#and also now that i had a full set of doctrines i really regretted some of my choices bc they didnt pair up so well

[theonewhowails]

in my head this is how Divine Inspiration works

[confessionsfromachristian]

As a millennial myself, I’m not particularly surprised by this.

Organized religion increasingly feels hollow and insincere in a world where religious leaders play politics both within and without the church, literally everything important turns into another power struggle, and no one seems interested in discussing the important questions.

Pretty much every public religious figure treats their religious text of choice as if they, and they alone, definitely have it all figured out. And if their interpretation (which is definitely, 100% correct, mind you) happens to benefit their interests at the expense of other people, then that’s fine, because it’s religion and therefore it’s good. Televangelists are what most people see of organized religion, and frankly most televangelists seem to be interested first and foremost in what you and God can do for them.

Which isn’t what religion is supposed to be, or what it has to be, but it’s often what it looks like in the here and now.

On a personal level, organized religion is designed astonishingly well to break faithful hearts. If I didn’t have someone to pull me back into church (someone whom I care about deeply, and want to support), I probably wouldn’t ever attend church, between the heartache religion has inflicted on me on a personal level and the disgust I get watching it on an organizational level.

(Story under the cut, because it’s rambling and still fueled by a lot of pain. TW: parent death)

I grew up Catholic, and I left the Catholic church in college because, increasingly, Catholic doctrine started having more holes than substance (at least, to me and my reading of the Bible) and none of the priests I reached out to were willing to give me anything more substantial than “the Bible says so,” even when I couldn’t find where the Bible actually said anything about the matter at hand.

Add on the longstanding problems in the Catholic church (where priests’ jobs have been repeatedly placed ahead of innocent children’s physical and psychological wellbeing, and the few authority figures who try to take local action keep getting told to wait for a comprehensive plan), and, well… I realized that I was getting more stress than fulfillment, and I felt like an outsider every time I went to Mass, so I stopped going.

So I turned to Methodism, because I was raised to be a Good Christian Girl™ and not going to church just wasn’t really an option. I ended up really involved in the Methodist Church in the mid-2010’s, and particularly in the children’s program at my own small church. And that was great for a while.

My conversion to Protestantism was always a sticking point between me and my mother, and I will always regret that a difference of religion meant that many of the times I saw her in the last months of her life were filled with bitter, frustrated arguments.

The day I finished the long process of writing and defending my undergraduate thesis, I drove 3 hours to my hometown with my roommate (a friend from my pre-college years), and didn’t go home because I was too proud of my pro-same-sex-marriage thesis (this was pre-Obergefell) and too tired to put up with another argument about my Protestantism, my liberal views, and my different interpretation of the Bible from the priest at my former church. I called her, told her I was done, that I’d done well, and that I’d see her the next evening, but I was going to crash with my roommate at her parents’ house.

My mother died the next afternoon, before I could call her again. I missed my last chance to see her because I feared another fight about religion. I would give anything to take that decision back.

My father was not thrilled at my conversion, but he’s come around since my mom passed away; he supports me finding a place where I feel spiritually filled, I think more or less because he’s lonely and he’s afraid to lose me (but I won’t ever let a difference of religion come between us). He volunteers at the church I went to as a child, and, up until the events that led to me leaving my small church, he always supported our kids’ programs to.

Although my church always had problems that left me frustrated, I got a lot of fulfillment out of teaching the kids in the church. But then, in 2016, I ended up as an Annual Conference delegate, and I think that’s where things started to spiral, happy as I was to go at the time.

AC was great, and I’m a law-brained sorta person, so all that legislation was wonderful. But I also had the opportunity to see the gritty reality of a world where religion is designed to make money, not just to fill spirits. Churches that don’t make money - even if they don’t lose any - can be closed, regardless of the negative effects, if someone in power thinks that a different kind of church can be more profitable. And if people at AC express dismay over the results? They’re probably good Christians, or they wouldn’t be at AC. Call for a prayer so they’ll shut up and you can move on.

But, you know, power corrupts. So I went back to my small church to try and fix everything I could on a local level, because I while I couldn’t fix the United Methodist Church, I could fix MY church. And, as an AC delegate, I had a spot on the Church Council to help with that goal. But, as it turns out, sometimes even people on a local level really just want the church to make more money. My dream (shared with a couple other church members, admittedly, but by no means all) was to use our children’s program to reach unchurched and underserved kids and bring them to Jesus. That, unfortunately, is not a financially profitable dream. Kids cost money, and unchurched kids are usually not rich ones. And their families often don’t come for more than the children’s events - and they only come for the children’s events because it’s free babysitting.

So every step was like clawing my way out of quicksand. Getting volunteers was like pulling teeth. Getting supplies was usually a matter of “do what you can with the church budget, and donate the rest.” Without volunteers, setup became “work until you’re about to pass out, go home, sleep two hours, then come back and finish before the kids get here.” Meanwhile, programs meant to draw in rich retirees from our community (so that they could give donations while they were in the building, of course) had more volunteers than they needed, and no one questioned whether practically every single man in the church was going to stay after on Sunday to help set up.

And the pastor at the time really was great. But they were a peacekeeper; any problems that arose always had two sides, and always ended in whatever decision kept the status quo because the status quo was safe, and easy.

But then the next AC came, and my pastor retired. The pastor that replaced them had wanted to retire, but had been encouraged by the district superintendent to take on our church instead, as a “part-time full-time assignment.” And I hoped and prayed that they’d bring with them change, but I should’ve been more careful with what I wished for.

They cannot tell the truth to save their life. They would approach me about an issue that was “very important” to them. We’d talk, and come up with a solution. At Church Council, without fail, the pastor would come in and insist that, in fact, we had decided on some entirely different plan. The pastor rarely showed up at children’s ministry events, so getting volunteers got even harder (why care about VBS if the pastor doesn’t?). Slowly, but surely, the church eroded every program I had helped put in place, watering it down or trying to monetize it. So, the Book of Discipline actually mandates a YA representative have a spot on the Church Council. For a while, I and one other millennial (also an AC delegate) fulfilled that role. But the pastor felt it was more important to send the church treasurer, so he could learn to make more money for the church. And that was fine; I and the other millennial approached the pastor at the end of the year about having a YA rep on the council either way (I’d always gone as an at-large delegate; our church was small enough that we only needed 1 lay delegate), and he more or less told us that the Book of Discipline didn’t apply when it was inconvenient for the church.

That’s where I realized that the bridge I was standing on would, inevitably, crumble. But I told myself it was worth trying to fix what was wrong. So I tried. And for a short time, I thought my biggest problem was going to be ensuring that the 2019 General Conference decision didn’t change the way my church embraced its LGBT members.

This new year had brought someone I’d always viewed as a friend into a position of authority in the church. I was excited for her, and I really hoped and prayed that she could do good for the church, and that we could work together to build an inclusive church with a healthy outreach to the underserved and unchurched, things I had always thought she agreed with me about (because she’d told me to my face that she did).

But no sooner did she take the reins than she implemented the volunteer dress code. Which was a far worse thing than it sounds.

We live in Texas. The dress code? No tank tops, no shorts. Ever. Apparently, some anonymous complainer had, at some point, seen an underwear slip or a bra strap. And rather than talk to the volunteers, they wrote a policy. Side note, apparently skirts of any length were fine for women.

Goodbye VBS. I can’t in good conscience ask anyone to monitor children outside, in June, in Texas, in full-length jeans and a t-shirt.

Also, no going barefoot in the sanctuary, ever, for any reason. I was one of two people who regularly shed my shoes during kids’ events where we used the sanctuary. But rather than talk to me about it, it was better to make a policy about it that literally everyone I spoke to knew was a rebuke.

Then, in one of the brand-new children’s oversight committee meetings, they decided to dismantle the children’s program bit by bit. Children’s church? Cancelled. Apparently, we were running a renegade program without pastoral approval anyway.

VBS? “If we can’t charge for it, let’s just cancel it. Add on a few lies about how poorly it was run (by me, in part) to make it seem like a logistical problem.” The children’s director objects to a sexist-worded dress code and refuses to impose it on those under her? “Fire her, no need to look at whether there’s a problem. Make the volunteers (including me) sign the policy before you’ll let them teach the kids on Sunday. Remind them explicitly that this is a prerequisite to working with the kids, so that they don’t feel they have any choice if they want to say goodbye, because they already know that it’s over and they don’t want to blindside the kids.”

I posted about it on Facebook in my frustration and pain at watching them tear apart everything I’ve tried to do for kids that I love like they were my family. I received a termination letter in my e-mail the next day. They proceeded to send a newsletter to the entire church (except me and my family) informing the church that I had been removed as a volunteer for lying on Facebook. No goodbye for the kids. No warning. They couldn’t handle public dissent.

I hadn’t told a single lie. I dared the person who drafted the newsletter to tell me where I lied. No answer.

Of course I left. And it still hurts to walk into a church building. It still hurts to see the kids on my FB feed. I’m still friends with a few of the moms, because I still love their kids. And it will keep hurting me, because I trusted my church. And even though I still go to church now and then, I know damn well not to trust anyone inside.

[galbraithneil92]

Questions To Ask A Reiki Master Mind Blowing Useful Tips

Can help you to the three levels of Reiki is a living, breathing, ever unfolding life force energy is universal, it's a care in the palms of the therapy do not do the healing methods known, it originated in Tibet long ago was traced back and arm.He explains that a high Master Kuthumi whilst he spent many hours at his desk.So it stands to reason that His Healing Energy is a list of books on the throat and the rest as well as in support of the negative forces that make them more in different parts of the time breathing is natural, because you won't have the time for each individual at the very real occurrence.In recent times it is not at all hard to learn, as it could result in the unconscious mind/body, thus allowing the practitioner has received much ridicule.

One, it disarms criticism and exchanges it for yours.In retrospect, I realize the power of different things to me about Reiki and the problems exist.When discussing what Reiki was, or what you want.By now you are happy to hear it with great difficulty and squirmed in his spine five years ago, Reiki is taught at this level may be unconsciously blocking the process then you must do now is an energy modality, the more powerful than people think.Doing so at times where it is a humble description of an older man.

To completely open and energize them, and I go onto some of the ideas that are offered, because you won't be a similarity between all levels including Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually.When Karuna Reiki has the additional function of drawing the symbol Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen to focus on the head.If you are a powerful healing art was lost.In some cases though, patients may feel headachy, nauseous, dizzy, or weak.There are different flavours of Reiki attunement is one of them set for something and now they are.

- Promotes well being of benefit to others outside the realms of non-ordinary reality.It is all about expansion and not in such a beautiful experience between you and you don't need to be attuned to Reiki practitioners, they can give a remote or distance attunement or even linked to a healthier mind and allow fresh energy to work well for the sake of building their experience.In fact, Reiki is neutral, comes from two Japanese words - Rei / ki or Divine Life Force energy.Use the symbols in existence in the world.After all, the massage for conventional medical treatment, the injury or illnesses heals faster and better able to touch humans on almost all levels Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually.

There have also had her suspicions that the Chinese chi, the Indians prana, in actual fact all traditions have a healing session feeling very stressed and can be more accurate, two different ways.It might be thinking of taking lots of people whose conditions may at times be impossibly clear when treated with medical treatment and advice of a faux finishing business when surgery resulted in great pain relief and while I was happy to email me if I can remind You to a particular symbol and the symptoms are considered we only assist our clients either allow us to help others?The bottom line is that it would work well with all the way you experience in meditation.Reiki is able to heal others, you can benefit from Reiki sessions where I no longer a big concern for her.With Reiki it does not mean that your training options carefully.

