Faith and Jesus play out in the real-world imaginations of people who need this kind of horseshit to survive. Life is hard, or at least people who tell themselves this about Jesus eventually see that reality can be kind of a bear at times.
From a range of silly Christian applications force-fed into one's brain because everything always, all the time is, after all, about you and yer buddy, Jesus, right? Christianity mixes love and hate in a vicious, toxic poison for your soul.
His Hands Would Bleed
He played the drums so hard when we were young, in high school.
My rock and roll bandmate, his hands would bleed, reminding me, for all the limitations on my own religious education, of poor Jesus and his bloody palms.
Now, he, the drummer not the savior of all mankind, says he finds.
Little passion for his work.
Of course, we’re old men now but to me, the real difference is in the words play and work.
Also, addendum here:
He’s become a devout Christian who keeps forgiving me for shit I don’t think needs any forgiveness. Plus, when he hears criticism of his magical thinking faith beliefs, he immediately identifies with Peter the apostle insisting on being crucified upside down as a salute to the big boss man who Peter had denied three times before his cock crowed, or something like that.
This martyr simplex of my bloody-handed former percussion pal is not conscious because despite his deep devotion to J.C. and his irregular reading of “scripture” he wouldn’t remember this amusing Peter-crucifixion-anecdote to save his life.
Bottom line, people are fuckin’ stupid and when they show or tell you they are stupid it’s best to believe them before they show up with their Bushmaster semi-autos and take out all you sinning motherfuckers.
Cassidy v Trump: Reality’s Blatant Truth and Christian Purity Running Amok
Hardly a fair contest
If you weren’t around for the Watergate Hearings of the 1970s, you won’t remember that in Real Time, Live, John Dean gave compelling testimony regarding President Nixon and his top advisors' participation in and cover-up of the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in the Democratic Party Headquarters.
You won’t remember that the initial reaction of Nixon and his loyalists was to call Dean a liar and suggest he was solely responsible for all that was wrong with the world.
John Dean was more than “thrown under the bus” he was lynched, set ablaze, and chopped to pieces, then thrown under the bus. Or at least that’s what his enemies tried to do to him.
The recent treatment by Trump loyalists of Cassidy Hutchinson strongly resembles what happened to John Dean. Trump himself has said that everything Hutchinson swore to under oath and the threat of perjury was ALL LIES. Everything. All of it. Lies, lies, LIES.
John Dean was saved when another Nixon underling, Alexander Butterfield who was not privy to any of the wrongdoings that had happened and were still happening, mentioned that Richard Nixon had audio taped every Oval Office meeting. This meant that everything John Dean stated could be proven or disproven simply by listening to the tapes. Unbeknownst to John Dean, he had receipts.
Now, in Trump's world, with the calling of other witnesses to the events Cassidy Hutchinson has sworn she saw, we will hear verification of her accounts of the events, or she or they will be guilty of and charged with perjury — there is no grey zone in this. Cassidy Hutchinson is lying or Donald Drumpf is falsely, cruelly, and obviously slandering her. It’s black and white.
Who do you want to put your money on, Cassidy or the Tangerine Imbecile?
Hint: John Dean is still around. He writes strong, smart pieces posted here on Medium. He appears on frequent TV news programs offering insights into the machinations of government malfeasance. He has lived what appears to be a fairly good and happy life and has done so ever since those rough few years around Watergate, as that word became synonymous with criminality, lies, and shame.
Like Joseph McCarthy, Roy Coen, like Nixon and his co-conspirators, like Hitler and Goebbels, big-time lying creates big-time consequences. Donald Trump is about to finally discover this, for the first time in his horrible life. He’s being brought down by a single person willing to stand up and start the ball of truth rolling down the hill.
Watch and see. And if I were you, I wouldn’t put your money on Trump to win this one. If you doubt my read on this, ask John Dean.
But better yet, if you were casting a movie and you needed a perfect virgin mother of God, someone pure and lovely and holy as fuck looking, could you find a purer and more perfect example of Christian love and truth and beauty than Cassidy Hutchinson? I mean look at her! Even absent the ubiquitous gold cross hanging just above a perky cleavage, could she look any more the part?
