What “believing in God” means to me

I believe in God.

There, I said it.

In many communities in the U.S., this is the expected and respectable stance to take. But in the urban, progressive environment in which I was molded—including in universities and some leftist circles I've been a part of—expressing a belief in God is often almost a kind of taboo. The person who expresses it is likely to be immediately summed up and judged as irrational, unintellectual, or unintelligent. The topic of God or spirituality rarely if ever comes up except as the butt of jokes (which I admit are fun to make.)

This is a sad state of affairs, because it means a significant chunk of humanity these days is cut off from a part of the human experience that has shaped us from time immemorial. 

There was a time when I, too, would have said I don’t believe in God. The older I get, though, the more nuanced my understanding of God becomes, and with that also my confidence that it exists.

I don't actually believe that it's possible for any human not to believe in some kind of God. I don't mean to sound provocative or dismissive; I just think it's a matter of conflicting definitions of what "God" means. If someone says to me they don't believe in God, I'm tempted to ask them which God they don't believe in. Unlike Santa Claus, God means something at least slightly different for literally everyone who uses the term. If we define God as a bearded white guy with a staff deciding from a cloud in the sky what happens in the world, blessing some while condemning others to an eternity in hell... then yea I don't believe in that guy either. But man, how far astray the modern human has wandered to reduce something so complex and indescribable to something so concrete and boring!

I've been starting to think that the problem is that modern humans, at least in the Western, post-industrial world, have lost touch with the importance of symbols in human culture. Symbols have always been used to represent complicated things, whether concepts or processes or memories. The symbol is not the thing itself, only a reflection, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. 

In sports, receiving a trophy or medal for an accomplishment has long been a cultural norm. Is there some inherent value in the trophy itself? Certainly not the gold-painted plastic ones I got for youth baseball and soccer. But they still meant something to me. I could pick one up and hold it and remember and feel a connection with that time of life and the journey that the trophy SYMBOLIZED. A nation's flag is not important because of the cloth or colors themselves, but because of everything it symbolizes to a people (and it can symbolize different things to different people). A photograph on the wall, a painting, an old rocking chair--pretty much everything in our physical world has some kind of symbolic value beyond just its image or function.

So with that in mind, depictions of God as a Father in heaven is a SYMBOL for something much greater, and frankly, it's silly to mistake the symbol for the thing itself. Now, I do believe that that outdated symbol of God as bearded white man needs some updating, or at least that it shouldn't be the EXCLUSIVE symbol of God. But my point here is that we need to understand the symbol as a symbol. Just like the bearded guy on the throne, the word "God" itself, like all words, is only a symbol, a reflection, of something infinitely deeper and broader.

So what is God for me? 

God is everything, starting with the infinite patterns, rhythms, and natural laws of the universe that determine the course of things. Laws of motion, gravity, quantum physics, chemistry. Somehow God, those infinite rhythms and patterns, produced something as amazing as a universe with infinite galaxies, and a solar system with an Earth that revolves around a sun in just such a way that it somehow birthed an ocean, and later microorganisms, and then even fish that swam around, and birds, and kept evolving to produce giant furry creatures like giraffes, and monkeys, and eventually the insanely complex organisms that are human beings. I'm only recounting the tiniest fraction of it all, but how unbelievably awesome! THAT, to me, the force or energy that made all that happen, and that continues to bind everything together to work together in some kind of imperfect harmony, is God. Evolution is of course an essential driving force behind that pattern, so it's absurd to me to think of evolution and God as two opposing theories. 

Believe it or not, the fundamentalist Christianity that would deny evolution is relatively new. It's only been a century or so that Christians have claimed that we need to interpret the Bible literally, for example that God created everything in six 24-hour periods. Before then, everyone understood (and many still do) that the Bible is chock full of allegories that symbolize deeper truths. That's why Jesus spoke in parables; there's literally no way to interpret them literally, unless you think he never meant to do more than just talk about stuff like birds and seeds all the time. But as a reaction to a very understandable fear of the drastic, upheaving, uprooting changes to traditional life that came with capitalism and industrialism and urbanization and "modernity" in general, at some point many Christians desperately clung to the Bible as something that could give them a literal, unerring, unchanging, fundamental "truth," and wouldn't allow the slightest questioning of it or consider other ways of understanding God beyond it. It's easier, in a way, to cling to that certainty than to sit with the paradoxes and nuances of life and of God. In the process, they often lose touch with the most important values religion teaches us in favor of tightly controlling behavior and personal matters like people's sexual orientation.

No wonder that anyone with a more "rational" perspective on the world decided to reject that version of God. But the problem is that many atheists and agnostics, from all the way at the other end of the spectrum, have adopted that exact same definition of God. They rejected it instead of worshipping it, but it's the same misguided confusion of the symbol for the thing itself, and it's not at all how God has been understood throughout the vast majority of human history.

An atheist may say that the "God" I described above is just science, not God, and I would respond that we are only arguing over semantics, over what the proper symbol of the pattern and rhythm is. 

Call it science if you want, but I choose to call it God. 

Referring to it as God, and honoring it, praising it, somehow endows our psyche with more hope, faith, and love, because it gives us a chance to align ourselves with it and be part of it. It gives us something to follow, encourages us to PARTICIPATE in the infinitely loving processes of the universe, instead of solely following our narrow-minded egos and our own selfish desires. It’s something to give gratitude for, an emotion that is shown to be connected with well-being and happiness. 

