deep down in your bones lacked 

sufficient purchase to keep you on one path

how many days or years did you stay 

you have always had a hard time with math

how many times 

were you sure 

that you saw

god when really 

that was just the moment

when the drugs finally kicked in 

you put your hands in some soil

declared that you were home

even moved into a dome

built by an old man named Owl

but the 13 years there proved for you

something finally unsatisfying or foul

when the contract was signed 

a tenant was evicted which 

you rationalized mainly because 

you learned they were shitting 

in the creek you were not the meek

to inherit this parcel of earth you

just had the downpayment asked

never explained to the seller

a local farmer who had been there

for years what all your dreams

were of decadent festivals on the back 40

when the techno sounds allegedly

carried to the next town over 

every time you tried to park too

many cars on this tight gravel road

named after pumpkins not solar toads

you bought land from somebody

who bought land from somebody

who bought land back then

when they just took the land

had slaves work the land 

it just wasn’t that long ago &

you know what you know

every book you read about 

why the hippies failed was

only part of the story because

some of those hippies were still there

yet within yourself you turned

a blind eye to the rural gentrification

that hip white people with bank 

& gas in the tank can come take

it’s optional if they even give thanks

a fine line between sustainability 

or trashing the land a fine line

between permaculture & a

permanent outpost for 

another version of white culture

don’t pretend it is not true

as you watch the vulture feast on

the remains of a mantra that 

you borrowed from the east 

you are not descended from ascended masters

you are not a shaman or a priest 

you are not part of anything

but a broken lineage

of screaming protest 

on the counterculture sidelines

of what used to be the 

antiauthoritarian left &

yet lest we forget 

from a disillusioned 

modernist

middle class

point of view 

you are nothing but 

poet bum or rubber tramp with 

a mortgage & a pension 

& a Subaru covered in stickers

so you can stand out in any 

traffic jam or parking lot

let me make a list of my 

own limits & imperfections 

the hyper-privileged online

self-appointed prophets

are talking about 

cages for the unvaccinated 

& government conspiracies

& you cannot help but wonder

if he ever worried about the 

government cages that 

already exist for the poor

the black & brown 

the unemployed & the addicted 

or about the military industrial 

war machine

the out of control copaganda

always already aimed at 

communities of color

they are not really

preaching bodily autonomy 

about a poke when they constantly

make an insult out of the word woke

they ran from yoga class to fitness class

to get your meal prep package off the porch

the first world cliches of every meme or joke

they are not autonomous just white

just a new age automaton of bodies

preaching narcissism from the digital 

glorification of blonde & toned & beach-ready

boutique experiences for the spiritually alone  

who must travel to Mexico or other exotic 

locations they learned about on Instagram

while staring into the abyss of their iPhones

you were almost them

admit it 

confess it

say it

own it

before your sobriety or conversion you 

were drunk on climate catastrophe insanities 

dropout escapist post-utopian fantasies

these peak experiences of 

fire festival fever dreams

tripping them dipping 

then into exotic visions in 

a capsule or some fungus 

then the angels 

climbed out of your anus or your navel to

spin you back 

into that magical caravan tent

where you were some kind of 

magical imaginary king

no just take me to the shop 

where I can buy

some more imported hippy bling 

all the feathers & facepaint & feeling your

feelings when the medicine will do

what the medicine will do

but no amount of psilocybin MDMA LSD

the medicine is not you

that was just a cloud not the face

of an old testament prophet in a cloud

remember what they keep teaching you

in those darn twelve step classes

you are not your thoughts

you are not your feelings

it takes a special kind of private

perfect privilege to constantly promote

every minor epiphany to the level

of substack scripture for your subscription base

because you have convinced them

that you are part of the anointed 

carefully called & chosen truth-tellers

when you are just as imperfect as anyone else

crawling around for joy 

pebbles on the ground

of a cave 

just grateful to be breathing

inside your hairless meat costume

of accidental consciousness on this

blue green ball of great mysteries

to be clear 

these people are driving me crazy 

because like them 

