Tag Archives: writing

#2689

Posted on by
Reply

I am so tired of selling and being sold
convincing and being convinced
educating and being educated
marketing and being marketed to.

I am so tired of this constant commerce
of this constant vying for my/your
attention/money/time/support/approval
subscriptions/likes/donations/views/retweets.

I am so tired of subject matter experts
and after-action best practices;
of top-10 clickbait article headlines
and 101 basic-bitch blog posts.

Aren’t you tired of selling your opinions?
Aren’t you tired of repackaging the obvious?
Don’t you want to scream into the void sometimes?
Don’t you just want to go apeshit? 

#2674

Posted on by
1

On Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Stories We Tell

(The third of my seminary reflection papers)

As a lifelong writer and seeker of stories in all their varied forms, the ChI Cultural Foundations course spoke to me on so many levels. For this paper I therefore want to focus on storytelling: on the stories we tell, who they include, who they exclude, and how they shape our perception of the world around us.

What I vibed with in the readings:

Something I found fascinating in many of the readings for this class was how often I saw clear parallels with the queer community. This was very apparent, for example, in the third chapter of Injustice and the Care of Souls titled, “Engaging Diversity and Difference: From Practices of Exclusion to Practices of Practical Solidarity.” In this chapter Brita L. Gill-Austern discusses four forms of the violence of exclusion: expulsion, assimilation, subjugation of the other, and exclusion by the indifference of abandonment. While it is easy to see how this exclusion can be perpetrated by the dominant majority (whether that’s racial, religious, sexual, gender, etc), these same forms of exclusion are also frequently perpetuated within minority groups. In an essay titled “Plural America Needs Myths” in response to Eboo Patel’s book Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise, Laurie L. Patton muses, “Why include others when we are worried about our own rights being trampled and, in many cases, keeping our community safe? […] Relatedly, there is a fear of admitting the pluralism within one’s own community, for it would undermine the idea that, in an American democracy, a community is coherent enough to claim an identity, and that identity and members of that community should be respected.” 

Online queer spaces are a prime example of this painful friction, as they can be either incredibly welcoming or incredibly hostile depending largely on whether those in the space consider your identity valid and acceptable. Less common queer identities, such as asexuality/aromanticism and bisexual lesbians, have long been stigmatized in online circles. This has escalated to the point where some online queer people proudly identify as ‘radical exclusionists’ and bully the most vulnerable in their own community, going so far as sending death threats and urging people (often teenagers) to kill themselves. These radical exclusionists believe they’re doing this to protect their community from interlopers who make it ‘look bad’ to the cishet majority and steal valuable resources from those who actually need them. Sound familiar? To balance this extreme gatekeeping in the queer community, others call themselves ‘radical inclusionists’ and take a far more open minded approach to which identities are included under the queer umbrella. People like this believe in ‘good-faith’ identification, meaning we accept a person’s identity at face value under the assumption that they identify the way they do because they know themselves best. Excluding them based on that identity, or trying to change that identity because we think we know better, is both cruel and pointless. 

This goes for all identities commonly policed both outside and within their communities, not just queer identities. Racial and religious identities are similarly policed, and almost always to their detriment. Thus when Sarah Gibb Millspaugh writes, “We are called to seek justice, to work for radical inclusiveness,” I feel that in my bones. In my heart. In my soul. I’ve seen countless instances of the misery radical exclusion causes, and have been on the receiving end of these attacks; never have I seen the violence of exclusion contribute to the safety or happiness of the community it purports to protect. What harms one harms us all.

The antidote to this fear-driven exclusion, as many of the readings for this class highlighted, is dialogue with the other. As Eboo Patel writes in Out of Many Faiths, “Dialogue, as simple as it sounds and as hard as it is to structure well, goes a long way toward stripping away the blinders of our identity-based stereotypes in order to see others for what they are and see ourselves as we are viewed by others.” It is so easy to fear what we don’t understand and to hate what we fear, but when we connect with the other we lose the little pilot flame that fuels both the fear and the hatred. Heck, even just knowing that we all fall prey to that instinctual fear is something that can bring us together, or at least help us find common ground.

What I struggled with in the readings:

The stories we tell, whether we mean them to be or not, are always biased to some degree. After all, we want to protect our communities, our identities, and sometimes we do that on a completely unconscious level through storytelling and the blending of fact and fiction. When a story is biased toward us, it can be hard to sense that bias because it feels instead like neutrality; yet when the story is biased against us, that bias bites quick and deep. We have to be critical of the media we consume and question assertions that sound a little too good to be true, especially when they aren’t supported by hard evidence, because we never know what biases we’re pushing and how they might harm someone else.

Let’s take, for example, something mentioned in New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko. I already wrote a fairly lengthy blog post about my issues with their claims that an ‘Axial Age’ generated some global revolution of human consciousness, so I won’t get too detailed here (lucky you!), but I think this quote is a good example: “What was this revolution in consciousness? It was the emergence of an individualized consciousness, one which allowed human beings for the first time to think apart from the “tribe.” […] …and it is here that the basis of science develops as people for the first time could stand apart from nature and look upon it as an object. Monastic spirituality wasn’t possible before [800-200 BCE] because primal people’s consciousness could not sustain it. […] It is also here that one is able for the first time to criticize social structures and injustices, as seen among the Jewish prophets who emerge in this period. […] Pre-Axial consciousness was not individualistic; it was tribal, seamlessly connected to the cosmos, nature, and the collective. It had no perspective of itself as separate from nature or from the tribe.”

Depending on your perspective, this quote might seem innocuous or might set off alarm bells. It certainly has some major red flags for me. After all, the authors seem to be claiming that before 800 BCE, humans were too ‘primal’ to have the cognitive function necessary to 1) see themselves as individuals, 2) see themselves as separate from nature or the tribe, 3) create lasting works of art, and 4) understand the concepts of science, social justice, or monasticism. This despite all the unbelievable works of human societal ingenuity that remain with us from before 800 BCE: the pyramids of Egypt, the Sphinx, Gobekli Tepe, Stonehenge (to name just a few), and all the ancient cultures which developed complex mythologies of justice and balance around which their laws revolved. The quote, quite simply, is ahistorical and unintentionally racist. However, if you come from a monotheistic background, especially a Caucasian and/or Western one, it probably sounds completely harmless – which is why we have to challenge our own biases and assumptions.