Will it ever be possible to PROVE that the forces I'm describing are "loving" and benevolent, as opposed to completely random? Nope. I know that I FEEL something undeniably loving when I look at a beautiful landscape, when I hear cardinals chirping on a cool morning, when a roar of laughter erupts while sharing stories around a living room. Even in the disgruntled fog of a mid-year staff meeting full of dozens of stressed-out teachers, if I look for it, I can feel it in the solidarity flowing between us. Stop reading this right now and take a slow, deep breath, and you may feel it too. But no one will ever be able to prove it.

Nor, however, will anyone ever be able to prove the opposite. Contrary to popular belief in secular circles, it’s no more logical to claim with certainty that NO god exists than it is to claim that some god definitely does. Neither can ever be proven scientifically, because the question is beyond the realm of science. So in the face of the mystery, I will choose the path that leads to more love and well-being, which also in turn leads people to treat each other better.

On our sabbatical, partly because we spent so much time in the natural world, partly from some of the stuff I've been reading,* I've been thinking about God in these terms a lot. The main symbol that's been occurring to me has been a circle. I've long known, intellectually, that the human experience (and the entire universe) contains ups and downs, expansions and contractions; I imagine my days, my years, my entire life cycling around in a circle. 

But those down times sometimes feel so hopeless, so utterly painful, because there's something in me that doesn't have "faith" in the pattern, that doesn't want to trust that good times always follow bad ones, just like the sun always rises no matter how dark the night, and warm spring air will eventually come and melt away the snow, no matter how bleak and cold winter gets. The task of faith is truly believing, not just in my head but also in my heart and soul, that in the end, everything will be okay. This means not getting overly irritated when we miss our bus, or have to pay more than I expected for a meal, or even worse. The "dark" times are a necessary part of the process, the decay before the renewal, of all existence.

Richard Rohr talks a lot about the story of Jesus' death and resurrection as a SYMBOL for this universal pattern. Bad things happen, often unfairly, like when Jesus was crucified. But the pattern of renewal dictates that death is ALWAYS followed by resurrection, as when an acorn falls to its "death" only to be reborn into an oak tree. Colloquial sayings like "every cloud has a silver lining" and "it was a blessing in disguise" show that an understanding of this pattern, of what I call God, is deeply embedded in our collective consciousness. We all have stories of an experience that was extremely hard for us; but if we're open and faithful about it, years later we're able to see that as bad as it was, something good eventually sprang from it. I'm reminded of Tupac talking about the rose that grows from concrete. He said that if you were to see a rose growing from concrete, you wouldn't criticize it for having wilting petals, you'd be amazed at it, admire and praise it for being able to grow in the first place! He was making a slightly different point about it than I am, but it fits here too as one of infinite examples of God's work; even in unfavorable conditions, God does miraculous things with the beings of the Earth, from flowers to human beings. 

When we lose touch with a consistent acknowledgment and appreciation of God, of the patterns I'm describing, we start to forget this universal pattern, and I believe that that's a huge part of the problem we in the modern, materially-wealthy world find ourselves in. In my last reflection I wrote about how people living in Guatemala generally seem to let things unfold on their own more than we do in the U.S., and I think the issue of God is related. Instead of trusting the patterns, trusting in God that everything will be okay, we do everything we can to control things and fit them into our narrow, egoic interests: we want to make sure we live in the best neighborhood with the best schools, so that our kids can get a perfect education, so that they don't end up at the bottom. What a deep-running fear at what will happen to our children if they don't end up in a “respectable” profession! I can't fault parents for it; the reality is we live in a (Godless?) society based on greed and self-interest, where if you DON'T play this game you could end up poor and marginalized in a system that doesn't care much about the poor and marginalized. 

But we should remember that playing that game is based off of a human-created idea of "success;" and that usually, your average middle-class person's conception of the "dreaded" camp of the marginalized is full of stereotypes based on the idea that certain ways of being are less valuable than others. Here's another reason religion or knowledge of God is important: it teaches us to buck mainstream ideas like that, and that we are ALL equally valued children of God, regardless of status, wealth, outward appearance, etc. We have no business judging different ways of being human any more than we should judge the rose that grew from concrete or the dog who lost a leg. (Of course I'm not saying parents shouldn't encourage their kids to become educated; they should. But the intention should be the broadening of their minds and the learning of useful skills; it shouldn't be for some human-centered idea of success that will shelter them permanently from the inevitable life challenges they'll have to encounter.)

So for me, believing in God and following God's will is about participating in the patterns of the universe.

Once you start thinking of religious ideas and texts symbolically in this way, they suddenly hit different. "God makes all things new" used to confuse me, but symbolically, it makes perfect sense: there will be a renewal after death. Even words as cringy as sin and punishment have a meaning behind them.Part of what makes humans unique--and many creation stories contain some version of this--is that they can choose whether or not to follow along with the patterns or not, in other words they can choose between good and evil.  Sometimes, we selfishly follow our own will instead participating in the patterns. Symbolically, this is referred to as "sin" and results in some kind of punishment, because you will eventually be flung back violently (violent backlash) if you keep trying to bend the patterns of the universe to your own will. If I keep treating people around me badly, it will eventually come back to bite me, as people will stop wanting to be around me and I will eventually be isolated, which is perhaps the worst form of punishment (symbolically: hell) for the social creatures that we are. And collectively, we are about to be punished with the “fury of God” (read: natural disasters brought on by climate change) for the sin of excessive industrialization. The interplay of sin and punishment, understood symbolically, is itself all a part of the pattern. What goes around comes around. Karma.  

The mistake NOT to make here is to think that anytime something bad happens to someone, they deserved it. No, absolutely not. There is plenty of evil in the world, due to humans' choosing evil, and part of the purpose of religion is to help people choose be on the side of correcting those injustices. But what's amazing about the universe we live in is that, again, even when objectively evil things happen, God makes something good out of them, if we only stay present enough to recognize the storm cloud’s silver lining. 

