#but ultimately that cannot come before unity and solidarity

[icannotgetoverbirds]

🚗🔨⚒️💥

Now that I have your attention:

hey. with all the shit going around I don't wanna see any trans infighting, okay? we have a chance to stick up for each other together right now. I saw a post talking about how the people discussing transandrophobia are (partially) behind the transfem hate campaigns with absolutely nothing to back it, most likely (and I'm just hazarding a guess here) because of the perception that people talking about transandrophobia don't care about transmisogyny.

While I, personally, don't feel qualified to speak at length on transandrophobia quite yet, I think I am qualified to say that yeah, this shit happens. Ultimately what you call it is more semantics than anything, but trans men face unique oppression for being both trans and men, on top of what we face for being afab. it's all sexism in the end regardless.

With that said? I am here for the trans women being targeted by smear campaigns, mass reporting, and whatever the hell the ceo is trying to pull. Seriously, what is up with that guy?

This blog is a safe space for transfems, transmascs, and transneutral folks; any discussions of transandrophobia are never to speak over or take higher importance than discussions of transmisogyny, or vice versa, and neither are to take priority over discussions on exorsexism, or vice versa.

Right now it's important that we trust each other to be speaking in good faith unless proven otherwise, and that we don't dehumanize anybody, even if somehow some vile accusation turns out to be true.

[tomorrow-and-tomorrows]

SNK 139.5: Towards the Final Pages with no Final Answers

The final pages of the updated ending are bold, but I think ultimately more evocative than the original preliminary ending.

Even after the intensely polarized reader reception that took issue with the lack of storytelling precision and clarity when it was most needed, SNK chose to end with a decisively ambiguous symbol. In literature, a symbol is something that clearly means something -- but with the most "literary" symbols, their meaning cannot be absolutely defined; any attempted answer as to what a symbol represents has no finality or certainty, and interpretation will remain ever open to debate. A symbol both invites and resists interpretation.

Naturally, the immediate response to the symbolic tree on the final page is to try answering the invitation to the question, "What does it mean?"

One prominent answer I've seen is that it symbolizes the continuation of the cycle of war and violence either because a) of the symbolic parallel to Ymir or b) on a more literal level, that it implies the actual potential revival of new era of Titans. A reasonable interpretation either way, but also, I think, an incomplete one.

The first reason for this is that "the endless cycle of war" was already clearly and powerful represented in the preceding panels:

The cycle of war was already continuing in the decades or centuries before the child arrived at the tree. A culminating image symbolizing the persistence or resurgence of an era of war as the final panel would thus arguably be redundant and unnecessary.

Furthermore, the chapter is entitled "Toward the Tree on That Hill." If the tree were simply a symbol of war, by implication the chapter could equally be called 'toward the endless cycle of war'. But such a relentlessly bleak and tonally flat ending sentiment would be firmly incongruous with the story's recurrent conviction in the equal cruelty and beauty of the world -- a conviction that I believe it has been faithful to all the way to its end.

The Long Defeat

But while on this topic of war, let's linger a moment on the "cruelty" side and the consequence of this wordless construction and subsequent destruction of a city -- the most bold and possibly controversial additional panels that are also my personal favourite additions.

One objection that has emerged against this brief sequence of Paradis' apparent destruction is that it renders the entire story to be "pointless". Eren's 80% Rumbling, Armin's diplomatic peace talks between the remnants of the Allied Nations and Paradis, and before that, the proposal of the 50-year plan and Zeke's euthanasia plan... everything, to the very beginning to the Survey Corps' dreams of some kind of freedom; was it all for nothing? All that striving, that hope, that final promise bestowed upon Armin: was it all a pointless story? Even more radically, is the story suggesting that Eren might as well have continued the Rumbling to 100% of the earth? Was Zeke's euthanasia plan the cruel but correct choice all along? What was the point of rejecting the 50-year plan if that had a greater chance of success at preventing this outcome?

I think Isayama suddenly pulling back to such a long-term view of history to the scale of decades or even centuries into the future calls for a reorientation in attitude towards exactly what kind of story we have been reading. Yes, if the metric is Paradis' survival, maybe it was indeed all "pointless". But that's also to say that, on the broadest scale, SNK is a story about futility, that it is a deliberate representation of the struggle to make one's actions historically meaningful.

In the long view of history, all the events, from Grisha running beyond the wall to see the airships and the first breaking of Wall Maria to Erwin's sacrifices, Paradis' discovery of the outside world, and finally to the Battle of Heaven and Earth, it would all merely be a handful of chapters in the history textbooks of the future. A future in which war and geopolitical conflict will continue even without Titans. That does not mean that all paths to the future are equal -- the 50-year plan would not have put an end to Titans, and Zeke's euthanasia plan distorts utilitarian ethics into just another form of oppression; there are better and worse decisions that lead to more and less degrees of suffering, but no decision can ever be the final one.

The additional panels remind us that in history, there never exists a singular "Final Solution". The reason there are readers who vehemently support Eren to have flattened 100% of the world, and the reason the Paradisians supported the oppressive, authoritarian, proto-fascist Jaegar Faction under Floch and even after the Rumbling, is that because they want to believe that a Final Solution to end conflict exists and will work. They resist the fundamental uncertainty and complexity of the situation, instead preferring a singular, unified, and coherent Answer to Paradis' struggle to survive. I'm reminded of the scholar Erich Auerbach's theorization of why fascism appealed to many people during periods of political and social crisis, change, and uncertainty. Writing in exile after fleeing Nazi Germany, he observed that:

"The temptation to entrust oneself to a sect which solved all problems with a single formula, whose power of suggestion imposed solidarity, and which ostracized everything which would not fit in and submit - this temptation was so great that, with many people, fascism hardly had to employ force when the time came for it to spread through the countries of old European culture." (from Mimesis p. 550)

This acutely describes the Jaegar Faction's rise to power and continued dominance in Paradis. But their promise of unity, of a single formula to wipe out the rest of the world either literally through the Rumbling, or to dominate them with military force, is a false one. Even if Eren had Rumbled 100% of the world instead of 80%, history would still go on. The external threat of the world may have been eliminated, but internal conflict and violence would still continue onward throughout the generations born on top of the blood of the rest of the world. Needless to say, out of all the options, Eren's 80% Rumbling is the very epitome of perpetuating the cycle of violence as it creates tens of thousands of war orphans like Eren once was, and it would justify employing violence for one's own self-interest to an extreme degree. For the generations to come that would valourize Eren as a hero, it would set a dangerous precedent for what degree of destruction is acceptable for self-defence -- nothing short of the attempt to flatten the entire world. It is no surprise that Paradis would meet a violent end when its founding one-party rule of the Jaegar Faction has their roots in such unapologetically bloody foundations.

Neither the 80% Rumbling nor the militaristic, ultra-nationalistic Jaegar faction that come to govern Paradis are glamourized as the "correct" solution to ensuring Paradis' future. (This can also put to rest any accusations of SNK's ending as "fascist" or "imperialist" propaganda, since the island's modern nation that they founded ends in war. All nations must fall eventually, but not all do in such blatant destruction). Importantly, neither is Armin's diplomatic mission naively idealized as that which permanently achieves world peace. No singular or unifying formula can work because reality is complicated. Entrusting oneself to seemingly simple Answers is simply insufficient, even if they are ideals of peaceful negotiation; that method may work given the right conditions, but the world will always eventually complicate its feasibility.

After all in the real world, there's the absurd irony that some in the West had called the First World War "The War to End all Wars". These days, WWI is merely one long chapter in our textbooks just a few pages away from the even longer chapter of the Second World War that is followed by all the rest of the conflicts that have followed since then even with the establishment of diplomatic organizations like the United Nations. In this sense, showing Paradis' eventual downfall is perhaps the only way to end such a series that is so concerned with history, from King Fritz's tribal expansion into empire, the rise and fall of Marleyan ascendency, and finally of the survival and apparent shattering of Paradis.

From its beginning to its end, SNK has poignantly evoked J.R.R. Tolkien's conception of history as The Long Defeat. In one character's words, "together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat". That is to say, "no victory is complete, that evil rises again, and that even victory brings loss".

No heroes, only humans

Eren's desperate, fatalistic resignation to committing the Rumbling, along with the characters' rejection of all the rest of the earlier plans to ensure Paradis a future, are merely the actions of human beings to that began with the need to find not even necessarily a Final Answer, but at least an acceptable and feasible one for the time being. But the characterization of Eren's confusion, childishness, and regret in the final chapter is startlingly real in how it demonstrates how, all along, we have been dealing not with grand heroes, but simply people who have no answers at all. SNK has always been about failures - and often ironic failures; it has always been a story about painful and frequently futile struggle.

People make mistakes, they can be short-sighted, selfish, biased, immature, petty, and irrational, and I think the ending follows through with depicting the consequences of that.

Erwin's self-sacrifice before being able to reach the basement (and his regression to a childhood state in the moments before his death), Kenny's futile chasing after that universal compassion he had seen in Uri, Shadis never being acknowledged by history despite his final heroic action, and so on -- these stories of ironic, futile failures are still meaningful in their mere striving. Eren's ending and Paradis' demise despite Armin's endeavour to ensure them a peaceful future are entirely consistent with this.

SNK certainly follows the shounen trope in which young individuals are bestowed great power and correspondingly great responsibility, and must then reconcile the burden of possessing that greatness on which the fate of the world depends. Yet it is equally defined by its representation of the state that us normal human beings confront everyday: the struggle against the apparent powerlessness to enact any meaningful or lasting change at all. Simultaneously, this helpless state does not exempt us from the responsibility to act in whatever small capacity we are able to resist oppression, ideological extremism, and the perpetuation of violence.