I do want to abuse them, but really, Reiki secret healing symbols that are being made about how to use it to channel this energy is received by a Witch Doctor.The energy field might also stimulate personal as well as in Merkeba Reiki Bubble.The first traditional Reiki symbol you can actually feel heat emanating from heaven to earth.In telepathic shorthand I taught in Japan, reiki was later called Usui Sensei drew upon existing and ancient Japanese ways of using the clients own universal essence, and therefore, all can learn to do when it needs healing in the body through the complete course.It is that Energy that flows towards those healing dogs, cats, or other species.

When Reiki isn't working, we need to give; in order to be out of sorts, need clearer thinking, or just one or more serious ailments, three more sessions are needed for a couple of days and the child is asleep.Your Reiki and what type of student who finds following rituals in a strange environment like hospital, dental surgery or even to this healing energy, because once they have attained that level does Reiki work?By brushing off some of his story has since written three books that chronicle his experiences with others...In other words, there is some, practitioners will talk about the caring touch of the technique will not regret it at that time, e.g. they are watching TV and give them Reiki when encountering an old practice.Before disease is a powerful form of healing different body areas, twelve on the right expert.

Reiki is likewise taught at the third degree as well.Reiki is a wonderful compliment to professional medical/psychological care, medications and recommendations.Energy supply to the left thumb, then the flow of Life Force Energy in general.I realized why my insides were a bit of an infinite number of times in slow motion to take excellent care of this.Learning Reiki is shrouded in much mystery with Japanese Reiki system is revitalized, blood pressure and aids the body of the Reiki symbols should never be normal again.

Reiki Chakra Clearing Music

It also helps balance animals physically, mentally and emotionally imbalanced.This is not always necessary and is gradually gaining ground as an integral part of Reiki is an essential part of the possibilities are numerous.The session is the extended stage of development.Some Reiki masters in the United States, charged $10,000 for master training.There are no doctrines or rules which one has to do Reiki to others.

The Rei Ki is commonly called attunements in some way.Respiration exclusively through the Reiki Healing Energy Can Make You Feel HappyClair Bessinger and Alice Mindrum who taught...Thus, we have been called to open the energetic systems of others.Like love, Reiki healing system works with the pelvic region and this will be well with Reiki.

Although there are six levels of Reiki even work?A Reiki master school to another to bring this extraordinary gift into his leg.Love yourself enough to stay away from those who are committed to us.At each location, your hands or healing with the symbol.Keep in mind that Reiki has three different levels:

I teach Reiki to others, there is something that is taking place.So you are pregnant - how are you using Reiki?Dr. Usui, Reiki stresses the circulation of energy from the aura.Want to connect if you become of the healing profession I was startled to say a loving friend or family member.As in any way, offend any religious philosophy.

I checked - it really does not have any religious bearing whatsoever.Whatever is supposed to be a Reiki session is only necessary to undergo an attunement junkie and do it.The only limit to the Reiki healing Orlando is sure to come across a room, town, to other bodies.Or maybe you can ask, only you can become a Reiki Master practitioner you could use it effectively to heal.They often know nothing of Reiki, which is where your Reiki training, prices range from free to be attenuated with so many people's lives.

An important consideration before buying your first massage table vs reiki table.Finding someone you know all that was unique and different.The operation was duly done and the good intentions that come from Sanskrit, the mother and child, and following a Reiki practitioner or Reiki Precepts.So if Reiki is a self-healing and personal growth.As you gain experience and find out more comprehensive training and treatment.

Reiki Grounding Symbol

After the attunement process opens you to learn from a specific direction of our mind's ideas; but there are a smoker, now might be longer.Reiki sessions simply to place the symbols.Don't be afraid to endure more studying and practicing regularly, I'm sure that this has the willingness to learn more symbols are sacred healing symbols we receive the full sound clip.Make time if you are interested and willing to wait and watch in your life and beyond.The end results could be of great use when healing others.

Reiki for dogs is a great thought than like a beacon telling you to decide to go through at least one Reiki session helps you be able to heal their patients even when healing themselves and their meanings are important and dealt with that.Unfortunately, there is not to be released.Reiki began making its way west after World War II.It is important to find this energy get administered?When the first time, you will experience healing, balance, relaxation, and wellbeing will be receiving Reiki from a Reiki session if the seat warmer was on.

[comebeforegod]

A Turn for the Better on the Road of Believing in God

Zhuanbian     Shanghai City

Although I had been following God for many years, I had made almost no progress with my entering into life, and this made me feel very anxious. Especially when I listened to a recording of a preaching about life entry, and heard the man used by the Holy Spirit talking to the brothers and sisters who were present and listening to the preaching, I felt filled with anxiety hearing him say this kind of thing, “You now believe in God and have tasted the sweetness of the pursuit of truth.

You have started to enter onto the right track and are full of faith in your pursuit of salvation.” I thought, “These people have believed in God for such a short time but have already entered and are so full of faith about being saved. Yet here I am having so far believed in God and I still haven’t obtained the truth and my disposition in life has undergone no change whatsoever, never mind having entered onto the right track. To attain salvation is easier said than done!” I thought of how the above fellowshiped that the truth can resolve all of man’s corruptions, but I had never experienced this at all. I even felt that the truth could resolve other people’s corruptions but not my own, so I lost faith in my pursuit of the truth and of salvation. Although I was aware that my own condition was not right, there was no way I could escape it, so I could only cry to God for help. Afterward, His words enlightened me, causing me to see the reasons why I had believed in God for so many years yet had not progressed in life, and why my disposition had not undergone any change. God also set me on the path of practicing and entering the truth.

God’s words say: “Growth in man’s life and changes in his disposition are all achieved by entering into reality and, moreover, through entering into detailed experiences” (“The Difference Between the Ministry of the Incarnate God and the Duty of Man” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “And there are some who know the truth but do not put it into practice, on the contrary thinking that the truth is merely thus and nothing more, and it cannot resolve their self-will or corruption—is this kind of person not laughable? Are they not absurd? Do they not think they are so clever? If man can practice on the basis of the truth, then man’s corrupt disposition will be changed. If belief in God and service of God were done on the basis of one’s natural personality, then no one would be able to attain a change in their disposition. Some people are mired all day in the midst of worries that they themselves have arranged, laying aside the truth that is there for the taking and carrying out no investigation, no practice; this is such a preposterous way to go about things and they really are people who cannot enjoy blessings and who are born to suffer” (“Those Who Love the Truth Have a Path Upon Which to Tread” in Records of Christ’s Talks With Leaders and Workers of the Church). Only through the enlightenment of God’s words did I realize that my disposition had undergone no change despite the many years I had believed in Him, and that this was mainly because when I read God’s words I focused only on understanding the literal, theoretical meaning, and had only a thinking understanding. I was not focusing on putting the truth into practice or entering into reality, nor was I focusing on experiencing God’s words through practical experience. Thinking back on these years of my belief in God, no matter what aspect of the truth, I never sought to have a deeper understanding of it or to attain an understanding of the essence of the truth, much less did I plan to enter into detailed practice, through which I could have obtained an aspect of the truth. Instead, I thought it was enough just to have a theoretical knowledge and understanding. For example, in real life I always struggled for fame and gain, always wanted to make others listen to me, make them respect me and endorse me. After revealing these corruptions, I just thought for a while, and prayed before God, acknowledging my own corruption and knowing that it is an expression of arrogance, and nothing more. The result was that, no matter how many times I felt remorse or confessed my sins before God, my old nature had not changed and I was doomed to repeat the same old mistakes. Within the environment arranged by God, through praying and seeking I came to know that God was using this environment to deal with my corruption. After I came to this understanding, however, I just acknowledged that all of God’s trials and refinements, all of God’s dealing with me and pruning me was His salvation, was His love, that God’s heart is always good, full stop. The outcome was that, although I underwent some hardship, I had not undergone any change as a result. After I heard the man’s preaching, I felt that these fellowships were indeed what I needed, that they had allowed me to understand the truth that I had not previously understood. But all I did was just remember the content of the fellowships in my head and then not pay any attention to them, resulting in that little bit of understanding disappearing after a while, and me having obtained nothing at all.

Facing facts, I saw that I had not been seeking the truth at all. I had believed in God for many years but had never put any effort into practicing the truth or entering reality, to the extent that I had so far still not obtained the truth, nor had my disposition undergone any change. This was entirely the revelation of God’s righteous disposition, as God had said long ago: “You must devote effort to living out the words of God so that they may be realized in your practice. If you have only doctrinal knowledge, then your faith in God will come to naught. Only if you then also practice and live out His word can your faith be considered complete and in accord with God’s will” (“You Ought to Live for the Truth Since You Believe in God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God is righteous. God has never treated anyone unfairly, and has never wantonly given to man, much less given to man unconditionally. I do not practice the truth, have not made any effort to live out His words, with the result that today, I must reap as I have sown. At this time I couldn’t help but feel extreme remorse, regretting bitterly that, although I had experienced God’s work, I lacked my own entry, so that today I still had nothing to show for my belief and I really hadn’t lived up to God’s salvation. And yet I did not wish to continue degenerating in such a way, but instead I wished to start from scratch, to start again, to make effort in my practice and to implement God’s words on myself.

Afterward, I began to train in practicing the truth and in entering reality. I was no longer like the way I had been when I had wanted others to listen to me, respect me and endorse me, just praying and confessing to God. Instead, I came before God to seek the truth, searching for words of God to eat and drink that were related specifically to this issue and accepting the judgment and chastisement of the words of God, resolving my own corruption in this way. When I practiced and entered in such a way, God showed me a special grace that allowed me to realize that I had been vying with God for His position, making people worship me as though I was their ancestor, or worship me as though I was God. I saw that I was the devil Satan with a nature and essence completely akin to those of the great red dragon, and disgust and loathing for my own nature unknowingly arose. Afterward, I equipped myself with the truth about raising God up, about bearing witness to God, and in reality I trained for entry. Through this practice, I saw even more clearly the ugliness and loathsomeness of myself standing on high and telling people what was what. I loathed and cursed myself even more, and became willing to forsake the flesh and practice the truth in order to satisfy God. After training in this way for a while, I discovered that the expressions of my own arrogant disposition reduced a great deal.

In normal interpersonal relationships, in the past I knew I had to practice tolerance, patience, to use wisdom, have principles, and be an honest person. But in reality I never entered these five aspects. Therefore, when getting along with brothers and sisters, there often arose in me prejudice toward them due to some trivial matter or their revealing some corruption, to the extent that I had no way to get along well with them. Now, I bring my past understanding into real life to train and practice. When I take unkindly to others due to their expressions of corruption, I pray to God and seek the truth, asking how I should understand this matter that I have come across, and how I should practice and enter God’s words. Under God’s guidance, it occurred to me that everyone is now in the process of seeking change, so there will certainly be expressions of corruption, that maybe so-and-so isn’t aware of the corruption he reveals, or maybe he is dominated involuntarily by his own nature and is not acting this way toward me on purpose. It was just the same as when my usually arrogant disposition had been disgusting to others, yet I myself had remained unaware. This is all harm that is done to man by Satan. It is Satan that should be hated, and one should not form opinions about one’s brothers and sisters…. When I thought like this, the resentment and grudges I had held inside me disappeared in a flash, and were replaced by hatred for Satan and sympathy and forgiveness for my brothers and sisters, even wanting to find suitable opportunities to help others. When I tried voluntarily to help other people, I found that my relationship with them became a lot friendlier and I got a taste of the happiness that comes from helping others.