Here's an example. In Guatemala, at one point we felt a little taken advantage of by the American running the place we stayed at. The gas at the place ran out, and he told us we could replace it and that he would reimburse us. We did so. Before he reimbursed us, we asked to stay an extra 4 days, which was about half the cost of the gas. We were hoping we'd still get that half reimbursed, but instead, he made it sound like trading the extra four days for the gas was an even deal. It felt petty to complain, as it amounted to a measly amount, and we had gotten a good deal on the room in the first place. Still, I was frustrated, mostly because it just didn't seem fair, and so I spent way too long fixating on it. The only thing that helped me not to was to constantly tell myself, basically, to have faith! This wasn't going to ruin our trip, and we'd be okay in the end.

Finally, just as I was letting myself accept it, I miraculously found some money in the pocket of a pair of pants I was wearing that had been left behind long ago by a former guest. As I excitedly pulled the wad of dollar bills out and started counting, I was amazed to find almost the EXACT exact amount we felt we'd lost. It was as if God was saying, "Simple-minded ones! I told you to trust!" Do I believe God intervened directly? Not really. But I do believe that it was yet another sign that the universe has a plan, that God will provide. And no lie, it's kinda cool and mysterious that it was basically the exact amount we lost.

So God provided then, and continued to over and over again—all the more when I had faith and kept my eyes open, ready to accept the pattern and participate in it. Which is what Jesus was alluding to when he talked about faith healing people and moving mountains. 

This example has privilege written all over it, I know. I couldn't even begin to try to make it analogous to the situation of so many people in the U.S. who struggle regularly to make enough money to pay rent in a relentlessly unjust and profit-driven society. So maybe my positive outlook here may have its blind spots, I'm willing to admit.

But it's worth noting that it's not usually the poor and oppressed who think they can go without God; it's those who have enough material wealth and privilege that they think they can control everything on their own—and in their arrogance usually make more and more problems for everyone else (climate change again being a good example). Some of the most profound and God-inspired statements I've ever heard came at church, when people experiencing homelessness, whether they were members or just passing through taking shelter, would take the mic after the sermon to respond and offer their testimony. Regardless of what their life looked like to an outside observer, many were still able to recognize God in the pattern of things, and be grateful for whatever they had been given. They were able to embody, much more than me, the faith that I'm trying to promote here.

I hope that this will be helpful to anyone who struggles with mainstream Christianity or religion in general, but senses intuitively that there's something about spirituality that is worth exploring and embracing.

*I can't claim to have come up with any of this on my own. My ideas are always a big synthesis of my life experiences and things I've read. But here's some of what I've been reading lately and probably influenced a lot of this: Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, Adrienne Marie Brown's Emergent Strategy, Octavia Butler's Parable series, Richard Rohr's daily meditations,  Popol Vuh (the Mayan creation story) Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, Beatrice Chestnut's The Complete Enneagram.. Many more I'm sure that I'm forgetting.

Control it or let it unfold? Sabbatical reflections

My fiancé and I recently got back to Cincinnati after about 80 days in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the first of two legs of travel for our sabbatical year. Here's a brief outline of what we did: 

We spent a couple weeks backpacking from city to city and staying in hostels through southern Mexico, then eventually decided we wanted to slow down and spend more time in the places we stayed so that we could get to know people and absorb a little more of the culture. So we ended up spending close to two months in Guatemala. First we stopped in Xela, the second biggest city in Guatemala, to take Spanish classes while living with a host family for a couple weeks. Then we went up to Petén, a rural area in the north covered in rain forest, and spent a few weeks volunteering on farms involved in reforestation projects. Along the way, we passed through a couple more culturally significant cities in Guatemala--Lake Atitlan, Livingston, Antigua, Guatemala City--before heading over to El Salvador for our last eight days, which we split between a hostel in Santa Ana and a couch surfing host in San Salvador.

I'll spare you all the details, but suffice it to say the trip was exciting, challenging, relaxing, stressful, thought-provoking, realigning, meaningful, among so many other things. 

For me, the most beautiful and beneficial aspect about it was just being able to get some space from the environment, lifestyle, and patterns of thinking I'd settled into over the past six years living in Cincinnati. We're fortunate to be able to have this kind of experience. It should be something that every human on the planet is entitled to every few years, and I hope anyone reading this can make it happen someday if they haven't already.

We learned so much while we were away: about the Spanish language, about Central American history and politics, about Mayan culture and traditions, about farming, plants native to the Guatemalan rain forest, tropical fruits, about ourselves and our relationship--the list goes on and on. 

I've noticed that often with traveling, a big part of the learning actually happens when you come back, and the person you've grown into returns to the place you left with a new point of view from which to experience, evaluate and make sense of what you've been swimming in your whole life. 

The most striking thing I've noticed being home this time around has been the perfectionist way with which Americans from the U.S., or at least middle-class and wealthy Americans, view the world. The deeply felt need to tightly control one's surroundings, to do things "right." This contrasted drastically with the laid back, let-things-unfold-as-they-unfold approach to life we encountered on our trip.

One example: shortly after we got back to the U.S., we saw a woman approach a bus that was stopped at a red light, hoping to get on. But that particular bus doesn't have a stop at that particular intersection, so the driver opened the door and kindly informed her that she couldn't get on, all in about the same time it would have taken her to board, pay her fare, and sit down. Of course there was no practical reason not to let her on; it simply violated protocol, the "right" way to do things. Now, the exact same thing has happened to me before, even with the same bus route. But after our trip, it struck me as so odd, even ridiculous. In Guatemala a bus will typically stop for you anywhere along the route, even if it stopped literally ten seconds earlier. Less rigid, less focused on efficiency and the "rules" about the "right" place to get on the bus, which opens up space for more compassion for the person who wasn't quite able to make it to the stop in time. And this was the case even though, ironically, if you miss a bus down there, there will almost certainly be another one coming shortly. We took busses dozens of times, and maybe three or four times waited longer than five minutes. The woman who missed her bus in Cincinnati probably had to wait another 15 or 20 for the next one. 

