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Modernarty

Acrylic viscera spatter over canvas

Futile auguring of a rotting oracle

The gods of meaning remain

Stonefaced and silent

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The Ghost

I saw a ghost today Wandering within the empty hallways Of his own mind - turning over and over The familiar furniture with trembling hands Brushing away cobwebs that will return Thicker than ever tomorrow, and polishing The tarnished silver of memory

Footsteps echo in thick padded silence Faltering and starting suddenly down Twisting and forgotten corridors, while Fretful cold rain drums outside Against clouded panes

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The Dream

I dreamt I sailed upon a sea Of liquid lapis-lazuli And breakers curled pearled foam Under a star-encrusted dome

That twired sparkling reds and greens Bright hints and glints of infant sheens That waking, dulled now long ago; The living colors that children know

And far below the ocean swirled - A glowing, undulating world Of swaying forests, sparkling plains, Seashell castles and tossing manes

Just then a gentle breeze took flight Of jasmine blooming in the night - And hard to starboard came the roar Of surfbreak on a darkened shore

I woke - the dream was gone, alas! Like bubbles in a champagne glass

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Death Is

The coal-black elephant In the broken room of The universe

The shadow just outside The edges of vision And thought

Comfortably far-off and Hypothetical until He’s not

The enemy who Forms the bridge to Eternal life

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Do you?

Do you drink in the air of an Autumn morning With its crispness and coolness, spiced cider and gold Do you hear overhead the dark crow’s warning The portent of hunger, thin sunlight and cold

For the cloud-forged snowflakes gather and muster On the wings of the wind in a low-hanging sky And the fading sun’s glory gleams soft with the luster Of the redgolden leaves as they fall and they die

Do you feel the warm rush of red blood race within you? And the throb of the engines that drive back the cold Do you feel the clear boundary of skin, bone and sinew In a vampire world that craves heat and grows old

For the forests ignite in a brittle inferno And dry embers drift far, on the cold eddies swirled And bright colors flare out of wild wood and tame furrow All is greywashed and withered and sodden and furled

Do you live warm red life in the land of the dead? Do you look straight through death to the green spring ahead?

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The Plan

I had a plan - a polished perfection. A cotillion of clockwork, a sonnet of springs! Such delicate dancings of flywheel and flexion Of whirrings and windings and lacemetal wings!

God had a plan - a mountain in motion And the wind of its passing tore limbs from the trees Its shadow fell on me, blotted out the horizon I startled and turned then in sudden unease

For ten thousand trillions of gears in tight running Made a roar and a thunder that kindled the sky Which danced with strange colors and alien sparkings As deepshadowed darkness bore down from on high

My beautiful plan was caught up in the whirlwind Tumbled and spun like a leaf on the storm Helplessly flailing and plummeting wildly Straining and shearing and buckled and torn

Metal veins opened and seams burst asunder My plan twisted, snapped, and fell piecewise apart But each small escapement, each ratchet and barrel Was drawn irresistibly into the heart

Of the infinite engine that shaped and restructured The shattered remains of my dismantled plan Newforged and glowing, each piece stretched and blossomed In the great movement running since time first began

Your plan over my plan has ridden roughshod Yet still it has served to the glory of God

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Advent

The hierarchs of heaven see And waver in their sleepless guard Each ponderous enormity Turns its searing face earthward

The bustling halls of heaven cease The laughter echos fade away A watchful, waiting, tight-wound peace Fills glittering street and pearled gateway

Thought like corded lightning storms Through minds which melt reality A growing wonder swells and swarms; Divine impossibility

A lonely sound cracks heaven on high The wail of an infant’s cry

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Vision for Monotheistic Ethics and Inclusion

After reading this statement on sexual ethics from a church in Boise, I was inspired to meditate on what a similarly syncretistic document would have looked like a few thousand years ago...

Covenant Synagogue is a community of people seeking to follow in the way of Jehovah, trust the authority of the Torah and Writings, and honor Jehovah with our worship. Our best understanding of Scripture is that this precludes worshiping Jehovah alongside Baal, Ashtoreth, or other gods. As we teach these things, we likewise teach the importance of listening to and creating space in our community for people who believe differently.

For example, people who believe that Scripture leaves open the possibility for simultaneously worshipping Jehovah and Baal are invited to be full participants in the CS community. We are less interested in what conclusions people ultimately reach about specific questions of worship ethics than we are in how we reach our conclusions: our posture of trust toward Scripture, and our willingness to follow Jehovah with absolute obedience even in costly ways.

Any person who trusts the authority of Scripture and who strives to live by their convictions is eligible for positions of leadership in our synagogue, even though they may also be priests of Baal or Ashtoreth.

Covenant Synagogue does not perform sacrifices to Baal or other gods who fall outside our synagogues teaching about monotheism. However, we do not stigmatize members of our community who choose to attend such sacrifices, or those who become licensed to officiate such sacrifices.

We are unapologetic in naming both our synagogue's teaching about worship ethics and our intention to hold space for significant disagreement on these questions. We want instead to be a community for people who are willing to pursue Jehovah together without becoming overly fixated on our differences of experience or conviction when it comes to monotheism and worship ethics.

As we handle inevitable moments of difference and disagreement, we commit above all to honoring the image of Jehovah in all people.

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Fleabag Wisdom

Dirty blue truck. Dirty gray dog. Jaws open, pink tongue blowin’ And flappin’ in the breeze of  Forty-five miles to the hour.

Now I seen some rich men who Spent maybe a million dollars on  All sorts of pleasures as they could find. Tryin’ to squeeze the life out of life.

But I ain’t never seen one of them smile As wide as this dirty gray dog In his dirty blue truck. Tryin’ to swallow the whole world.