Towards That Symbol

That was a rather long but vital digression about the additional "construction and destruction" pages. To return to the issue of the symbolism in the final panel, here I will turn from seemingly affirming the tree as symbolizing the cycle of violence, towards what I think is the greater complexity of what the tree might "actually" symbolize.

As I've said above, I don't believe that the final chapter title is synonymous with 'toward the endless cycle of war'. In tone, theme, and characterization, SNK has always been defined by the tension between cruelty and beauty, the will to violence and the underlying desire for peace, and the rest of the contradictory impulses that all simultaneously coexist. The end of SNK as a whole commits to a similar lack of closure, ambiguity, and interpretive openness.

So far I have rambled on about only a view of the perpetual "cruelty" of history. Where, then, is the "beauty"?

In short, the "tree = cycle of violence" interpretation is obviously based on how that this tree recalls the original tree in which the spine creature, as the source of the power of the Titans, resided. But it's worth first considering, what exactly is this creature? We seem to get our answer in the chapter that most precisely crystallizes the dual "cruelty and beauty" of the world:

The spine creature might be said to be life itself. Or more specifically, the will of life to perpetuate itself, for no reason at all but for the fleeting moments in which we feel distinctly glad to have existed in the world.

The creature at the source of the Titans, and in extension the Titans themselves, is neither inherently a positive or negative, "good" or "evil", creative or destructive force. It's both and all of those at once. As with any power, the Titans were merely a tool that was put to use to oppressive ends.

So as I now suggest that the tree at the end is symbolically a "Tree of Life", I don't at all mean "life" in the typically celebratory or optimistic sense: rather, I mean it in the ambiguous, ambivalent, uncertain, and complex sense that has been evoked throughout the above discussion of the inevitable continuation of war.

The title "Toward The Tree on That Hill" is derived from its associations with Eren and Mikasa, but more specifically of course, from Armin's affirmation of existence. However, the tree as a symbol of existential affirmation is undercut with the revelation that, despite Armin's diplomatic mediation between the Allied Nations and Paradis, the island nation never escapes war just as no nation in the history of the earth has ever fully escaped war.

The image of Armin running toward that life-affirming tree by the end becomes twisted and complicated, as the image of the anonymous child approaching the Tree of Life evokes both awe at its beauty and grandeur, and a deep dread at the foreboding of its cyclical return to Ymir's tree that signalled the beginning of a bloody era.

And I think that is precisely it: Life is not some idealized, beautiful vision that we always want to run toward; it is also ironic, complicated, and dreadful. It is ambivalent. Like a literary symbol, the meaning of life cannot be pinned down absolutely. The tree therefore becomes itself a symbol of uncertainty, of an open future that is cyclical both in its beauty and war.

As a final observation, it is surely no coincidence that, the small, black, birdlike silhouettes of the war planes destroying the city from the sky is replaced by the similarly small black silhouettes of birds in the final panel.

If the birds represent freedom from war, the irony is that the immediately surrounding land appears to be one completely empty of people save for the exploring child; it is a freedom attained only without people's presence. Yet at the same time, a child from some existing civilization has reached it; perhaps it is freedom that they have reached, perhaps it is something else that they see in the tree. What is it that they were looking for? What does the tree and its history represent for the child, and what does it mean for their future? Alternatively, does the child-in-the-forest imagery negatively recall the warning that the world is one huge forest of predator and prey that we need to protect children from entering?

Rather than providing answers, this tree embodies all of the potential questions, and all of the potential answers. These possibilities will unfold themselves into an uncertain future beyond the chapters of history that Eren, Armin, Mikasa, Zeke, Erwin, and all the rest of the characters were part of and left their mark on; and whatever future this child will witness or create, it will similarly be one of the struggle against futility, as the journey begins anew with each generation in every new era. Neither - or both - hopeful or despairing, the final image of this tree, just like life itself, contains those innumerable irresolvable tensions as it gestures towards all possibilities, both oppressive and free.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Part - 2: Catholic Social Teaching Series: The Common Good, Part 1

Last time, in this space, we looked at the first pillar of Catholic social teaching: the dignity of the human person. This is a concept that is easily familiar to many Catholics, particularly since it undergirds the pro-life movement.

It lies at the root of the truth that human beings are human beings, not human doings; that their value does not depend on how much they can earn, nor on whether they are inside or outside the womb; nor on whether they are too old or sick to be “productive”; nor on whether they are innocent or guilty (since we are all the authors of the passion and death of the Son of God). Our rights and dignity proceed, as President John F. Kennedy put it, “not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

We also saw that the Church looks at us as persons — that is, as creatures in a familial relationship with one another — due to the fact that we are made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God who is himself a communion of Persons.

This brings us to the next pillar: the common good. The common good — like solidarity — is an aspect of Catholic social teaching that often affects the American ear in a profoundly different way than the phrase “dignity of the human person.”

Many fear that it is the Church’s trendy nod to Marxism, as though the Church pits the common good against the dignity of the human person, as the Marxist pits the rich against the poor or the U.S. Constitution pits the three branches of government against one another to maintain a “balance of power.”

But this is to radically misunderstand Catholic social teaching. As we noted last time, the American conception of the social order, while it draws on certain aspects of a Catholic anthropology, also veers from it.

Our culture tends to see selfishness and sin as the most basic reality and virtue as the mask. So it begins with selfish individuals in conflict as the basis for its politics. Selfish competition in the marketplace, in the state and among various races, classes and genders is seen as the most basic reality, and everything comes down to a perpetual struggle for power among sinners.

Catholic anthropology, by contrast, insists on the human person made in the image and likeness of God as the most basic reality and sin as the mask. So it begins with the following presupposition: Human persons are in the first instance created by God, and love of God and neighbor is the fundamental purpose of our existence. To be sure, sin (and concupiscence) is a reality. But it is not the fundamental reality.

Because of this, the four pillars of Catholic social teaching work in harmony, not against one another. They certainly take into account the fact of the Fall — without which there would be no need for Catholic social teaching (anymore than, say, the angels need instruction on how to love perfectly) — but they do not begin there, as our politics does.

Catholic social teaching starts with the fact of the human person created in the image and likeness of God and with our primordial common call to such goods as vocation, fruitfulness, work and worship. Think of the four pillars as four notes in a chord, not as warring political ideologies.

And so, when the Church speaks of the common good, she does not begin with the rights of the individual in conflict with the needs of the collective, but with the fact that because eachperson is made in the image and likeness of God, all persons are.

Therefore, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says:

“The principle of the common good, to which every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.’”

Since human beings are made in the image and likeness of a Trinitarian God, the family — not the individual, state or corporation — is the living icon of God and the basic building block of civilization. No small part of Catholic social teaching can be summed up in the principle: “If it’s good for the family, it’s good.”

The Church has in view a common end: “a true worldwide cooperation for the common good of the whole of humanity and for future generations also.” Yet this common end is woven together by several necessary and intrinsically linked threads: the sanctity of life, the demand for a living wage, “respect for and the integral promotion of the person and his fundamental rights, commitment to peace, the organization of the state’s powers, a sound juridical system, the protection of the environment and the provision of essential services [such as] food, housing, work, education and access to culture, transportation, basic health care, the freedom of communication and expression and the protection of religious freedom.”

That said, the thing to remember is that building blocks are for building. The Church deeply respects the family and fights to protect it more than any other institution. But the paradox remains that the family, though necessary, is not sufficient for our flourishing as human beings.

The evidence for this is seen in the greatest family in history: the Holy Family. It is not a family simply ordered toward amassing its own good and then passing it on to the children, with no concern for the community.

On the contrary, the Holy Family’s purpose is about offering themselves entirely to the world. Mary and Joseph take seriously the fact that the prophets declare, on behalf of Israel and the whole world, “For to us a child is born” (Isaiah 9:6). This family offers itself and the fruit of Mary’s womb for the life of the world.

Not surprisingly, then, Jesus likewise treats the family as a building block, not as an end in itself. He subordinates it to the kingdom of God in emphatic terms, saying, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

His point, of course, is not that we should wish evil on the family, but that nothing, not even the family, comes before our fidelity to the kingdom of God.

In a related way, the Gospel tells us that Jesus was asked, “Who are my mother and my brethren?” And looking around at those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brethren: Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33-35).

Once again, the family is hailed as good, but its goodness lies not in being isolated from the community, but by its reaching fulfillment in the kingdom of God. The fruit of Mary’s womb calls us to a generous fruitfulness that will redound not only to our progeny, but to future generations throughout the world.

The mention of future generations ties together two ideas that most moderns seldom think to relate: material generosity and the fruitfulness of the marital act. That’s because our politics has unnaturally severed them.

Conservatism is typically associated with being “pro-life” in terms of procreation and liberalism with being free in terms of money. But in the biblical tradition, separating those ideas is absurd. Generation, generosity, generativity, genital, genealogy and genius (among others) all come from the Latin root gener, meaning “kin,” “clan,” “race” or “stock,” with the root Indo-European meaning of gen being “to beget.”

The connection is not far to seek. Generous persons are life-giving persons in the biblical tradition. They literally give life by begetting children, but also give life to others by recognizing their common humanity and supplying their needs. They further give life by tending the garden of creation and using their genius to create wealth by inventing new things or by husbanding (note that word) nature’s bounty provided by God. Such generosity is characteristic of the biblical saint: archetypally Abraham.

Abraham is particularly remembered in Scripture for his fruitfulness and generosity rooted in faith. God makes him the father of many nations, and his generosity toward those around him is seen constantly.