Another way this cultural difference manifests is in the relationship between humans and animals. Dogs roam the streets everywhere in Guatemala. They don't bother anyone, but regardless, in the U.S., most people would never be okay with unattended dogs walking around their manicured, pristine suburbs. In Guatemala they seem to be tolerated at the very least; people even put food out for them and let them hang out on their doorstep. When we got out to the rural, the coexistence was even more pronounced: pigs and chickens are also part of the menagerie. They walked around freely, grazing along the sides of roads. We figured they must be owned by someone, and when we asked about it we were told they were. Apparently everyone seems to just kind of know whose animals are whose, and they let them roam free to find food wherever they can. Instead of humans needing to be in complete control, animals and humans are coexisting, with nature at the helm. Plus, it makes for many more sightings and interactions with puppies, and kittens, too.

Even this squirrel wanted to coexist...especially when he found I had food.

We also noticed that people were so much more resourceful down there. In the U.S., when you need some material object, what do you do? Go out and buy it. Or nowadays, pick up your phone for a couple minutes and click a button. In rural Guatemala, instead of always buying a manufactured item created perfectly for the exact use you will put it to, people engineered what they needed with whatever was around. Simple benches from a slab of wood and tree stumps, outdoor stoves from leftover cinderblocks and rebar, flowerpots from washed-out water or coke bottles, wild plants used as teas to cure soar throats or as bandages to heal machete wounds, the list goes on. All perfectly functional, and less wasteful. 

Maybe the most pronounced example was the work culture. In the U.S., we literally have a phrase "work-life balance," which shows that we typically treat work as if it is disconnected from life. As if you have a life, and then you go to your work which is not part of it. On the farm in Guatemala, work was much more integrated with life. The first thing we'd do sometimes when we showed up to the farm would be drink a coffee, while enjoying the scenery and chatting with the other folks around. Then maybe we'd discuss what we'd be doing that day, and get started chopping down branches to feed the cows, or planting cacao or coffee or breadnut, or transplanting trees. After an hour or so doing that, we'd head back to relax and chat while someone prepared lunch. Someone may pull down a coconut, chop it open, and pass it around for sips of coconut water. After lunch we'd find another task to do, and the cycle would continue. It felt like a rhythm, a balance between producing and just living, being, with relationships at the center as opposed to productivity-- relationships with nature, with food, and with other humans. We also loved how mothers could take their kids to work with them, and that there always seemed to be kids around wherever we went. It made child-rearing seem much more natural, less stressful and complicated, than back home.

I realize that I'm generalizing quite a bit here. I met plenty of people whose mentality toward work was further along the spectrum toward that of the U.S. I also don’t mean to romanticize life in Central America or less developed countries in general, though I suspect I am some. I'm aware that there are positive and negative aspects to any cultural norm, and I could go back and point them out in each of the ones I described above. For example, the American director of the organization we were volunteering with lamented about how the farms could be producing so much more and making themselves more financially stable if only they took a more diligent attitude toward the work. There is probably truth to this--and I have to admit, I sometimes found myself feeling bored and wishing there were more for me to do--but the owners of the farms, weighing his arguments, seemed to opt for the more relaxed, rhythmic, balanced, and relationally-rich work culture they were used to. They kind of smiled and shrugged when describing his seemingly unquenchable zeal for "improvement." 

Whatever positives to American work-culture there most definitely are, we have to bear in mind a difficult truth: the urge to control things in our environment to the extreme that we do, to be perfectly efficient, to "advance" technologically, is a legacy of white supremacy and capitalism and, in my opinion, a fundamental driver of climate change and the destruction of the planet. Guatemalans may have a low per capita GDP than Americans*, but they are infinitely less responsible for the climate crisis. In fact, reclaiming indigenous practices similar to the ones practiced there, where Mayan culture is thankfully still very prevalent, is going to have to play a big role in whatever resurrection we can hope for as/after the climate catastrophe runs its course.

Not to mention, I don't think it would be at all fair to say that Americans are better off than Guatemalans. Materially, yes, and I certainly believe in creating a world where Guatemalans have the same basic access to the important care and services that we do. But in terms of overall well-being and happiness? I wasn't there long enough to truly know, but my instinct, based on the many interactions and conversations we had with people from diverse parts and backgrounds of the country, would be to say that Guatemalans have us beat. I suspect it has to with the fact that they spend so much more time in community, just being around other people, than Americans. We noticed that they were essentially always with other people, whether their immediate families or the several friends who would randomly stop by to chat for a few minutes every day. Middle-class Americans seem to spend so much time alone, in (comparatively) giant houses, with all sorts of stuff, but very little human interaction. No wonder that so many Americans are terribly lonely. Paradoxically, it's mostly by choice. Once people have money, they often spend it to make themselves more comfortable, but that often means more isolated. I've always believed that capitalism and the inequality it produces are not, in the end, healthy and wholesome for those who reap the material benefits. Which is why the privileged need to be just as invested in forging an equitable society as the marginalized. But I digress...