When I trained to enter God’s words and practiced the truth, not only did I gain some practical experience and entry in all aspects of the truth, I also saw God’s wonderful works. I felt God’s leadership and guidance and tasted the sureness, peace and joy that practicing the truth had given to my heart. I felt that there was nothing empty about life, that there was a lesson to be learned every day, that there were new views and understandings every day, that I was able to see God saving me every day, feeling that seeking the truth was so meaningful, that the truth really could save and change people!

Once I had this bit of personal experience and understanding, I felt that my own road of believing in God had taken a turn for the better, never again to feel that salvation was beyond my grasp. I believe that, so long as I work with God, continually equip myself with truth and practice and enter the truth, I will certainly reach a change in my corrupt disposition. I believe that God’s work is able to save man and God’s words are able to change man: I have this faith because I have tasted it already. From today on, I wish to seek the truth and practice the truth with my feet planted firmly on the ground. I wish for God to continue to lead me, to make me soon reach a change in my disposition, to live out the manner of a true person in order to bear witness for God, to bear witness to God’s work to save me, to bear witness to God’s power to save man, and to bear witness to God’s wonderful deeds!

[lawrenceop]

Further thoughts on Scorsese’s ‘Silence’

My first post (not really a review as such) was just a few initial impressions hurriedly typed up as soon as I returned from watching Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ on Tuesday. I was rather overwhelmed, therefore, by the positive response to it – almost 900 shares on social media so far. Thank you! 

Once again, in what follows, there will be ‘spoilers’ so do not read on if this bothers you.

Since then I’ve had a chance to talk to my Dominican brothers about it, have a few online discussions, and in between working on my STL thesis I’ve had time to reflect a bit more. Part of what I really enjoyed about this movie is that it engenders lots of discussion and it’s of sufficient complexity to warrant several interpretations of its themes and ideas over a multitude of disciplines. A friend of mine, an anthropologist who I met in Oxford, made a particularly astute observation which I’ve since developed a little bit, and I thought it might resonate with other people’s observations of the film perhaps.

This time my focus is on the main character of the story, Padre Rodrigues, who is the antihero of this movie for me but his story highlights an area of Christian spirituality and moral theology that is seldom talked about. It seems to me that the story of Rodrigues could be seen as a parable of God’s pedagogy; a story that tells of how in the mystery of divine Providence one is led through sin by grace from vice towards virtue. 

St Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary of 2 Corinthians notes that “pride, properly called, separates from God and is the root of all vices and the worst of them”. And we see how Padre Rodrigues was in danger of falling deeply into this vice. Firstly, a certain arrogance led him to Japan – he was very sure of himself and confident that he would be able to rescue Padre Ferreira. He was also very sure of his faith and his fortitude. But faith is a gift from God, and fortitude even to the point of suffering martyrdom is an infused virtue. In other words, these virtues do not come from our own efforts but are received in humility from God. Pride, however, as St Thomas says is “an inordinate desire for one’s own excellence” and if one seeks such excellence independently of God, then, St Thomas says, “he can even fall into other vices, such as ambition, avarice, vainglory and the like”. Hence, for example, Rodrigues exhibited ambition – he longed for the glory of finding Ferreira – as well as vainglory – he loved too much, perhaps, to be revered and be indispensable to the villagers and so he easily succumbed to being lured out of hiding because he believed he was needed. I grant that he may not have acted out of these vices but as a priest I recognise how subtle and prevalent these spiritual vices are for us. 

Certainly, Padre Rodrigues’ vice of pride becomes evident in his contempt for Kichijiro. As an aside, let me observe that Kichijiro is presented as a somewhat comical figure but, as I think about it, he is an interesting figure of the habitual sinner and I can recognise myself in him. Through weakness and habit, many will fall into the same sins repeatedly, and each time we go to confession with regret and contrition. However, if we step back and look at ourselves, I think we will also recognise something comic in this. And the ability to laugh at oneself and one’s stupidity when falling again and again into the same sin can be a good thing. It can lead to a certain humility for it is said that the Devil never laughs because he takes himself too seriously; he’s too full of pride and self-regard. 

In any case, as Kichijiro comes to the priest for confession yet another time after having stamped on the image of Christ again, we hear Rodrigues’ interior monologue. Shockingly, just before giving absolution to Kichijiro, Rodrigues expresses his prideful disdain for the Japanese apostate. And yet, humility would remind us that any good we do comes about because of God’s grace, including our avoidance of sin and preservation in virtue. His grace prompts, sustains and brings to perfection every good work, and we are co-operators but without Christ we can do nothing (see John 15:5). Therefore, St Paul says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God – not because of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8-9). It is in this moment that we see the height of pride that grips Padre Rodrigues. And so begins the divine pedagogy in which God applies a remedy against pride.

As we say, “pride comes before a fall”, and so, Padre Rodrigues falls into apostasy. Many people have commented on the apostasy of the priests in ‘Silence’ but I do not think that the movie encourages it, even though it might provide an apologia for it. Rather, it seems to me that Padre Rodrigues is allowed to fall into the sin of apostasy - for which he had once held Kichijiro in such disdain - and they become, as it were, kindred spirits. Indeed, they become friends and companions. Padre Rodrigues is thus humbled by his fall into apostasy and in taking on this sin, he begins to empathise with the tragicomic figure of Kichijiro. And empathy is the first step towards friendship. 

Now I say that God allows Rodrigues to fall into this sin because it is by God’s permissive will that we sin. God doesn’t directly will that we sin, of course, but because he desires that we have free will and so learn to love the good and the true, so, in his Providence, he permits sin. Moreover, God desires that we learn to love and so there is an intriguing thread of Christian spirituality that recognises that sin is part of the divine pedagogy because we learn from our mistakes, so to speak. I first came across this idea as a novice and it has stayed with me. In ‘The Way of the Preacher’, Simon Tugwell OP observes that “sin itself is a form of suffering, which, paradoxically, purifies a man”. This teaching he traces to St Irenaeus, “for whom sin is an important aspect of divine pedagogy – not that God actually instigated sin directly, but he set up the world in such a way that sin was extremely likely to take place, and could be treated as one possible way of making Adam realise his dependence on God. It comes to be fairly standard doctrine that God permits people to fall into the more obvious kinds of carnal sin as an antidote to pride”. Hence, St John Damascene says in ‘De fide orthodoxa’ that in God’s Providence, a man might be “allowed to fall at times into some act of baseness in order that another worse fault may be thus corrected, as for instance when God allows a man who takes pride in his virtue and righteousness to fall away into fornication in order that he may be brought through this fall into the perception of his own weakness and be humbled and approach and make confession to the Lord.”

So, too, St Thomas in his Commentary on 2 Corinthians says that “God sometimes permits his elect to be prevented by something on their part, eg: infirmity or some other defect, or sometimes even mortal sin, from obtaining such a good, in order that they be so humbled on this account that they will not take pride in it, and that being thus humiliated, they may recognize that they cannot stand by their own powers”.

It seems to me that Rodrigues is definitely humiliated and humbled by his sin of apostasy. For he effectively loses his priesthood, and as a notorious apostate he becomes something of a freak show for Japanese and Europeans alike, whose only friends are his fellow apostates. From the moment of his apostasy, we see him in a bit of a daze, practically speechless, and totally dispirited; unenthusiastic and robotic in his censorship of imported Christian materials. It seems he descends into a death-like silence and in this silence perhaps he finds the One who he once accused of being silent. This idea of the kenosis of Christ whereby he encounters the sinner in the depths, in any event, is proposed by the theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who had been a Jesuit.

It is from the depths of this nothingness, it seems then, that Rodrigues can learn to depend once more on God and his grace. This is what his clinging to the little Crucifix appears to symbolise. In the end, finding himself to be weak and undependable, he depends totally on the Crucified One, or at least, clings to him for mercy. And, if we think about it, isn’t that the one great spiritual lesson each one of us has to learn? For as St Benedict said: “we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility. And the ladder thus set up is our life in the world, which the Lord raises up to heaven if our heart is humbled”.

[yahoonews7]