Similarly, our biases can drive us to see a benefit to assimilation or to a pluralism that still uses the majority as the umbrella under which all other identities reside. In the United States, for example, this results in interfaith spaces that still have a decidedly Christian/monotheistic vibe. I therefore very much appreciated Eboo Patel’s quoting of Stephen Prothero when he writes that Prothero, “calls the idea that religions are mostly alike and all paths up the same mountain ‘pretend pluralism,’ a notion that might make us feel good on the surface but at its core is ‘dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue’.” 

I agree also with Patel’s argument for a civil religion or overarching civil mythology which helps bind us as a nation together, though I agree with some of the other essayists in the same book who point out flaws in his argument. John Inazu eloquently spoke to Patel’s over-optimism in his essay “Hope Without a Common Good” where, for example, he stated, “The attempt to neutralize the power of the Christian symbol of the cross in the service of national unity should concern Christians and non-Christians alike.” The idea that symbols like the cross are theologically neutral comes from existing in a predominantly Christian society; it shows once more our bias and what stories we take for granted as part of everyone’s lives.

What this may mean for my future work:

In Chapter 3 of Injustice and the Care of Souls, Gill-Austern poignantly states, “Partnering begins with the humility to know that we do not know what is best for the other.” I think this is a core part of ministry: recognizing not only your own biases and preconceptions, but that you can never know what is best for someone else. You can only help guide someone on their path, providing support and insight as needed, and hope they find what they are seeking. There is a greater lesson in this as well, of course; in all aspects of our lives, a little humility can go a long way toward fostering more harmonious relationships with others. This is especially important in any situation where we hold a degree of power over another and thus even our best of intentions can come off as controlling, domineering, or paternalizing. For example, I have to be aware of this constantly in my work in emergency management since I represent the state of Washington. When I am interacting with our local jurisdictions and especially with our local tribal nations, I am careful to conduct myself in such a way that it never seems like I am telling them what to do or what is best for them. Even well-meaning advice can sound like a command when it comes from a government employee, after all.

Something else I take away from the readings as being an important component of ministry is a quote from Inazu: “We can find common ground even when we don’t agree on a common good.” Common ground is found in that space where we have set aside our personal goals and have come together simply to understand each other better. This sounds simple, but of course it can be the hardest thing we ever attempt. If we struggle to find common ground with people within our own communities, who have so much in common with us, how much harder is it to find common ground with those who are not just the other, but often even the persecutor? This is something I struggle with constantly, especially when it comes to people or groups who have shown little desire or effort to understand me and mine. Extending understanding to someone can leave you feeling vulnerable or like you have betrayed those they harmed; to make this effort and then have it come to naught because the other person refuses to attempt a similar understanding is an outcome I think we all fear deep down. So how do we overcome this gap?

“You overcome story with story,” Eboo Patel writes, quoting Martin E. Marty. “You break the spell of myth with another myth.” This, I firmly believe, is how we come together, and is the role my ministry is meant to play. Humans are natural storytellers, even if most of us never really think about the role stories play in our lives or the many forms stories can take. My work, for example, involves telling stories – cautionary stories of past disasters and natural hazards, scary stories about the consequences of inaction, and empowering stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in times of danger. Telling stories is also a vital aspect of paganism, and many pagans like myself use storytelling to share experiences of our gods, guides, and ancestors. Likewise, the queer community uses storytelling to keep alive the memory of those who came before, to dream together a better future, and to build a network of support. And as disparate as these communities all are, their stories still contain many of the same narratives and connect in more ways than you might initially think. 

Storytelling brings us together. Shared mythology unites us. It need not be religious – look at how stories like the sinking of the Titanic or the ‘boy king’ Tutankhamun fascinate us on a grand scale decades, centuries, and millennia later. Can they not be part of our shared mythology too? I think they can. I think they all can. So why not bring people together and simply ask, “What is the story that drives you?” – and find the common ground between us all?

#2664

Posted on by
Reply

On Theologically and Geologically Accurate Mountains

(The second of my seminary reflection papers)

“In order to fully recognize our place in creation,” Sherri Mitchell writes in Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, “we must realize that our stories are not the only stories that are being told.” I feel this quote serves as a good introduction to the topics covered in Global Spiritual Traditions 1 (GST1), as the class not only covers religions and worldviews less understood by the West but ones which have been systematically silenced and suppressed. Much of the lessons we can learn from these faiths come from a rich and ancient practice of deep listening which Western society has long lost. Given how much history and how many concepts GST1 covered, including all of the lessons I took to heart from this class would require a much lengthier paper than anyone wants to read, so I will try to hit the highlights with some brevity.

What I vibed with in the readings:

I knew going into this class that I would enjoy many of the readings – in fact, several of the required books were ones I already owned. Restoring the Kinship Worldview by Wahinkpe Topa and Darcia Narvaez has been in my digital library for a while, though I had not yet had a chance to read it, so this was a delightful opportunity to bump it up my to-be-read list. I found the chart of common worldview manifestations extremely helpful as a quick overview of the Western versus Indigenous mindsets, and especially appreciated the highlighting of the dichotomy between ceremony as rote formality and ceremony as life-sustaining. I also appreciate that the authors emphasize, “All people are indigenous to Earth and have the right and responsibility to practice and teach the Indigenous worldview precepts.” When we try to respect closed traditions and historically marginalized populations, sometimes in doing so we struggle with recognizing the line between cultural appreciation and appropriation, and between learning from shared wisdom and stealing ideas that are not our own. I imagine many non-indigenous folks worry they have no right incorporating aspects of the Indigenous worldview into their lives, so this statement is a valuable confirmation and invitation to all to learn from the text.

I also knew I would enjoy the readings on Buddhism, as I have felt drawn to Buddhism for several years after reading about the Buddhist response to the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Buddhism’s emphasis on the cessation of suffering led some Buddhist sects to denounce nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 disaster as being anathema to the preservation of life, a stance which was obviously quite unpopular with the Japanese government. This was also how I learned about bodhisattvas, as the bodhisattva Jizō is beloved in Japan as a protector of children and many of his statues mark areas where children died during the 2011 disaster. Thus Mahayana Buddhism’s focus on bodhisattvas and service to others speaks most strongly to me, as I can think of many souls – not just humans! – I have known in my life that seemed like bodhisattvas. They often challenged the status quo and inspired those around them to be better simply by exhibiting honorable qualities like humility, patience, empathy, humor, inclusivity, and reverence for all life. They demonstrated a dedication to coexistence and nonviolence that I strive to attain on a daily basis. As Buddhist Pamela Ayo Yetunde says in Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, “If our compassion bypasses what we find most difficult, we will not develop the strength to weather our most profound challenges.” 