Many Americans, myself included, have had the perfectionistic need to control and manage deeply engrained in their psyches for generations. I'm struggling with it right now, as I keep revising this post so that it perfectly expresses what I want it to before I publish it. My goal in writing this isn't to convince people to try to change that all at once, but maybe to help them at least become conscious of it, and to be reminded that there are people who are getting by with a much more "let-things-unfold" kind of attitude toward life. 

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*The reason for poverty in Guatemala goes much, much deeper than anything I've described here. The country has had a long history of being exploited by foreign companies (United Fruit) and governments (the U.S. funded the Guatemalan government during their civil war, which left hundreds of thousands dead, persecuted, and displaced). I'm sure there's plenty more that I'm not even aware of. My point is just that even if it were feasible to "advance" economically through a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type of increase in production, if they follow our model, it will only exasperate the global crisis we're in. 

The Rhythms of Battle

 Kalrin knew it was almost his turn to step out onto the battlefield. 

It would be his tribe’s last chance to return home, to avoid the utter shame of defeat. It wasn’t that time was running out. On the battlefield, time was not measured. Every event, every movement, every dance, operated on its own time. The battle could not possibly be concluded by the arbitrary tick tock of a clock. It was done when it was done, when men were either neutralized, or brought home. It did not matter how much time was wasted. Time was a construct of the outside world, with its machines and its clocks. There were no clocks or mention of clocks on the field. 

But while time itself was not a concern, Kalrin knew that opportunities were running out. In this outing alone two men had already been neutralized. In all likelihood, they would not return to the battle. Of all the warriors, he had been selected to be next. He wasn’t chosen by his tribe. The rules of the battle, decided on by the ancestors many generations ago, dictated that the warriors must be lined up in order before the battle can begin. Now, in the last outing of the final battle, fate had it that he was next in line.

 

He donned his helmet and shin guards, grabbed his staff, and stepped out of the cave. As was custom, he did a practice dance and twirled his staff around. The roars, hisses, and cheers of the villagers in the distance did not escape him, but did not concern him either. His focus was entirely on what was before him, aided by the juice of the cocotba leaves flowing through his gums and into the rest of his body.

He knew what he was up against. Just moments earlier, he had watched from the cave as, far in the distance, the wolf den opened, and out came an enemy warrior that Kalrin knew well, walking slowly to the middle of the field, stopping atop a small hill covered in a perfect, dark brown circle. He was answering the call after the one who had come before him, the one chosen to start, had withstood many stages of intense battle, had neutralized dozens of men, but had finally proven himself too tired to go on.

Kalrin approached the field and stopped about 20 yards away from where he knew his opponent would be standing. He did not look up at him quite yet. First, he danced. Breathing deeply, he held his staff before his face and peered at it intently before swinging it around. He then stepped forward, planted his right boot firmly into the ground, pedaling the dirt with his left. He bent his knees and then finally brought his eyes up to his opponent and pointed the staff at him. 

Even though Kalrin had dueled with him before, his heart constricted with a jolt of fear as he looked into the bearded face of the mage before him. Verira, he was called, and known throughout the land as the most deadly of all wizards in the empire. Like a giant, he towered over the small hill upon which he stood, staffless, squarely facing Kalrin with one gauntlet held up in front of his face, eyes barely visible from beneath the brim of his hat, staring him down. Undeterred by his intimidating stance, Kalrin held firm in his own position and stared back. He kept his staff aimed at Verira for a moment, then pulled it back over his shoulder, gently waving it back and forth and awaiting the mage’s dance. 

In an almost indiscernible gesture, the mage shook his head twice as the rest of his body remained squarely facing Kalrin. Then suddenly, he kicked his leg up, stomped on the ground, and hurled a fireball directly at Kalrin. As he threw it, warriors from both tribes all across the field crouched into a position of expectation. 

Kalrin sucked in his belly and lifted his arms to narrowly escape being torched. The warriors in the field exhaled, straightened their legs and relaxed. Kalrin waited, and hearing nothing from the black-robed shaman behind him, stepped back to dance once again.

There were some who, because they did not understand, scoffed at the tedious observance of the dance; who called it superstitious, unproductive, a waste of time. The warriors themselves, of course, never questioned the rituals. To an outside observer, much of the battle itself would appear to be ornamental, overly elaborate or even showy, but every warrior of every tribe understood that all of the ceremony of battle, including the dance, was integrally linked to the battle itself. It was a way to summon the energies of the Gods into the very center of one’s being; to be fully present, conscious, undistracted. The dance was one of many of the cycles and rhythms of the battle. To put an end to it would be to succumb.

There were those who no longer even honored the battle itself, and had given up on it. Too slow, they complained. A bore. His elders had always explained that such people simply do not understand the patterns. “They have been led astray and deluded, believing that there is no value in being, but only in doing; believing that the mind must always be filled, diverted, entertained. The victims of the empire and its depravity are many.”

The final battle always came in autumn, before the last leaves fell. He was reminded of this when he felt a biting gust of cold wind against his face.  Still, he danced, and as he did so, he looked into the distance. He saw warriors from his tribe in the field, clad in red. Three of his brothers. One to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead, each temporarily safe in the middle of a protected haven of dirt, but surrounded by the enemy on all sides, wearing the same black hats and striped gray robes as their leader Virera.

“I just have to bring them home,” Kalrin muttered to himself. “I can’t leave them stranded out there.” In this final outing of the battle, he wasn’t even worried about whether he would make it home himself.

Again, he stepped back in, dug in his heels, pedaled, bent his knees, pointed his staff directly at Virera, and waited. Again, the warriors in the distance held their breath and crouched in expectation. Again, Virera kicked his leg high, stomped on the ground, and hurled a fireball that Kalrin had to back away from in order to dodge. Again, the silence of the shaman. Kalrin relaxed as he knew he had now gained a slight advantage.