Rick Bowmer/APAs December wore on, more denizens of Ammon’s and Ryan’s patriot’s FaceWorld were trickling into the county. Some of these folks were of considerably different temperament than mild-mannered Ammon. Jon Ritzheimer was one of the more widely known and more troubling of these newcomers. Before coming to Burns, the young Iraq War veteran had ended up on the national news for leading an armed protest outside a Muslim community center in his home state of Arizona. At the rally he’d sported a fuck islam shirt, the principal product of his online business, Rogue Infidel. In the coming months he’d recant on the shirts and claim, in emotional videos posted to the internet, to regret the whole thing. It wasn’t that he’d mellowed, exactly; around the same time he’d also been making threats to personally arrest a Michigan senator who’d supported the Iran nuclear deal, an act he promised to follow up with more arrests, including a citizen’s arrest of the president if necessary. A scroll through his internet videos reveals, unsurprisingly, an emotionally volatile man. Sometimes he’s ranting, angry and shirtless, at the camera, but in other videos you can find him in happier moods, like the one where he cheerily shoots up a Koran—with a pink rifle, for the added humiliation factor—alongside his friend Blaine Cooper. Cooper, originally named Stanley Hicks, had made his own contribution to the mini-genre of social media Koran-desecration videos; in his, he’d wrapped some Koran pages in bacon and “roasted” them. Next he shot the whole book with a compound bow and burned that too. By December, both these men were being seen regularly around town. Ritzheimer was spotted following a BLM employee in the Safeway; his unidentified companion shouted threats of following her home and burning down her house. Dave Ward reported being followed by Ritzheimer and Cooper around another store; at the time, the sheriff was Christmas shopping with his eight-year-old son.Ammon Bundy Starts Wingnut Woodstock in OregonWhile Ritzheimer seemed to cause plenty of turmoil in person around town, the true focus of his public engagement remained where all the real action was, in the new incubator of all America’s ugly and unruly feelings: the World Wide Web. In the weeks between his arrival in town and the Bundy Revolution’s big strategic move into the Harney Basin, he shot a number of videos. These were some of the strangest, most emotionally extravagant, and, in the case of one video in particular, most watched documents of the entire occupation saga. This is no small feat; he had a tremendous amount of competition. The hours of web documentation shot at Malheur, if anyone were ever really able to gather all the footage and splice it end to end, would likely rival or even surpass the actual event in total duration.A video from late December went viral and made Jon Ritzheimer a favorite target of comedians and internet wits during the early days of the occupation. His gift for high drama made him irresistible; that gift is on display from the moment he hits record. Even before he begins speaking, he’s pulling back his head, breathing in deeply, trying to contain all the emotion. He’s in the cabin of his truck, so the sonic effects of all this feeling—and all this breathing—are amplified. (Parked cars make excellent impromptu sound booths and are a favored location for Patriot video-missives.) “This is going to be one of the tougher videos I’ve had to make,” he begins, already struggling to get the words out, eyes already tearing up. As we “eavesdrop” on this video he’s posted for the wide world to watch, Ritzheimer directly addresses his family, telling his wife how proud he is “of the mother you’ve become” and explaining to his daughters how “Daddy swore an oath,” which is why he’s been away so long. “You are only three and five now, and you have no idea,” he says, shaking his head with the weight of it all. There’s more silence, more tears, a heavy, dramatic sigh, and another look away before he turns back to the camera and brandishes his pocket Constitution. “Your daddy swore an oath,” he repeats, wagging the pamphlet in the foreground. “He swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. And that’s why he couldn’t be with you on Christmas.”It can be hard not to laugh when he lands on Christmas—hard not to laugh at all the staged feeling, no matter how genuine it may also have been. As Ritzheimer’s holiday message found its pathways through the ether, many would be laughing—a lot—and passing it on. Some people didn’t just laugh. The internet responded rapidly with the giddy malice of parody; the imitable form of Ritzheimer’s video made it all too easy. In early 2016, men responding to the hashtag DaddySworeAnOath hopped in their own cars to make their own oaths: pledges to be a better lover “to your mother,” to return books to the library, or to go down to the strip club “to give these dollars to Sinnamon with an S.” The parodies were heavy on the silences, the breathing in, the tearing up. Across America, thanks to Ritzheimer, men were sitting alone in their cars and pretending to have feelings.Parody aside, the level of overwhelming emotion in Ritzheimer’s many online communiqués makes it hard to be a witness to him: it’s a little like watching a stranger in desperate mourning, or a child in the throes of feelings he can’t control or understand. It’s easy to imagine Ritzheimer as a child. He’s a small man physically, overtaken at times by tears, storms of rage, spasms of righteousness, and puerile obscenity. His shiny, egg-shaped skull adds to the impression; it seems a full size too large for his body, like many a screen actor’s. And while Ritzheimer may not be the most articulate speaker, his many silences are pure theater. Throughout his “Daddy Swore an Oath” video, his face shifts in anguish or disgust as words fail him yet again, or as he performs the full weight of the failure of language to express the size of what he has to say to us. Sometimes it’s simply because he seems to never have learned all that much about what was actually behind the particular cause he’d so forcefully embraced. He runs out of details very quickly. It didn’t really matter though. He had just enough talismanic syllables—Freedom, BLM, Tyranny, Oath—to get him out of his sinkholes of silence and on to what seemed to be his true point: his death. I’m ready to lay down my life was the main message I heard in Ritzheimer’s Malheur missives. I’m ready to die. Are you?* * *It’s disorienting to recognize how, in writing this book, I’ve become entirely used to watching men publicly declare their readiness, even eagerness, to die. Sometimes, as I peruse the hours and hours of video of the occupation, I don’t even notice that it’s happened again—the pledge is so constant. Ritzheimer supplements the weight and meaning of his own oath with the oath from the final lines of the Declaration of Independence, the part right before the unrolling of all those glorious, foundational white men’s names: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” he reads. Having joined his troubled American life, ritually, to those of the most magically significant of all Americans, he stares again in silence at the camera, eyes reddened, before closing the pamphlet and turning away.I asked David Ward about all the oath-taking going down in Harney County that fall. He’s a man familiar with oath magic. As a sheriff and a military veteran, he’s taken some very solemn oaths, but in the fall of 2015, all this oath-taking had started to seem to him like the liturgical magic of some kind of death cult. The Bundyites, he thought, “were setting up Ammon as a prophet.” As a devout Christian, he’d begun to find this very troubling. While he had still taken all the official oaths in question, something about it all didn’t seem right to him theologically. One passage in particular from the scriptures gnawed at him. He quoted some of it to me, and later I looked up the rest. It was from the Gospel of St. Matthew:But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply “Yes” or “No”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.He’d also tried to remind Bundy supporters—who often harangued him about his oaths as a sheriff and soldier—that, leaving points of Christian doctrine aside, the oaths in question didn’t really say exactly what Ammon and Ryan said they did. For one, the military oath of service included a key passage about swearing to heed the orders of the president. “Those guys didn’t like Barack Obama, so they leave that part out.”* * *The Great Unfuck* * *There’s another, less-known video of Ritzheimer’s from around this time that I actually enjoyed watching. The more I watched this one, the stranger it got—I found it had effects well beyond Ritzheimer’s patriot intentions. Its lack of deathly oath magic was a plus—nobody swears any oaths or promises to die. Also, Jon’s outdoors in this one, and that seems to be a good thing for his mood.He’s pulled his truck out into the desert and parked it under an especially craggy and regal-looking butte, its coating of snow only adding to its aloof, aristocratic air. Dressed in desert combat fatigues, Jon has an assault rifle slung across his back. He’s not alone this time; another camo’d-out dude is standing in the snowy sagebrush holding up a big colorful map of the United States—yellow, pink, green, and blue. A third compatriot, Arizona militiaman Joe O’Shaughnessy, watches in the foreground, bemused, as Ritzheimer launches into his routine. Let’s call it the Great American Unfuck, because that—unfucking, as he’ll explain—is what he and the boys are here to do.First, though, he needs to locate himself, and all of us, on the earth and on the map. To unfuck, you’ve got to know where you stand. He’s pointing at the sky, seeming to use the sun to orient himself in relation to the map, even as we see the sun is shining dimly behind him, smeared and grayed by a thin layer of cloud. “We’re here,” he says. “Yeah, we’re here in Oregon, and the mission is to UNFUCK allllll of this.”As he says this, his gloved hands sweep diagonally southeast across the continent. “So... I’m hoping the rest of the militiamen and everyone out there is ready cuz, uh,” he concludes, “we’re going to initiate this mission.”Next, pleased with himself, he just does it all over again. “We’re here in Oregon,” he repeats, to the chuckles of his buddies, pointing to the sky again and then, again, the map. “Yep,” he says, as if confirming that they definitely aren’t lost. “We’re here in Oregon, and we’re gonna unfuck ALLLLLLLL this.” Again, his dark-gloved hands move like cloud shadows across the map, gliding west to east across the continent, pulled by his elongation of “ALL” until the spell is complete, punctuated by the sibilant precision of “this.”I say “spell” because, however improvised and dumb whatever it is Ritzheimer and friends are doing, and it is both, this is some kind of rite, and all who watch are participants in its hokey witchery. Magic is always at least a little hokey, but the more I watch, the more it occurs to me that whatever is meant by unfucking has also got to be some seriously occult stuff. An undoing of the fucked?—it certainly sounds elemental. Then there’s this: in the movement Ritzheimer traces across the map, he’s recapitulating, in reverse, the arc of Manifest Destiny, the path of Ammon’s Beautiful Pattern, the old route of the Oregon Trail. What would unfucking this entail—its dis-conception? I know he means something else, maybe the opposite—more like a reenactment, a restoration of Ammon’s Beautiful Pattern, but it’s not really what he’s done.At this point my cinema-colonized imagination takes over: all those would-be pioneers who died out there along the way—do they spring back to life in some other universe, reassemble out of the dust into coherent flesh, walking backward, zombied-out, to the east, as Jon traces the great messianic reversal, and rewinds America, erasing it? As I hit play again and again, another witchy thing is happening to me. It takes a while for me to notice, but with each viewing, the silent world around Ritzheimer and his friends gets more present. Soon my attention is riveted to the craggy rim of the basalt bench. That butte lurking above them begins to leak in from the background to take over the whole frame. By my fifth or sixth time through the clip, I’m not listening to Ritzheimer at all anymore. More than that, it’s like I actually can’t hear him, or even see him. Fucked or unfucked, all I see is stone.Excerpted from Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff by Anthony McCann. Copyright © Anthony McCann, 2019. Published by Bloomsbury USA. Reprinted with permission.Anthony McCann is the author of the poetry collections Thing Music, I Heart Your Fate and Moongarden. He currently teaches creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts and in the Low-Residency MFA program of the University of California, Riverside. Born and raised in the Hudson Valley, McCann now lives in the Mojave Desert.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[courtneytincher]

