Have you ever wondered what the first letter of the Bible is? Given the impossibly brilliant structure of Genesis 1 and the significance of every single detail about the text, one would be foolish, imprudent, silly to assume the first letter of this divine work is not a signal, an easter egg, perfume sprayed on the envelope of the love letter you just received. Now it might not be those things but one would need to check first, expecting something to be there.

One familiar with the symbolic grammar and intricate fractal logic of Torah and the Hebrew language it is written in, might guess the first letter of the Bible to be the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet: the aleph ( א). This would be analogous to the first stanza of the acrostic poem, Psalm 119–what I think of as “the ABCs of Torah”–being the aleph stanza in which each line begins with a word that starts with the letter aleph, the second stanza starting with the second letter, bet (ב), and so on through the alphabet. Aleph would be my choice for the first letter of the Bible. What about you? Thinking as a curious symbolist with a desire to cram into a text as much exposition of the underground of reality as possible, what would you want to communicate with that first letter of scripture? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” but with a single letter.

Btw, have you ever noticed the similarities between Hebrew and Greek? Hebrew begins with aleph, bet…while Greek begins with alpha, beta…there are many other similarities. Not a coincidence. The mind blowing thing to me is that Hebrew, Greek, and therefore English, all share the same common ancestor: Egyptian hieroglyphy. It goes something like this in terms of alphabetic evolution leading to the alphabet used in Torah: Hebrew <- Phoenician <- Proto-Siniatic/Proto-Canaanite <- Egyptian Hieroglyphs. And the crazy thing is, you can swap out Greek for Hebrew in that chain and then trace it back to the characters this essay is written in: English <- Latin <- Greek <- Phoenician <- Proto-Siniatic/Canaanite <- Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Every time you write a capital A you are reproducing an unbelievably ancient symbol of an ox head. You just have to turn that A upside down and you practically have a bull’s skull hanging on your wall: ∀. The aleph, too, has some horns on it: א. Aleph, the ox, symbolizes strength, the leader, the commander.

Speaking of that aleph, are we right in guessing it would be the first letter of holy scripture? On the face of things, the answer is clearly “no” but I think we can turn this into a “maybe” or a “sort of” with some creative thinking. In fact the first letter of Torah is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet: bet or beth ב. What do we make of this? The first word of the Bible is bereshit, which is typically translated as “in the beginning,” though I prefer to translate it simply as “Beginning.” If the first letter was basically any other letter I would be less suspicious or look for other significance but the fact that the first letter of the Bible is the second letter of the alphabet feels like a clue. Pause for a second and consider: what might God be communicating in these Spirit-breathed characters if this were a clue?

It’s interesting that the aleph is sort of silent in the ancient biblical Hebrew language. The aleph is sort of silent because the main function it serves is as a glottal stop or a breath notation. Think about the word “uh-oh,” where the dash serves as a reminder that this is not the word “uhoh,” there is a little air pop in your voice box that separates the two syllables. Or say the word “ear” as you normally would–it begins with a glottal stop–and if you try to say ear without that glottal stop start you will sound kind of pervy. We might think of the musical notation for a rest in which the absence of sound is inscribed with musical notation. There are also several instances of what is called the “quiescent aleph” in biblical Hebrew in which the letter is entirely silent. If the aleph is silent in its way, wouldn’t it make sense to begin Torah with the bet of bereshit since the absence of the aleph is the perfect way to signify its presence?

And then consider the shape of the aleph. In various Jewish traditions the aleph is thought to be comprised of two other Hebrew letters, yod (י) and vav (ו). To see this, let’s simplify the shape of aleph א into the capital N (these letters are not actually related). Each leg of the N pointing up and down can be thought of as a yod (י) and the diagonal connecting line can be thought of as a slanted vav (ו). And in this symbol we can see the entire cosmos. The arm pointing up signifies the heavens, the arm pointing down signifies the earth, the slant signifies the connecting principle between the two. Vav can actually mean the word “and” and yod can mean “work” or “deed” like a closed hand signifying the completion of an act. The heavens and the earth. And indeed the vav connects the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1. So in the aleph we see the heavens, the earth, and the and that joins them.

On the other hand, it’s interesting that the numerological values of aleph and bet are, perhaps unsurprisingly, 1 and 2 respectively. You may have heard that both Hebrew and Greek use the same characters to communicate letters and numbers. So we might say that the first number of the Bible is 2. Which means number 1 is skipped over such that the written Torah begins with a syncopating beat.