Again the dance. Another ball of flame. This one missed below his knees. Virera reared his head back and cursed the Gods loudly before spitting and preparing his next spell.

Kalrin felt a strange mix of relief and tremendous pressure. One more miss and he would bring one of his brothers home. But one wasn’t enough. And accepting a deal for one would mean he would give up his chance to bring them all home in one fell swoop. He would have to pass up on his own chance and leave his faith with the next warrior in line.

No one knew the exact reasons behind the rhythms and rules of the battlefield. Why a mage could cast only a certain amount of spells before letting a warrior walk and facing the next, or why the battle was waged in nine stages, as opposed to ten. But the ancestors had determined these things, and everyone knew there must be good reason for them. No one questioned the rhythms and rules any more than they questioned the four seasons, or the waxing and waning of the moon. 

Kalrin looked to an elder to the left of the field for a sign, knowing what he would receive. 

Again he danced, and stepped forward. Again Virera’s fireball. As the elder had instructed, he refrained from moving his staff. It was custom to make a mage prove himself after throwing three wayward balls, so he watched this one pass directly in front of him. From behind him he heard the shaman yell “Aiiiiiieee!” and felt his chest constrict.  

Two more chances. He danced, peering at his staff and summoning his concentration once more. He looked out beyond the field and saw the villagers looking on. So many gazes filled with both hope and apprehension. They clung to their bread and sausage to calm their stomachs, guzzled erbe to calm their nerves. This final battle was being held in his tribe’s home town of Ycnic, and he recognized his compatriot villagers by their red garb. They were the ones he was here for. 

Scattered between them in smaller numbers were those clad in gray and black stripes, who had presumably made the journey here all the way from the enemy’s city of Yern Wok.

For far too long the people of Ycnic and similar villages had suffered at the hands of the empire, whose capital was seated in the hellish, mercantile, mechanistic Yern Wok. Because of the city’s affluence and opulence, they were able to hire their warriors like mercenaries. This luxury was not available to Ycnic and other villages like it, none of which had the riches to recruit the most famous warriors in the empire, but instead had to raise them up directly from their surrounding farms. Kalrin himself was such a farm-bred warrior from the outskirts of Ycnic. 

Yes, this battle was about much more than him and the warriors of the tribe. This was about the people of Ycnic, the people of all villages standing up to the most dominant, unforgiving, oppressive tribe of them all, and the greed and avarice that it had come to symbolize. It was about justice for the common man and his kin.

And for that reason, battles had always been a family affair. Villagers came in companies from far and wide, to take respite in the lush green field and witness the dance of the battle. Whether their tribe won or lost, all honored and revered the battle first. Just a few stages earlier, at an opportune break in the action, Kalrin had watched as villagers for both tribes stood up and sang together, of one voice, of one mind, of one accord, a song whose words and tune they had all learned from the elders when they were children; a song that had been passed down from the ancestors generation after generation, even if most did not know its origins. All sang with heartrending nostalgia of being taken out to the battlefield, of never coming home. Kalrin had always admired the brief but profound sense of peace and oneness that the song evoked in the crowd. It was sung ceremoniously before the end of every single battle, without fail.

Yes, the battle was much more than just a battle, and the rituals much more than superstition or entertainment.

And here, tonight, Kalrin found himself in the exact situation he had dreamed of ever since he was a child in Ycnic. The final battle of the season. The final outing of the battle. The final chance to bring his brothers home and claim victory.

These thoughts and others all flashed through his mind within seconds as he danced, but he maintained an awesome sense of calm, steadiness, and awareness. He pointed the staff at Virera, who stared at him from beneath the brim of his hat for an extra couple of moments that felt like a lifetime. Once again he kicked his leg up, stomped on the ground, and hurled a fireball. 

In a split-second, Kalrin decided that this was the one, and keeping his eye on it, swung the staff with all his might. At the last second, and seemingly defying the odds of physics, the glowing white orb suddenly sank beneath his staff. 

Kalrin cursed for having let himself be deceived. Virera’s magic was strong; he should have guessed that such a one was coming.

Last chance. The cheers, hisses, and whistles from the crowd droned in his ears. It defied logic, but somehow, despite the heat and pressure of the moment, Kalrin felt a buzzing in his head, a warmth in his chest and abdomen, and a profound sense of peace in his soul. He took a few extra steps in his dance as he stepped back into the box and faced Virera. As he eyed the bearded mage shaking his head with his eyes barely showing, something happened. He suddenly understood the spell that was to come. He could not have possibly explained it, but he knew. He gripped and ungripped his staff, but something told him not to point it. He simply waited for Virera to kick his leg, stomp, and sling what could end up being the last fireball of the season. In the distance, the warriors all crouched and held their breath.

Kalrin lifted his leg and planted it forward as he swung the staff with all his might. Crack!! For a moment the whole colosseum appeared to stand still. Kalrin watched as the ball sailed high above Virera, who anxiously snapped his neck back to watch it. Filled with an incredible surge of excitement, Kalrin began to sprint out onto the field. This was it. This was their chance. He saw his red-clad fellow warriors running, too, jumping almost, necks craned toward the ball that was still soaring through the air as Kalrin reached the first haven. 

Could it be? The stuff from the myths of old?

As the ball reached its crest and began falling, the warrior in the center of the field was sprinting backward toward the wall that divided him and the rest of the warriors from the villagers. Desperately, but with laser focus, he tracked the ball, knowing that the unexpected had just occurred, that the battle may have just turned completely, and that it was up to him and only him to stop the ball from clearing that wall into the crowd of villagers, where it would never be found. The rules had always dictated that any ball that goes over the wall counts as a homecoming for the warrior who hit it and all of his tribe’s warriors on the field. He streaked back, felt himself approaching the wall, took two steps up the wall and stretched his gauntlet up as far as was humanly possible. But the ball sailed just over his reach.