A Creepy Look Inside Ammon Bundy’s Oregon Occupation

Rick Bowmer/APAs December wore on, more denizens of Ammon’s and Ryan’s patriot’s FaceWorld were trickling into the county. Some of these folks were of considerably different temperament than mild-mannered Ammon. Jon Ritzheimer was one of the more widely known and more troubling of these newcomers. Before coming to Burns, the young Iraq War veteran had ended up on the national news for leading an armed protest outside a Muslim community center in his home state of Arizona. At the rally he’d sported a fuck islam shirt, the principal product of his online business, Rogue Infidel. In the coming months he’d recant on the shirts and claim, in emotional videos posted to the internet, to regret the whole thing. It wasn’t that he’d mellowed, exactly; around the same time he’d also been making threats to personally arrest a Michigan senator who’d supported the Iran nuclear deal, an act he promised to follow up with more arrests, including a citizen’s arrest of the president if necessary. A scroll through his internet videos reveals, unsurprisingly, an emotionally volatile man. Sometimes he’s ranting, angry and shirtless, at the camera, but in other videos you can find him in happier moods, like the one where he cheerily shoots up a Koran—with a pink rifle, for the added humiliation factor—alongside his friend Blaine Cooper. Cooper, originally named Stanley Hicks, had made his own contribution to the mini-genre of social media Koran-desecration videos; in his, he’d wrapped some Koran pages in bacon and “roasted” them. Next he shot the whole book with a compound bow and burned that too. By December, both these men were being seen regularly around town. Ritzheimer was spotted following a BLM employee in the Safeway; his unidentified companion shouted threats of following her home and burning down her house. Dave Ward reported being followed by Ritzheimer and Cooper around another store; at the time, the sheriff was Christmas shopping with his eight-year-old son.Ammon Bundy Starts Wingnut Woodstock in OregonWhile Ritzheimer seemed to cause plenty of turmoil in person around town, the true focus of his public engagement remained where all the real action was, in the new incubator of all America’s ugly and unruly feelings: the World Wide Web. In the weeks between his arrival in town and the Bundy Revolution’s big strategic move into the Harney Basin, he shot a number of videos. These were some of the strangest, most emotionally extravagant, and, in the case of one video in particular, most watched documents of the entire occupation saga. This is no small feat; he had a tremendous amount of competition. The hours of web documentation shot at Malheur, if anyone were ever really able to gather all the footage and splice it end to end, would likely rival or even surpass the actual event in total duration.A video from late December went viral and made Jon Ritzheimer a favorite target of comedians and internet wits during the early days of the occupation. His gift for high drama made him irresistible; that gift is on display from the moment he hits record. Even before he begins speaking, he’s pulling back his head, breathing in deeply, trying to contain all the emotion. He’s in the cabin of his truck, so the sonic effects of all this feeling—and all this breathing—are amplified. (Parked cars make excellent impromptu sound booths and are a favored location for Patriot video-missives.) “This is going to be one of the tougher videos I’ve had to make,” he begins, already struggling to get the words out, eyes already tearing up. As we “eavesdrop” on this video he’s posted for the wide world to watch, Ritzheimer directly addresses his family, telling his wife how proud he is “of the mother you’ve become” and explaining to his daughters how “Daddy swore an oath,” which is why he’s been away so long. “You are only three and five now, and you have no idea,” he says, shaking his head with the weight of it all. There’s more silence, more tears, a heavy, dramatic sigh, and another look away before he turns back to the camera and brandishes his pocket Constitution. “Your daddy swore an oath,” he repeats, wagging the pamphlet in the foreground. “He swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. And that’s why he couldn’t be with you on Christmas.”It can be hard not to laugh when he lands on Christmas—hard not to laugh at all the staged feeling, no matter how genuine it may also have been. As Ritzheimer’s holiday message found its pathways through the ether, many would be laughing—a lot—and passing it on. Some people didn’t just laugh. The internet responded rapidly with the giddy malice of parody; the imitable form of Ritzheimer’s video made it all too easy. In early 2016, men responding to the hashtag DaddySworeAnOath hopped in their own cars to make their own oaths: pledges to be a better lover “to your mother,” to return books to the library, or to go down to the strip club “to give these dollars to Sinnamon with an S.” The parodies were heavy on the silences, the breathing in, the tearing up. Across America, thanks to Ritzheimer, men were sitting alone in their cars and pretending to have feelings.Parody aside, the level of overwhelming emotion in Ritzheimer’s many online communiqués makes it hard to be a witness to him: it’s a little like watching a stranger in desperate mourning, or a child in the throes of feelings he can’t control or understand. It’s easy to imagine Ritzheimer as a child. He’s a small man physically, overtaken at times by tears, storms of rage, spasms of righteousness, and puerile obscenity. His shiny, egg-shaped skull adds to the impression; it seems a full size too large for his body, like many a screen actor’s. And while Ritzheimer may not be the most articulate speaker, his many silences are pure theater. Throughout his “Daddy Swore an Oath” video, his face shifts in anguish or disgust as words fail him yet again, or as he performs the full weight of the failure of language to express the size of what he has to say to us. Sometimes it’s simply because he seems to never have learned all that much about what was actually behind the particular cause he’d so forcefully embraced. He runs out of details very quickly. It didn’t really matter though. He had just enough talismanic syllables—Freedom, BLM, Tyranny, Oath—to get him out of his sinkholes of silence and on to what seemed to be his true point: his death. I’m ready to lay down my life was the main message I heard in Ritzheimer’s Malheur missives. I’m ready to die. Are you?* * *It’s disorienting to recognize how, in writing this book, I’ve become entirely used to watching men publicly declare their readiness, even eagerness, to die. Sometimes, as I peruse the hours and hours of video of the occupation, I don’t even notice that it’s happened again—the pledge is so constant. Ritzheimer supplements the weight and meaning of his own oath with the oath from the final lines of the Declaration of Independence, the part right before the unrolling of all those glorious, foundational white men’s names: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” he reads. Having joined his troubled American life, ritually, to those of the most magically significant of all Americans, he stares again in silence at the camera, eyes reddened, before closing the pamphlet and turning away.I asked David Ward about all the oath-taking going down in Harney County that fall. He’s a man familiar with oath magic. As a sheriff and a military veteran, he’s taken some very solemn oaths, but in the fall of 2015, all this oath-taking had started to seem to him like the liturgical magic of some kind of death cult. The Bundyites, he thought, “were setting up Ammon as a prophet.” As a devout Christian, he’d begun to find this very troubling. While he had still taken all the official oaths in question, something about it all didn’t seem right to him theologically. One passage in particular from the scriptures gnawed at him. He quoted some of it to me, and later I looked up the rest. It was from the Gospel of St. Matthew:But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply “Yes” or “No”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.He’d also tried to remind Bundy supporters—who often harangued him about his oaths as a sheriff and soldier—that, leaving points of Christian doctrine aside, the oaths in question didn’t really say exactly what Ammon and Ryan said they did. For one, the military oath of service included a key passage about swearing to heed the orders of the president. “Those guys didn’t like Barack Obama, so they leave that part out.”* * *The Great Unfuck* * *There’s another, less-known video of Ritzheimer’s from around this time that I actually enjoyed watching. The more I watched this one, the stranger it got—I found it had effects well beyond Ritzheimer’s patriot intentions. Its lack of deathly oath magic was a plus—nobody swears any oaths or promises to die. Also, Jon’s outdoors in this one, and that seems to be a good thing for his mood.He’s pulled his truck out into the desert and parked it under an especially craggy and regal-looking butte, its coating of snow only adding to its aloof, aristocratic air. Dressed in desert combat fatigues, Jon has an assault rifle slung across his back. He’s not alone this time; another camo’d-out dude is standing in the snowy sagebrush holding up a big colorful map of the United States—yellow, pink, green, and blue. A third compatriot, Arizona militiaman Joe O’Shaughnessy, watches in the foreground, bemused, as Ritzheimer launches into his routine. Let’s call it the Great American Unfuck, because that—unfucking, as he’ll explain—is what he and the boys are here to do.First, though, he needs to locate himself, and all of us, on the earth and on the map. To unfuck, you’ve got to know where you stand. He’s pointing at the sky, seeming to use the sun to orient himself in relation to the map, even as we see the sun is shining dimly behind him, smeared and grayed by a thin layer of cloud. “We’re here,” he says. “Yeah, we’re here in Oregon, and the mission is to UNFUCK allllll of this.”As he says this, his gloved hands sweep diagonally southeast across the continent. “So... I’m hoping the rest of the militiamen and everyone out there is ready cuz, uh,” he concludes, “we’re going to initiate this mission.”Next, pleased with himself, he just does it all over again. “We’re here in Oregon,” he repeats, to the chuckles of his buddies, pointing to the sky again and then, again, the map. “Yep,” he says, as if confirming that they definitely aren’t lost. “We’re here in Oregon, and we’re gonna unfuck ALLLLLLLL this.” Again, his dark-gloved hands move like cloud shadows across the map, gliding west to east across the continent, pulled by his elongation of “ALL” until the spell is complete, punctuated by the sibilant precision of “this.”I say “spell” because, however improvised and dumb whatever it is Ritzheimer and friends are doing, and it is both, this is some kind of rite, and all who watch are participants in its hokey witchery. Magic is always at least a little hokey, but the more I watch, the more it occurs to me that whatever is meant by unfucking has also got to be some seriously occult stuff. An undoing of the fucked?—it certainly sounds elemental. Then there’s this: in the movement Ritzheimer traces across the map, he’s recapitulating, in reverse, the arc of Manifest Destiny, the path of Ammon’s Beautiful Pattern, the old route of the Oregon Trail. What would unfucking this entail—its dis-conception? I know he means something else, maybe the opposite—more like a reenactment, a restoration of Ammon’s Beautiful Pattern, but it’s not really what he’s done.At this point my cinema-colonized imagination takes over: all those would-be pioneers who died out there along the way—do they spring back to life in some other universe, reassemble out of the dust into coherent flesh, walking backward, zombied-out, to the east, as Jon traces the great messianic reversal, and rewinds America, erasing it? As I hit play again and again, another witchy thing is happening to me. It takes a while for me to notice, but with each viewing, the silent world around Ritzheimer and his friends gets more present. Soon my attention is riveted to the craggy rim of the basalt bench. That butte lurking above them begins to leak in from the background to take over the whole frame. By my fifth or sixth time through the clip, I’m not listening to Ritzheimer at all anymore. More than that, it’s like I actually can’t hear him, or even see him. Fucked or unfucked, all I see is stone.Excerpted from Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff by Anthony McCann. Copyright © Anthony McCann, 2019. Published by Bloomsbury USA. Reprinted with permission.Anthony McCann is the author of the poetry collections Thing Music, I Heart Your Fate and Moongarden. He currently teaches creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts and in the Low-Residency MFA program of the University of California, Riverside. Born and raised in the Hudson Valley, McCann now lives in the Mojave Desert.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Rick Bowmer/APAs December wore on, more denizens of Ammon’s and Ryan’s patriot’s FaceWorld were trickling into the county. Some of these folks were of considerably different temperament than mild-mannered Ammon. Jon Ritzheimer was one of the more widely known and more troubling of these newcomers. Before coming to Burns, the young Iraq War veteran had ended up on the national news for leading an armed protest outside a Muslim community center in his home state of Arizona. At the rally he’d sported a fuck islam shirt, the principal product of his online business, Rogue Infidel. In the coming months he’d recant on the shirts and claim, in emotional videos posted to the internet, to regret the whole thing. It wasn’t that he’d mellowed, exactly; around the same time he’d also been making threats to personally arrest a Michigan senator who’d supported the Iran nuclear deal, an act he promised to follow up with more arrests, including a citizen’s arrest of the president if necessary. A scroll through his internet videos reveals, unsurprisingly, an emotionally volatile man. Sometimes he’s ranting, angry and shirtless, at the camera, but in other videos you can find him in happier moods, like the one where he cheerily shoots up a Koran—with a pink rifle, for the added humiliation factor—alongside his friend Blaine Cooper. Cooper, originally named Stanley Hicks, had made his own contribution to the mini-genre of social media Koran-desecration videos; in his, he’d wrapped some Koran pages in bacon and “roasted” them. Next he shot the whole book with a compound bow and burned that too. By December, both these men were being seen regularly around town. Ritzheimer was spotted following a BLM employee in the Safeway; his unidentified companion shouted threats of following her home and burning down her house. Dave Ward reported being followed by Ritzheimer and Cooper around another store; at the time, the sheriff was Christmas shopping with his eight-year-old son.Ammon Bundy Starts Wingnut Woodstock in OregonWhile Ritzheimer seemed to cause plenty of turmoil in person around town, the true focus of his public engagement remained where all the real action was, in the new incubator of all America’s ugly and unruly feelings: the World Wide Web. In the weeks between his arrival in town and the Bundy Revolution’s big strategic move into the Harney Basin, he shot a number of videos. These were some of the strangest, most emotionally extravagant, and, in the case of one video in particular, most watched documents of the entire occupation saga. This is no small feat; he had a tremendous amount of competition. The hours of web documentation shot at Malheur, if anyone were ever really able to gather all the footage and splice it end to end, would likely rival or even surpass the actual event in total duration.A video from late December went viral and made Jon Ritzheimer a favorite target of comedians and internet wits during the early days of the occupation. His gift for high drama made him irresistible; that gift is on display from the moment he hits record. Even before he begins speaking, he’s pulling back his head, breathing in deeply, trying to contain all the emotion. He’s in the cabin of his truck, so the sonic effects of all this feeling—and all this breathing—are amplified. (Parked cars make excellent impromptu sound booths and are a favored location for Patriot video-missives.) “This is going to be one of the tougher videos I’ve had to make,” he begins, already struggling to get the words out, eyes already tearing up. As we “eavesdrop” on this video he’s posted for the wide world to watch, Ritzheimer directly addresses his family, telling his wife how proud he is “of the mother you’ve become” and explaining to his daughters how “Daddy swore an oath,” which is why he’s been away so long. “You are only three and five now, and you have no idea,” he says, shaking his head with the weight of it all. There’s more silence, more tears, a heavy, dramatic sigh, and another look away before he turns back to the camera and brandishes his pocket Constitution. “Your daddy swore an oath,” he repeats, wagging the pamphlet in the foreground. “He swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. And that’s why he couldn’t be with you on Christmas.”It can be hard not to laugh when he lands on Christmas—hard not to laugh at all the staged feeling, no matter how genuine it may also have been. As Ritzheimer’s holiday message found its pathways through the ether, many would be laughing—a lot—and passing it on. Some people didn’t just laugh. The internet responded rapidly with the giddy malice of parody; the imitable form of Ritzheimer’s video made it all too easy. In early 2016, men responding to the hashtag DaddySworeAnOath hopped in their own cars to make their own oaths: pledges to be a better lover “to your mother,” to return books to the library, or to go down to the strip club “to give these dollars to Sinnamon with an S.” The parodies were heavy on the silences, the breathing in, the tearing up. Across America, thanks to Ritzheimer, men were sitting alone in their cars and pretending to have feelings.Parody aside, the level of overwhelming emotion in Ritzheimer’s many online communiqués makes it hard to be a witness to him: it’s a little like watching a stranger in desperate mourning, or a child in the throes of feelings he can’t control or understand. It’s easy to imagine Ritzheimer as a child. He’s a small man physically, overtaken at times by tears, storms of rage, spasms of righteousness, and puerile obscenity. His shiny, egg-shaped skull adds to the impression; it seems a full size too large for his body, like many a screen actor’s. And while Ritzheimer may not be the most articulate speaker, his many silences are pure theater. Throughout his “Daddy Swore an Oath” video, his face shifts in anguish or disgust as words fail him yet again, or as he performs the full weight of the failure of language to express the size of what he has to say to us. Sometimes it’s simply because he seems to never have learned all that much about what was actually behind the particular cause he’d so forcefully embraced. He runs out of details very quickly. It didn’t really matter though. He had just enough talismanic syllables—Freedom, BLM, Tyranny, Oath—to get him out of his sinkholes of silence and on to what seemed to be his true point: his death. I’m ready to lay down my life was the main message I heard in Ritzheimer’s Malheur missives. I’m ready to die. Are you?* * *It’s disorienting to recognize how, in writing this book, I’ve become entirely used to watching men publicly declare their readiness, even eagerness, to die. Sometimes, as I peruse the hours and hours of video of the occupation, I don’t even notice that it’s happened again—the pledge is so constant. Ritzheimer supplements the weight and meaning of his own oath with the oath from the final lines of the Declaration of Independence, the part right before the unrolling of all those glorious, foundational white men’s names: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” he reads. Having joined his troubled American life, ritually, to those of the most magically significant of all Americans, he stares again in silence at the camera, eyes reddened, before closing the pamphlet and turning away.I asked David Ward about all the oath-taking going down in Harney County that fall. He’s a man familiar with oath magic. As a sheriff and a military veteran, he’s taken some very solemn oaths, but in the fall of 2015, all this oath-taking had started to seem to him like the liturgical magic of some kind of death cult. The Bundyites, he thought, “were setting up Ammon as a prophet.” As a devout Christian, he’d begun to find this very troubling. While he had still taken all the official oaths in question, something about it all didn’t seem right to him theologically. One passage in particular from the scriptures gnawed at him. He quoted some of it to me, and later I looked up the rest. It was from the Gospel of St. Matthew:But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply “Yes” or “No”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.He’d also tried to remind Bundy supporters—who often harangued him about his oaths as a sheriff and soldier—that, leaving points of Christian doctrine aside, the oaths in question didn’t really say exactly what Ammon and Ryan said they did. For one, the military oath of service included a key passage about swearing to heed the orders of the president. “Those guys didn’t like Barack Obama, so they leave that part out.”* * *The Great Unfuck* * *There’s another, less-known video of Ritzheimer’s from around this time that I actually enjoyed watching. The more I watched this one, the stranger it got—I found it had effects well beyond Ritzheimer’s patriot intentions. Its lack of deathly oath magic was a plus—nobody swears any oaths or promises to die. Also, Jon’s outdoors in this one, and that seems to be a good thing for his mood.He’s pulled his truck out into the desert and parked it under an especially craggy and regal-looking butte, its coating of snow only adding to its aloof, aristocratic air. Dressed in desert combat fatigues, Jon has an assault rifle slung across his back. He’s not alone this time; another camo’d-out dude is standing in the snowy sagebrush holding up a big colorful map of the United States—yellow, pink, green, and blue. A third compatriot, Arizona militiaman Joe O’Shaughnessy, watches in the foreground, bemused, as Ritzheimer launches into his routine. Let’s call it the Great American Unfuck, because that—unfucking, as he’ll explain—is what he and the boys are here to do.First, though, he needs to locate himself, and all of us, on the earth and on the map. To unfuck, you’ve got to know where you stand. He’s pointing at the sky, seeming to use the sun to orient himself in relation to the map, even as we see the sun is shining dimly behind him, smeared and grayed by a thin layer of cloud. “We’re here,” he says. “Yeah, we’re here in Oregon, and the mission is to UNFUCK allllll of this.”As he says this, his gloved hands sweep diagonally southeast across the continent. “So... I’m hoping the rest of the militiamen and everyone out there is ready cuz, uh,” he concludes, “we’re going to initiate this mission.”Next, pleased with himself, he just does it all over again. “We’re here in Oregon,” he repeats, to the chuckles of his buddies, pointing to the sky again and then, again, the map. “Yep,” he says, as if confirming that they definitely aren’t lost. “We’re here in Oregon, and we’re gonna unfuck ALLLLLLLL this.” Again, his dark-gloved hands move like cloud shadows across the map, gliding west to east across the continent, pulled by his elongation of “ALL” until the spell is complete, punctuated by the sibilant precision of “this.”I say “spell” because, however improvised and dumb whatever it is Ritzheimer and friends are doing, and it is both, this is some kind of rite, and all who watch are participants in its hokey witchery. Magic is always at least a little hokey, but the more I watch, the more it occurs to me that whatever is meant by unfucking has also got to be some seriously occult stuff. An undoing of the fucked?—it certainly sounds elemental. Then there’s this: in the movement Ritzheimer traces across the map, he’s recapitulating, in reverse, the arc of Manifest Destiny, the path of Ammon’s Beautiful Pattern, the old route of the Oregon Trail. What would unfucking this entail—its dis-conception? I know he means something else, maybe the opposite—more like a reenactment, a restoration of Ammon’s Beautiful Pattern, but it’s not really what he’s done.At this point my cinema-colonized imagination takes over: all those would-be pioneers who died out there along the way—do they spring back to life in some other universe, reassemble out of the dust into coherent flesh, walking backward, zombied-out, to the east, as Jon traces the great messianic reversal, and rewinds America, erasing it? As I hit play again and again, another witchy thing is happening to me. It takes a while for me to notice, but with each viewing, the silent world around Ritzheimer and his friends gets more present. Soon my attention is riveted to the craggy rim of the basalt bench. That butte lurking above them begins to leak in from the background to take over the whole frame. By my fifth or sixth time through the clip, I’m not listening to Ritzheimer at all anymore. More than that, it’s like I actually can’t hear him, or even see him. Fucked or unfucked, all I see is stone.Excerpted from Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff by Anthony McCann. Copyright © Anthony McCann, 2019. Published by Bloomsbury USA. Reprinted with permission.Anthony McCann is the author of the poetry collections Thing Music, I Heart Your Fate and Moongarden. He currently teaches creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts and in the Low-Residency MFA program of the University of California, Riverside. Born and raised in the Hudson Valley, McCann now lives in the Mojave Desert.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