There is a midrash (a Jewish commentary on the Tanakh)–or we might call it a folk tale–in which, at creation, all the characters of the Hebrew language line up to see who will have the honor of being the first letter of Torah. Beginning with Tav, the last letter of the alphabet, the letters all arrived and made their case in a presentation reminiscent of the animals presenting themselves to Adam so he could name them.

When Bet came to make her case she explained that, first off, she is the first letter of the word for blessing, barak, as in barukh Atah, or “Blessed art Thou, O Lord.” And isn’t the creator of all things most blessed? And won’t it be a blessing when you command your creatures to be fruitful and multiply? Second of all, she explained that she is the symbol of a house or tent or dwelling, but with the front door open (ב). And isn’t the coming created world one great house of God and one great welcome home to all creatures you will create and isn’t their natural response to thank you and bless your name in response? And so we can see that it is not without meaning that the first written letter of creation is bet.

In the story, the Creator approved of Bet’s plan and thus began holy scripture with bereshit. Aleph resigned herself to not being chosen as the first letter but the Creator honored her humility by announcing that she would be the first letter of the unity of God found in the great Shema prayer of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel, Yhwh is our God, Yhwh is one.” “One,” spelled out in Hebrew, begins with aleph or ehad אֶחָד. Further, aleph would begin the first of the Ten Words (what you probably think of as the Ten Commandments), Anochi, or the divine “I” of God. As in, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.”

I think this tale about the parade of the Hebrew alphabet actually tells us something about the hidden first letter of the Bible because there is a sacred mystery that comes before that potent bet in bereshit; before the beginning there was the glorious mystery of the divine life, dwelling in eternal perichoretic happiness. We speak of that which we can only dream of. This surely trinitarian reality is wonderful to contemplate and we speak of it with hesitance. Hasn’t God revealed his ehad unity or oneness to be that of love? Isn’t the divine “I” that of the eternal holy community of the Trinity?

I think the first beat is there in the silence of the unwritten aleph. Perhaps it is silence that represents the connecting point between the eternal dwelling of God and that lovely bereshit; perhaps it is the sound of an indrawn breath before the singer begins; perhaps the sigh of the lover; perhaps the two comes out of the one; perhaps in the invisible aleph and written bet there is the systole and diastole of the divine heart.

Aleph: [Inhales] Silence.
Bet: [Exhales] Bereshit. Beginning, God creates the heavens and the land.

First there was the divine mystery–the unity of love, then God begins creating. Maybe the invisible aleph tells us about the joining of the two.

To get an idea of what we’re talking about, I want you to listen to track one, “Acknowledgement,” on the John Coltrane album, A Love Supreme. Use some nice speakers or headphones and do this when you have a minute to relax. Don’t go from abusing your mind by task switching and scrolling straight into trying to appreciate one of the greatest of all jazz albums many view as divinely inspired. When you get the chance, play that first track and imagine the entire ethereal introduction as being the unwritten aleph, the invisible first letter of Torah. The cold wind of the tam-tam awakens you; Coltrane’s tenor sax calls forth sunrise like the lark famous for its ascent; the piano sways like wind chimes welcoming the morning; the eager cymbals whisper the angel’s anticipation; there is no time as of yet. It’s not until around 30 seconds in that the first double bass notes begin to chant the words, “a love supreme,” and creation proceeds. That first bass phrase is the bet of the bereshit.

The pragmatic among you may be wondering, “So how does this knowledge change my life?” or “What do I do with this?” And the skeptical among you may be thinking, “Wow, you can make up basically anything about the Bible.” To this I would only shrug my shoulders humorously, purse my lips thoughtfully, stare off in the distance wistfully.

Love God in all his ways.

Two final notes:

• Some who are influenced by St. Maximos and other strains of theophilosophical speculation might consider the issues of temporality and linearity that are (potentially but not necessarily) implied in the above meditation to be problematic but I’d encourage such a person to chill out and just enjoy the prompted contemplation.

• If you are that Bible nerd who is jumping out of his chair because I did not say anything about the relationship between Jesus, specifically in the Gospel of John, the letter bet, and bereshit, then props. That is some obscure knowledge I would like to write about at a later time. It should be in this little essay but it’s already been so long since I’ve published anything and I needed to send it. Jesus as the eternal Logos made flesh through whom all things were created is the greater revelation.