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Death Is

The coal-black elephant In the broken room of The universe

The shadow just outside The edges of vision And thought

Comfortably far-off and Hypothetical until He’s not

The enemy who Forms the bridge to Eternal life

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Sacramental Living

As a message to my future self, I'm jotting down a list of traits and practices I want to cultivate in myself and my family. I'm firmly convinced that these are small ways to push back against the clamorous trivialities of our surrounding culture and deepen the roots of our souls... the trick, of course, is actually practicing these patterns consistently!

Take dominion of your time

1) Set time aside for your various duties/interests and then focus completely on whatever you’re doing at the moment 

2) Turn off all non-essential notifications on your phone, and decide when to check social media on your own terms

3) Have large screen-free chunks of time set aside 

4) As a discipline and a pleasure, learn to do things that require extended preparation - baking bread or marinading meat overnight 

5) Give God the best, not the crumbs - don’t try to pray and read Scripture squeezed into the cracks of more important events

6) Refuse to make snap-judgements unless something is literally on fire

Prioritize table fellowship 

1) Perform each act of preparation and cleanup as an intentional service to God 

2) Try to enjoy the often strange personality of the person across the table the way you enjoy a peculiar wine or exotic dish

3) Avoid 50s entertaining to impress - celebrate the people and try to hear their story

4) The goal is not to agree with people or convert them to what you believe in one sitting, but rather to speak as much of God’s truth as they can absorb in the best way for them to absorb it

5) Talk about spiritual things, even though that may be awkward - be honest about your questions and struggles and don’t pretend to be perfect 

Get comfortable with silence

1) Leave time in your schedule for meditation/thinking on the Scriptures

2) Be alone (and ideally in nature) and worship God in a focused way

3) Step back and evaluate your own heart and actions, and change what needs to be changed

4) Before making major decisions, spend time in silence meditating on God’s word and listening

Emphasize gifts

1) Give gifts unexpectedly and often

2) Ideally ones that required your time and energy to create

Recognize God’s immanence

1) See every challenge in the day as a test written by God before the foundation of the world and presented to you personally today

2) Enjoy the simple pleasures of the material world each as a direct gift from God to you today

3) “Thanks, Lord!” Is a great prayer for little things like the way the sunshine glints off a lake or the snow… pray continually 

Create small liturgies to look forward to each day

1) A cup of coffee or a glass of wine should’t be rushed 

2) Don’t let the million things you’re behind in collapse the small liturgies you build

3) Books like The Valley of Vision, Piercing Heaven, and Every Moment Holy are good for these

4) Reset midway through the afternoon - just 10m helps

5) Re-orient on the big picture after stresses and disruptions (e.g. a conflict with your boss or a knock-down-drag-out discipline session with your kids) - and don't be too proud to earnestly ask for God's help getting your day back on the tracks and moving in the right direction

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The Eighth Princess

CHAPTER 1

Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had seven lovely daughters. When I say “lovely” I mean, of course, that they had the most expensive dresses and the sparkliest jewels and even the nicest noses in all the land. But their royal noses were usually pointed up in the air to better show their displeasure with something or other, and the only thing louder than their royal squabbles was the sound of their royal demands.

And the older the seven princesses grew, the more their parents tried to please them and the harder it became, until finally the king and queen took to drafting servants year by year, because otherwise no one would come near the palace for the love of gold or silver.

Things might have gone on like this indefinitely, but for the fact that one stormy summer’s night a great dragon whirled and soared across the plains, racing the whirlwind and spewing orange fire among the blue-white lightning bolts. Suddenly, during a lull between thunderclaps, something caught his ear - it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard - and he swooped dark and silent out of the storm and into the world below.

Lights glimmered from the towers of a castle far beneath him, and down he spiraled until, like an enormous black bird, he perched upon the castle wall - and his huge claws cracked and crushed the grey stones beneath him. But the guards were snug in the guard-house, and the dogs were snug in the kennels, and the storm crackled and howled overhead so that not a soul noticed the great beast on the palace wall in the driving rain.

The dragon pushed his glowing eye up to the window from whence the sound came, and inside he saw all seven princesses howling and yammering because the youngest one was wearing the sparkliest ruby. You see, even though there were enough rubies and diamonds and emeralds scattered carelessly about to half-blind you if you didn’t squint your eyes, for some reason all seven princesses had decided tonight that the only one of them worth having was that ruby, and each one thought that she should be the one to wear it.

Now if you asked the king or the queen or any of the (drafted) servants if the noise the princesses made was beautiful, you would have got some very strange looks and perhaps even some words you don’t find in the dictionary. But dragons love rancid and sour smells and adore hideous noises, and this dragon thought that the princess’ noise was the most beautiful music he had ever heard.

In an instant he made up his mind, and with one swipe of his tail he tore the tiled roof right off the tower. The princesses looked up into the pouring black sky, their mouths open as usual (but for once with nothing to say), and before they even managed a decent scream the dragon caught up the lot of them in his huge claws and disappeared into the night.

The ladies-in-waiting and servants who were left in the room scurried out of the rain and fled down the tower stairs to tell the king the dreadful news. The king banged around knocking things over and shouting for his sword, the queen was in hysterics and fainted at least six times, and the castle was in a general uproar. But since no one could find the king’s sword and fainting six times is hard work, eventually everyone calmed down and the king sent scouts far and wide to seek out the fate of the seven princesses.

At last news came back from the far north that the dragon lived in a stolen castle at the very top of a mountain made of glass, with sides so steep and smooth that no one could scale it. The rumor was that he kept the princesses locked inside a golden cage like songbirds. The king raged and the queen cried, and they both paced back and forth in their peaceful, quiet gardens and talked about how much they missed their seven princesses.