Indeed, the mark of his call is that his life-giving generosity will ultimately touch the whole planet, and “in you shall all the nations be blessed” (Galatians 3:8). He is generous even to the wicked, famously dickering with God in order to get him to spare the legendarily corrupt cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

This brings us to one of the core biblical insights about the use of our gifts, whether spiritual or material. What is true of Abraham is true of all his spiritual heirs: namely, that the Chosen People are chosen for the sake of the unchosen. Our gifts, whether in spiritual or material wealth, are given to us for the sake of those who do not have them — and those to whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48).

Indeed, as the Parable of the Talents makes clear, what we are given is expected back with interest. This is a particularly acute responsibility for those of us living in the wealth of the First World when the bottom billion of the world’s population is literally starving to death. We are Dives (the Rich Man). They are Lazarus. And we have the opportunity and responsibility to be Abraham.

As Pope Pius XI said:

“The distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.”

This, of course, involves individual initiatives toward generosity and private charity, and the Church and her members are immense engines of such generosity, not only helping the desperate, but, just as important, carrying out the Compendium’s insistence that:

“By means of work and making use of the gift of intelligence, people are able to exercise dominion over the earth and make it a fitting home: ‘In this way, he makes part of the earth his own, precisely the part which he has acquired through work; this is the origin of individual property.’”

This suits the rugged individualist American ethos quite well. Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for the rest of his life. The Church is all for that. But, then, the Compendium turns to the task of the state, beyond the individual, in addressing the common good as well:

“The responsibility for attaining the common good, besides falling to individual persons, belongs also to the state, since the common good is the reason that the political authority exists. … The individual person, the family or intermediate groups are not able to achieve their full development by themselves for living a truly human life. Hence the necessity of political institutions, the purpose of which is to make available to persons the necessary material, cultural, moral and spiritual goods.”

This too is common sense. The myth that the individual or the family is sufficient to provide for themselves without any help from (or given to) the community is simply foreign to Church Tradition (and to experience and common sense).

In a thousand ways, we are dependent, for example, on an infrastructure maintained by the state, which supports us with everything from an interstate highway system to the Internet, from a police force to a system that defends the weak from the predatory, from a military that protects us from deadly threats to a meteorological surveillance system that warns us of tornadoes, as well as state agencies that work to make sure our food and medicines do not kill or cripple us.

And this is just scratching the surface of the tasks that the state, of necessity, must perform in serving the common good. Our freeway system is not maintained by small bands of local citizens patching potholes on Saturday afternoon. There is a state department for that purpose.

When Hitler declared war, he was not met by some boys from Brooklyn who grabbed their pistols and headed across the Atlantic in a dinghy. The state’s military answered the call.

Of course, being human creations, none of these things are flawless. But without them, a quick look at Somalia, or Tikrit, Iraq, shows what really doing away with the state looks like.

Indeed, St. Paul understood the state to be so vital in forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — that is, to maintaining the common good — that he told the Romans:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason, you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (Romans 13:1–7).

And Paul gives these instructions to the Christian community despite the fact that the Caesar of whom he wrote was Nero, the psychopath who would eventually cut off his head.

This does not, of course, mean that we are to simply knuckle under to every whim of Caesar. Indeed, thanks be to God, we live in a representative system of government where, at least in theory, we hire our Caesar by voting him into office. The task of civil authorities, according to the Compendium, is: “to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority, but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.” And when, as sometimes happens, Caesar enacts unjust laws, we have the right and obligation to resist him, since “an unjust law is no law at all,” according to St. Augustine.

No small part of why Caesar can go wrong is that he often forgets that man does not live on bread alone and tries to reduce the human person simply to a consumer and producer of material goods. The blunder of both consumerist capitalism and communism is the insistence that our highest good is merely material. But, in fact, our life begins and ends in Jesus, and he is our Supreme Good.

Scripture points to this in a curious, yet clear way. In the Old Testament, God commanded that Israel celebrate the sabbatical and jubilee years, which required fields to lie fallow, cancellation of debts and a general release of persons and goods — indicating that everyone in Israel has a right to the common goods of land God gave them. Israel never really observed this fully. But when Jesus, God made man, fulfills the Law and the prophets, he embarks on his mission by applying the image of the jubilee to himself (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2).

Jesus does not mean he is declaring a jubilee year to begin his ministry. He means he is the jubilee, just as he will later say he is the true Bread of Life, prefigured by the manna in the wilderness, and he is the true temple prefigured by the stone building in Jerusalem. What was seen in sign and shadow in the Old Covenant is now revealed in fullness in the Word made flesh.

And so the Church insists that, in the final analysis, every person has the right to know the truth, mercy and love revealed in Jesus Christ, the very embodiment of the common good. All of our other efforts to promote the common good must keep that fact in mind.

Having sketched this framework of the common good and placed it within our transcendent heavenly destiny in Christ, the Church then makes clear, “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favoring anyone.” This is, of course, straight out of Genesis 1 and carries with it implications that are, at once, commonsensical and also very challenging — and none more so for Americans than the principle of the universal destination of goods.

The Compendium tells us, “The right to the common use of goods is the ‘first principle of the whole ethical and social order’ and ‘the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine.’”

It is here that the American pulse often begins to quicken in fear and the suspicion that the Church is talking about some kind of communism. But this is not so. Communism is the theory that private property should be abolished and everything owned by the state. It is a utopian notion that, like many utopian notions, took a single idea from the Christian tradition and exalted it beyond all reason and sense, forgetting that, crippled by sin, we cannot do always what we do sometimes. The idea communism battened on was this: “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32).

It’s a beautiful thing when this happens due to a spontaneous outpouring of self-donating love. But, as St. Luke will point out in the story of Ananias and Sapphira just a few sentences later, the serpent of greed and falsehood lurks even in the Church, and still more in the world, due to original sin. So communism was doomed, since a perfect sharing of everything in common is beyond our capacity this side of the eschaton. Communism’s attempt to make it happen through force could and did only end in epic slaughter, gulags, famines and a police state.

Only the Holy Spirit can make saints. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot made only huge piles of corpses. The communist claim to abolish property and class merely wound up concentrating property and power in the hands of the communist rulers and robbing everybody else of the property that attends the dignity of the human person.

Yet, for a paradoxical reason, this is also why the Church is suspicious of unrestricted capitalism. Of which, more next time.

BY: MARK SHEA

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

[ganymedesclock]

Based on S3E7, what do you think about the nature of quintessence? I get the impression it came from the rift, and yet so much of Altean technology that Allura seems totally comfortable using relies on it.

To my rough understanding, Honerva is being a reliable narrator when she claims quintessence is life itself. It’s not always used as energy- Allura in s1e1 noticeably says “The quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in his Lion” which would suggest that this is a sort of ephemeral vital essence- soul, or what Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra refer to as “spirit”. It is both the vitality of any living entity, and a reflection of the essential character of that person. In that sense, Blue, for example, doesn’t have to read Lance’s mind and mull over his thoughts to know he’s a worthy paladin- all she has to do is feel the energy he radiates by his natural personality and sensibilities- and know that it feels like her own.

It appears that even before the rift, the Alteans were using quintessence, but, as it’s the substance of life, it comes in, well, organic byproducts. Remember, Alteans were harvesting and powering their machines with Balmera crystals.

The majority of the energy-related minerals that we’ve encountered in the setting- crystals and scaultrite- have one thing in common: they’re organic byproducts of living creatures, Balmera and Weblums. 

(This makes me have some suspicions about luxite- it’s stated to have been mined, but that doesn’t rule out that it has its origins in a living creature. Quite possibly, luxite is a material similar to ammolite, petrified wood or amber- an organic byproduct fossilized and transformed by metamorphic processes into a mineral. And that would better explain that it was seemingly only found on one planet- when even fairly esoteric mineral compounds you’d expect to be in multiple places. But a particular plant or animal, especially a prehistoric one that had been potentially extincted or its descendants moved on from it, could easily only exist at a single planet where those remains could gather and become compressed into metal)

The revolution around the rift is being able to harness this sort of vital energy in a pure undiluted form, completely free of the creature that created it. This is where the vampiric allusions of the empire, and Zarkon in particular, come in- and this is where we see Coran’s horrified reaction to the refining station in s1e11. After all, if it’s the substance of life, harvesting it in masse as the empire is... well, imagine if all of those canisters were full of blood.

This also implies some fascinating things about the rift between worlds, which... roughly, as far as I gather, the implication is that the rift is effectively a sea of quintessence, whose so far only known landmark is the Rift Entity that swims freely within it, and every individual reality is a closed microcosm nestled inside of that rift, with the rift acting as a barrier or boundary between them, and the only thing naturally endowed with the power to cross between worlds and thus open those apertures into that liminal ocean is Voltron.

Which... raises some really, really interesting questions about this model of the universe and what this proposes for the origins of life in this setting. Because Coran’s video in s2e9, at least, the bits that we hear, imply planets themselves have a beating heart and a life cycle- that they, too, age and die, independent of their native ecosystems, and when they do, the weblums exist as planetary vultures that devour what remains of their souls, digest them, and processes them in some form to pave the way for the birth of new planets.

But if we assume all quintessence originates from the rift, and perhaps seeps into existing realities, that would imply life at all is a certain degree an alien presence- perhaps invoking a kind of Prometheus legend where at the beginning of reality, all quintessence only existed within the rift, and some sort of great breach occurred- either by Voltron, another member of its “species”, or... perhaps the “goddess” it’s implied to serve- that brought life to realities. Because whatever the Baku was, it appeared powerfully connected to quintessence given the vibrant violet glow around its nest, and controlled Luxia said some very ominous things about “it is time to return to the giver of life” that wasn’t really answered with the death of the Baku.

This is especially significant given what I discussed in a prior post about the thematic elements underlying the series on the topic of life and death. Especially given that we see quintessence in three forms: the yellow, neutral state that appears to be the body of the rift, the “primordial ocean” if you will- the cyan energy associated with Voltron, and the purple energy associated with the rift.