It makes me happy that I have friends who want to think and write about bureaucracy because it's an important subject and it makes me feel like less of a weirdo for having wanted to write about the theology/philosophy of bureaucracy for some time. I hope that by the end of this essay I know how to spell the word. I also hope that by taking the time to think about the meaning of bureaucracy and by listening to what it says about our design and destiny, about sin and iniquity, about the good and true and beautiful, that we might take a small step toward preserving and expanding our humanity. What follows are some fragmentary thoughts on the philosophy and theopolitics of bureaucracy.

What Even Is Bureaucracy?

The French economist, Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay, invented the word “bureaucracy” in the mid 18th century. Vincent de Gournay seems to have lived in a particularly bureaucratic time as he said, “We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureaumania." You’re probably familiar with the word and have a good practical knowledge of its use and yet it is likely you haven’t gotten the full thrust of its meaning. When we say “bureaucracy” we should be thinking in the category of “forms of government.” So democracy, kleptocracy, plutocracy, meritocracy, bureaucracy, and so on. The “-cracy” comes from the Greek, kratos (κράτος), meaning power or rule, and the prefix tells you what form of power is in question. So democracy is demos + kratos or rule by the people, autocracy is rule by a single person with absolute power, etc.

So what is a bureau? It’s a desk. In the word “bureaucracy” we have “rule by the desk” where “desk” serves as a metonym for the system of rules and regulations, the system of administration. It is a sad picture in which the desk becomes the space of division, anti-mediation, legal entanglement, and dehumanization between the official and the citizen where both encounter great difficulty in any attempt to relate to each other as an I and a Thou.

The Narrative and the Reality

Bureaucracy rears its expressionless head in many places, in the workplace–especially large corporations, in education, the medical system, in business churches (more on that below), sadly I suspect even some families are infected by it in their own way; but of course bureaucracy is primarily a governmental reality.

All or most of the world’s governments run according to bureaucratic mechanics. In the USA they teach children in school that the US Government looks kind of tripartite like this:

But then, when you grow up, you find out that the USG looks something more like an iceberg:

Agencies! How much they shape our lives! Did you know that no one really knows how many agencies the USG is comprised of? Part of the challenge is in classification but part of the mystery resides in the varying levels of hiddenness and accountability certain agencies are beholden to. There are at least 450-500 departments, agencies, subagencies, bureaus, and such. These organizations touch practically every aspect of society. Is this too much agency? Feels like it but what do I know? Maybe it is good so much iceberg lies beneath the surface.

The Art of Bureaucracy

The best way to grasp the tragic significance of bureaucracy is in art. Indeed art is one of the key antidotes and alternative paths to the crushing forces of bureaucracy and therefore art that critiques bureaucracy is always doubly poignant. Let’s look at a few works worth mentioning.

Catch-22

The art of bureaucracy can be quite challenging. Heller’s novel, Catch-22 is one of the greatest works of art that critiques bureaucracy and yet reading it was easily one of my two least favorite reading experiences out of the thousands of books I have read. Reading that book was pure suffering for me. I think I hated Catch-22 so much because of how well Heller captures the nihilistic and destructive absurdity of bureaucracy which, along with all exertions of power that are arbitrary and dehumanizing and destructive, are all the more painful in their effect given the contradiction between arbitrariness and intensity of suffering they produce. Bureaucracy has always really gotten to me and is one of the chief forms of suffering that makes me pray, “Lord Jesus, come quickly.” We can psychoanalyze this later.

It was in reading Catch-22 that I understood that war is the paragon of bureaucracy. How do the gods of war get so many humans to participate in such a foolish, insane, destructive, shameful, evil tradition? There are only answers, rather than an answer to this question and yet it seems certain that, without the technology/ies of bureaucracy, war as we know it would be impossible. We could complicate this idea by thinking about how primitive societies conducted war and describe a progression in which technological advancement, legal innovations including the nation state, the form, the spreadsheet, and other artifacts of modernity, have brought war on its evolutionary path from a few humans clubbing and hacking each other to death in a field to the trench and chemical warfare at scale of the two world wars, to the horrorshow that the powers, satanic elites, bankers, arms dealers, and their army of bureaucrats are cooking up for WWIII, but I think the point stands and is only reified as history progresses: bureaucracy is the lifeblood of war, which is its logical conclusion.

Heller’s primary failure in his great magnum opus is that he fails to acknowledge the Kingdom of God, he fails to acknowledge Christ, and therefore he fails to identify the redemptive, prophetic path as he explores the dehumanization and absurdity of the bureaucracy of war. So how do people respond to this great systemization of death in Catch-22? Some embrace the madness, some try to game the system, some capitulate, some try to maintain their morality and humanity but remain too timid and powerless to know what to do, some just duck their heads and wait it out, some try to attain a mystical stoicism and survive by aloofness. The most active thing Yossarian does at the novel’s conclusion is to escape to Sweden.