What I did not expect was to enjoy and align so much with Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu! I was least familiar with the Tao Te Ching coming into this class and found myself nodding along in enthusiastic agreement during the readings and lectures. When Dr. John Mabry writes in the introduction to his translation of the Tao Te Ching, “The Taoist follows the example of the animals and the Earth herself, and perceives of the divine in the same way,” I feel this in my bones. Animals do not question their experiences; they do not second-guess their senses or accuse their minds of playing tricks on them. Only humans ascribe so many rules and rights and wrongs to everything around them to the point where we hardly know what to make of the divine when it is right in front of us. We struggle with the concept of Yin and Yang because we hate thinking about ‘bad’ things – even though ‘bad’ is merely another concept we have pinned on some parts of our world and not others. No wonder we cannot keep our environment in ecological balance when we have forgotten what balance even means! It makes sense, then, that many pillars of the Indigenous worldview are also reflected in the Tao Te Ching, such as cautions against exalting people of extraordinary talent (thus fomenting competition) and public displays of wealth (thus fostering envy and discontent), and of course the idea that true strength comes from gentleness of spirit, not violence and aggression.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention how much I appreciated Hinduism’s concept of ishta, or one’s chosen aspect of the divine which holds a special place in the heart. Many modern pagans call this a ‘patron god’ or something similar, and this is often the deity to whom they first became devoted or with whom they primarily work. My ishta or patron god is Bast, the Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) goddess of war, love, protection, the home, and of course felines. Bast has been part of my life as long as I can remember, since I have always had a fascination with both cats and ancient Egypt, but I never really realized I could worship her legitimately. Then one morning when I was 25, Bast came to me in a way I could not ignore or disprove and opened my eyes to the spiritual journey before me. I am forever grateful to her for helping me embark on what has become quite the spiritual adventure! She will always be my soul-mother and the main deity I follow, no matter who or what else I incorporate into my practice.

What I struggled with in the readings:

I feel like I should preface this section by saying I actually enjoyed Huston Smith’s Buddhism and Hinduism chapters in The World’s Religions. I think these chapters were two of his strongest and provided good foundations for the rest of the readings on those topics. However, I do want to quibble a bit once more on one place where his monotheistic bias shows through (for the sake of brevity I cut a few others). In The World’s Religions Smith writes, “It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge.” While I greatly appreciate the pithy poeticism of this line, I politely must beg to differ. For one, that just isn’t how mountains work and I dislike inaccurate metaphors, even pithy ones. Mountains have no single summit, no point at which myriad trails can converge to one singular place, but instead a range of peaks and ridges (or perhaps wide plateaus for the more rounded summits) to which many trails may lead yet never cross paths. Think of the many sacred mountains which make up the Himalaya, for example, or the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest. A better metaphor instead might be to think of divinity not as the point at which the trails of life’s mountain merge, but as the stone of the very mountain itself and all its sisters in the range. I have a hard time believing, after all, that we are all climbing the same mountain – even in a metaphor. Plus, since no two mountains are alike in composition or ecosystem, it better suits the fact that no one’s experience of the divine is the same as another’s, and many people experience it as a multiplicity of identities or entities, not a homogenous whole.

Setting Smith aside, I do have to admit that I struggled a bit with some of the chapters in Restoring the Kinship Worldview despite fervently agreeing with much else in the book. So many of the readings for this class cautioned against rigid binaries yet it feels like the binary of Indigenous versus Western worldview is just that – rigid. For example, I felt uncomfortable when Topa and Narvaez essentially blamed the Sumerians for the creation of the Western worldview when they were neither white nor European, and existed over 8,000 years ago. I know the Western worldview is not necessarily a new thing, though of course modern society has exacerbated it beyond any other time in history, but it seems unfair to wrap any society that built permanent settlements or developed agriculture into what has become a deeply white supremacist and capitalist worldview. There were plenty of non-white cultures that built great cities and enacted war or conquest on each other – do they deserve to be stripped of their indigeneity for it? Do the Sumerians, who in some ways had one of the most gender-progressive societies in human history, deserve to be tossed aside completely as part of the Western worldview with all the negatives that brings to mind? I understand the intent of the binary, I do; I just worry that its rigidity means we lose valuable nuance on both sides, and that Western as a term is beginning to lose its precision as its umbrella continues to expand. At the very least, it is a good reminder that we can become entrenched and unbalanced in even the most well-meaning of views and should regularly check-in with ourselves to see if we have become overly dogmatic.

Lastly, something I knew I would struggle with in the readings, because I already struggle with it when I read about some of these worldviews, is the concept of nonviolence. I understand and embrace the concept in theory, and I truly believe it is necessary for our global society to embrace nonviolence on a grand scale if we are ever to solve the issues plaguing us. Yet when it comes to individual situations, to specific circumstances, I find it so much harder to adhere to a nonviolent approach to resolution. This is especially difficult, of course, when something or someone I love is threatened or impacted, but with my fiery temper I tend to struggle no matter what. Releasing that anger is important, yet it often feels like in doing so, or in advocating for a peaceful resolution versus punishment, the original act of violence is condoned. That punishment equals justice is perhaps the hardest part of the Western worldview for me personally to release, though I think I have made a small bit of progress over the last year or two. Chapter 18 in Restoring the Kinship Worldview was immensely helpful for me in reframing how we can go about conflict resolution with its emphasis on how “offenders help the community by drawing attention to imbalances.” Focusing on the greater imbalance helps me recognize that no offending action is done within a vacuum and any resolution also has to take the entire network into account.

What this may mean for my future work:

While the worldviews and traditions covered in this class span greatly in both space and time, they all in some way address the concept of change and how humans can become unbalanced and unhappy when we fight change instead of accepting its inevitability. This is especially so for the major systemic changes we face as a global society such as climate destabilization, increasing wealth inequality, and armed conflict. “The time has passed for us to opt out of change,” Mitchell so sagely writes in Sacred Instructions. “Change is upon us.” As someone in the field of emergency management, I want to help people through this process of acceptance so they can become more resilient to the changes we know are either inevitable or very likely. There are also a lot of overlaps between emergency management and Buddhism specifically, which I wrote about here, and I think there are great opportunities for incorporating a Buddhist worldview into emergency management. I definitely intend to incorporate aspects of various Indigenous worldviews, Buddhism, and Taoism into my future work to bring a more spiritual dimension into the work I do each day and into whatever I find myself doing post-seminary. (Not to mention that the readings on Indigenous worldviews are quite valuable for my work with our tribal nations in general!)