The only entity associated with the color purple out of Voltron is the Black Lion- specifically one who appears thematically conflated with transcending opposites, and kind of a ruler of the boundary between life and death. And both of Black’s paladins, and their answer among Sincline, are, in a way, all people who come back to this matter of ‘darkness’ and dealing with the matter of death- Zarkon, our wayward Orpheus; Shiro, who passed through a hellish experience and emerged a changed person- and Lotor, so far the only person we know who has the distinction of hailing from two different destroyed planets.

Simply- it’d seem as if there’s a sort of thematic order and entropy battle here. What we see of purple energy is that it is, by and large, destructive. It’s the consuming force that sustains Zarkon’s undeath, it appears most commonly in crackling, burning electricity or the razor-sharp cutting force of Shiro’s prosthetic. Our heroes have used it, Shiro most obviously, but Allura also used it to destroy the Komar.

But also, it cannot be harnessed easily, and without ill effect. The castle running even briefly on the energy caused lasting harm and the title of “Crystal Venom” is very evocative that the violet energy was as unto a poison in the castle’s veins. Alfor’s AI, afflicted by it, gave in to despair, turned manipulative and cruel, and tried to kill Allura and the rest of the paladins.

We also have so far yet to see galra healing pods, or any sort of restorative thing using the purple energy that the empire favors. If anything, the abundance of prosthetics and that Zarkon took months to recover between Haggar reviving him in s3e7 and his retaking the throne in s4e1 would suggest the empire is miles behind its ancient enemy when it comes to medicine.

And where does Altea vastly exceed the empire? In healing, and in defense. The empire’s shields are a joke compared to the undiluted glory of the Castleship who so far in the plot has yet to take a direct hit because its shield is so damn durable. Again, the implication is clear- there are two underlying forces in the universe of Voltron. The blue Order, and the violet Entropy.

This implies some very interesting things about Voltron and the rift entity- that the two are, in a way, natural enemies. That their conflict vastly predates their respective appearances on Daibazaal, and their alignment with various people at the scene of that impact.

That Sincline, ultimately, is destined to fall on Voltron’s side of this conflict- it is an inherently Order-aligned being by its obvious blue lighting, a color scheme it shares with Lotor- who it is not an exaggeration to say, at bare minimum Lotor’s pragmatism and concern with the stability of the empire means he could never really follow and believe in the entropic worldviews of his parents.

But also, in a way, this is obvious- because the whole point of Voltron, and presumably of Sincline, if it operates the same way as its “older sibling”- is to achieve harmony and order among five very different components. Solidarity is born of knowing, conscious, mutual unity.

[3sportsguns]

Brees Is the Example of Needing to Listen

Last week Drew Brees sparked internet outrage after voicing his opinion on the American flag protests. The New Orleans QB said he will "never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America..." and "I love and respect my teammates, and I stand right there with them in regards to fighting for racial equality and justice. I also stand with my grandfathers who risked their lives for this country and countless other military men and women who do it on the daily basis."

Of course given recent events these comments are really tone deaf, even for the rest of the interview he gave. Before that he said "I think we accomplish greater things as a community, as a society and a country when we do it together. And I think that we're all equipped with great talents, abilities and strengths and we can use that with each other and for each other...Obviously there are riots and there are protests and people are certainly out there showing their frustration as well but I think at the end of the day we need to find ways to work together to provide opportunities for one another to continue to move our country forward to a bigger and better place."

That was a perfect answer for what is happening but him saying "I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag." was him disregarding what seems to be his general attitude because people are trying to draw attention to it and he ruled it all out. The protest was never about disrespecting the flag but the narrative was politicized and changed to that. Saying you understand why the protests are happening but saying "I never will..." means you aren't open to the converstation. That was wrong and that was his mistake.

Drew Brees apologized the next day on Instagram saying "...In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country. They lacked awareness and any type of compassion or empathy. Instead, those words have become divisive and hurtful and have misled people into believing that somehow I am an enemy. This could not be further from the truth, and is not an accurate reflection of my heart or my character.

...I stand with the black community in the fight against systemic racial injustice and police brutality and support the creation of real policy change that will make a difference.

I condemn the years of oppression that have taken place throughout our black communities and still exists today. I acknowledge that we as Americans, including myself, have not done enough to fight for that equality or to truly understand the struggles and plight of the black community..."

Of course after misstepping he still took criticism for his white privilege, being fake and just covering for himself. The question is 'which is the real Drew Brees?' His teammates like Michael Thomas and Cam Jordan seemed to accept his apology and former teammate Joe Horn came out before his apology to support him saying he knows the man he is and what he has done for the New Orleans community. Brees said himself it's about action and not words and so the apology was a start but not enough.

The problem with Drew's take is the same as Colin Kaepernick's original protest, it became politicized and tried to take control of the narrative. The president voiced his support and Fox News Laura Ingraham said 'Drew Bress can have an opinion' after telling LeBron James 'Just shut up and dribble' for having his opinion on the country. That is of course hypocritical and borders on racism, so Brees' next step was critical to put action in place and not just have words. Mrs. Brees started it with the action with her own Instagram apology saying "WE ARE THE PROBLEM... 

We can read books to our children about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X., Hank Aaron, Barack Obama, Rosa parks, Harriet Tubman.. and feel like we are doing our part to raise our children to love, be unbiased and with no prejudice. To teach them about all of the African Americans that have fought for and risked their lives against racial injustice. Somehow as white Americans we feel like that checks the box of doing the right thing. Not until this week did Drew and I realize THAT THIS IS THE PROBLEM.

...We have heard stories from men and women we have known and loved for years about the racism that occurred in their lives .. stories that were never shared or talked about because somehow they were considered normal. To all of our friends and anyone we hurt ...we will do better.. We want to do better , we want to HEAR you, and we will fight for you because thinking we are not part of the problem...is checking the box it means we are are not doing enough. It’s our job to educate ourselves. We are sorry."

That is exactly the right response to what Drew Brees said about the National Anthem apologies and really what white people need to think about. I wrote that I can try and understand what the African American experience is and need to remove the entitlement of thinking I can understand because I never will. What needs to happen is we just need to listen.

I think Brees followed up his apology with action that validated what his wife said when he posted on Instagram to the president "To Donald Trump, Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community, I realize this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been. We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities.

We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week. We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform.

We are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history! If not now, then when? We as a white community need to listen and learn from the pain and suffering of our black communities. We must acknowledge the problems, identify the solutions, and then put this into action. The black community cannot do it alone. This will require all of us."

This is a critical response of action because what his comments did, I believe unintentionally, was fuel the narrative that the National Anthem protests disrespected the military and country and can disregard the message of what the narrative is about. It was already being done after Brees posted his apology.

Colin Kaepernick's message was right, and the NFL has even now come out and said so, as he chose a peaceful protest that many are backtracking to with the riots that have broken out around the country. To be clear there is a massive difference between the rioters and protests and they are not one in the same. Kap was ridiculed and I truly believe he had no intentions of disrespect and even took a suggestion from a former army ranger on the best way to express his peaceful protest. There were also plenty of former military personnel that were in agreement with what Kap was doing, but there were also plenty that disagreed with it.

The American flag is a piece of cloth that represents a lot and different things to everyone. It's a symbol of what the country should be, it's a representation and reminder that freedom isn't free to America. I think a symbol is given power by the actions meant for it and not just the flag itself but it can be a powerful symbol. Is the country perfect, absolutely not. The protests are expressing that clearly and the country of the United States of America isn't perfect and work needs to be done. 

Drew Brees was speaking what the flag means to him but was furthering an untrue narrative. I'm sure most people don't think they're racist at all but what the protest has been about is opening the white communities eyes to the wrong that is the acceptance of status quo, to not being open to the experience of our fellow Americans in the African American community and the fact that we haven't listened enough or actually heard what is going on and being shared by black communities. It is almost a sense of entitlement that we as the white community have it figured out and could lead the charge when the truth is we don't totally understand African American experiences and need to support them as they speak their truths and lead the charge.

I went to a public high school and have always been around all races and types of people and never had a problem with anyone. I've dated girls of different nationalities and never have, nor will, consider myself racist but that in itself is the problem. I think most people say they're an ally by not being racist but haven't actively done anything to change it and that's exactly what Mrs. Brees spoke to. It's an almost insensitivity because you think things are fine even though you see what is wrong.

In a conversation recently with my father I think he crystallized it perfectly when he said "I will never understand the experience of an African American and these protests have been the big eye opener to that." That was the realization for both of us that the example we need to be is in supporting this movement by listening and echoing what is being said by those that have lived with these injustices.

To me there are things you can love about the country and agree that it's not perfect. I think that's where Brees was coming from in his experiences with flag, National Anthem and his families sacrifices serving in the military, but he voiced it incorrectly. The protests are about a beat down community being heard and opening eyes and in an eagerness as human beings people have said 'I get it and am part of the solution.' when it has been a misstep as a whole because ultimately the white community needs to be a force for change but do so in a supportive role behind African Americans so to not bulldoze over what they're sharing and have experience.

This is what we need to do as a community, to listen to what maybe just never sank in. There is only one right side on police brutality and systemic racism, but we as American people also need to be wary of not actually listening to others' opinions because for a lot of other things in life there are more gray area. Brees misstepped with his comments on the National Anthem protest, but in doing so can be the leader for the white community in exactly what we need to open our eyes and ears up to.