I have too much free time

I too have been drunk on

every passing spiritual fashion 

of woo woo

doo doo 

on my shoe shoe 

to share with

you & my crew phew 

to be clear now eww

if I had not had the Conspirituality podcast hosts

to do a close deconstructive reading of 

the latest Eisenstein animated video 

I too might have been swept away again

shared it favorably on my page 

& then what or

what then

because you see 

like many millions of others

I watched the video for the Coronation 

in the spring of 2020 when my intuition tweaked

my feelings were felt like oceans of mountains

of volcanoes of hurricanes of feelings everything

off the charts my dreams & sleep like downloads

from god the whole thing was real for sure

this was earth’s moment 

to wake up 

to shut up 

to shut down 

all the shit 

that is killing us &

yet within a few months 

find us finally living in 

the long-awaited 

carbon-neutral 

fair-trade

free-world 

without child-slavery 

or sex-trafficking

or anything else the highly selective moral compass

of hip white bloggers have deemed really bad this week

why did I order all of his books that day &

from an independent store even 

& not Amazon either

had to wait more than a week for them to arrive

started to read them 

never finished them 

now listening 

to this podcast almost two years later 

I am so glad

I never read them 

now I just moved them to 

the box to take to the used bookstore

because damn this is just some diluted John Zerzan

some warmed up leftovers from Hakim Bey

perhaps a sprinkle of David Graeber but only if 

David Graeber were merely just a smarter version of Joe Rogan 

& spiced generously with a word you stole from Thich Nhat Hanh

may he rest in peace & power

I am sorry I bought your books Charles Eisenstein but

I am not sorry I listened to Conspirituality the other day

now back to 2020 please

keep this clear because 

of the murders of 

Ahmaud Arbery

Breonna Taylor 

& George Floyd 

something snapped 

this pandemic thread

in my sabbath head

 

that it was really only 

just about the climate

just about

you know the wildfires 

extreme ice storms 

the rising polluted sea waters 

& not about the police the cops

who are militarized to the nines

an occupying army for the rich

& not about the poison of the 

prisons in Mississippi where 

the inmates might accidentally

eat a rat that got cooked 

in the cornbread that day

there are more choices between

climat-denier & covid-denier

there are more choices

you can still be a nonviolent anarchist

& not be coerced by some Twitter troll

to apologize for voting for Democrats

to defeat Trump & his citizens army

of red hats like brown shirts with blue flags

declaring fealty to a family name

even though in your regional municipality

he is far from defeated but holding

almost every 

county city or state 

government hostage all set 

to giving more civil rights 

to unborn zygotes than

to women 

immigrants 

blacks 

or queers   

if this is our zeitgeist it is actually

much worse than my worst fears 

so there is not a manual on 

how to follow empathy or solidarity 

or compassion or clarity

or courage into the daily drama 

the beautiful but broken barrage

especially when without church or cadre

you do not have a coherent entourage

with whom to climb the barricades

so you are constantly blogging 

tweeting posting praying playing

now whether I am consulting 

Situationists or Surrealists or Socrates

Buddha or Bonhoeffer or Boxcar Bertha

Jesus Christ or Jack Kerouac or James Cone

we need a forever discerning eye

of fellow travelers & friends 

with ears to the ground with a forward

glance to see past the bend in

this winding dangerous switchback road

that surely looks like our collective end

P.S.

you bounce from spiritual bypassing 

to spiritual bypassing

guru generalists who are really

narcissists don’t care 

they just take the dare

to steal from whatever source is there

that makes them feel of course

to be fair 

there is no perfect perpetuity 

not even that elusive imperfect perfection

not prepackaged poetic tradition

not a thing to calm intrinsic sedition

just because we have made a 

temporary pact with the social

refusing to push it all off the cliff

refusal to murder neighbors in 

the light of day

does not necessarily mean we

have somehow made peace

with the managers with the

planners who themselves don’t

have a plan except their 

escape pods

all these temporary nods to a 

noble egalitarianism are not to

be taken seriously until 

the hostages have been freed

yet some goodness or gratitude

are the total sum of these vast

spiritual travels & incessant dabbling

just don’t claim authenticity that

is not mine or a rigid doctrine 

not validated by love or reality 

Video:
Preface -
https://youtu.be/iURbDHXTQ44
Poem - 
https://youtu.be/VhWwC4XCio0