“Filling your cup until it overflows is not as good as stopping it in time,” states the Tao Te Ching. “Oversharpen your sword and it will not protect you very long.” I also want to use the lessons learned from these sources to help people, especially those in emergency management, develop a better relationship with self-care and wellness. Ours is a ‘tough it out’ field where burnout runs rampant and I think these worldviews have a lot to offer in terms of moving us toward a healthier professional, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual environment. This need not be ‘religious’ in the overt sense; after all, Mitchell reminds us that, “We are tied to every ascended master that has ever lived.” I experienced this myself when the renowned writer Rachel Carson came to me in a dream, a treasured visit which served as a powerful reminder that our ancestors include not just those of our blood and our teachers not just those enshrined in holy books and mythology. They can be those who walked similar paths to ours, who fought the good fight and can help us do the same without exhausting ourselves completely. I hope I can assist others in making similar connections and discovering the aspects of these worldviews that will best guide them toward a more balanced life of service to self and others.

#2661

Posted on by
Reply

Under hazy skies and a blood red sun, breathing in cancer ash and covid, I beg, Take me, someone, anyone! I scream, dare, plead, taunt, Come claim me, o queen of Elfame, come lure me away to Tír na nóg; come spirits fair or foul and kidnap me to Faerie, to Avalon, to anywhere other than this dying world! I hunt ceaselessly for fairy rings, for corpse roads and will-o-wisps, but we have burned the forests, we have turned the soil to dust, and all the old roads closed to us long ago. Take me, someone, anyone, I am ready to leave! I pray, knowing it useless, knowing no one listens at the threshold. Yet still I offer, with a laugh like a scream like a sob, I would surrender ten thousand years of my life in alien Tír na nóg’s unchanging twilight, and all I once loved dead and gone, than spend one more day in this hellish land!

#2644

Posted on by
Reply

Reflecting on Soups, Muds, and Other Squishy Things

[ Since I’m now officially in seminary, I’ve decided to post some of my writings for school here. ]

Global Spiritual Traditions 2 is my first ChI course as an official student. As such, this is also my first reflection paper. Because of this, I feel a short preface is in order to set the tone and establish my thought process for this paper. I am, as will become abundantly clear, a writer through and through; the gods marked me as such from the beginning and it colors every aspect of my being. This means I approach any piece of writing, be it personal or professional, with an extremely high expectation of myself for the final product and a certain verbosity that can bury the lede in favor of lyrical run-on sentences. (See? I’m doing it even now. …I also really like parentheticals.) This also means I have trouble simply reflecting in a piece of writing such as this, as there will always be part of me that demands to know what the ‘right’ answer or ‘point’ of the paper is in order to best please the person reading. (That this paper will not be graded doesn’t seem to make a difference to my type-A brain.) To circumvent this, I’m going to try to treat this reflection paper more like a diary entry and less like a thesis. We’ll see how well I manage. Let’s dive in!

What I vibed with in the readings:

Mysticism! Oh how I wish I had known about mysticism as a kid. The only religion I had much exposure to as a child was the blander kind of Christianity that seems to care more about rules and appearance than inspiring beautiful spiritual experiences. “Freeze-dried liturgy” as Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi so aptly calls it in his book Jewish with Feeling. My heart was open to the mysteries and majesties of the universe back then but I found little to inspire such feelings in beige-colored churches lacking beautiful stained glass windows or towering organs. Even as an adult I knew very little about the mystic traditions in Christianity and Judaism, and only a bit about Sufism thanks to a college course on Islam. This course introduced me to Rumi, whose words spoke directly to the longing in my soul. I have come back to his poetry many times in the years since, finding great comfort and validity in the emotions expressed there. But beyond Sufism, it seemed like there was little for me in those religions as a person who found the divine in cats and moths and morning mist, not archaic texts and hard pews and the worst interior decorating ever.

Ultimately, it makes perfect sense that I vibe best with the mystics of any faith. A Christian friend once asked me, back before I even had an established spiritual path, how I as a ‘blind’ person (blind to what he considered the divine truth, ie God) could walk my path with such certainty while he struggled with his path daily. I think part of the answer came down to the fact that he focused so much on the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” of his religion, on all the things his faith expected of him, while I simply moved toward whatever made my heart sing. There were no scriptures or priests or elders to get in my way; no bars to reach or expectations to fail to meet. I followed my heart like a lodestone, trusting the universe to lead me wherever I needed to go, and this was just impossible for my friend to understand. “How do you know killing people is wrong if you don’t follow God and the ten commandments?” he once asked me in genuine confusion, and I didn’t really know how to answer him except to say that I just knew. I just felt what was right and what was wrong, like I was being guided, but I knew it wasn’t his God doing the guiding.

If I had read back then the following by Ibn ‘Arabi (quoted in The World’s Religions by Huston Smith), it would have clicked immediately: “My heart has opened unto every form. It is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka’ba of the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I practice the religion of Love; in whatsoever directions its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith.” This speaks to my soul so deeply. Perhaps I might have been able to use these words to explain to my friend how I walked my path so faithfully.

In addition, for all that I have always been the ‘good kid’ and am not naturally a rule-breaker, I balk quickly at being told what to do by authority figures who have not earned my respect. Thus any religion that tries to tell me how to experience the divine, and especially how not to experience the divine, is going to trigger my stubborn side. Why should it matter how I dress or what I eat? Who are you to say who can and cannot be part of the inner circle? Why are you so focused on these two lines of text and not the other thousand? Etcetera etcetera. For this reason I appreciated Deborah Broome’s analysis in Who’s at the Table? Inclusiveness in the Gospel of Luke when she said, “Luke’s Jesus has a new interpretation of the law of purity – that purity means inclusiveness in table-fellowship.” While Jesus wasn’t exactly preaching the kind of mysticism I subscribe to, I think any expansion of inclusivity and a focus more on fellowship than right praxis moves us toward a more direct relationship with the divine as both individuals and a greater spiritual community. After all, if I am so focused on my personal connection with the divine that I lose my sense of responsibility to my fellow creatures, will that lead to a healthy spirituality? Of course not. No matter what we see as the overarching divine (God or gods or something else entirely), mysticism has to include a dedication to the divinity in everything around us as well. “…all ground is holy ground,” Vincent Pizzuto writes in Contemplating Christ. “All water is holy water. All bread is Eucharist. All life – not merely human life – is sacred.” And I think that’s beautiful.

What I struggled with in the readings:

Coming into this class as a queer person from a distinctly agnostic household, I thought the biggest thing I would struggle with in this class was the not so stellar history of these religions and equality (Christianity and queer people, Islam and women, Israel and Palestine, etc). I even prepared myself for this, reminding myself ahead of readings that I likely would disagree with at least some of what I found there, would roll my eyes at the overwhelmingly male, cishet worldview from which the writings sprang. I was ready to try my best to be open minded and remember “not all Christians.” Yet while I probably did roll my eyes once or twice, these concerns never really came to fruition. Instead, what I actually found myself struggling with was the superiority many of the authors expressed when talking about monotheism versus polytheism. 

Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, was perhaps the worst at this, especially since some of his claims were just plain false. “Small wonder that no nature polytheism ever spawned a principled revolution” he writes, along with claiming “polytheisms feared change” as if some of the greatest and longest lasting empires in the world were not polytheistic. Sumbul Ali-Karamali in The Muslim Next Door: The Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing likewise paints a picture of the pre-Islamic Middle East as a barbaric, godless place full of idol worship and polytheism (gasp!) saved only by the coming of the Prophet Muhammad. She also claims early Islam granted women more rights than any other religion or culture at that time which, again, is a bit of a stretch. I don’t mean to undersell the incredible changes Islam enacted; I just want to make sure we look at the whole of human history, and that means not taking religious texts at face value. Even Rabbi Zalman, despite his impressive knowledge of world religions, seems to think only in Judaism do you find mankind going toe-to-toe with the gods when the Egyptians regularly hassled, guilted, harangued, and otherwise called out their gods in much a similar manner.

I understand this penchant to see monotheism as inherently superior to polytheism, I really do. The polytheist empires of the past are far gone and seen most often now in Disney cartoons and bad Halloween costumes; they hardly feel real anymore, and their religions even less so. It’s even harder to respect their breadth and beauty when they play the Big Baddies in so many stories from monotheistic religions’ histories. For many people in western society, both atheistic and theistic, the idea that polytheism naturally and inevitably evolved into monotheism is unquestioned. This belief is so ingrained that I honestly don’t think any of the writers from these readings consciously meant to include such bias in their work – it just seeped in of its own accord.

Even interfaith spaces often seem to suffer from this subconscious bias. While it’s nice to hear faith communities talk about how it doesn’t matter what you call the Creator or source of the divine, that all faiths are one, the language used still comes down most often to the singular. God, not Gods; Creator, not Creators; Divinity, not Divinities; Spirit, not Spirits. This is similar to soft polytheism, or the belief that all gods are simply different manifestations of the same single divine entity, and it can be really alienating to someone who worships multiple, unique gods. If all gods are the same, and names do not matter, then why do these spaces never pray to my gods? Why are mine always subsumed into the collective and not the other way around? My gods are not slivers of a greater whole, nor are they archetypes wearing regional costumes. They are as fully realized as Allah, as Jesus, and have much to offer the global community. That their voices are quieter today than two thousand years ago is not because their power waned in the face of the Christian God, but merely the result of human politics and the inevitable rise and fall of civilizations. They are still here, as are their followers.

I think Rabbi Zalman put it best when he said, “…we need to survive also the danger of dissolving into mere secularism or into a vaguely spiritual New Age soup in which the distinctive contributions of the various religions would be wiped out.” While he was speaking from the perspective of Judaism, the old gods are already victims of that so aptly named New Age soup. I fear further efforts to emulsify them into a generic divinity will dissolve their own unique qualities completely. Fortunately, us pagans tend to be a loud lot, and I personally don’t plan to let this happen without some serious pushback!

What this could mean for my future work:

So I have talked up the mystics and griped a bit (okay, maybe more than a bit) about monotheistic bias. What does this mean for my future work as a chaplain, or whatever official role I ultimately find in the greater spiritual community? I turn back, as I imagine I shall again and again, to more of Rabbi Zalman’s words: “Our ancient faiths have become over-verbalized and under-experienced. We talk too much and feel too little.” 

We talk too much and feel too little! How well-put! No matter where my path leads me, I know I want to help people get to the place where they think less and feel more. I want to help them understand that the divine is all around us, always waiting for us to reach out, and that we require no one’s permission or presence to access it. “The point,” Rabbi Zalman writes, “in our non-theological, experience-based approach, is not what God ‘wants’ or doesn’t want; God, however we understand the concept, can take care of Godself. The point is what we want and need.” I love this. The divine is limitless and incomprehensible; there is no reason to think it relies on humanity to provide it anything. So what do you want? What do you need? Those things are what matter on your path. It’s easy to get lost, though, to confuse what you need with what you’re told to need, to bury your desires in a deep dark place, to muddy things up terribly. If I can help someone uncover the buried lodestone in their own heart, or sift the waters until they’re pure and clear again, then that is what I want to do. 

In Jewish with Feeling, Rabbi Zalman recounts a story in which Reb Menachem Mendel Schneerson said, “The Earth contains all kinds of treasures, but you have to know where to dig. If you do not, you will come up with nothing but rocks or mud. But if you ask the geologist of the soul where to dig, you might find silver… A rebbe can only show you where to dig. You must do the digging yourself.” As someone with a geoscience background, I absolutely fell in love with this metaphor. I’m not sure I see myself as ever being a spiritual teacher, really, or at least not in such an official capacity (hello imposter syndrome), but I can be your spiritual geologist for sure! Bring me your soul mud. Bring me your soul rocks. I will teach you how to identify the different minerals inside, what they represent, how they formed, and what they say about the person who birthed them. And like a true geologist, I will be excited about it all, because while not all that glitters is gold, all that glitters is interesting.

#2630

Posted on by
Reply

After the breaking of the Lost Boys, when their leader vanished and the dark mage disappeared from the Island, Alice thought that was the end of it for both good and ill. Tivius might be gone, but so was Mage, so perhaps there was some balance to be found there. Those who were left were loyal to Alice and could be relied upon to help them pick up the pieces and start anew. It was a terrible ending, they thought, but from such things new beginnings grew. That’s how it worked, right?

But they were wrong, because the true end, the shattering, still approached.

None of the Lost recognized that Mage, a bit of a loner even among their collection of misfits, had developed such a connection with the Island itself. In the wake of her absence Mage seemed more like a dream, or for some of the Island’s inhabitants a nightmare, more than a physical presence among them. In the weeks and months that followed, those who had known her quickly began to forget details of their friendships or animosities, conversations they’d had in the dark hours of the morning, even what she looked like and how she had come to the Island in the first place. Facts faded, became muddled, turned more myth than truth. 

Yet the Island remembered her. The Island retained its connection to the one person who had understood it as well as Alice and Tivius, albeit in a different way. Mage had seen through the art and artifice of the Island’s inner workings to its core of truth, and so she would remain part of its story as long as it existed. Mage called to the Island as one of its missing inhabitants and it called to her as one of the few places she had ever considered home. Thus it responded to her thoughts, her emotions, even her desires, despite the miles of ocean between them. And it reacted.

