24/52 - Politics and Religion (From Your Friend, the Vagabond)

"If I play you a piece of music, that's when you can truly look inside me." 

- Hans Zimmer

Dear Internauts,

Been told I gotta be outta here by the end of the month.

I suppose it's meant to serve as some kinda incentive, but incentive to do what exactly? I would imagine it's to do something I haven't been doing. What haven't I been doing? Well, instead of looking for a job so I can afford to move, I'm now looking for somewhere to move while looking for a job so I can afford to move there.

Of course, the verb "looking" is more than a little skewed.

Let's be real, I can look for and find almost anything these days. That's not the issue. I send you this message on the technological equivalent of a magical bulletin board extending near-infinitely out in every direction. I suppose that in the scope of the infinite, the idea of nearness and far-ness both fade to blankness like a face carved in wood then sanded to obscurity. That is my point about the job market, but it's also my point about identity, politics, and art.

The ability to find a face in the wood is seen as useless to those who define human worth by their ability to rub sandpaper up and down at economically advantageous speeds. To them it's only a matter of getting your hand on the paper and nudging your way into a spot by the timber with a firm handshake and a go-getter attitude.

How many assembly lines does it take to make a worker?

Then again, any philosophy founded on the premise that people have a need to sustain society instead of the other way around is inherently futile as a means to sustain society.

I'm stuck wondering whether I'm ever too political or too personal or too nebulously disconnected in these posts, but that's really a question of whether honest expression is the light, the subject, the reflection, or the shadow of its context.

What is it they say about never bringing up politics and religion in polite company?

Well, I'm not feeling so polite, so let's get political.

I think it's hypocritical and disgusting that we are asked to see the shooting of a member of the government as the somber and tragic victimization of a respectable figure of class while considering our national heroes to be those who continuously and without remorse or recourse kill hundreds of thousands of people who belong to ethnic, national, religious, and/or economic groups against which we are daily propagandized.

Either every act of violence is a tragedy committed against the very heart of our existence OR the specific contents of one's wallet offer the greatest value judgement on the severity of a crime.

People of color are more likely to be shot by police not because they are more likely to be criminals but because they are more likely to be stopped by police due to implicit racial bias. Every single time a person of color is killed by a police officer and the officer is cleared of all charges, it confirms that the legal system parading as shield is actually a knife in the back of liberty. So long as those who are sworn to protect and serve even carry lethal weapons, they stand as a symbol first of death (and obviously at very least of gross misconduct and grosser incompetence).

You wanna talk about some amendment rights which say you can carry death on your hip and support a corporation which runs a huge section of the government via bankroll? At what point does your protection against a tyrannical government require you to actually stand up and do something about it? Because they have all your communications, all your private information, all your transportation, all the biggest toys, and you're wrapped around their finger when it comes to symbols and buzzwords of fear and patriotism. But hey, if you want you can go shoot up a damn ball field. Let's see how much good you do to get your message across when all it does is lead to more empty rhetoric about standing together. Nothing changes in this tyrannical government when schools are razed or millions march. You can't even vote in an election in a country that gets a buzz from the mere whisper of the word democracy, because the electoral college means your vote doesn't mean diddly.

You wanna change something? Let me tell you how it works. You go and stick a gun in someone's face if you think that's the only option and I'll tell you exactly what you'll change.

It was a long, silver revolver like I'd only seen in the movies. So big and polished I was sure it had to be a toy till the barrel made my eyes cross. Everything else in the whole world slipped out of focus except for the roar of his voice and the yellow gleam on that long tube like the sun right before you drive into a midnight black tunnel. Orders like the glare of tanker truck brights smacked my temples as my hands moved to get my wallet, then empty the cash drawer, then lie down on the ground. Don't move or I'll kill you. 

A month later I'd sit with a blood-drenched young woman who'd been beaten to near death by some drunk dates. My head hurts.

Over the next five years I've come to be very well acquainted with the terms Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. While every act of scandalous violence that makes the news is either justified under the law, an act of terrorism, or the result of mental illness, none of those things is ever actually true. We could argue for a long time about the semantics of that, but I only have my experience and biases and look at that so do you.

What I do know for certain is that I had mental illness in my life for at least a decade before anyone put a gun in my face. The biggest cause and trigger for this neurological disorder is a piece of advice I'd received my whole life and have continued to receive from the well meaning but blatantly deluded and unsympathetic.

Any time you see someone in pain or going through hard times and tell them the solution to all their problems is that they've just gotta "have more faith", you're being coldhearted and abusive. It could be a form of gaslighting, or at very least boils down to simply saying, "you're not wishing hard enough." For anyone with as much religious fervor as I fanaticized toward for all my childhood and adolescence the message was clearly, "you're not trying hard enough."