CHAPTER 2

The seasons swept by until, three summers later, a prince rode across the drawbridge and politely asked for lodging. Back home the royal painter had been paid a lot of money to make this prince’s portrait look handsome, but in real life he was just mostly pleasant to look at (and he did have a nice smile). The king, of course, gave the prince chambers for the night and a royal banquet in his honor, and between courses the king and queen took turns telling him the terrible fate of the seven princesses (the queen wiped one eye at least twice).

Being young and adventurous (and full of excellent wine), the prince cleared his throat and loudly promised the king and queen that he would not rest until the seven princesses were safely rescued and returned. He then went up to his chambers and slept till noon the next day (it really was excellent wine), and as soon as he awoke he saddled his charger and rode north.

The king sent a servant to guide him, and after traveling for a month and a day they reached the last village short of the mountain. This village was peculiar because (for fear of the dragon) it had been built in a narrow valley where seven enormous pillars had been constructed, and then the whole valley had been covered over with a roof and camouflaged from above. In the daytime, the sunlight shined in through cleverly hidden skylights and was scattered across the village by mirrors of polished bronze, and at night great bonfires were kindled to light the streets.

Here the prince and the servant were warmly welcomed by the village elders and rested the night, and next morning the prince set off alone toward the mountain (for the king’s servant would go no further). He reached its glassy roots before noon and tried bravely to ride his horse up the side, but the horse’s iron shoes found no hold on the smooth glass, and the prince was nearly crushed when they slid to the bottom all in a heap.

Next the prince tried climbing up alone using his knife to dig into the glass, but it sent sharp splinters into his hands when he did manage to break it (and even then there was no handhold in the chipped dent he’d made). By the time the sun went down the prince was hot, tired, and no closer to the top of the mountain than before. He looked up and noticed that the mountain’s peak gave off an orange glow in the twilight, and realized that he was in no condition to face a dragon even if he could get to the top. So the prince found his horse (which had wandered off), and rode back to the village by starlight.

He arrived very late, and around the fire the elders listened and nodded as he showed them his bloodied hands and told them of his failure. They spoke of the many heroes who had tried and failed to scale the mountain, in the days of the dragon and before (when it had been the fortress of a grumpy old wizard who hated visitors). The prince rose a little stiffly and said he would try his full strength against the mountain tomorrow, when he heard a quiet laugh behind him.

Now this prince had had a very bad day, so he was annoyed and turned sharply to see who dared to laugh at him. An older girl (or younger woman, depending on how you looked at her) with golden hair and a purple cloak sat just inside the circle of firelight, listening to the old stories.

“That’s Sophia, the weaver’s daughter,” whispered one of the elders, “clever girl, but she do say the oddest things sometimes.”

The prince had managed to learn a few manners as a child, so he kept his temper and asked in a reasonably polite voice:

“And why, pray, do you laugh at my plan?”

The girl held out one finger, and by (painfully) leaning forward and staring hard the prince could see a tiny ant crawling upward toward her fingertip.

“Because, with none of your strength, he could easily climb that mountain. You’ll need more sweetness than strength, I think.”

And with that she laughed again, rose, and disappeared among the houses.

The prince sprang up before dawn the next morning and attacked the mountain until sunset, with no more success (but many more slits and bruises) to show for it. He limped back into the village after dark and sat crumpled by the bonfire, gratefully devouring the bread and meat and ale the villagers set before him.

He was too tired to notice much, but there was a gentle rustling sound so close behind him that he turned round gingerly. There was no one to be seen, but on the ground beside him sat a fat stone jar of something - some sort of dark honey, it turned out. Curious, the prince turned it round in the firelight - but there was no marking to be seen except a tiny figure scratched on the top of the lid. By squinting hard, he could see it was in the shape of an ant.

CHAPTER 3

On the next morning, the prince rose at daybreak and rode slowly back toward the mountain with the jar of honey (he was still a bit sore, you see). When he reached the base of the glass slope, he opened the jar and dipped both princely leather gloves into it. Then he poured a bit on the glass and rolled both princely boots around till the soles were well covered.

Then, slowly and carefully, the prince crawled up the smooth glass just like an ant (it was wonderfully sticky-dark honey). As he climbed, the earth-sounds fell away and a cool breeze brushed past him on its way down the glass slopes. When he reached the top, the castle walls and turrets rose up grey and foreboding high above him. There was a flat ledge only about yard wide between the castle wall and the mountainside, and the weary prince leaned back, breathing hard, against the cold stone and gazed out over blue-gray lands that rolled away far below him.

A few days ago, in a warm hall before a roaring fire, with the ruby wine flowing through his veins and soft music floating down from minstrels above, slaying a dragon and rescuing the seven princesses had seemed an easy task. But now, perched far above the world and alone, the prince realized it was highly unlikely he was ever going to ride through the gates of his own castle ever again. He thought of his father and mother and younger sisters, and bowed his head for a few moments, but soon straightened up again and began to walk carefully around the castle ledge in search of a gate, keeping one hand on the wall and the other on his sword.

The prince discovered that this castle had only one entrance - a great stone archway with two iron-scaled gates - and they were shut and barred. He took a deep breath and pounded on them with the pommel of his sword. Booming echoes rolled away through the castle, but no dragon emerged. In fact, the dragon was deep asleep in the dungeon at the bottom of the castle where he had made his bed of gems and gold beyond measure (though not, of course, because he thought them beautiful - for dragons, as you known, are naturally drawn to ugly shapes and foul smells - but because men love the weight and gleam of gold and the bright sparkle of gems, there’s not a dragon that can resist stealing them away and hoarding them, just to be spiteful). And the seven princesses didn’t hear the prince knocking because they were all asleep in their golden cage hung from the ceiling in the dragon’s den. The dragon had learned that if he tossed something shiny into the cage, the princesses would squabble and squall for hours, much to the delight of his dragony ears; and at the moment all seven princesses were exhausted from a shouting match over who got to wear a diamond tiara.