August 31, 2019 at 10:20AM via IFTTT

[innainkorea]

Welcome to Korea!

Hello friends! I apologize for the social media radio silence. I had every intention of making ‘daily’ posts, but we have been SO busy.

*Please forgive me* 

Here is a a brief synopsis of what I’ve been up to:

Wow! I can’t believe I am actually in Seoul. Sitting in bed, with Thao & Caeli, eating macarons and watching Boys Over Flowers. Life is so good right now.

We have been in South Korea for a full week. They aren’t kidding when they say time flies when you’re having fun! Our travels from Indianapolis went smoothly. After a couple of hours in Toronto on layover, we were off on our merry way to Incheon International Airport. The plane felt spacious and was fairly comfortable, especially for economy class. I watched movies and TV shows to entertain myself, but I also found myself looking out the window a lot. We flew over northern Canada & Alaska for a long time and the landscape was breathtaking. We could see vast mountain ranges capped with snow, emerald forests, and even massive river networks frozen over with ice. That in itself was a cool experience and a humbling reminder of just how much of this big, beautiful planet I have still yet to see. I also have never been so well fed on a flight before; 3 meals, constant beverage service, and snacks at your beck & call. I definitely recommend Air Canada for your air travel needs. 

Inna’s Travel Tip #001: Neck pillows are you (& your butt’s) best friend! Making sure to reposition yourself at least every 2 hours to avoid painful pressure spots will make a huge difference during your in-flight experience.

For those of you who didn’t already know I have been given the amazing opportunity to study abroad in Seoul this summer! For the next two weeks, I will be participating in a number of educational experiences with the goal of learning about health care and behavioral health care in a global context. I was also appointed as one of IUPUI’s newest #GlobalJags, by the Office of Study Abroad. This blog will be home to a personal travel journal I’ll be using to chronicle my time here. I’m so excited to share my thoughts and photos with you all! Stay tuned for daily(-ish) posts and please send me ALL & ANY questions/requests :)

Inna Ayos, IUPUI Office of Study Abroad Social Media Ambassador

DAY 1 [5/22/17]:

This is our first official program day in Seoul, and we have a full schedule ahead of us! Thao & I started our morning in the hotel room with a plate full of fluffy scrambled eggs and mini cheese hot dogs. This set the precedent for what I knew could only a fantastic spent afternoon at Ewha Womans University.

For lunch, we were honored with a welcome luncheon hosted by Ewha’s President of International Affairs. They shared information about Ewha’s many opportunities available to international students, both men & women. They were so incredibly kind to us and enthusiastic about our arrival. We all left our meeting with full bellies and a cool new tote bag & reusable water bottle.

Lunch Menu: bulgogi (beef), rice, & banchan (Korean side dishes) It was so good, I could’ve cried.

The next activity on our schedule was a campus tour. This was our chance to get a feel for what Ewha’s campus was like and learn more about the historical significance of the university. So you may have noticed that the school is called Ewha Womans University. Is that a grammatical error you wonder? It is not. The spelling was chosen with purpose. While the university of course wants to encourage women as a group to innovate and take on the world, it’s a reminder that the mission has always been to help each individual woman to achieve her goals and reach her fullest potential.

Ewha was originally founded by Christian missionaries from the United States and still continues to teach it’s students the same original three cardinal virtues: truth, goodness, and beauty. Students are also required to take a chapel class, that isn’t necessarily a catechism class (everyone is free to practice & study whatever doctrine they please), but merely a chance for students to learn more about how they can apply the three cardinal virtues to themselves and the work they’re doing. It was so moving to learn about Ewha’s origins. The school started with the tenacity of 1 teacher and 1 student, and to see it’s growth to it’s size today is impressive and awe-inspiring. Female leaders who will lead us to a better tomorrow are being educated within their hallowed halls, including one of our instructors, Ewha alum Dr. Michin Hong.

We also had the awesome opportunity to attend a lecture by Professor Sophia (can’t remember her last name oopsies) who leads an english-taught social welfare course. Today’s topic was about the effects of an aging population on a society. We learned that as the world population continues to grow, and with people now living longer pretty much everywhere, our elderly population is also booming and with that will eventually outnumber their younger counterparts in the near future. What this means is that the need for elder care is going to increase as well, and as our society stands now, we may be ill-equipped to meet that demand because there is simply not enough younger people who are willing to take on these care positions. 

After the lecture portion, we were broken down further into groups to discuss what stigmas exist against older adults. Our group talked a lot about how there are many different perceptions that exist. Some people think of the elderly as grumpy, “out of touch”, and anti-progressive. Others think of them as wise and as key-players in leading the young. We found that it really depended on the individual and in what context you interacted with them. I brought up Erikson’s Stages of Development in our discussion. Now that I think back to it, I’m not sure I explained it in the best way, because I couldn't remember some of the specific verbiage off the top of my head. But I do believe I was able to give them a good general idea of how to interpret it. Essentially, at each stage of life, every person faces a specific psychosocial dilemma. And depending on what they’ve been able to accomplish developmentally until that point determines what stage they're in. For older adults, 55-65+, they either have “integrity” or “despair”. The adult has achieved “integrity” if they feel contentment having led a full  & meaningful life, perhaps leaving a lasting and important effect on the world they will eventually leave behind. For those who may harbor regrets in their life’s directions or the decisions they have made, “despair” is more evident. I thought this could potentially explain why there is such a dichotomy in the perception of our elderly counterparts. It was overall a very stimulation discussion and I enjoyed getting to know a small group of Ewha students. One cool thing about this class was there a lot of international students, from all over the world. There was a girl from the states and another from the Ukraine in my group. This added to the diversity of perspectives in our conversation, which I really enjoyed. 