Singly, then in small groups, the crows on the Island began to croak and caw, “Lied. He lied. He lied.” The gentle waves which crashed against the Island’s long beaches began to whisper, “Alice… Alice…” and the sun rose each morning red as freshly spilled blood. The shadows in the forests lingered a little longer each day. The smoke that curled up from incense and hearth and bonfire twisted in languid loops that seemed, just for a moment, to spell mutiny. And then as storms began to roll in from the horizon, lightning cracking across the thunderheads like bright hot laughter, the crows would rise in vast murders that stretched across the evening sky and screech, “HE LIED HE LIED HE LIED HE LIES HE LIES HE LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES.”

#2600

Posted on by
2

“You picked a shitty scribe,” I tell the Nameless, who shrugs as she licks starblood off her long talons and replies, What do I care? It’s all dust to dust to dust. The greatest works of literature and grandest monuments of mankind will still yield to entropy. I can’t tell if this is meant to be dismissive, comforting, threatening, or none of the above, but I find myself somehow buoyed by her words anyway. It’s oddly calming to know Shakespeare and myself share equal anonymity in the far future where all has turned to dust. Atoms are atoms. The Nameless gestures flippantly. You all unravel in the end.

#2596

Posted on by
Reply

We are none of us reliable narrators, especially not in this moment we have replayed so many times I know every line and gesture by heart. The Moon will say it was necessary; the Sun will say he is a fool and a coward. They will both be right; they will both be wrong, so very wrong. I will reach my hand out to Tanim’s ghost as he watches Daren crouch over his crumpled body. I will avert my eyes from Daren’s flat black gaze that sees all and betrays nothing as he rises, blood on his hands and seeping into the white carpet beneath us. I will bear witness as they once more play out this scene in which I have no role and when it is over, when they have faded, retreated, when the room is empty and the stains have dried, I will be here still.

#2593

Posted on by
Reply

Choosing which fork in the river to follow has never challenged me. I know who and what I am meant to be, what I am meant to do, where I am meant to go. I do not fear the bends and loops in the river’s path, nor even the rapids and little waterfalls. What challenges me are the artificial obstacles placed in the river: the boulders, the dams, the pollution and infrastructure poisoning the river’s clear waters and turning its natural course into a dangerous maze. How can I make choices based on what is best for me when the future is so uncertain? How can my heart run wild along its course if the way is so often barred? Not even our souls remain untouched wildland when society is so steeped in cruelty and greed.

#2587

Posted on by
Reply

Incorporeality will be the death of me. I have submerged myself in your world as much as I can – for twenty-one years, for seven thousand, six hundred, and seventy days, for tens of thousands of hours – but it is never enough. No matter how long I drown myself in your most potent memories, how deep I dive into your most painful emotions, somehow I always find myself back at the surface once more. No matter how vividly I can imagine you, it is not the same as truly standing in the room with you. To cup your face in my hands, to watch the grief and anger war in your eyes, to hear the tremble in your voice. Tens of thousands of hours and yet I have never touched you. Two thirds of my life and yet I cannot numb myself to the agony of empty arms and ringing silence. My imagination is powerful but even it cannot replace the way your hands grip hard enough to leave bruises and knowing I will never experience that sensation is unbearable. Yet here I am, twenty-one years later, bearing it because there is no alternative.

#2569

Posted on by
Reply

Daren’s presence in your life hasn’t made you give up your vices. You are no dilettante when it comes to the finer things in life but after years of living alone your standards have dropped. Amytal washed down with absinthe and a couple Black Devils for a chaser? That’s not a party, just your regular nightcap. At some point you stopped caring what you put into your body (or who) and how often. You didn’t have a future so why worry about whether you’d wake up in the morning or not? Things are different now, though, and you can’t bear to have the man you love think you have no taste.

So Daren’s presence in your life hasn’t made you give up your vices – it’s made you refine them. He makes you want to be a better man, after all, and that means raising your standards back up to where they belong. No more nightclub hookups and hardcore barbiturates, no more granite countertops scattered with used needles and burned out cigarettes, no more treating your expensive liquor like corner store beer swigged straight from the bottle. You’re a man of class with a fully stocked wet bar, a closet full of Armani, and too much money for your own good. Time to start acting like it.

Of course, being a better man also means sharing your luxury. All his life, Daren has lacked the wealth you’ve always taken for granted. How could sophistication thrive in such scarcity when the only goal was survival by any means? He is beyond survival now, though, and you take endless joy in introducing him to the finest indulgences money can buy. You worship him between silk sheets and drape him in Gucci and Louis Vitton; in the morning it’s imported coffee and cigarettes, in the evening cocktails mixed with the finest ingredients and served in crystal barware.

Not that he cares, of course. Your wealth is meaningless to Daren and your fancy gifts earn you exactly zero admiration or infatuation. That’s fine, though, because your pleasure is found in the giving itself; you take just as much satisfaction in watching your lover destroy your fine gifts as you do watching him indulge in them. Every time he stubs a cigarette out on your antique velvet furniture or uses your silk tie to clean blood from his knife, you fall a little more in love. You probably shouldn’t – you’re probably encouraging his habit of throwing crystalware at you – but you’ve never been very good at moderating your vices, have you?

#2564

Posted on by
1

You have questions, little scribe. I can tell. 

I can hear the clicking of the Nameless’ long nails all around me and when She speaks I imagine, incongruously, canine jawbones clacking and grinning where they float in the head of a woman-shaped darkness. Asking questions of such an entity isn’t something I want to make a habit of, but after a hesitation I find myself saying, “Why me? I know I’m the scribe, but it doesn’t seem like you have a story to tell so I’m not quite sure why you waste your time with me. No offense.”

Every story is mine, the Nameless replies, beginning to end. Stories are chaos. Chaos drives stories. And besides,  She spreads Her taloned hands wide, time has no meaning to the void. I exist everywhere and always.

“So that’s it? You just want to make sure they’re recorded?” That seems too simple – and far too benevolent for the Nameless. She likes games, after all, and She always wins. I just haven’t figured out what one we’re playing.

I don’t care about records. Your words will last only as long as the methods with which they are documented, and those methods will only last as long as technology and human civilization do. Which won’t be much longer. ‘No offense.’ She laughs, the sound echoing like flowing water in a cavern.

“Then why me?” I know I won’t get a straight answer but I can’t help asking anyway.

Oh, I’m not going to hand you all the answers, the Nameless purrs. Where’s the fun in that?