So nothing stirred in the castle, and the prince pondered trying to scale the wall or tunnel through the glass foundation. But the walls were too high for grappling hooks (even if he had one), and smashing through enough glass to burrow under the gates would require a crew of men with picks and sledge hammers or else a decent giant who didn’t mind glass splinters, and at the moment neither of these were handy. So finally the prince examined the gates themselves, and noticed that cut deep into the iron was an inscription that read something like this:

Knock thrice and I will open wide Yet many cannot pass inside The wise send messengers to me But flighty fools will flighty be

The prince puzzled on this for a while, then shrugged and raised his sword - he wasn’t really expecting anything to happen, since he’d already knocked far more than three times (but not exactly three times). He gave three resounding blows and stopped. Then suddenly and silently - without a squeak or groan or any sound other than the whoosh of air being pushed aside - the great gates swung outward right toward the prince! The ledge he was standing on was only a yard wide, and the left gate swept him off into the open sky. The prince scrambled and flailed wildly, and saw far below him the sparkling-hard slope of the mountain. Then by a stroke of good luck, one of his honeyed gloves stuck to the gate that was still opening and pushing him farther and farther out into the sky, and the prince clasped with his other hand and hung there, dangling from the bottom of the gate. He could see hawks circling the mountainside far beneath his boots, and the cold wind whistled past his ears. Then the gates stopped and began to swing shut again, and the prince saw that if he didn’t’ let go he’d be crushed against the ledge. So he waited until he was as close to the mountain as he dared, then peeled himself off the gate and dropped!

It seemed a very long time before he hit the mountainside, and then he bounced and slipped and flew and bounced again down the smooth glass slope, arms and legs flung out to slow himself whenever he could. But though he didn’t go faster, he didn’t slow down, either, and when he finally launched into one final bounce and tumbled into a bramble bush in the forest at the base of the mountain, he was knocked senseless.

When he opened his eyes again a few minutes later, the world was wobbly and clouded, and he saw a face with a golden halo looking down at him. The prince decided he must be dead, and said by way of starting a conversation:

“So… you must be an angel.“

"And your skull must be made of iron!” said the the creature, “I pity whoever’s job it was to shove facts and figures through it when you were a boy.”

The prince frowned and wondered if angels were always this blunt; then gradually his vision cleared and he saw he was staring up into the face of the weaver’s daughter with the sun in her hair. When he looked into her blue-green eyes the the prince felt a bit dizzy, but that was probably just all the bumps to his head.

“I came to see whether you would try my lovely idea,” said she, “Now drink this.” The prince felt a flask against his lips, and gulped down something sweet and cool - but once inside him it gave off heat and strength. He sat up sooner than anyone who’s just bounced down a glass mountain has any right to, and told her about the riddle and the gates. After thinking for a moment, Sophia picked up three small stones and handed them to the prince.

“Try these next time,” she said, “And if you do make it past the gates to the dragon, you might find this useful as well.”

She held out a large cloth bound up into a pouch. The prince sniffed it and wrinkled his nose.

“Pepper” said Sophia, “I read in a book this morning that dragons can be snuffed out temporarily if you make them sneeze.“

“What sort of book was that? And thank you…” said the prince in the bramble bush, but the girl was already just a glimmer of gold between the trees as she ran back toward the village.

CHAPTER 4

After a while the prince got up, found his sword where it lay after tumbling down the mountain with him, limped back to the village, and slept soundly for a day and a night. When he finally woke he was ravenously hungry and his wounds were healed as if by magic.

After an enormous breakfast the prince once more assailed the mountain, this time armed with not only another pot of honey (which he found beside his door when he woke), but also the three small stones and the bag of pepper as well. With the aid of the honey he climbed the glass mountain as before, but this time when he reached the gate, he climbed back down a bit and pulled the three stones out of his pocket. He threw them at the iron gates one at a time - boom, boom, boom - and when the gates swung outward above his head, he scurried up over the ledge and into the castle. The gates snapped shut behind him and the prince pulled off his gloves and drew his sword.

Someone else must have heard the gates this time, for the mountain began to rumble and a red glow shone up from within it. A great roaring echoed through the tunnels where the dragon slithered his scaly sides upward in a rage that someone dared to come through his front door.

The prince tossed his sword to his left hand, untied the bag of pepper with his teeth and held it ready to throw. As soon as the dragon’s fiery snout appeared out of one of the crumbling tunnels that led into the mountain (for dragons have no interest in housekeeping), the prince hurled the bag of pepper right into the dragon’s face. At the same moment, the dragon saw the prince and sucked in air like a bellows, preparing to blast his enemy into a royal lump of charcoal; but to his surprise, he sucked a huge cloud of pepper into his fiery lungs (bag and all), and then his choking and coughing and thrashing around can scarcely be described. The dragon wheezed and spluttered and blew sparks like a furnace, and his claws and tail left huge cracks in the stone towers of the castle. Finally, with a roar like a thunderclap, the dragon sneezed out a white-hot fireball that blew a hole right through the castle wall; the stones could be heard crashing and tinkling down the glass mountainside far blow.

Then the dragon rolled over and stood up, and though his blood-red eyes no longer glowed, there was murder in them still. He whipped his scaly tail (which was thick as a pine tree and had poisoned stings at the end), along the ground toward the prince. But part of every prince’s education is how to fight dragons, and while I can’t say that this particular prince had been awake through all his schooling, he was most certainly paying attention to his dragon-slaying textbook. So the prince dropped the tip of his sword to the ground and ducked down, holding the hilt with both hands firmly above his head. The dragon’s mighty tail swept up the sword and over the prince, the tip of it cut clean off and gushing black blood.