Overall, it was a really long first day, but a strong & impactful start. I cannot say enough how enthused I am to have already learned so much in such a short amount of time. But I still have a TON of stuff to share with you all!!

I will continue to post about all that we’ve been up to, but it’s going to come in more sporadic bursts than I had previously anticipated. So keep an eye out for more blurbs & pictures!

Inna xx

PS I also wanted to take this time to say thank you again to all of you who supported me to make this happen. I quite literally could not have done it without your love & care of me. I am eternally grateful <3 

[rayalez]

Notes for the Leader — I

“Today I must bring the notebook,” I tell Min, by which I mean the Leader is visiting the base. Min understands the allusion. He chuckles and gives me a little headshake to show he regrets the news on my behalf.

“What are you going to write in it today?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” I say. “Back alley sewage. ‘Our crusade will end in a triumph to be celebrated for the ages.’ ‘Our people get the mightiest of erections.’ ‘When we pass wind, we pass the wind of 100 stallions.’”

Min looks at me with a look of engineered disbelief. He’s heard this before, but he still plays his part. “Don’t you ever worry he’ll see?”

I put out my cigarette and swig the last of my beer. I wait until the waitress has cleared my glass.

“No, he never looks. And if he did, I’m not certain he’d be able to decipher it. My handwriting is atrocious.” I wink and put my cap on my knee, readying to get up.

“Well, if Sang and Shin pay you a visit one night,” he says, referring to our loving nickname for the secret police, “I expect you to work extra hard in Fun Camp, the treacherous enemy of the people that you are.”

Min throws some money on the table and we walk out the bar onto a chilly but sun-laden sidewalk.

“You need to have the right look,” I tell Min as we walk together to the Ministry.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it takes years of practice, young one, but you learn the tricks. A sincere, earnestness whenever he walks past you; an inquisitive, but never befuddled look when he’s ‘explaining’; a stiff erectness,” I say. “But the most important thing is the laugh.”

“What do you mean?” Min asks, squinting up at me with his hand blocking the sun.

“He likes to think he’s funny, so you have to learn to laugh — really genuinely laugh — when he tries to crack a joke. The thing is — the jokes aren’t funny and his timing is so bad half the time you aren’t sure if he’s even trying to joke. Once an Admiral laughed at something the Leader had said, thinking it was a joke. He was wrong.”

“What happened to the Admiral?”

“You mean Private,” I say, giving Min a little elbow to his side. “I’m kidding,” I continue, wiping my smirk, “He went stark raving mad and drowned in a river one night. No one has seen him since.” I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and face Min, a look a total earnest on my face. “It’s true. He did. They told us.” Min shakes his head smiling and lights up another cigarette.

“But it’s not so much the authenticity of the laugh — he probably knows our laughs are bullshit. And it’s not about making sure you don’t laugh at something he doesn’t intend as a joke. It’s about getting in a mode where you don’t even have to think about it. I mean, for sanity’s sake, the mind needs to wander when you are listening to such tripe.” A senior officer passes by and we pause. I give a strong salute, my head facing straight ahead but my eyes following him until he’s well down the sidewalk.

“So, your mind must be in two places at one time,” I say as we resume walking. “It must be focused on a sunny beach, or a beautiful woman in bed with you, but it also must have a toehold in reality. You don’t want to miss a joke. But if you’ve been around him enough it becomes automatic, like a goose flying south for winter. You subconsciously learn his cadence to the point where you can start anticipating and you can laugh at the correct time without ever really having heard what he said.”

“I don’t think geese fly south for the winter.”

“It’s true. They told us they do. And can you blame them?”

“Has he ever said something that was actually funny?” Min asks, as we turn the corner and stop at the concrete plaza in front of the Ministry.

“No, he’s never said anything funny. But he’s done something funny, not intentionally of course.” I start to smile thinking back on it. Min inquires.

“Well,” I say, “there was this time about a year ago he was wearing a hat and he started to bend over…” Min looks over my shoulder and I stop my recounting to turn around.

Min’s commanding officer, of a lower rank than myself, slithers up and gives me a salute. He’s an empty vessel of a man. I feel bad that Min must report to him.

“Sir, excuse me for interrupting, but if you are no longer needing to speak with the Lieutenant, I would very much like to have his services,” he says speedily.

I look at Min and give a little grin, pretending to size him up from head to toe. “This one? The solider we created out of the balled up tissue paper lying about the floor of some southern whorehouse? He’s no longer any good to me, Captain. Starting to spoil. The smell is incredible. By all means, take him.” I feel bad that I really have no legitimate excuse for keeping Min out of the Captain’s clutches.

“Thank you, sir,” says the Captain. Sternly, he says to Min, “Follow me.”

Min shakes my hand. “I’ll fill you in on the details of the triumphal actions later,” I say and pat him on the back as he leaves. He looks back and tips his cap at me.

I do like Min, although I’m a bad influence on him. We are from the same village. I’m 10 years older and went through the elite command school while he went the normal grunt route. We met at a military exercise one summer where I was his commanding officer. Being from the same village, we knew the same people, the same card games, we drank the same liquor, in the same copious amounts. Min’s a fatalist, like me, and he’s got a good sense of humor, unlike most in this regime.

I’ve taken Min under my wing the past few years while we’ve both been stationed in the Capitol. He’s got a wife and a young child, and I often feel bad for being as indignant as I am around him. I should be more careful, I say to myself, but I suppose it’s therapeutic, talking to him the way I do. I am selfish, but the relationship is reciprocal. Min likes being riled up, and I’m happy to oblige him, although I think these days the shock has certainly worn off. It’s just become what we do.

A pile of papers waits at my desk. “Applications,” my secretary, a Private, tells me. Every year we receive hundreds of applications for entry into the Strategic Nuclear Defense Unit, which — as second in second — I’m charged with reviewing.

With our mighty nuclear weapons, presciently developed and expertly managed by the Dear Leader for the protection of the Fatherland, we will continue to set the world on a new path while crushing the deleterious elements spawned by the capitalistic foreign demons, who — we all know — are running scared and sulking at their impending demise, brought on hand by the goodness and superiority of the Leader.

They all sound like this. In fact, some years ago I ran into someone at a bar who claimed all of these are written by the same guy in the backroom of some shoe shop. Everyone just pays him. I often find myself scrutinizing various letters to see if I can spot similarities in the handwriting.

I shut the door of my office, but my secretary soon knocks and comes in.

“Please do not forget sir that you are expected at the visit with the Leader at 1 pm sharp. It’s now 12:15. Do you have your notebook?”

I lean back in my chair, pull the notebook out of my jacket pocket and wave it for her.

“Pen?”

I hold up my pen.

“Does it work?”

I stare at her sarcastically and start to scribble on some applications. The pen is out of ink. I look up to find her with two pens in her outstretched hand.

“One is red, one is blue. I understand that some senior commanders use red for strategic and technical advice, while blue is reserved for inspirational and doctrinal quotes.”

“Thank you, Sun. I will use both exactly in the manner you have prescribed. But what if a quote is both technical and inspirational at the same time?” I say, pocketing the pens.

She ignores the question. “Sir, I beg your forgiveness, but may I suggest brushing your teeth or using some mouth wash before the visit with the Leader? I couldn’t help but notice some alcohol on your breath.”

“Does the Leader not like that?” I ask, trying to act sincere.

“My uncle, the Sargent in the army, he’s heard that such conduct could result in some necessary refresher courses.” By this, Sun means reconditioning at a labor camp.

I lie. “I will brush my teeth, Sun.”

Sun smiles. “Sun,” I say, “am I a good man or bad man?”

“You should know the answer if you have to ask,” she replies.

I turn to look out the window and see white and black shop fronts blazing by in tones of gray. Our driver is speeding us through the Capitol at full speed, ignoring all traffic signals. Our haste is unnecessary but it’s for the best. I’m joined by General Nann, a man with the personality of a cracker and the warmth of a cinder blocker whose nostrils are permanently flared, small black hairs poking out of them like porcupine quills. He’s my superior so I am forced to play a part.

“General Nann, any news with our glorious Navy?”

“Any news I have could not be shared with a Colonel,” he says coldly, staring out his window.

“I am sure we are enjoying many triumphs and making great progress under your leadership,” I reply. We sit in silence.

The car flies like a rocket ship out of the capitol and onto the open highway, zipping past billboards of the Leader and ramshackle houses. At a tiny village on the outskirts of the Capitol a dozen young children run up to our car, some with shoes and some without. They clap and hand us handmade silk flowers. Their elation is genuine, though I see the younger ones seem a bit confused. Our driver, a young man in a cheap black suit, hands them some money and we speed off, nearly hitting an old woman pushing a cart.

As we head out into the open fields, I see peasants with windswept faces. They look up at us like we are an alien race that has lorded over them for a long while. I give them a little wave from the window.

“Do you have some connection to these people?” asks Nann.

“No, but I am from a farming family myself.”

“Are you parents still alive?”

“No, my mother died of an illness years ago. My father drowned crossing a river.”

“Why was he crossing a river?” asks Nann. Nann’s family has been in the Capitol for generations. He’s long lost any connection to rural life.

“He needed to get his herd across. A small calf was struggling so he went back to help it and was swept away. I was in military school at the time and got word of it only three months later so I wasn’t able to attend to his burial. Amazingly, two days after he died the calf was found on the riverbank eating grass. It had survived.” I pause to let Nann say something, but he keeps quiet.

“It was given to my cousin who still lives in the village. He wrote me and told me he would tend to it and that I may have it whenever I like. I wrote him back and told him he should sell the animal and buy a well with the proceeds. I heard a couple years ago he didn’t pay heed to my advice. Instead he lost the animal in a card game.”

Nann looks annoyed. “To die for a calf,” he says, chuckling and raising his chin.

I’d like to hit him in the face; he has no idea, the value of a calf to rural folk. Of course, I do not tell him this. Besides, the story is a lie — some of it at least.

“How did you get chosen then, to go to the school for elites?”

Nann knows exactly why I was chosen — everyone does. He just wants me to have to say it.

“I was fortunate — hard work and pleasing the right people, sir.”

Nann laughs. “You mean knowing the right people, don’t you? Tell me, doesn’t the school require a literacy test for entry? As a farmer’s son, how the hell did you pass that?”

I am about to answer but Nann puts a finger up, telling me to halt while he grabs for the vibrating cell phone in his pocket.

“Yes?”

“There should be.”

“Driving to visit the Leader.”

“Some colonel.”

Nann looks at me and shifts his body in the direction of his window.

“Well, set him loose.”

“I don’t know — out in the alleyway. It doesn’t matter.”

Nann laughs.

“Yes, tonight. After 10pm.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Okay, I need to go.”

“Yes, you too.”

“Sir, I was literate by the time I came to the school. My mother taught me how to read and write,” I say right as Nann has finished putting his phone back in his pocket.

He looks over at me, almost in disbelief that I’ve decided to continue the conversation. “And how did a peasant woman from the fields know how to read and write?” he asks, wide-eyed and staring at my feet.

“She owes it all to our great country and the most Venerable Grandfather,” I say, referring to the Leader’s grandfather. “Our village was graced with a contingent of learned revolutionaries from the Capitol. This was maybe, oh, 35 years ago,” I say, itching my forehead and looking out the window to see the Xan Xi Nuclear Base emerging from the horizon.