What’s left? Thank God there is so much more and the Church will need to be thoroughly grounded in the story of God, in art, in the prophetic imagination; she will need to be truly filled with the Spirit and with spiritual people if she is to thrive in a world at war and be the city on a hill she is called to be.

Ikiru

The 1952 film, now in the Criterion Collection, Ikiru, is notable for its redemptive narrative arc and its positive prophetic challenge to bureaucrats. The name, Ikiru, means “live,” and (I will optimistically use the temporal clause) when you watch it, you will come away feeling that an angel has been whispering intensely but lovingly in your ear, “Live!” Ikiru is one of the greatest films ever made, so there's that.

Ikiru is about a lifelong bureaucrat, Kanji Watanabe, who has lost his soul in the church of the Tokyo public works office. (Weirdly, I just went to order a second drink at the coffee shop I’m at, and when I came back to my laptop, that word “church” was there. I think autocorrect may have turned “churn” into “church.” I decided to leave it as indeed bureaucratic systems operate according to their own anti-liturgies and a beholdeness to a form of anti-transcendence.) Slight spoilers follow though I don’t believe they will harm your viewing experience. Watanabe discovers that he has stomach cancer and not long to live. In this encounter with imminent death, he begins to rethink his life. After exploring different strategies for coping with his proximity to death, Watanabe finally sees a way to redeem himself; he decides to help a group of people that have been begging the various bureaucratic offices in the city to heal their neighborhood where sewage has been creating a public health hazard. Watanabe devotes his remaining life to turning this place of woe into a beautiful park for the children of the area.

The third act of the film portrays a kind of funeral courtroom scene in which Watanabe’s life is litigated by his former bureaucratic coworkers as they discuss the strange behavior he exhibited prior to his death. Their default stance of self-preservation and self-justification is undone as they get more and more drunk and then the truth comes out. They acknowledge Watanabe’s nobility and promise to repent of their inhumane ways and to do good in their positions moving forward. Do they? You’ll have to watch to find out. The conclusion of Ikiru stands as a prophetic challenge to all of us who waste our lives away and fail to be courageous and agentic enough to truly pursue the good in whatever work we’ve been given to do.

Runners Up

There is really an abundance of great art that critiques bureaucracy. It’s interesting just how inspirational this most life-sucking of fallen realities is to so many artists. A few more recommendations: Brazil, the 1985 psychedelic satirical horror film cult classic by Terry Gilliam. The 80s were so very weird. There is the novel by Kafka and the movie by Orson Wells, The Trial. Of course 1984 and Brave New World both capture bureaucratic dystopia. The Tom Hanks movie, The Terminal (not a great movie but one of the few redemptive ones), is a feelgood story about a man whose very existence becomes bureaucratically problematic such that he gets trapped in the liminal space of an airport as he awaits the acknowledgment of his humanity. On a much less serious note, Office Space, while not the most appropriate film, is very funny and offers an insightful alternative to the nihilism of corporate bureaucracy in its decently redemptive conclusion. We could go on.

Caveats

Quick note that should be obvious: there is never really only one form of governance at play in a society. The USA is governed according to democracy, kleptocracy, technocracy, bureaucracy, plutocracy, corporatocracy, to name a few.

Further, I hear the voice of the cold-hearted realists who are saying, “Good luck living without administration,” the well-behaved rule-followers saying, “But chaos scares me and I like having a reliable, predictable system that tells me what to do in order to stay out of trouble,” the good-hearted civil servants saying, “I pour out my life to help people through trying times, even sacrificing my physical and emotional health, all for no praise and a meager paycheck, stop harshing on bureaucrats.” We could go on. To all this I say, touché. I know real life is complicated and I am grateful to live in a country with (more or less) rule of law (Nomocracy?) and relatively low levels of corruption (debatable, I’m sure).