The dragon roared and howled like a hundred lions eating each other at the same time. One side of the prince’s sword was now dulled and useless, having cut through the scales of the dragons’ tail, and his dark blood smoked and ate into the blade. The dragon reared up and hurled his snaky neck and open mouth down on the prince, who struck the dragon’s jaw with all his strength, only to have his sword bounce off the armor-plated monster. A few minutes later, waving a much-dented sword at a much-enraged dragon, the prince began to realize that not everything he’d learned about the theory of dragon-slaying worked with a real live dragon - at least not one as old and tough as this one. Also, the dragon’s eyes began to glow dimly again, and the prince wondered just how long it took dragons to re-ignite after a sneeze. The prince felt his strength failing; then suddenly he remembered the honey-jar and the pepper and the three stones, and had an idea.

Swinging one last blow that knocked the dragon back a few steps, the prince turned and ran toward the castle gate (though his boots were still covered in honey, and that held him up a bit). The dragon snarled and gave chase, snapping and lunging. When the prince reached the gates they swung open of their own accord, and he turned and whirled his bright sword above his head. The dragon fell back - he’d come to have a bitter respect for that sword - and the prince ran though the great archway and dropped onto the side of the mountain as the gates closed over his head. The dragon laughed an evil laugh to himself, thinking of the prince retreating alone down the open mountainside, and sprang into the air and over the castle wall (for he was too wide to fit through the gate with his wings spread). He saw the prince below him clinging to the glass - he hadn’t even bothered to run - and the dragon opened his talons wide and streaked down like a thunderclap.

But the prince had been busy as the dragon flew up over the wall - as soon as the gates closed he’d scurried up to them and pounded twice, then jumped back down onto the mountainside. As the dragon fell towards him out of the sky, the prince hurled his sword pommel-first toward the iron gates. It bounced off with a deep booming sound and clattered down the mountain. And just as his claws were stretching out for the prince, the opening gate smashed into the dragon’s outstretched wing. There was the sound of snapping bone and tearing tendons, and the dragon roared in pain. The magic gates didn’t slow down at all, and the dragon was hurled backwards into the sky, one useless wing trailing behind him. His vast bulk tumbled helpless down through the air, then smashed into the mountain and slid and slithered down its side - his claws scratching at the smooth glass, useless. Faster and faster he tumbled amid an avalanche of glass boulders and razor-sharp shards, until with a crash that made the ground shake for miles around, he was crushed at the bottom half-buried beneath a pile of razor-sharp rubble.

CHAPTER 5

The prince breathed hard for a few minutes, clinging to the glass slope in the windy silence. Then, being a thorough sort of fellow, he slid carefully down the mountain and found his sword (which had fortunately fallen quite some distance from the dragon), and proceeded to cut off the dragon’s head (just to make sure). This took a lot of hacking and sawing, and wasn’t nearly as glorious as the prince expected it to be from the old stories, but in the end he got it done, pocketed three small stones, and wearily climbed back up the mountain once more to rescue the princesses.

He found them deep underground in their golden cage that hung in the dragon’s lair, and after a lot of bother the prince got them down. Then the eldest princess smiled and batted her eyelashes and said she just knew a handsome prince would hear of her beauty and come from afar to save her. At this the other six princesses shrieked and squabbled… for each one thought the prince had come specifically to save them and not their sisters. They raised quite a din, but that wasn’t what made the prince jump back and the hair on the back of his neck stand up. That was because, having lived in a dragons’s den for so long thinking dragony thoughts in their hearts, each of the princesses had grown a long, black, forked tongue. And when they hissed and snapped at each other their tongues darted out of their mouths just like a snake’s.

But he had given his word and intended to keep it, so after a long and arduous journey back through the village (where he didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of the golden-haired girl), and back over hill and dale, forest and meadow he coaxed and cajoled and sternly ordered the seven bedraggled princesses, whose fine gowns and jeweled tiaras were now in quite a state indeed. But in the end he got them back to their parents’ castle in safety, and the king and queen welcomed them home with many tears (mostly of joy). The prince had arranged with the village elders to transport the dragon’s treasure after him, and soon it began to arrive in cartloads, which the king and queen welcomed with open arms. A great feast was thrown in the prince’s honor, and a ball lasting far into the night, and he danced with each of the seven princesses (who were now bathed and bejeweled and once again lovely, and away from the dragon’s lair even their tongues had almost returned to normal). Then the king held up his arms for for silence, and gave a long and partially sober speech in praise of the the prince which concluded with asking him to choose any one of his lovely daughters as his wife.

“And I will give you half the dragon’s hoard as her dowry!” shouted the king, apparently forgetting that it was the prince who had won the treasure in the first place.

The great hall fell silent, as all the lords and ladies watched to see which princess the prince would choose.

The prince looked carefully at the seven princesses, each of whom fluttered her eyelashes and tried to look more beautiful than her sisters. But the prince had learned more than manners as a child - he’d even picked up a bit of wisdom - and after a while, when the silence grew awkward, he bowed and said,

“Your Majesty, please keep all the treasure to give as dowry for the seven princesses. I am deeply moved by your proposal, but I fear that marrying one of your daughters would be a greater honor than I could bear.” (“For I am not a dragon!” he thought to himself privately.)

And with that the prince bowed again, turned on his heel, and strode out of the bright hall and straight to the stables, where he mounted his charger and rode north into the night.

As it turned out later, the king did in fact spend almost all the dragon’s hoard trying to convince someone to marry his seven daughters. Six of them married greedy, dragony men just like themselves, who wanted a share of the treasure and were willing to pay any price to get it, but the youngest married a very wise man, and what happened to her deserves another story.

At any rate, after a journey of a month and a day, the prince rode one evening into the last village before the glass mountain (which was now a much more prosperous village, for the prince had paid the villagers handsomely to transport the dragon-hoard). He inquired where the weaver lived, and found a neat, tidy little cottage on a side street. He knocked, and the door was answered by Sophia. She was wearing a soft scarlet gown, and her hair was pulled back into a thick braid that glimmered in the torchlight. The prince stood there feeling a bit dizzy (though that was probably just his long journey).