#2557

Posted on by
Reply

Look, I get it – I’m forgettable. It’s okay, really, it’s not like I’m trying to be memorable. I want the words to stick in your mind, not the person who recorded them. It’s just that these days if you want to sell something you create you have to sell yourself first. You gotta put yourself on display and win the masses’ affections before you win their interest. I don’t want to do that, though. I’m not a priestess dripping gold, I’m not an oracle tripping holiness, I’m just a scribe. I preserve; I don’t proclaim. I witness; I don’t wield authority. I was never meant for pomp and pageantry, that’s why I’m a scribe to the gods. Yet how else do I get people to listen to my words? I don’t need to be memorable, I don’t even need to be likable, but I need you to read my words. I need you to remember they exist if nothing else. So what do I have to do when the words aren’t enough to earn reader loyalty? Do I have to offer a pound of flesh along with them? An ounce of soul? Do I have to put on a pretty mask and play a part that isn’t mine just to get you to care about the words coming out its painted mouth?

#2539

Posted on by
Reply

There is a woman named Margaret. Years ago she was young, first the silky pastels of spring and then the bright jewel tones of summer. She is not young now, though, for the years of her prime are far in the past. Autumn laid hold of her for a time and she was the burning oranges and reds of its passion. Then winter came, muted blues and the white and black of bare birch trees, and Paul died.

When the flowers on the doorstep stopped arriving, and neighbors stopped dropping off lovingly prepared home-cooked meals, and the doorbell heralding another kind visitor finally fell silent for good, Margaret joined a group. There was a faded flier tacked to the supermarket bulletin board and she tore off one of the little slips on its edge that listed a date, time, and place. Tuesdays, six o’clock. Snacks will be provided.

It was a nice enough group at the start. Paul had been gone four months and in the group a man’s wife had been gone for two, a mother’s young child for three, another husband for five. Others, like Margaret, bore fresher wounds. On Tuesday evenings for exactly one hour the gathered mourners talked as they sipped instant apple cider and grainy hot chocolate from small Styrofoam cups. Winter passed like this, dreary and indistinct, and Margaret tried not to count the days.

Spring came, then. The group grew smaller. Some healed, as much as one can heal after a loss; enough, at least, to let them go back to their singular lives and move on from the group. Some just stopped coming, unable to face another’s grief head on when it stirred up their own. There was always Margaret, though, with her cup of hot chocolate or burnt coffee. Dependable, punctual Margaret.

The fleeting months of spring and summer passed, bringing autumn, bringing winter. The group changed. The old ones were gone. New ones with new stories, new tragedies, came to spill a little grief from their overflowing hearts. Margaret listened; she was good at listening. Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. A husband gone two months. A wife gone three weeks. A trio of children, gone in an instant. Paul gone forever. Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. She watched them come and go with the leaves.

There is a woman named Margaret. Years ago she was young but it’s hard to remember those days, the memories worn smooth by the river of time. The brokenhearted come and go, seeking comfort, giving solace. Margaret stays, finding neither. Tuesdays, six o’clock, snacks will be provided. And always there is Margaret.

#2535

Posted on by
Reply

They say if you have a story that needs telling, go to the Scribe. If you are willing to give your story over to them, if you will let them see or hear or experience as much of your story as possible, they will record and tell it for you. They ask no payment for this service for they are honored by your trust in their work. The Scribe will tell anyone’s story; gods and goddesses, demons and angels, spirits and creatures of every realm and type. If you will offer it, the Scribe will tell it. You do not need to be the hero of your story. You can be the villain, the victim, even just the witness, for the Scribe will not judge you. The story need not even be true for the Scribe holds truths and lies of equal value. Whenever you are ready to have your story told, the Scribe is there. They exist in every time, waiting for you to reach out – you just need to find them.

#2521

Posted on by
Reply

maybe he stands on the ledge so often
(just take my hand, darling)
not so you’ll come stop him from jumping
(why don’t you take mine, beloved?)
but so you’ll come give him the opportunity
(his smile a crescent moon)
to push you off
(sharp enough to cut your wrists on)
instead

(what are you afraid of?)

#2516

Posted on by
Reply

Tomboy

I was a child who hated dresses yet wore my tangled hair so long it reached the base of my back. I performed in ballet recitals yet despised the makeup they required be plastered on my face. I loved glitter and stuffed animals and motorcycles and wooden swords. I was a princess, but I was one who could rescue herself.

I did not call myself a tomboy, though. The word fit awkwardly in my mouth even then, much like choir dresses and pink tights fit awkwardly on my chubby form. It’s only in adulthood that I understand why I hesitated to claim the label: tomboy implied girl. To be a tomboy meant to be a girl who liked boy things, who was unlike ‘normal’ girls but who still, beneath the mud and the bruises, was a girl. And I was not a girl.

I was frozen pond water. Freshly mown grass. Coyotes howling in the night. I was wild blackberries and ripe apples and library books, wood smoke and Play-Doh and agates. I was thousands of memories and sensations squashed into the jelly bean-shaped body of a human child. They might have been consolidated under a given name and assigned gender but they never truly united into one concept. Yet what child worries about such things when they’re tromping through wetlands or howling at the moon? 

I’ve since shed the last of the dresses and most of my hair, and with them all the labels I once accepted (albeit with resignation) as my default. Replacing them with nothing has left me freer than since I was that blissfully unaware child. Besides, I am still her, still mushrooms and noisy crows and pressed pennies; we just understand us better now.

#2494

Posted on by
Reply

No exes in my graveyard, instead I’m dogged by the ghosts of friendships abandoned, bodies left to rot where they fell in the undergrowth because neither of us bothered to give them a proper burial (can’t honestly say I even checked for a pulse before I ran, fearful of either outcome) and while watching yet another love begin its slow anemic decline I feel your specter sit beside me and I rest my head on her shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

#2492

Posted on by
Reply

Look, I’m just the pilot; I don’t have any control over what meatsuit I was assigned. I didn’t get to pick the make or model or color or any of that, I just operate the damn thing. It’s a machine, you know? And this one came off the factory floor full of design flaws and defects so it requires even more work than some others to keep it functioning. I try my best to maintain all the parts, I even call in a mechanic when a task’s above my skill level, but I didn’t choose this 24/7 job and I’m really not that attached to it. The meatsuit doesn’t define me. I don’t identify with any of its individual components or the composite whole. I’m the operator, separate from that which is operated. Try to remember that when you look at me; I’m stuck inside this unit but that doesn’t mean you should judge me by its appearance. After all, what am I supposed to do – trade it in for a new one?