[oaesiir-beloved-of-heaven]

I Was the Alt-Right, and I Cannot Believe what is has Become

I really wanted to write about Charlottesville, but I just found myself so busy. I was once very politically active especially online, but now I have so many other things on my plate. Yesterday I woke up at the crack of dawn and, passing my gold and black Heilieges Reichsflahn, I brushed my teeth and washed myself for the day before getting dressed and tying up my work boots. I rounded the corner into the kitchen, passing my Old Glory who has hung or flown everywhere I have lived since I left college. I made my coffee, turned on my playlist of American Folk, and sat down for a smoke before making breakfast. My roommate and I had breakfast together and I left for work. While I work I didn’t think about much anything beyond work - being on auto-pilot most of the time, I think about quite a lot while at work but I pretty much put myself completely into my job. If I lose it or don’t do well, then my means of survival will be in jeopardy. Besides, this company is the reason I have a life to start with and I can’t see why I wouldn’t at least be grateful for that by doing the job they pay me to do. I went home after work and, pulling out a bottle of whiskey and a bag of tobacco from the fridge, my roommate and I sat in for some reading and bants in a cloud of smoke with a glass of whiskey each and the evening proceeded much as that while more American and Irish folk played in the background. Windows up, we let the cool breeze wash over us brought down by the rainy cold front we’d been experiencing most of the weekend. When I started in the Alt Right, it was basically a bunch of people on message boards who were discussing alternative conservative viewpoints that ran against the mainstream conservative thought. Many of these positions had historical foundations and might even be acceptable to leftists and moderates. But, in the end, what kept me in it were the works of a particular writer from the 1790s named Joseph de Maistre. Critical to most of his traditionalism was the idea of the “True Held,” a position Oswald Spengler also spends quite a lot of time on - he famously referred to Adolph Hitler as a, “Heldentenor,” or merely someone who acts as a hero and is basically an impostor - and it ultimately is what kept me in Traditionalism even as it gave itself over to what amounted to what was already mainstream in the Far Right. It was something, ironically, many people who are still members were vehemently against at one time - but to my point about the “True Held.” It became something of a meme with the phrase, “Patrician,” referring to someone who embodied traditional ideas exceptionally. This idea intrigued me, that the true aristocrat is not someone who writes but commands. For being intellectuals themselves, many of the Traditionalist writers were actually anti-intellectual and proponents of Obscurantism - meaning that many systems of government work for reasons beyond our comprehension, and that Statecraft is almost like a Holy Mystery to be contemplated and understood. An example of which might be that Christ admonishes his believes to forgive those who wrong them and resist passively forays into their religion by hostile forces or oppression by legitimate governments. On its face, this has nothing to do with Statecraft. However, with contemplation under obscurantism, one sees how it can be a recipe for creating an ideal citizenry. It preserves civil unity against internal strife which might otherwise divide it so that the ruling class can devote their time to matters of state and the betterment of the realm instead of keeping their de facto children in line. But, as I said, I ultimately left. I just didn’t see it going anywhere good, and Charlottesville basically proved me right. My approach to the situation, however, is different from most. These days I describe myself when forced to as a pragmatic centrist; I believe whatever is good for my nation and all its people should be done, and that the ultimate endgame is the preservation and growth of the United States of America. As such I don’t see how coming down fully on any side in this identitarian clash is beneficial. Let me be clear in that I think Blacks and Whites, equally, have a right to their ethnic preservation. We might say that “White” and “Black” aren’t real ethnic groups, but the fact is that Whites and Blacks in this nation while different across the States have indeed over the three centuries of our nation’s history coalesced into two distinct ethnic groups. Whatever they are or are not, that’s not nearly important as what they think they are. I will agree that Blacks are disadvantaged in that country and that is the fault of White people, not the White race. You cannot collectively hold an ethnic group accountable for the actions of a few of its members, and this is particularly true when one considers that many Whites would happily disown those racist individuals who have harmed Blacks. It makes no sense to punish them when they would gladly help Blacks obtain equal rights, save for the fact Black Activism increasingly is hostile to all White people. It seems to me and many other Whites that what Blacks perceive as an ideal fix to the current situation is to turn the racial tables, placing Whites in the disadvantaged position and Blacks in a position to lord over them in the manner they believe Whites must do. For my part I believe the proper thing to do would be to bring Blacks to the level of Whites and then work against Whites who want to keep that from being a reality. Blacks helped build this country, sometimes against their will. As such it is more than fair and just, our duty as people who value equality, to ensure that they can now share in the full bounty of Columbia. I have said before that I fully support the right of Blacks and Whites to preserve themselves. What I do not support is a strategy where it is a zero sum game, that for one side to win the other must lose. So long as this is how the game is played, the longer it is played the more damage it will do to national solidarity. What is proper is that the Republic provides for the needs of all citizens and represents their interests; that our Federal Union brings us into cooperation for our common benefit. What right does the White Man in Virginia have to lord his interests over the Black Man in Illinois, or vice versa? Both are equal citizens under the law. The only determinant factor in such a situation if one party must be chosen over the other is how would subsidizing one enable him to better our nation. If this question cannot be answered, for both are equal to one another, then it seems to me then neither have any superiority over the other. It is in the best interest of the Republic if as many of its people as possible live, under its auspices, as healthy, wealthy, well-educated patriots. To return to the racial subject, it is true we have seen a rise in White Nationalism over the past decade. I attribute this to a perceived power shift beginning with the presidency of Barack Obama; his presidency in conservative circles was spoken of in terms of apocalyptic persecution for White Christians, much as Trump’s presidency is spoken of in terms of genocide for non-White Americans. I would like to point out at this time President Trump has disavowed the actions of those conservatives in Charlottesville, much as Obama did in his later years criticize Far Leftist activists. However both these men came to power because they spoke to these groups in ways that brought them to the polls, and now both men have disowned the radicals that made their success possible. This trend is troubling to me and it doesn’t bode well for our democracy; if the citizens can’t trust their elected officials to hold to their campaign platforms then how can they trust in democracy at all? Perhaps the most dramatic example of what I am talking about actually comes from France, where the recent president Macron has begun to enact many policies and make changes and overtures pleasing to conservatives when he was perceived as the more Leftist candidate when compared to Le Pen. If elected officials continue to act this way, eventually, we will see a wholesale breakdown in trust for any federal republic as a fraud and a sham. When people cannot trust their governments, they look to smaller entities; regions, localities, and of course race. Blacks have been doing this now for almost a hundred years in the United States; I would wager that if one took a national poll asking if one trusted their government, Blacks would overwhelmingly say no compared to Whites and it would have very little to do with Trump’s administration. Blacks have continually felt as outsiders in the Republic, and this is tragic when one considers that after Emancipation many Blacks ecstatically embraced the Republic and wanted to attain the level of freedom enjoyed by Whites only to see that their biggest obstacle to doing so was Whites themselves who feared and despised their fellow citizens. If the Republic intends to survive this generation of racial strife it must take a leading role in diffusing it by helping both races and seeing to their interests. Whites must be made to understand that the rise of the Black Man does not entail their fall, and Blacks must understand that not every White Man will be an enemy to their progress simply because of different racial origins. In the end, both sides fear the same thing: a tyranny that will subvert their rights. But in our Republic so long as we work to preserve it this will not be a reality. So long as our common ancestry in this country and pride in what we and our ancestors have built here and a desire to defend it can always be found in us, we will never lose it. I spoke earlier about “Patrician” values, and about how they stayed with me even after leaving the Alt-Right. It’s because to me, Traditionalism and Patricianism are universal values that any person can pursue, white or not. To improve oneself, to grow in knowledge and physical strength, to draw strength from the example of your ancestors, and keep their customs and culture can be done by anyone all without hindering anyone else from doing so. Many things I garnered in the Alt-Right aren’t things that go hand-in-hand with what it is now, and I know many other former Alt-Righters who can say the same. I think that by simply being fiscally responsible, being healthier than I’ve ever been every day, learning new skills, and doing my part for my community I am in many sense Patrician. I’m not done here; some day I hope to work in government and in the military. Theodore Roosevelt didn’t do a quarter of the things we now know him for until he was 35; before that he was a student and academic for most of his life, even being forced to move back home with his parents after bouncing around Ivy League colleges for the better part of his young adult life. So for me - and all of us - there is still room to grow, and we can all do our part to stop this racial division before it gets any worse. Whether Leftists or Rightists like it or not, Blacks and Whites get along every day. I work in a field that has its fair share of minorities and whites working side-by-side to literally build this country. Its stores, homes, monuments, and infrastructure. We are judged by what we can do, not who we are. In fact I daresay outside of close friends no one really cares what anyone does in their personal time; it’s not too late for any of us to make a change. Racial harmony starts on the ground with each and every one of us, and together we can build an America that will confound the radicals and their poisonous ideology.

[astoryasong]

A Mind’s Plea

We flourished.

We, the Kreeativs, transcended the realm of the physical long, long ago. We had transitioned from the constraints of our bodies and become beings entirely composed of thoughts. Our knowledge and imaginations we warmly shared with one another as you would an embrace with a dear friend. We learned from each other and combined our minds to overcome the deepest conundrums and oddities our home in the Milky Way Galaxy had to offer. It was curiosity and creativity we valued above all else. Our ideas lived permanently in the minds of our race, and as such, we had attained immortality. We understood each other completely. We were at our peak. We flourished.

Then, almost one Earth year ago, my entire race was brought to its knees. Whilst collectively contemplating the subtle intricacies between new elements we had found on an asteroid at the farthest reaches of our galaxy, one of our many minds went silent.

It may be hard to imagine, but even with hundreds of millions of minds, we were so interconnected that the sudden absence of even one mind brought with it a terrible cold, empty feeling of incompleteness. The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. How could we, ideas, cease to be?

We spread the tendrils of our minds across our expanse of the universe, looking frantically for the mind we had lost. Then, after a time that could have been very, very long or very, very short, we found it. And yet, we did not.