The point in using bureaucracy pejoratively is not that government or government offices shouldn’t exist, but that tyrannical officialdom should be identified and designed against. I’m not advocating for anarchy, at least not in the common sense of the word, but for a society in which the principles of the bureau are governed by the higher order principles of love, dignity of the imago Dei, servanthood, wisdom, common sense, mercy…

Business Church

One of the more traumatic forms of bureaucratic entanglement and dehumanization occurs inside of business churches. By “business church,” I mean churches that operate more as nonprofit businesses (did you know Ikea is a nonprofit?) than as organic/spiritual/familial communities of the holy brethren. I trust God uses business churches for all kinds of good in the world but indeed they have their downsides. I have known many people who have gone through protracted seasons of healing, forgiveness, processing, as they have tried to recover from the profound dysphoria that results when one is injured by living inside of an organization that purports to operate according to the economy of spiritual family but also operates according to the economy of the corporation. What does it mean when your spiritual family, the people who are reflecting Christ to you and praying for you and discipling you and hearing some of the most intimate and personal aspects of your story, the people who are your church, also have to relate to you according to the legal framework of employee/employer? What happens when you get fired? What does it mean when relationships mediated by Christ and the sevenfold unity of the Church are also mediated by HR and the forces of the marketplace?

I am here only nodding to this reality that deserves much more attention and pausing to declare that churches should operate according to the political logic of the Kingdom of God and according to the economy of the family. I’m grateful that at my church, “Family rules, not business rules,” is a thing people say. It is hard to live out and we do it imperfectly and of course some communities abuse and pervert this idea in the most awful ways but, when it’s healthy, church-according-to-family-dynamics is so beautiful I don’t even know where to begin.

The Meeting Place

So if the bureau, the desk (at least in the symbolic framework we’ve been discussing; desks can still be lovely symbols in other systems, my dear writers), is the anti-human form of mediation that results in so much human suffering, so much wanton waste, banal evil, a dysphoric smoke cloud of enchantment that makes us sick to our stomachs, then what is the alternative? I propose the table of Eucharist. What if we lived by koinocracy rather than bureaucracy? Koinonia being communion, shared life. Indeed God invites us to break bread with him, to eat a meal with him; God provides the meal by giving us himself . The table is the cosmic meeting place of the I and the Thou, of the divine with the Divine (the Divine with the Divine?). At the table, our humanity and dignity is renewed and we humanize each other, we even bear witness to God’s divinization of each other in Christ. The table operates according to the principle of love, of self-giving, of sharing, of koinonia.

What other forms of government might we consider?

Agapocracy or Philocracy, the rule of Love.

Sophocracy, the rule of wisdom that knows what is best when, knows how to apply nuance, knows when a rule should be broken, knows what higher principles are at work in any given situation, knows what Paul means when he says “the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.”

Goneiocracy? Admittedly awkward but having less baggage than patriarchy and matriarchy. Rule by the parents. Or presbyterocracy, rule by the tribe’s elders or servants of the church. Good parenting and eldering is not overbearing but governed by self-sacrificial love and service with the aim of feeding, forming, protecting, liberating, empowering, and celebrating being succeeded by, the members of the household. Pneumocracy, rule of the Holy Spirit. Diakocracy, rule through service and modeling Jesus by becoming a slave. Oikocracy, governance modeled on the principles of the household. Kenarchy, rule by way of self-emptying, or Martyrocracy, rule of the martyrs. Rule by way of the embrace of death for the sake of the hope of new life; giving charge to those who are most willing to die.

You get the idea. What would you add to this list?

Temptations and Transcendence

Despite my extreme experience of disgust in encounters with bureaucracy, I’m grateful to say that I don’t have many dramatic experiences of it to narrate to you. I think my experiences of injustice in many non-official and non-governmental forms are the formative factors for my emotional response. But how little bureaucratic suffering it takes for me to sin against God!

One of my daughters has a French middle name that has an accent mark over the é. PSA: it seems government offices don’t know how to use such characters. I remember receiving her social security card and her birth certificate in the mail and realizing that both offices had added an apostrophe at the end of her name rather than simply converting the é to an e. Having perhaps imbibed too much art that critiques bureaucracy and having consequently become a bit cynical (consider this re:my art recommendations above), I imagined various scenarios in which this apostrophe might cause my daughter all kinds of complications later in life and so I decided to fix it.

I have a distinct memory of standing behind a glass divider, awkwardly tilting my head in an attempt to be heard through the hole meant for passing papers and pens and sound waves, and feeling so much disgust for the woman whose face I can still recall, numb, expressionless, and unresponsive to the absurdity of the problem; uninterested in why I didn’t think I should have to pay money to fix her colleague’s mistake. It wasn’t even that big of a deal, I know! But I kind of wanted to burn the building to the ground (just joking, NSA!).

I have since repented. I pray that God would bless that woman.