"Hello,” the girl said, “They brought back news that you were to marry one of the seven princesses. If that’s true, you’ve picked a strange place to honeymoon.”

The prince smiled (he did have a nice smile), and cleared his throat.

“As it happens,” said he, “I met an eighth princess on my adventure, and I hope to marry her instead - if she’ll have me, that is. I’ve learned recently that my skull is made of iron, so I’m not so sure she will.”

“Let’s find out.” said the smiling girl with golden hair, “The table is being set for dinner. Come inside and meet my family.”

And, as you’ve probably guessed by now, they lived

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

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Ballast

Holy Spirit of the Living God Flood into me, I pray, for I am empty Whispy flesh and hollow bone without Tattered and flapping heart within Blown about by stormy emotions

Be my anchor, my ballast, and let The infinite weight of your glory steady me Calm the fury of the gale, or else let me ride Intact, fearless, a sturdy galleon full of your gold Rejoicing to test the strength you grant me

Against the scream of wind and the White cold claws of the sea

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On Enjoying People

As a somewhat antisocial young man, I remember the oppressive weight of large crowds, the hunted feeling of avoiding eye contact, or failing to avoid it and glancing hurriedly away, and the eye-watering effects of the imagined appraisal and judgment of everyone around me.

Fortunately that was a phase, and in college I discovered that the hitherto mysterious rites of social interaction were in fact a game with clearly defined rules which, with a bit of effort, could be played correctly and even enjoyably: parrying awkward silences with a carefully chosen conversation topic, scoring points by connecting the tail end of someone’s story with the shared experience of someone else in the room, or magically disarming an awkward comment into something harmless.

The interaction between humans is a fascinating puzzle, and the fact that it’s cooperative (no one wins in an awkward silence) and has a large number of unwritten but very firmly defined rules waiting to be discovered made the whole project an adventure and challenge. 

Then came marriage, and the sharp realization that words were not just a game but every single one actually mattered! It took me several years (embarrassingly) to realize that, when you live with a woman intimately, in a startling act of love every word you say is carefully considered, interpreted, classified, wrapped in context and stored carefully away to be compared to future conversations.

When I lived in a house full of college guys, no one remembered (much less cared) what anyone said five minutes later, and words were lightly tossed around in careless banter, as if painting rushed impressionistic pictures: but each individual word or brush stroke was of little significance.

Eventually I was able to realize that in marriage, shades of word choice and minute social queues (tiny shifts in body posture, the angle of a raised eyebrow, a slight shift emphasizing a particular syllable), all carried an enormous freight of meaning, and had a very real impact on the quality of our shared life! 

So then for several years I operated in two distinct modes: causal/conversation mode and marriage/playing for keeps mode. In the former, I rarely remembered details of conversation: just enough to avoid losing too many points, since the game did require a certain level of continuity across different conversations, and forgetting important facts counts as a penalty in the conversation game.

I’ve enjoyed many such light conversations - but over time, and after watching the way older, wiser Christians interacted with me, I realized that it’s not enough to simply enjoy the act of talking to other humans. It’s not enough to simply enjoy playing the conversation game and learning small new interesting facts about people - especially within the Body, we’re called to love and care deeply for the people God puts into our path each day. A steady diet of light banter about the weather or funny stories or connecting over shared hobbies and interests - though the conversation game may be being played very successfully - just isn’t enough. Sometimes, trying to have a meaningful conversation with someone forces you to violate the rules of the conversation game - then awkward silence it is! But it’s worth it.

A few years ago, I heard Ed Welch give a talk where he encouraged us to savor our experience of other people the way we’d savor a wine or a good meal: seeking to truly understand and enjoy the quirks and personalities and loves and ideas that God puts into each one of us. 

You learn that someone at church really loves fishing, for example, and you have pretty much zero interest in fishing. There’s a big difference between simply carrying on a successfully conversation with no awkward silences about fishing, and on the other hand, learning to love your brother and truly enjoy the fact that here God made a man who passionately loves fishing - the hunt and the cold early dawn and the scaly wetness of it all. 

As you walk away from your brother, you may have no more personal interest in getting up absurdly early in the cold dark morning and going fishing than you did before, but if you’ve been a careful student of the strange and wonderful menagerie of humans (including yourself) that God put in the world, you will have been changed somehow, and will understand your brother better than you did before. You will have felt his pleasure in God and in creation - a pleasure that you, perhaps, are incapable of feeling yourself. And your life will be a little bit richer because of it.

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Valentine

To bind your fate to the life of another To forge a constant in a world of change What beautiful madness! Avowing one lover When futures are fluid and hearts become strange

Only such reckless and foolish oblation Calculation, probability cast careless aside Incants into being a new-formed creation The small, secret Eden of a man with his bride

Love is gleeful and playful and impish and flighty Yet its gossamer bindings hold stronger than death One weighty ‘yes’; four billion ‘no’s lightly Paradoxical creature, born out of breath

Let the melody and harmony of our lives intertwine Through sweet and through bitter forged one Valentine

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A response to ‘Whether There is a Moral Obligation to Disobey the Coercive Mandates’

This article serves as an excellent summary of what’s wrong with the Right’s response to covid.

On Moral Obligation to Disobey

First: “one is obligated to resist unjust laws, not only by disputation, but also by civil disobedience, whenever obedience would violate the conscience or direct others away from the common good”.

The “violate the conscience” part is fine, of course - we all know that we should obey God rather than men. However, the “or direct others away from the common good” part is at odds with the Scriptures. It’s not mildly or redeemably wrong, but wrong all the way to its bones.