The mind was there. We could feel its familiarity, but the mind was no longer composed of the hundreds of thousands of original thoughts that had once constituted its presence. Something was horribly wrong. It was as if all of its essence had been stripped away, left only with a hollow shell that had once housed endless beautiful ideas. We opened our mental arms towards the mind, hoping to welcome it back to us, but it didn’t take notice. In fact, it noticed nothing. Not us, not the stars before it, nor the mysteries around it. We were stunned. A mind had never broken away from us before.

Then we felt an unusual aura encroaching upon our combined thoughts. It started out as a mental whisper, its foreign presence brushing up against our minds. But only moments later, the presence crashed up against us as violently and abruptly as the sea crashes upon the rocks during a storm. “WE ARE THE RITERSBLŎK!” the presence thundered; we recoiled at the force. “IF YOU WISH TO SAVE THIS MIND, YOU WILL SURRENDER TO US.”

This was the first time since the Kreeativs ascended from our physical forms we had encountered an enemy that could truly threaten us. And, it was the first time since then that the Kreeativs’ minds, in their panic, loosened their connection to one another. We retreated far away from the Ritersblŏk, hoping to rally together and discern a plan.

Because it had been so long since we had last drawn arms, a great many of our minds began to worry. Should we give in to the Ritersblŏk’s request? Should we leave the lost mind behind, forever to remain a lonely, hollow shell of its former self? While we were frantically mulling over these thoughts, another mind went dark. And before we even had the chance to take in the horror of another loss, yet another Kreeativ vanished. Then another. Then another. The panic among us sparked a lack of unity between our minds, and the lack of unity, in turn, ensued chaos.

The following months were frenetic; we became disjointed. It is at this point of my story that I painfully must stop referring to our once-great race as “we,” for we were “we” no longer. Millions of minds mustered their most palpable thoughts, brazenly believing that if they conjured a thought strong enough, their minds could not be wiped blank. They rushed boldly off to breach the firm defenses of the Ritersblŏk. Each hoped to recover the ever-increasing number of hallowed minds that had gone before it, but no mind escaped our adversary’s grasp.

Then, a few weeks ago, the incredible occurred. A mind returned to us. It was beaten, broken, a remnant of its former self, but it wasn’t completely scraped clean. It came to those of us that remained, the few hundred that had not yet fallen prey to the murmurs that echoed across the galaxy: “Come to us. Save your friends. Come to us.”

I embraced the mind. Erratic joy and deep pain simultaneously battled for the upper hand within my being as the injured mind sputtered toward us on its last vestiges of mental strength. “Ideas,” the mind brushed its consciousness up against mine, “Great ideas cannot be ended.”

This was not news to me, for it was ideas that had made us (almost) immortal. But the fellow mind sensed my lack of understanding and elaborated. They had been near our enemy just long enough to grasp an understanding of their most prominent weakness. The Ritersblŏk had captured the Kreeativs in an effort to take over the Milky Way without the hindrance of minds--physical or not--that would oppose their ultimate rule. However, should a great many conciousnesses armed with creative ideas rise up against the Ritersblŏk at once, they would not be able to handle the influx and power of so many minds at the same time. The Ritersblŏk would be forced to end their conquest and limp back to whence they came.

We accepted the broken mind back into our shared consciousness and huddled the last of our race around this newfound hope. Unfortunately, the minds already captured by our enemy were beyond reparation, no longer able to conjure original ideas. What I needed to find was help. There had to be someone, somewhere who could band together in solidarity with us to assist us in overcoming our worst enemy. And so the remainder of us piled our erudition together. We no longer had the vast collection of knowledge we had once achieved when our race was whole, but we had glimmers and glimpses of what we learned from one another before this all began.

That was when I remembered you--humans. Humans, who live on a planet not unlike the one from which we originated, are the closest in thought pattern to ourselves. Even though you still maintain your physical forms, you, too, thrive upon creativity and ideas. I remembered that humans are constantly innovating, exchanging thoughts, and collaborating with one another to achieve great works. And so I know it is your kind and your kind alone who could help me to save the last of the Kreeativs and defeat the Ritersblŏk.

I have adopted a physical form in order to blend in while I learn from you. I have only been here a few days, but I must say I vastly underestimated how large a planet can feel when you occupy a physical space. However, it has not taken me long to learn about Earth’s great learning interface--the internet--where the minds of your race spend their time in quest of new, diverse ideas and thoughts. So I have come to make my plea on the social interfaces of the most familiar planet in our galaxy in order to study under you and learn how to utilize my ideas to defeat my race’s archenemy. 

The Ritersblŏk will never stop hunting my race until they have eliminated the last of us, and from there, they will move on. And while you’re not going to like it, I think I have a pretty good idea of who’s next. I come to you as a messenger, a warrior, and a student of your talent. I am in need of thousands of creative ideas, and this place is my best hope. I whole-mindedly believe that this planet can change the course of history and defeat our mutual opponent once and for all. For if the Ritersblŏk are the enemies of our liberty to think differently, then I am certain I have come to the right place.

- LMR

[imtiredoftendingtothisfire]

What do I actually want?

Not a post I expected to be writing 24 hours ago, but some developments came about which have required my deliberation. The boy in previous posts has come back into the picture and we have been dating again to see where things can go. Everything was promising until last night when he raised the question about being young and not having much chance to explore the dating world, and the foreverness and certainty of a relationship. It brought into question whether I am in love with him, or the idea of him....

After 14 months and roughly 4-5 false starts many would have given up hope of trying to make things work, and ultimately I was ready to walk away both recently and in July because I could not deal with the hot and cold any longer, but something always brought me back. Being a Taurus it takes me a while to get warmed up but once I have a feeling about someone I will go all in and commit, and try and try until I believe I cannot try any harder, because I’m stubborn and don’t like to give up. But why am I trying? The first comparison that springs to mind is the UK leaving the EU, do they want to achieve Brexit because of what would happen, or because they’ve fought for it for so long and though new information has come to light along the way the believe they should stick to their guns wholeheartedly.

I’ve had some pretty shitty relationships over the past 8 years and I’ve been damaged by them, something I’m still dealing with now, but with every relationship I can gather information and learn more from it and about myself as to how I be my best self and what I would seek in a partner. I’ll describe what I think I want below.

In my imagination, we would be equal parts our own people, strong on our own and stable enough to be our own unique individuals, however I also would love to be a solid unit of solidarity, equal partners in crime, those that rely on each other and can do whatever together. Not necessarily do everything, but have the option. I look at couples who post everything on social media, and those who post nothing. I would love for someone to look at either myself or my partner’s social media and think “they’re cool, they have a lot of friends, aw they have a boyfriend, they travel so much, ooo he’s seen this Drag Race girl”, I would hate for every post to be joined yet also I would hate to feel invisible. If I’m in a situation that is posted about then tag me, rather than risk redacting me from events and life. I want a partner who I can go for dinner with and drinks, we just enjoy each other’s company and talk nonsense about our favourite tv shows or people we know or memes.

Enjoy the little moments together in bed or on a Sunday afternoon. I want them to have their space and I mine, often gay couples can easily intertwine to the point it’s impossible to decipher who is who anymore. I would love to develop over some weeks and months to getting so close and happy with someone that they would feel proud to call me their boyfriend and the same for me.

Gradually spending more time together to develop that connection and unity. The more time you spend sharing moments and memories the faster the connection grows, which is why so many gay couples will declare love after 3 weeks because they’ve spent every day together for that time, but conversely only spending 1 night a week together each week for 3 months is no time at all. Until a couple are living together or on holiday I don’t think you should have more time with the person than you would alone, otherwise you risk losing yourself, and for most people that is hard to grasp.

Now turning to the boy in question. At moments over the previous year I have genuinely thought to myself “he makes me so happy. I think I may have tha PT genuine deep love for him” yet I’d always hold back in saying anything for fear of being rejected, and then a hiccup would come along and shake the dynamic and we’d start 10 steps further back, meanwhile I would have to rebuild that trust, familiarity and connection with him. Last Halloween after 8 weeks of dating we officially went exclusive, and 3 weeks later I realised he said he may love me, and until this point I had been very bláze about the relationship because I was keen to not jump into anything, but at this point I knew my heart was in it.

Things clicked. Firstly I found him visually beautiful, his eyes were so intriguing and desirable, I couldn’t help but find myself gazing at him, and realised I might seem crazy so tried to stop. We have so much in common be in pop culture references, music, movies, drag, Vega sim, desires to travel, plans for marriage, kids etc. In my opinion there’s too much to throw away because it’s impossible to find someone with all these things that you have such a connection with. Of course I’m in love with the idea of a future with him. I have a vivid imagination accompanied with a pragmatic approach to life, and can realistically seeing how things would fall into place and progress over the next few years, and maybe that’s leading to me get ahead of myself.

He on the other hand is in two minds, despite being the one twice lately to ask for another chance, however after this I seemingly appear to be the one clutching at that potential whilst he gets cold feet. There’s a weird bittersweet situation here as I think I do love him, but after being hurt and cut out so many times over the last year I think my heart is equal parts devoted and confused. It doesn’t want to fully commit because it fears it may end badly again, but the fondness, appreciation and desire is still present. I tell myself I need those little cute date like moments to rebuild the relationship between us and to have that run of emotional growth and blossoming.

I don’t know what will happen down the line but I know I am definitely interested enough in this boy to want to see where this goes. The way he laughs, the way he thinks, the way he works and wants things, the way he operates with his friends, the way he is with me. I love it. Of course there are a lot of things that I’m not hugely fond of, like his reluctance to join certain social events or the family, but that comes with time. I wouldn’t want to introduce someone to my family if I wasn’t sure it was the long haul.