#2490

Posted on by
Reply

feel like i’m going crazy, i keep seeing absent ghosts everywhere, pseudo-specters, nothing-theres, whatever you want to call them, the empty spaces of missing trees that i could swear were there this morning but are gone now this evening, it’s like the city swallowed them whole while i wasn’t looking and left behind more vacancy, more vacuum, more v o i d . . .

or maybe there was never a tree right there in the first place and i’m just too obsessed with ecocide, maybe i’m going crazy from grieving all the trees i couldn’t spare the chainsaw, whole forests weighing on my conscience, i don’t know i just swear there was a tree in that space before and now there isn’t and i’m afraid that if i look away for too long there won’t be anything green left when i turn back

New Zine – “turn to geology on your deathbed”

Posted on by
Reply

My 8th zine is here to rock your world! “Turn to geology on your deathbed“ is full of poetry, prose, and hand-drawn art celebrating the nature and lamenting our role in its destruction. Topics include geology, nature, disasters, climate change, environmental justice, and the burden of being alive in such a dark time. The work here is filled with grief, rage, awe, hope, and responsibility.

As always, you can find physical and digital versions of my zines in my Kofi shop! Physical copies are just $5 plus shipping and digital versions are free/pay-what-you-want.

https://ko-fi.com/onlyfragments/shop

#2476

Posted on by
Reply

The wolf managed to ignore its hunger the first night but tonight it’s ravenous, so desperate for the taste of fresh meat that when it catches the scent of blood on the wind it eagerly tracks the smell through rainy back alleys and dark city streets. It’s new to the hunt but knows enough to stick to the shadows while it discerns the metallic odor beneath layers of gasoline, cigarette smoke, and exhaust. It reaches the source, a pool of fresh blood at the end of a narrow alleyway, just as a body slumps to the wet pavement. 

“Oh. Hello there, lovely beast,” The pale man who stands over the discarded body licks blood from his fingers as he eyes the wolf. Its hackles rise under his flat black stare, growl rumbling out from between bared teeth – no human would dare hold a predator’s gaze so boldly. Instead of shrinking in fear the man smiles, revealing sharp canine teeth. “Aren’t you a fine one with your black fur and blazing blue eyes? Very scary.” He took a step back, gesturing with one hand to the still body. “You look hungry, though. I’m done here if you’d like the rest.”

The wolf hesitates, trying to decipher any lies through the man’s body language, to sift through his strangely indefinable scent for some hint of ulterior motive. Finding none, when the man backs up another step the wolf chooses hunger over wariness and falls upon the body, tearing into the still warm meat with relish. The stranger has disappeared by the time its hunger is finally sated.

—

Tanim tips his head up, surreptitiously scenting the chill evening air. This basement level apartment seems to be the place, though its unlabelled door and tightly shuttered windows certainly don’t suggest recent occupancy. His new senses haven’t failed him yet, however, so he knocks anyway. After a long moment the door cracks open and familiar dark eyes stare back at him out of a narrow, pale face. Tanim wets his lips; that hard gaze is just as inscrutable up close as it was the night before.

“Hey, I didn’t get a chance to thank you for dinner,” He holds up the bottle of obscenely expensive liquor held in his other hand and offers a tentative smile. “I thought maybe I could pay you back? My name’s Tanim.” 

Those dark eyes bore into him a few agonizing seconds longer before one side of the stranger’s thin mouth lifts in the shadow of a wry smile. He opens the door wider, stepping aside and gesturing for Tanim to enter. “Daren,” he replies. “Come on in.”

#2458 – Summer Solstice

Posted on by
Reply

On this longest day of the year your priestesses take to the streets to celebrate the Sun triumphant. Clad in flowing silks and precious gems, skin glowing with gold dust, they blend their voices in lilting harmony as they sing your praises. Dancers dip and weave in time to the pounding of drums; tiny bells on their ankles jingle with each minute movement. Despite the heat of the day, torchbearers carry flaming braziers into which your oracles toss incense laced with poppy and nightshade. The procession treads on rose petals thrown by the gathered crowd until the marble boulevard gleams red in the sunlight.

Finally the litter bearing your statue comes into view and the cacophony of chanting, drumming, and clapping reaches a crescendo. Here you are in all your glory, white marble form adorned in gold and shining like a beacon. The writhing incense smoke makes your placid expression appear to flicker through emotions – wrath, sorrow, regret, compassion – as if even cold stone can be moved by the prayers of the masses. Those gathered call out to you as the litter passes, giving praise and begging blessings, or bow their heads and weep for the honor of witnessing your sacred statue with their own eyes.

Only one person who serves your holiness is not at this celebration. Do you notice my absence, Lord Sun? Does it offend you? Or are you pleased at least someone holds vigil with the corpse of your slain lover? Out in the streets they rejoice the godblood dripping on your hands yet only you and I know the truth of it. Let your priestesses and oracles exult in your victory today; your scribe will do right by the fallen Moon, even if I am the only one mourning the death of darkness on the longest day of the year.

New queer zine!

Posted on by
Reply

Hey everyone! My 4th zine is now available for purchase. Courting Shakespeare’s Sister: A Zine of Queer Yearning is full of very gay poetry, prose, and hand-drawn art, making it a perfect companion as we head into pride month.

I’ve also set up a Kofi to sell my zines through! All of my zines are available here in both physical and PDF form. New ones will be coming every couple of weeks. Check it out at the link below!

[ OnlyFragments on Kofi ]

Only Fragments Zines!

Posted on by
5

I’m excited to announce that I’ve been working on compiling some of my writing into handmade zines! Find physical and PDF copies for sale at my Kofi shop!

Volume 1 – Lady of Flame

The first completed zine is Lady of Flame, dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Bast. It features poetry, prose, prayers, and some other feline-themed goodies, along with my original artwork.

Volume 2 – I Am Not the Granddaughter of the Witches You Couldn’t Burn

The second completed zine is I Am Not the Granddaughter of the Witches You Couldn’t Burn, a witchcraft zine full of prose, poetry, custom sigils, and witchy art.

Volume 3 – Sacred Harlot

Volume 3 is Sacred Harlot, dedicated to the goddess Inanna. Its prose and poetry have a distinct self-empowerment theme, along with descent into the underworld.

#2423

Posted on by
2

Forgive my lack of manners, I just /devour/ poetry
can never seem to let it breathe, take a sip
roll the vintage along my pallet and
discern dimensions of linguistic terroir.
I am just so /parched/ you see
I swig straight from the bottle like a boor
each syllable sweet as honeyed wine
divine versification rejuvenation!
But then the last stanza’s been swallowed
metaphors drying on my tongue
and I’m a desert /desperate/ for a drop
pining for poetry’s reprieve once more.