eternalreflux

[eternalreflux]

I come here in search of something I had fifteen years ago, when I had a blog and a few people who read it, and I read their blogs, and we commented, and we learned about one another.

I run to this refuge, away from the constant posts designed to stoke engagement with idiocy and controversy.

I want to make this space a place where I post contemplative, slower thoughts. Where few folks visit, but those who DO come, give me a few minutes of attention because I insist, gently, that this is as good a place as any to rest for a little while. Because I am scribing a circle around this space with my cottonwood branch, I am declaring it mine.

•••

I tap these words out sitting in my car, in a long line of cars, on the side of a desert road, about half a mile from a food bank. The wind buffets the car from time to time. A storm is coming. The clouds cover the sun.

In a couple hours I’ll be at the front of the line and volunteers will be putting food into my car. Big cardboard boxes of veggies and fruit and maybe some dairy and meat and canned goods. And these volunteers will be from local churches, for the most part. And they stand on the makeshift assembly line and put all the food into the boxes and they carry the boxes to our cars and they say “God bless you.” And most of them voted for Trump. That’s the way it is in this red town.

I am an immanentist—I believe that God exists in this world. In this creation. In us. While it may be possible to encounter the divine on your own, as the divine is within you, the surefire way to encounter God is to be with other people. And those other people are often folks you don’t want to be around.

This is common sense, really, isn’t it? That God will work through us all? That the Samaritan—the person with heretical views, who we disdain and think of as our enemy—will often be the one to help us?

The temptation in our fast world is to affix a label to ourselves. To confuse the label with actual morals. Actual actions. To align ourselves with folks with matching labels. To stand against folks with different labels. We have sorted ourselves into communities and clubs and even careers based on these labels. We dislike being around folks with different labels. Yet God dwells within those people just as much as God lives within you. God often chooses to appear to us in the guise of the stranger, the enemy.

Perhaps these folks are happy with deporting folks without due process. Perhaps they would delight in deadnaming your trans son and make him use the women’s bathroom. Perhaps they think tariffs are a great idea.

And yet. We cannot just refuse to see. We can’t write off tens of millions of our relatives and coworkers. We don’t have to accept their views. We don’t have to pretend that their views are unconnected to actions and consequences. And yet. Look. These Trump voters are being God to others every Saturday. Look and see God right there. See these Christs handing out loaves and fishes . See these bodhisattvas watering all these seeds of good karma in this desert.