Another week, another moment to self-reflect internally and externally.

I made mention to my partner last Saturday that writing up the post covering the previous two weeks felt like “old-school” blogging. I didn’t care about the flow, really; I didn’t care what any one was going to say. I just wrote. As a writer–I’ve been one since I was 5–it was a liberating experience because I spend my writing time now writing for other people and attempting to preemptively figure out where the weaknesses are in my thoughts so to receive the least amount of criticism. All of my writing currently is literally up for review in some kind: sermons, poems, prose, dissertation, book reviews, etc. And while I know the value of that type of writing (and by the way, if you didn’t know, all of those genres I just listed all have different grammatical and syntactical and logical demands), I think (maybe?) I need more moments of just writing as if no one was looking, or…rather, more moments where I’m writing as if I don’t care about who sees what…I think that help builds confidence in the end…

Do you remember just getting on the blog and word dumping? Maybe some of you remember MySpace. I didn’t really use it. Do you remember the time before the time you felt compelled to build a brand or a platform? When you knew only your friends were reading and so why bother with everything being perfect as if you were submitting a journal article for peer review? Where you just wrote and let that stream of thought weave and wend, bend and twist, curl and furl where ever and whenever it wanted?

I miss that effervescence (a word I nearly spelled correctly on the first try!). Everything has become about production of a product that is unique, but what’s most fascinating about that pursuit is… It all becomes the same. I think being yoked into one brand or one platform (I’m this person, I’m this message) renders one into an intellectual division of labor that is destructive and violent to the inner world of the writer. I think it limits growth. While writers should always be about changing some part of the world in some way with our words, I don’t think we must then brand that, nail it down, and let that box suffocate us. If there’s any “platform” I want it’s one disoriented toward production and oriented toward people, a platform upon which I stand and holler…things practical, or things insightful, or things interesting, or things just flat out odd, or things that are still in process and as soon as they come out I think…oh, wait, I need to rethink that…

Not all writing can be written and released into the world in such a fashion (I’m aware, see above), but maybe some of it should be so we writers don’t forget how much this art brings us life, so that when we return to our academic or creative projects, we have something more (better?) to give them rather than a hope and a prayer that we’ve upheld our platforms and brand. When it’s all said and done, and we go the way of dust and dirt, that which we’ve left behind does not and will not carry our platform and brand, it will have it’s own message which will change in each era it’s encountered, held by hands different and distant from ours, read by eyes and ears and fingers asking questions greatly altered from ours, internally digested and externally practiced in environments, societies, cultures, atmospheres, (worlds? galaxies?), moving in trajectories and operating in and out of boundaries we can’t even imagine.

Let us write with intention and substance, but may that intention and substance be not for our glory and fame, but for the good of the world.

With that said, here are some fun things from my week:

1. I promised some images of the gardens (herb and regular). Here is the fulfillment of that promise:

2. Project “Delete-The-Juniper-Tumors” is underway; here are some images from that endeavor:

3. This morning The younger of #TheBrothersLarkin, #TheFury, and I went to the “Enough is Enough” March for Our Lives protest and march to end gun violence. It was encouraging to see such a great turnout. It was discouraging that it wasn’t bigger.

I appreciated the speakers. It takes a certain amount of strength to get up and sound your voice out against such horrific violence, especially since this issue touches on amendment rights. (I won’t go into that here, that’s another post, of the academic kind, though, fwiw, how does one pursue the rights of life and liberty and happiness if it’s potentially threatened at every turn by an amendment right?) The thing I really want to mention is that many of the speakers made an appeal to “common sense”. Okay, great, thanks Thomas Paine. However, “common sense” is just sense that is commonly held. It’s not guaranteed to be “right” or “good”… It’s the sense of the dominant culture or group; in other words, it’s just common. It’s common sense for me to wear pants when I need to in 2022, but at one point that was the furthest thing from common sense. Common sense shifts and changes and doesn’t have a moral quality about it (thinking of moral virtues) apart from fitting in with the dominant culture or group. And, to be honest and quite blunt, I kind of think “common sense” is what has gotten us here in the first place because we have ceased to have enlightened sense motivated by narratives that exist outside of the ones peddled to us by the dominant culture and group. I think it’s time to be very honest about how infected our common sense is by narcissistic systems and the ideologies and mythologies of whiteness, heteronormativity, and androcentricity (note: I didn’t say anthropocentricity). This is why I appreciate regular encounters with my sacred scriptures and the principal character in my tradition: Jesus of Nazareth the Christ. Regularly telling and explaining his story that is (for Christianity) God’s story in the world for the oppressed and disenfranchised–the story of divine pathos for the entire cosmos–reminds me that there is a need for me to come to the end of my narratives, mythologies, and stories that I’ve spun from within the systems I’ve been raised and die to them. And then in receiving new life in divine love and being (re)located in God I take on new ones that then elevate my view of the world, of my neighbor and of myself. If I just rely on “common sense” I’m most to be pitied and will most likely lead a life that merely perpetuates the violence we are seeing now. I’d like some more appeals to “uncommon sense”.

I was nervous to participate not because I waver on this issue (I don’t) but because I don’t often feel safe in my community. As someone who does not ascribe to views of the majority, I’m aware that I (and my family and friends) could be targets of anger. This protest had emotion attached to it, but it directed toward change and action; not hatred and destruction. Nonetheless, there’s always that one … what if… It didn’t help when a man showed up who was displaying is gun on his hip and then proceeded to record everything from beginning to end. Even when he was asked to stop. The police were of no help because he wasn’t really doing anything illegal (let’s make a distinction between “wrong” and “illegal”). But still, why do that…why film children even when you’ve been asked to stop. My friend and I put our bodies in the way as much as possible to block the children. The entire thing felt like a weird af flex; this is why I don’t feel safe here

Okay that’s it…see you next week, beloveds. I’m super glad you’re here and thanks for stopping by.