As Kalrin began to register what was happening, he did not even try to contain his joy and excitement. If there were ever a time where it was permissible for a warrior to show emotion, this was it. His arms shot up as he rounded the first haven and touched the bag, catching a glimpse of Virera, head down, walking off the field and back to his cave. The red villagers of Ycnic were beside themselves in jubilation. It was all over, and no one could prevent that, but the rituals still dictated that he had to circle the entire field, touching every base, before returning home. As he rounded the third base and headed for home, he saw pure and utter ecstasy in the faces of the three brothers he had safely sent back home, as well as everyone else from the tribe who had stormed out from the cave and the wolf den to greet him.

He would go down in history and fame, but he was not thinking about that now. He was not thinking at all. His heart, body, and soul were all unflinchingly headed toward the embrace that awaited him as soon as he made it home.

The villagers in the surrounding cottages and taverns of the village of Ycnic, hardened by all the seasons of drought and scarcity, wept tears of joy as they heard a familiar voice booming through the loudspeakers: And this one belongs to the Reds!

Welcoming the scary new world

We're kidding ourselves if we think 2020 was just a fluke of a shitty year. One month into 2021 and we're not anywhere close to being out of the mess we're in. A worldwide pandemic that is exacerbating the already existing racial injustice and economic inequality. Climate change ravaging the planet, displacing more people every year. Homelessness and food insecurity on the rise. I don't need to go into the details for you; those who have ears have already heard.

It's no longer 2020; it's the 2020s. Things are going to get worse before they get better. And there is no going back to normal.

This is scary, and we are all already struggling, in some way, with the loss that this has brought about. This is real, and hard, devastating, and there's no way I could ever try to minimize it. 

But every loss also comes with opportunity. Every period of chaos and disorder is eventually followed by a period of reordering. If we can get our priorities straight, what emerges from this will be substantially better than what we had before. 

"Normal" was never good, certainly not the best we can do, for the vast majority of people. Those at the bottom know that inherently; sometimes the folks more in the middle have just enough to believe they're making out just fine. But even people like me working in relatively well-paying, middle-class jobs would benefit from the wide-scale reordering of society that needs to occur. Consider: even before the pandemic, I still had zero control over my working environment; I still had to work way over my contractual hours to feel remotely competent (always a struggle as a teacher with 150 students on the caseload); I still felt disrespected and exploited by the powers that be on a regular basis; I still had my hands tied because losing my job would mean immediately losing benefits, and shortly afterward the ability to pay my mortgage and student loans. Yes, I lived in relative comfort and privilege--but still didn't have the freedom to fully cater to my and my community's well-being and pursue my potential as a human being. Sound familiar to anyone? Most of us put our heads down and trudge through it silently, knowing that we have it better than many, and fearful of a culture that slams anyone with the audacity to envision a life free of exploitation as being lazy and entitled.

Now is the time for radical change in the way we do society. We're already seeing massive shake-ups in our institutions, and I think this is only the beginning. School is being revolutionized in ways we can't even yet imagine. Protests the likes of which we've never seen before erupted last summer, and best believe they will return. Social media, as problematic as it is and will continue to be as long as it is owned by for-profit companies manipulating our decisions and selling our data (watch The Social Dilemma on netflix if you haven't already), has radically democratized media and the way we share information. I was just watching a local radio show the other day on facebook and impressed at how an ordinary person with talent can get a message across throughout the city, without the need for massive amounts of capital to get something started. The GameStop episode is another hilarious example of the old-guard losing its power due to some collective action on the part of everyday people. More examples abound.

My point is to say that we have to start reimagining our world. We can't be deluded with naïve plans to go back to a sense of normalcy that was only truly wholesome for a tiny minority, if that. New ideas, new possibilities. Young folks can't allow themselves to be held hostage to outdated hierarchies and expectations; it's up to us to bust those up and pursue something better.

I'm excited.

Becoming opinionated, yet humble

I am an opinionated person. And yet the more I learn and grow, the more I realize how important it is to counterbalance strong opinions with humility and an understanding that in another context, or another period of my life, I would see or have seen things differently.

  

In high school, my opinions were at best about trivial matters, like when I argued with friends profusely that the Cincinnati Reds should resign hometown hero Barry Larkin to a 19th season. Eventually, as my sphere of concern widened and I became more aware of issues of greater societal importance, my opinions about those matters became equally adamant. To this day, I remain firmly committed to certain ideologies and worldviews, spend lots of time researching and questioning them, and can make decent arguments with relevant evidence to support them.

But what I've begun to realize is that if we are open-minded, and are blessed with the opportunity--or are forced without choice-- to remove ourselves occasionally from the particular context in which we're living, our ideas will naturally shift. Humans are social animals, and we're so incredibly adaptable. Our views are never objective, but an ever-changing amalgam produced by our individual brains processing, synthesizing, and evaluating the millions and millions of stimuli we receive each day. This is obvious, and yet we lose sight of it. Or we subconsciously think that somehow WE were the chosen ones, and were blessed with the exact environmental circumstances needed to show us the RIGHT way of looking at things.

I did quite a bit of traveling in my twenties because I was so eager to see, learn about, and participate in lifestyles that were completely different from what I was used to. Maybe it has been the time I spent immersed in other countries and languages that has led me to the perspective I'm sharing here. And yet when I got back from Rome, after an entire year of living in an academy in which the only permitted languages of communication were Latin and Ancient Greek (no joke), I was so confident that I had figured out the meaning of life and had all the answers about what the world needs to right itself. It went something like this: Everyone just needs to study the texts of ancient thinkers and writers who spent their entire existence pondering life's big questions. We study the texts, apply the principles to our own lives, and thereby make ourselves better people, and influence the people around us for the better. Simple as that!