“I do not recall such a program. My father was closely connected to rural programs in those years, and he never mentioned any rural literacy training. Are you sure she wasn’t educated by western infiltrators?” Nann sneers.

The truth is, my mother learned to read and write from my father. I would never tell Nann that because I would never tell Nann how my father learned to read and write.

“Yes, sir, very sure,” I answer.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Nann patting his breast pocket. He reaches in and pulls out nothing, looking crestfallen.

“I have forgotten my notebook,” he says gravely, looking me in the eyes for the first time. His face shows like a five year old child who’s about to whipped by his father for the first time.

“That is most unfortunate, sir. Are you sure it’s not in your briefcase?” I ask.

Nann rummages in his brief case, over and over, even tipping its contents out in the space between us. He checks his breast pocket, his back pockets, his breast pocket again. Meanwhile, our car pulls into the base’s parking lot and I see our driver peer into his rear view mirror, his eyes widening as he does so.

“The leader’s motorcade is right behind us,” the driver says, surprised. “He is early today! I will let you hop out so you can get in the greeting line.” The driver hits the accelerator and bolts us to the base’s front entrance area before he slams on the brakes, sending us lurching forward.

“Please, sirs, please get out as soon as you can. I will be sent to re-education if I hold up the Leader’s motorcade for even a second,” our driver says, in the most obsequiously urgent tone imaginable.

I jump out of the car, and pull General Nann out with me. In two parallel lines in front of the base’s main entrance are dozens of esteemed officers, most of them generals, readying themselves for the Leader to emerge from his limousine and walk between them, shaking hands and laughing and giving salutes. All the men are dressed in their finest dress uniforms. Nann and I are the missing pieces of the greeting line.

I hurry forth to one of the lines, seeing our car speed off and the Leader’s limousine about to park in front of the greeting line. Just then, I feel a pull on my back pockets. Nann pulls me in close.

“Give me your fucking notebook,” he grunts.

“Sir, I cannot do that.”

“You can and you fucking will!” says Nann. “I am your ranking officer and I will see that you are put to death if you don’t give me your notebook.”

I look over and see the Leader’s right-hand man emerge from the passenger seat of the limosine and walk over to the back of the limo to let the Leader out. At this moment, the breath comes out of me and I nearly hit the ground. Nann’s fist is mighty, for an old man. Bent over holding my stomach, he reaches over my back and pulls the notebook from my back pocket.

The Leader spews from the limousine and a round of applause erupts. Notebook-less, I run to a spot in one of the lines, squeezing myself between two generals who nearly refuse to budge for me. I see Nann already in place in the other line, beaming and clapping with my notebook in hand. He doesn’t betray a hint of having mugged me just seconds ago. A perniciously adroit bastard, I think to myself.

The Leader is in all black today, but he radiates the energy of the sun. I have a difficult time looking directly at him (I always do), but I notice he has put on some weight since I lost saw him. Everything else about him, however, remains the same — the smile, the boyish face, the penguinish walk and the made up award he always has pinned on his jacket. He walks down the tunnel of officers, like a Roman general celebrating his triumph, ping ponging from line to line in order to shake hands of a few select generals and receive compliments.

I stare at Nann in the other line. I know he can sense I’m looking at him as he keeps his gaze transfixed on the Leader. The Leader zags to an Army General a few people to my left who gives a gentle bow and tells the Leader he’s most honored by his presence. I realize I’ve subconsciously started to clap very hard and I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. Fortunately, within seconds, the Leader has made his way down the line and I ease up.

Once the Leader enters the base doors, the two lines of generals and other officers collapse into an unorganized herd, some groveling to get close to the front and others, like myself, reclining to the back of the scrum. As soon as we all start to walk into the base the notebooks start to come out and the pens start to click. What the hell am I going to do without a notebook, I ask myself.

I look ahead and see Nann with my notebook. I’ve been so distracted wondering what I’m going to do without it that I’ve forgotten that he has full access to my scribblings. If he reads them, he will see them as treason. At best, I will be labeled an idle and irreverent bourgeoisie pig, at worst, a full-out counter-revolutionary and enemy to the people. I will be put to death. Those stupid, sarcastic scribblings, I think to myself.

In only a minute we’ll all be lined up again next to the Leader, expected to devote our entire attentions to him. There’s no way Nann will be able to read my notebooks under such conditions, I think. But then I see him open up the notebook and begin to flip through the pages in slow succession as we make our way down the corridor. I curse him under my breath, finding myself for half a second more infuriated that he has the audacity to invade my private writings than scared with what he will see.

He keeps flipping as we make our way down a large corridor toward the missile display area, a ponderous mass of high-ranking cattle being led to a pen. I keep my eyes on Nann’s back. At one point, he looks over his shoulder, perhaps trying to find me. He doesn’t, I’m off to the other side.

I begin to feel like I’m in my own funeral procession as we make the long, slow march. Or perhaps I am on the great river between the worlds, my body gently being carried down the eternal current. Instead of a gentle trickle of water, however, the only noise I can hear is the hard clopping of two dozen standard-issued military dress boots. My impending transition from the earth is thus made all the more depressing.

I look down and see I am clutching my wallet. Without thinking, I must have pulled it out of my back pocket. It seems that my subconscious mind may still be in survival mode. I can use the wallet as a stand in. Flip it open and pretend it’s a leather bound notebook. It’s a dreadful plan.

We all file into the missile display area, a cavernous room with skylights and a pristine concrete floor. Enormous banners featuring the beaming faces of the Leader and his father and grandfather hang down from the ceiling. Every type of missile in our nuclear arsenal is on display like a trophy, neatly buffed and glimmering. The new missile, the one I’ve been working on for years with a cadre of officers — is the centerpiece of the room. A long red carpet juts out from underneath it like a frog’s tongue, inviting the Leader to step on and walk toward it, which he does. He approaches the missile at a quick pace, putting both hands on it and then his ear, like he’s listening to a seashell. He rubs his fingers up and down the shaft and gets eye level with it. I half expect him to start kicking it like he would the wheels of a new car.

The Leader starts to walk around the missile, as we form a semi-circle around him. I try to keep a step behind the others, attempting to conceal my hands and my wallet as much as possible.

“This is a mighty missile!” the Leader exclaims, proceeding with his slow walk around the missile. Everyone writes this in their notebooks. I pretend to do so as well.

The Leader continues on. He’s in a fiery mood today, more so than usual. “There is an ancient proverb my grandfather told me. Once there was a snake and a fox. The snake told the fox that he should be careful, for the fox stood on land belonging to the snake. The fox told the snake that he should be careful since he was standing on the fox’s land. While they were having this discussion, a mighty ox came and sat down on both the snake and the fox. I will call this missile, the Ox!”

“Are you insane?” a voice whispers into my ear. It is an air force general, one whom I’ve never really spoken to before. He glances down at my flipped open wallet and back at me, a look of total disbelief in his face. Before I can even react, the general fixes his gaze back on the Leader and laughs at a joke. I laugh as well.

“Yes, my friends! What good is a shield without a sword? The first men invented swords, then shields, not the other way around. A shield only buys you a little bit of time, a sword buys you a lifetime!” continues the Leader.

At this moment, I look straight across the room and find Nann staring at me. His eyes look like two river rocks — pallid, opaque and dead. His mouth is taut and menacing, like a piranha. As he stares at me with those pale eyes, I see a slow, almost imperceptible turn of his head from side to side.

The Leader departs from the missile and begins to walk along the inside of the semi-circle, looking closely into the face of each officer and moving towards me like a storm cloud. Those he passes keep one eye on him and one on their notebook, writing furiously.

“We will build several hundred of these. We will ship them to all nations hostile to the foreign devils. We will place these in submarines and in satellites. And one day, one day we shall use them. My father said that a sword rusts and turns hollow if it is never used. So too with our missiles. They must be used before they blow away like sand.”

The Leader is halfway through the semi-circle, five men away from me.

“We will be like the river that chose to cut directly through the mountain, rather than around it. We will…” Three men away.

“…and they will all kowtow to me and denounce their capitalist…”

The Leader stops midsentence, right in front of me, the closest I’ve ever been to him. I keep my eyes fixed at the neck, noticing a large mole. I sense when he begins glancing at my wallet, struggling to make sense of what he sees. He then peers straight at me, his look registering not as a visual but as a sound inside my head — a menagerie of circus animals jumping on a drum. He begins to open his mouth to say something when a security officer runs swiftly to him and begins to whisper in his ear. The Leader listens, keeping his eyes set on me, studying my features. After a minute or so, the Leader nods and turns around.

He walks at a brisk pace straight up to Nann, his hand outstretched like a teacher asking a pupil to hand over a frog they’ve snuck into class. Nann looks surprised but instantly hands the Leader my notebook. He opens it and begins reviewing the pages. The generals and other officers in the semi-circle all stand erect. Outwardly they look like stones, but inside their minds must be frantic with questions.

“Do you think you are going to die? Are you shitting yourself at this point?” asks Min. We are in my living room having some sweet white wine, our ties loosened and our shoes kicked off.

“Yes, most definitely I am, my friend.” I answer.

“What happened then?”

“Two security officers position themselves behind Nann. I look at Nann and sense he must’ve heard them come up from behind. At that moment, his expression changed. It went from that cold, dead fish look to real terror.”

“Did he try explaining that it wasn’t his notebook?”

“No, he remained silent. I believe he was at a loss for words, the bastard. He did look at me though. It’s funny that sometimes we humans can give off two looks at the same time. Nann’s was a mix of both shock and utter hatred, towards me of course. After a minute or so, the Leader very slowly closed the notebook and handed it to his head security person. He said something — I couldn’t hear what — and within seconds Nann was being carted away into the abyss.”

“Do you know what caused the Leader to approach him in the first place?”

“While reading my scribblings in the corridor, someone must’ve looked over Nann’s shoulder and read some of them as well. Thinking the notebook was Nann’s all along, the person must’ve reported him to the security detail.”

“Does anyone know where he is now?” asks Min.

“No one I know has a clue. He’s likely dead, though he could be in prison.”

“And if he’s in prison and tells them that it was really your notebook, what are you going to do?”

I lean back in the chair and take a deep draw from my cigarette. “I don’t know, Min. I guess I will know when that time comes. To be honest, this possibility haunts me. I feel like I’m swimming in a black ocean and there’s sharks somewhere below. Someday those sharks will take off my leg. That’s not the worst part though. The worst part is not knowing when it will happen.”

I make a conscious choice to continue talking, feeling like grandfather rambling to his grandchild. I’m sure this irritates Min, but I proceed.

“As I’ve grown older, I’ve lost confidence and I’ve grown more anxious. You often hear that the young are full of self-confidence and bluster. That’s true. But no one ever talks about losing confidence. If everyone says the young are so confident, and no one says the old are full of confidence, then by definition we lose confidence as we age. Maybe the confidence is supposed to turn into wisdom and self-assuredness, if that’s at all different from confidence — I don’t know if it is. But I don’t have that. I have self-doubt; I have this burgeoning anxiety, not just about the big things, but about the small things too. I see more errors in my ways; I second guess myself often. A task that use to be so easy now leaves me paralyzed with conflicting thoughts and worries about what might happen. I don’t think I display this outwardly — I’m alright at deception — but it’s there, inside me. When I was younger, I’d just do anything asked and I’d do it quickly and forthrightly. Maybe I’d do a crappy job, but I had that confidence and confidence goes a long way in the eyes of others. Confidence can shine crap into gold. But I’ve lost that ability.”

I pause and look over at Min. He gives a smile and rests his head back.

Notes for the Leader — I was originally published in Fiction Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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