Fuck no, man, Trump is screwed.
Another Everlasting Self
Sometimes the poems of others can help us know-it-alls.
Tracy K. Smith is a poet I’d never heard of because like most poets I vastly prefer MY poems to anyone else’s (But I digress); Tracy, wrote a short poem about how a human walking in from the rain And a dog, doing likewise, tracking in mud, was kinda the everlasting same, dammit all.
Only I added the “dammit all,” but I bet Tracey K. Smith won’t mind because after all, writing poems, even short ones, and reading them is a collaborative condition too, (Kinda like bringing mud into the house) and everlasting self oughta talk in the words that feel best and right, bless it all.
Maybe this is the essence of grace as discussed by Christians all the fuckin’ time, and faith, which is a gift, they say, kinda like dogs and muddy floors and every other blessed thing life offers us, amen and shit, you know.
No? Never mind then but thank you Jesus just the same.
The Wild Ones in the Wings
Nathaniel Hawthorne articulated how there were many paths to martyrdom for…
You know who you are; the ones for whom the rules made little sense, the rewards felt hollow, empty — your courage so often went unrecognized or when acknowledged, mocked, scorned, or otherwise.
“If they give you lined paper, write sideways.”
You’ve always known you were different than the others; sometimes they rewarded you but more often, the opposite.
You were the ones who told the truth, as best as you could see and articulate it, who suffered rejection and misunderstanding, and who learned to cherish your place out there, way off on the side, away from the mass of others.
You were always the wild ones in the wings.
THE SADDEST GOODBYES
My Friend Sherry
The last time I saw my friend Sherry was about a week before she died.
I’d known her for over 20 years and she was wealthy good-looking and generous over all those years.
She was a true friend and someone I knew I could rely on and who I believe felt the same towards me.
She was still partly all of those things the last time I saw her. But she was mostly aware that she was going to die very soon and she was as ready as I think anyone can ever be.
Her explanation of the suicide cocktail pills she had was a bit confused and confusing.
One moment she said she’d need to swallow 1500 and was unsure if she could manage to get that many down. But a few minutes later she thought maybe she’d only need 15 or so.
She wasn’t really clear on what it would take or when, or even if she was going to take them, but since her cancer was incurable and had been found initially in her brain; she wanted to be sure not to wait too long.
She wanted to have the option of leaving under her own terms because it would be the last small bit of freedom and power she’d have.
She’d been a leading light in our city’s social life: fearless, funny, honest, and always up for laughter.
At our last meeting, I told her that if she needed any help leaving this life, I’d be willing to assist her.
Her choosing the time to leave when no other choices were left to her didn’t seem to me then, and doesn’t seem to me now, like suicide —
It was more like simple acceptance.
At my offer to help, she smiled and seemed to understand. And I think she appreciated it.
I knew, and know, a lot of shit about Sherry most people don’t, and won’t ever know, because she can’t, and I never will tell.
I can assure all that she was a classy dame from a strange background, but she’d transcended all that through guts and smarts and good looks, and as her time to die approached she was not going to let her illness defeat her.
Destroy? Well, yes, there’s not much one can do about that,
But defeat?
Nope, wasn’t going to happen.
Her old friend Donald, who had set up this final get-together for the three of us, was shaken and sad and turning to Jesus and God to help him.
But Sherry and I, looking square into one another’s eyes, knew, in our bones and hearts that there isn’t any God out there helping or ignoring us for that matter.
And that in the end you’re on your own.
That’s just the way it is.
The last few moments with Sherry, she looked at me and smiled and the clarity in her big brown eyes said more than any of the words we had exchanged.
It was the same clarity I’d seen in my mother’s eyes the last time I saw her before her brain cancer killed her too.
A clarity of self-knowledge, acceptance, and the desire to enjoy, as much as their difficult circumstances allowed, their final breaths.
I don’t know whether Sherry took her death cocktail or not.
But two weeks after that last meeting, she was dead.
So goodbye Sherry, my dear old friend.
I’m glad that in the end, I could hear you whisper to me, without words, a final loving message: “Relax, you’re going to die one day, too.”
I know darlin’. I know.