Ha! Eight years later, I see how off I was, first and foremost because these all-knowing authors were all men and rooted in western culture, but also because the approach itself favors the intellectual at the expense of other ways of knowing and being valued in many other parts of the world. It also ignored material conditions of people, i.e. social class, and assumed everyone has equal access to pursue that type of lifestyle. In emphasizing the inner-life of the mind, it pretended politics and systems of oppression don't exist.

Don't get me wrong: I benefited greatly from my time in Rome and the worldviews I developed as a result. I changed from a young man whose goals and aspirations were centered around his own personal fulfillment and happiness, to someone who has since then dedicated his life to at least attempting to make himself and the world better. In addition, spending a whole year in such an insular community with very little access to the outside world gave me a critical eye that helps me resist conforming to the unhealthy norms of our capitalist, consumerist, individualistic society, which I am extremely grateful for. But I would cringe if I were ever forced to listen to conversations I had with people shortly after returning home, when I was so dogmatically tied to my ideas that anytime someone brought up an alternate one, I would receive it with intense judgment*. This isn't to say I did no good by expounding my ideas at the time. I know that I've influenced many in a positive way by doing so, and also by living out (mostly) what I preach. But I could have done it with more humility and less judgment, and the world would be better for it.

   Though my views have evolved tremendously--and I can credit myself for being open-minded enough to allow that to happen-- I know that I still sometimes approach conversations with the same dogmatic certainty. I may have convinced some folks to view things differently, but also damaged some of my relationships and my ability to be more intimate with people I love, which I deeply regret.

Over the past year, due to both COVID and my own personal crises, I've had to do some serious self-reflection. I've recognized that many of the political and other debates I get in, which on the surface seem to be about ideas and viewpoints, are actually rooted in much deeper emotional or even physiological drives. Why is it that I am so intent on getting others to see the world how I do? At its core, I think it has to do with a need for belonging. I dream of a better world, and when I run up against people telling me either they don't share that dream, or think it's unrealistic, (or share the dream but think it will be achieved simply by electing the right person/people/party) I feel isolated, alone, and like I will never find a community that shares my values and wants to work toward a world that I want to live in. This core feeling of being left out stems from childhood experiences, I'm sure. So as much as political discussions SEEM to me to be about the ideas themselves, the drive is parent to the thought. (And while the particular drives are different with different people, this is not just me; it's universal, though it takes some soul-searching to acknowledge it.) It would be helpful for me to remember that in dealing with people whose life experiences, backgrounds, and hence views are different from mine. 

Please don't mistake this for relativism. I'm not claiming that all ways of looking at the world are equally true, or that there is no truth. I believe that collectively, we do have access to universal truth. Clearly, the conspiratorial nonsense spouted by Qanon supporters,for exampe, are objectively false. BUT, it's important to remember that from THEIR SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVE, they believe them to be true (or at least some do). And we, too, have all had strong opinions that we later realized were not true. So the question becomes how do we have humility, and even compassion toward folks with differing beliefs, however outlandish? After all, Qanon supporters weren't born into a vacuum; they are living in late capitalism in America. However ridiculous their theories, they stem from a realization that the world, indeed, is falling apart at the seams. The problem is the deluded, unhealthy, and ultimately destructive way that they try to make sense of it all. If you know some conspiracy theorists--who doesn't in today's world?-- is there a way to follow them in their thinking, with empathy and care, and then ask questions that might put some cracks in what they're saying? (Disclaimer: there's only so much patience we can have. Folks that are out there committing or encouraging violence in the name of bogus conspiracy theories, or whatever else, need to be immediately stopped and dealt with. But I still think it's important to understand that they are humans who got to this point through a set of social conditions and individual experiences, not just inherently evil or stupid people destined to be where they ended up.) 

All of this is to say that we should be mindful that at any given moment in which we have a strong opinion, we are most likely, in fact I would argue definitely, overconfident. This does NOT mean we should hold them back because we are not 100% sure about them. In fact, I would argue that people have a duty to express their opinions on matters of importance, both so that they can provide new and important perspectives to those around them, and so that they can allow their own views to be challenged. But democratic debate and dialogue that actually seeks to further our understanding of politics, the world, life, this whole being-a-human thing, requires some humility and an understanding, felt deeply within the body and soul, that we don't have all the answers and that our opinions are bound to evolve with time. 

*Those who were victims of this know who they are. Please forgive me!

This blog

 I think about things a lot. When I see family, loved ones, colleagues, and even just acquaintances, I share my ideas. But I've always wanted to write more, to share them with a wider audience, and hear back from people who engaged with them and can offer complementing or alternative perspectives. What keeps me from doing so are the deadly twins of perfectionism and vanity (or concern with how I'm perceived). I've come to realize that I need to trash both of those, that my growth and healing as a human being depends on it. 

So here goes: a blog dedicated to sharing all the random ideas percolating in my head, as well as practices I'm adopting in my life. I know that some day (probably not too far off) I will look back at some of them and realize that I was off. Worse, I'm sure the folks reading will come to that realization much earlier than me, and let me know about it. It may be uncomfortable, but I'll get over it. I do think that I have creative ideas about the world and our place in it, and I hope that some of the things I write will generate enthusiasm and debate, and help folks think about things differently and adopt more wholesome and liberatory practices and routines in their lives and communities. So it's worth it.