Love is a weird thing. I have had 3 relationships before, 2 of which I claimed to have loved the other person, though only 1 I would say I meant it at the time. In hindsight, was that feeling legit and real? Was it love or codependence? It wasn’t love. It was naïvity and lack of esteem. I was 17 when we got together and 21 when we broke up, but we declared love after roughly 2 months and after 13 months he cheated and it broke me. I stayed in that for a further 2 years pointlessly but at that age I didn’t know any better. That love I felt was so Disney and cliché but it wasn’t love.

Love for me is that constant underlying gut feeling that that person is awesome, like a river flowing. Sometimes it flows rapidly and other times the waters are calm, but it’s constant. The moment when you see them across the room and just can’t help but smile. You would do anything to walk down the street holding their hand or just having tha extra moment to speak to them about the most stupid thing. I don’t know if that’s love, but that’s what I’d describe it as.

So what do I want? Honestly, I just want to be happy and not feel any kind of anxiety, or worry, or feel nervous. I want to feel confident and secure, whether that be with someone or not. I would love for someone to compliment my life and not hold it back, whether physically or emotionally. I want to be my best self but equally the best with someone else at their best, and if I have to help them become their best then I’m game. What I don’t want is to feel on edge, or that I’m an after thought, or forgotten, because to me that is what partners are. Partners are equal and support one another, but ensure that they do not compromise themselves for someone else.

With regards to the boy in question. I do think I love him. Right now not in that euphoric rush of emotion we get shown in romcoms, but that constant steady feeling within my stomach and my knowing. I can safely say that I can see myself being happy with him down the line, and happy with him now. All I really want to do is to do things with him however big or small, but together. I want to build those moments and memories and be there for each other in both the good times and the bad. I want the best friendship and support system, and I want to support him, I know in myself I’m secure and I can rely on myself, and he’s someone I will open up to and look for reassurance from should I need it. I just hope he feels the same. Sure the future seems appealing and is something I’m considering, but it would be foolish to ignore it and not look forward to it. But in the day to day, I just want to get to that comfortable happy state.

Ultimately not everything is up to me or what I want, in this situation it’s about two people. The things I have learned about myself with this boy are unreal. I have grown within myself and feel way more secure and ready for life in general thanks to what we’ve been through together, it just makes me sad that we’re not in the happy home run period. I feel like we can be one day soon, thought from my perspective I need those little moments of just being together and in each other’s company to get there. Taking those little steps to building something great. I plan to forget the future and what might happen down the line or potential or anything, and just focus on the day to day feelings. If I feel like I want to enjoy the every day and the now, and one day I will look back and realise everything else has happened along the way.

This was a really long post and I’m not sure what I’ve accomplished, despite my constant analysis of everything. Though I know how I feel and what I want. It’s hard to verbalise this to the boy. But here goes...

[emilieideas]

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, Lewis Hyde (1979)

“...‘Do unto others as you would do unto yourself’ and ‘God helps those who help themselves,” always sung to a tune whose accents fall on ‘self.’ With the moral community of old reduced to the heart of the landlord, but conscience and guilt are feelings that only individuals have. Ethical dilemmas are resolved either by comparing self to self or by having each self sit alone and imagine itself ‘before God’s judgment seat.’”

 “Finally, in the modern world, it seems that interest charged for the use of money no longer sets up a boundary between people. Even in tribal life, usury was a way of having some intercourse with strangers. Now the entrepreneur and the man with ready cash seek each other out. Interest is the sign of a lively community.”

 “The debate over usury has usually assumed a world clearly divided into brothers and others, friends and enemies. But most social life is not so rigorously symmetrical. … as there are degrees of relatedness (and therefore degrees of strangeness), so there are degrees of reciprocity

 Note: use of money to mark closeness of relationships

 “Ezra Pound’s creative life was animated by a myth in which ‘tradition’ appears as both the source and ultimate repository of his gifts.”

 “Pablo Neruda took the beginnings of his art to lie not with spirits or with the past, but with something human, current, and almost anonymous. His gifts spring, he felt, from brotherhood, from ‘the people,’ and he quite consciously offered his art in recognition of the debt”

 “Just as treating nature’s bounty as a gift ensures the fertility of nature, so to treat the products of the imagination as gifts ensures the fertility of the imagination. What we receive from nature or from the imagination comes to us from beyond our sphere of influence, and the lesson of aboriginal first-fruits rituals seems to be that the continued fertility of these things depends on their remaining ‘beyond us,’ on their not being drawn into the smaller ego. ‘All that opens the womb is mine,’ says the Lord. First-fruits rituals protect the spirit of the gift by making evident the true structure of our relationship to the sources of our wealth. The salmon are not subject to the will of the Indians; the imagination is not subject to the will of the artist. To accept the fruits of these things as gifts is to acknowledge that we are not their owners or masters, that we are, if anything, their servants, their ministers.”

 “The fruit of the creative spirit is the work of art itself, and if there is a first-fruits ritual for artists, it must either be the willing ‘waste’ of art (in which one is happy to labor all day with no hope of production, nothing to sell, nothing to show off, just fish thrown back into the sea as soon as they are caught) or else, when there is a product, it must be this thing we have already seen, the dedication of the work back toward its origins.”

 “There is a difference in kind between a viable organism and its constituent parts, and when the parts become the whole we experience the difference as an increase, as ‘the whole is greater.’ And because a circulation of gifts has a cohesive and synthetic power, it is almost as a matter of definition that we say such increase is a gift (or is the fruit of a gift). Gifts are the agents of that organic cohesion we perceive as liveliness. This is one of the things we mean to say, it seems to me, when we speak of a person of strong imagination as being ‘gifted.’ In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge describes the imagination as ‘essentially vital’ and takes as its hallmark its ability ‘to shape into one,’ an ability he named ‘the esemplastic power.’ The imagination has the power to assemble the elements of our experience into coherent, lively wholes: it has a gift. An artist who wishes to exercise the esemplastic power of the imagination must submit himself to what I shall be calling a ‘gifted state,’ one in which he is able to discern the connections inherent in his materials and give the increase, bring the work to life.”

 “Sometimes, then, if we are awake, if the artist really was gifted, the work will induce a moment of grace, a communion, a period during which we too know the hidden coherence of our being and feel the fullness of our lives.”

 “If the increase of gifts is in the erotic bond, then the increase is lost when exchange is treated as a commodity transaction (when, in this case, it is drawn into the part of the mind that reckons with value and quantity).”

 “The moral is this: the gift is lost in self-consciousness. To count, measure, reckon value, or seek the cause of a thing is to step outside the circle, to cease being ‘all of a piece’ with the flow of gifts and become, instead, one part of the whole reflection upon another part.”

 “To offer a last illustration that is closer to the concerns of artists, most of us have had the experience of becoming suddenly tongue-tied before an audience or before someone whom we perceive to be judging us. In order to sing in front of other people, for example, the singer cannot step back and listen to his own voice–he can’t, that is, fall into the otherwise useful frame of mind that perceives the singer and the audience as separate things, the one listening to the other. Instead he must enter the illusion (an illusion that becomes a reality if the singer is gifted) that he and the audience are one and the same thing.”

 “The creative spirit moves in a body or ego larger than that of any single person. Works of art are drawn from, and their bestowal nourishes, those parts of our being that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, from the group and the race, from history and tradition, and from the spiritual world. In the realized gifts of the gifted we may taste that zoe-life which shall not perish even though each of us, and each generation, shall perish.”

 “There is a larger self, a species-essence, which is a general possession of the race. And the symbolizations … which express and carry the ‘facts’ of zoe-life constitute the speech by which that larger self articulates and renews its spirit.”

 “The work of art is a copula: a bond, a band, a link by which the several are knit into one. Men and women who dedicate their lives to the realization of their gifts tend the office of that communion by which we are joined to one another, to our times, to our generation, and to the race. Just as the artist’s imagination ‘has a gift’ that brings the work to life, so in the realized gifts of the gifted the spirit of the group ‘has a gift.’ These creations are not ‘merely’ symbolic, they do not ‘stand for’ the larger self; they are its necessary embodiment, a language without which it would have no life at all.”

 “In first introducing these two Greek terms, I said that it is bios-life—individual and embodied—that dies, while zoe-life is the unbroken thread, the spirit that survives the destruction of its vessels. But here we must add that zoe-life may be lost as well when there is wholesale destruction of its vehicles. The spirit of a community or collective can be wiped out, tradition can be destroyed. We tend to think of genocide as the physical destruction of a race or group, but the term may be aptly expanded to include the obliteration of the genius of a group, the killing of its creative spirit through the destruction, debasement, or silencing of its arts”

 “And there are individuals—all of us, I would say, but men and women of spiritual and artistic temperament in particular—who cannot survive, either, unless the symbols of zoe-life circulate among us as a commonwealth.”

 “The true commerce of art is a gift exchange, and where that commerce can proceed on its own terms we shall be heirs to the fruits of gift exchange: in this case, to a creative spirit whose fertility is not exhausted in use, to the sense of plenitude which is the mark of all erotic exchange, to a storehouse of works that can serve as agents of transformation, and to a sense of an inhabitable world—an awareness, that is, of our solidarity with whatever we take to be the source of our gifts, be it the community or the race, nature, or the gods. But none of these fruits will come to us where we have converted our arts to pure commercial enterprises. The Nielsen ratings will not lead us toward a civilization in which the realized gifts of the gifted stand surety for the life of the citizenry.”

 “one of the first things we can say about the gifted state which [Whitman’s] epiphany initiates is that this tension, the ‘talk of mine and his,’ falls away. As gift exchange is an erotic commerce, joining self and other, so the gifted state is an erotic state: in it we are sensible of, and participate in, the underlying unity of things.”