I followed everything I ever was taught would lead me to God's will and whenever I thought I had a hint of the scent of the Christian/moral/right way to go I dove after it, no matter the personal pain or the confusion or any mockery. I would do whatever I was asked by those I looked to for guidance because they were people of God. They were that divine voice in my life, and any task they told me to do I would do. If I made them proud, that meant I made God proud. If I did right by them, that meant I was right in the eyes of the Lord. That meant I was a good person. That meant that I wasn't nearly as broken, lost, and confused as I constantly felt underneath it all.

Now, you may have your own relationship with faith that looks and feels nothing like this. I sure hope if you do it is nothing like this. For me, though, it took way too long for me to realize that I was never gonna be good enough for God. I was, after all never good enough for the mentors, leaders, pastors, adults, and older kids I looked up to. Nothing I did was ever good enough. And nothing I did would ever be good enough...so long as they still needed someone as willing and dedicated as I was for their new ministry. All the hard work and leadership and passion was praised because it meant I worked for them and helped them lead and gave legitimacy to their efforts with my emotional, mental, and physical adoration and obedience. Any time they needed something from me I wasn't willing or able enough to provide, it wasn't just a slight against them—it was a slip down into sin against God.

That's called abuse. That's called brainwashing a child and abusing him for decades. I sure hope that's not your experience, but that was mine.

When my questions and my depression and my inability to live up to an ever climbing, unreachable set of standards all got to be too much, that's when all those mentors and friends and "church family" vanished. Some just cut off all ties. Some first made sure I knew how much they despised me and how much I should despise myself. Some tried to pretend like nothing changed, playing like they could be cool with me and cool with those telling me to go kill myself.

I wanted so much to hold onto the culture and family I'd know my whole life that I stuck around through it all as hard as I could for as long as I could.

About a week and a half after I left the hotel job—still very much in shock, neither sleeping or much leaving the house down in Nashville—I got a call from one such church family member. This was the guy I'd wanted to be since I was a toddler. I looked up to him (i'm now ashamed to say) sometimes even more than I did my own father. He'd noticeably dropped all contact the moment I wasn't in the same state, picking up like he hadn't been screening my calls and emails for the traditional hugs all around the few times a year we'd see eachother. I hadn't heard from him since college, and he was one of the last I expected to call. In some ways, I thought in that moment he was who I needed to hear from the most.

After a brief exchange, he asked me to explain what was going on. I did my best in the haze of crazy I boiled in at the time to do so. Like with my boss when I'd tried to explain how if I hadn't helped the lady would have literally died, I really thought if I was clear enough in my emotions and explanation, this old shepherd of mine would see exactly how his sheep was wounded and know just how to help.

To his credit, I guess, he was consistent. Had this been the me of 6 or 16 then maybe his would have been just the healing rain my dried up psyche needed. Instead, he just said what he always did. He said what he'd said so many times to me, and for the first time in my life, his voice and that script did not ring with the power to which I'd been so accustomed. The love I so needed to hear had vanished from his speech like the flavor in a cheap diet drink though the packaging look so much the same.

"You just gotta have more faith. Be like Job. Or Abraham. Or Paul. Or James. If you just have more faith, then God will get you through this."

There's the rub. If only I had what I didn't. If only I could do what I couldn't. Then the God of everything who could do anything would finally deem me worthy of some time.

I couldn't hear love in his voice. Believe me, I searched for it even harder than I'd searched for some kinda sign of escape from that silver revolver. I could, however, hear the self-congratulatory condescension. He'd just thrown it back up over his shoulder and walked away, winking at me as if to say that's how it's done. Instead of nothing but net it was a wide air-ball. (But being as the ball is imaginary, I guess it was all subjective.)

So there's some politics and some religion.

My politics is that I can't tell you how to live your life, but if I feel up to it, maybe the world might be a better place if you and I worked together on it.

My religion is that it's wack to worship the powerful in a universe so intent on wiping out anyone without an edge. It's the weak who deserve praise. Let's build a temple to the pathetic. We're more forgiving and will understand when resources are diverted for something else. We're used to it.

Don't let this blog fool ya into thinking there aren't those who love me. I was raised in a denomination that officially considers me and anyone else a bit too deviant to be an abomination, but I was also raised by two loving parents who believe in me and only brought me to church because it meant something better for them than it did for me. I hope they know that my disappointment in the institution is not a reflection on them, both of whom I've enormously proud. We don't agree on some things, but that's actually for the best. I love them and they love me, and as I get older I've learned to see that quality beats quantity when it comes to those you keep close.

In that sense I say to anyone who may be worried about the world outside the culture you've known. From someone who often isn't sure—especially at this moment—if there is any kinda future ahead, please know that the possibilities for a new life are always unexpected and the risk is worth the jump. No use wasting your life being anyone else's punching bag or scape goat.

And finally, wherever I end up going in the next few weeks, know that I'm gonna be right here in this third space where we meet. I'll be making music and comics and questions. I'll be "thinking too much" in the words of those who'd rather I just not. I hope that in some way me being so open and obnoxious with my brain rumblings could maybe let you know it's okay to be YOU too.

Thanks for reading,
Odist