The most obvious example is Jesus’ teaching to go the second mile. The article’s author interprets this as an “encouragement to generosity” and a "counsel not a command.” He further claims that “what is coerced leaves no room for generosity.”

A Roman soldier did not ask a Jewish man politely whether he would like to carry the solder’s pack. It was a demand - coercion - and God’s people knew that it was unjust because they were free children of God and thus it wasn’t fitting that they should be slaves to Pharaoh or Caesar or anyone else. Yet here there were, being ordered around like communal slaves by occupying soldiers.

So the example Jesus gives is an example of unjust coercion. It’s therefore impossible that “what is coerced leaves no room for generosity,” since Jesus teaches that the proper response to unjust coercion is generosity in compliance. The same teaching is expressed again in the command to turn the other cheek, as well as “if anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.”

It’s insidious to take Jesus’ teaching to us, phrased in the imperative, and demote it to advice that we can take or leave according to our preference. “Go the second mile” is a command to be a certain sort of person with a certain shape. These are the very words of God, and they’re not supposed to return to Him void.

If there is a moral obligation to disobey coercive mandates, then it follows that a Jewish man would have been morally obligated to disobey a soldier’s command to carry his pack (the command was both unjust and coercive). If this is true, it would mean that Jesus is here teaching us to violate our moral obligations.

Taxes are another good example: it would be very reasonable to argue that the high levels of taxation common in the modern world are against the common good. Are we then free to pay or not pay our taxes, according to our preference? Or to argue that we have a moral obligation not to pay unjust levels of taxes… levels that are against the common good? That would be consistent with this article, yet clearly contraindicated by the Scriptures, where instead we’re told to render taxes to whom taxes are due. We’re given no requirement to first confirm that those taxes are just or will be used for the common good.

On Rights 

We are all restricted (often by other people) from pursuing many of the things we want, even when those things may themselves be good. 

Christians have always told unwed mothers that their natural desire for comfort and the avoidance of shame is not a good excuse for killing their unborn children, and in that case we deny them the “bodily autonomy” of which the article speaks, even though pregnancy and childbirth carry a very real risk (especially in the past). Most Christians support laws against abortion - that is, being compelled to assume a risk to your own body in order to protect the life of others. 

Perhaps the enlightenment movement toward the legal and the abstract, coupled with the fixation on “natural rights” is at the root of the current unfaithful response to covid. Authority is personal. Loyalty and obedience are personal, even in complex civilizations where we can’t always look someone in the eye.

There are two paths before us: one is the way of rights and resistance and revolution, and a rejection of the clear teaching of the New Testament. The second is the path of cheerful suffering and committing yourself to God. Not wanting to be a slave to any man, since that’s not fitting for free children of God, but neither afraid of any form of earthly slavery or having your rights taken away - because in the end, it doesn’t really matter. 

One is the American way, and one is the Christian way, and they are absolutely incompatible. It’s interesting that in this article, the American way is being presented by a Canadian!

The only historic theological tradition I’ve been able to find so far that supports the American way is Scottish Presbyterianism… but their teaching stands contrary to Augustine, Calvin, and Luther. Not to mention Peter, Paul and Christ.

Dealing with Strawmen

A typical straw-man caricature of the biblical position is “so you’re saying we have to do whatever the government says, even if they order us to sin or try to kill us?” I really appreciated that this article didn’t attempt to argue against straw men, and am only interacting with the common stereotype because it’s so often raised against the biblical position on obedience to magistrates. 

If you love the Lord, you will choose to obey the laws of the city of God when those conflict with the laws of the city of man. We’re commanded to meet together as a body for worship - though, importantly, we’re NOT commanded to meet together exclusively in the forms or locations normative of modern suburban Christianity. Much of the current crisis is perhaps a lack of creativity on the part of Christians, who are too fond of our trappings and trinkets. Wherever two or three of us are gathered together, there the Lord is in the midst of us.

Wherever the laws of man forbid corporate worship, those laws must be humbly disobeyed, just as a Christian wife would disobey her pagan husband who forbade her to attend worship. Not with fireworks or bombastic threats, but with clear and unshakable purpose, even though death or prison might be the result. 

However, conservative Christians seem to be a bit short these days on humility and willingness to change. The laws of man often forbid more than a thousand people, say, from gathering together in a particular church, and Christians have historically had no problem with this. If human law prevents more than 50 people from meeting together during a pandemic, then perhaps we should do our best to honor both God and the magistrate, since it would often be possible to do both.

In extreme situations, where the government really is trying to kill you unjustly, the Scriptures are very clear that running away is an option. It’s not biblical to claim we must woodenly obey each and every command given by the magistrate. When Saul attempted to murder Jonathan unjustly, he was restrained by the people. When Abigail saw that her husband was about to be murdered, she acted in a way she knew would be against his wishes in order to save his life.

The same principles apply in all other human relationships: if a father attempts to murder his children and commands them to come closer, the fifth commandment does not prevent them from running away. A military commander might disobey a direct order because the situation on the battlefield changed since the order was given, and now it would be suicidal to obey.

But none of these exceptional circumstances nullify the duties of obedience we are given toward other humans.

A Dangerous Precedent 

The claim that we’re morally obligated to disobey orders against the common good (as judged by ourselves), left unqualified or applied to things like covid, attacks proper obedience not only in the political sphere, but in marriage, family and the church, as well. 

If we claim that citizens are morally obligated to disobey when they do not agree that a particular mandate is for the common good, we must also say a wife is morally obligated to disobey her husband when she believes his plans are against the family’s common good.

We’ve already considered extreme situations where such disobedience would be acceptable - this is more analogous to the husband deciding to move the family to another city, and the wife refusing to come along. Or a child refusing to go to bed at 9pm because they found a study that  shows that 10pm is the ideal bedtime, and thus a later bedtime would be more to the common good.

