How to Return to the Garden
In the beginning was a garden. Whether we consult religious myths or natural sciences, we can trace the roots of our species to complex ecosystems of biological life pouring forth in generative relationships within the web of existence. Humans, like all other life-forms, once participated in these ecosystems according to the constraints of their environments;…
Don’t Help My Unbelief
I want you to know that unbelief in God is not a sin. I want you to know that atheism is not a bad word.
Summer’s End (August)
Since I left God the Father I have fallen in love with the earth that has always been my home. Allowing myself to feel this way about the reality around me has done more for the God-shaped hole in my heart than my Father in Heaven ever did. But…
Summer’s End (July)
Today I feel the ache of summer’s mortality, as July blazes out in a crescendo of sun and heat and humidity and I can feel in my skin that suddenly more summer is behind us than in front of us. The gift of awareness comes with the awareness of death and this gift is harder…
i make the river sing
This is now, now. Fuck. This is a new year. These are the first words of a new year. Time is meaningless, and so is existence, but I am ensnared in both, god in skin trapped in meaningless time and meaningless existence and craving meaning I make it myself. don’t you see? the craving of…
Why Won’t God Fucking Do Something?
It’s an amazing, intricate, world full of suffering and death. It’s not enough. But it’s all we have.
How Firm a Foundation?
If I had been able to really believe, none of this would have happened. If I had ever been able to experience the God they spoke of in the way they spoke of Him, I probably would have been satisfied. If I had heard the still small voice of the Divine without also hearing the…
Always Has Been
last night i had a dream / vision wherein I briefly escaped this time/space-bound reality and saw the gods and us and everything floating in galaxies + grids. “come out here and dance with us,” the gods beckoned. I looked, and behold, under everything, gods dancing on dark waters, an eternal empty stage, a void,…
The Grace of Insignificance
recently a few folks have emailed me to tell me that they perceive me as sad, lost, hurting, or broken because of how i have been playing with language around ideas of god, faith, and existence. this always catches me by surprise, because i am happy + at peace, more than I’ve been in a…
God Did Not Speak to Me
God did not speak to me. I spoke and my voice was divine, though I was unaware that all the “god” i seek is not something, someone, an entity bearing being somewhere beyond the universe. god has only always been everything, and I keep forgetting.
a love letter to my friends (in late spring this year)
you should have been here by now. for six months i have been staring out this window at the naked trees, watching the snow fall and melt and waiting to share spring with you i was going to buy $100 worth of asparagus and tomatoes and sweet potatoes and bratwursts and salmon and pineapple. then…
Jesus Dies on the Cross
It’s Good Friday and I’m standing barefoot in my driveway with a sledge hammer and a fistful of nails. Scattered around me on the ground are broken pieces of an old church pew, a shattered portrait of Jesus, the small leather Bible I read every single day many lifetimes ago (when I was a good Christian).
I Will Cease My Relentless Deconstruction
I will cease my relentless deconstruction when I have excavated deep enough to find something solid upon which I can begin to build again. So far I have found only foundations that turn to sand when I rest the weight of my full being against them. I would be a fool to build on sand.…
Most Days Humanity is a Shrug of Futility
Most days, humanity is a shrug of futility. My religion taught me to deny this fundamental existential reality. I was supposed to convince myself that god has a plan for my life. I was supposed to convince myself that I was created for a purpose. /// There are two problems with these beliefs: 1.) they…