 “Note that in each of these cases Whitman’s body is the instrument of his conversion. The intercourse that leads him to the gifted state is a carnal commerce, one of bread and tongues, hands and hearts. Whitman is what has traditionally been known as an enthusiast. To be ‘enthusiastic’ originally means to be possessed by a god or inspired by a divine afflatus. The bacchants and maenads were enthusiasts, as were the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New, or, more recently, Shakers and Pentecostal Christians. Enthusiasts, having received a spirit into the body, have never been hesitant to describe their spiritual knowledge in terms of the flesh, to speak of ‘a sweet burning in the heart’ or a ‘ravished soul.’ Whitman is no exception, as all our examples so far illustrate. He takes his own body to be the font of his religion”

 “The poet studies inside of objects the way the rest of us might study in the library.”

 “the self takes on identity through its reception of objects—be they perceived lilac leaves or the atoms of the physical body—and the self gives up identity as it abandons these objects. The self is not the reception, not the dispersal, not the objects. It is the process (the breathing) or the container (the lung) in which the process occurs.”

 “Whitman is saying, as he said in the poem about the ‘terrible doubt of appearances,’ that the state in which he comes to life requires that he find a reader to whom he may communicate the gifts of his soul. He exists, he is realized, literally, through this completed contact”

[firstumcschenectady]

“How to Love God” based on  Acts 17:22-31 and John 14:15-21

One of the squeal worthy moments of my life was being asked to serve on the Board of Directors for the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA).  When the official request came in I was surrounded by young, United Methodist clergy people, and the announcement led to an immediate toast.  The Methodist Federation for Social Action has been a justice leader in both the The United Methodist Church and the United States for more than 100 years, starting with worker's rights. Calls for justice expanded, as they do, because any justice work always intersects with other justice work.  By 1940 Mary McLeod Bethune joined the board to help focus the work on combating racism in the denomination.1 

  Our “spring” board meeting, in March, was outside of Philadelphia. (So, it was our winter board meeting.)  Trainers came from “Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training” to work with the board for two days.  It was very different training than I have done before.  Almost all of the anti-racism training I've done has been focused on the personal.  That is, I've often looked at my own behaviors and biases with hope of becoming more aware and less biased.  Those trainings have all been a blessing.  Some educational opportunities I've had have been important in educating me about the history of race and racism in our country.  Those have also been very important. 

However, the training we did at the MFSA board meeting was different than any of those.  We looked at institutional and structural racism.  In fact, our training was really “anti-white supremacy” training, and we looked at the ways that white supremacy lives in our society and its institutions.  One of the most useful ideas I brought home from the training was the idea of the “center” of power and privilege in our society and its contrast, the “borderlands” outside of power and outside of privilege.   

  I'm going to offer here a very extended quote because I don't trust myself to find the language to summarize these ideas quite yet:

 “There is a center in US society that is considered normal: white, male, heterosexual, married, Protestant (Christian), Anglo-American, English speaking, upper middle class, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged and embodying a particular standard of beauty. It is the standard by which all are measured. Around this center exist the rest of us – at varying distances from the center. Some of us are closer and some further apart. The borderlands surround this “center of normalcy.” Power, time, place, and position dominate their interaction. The borderlands is a juicy place. It is a place full of possibilities, chaos, creativity, conflict, beauty. It’s the place where harmony and conflict exist – simultaneously. It’s a place that transcends and defies dualism, where rigid linear reality cannot exist; a place where multiculturalism and diverse identities mix and mingle in a constant ebb and flow of mess, mediation, and mitigation. Our institutions are structured to rein force and maintain the center. When institutions ‘embrace diversity’ people of the borderlands must assimilate in order to come in to the center, though they will never fully belong there. The tension that results is troublesome for the center. It creates conflict that the center is not structured to tolerate. Thus, brining the borderlands into the institution means forcing it to conform, contort, and homogenize. There is peacefulness in the borderlands but not peace. The power and privilege of the center causes separation, divisiveness, and ultimately destruction within the borderlands. The center demands conformity and sameness, making scarce the resources required to creatively and collectively resolve conflict. This is the daily experience of the borderlands. The power of People of Color and other oppressed groups is in the borderlands. Coming to the center disempowers the borderlands and destroys its spirit. Our institutions are defined by rigid boundaries, which isolate both institutions and the center. The challenge for anti-racism transformation teams is to make these boundaries more permeable and to move the institutions to the in-between-ness of the center and the borderlands. Journeying through the in-between-ness brings the center to the borderlands, making permeable the walls and boundaries of the institution. It pushes the center out into the borderlands, making it part of its chaos and creativity, conflict and beauty. In doing this, the borderlands becomes what is normal, diversity and justice become the standard. The borderlands becomes the Beloved Community for which we all yearn.”2 

This model of the world as it is, and as it could be, has been playing around in my mind for 2 months, and I needed to share it with you. It has helped me to see more clearly.  Within this model it was useful to learn that one of the ways the center maintains its power is through the control of resources and “legitimacy” which sets up different groups in the borderlands to compete with each other. It was also helpful, if radically uncomfortable, to be confronted with the idea that charity is a means by which the center deals with its guilt AND attempts to bring the borderlands into conformity. (I'm still squirming.) 

After this training, when I was invited to work on dreaming an anti-racist United Methodist Church at the Change Maker's Summit led by the General Commission on Religion and Race, I was super excited!!  When I got there and started listening, I realized that my newfound knowledge of how white supremacy works and the language I could use to talk about it was ALREADY shared language among the people of color I was in conversation with.  I'd had this MAJOR learning experience that had reformed my thinking, which I'm still struggling to fully understand, and then I realized that I'm still super far behind.  

I think, perhaps, that knowing how far behind I am is an appropriate place to be, at least as  long as I don't get comfortable and stay here.  Part of the way that white supremacy, and “the center” are maintained are by encouraging white people NOT to see the structural and institutional ways that they're maintained.  From within the center, things just look “good, orderly, and right.”  As we looked carefully at the sorts of factors that impact how closely an individual lies to “the center”, I realized that I share ALMOST all of those characteristics, and I have been socialized to seek the sort of power that “the center” brokers, and move myself closer and closer to the center.  

Thanks be to God, I've also been introduced to Jesus, the Bible, the vision of the Torah, and the concept of the kin-dom of God.  The values that I've learned in THOSE places are the values that led me to every anti-racism training I've ever gone to, and are the values that give me a way to counter the narratives and socialization of “the center.”  Now, to be clear, The United Methodist Church as an institution operates with a confusing mix of the values of “the center”, the language of Jesus, and an occasional reflection of the actual values of Jesus.  It is a very confusing place to be.  That mix of values and language pervades all the levels of the church, albeit in different concentrations of each ingredient.  

One of the other take-aways from the anti-racism training is that no person, institution, or experience is truly free from the values, power, and impact of “the center” and we kid ourselves if we think we are.  Yet, together, we are able to make progress anyway, if we try. 

So, loving God and following Jesus offer us a way out of the center and its values, into the borderlands to be part the Beloved Community in all of its beautiful diversity.  God's universal love for all people leads to God's dream of world where people are able to survive and thrive together.  However, even in the Bible, that universal love of God gets held in tension with other values and ideas.   

  For instance, let's take this brilliant speech of Paul's in Acts.  He meets people where they are, and takes what they already know seriously.  He is speaking to people who don't share his experience of God, he started out as a monotheist and was well educated in Judaism.  He is speaking to polytheists, and he makes space for them. I love that he notices to their humility in the altar to the unknown God, as uses it an opening to tell about the God he knows.  I also love that he quotes one of their well-known sayings, “in God we live and move and have our being” and applies it to God as he knows God!  I also think it is really funny that one of my favorite descriptions of God (“in whom we live and move and have our being”) was ADAPTED to fit the monotheistic God.  I think it is beautiful that Paul includes the people he speaks to as being children of God, and indicating that in his faith God loves them all.   

  Of course, then the passage comes to its end, and Paul tells people that they all have to do things his way, and follow his God while abandoning what they've known, or his God will punish them all. SIGH.  Paul thinks there is ONE right way, he knows it, they don't, and they should all do it his way.  That's not so beautiful, nor so welcoming or respectful of the people he is talking to.  He changes from accepting people as they are to telling them how they should be. It is a switch from valuing the borderlands to demanding that they comply with the center.  His speech ends telling them that unless they think like he does, they're of less value.  He requires unity with his ideas rather than joining with the people in solidarity with their needs. 

John presents this differently.  He shows Jesus speaking to people who already know and love God.  The speech says that God has desires for how people act, but the desires are that people treat each other with God's love for them, and build communities centered in love.  This makes it clear that unless love defines actions, people are not truly following God.  There is no space for exceptions so that anyone can be excluded, instead there is a reminder that  the Spirit can help us live as God wants us to live.  We're told we aren't alone, and that doing God's work IS the same same as loving God, and then when we want to seek out God we can do so by loving God's people.  In this brief passage I hear the values of God and Jesus without significant muddling of the center!  (Thanks be to God for moments like that!) 

Loving God is loving God's people.  All of them.  Loving people who are in the borderlands is sometimes a challenge.  So too is loving people who live near the center.  But God doesn't make space for exceptions. Only for love.   

  I'm pretty sure that one of the most important forms of loving God's people is truly seeing, hearing, and knowing each other.  That means helping to loosen the walls between the borderlands and the center, and for me at least, that's going to require continued anti-racism and anti-white supremacy work.  But, thanks to the writer of the Gospel of John,  the Methodist Federation for Action,  and this church, I know that I don't go it alone.  Thanks be to God! 

 Amen 

  1http://mfsaweb.org/?page_id=2692 

  2 Robette Anne Dias & Chuck Ruehle, Executive Co-Directors, ©Crossroads Ministry http://www.crossroadsantiracism.org/wp-content/themes/crossroads/PDFs/The%20Borderlands.pdf

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 14, 2017