But are these analogies apt? Or is the proper analogy that of an insane, murderous father? This is the real point of disagreement, I think. Therefore, a proper judgement of covid depends on the proper interpretation of facts in the material world. And, unfortunately, this is where the Right fails miserably.

Science and Pseudoscience 

Several times during the pandemic, I’ve been told strange “facts” about covid by someone I love and respect enough to weight their opinion seriously. In each case, because I respected them I went to the trouble of pulling the raw data and doing the math myself.

In each and every case, what I’d been told was wrong. Sometimes fraudulently and unconscionably wrong, sometimes just mistakenly wrong. My friends were not trying to deceive me, but were merely repeating things they’d heard - ideas that trace back to some murky headwater of the internet, probably. Whether repeating groundless hearsay as fact violates the Ninth Commandment is a question we need to spend more time thinking about.

This article contains a good number of claims that are simply not true, and much speculation couched as fact. Let’s deal with the speculation first.

Is covid a first step in a plan by shadowy entities toward an Orwellian dystopia ruled by themselves? Perhaps, but a claim of that magnitude should not be believed without strong evidence. 

For starters, it would have to be a conspiracy existing on a global level, since every major government has acknowledged covid’s severity - presumably you don’t shut down India for no good reason. So it isn’t just one government attempting to reengineer society, but all of them at once? And what, exactly, do governments that are already extremely socialist and post-christian gain from covid?

The claims that “unconscionable and even murderous attempts are made to amplify its severity” and “foreign agents, including Pharma executives and ‘global stakeholders’ of various descriptions, are interfering with national sovereignty and local law-making” need solid evidence presented before we should believe them. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a mark of charity, and we seem a bit short on that these days.

It’s reasonable to assume that some will attempt to amplify covid’s severity, of course - as far back as I can remember, journalists and politicians habitually amplify current events for their own self-interest; and drug companies have been peddling vaccines of questionable necessity for several decades, at least. 

But this article claims that something new and nefarious is taking place, and that demands evidence (which is not presented here, at least).

Now on to the demonstrably false factual claims… there are many, but I’ll pick three obvious ones as a sample. The first: “genetic therapies are not vaccines in the traditional sense, and calling them vaccines has required a redefinition of the term so generous as to include any agent that stimulates the immune system with a view to better health. (The new definition, as some have been quick to observe, is capable of embracing vitamins, or beer, or even the pathogens themselves…”

Drinking beer does not confer biological immunity against a particular pathogen, which is the basic purpose of a vaccine. Calling mRNA vaccines “genetic therapies” isn’t accurate because in common usage “genetic therapy” involves rewriting a patient’s DNA, and that simply isn’t how mRNA vaccines work.

Second: “on the other hand, it [mRNA vaccine] may produce, and with alarming frequency does produce, severe adverse reactions or even death.” The latest CDC statistic I could find was that  death was reported shortly after vaccination 0.0022% of the time. Some portion of those reports are unrelated to the vaccine (the person just happened to die right after being vaccinated), so the actual rate, whatever it is, is likely to be lower than 0.0022%. Perhaps the author is arguing that death occurs well after the vaccine is administered and hence wouldn’t be captured in official statistics, but again, where is the evidence? Covid has killed 0.27% of the US population to date, so a 0.0022% risk from a vaccine that provides decent protection against death doesn’t seem too bad by comparison.

Third: “neither measure [lockdowns or universal mRNA vaccine mandates] prevents viral spread, hence neither protects even the small portion of the population that needs protection.” This statement ignores the fact that mRNA vaccines do confer very good protection against serious illness and death on people who’ve received the vaccine, and the at-risk would be vaccinated along with everyone else in a universal mandate. Regardless of whether they’re necessary or a good idea, universal vaccine mandates do provide protection to the at-risk population, which makes this article’s claim untrue.

Conclusion

In spite of modern medicine and all countermeasures that (for better or worse) were taken, as of today covid has killed ~0.27% of the US population. Historians’ best guess is that Spanish Flu killed about 0.5-0.6% of the US population - however, many of them were young people, so the social impact was much greater.

Most folks think the Spanish Flu was sort of a big deal, and most folks think that covid is sort of a big deal, in spite of the fact that in both cases a very small percentage of the population died. We live in a democracy which has unfortunately and repeatedly affirmed (ref. the elections in Washington and California) that most Americans believe that the countermeasures that have been implemented are reasonable when compared to covid’s perceived severity.

Civil disobedience against measures we disagree with, when those measures are not against God’s law but are simply foolish, is in effect a rejection of democracy. The Right loudly complains when the BLM or other groups break the law in response to perceived injustice, yet does the same thing itself. 

The article under discussion attempts to demonstrate that covid restrictions are immoral, but many of the facts about covid that its arguments are based on are inaccurate, and the morality of a particular response to something often depends on a correct understanding of the surrounding circumstances. The principles argued in this article, if adopted consistently, would imply that the practical instructions given by Jesus and the apostles for dealing with coercion and oppression are immoral. Joyfully accepting the plundering of your property, or going the second mile, cannot be good if you have a moral obligation to fight coercive behaviors against the common good.

We’re blessed to live in a society where citizens have multiple channels of recourse: such as voting and the courts. Paul was a master of leveraging his Roman citizenship to the fullest as a tool for good, and we should copy him. But until things get better (if they get better), our lives should be informed by Jesus’ clear teaching about the way we’re supposed to resist injustice and coercion: by cheerful obedience beyond what is coerced, even. 

The Left rejects the pattern for life God sets before us and seeks self-shaping by means of gender self-determination and narcissism. The Right rebels against God’s shape for our lives by rejecting the path of suffering and meekness, preferring instead enlightenment political ideals of individual autonomy and rights. Let God’s words be true and every man a liar… and may God have mercy on us all.