Regardless of which side of the bureau you are on, you are commanded by God to treat the Other with dignity. We must reject the temptation to objectify each other. The bureaucrat must repent of becoming hard hearted and numb to the sufferings and needs of the people they serve and be patient with their vices. The bureaucrat must pursue justice, must use honest scales. The person interacting with the bureaucrat must repent of seeing them as mere roadblocks or idiot cogs and must see them according to Christ; they must be grateful for their help and show respect to them.

When I do my taxes I must send my forms to the IRS stamped with an invisible blessing. May the lady at the DMV experience the love of Christ when my number is called.

Maybe this is easy for all of you and I am just writing my confessions.

The point here is that the bureaucracy is harmful to human thriving and its deleterious effects are suffered by all parties involved. Let us have compassion on one another. I don’t know how academically sound this idea is, but where I come from, we use the word “iniquity” to describe sin that is transpersonal. What I mean is, not all sin is you doing a bad thing. Much of the world’s sin or brokenness is larger than you or me. We are born into and embedded in a system of sin that we all suffer from and contribute to. I think bureaucracy is an expression of this. Humans are often unruly, dangerous, impulsive, and we need systems of control and behavior management that help keep our baser nature in check. But these systems that mitigate our viciousness also become egregoric embodiments of the very vice they were designed to restrain. And it hurts to be the hammer or the anvil, here.

So let us pray the Jesus Prayer and repent, repent, repent, and become prophetic misfits who are always finding ways to turn desks into communion tables.

And don’t forget to read Josh’s story, Permit. It’s really good!

A Place to Come and Die

“There is simply no way to grow in God without times of purgation.”

Mark Kutolowski and his wife, Lisa, are founders and co-directors of Metanoia of Vermont, a homestead and community devoted to spiritual formation. A few years ago, Mark wrote a piece winsomely titled, A Place to Come and Die, which I like to read early in the lenten season. If you are observing Lent then I recommend it to you.

“Lent is not about self-improvement. Lent is about self-surrender, and confident trust in the Divine Physician who purifies and heals us when we give ourselves into the arms of Christ.”

Revival Would Crush You

Also for Lent: I have listened to this provocatively titled podcast episode, Revival Would Crush You, three times now and each time something different stands out. This is the first episode in a series from the Awaken Network Podcast. It asks the question, if true revival in the Church came to your region, would you be able to endure it? I’ve asked my church to listen to this conversation so that our lenten prayer might be, “God, strengthen the walls of my soul; thicken the walls of my soul so that I can contain more of your glory.”

Church of Kidane Mehret

Over the years I have found myself increasingly drawn to African music. Obviously Africa comprises 54-55 countries and there is a vast range of cultures and musical styles represented there but I can say nonetheless that African music, ranging from the Saharan desert all the way down to South Africa, tends to calm me down and bring me happiness. So I am happy to share with you a new album, posthumously released, of the music of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, of blessed memory. Emahoy, (an honorific that means “mother”) was an Ethiopian composer and pianist and a nun in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. She died in 2023 at the age of 99.

When she was about 60 (and I was just born), she emigrated to Jerusalem where she lived at Kidane Mehret, an Ethiopian monastery, for the rest of her life. Emahoy recorded these tracks in various churches throughout Jerusalem. My favorite album of hers, her blues album, is called Souvenirs, but in Church of Kidane Mehret, Emahoy has created some beautifully haunting tracks that I now cherish. Definitely bought this one on cassette tape.

There is so much to say about Emahoy’s life, her work on behalf of children, her ahead-of-her-time fusion of traditional Ethiopian/blues/classical and more, but I will only refer you to the BBC audio documentary about her called The Honky Tonk Nun.

All is Sound

I meant to include this one on my 2025 end of year favorites list. The first track, “Creation,” makes for wonderful background music to a reading of Genesis 1. “A Sleeping Planet,” my favorite track, engenders the delight of the fecundity (love you, K) and flux of life. “Nada Brahma” is a Vedic term meaning something like “Sound is God” or “Sound is joy,” and makes me think about Christ as the eternal Logos made flesh.

The 21

In Romans 8, Paul quotes Psalm 44 in an encouragement that is all too immediately relevant for so many Christians throughout the earth:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

That “in all these things” line often gets the treatment of something nice that might be cross stiched on a piece of cloth stretched across a circular frame in your grandmother’s bathroom. But the Sons of Korah–the psalmists who composed Psalm 44–give God more of an emotionally resonant challenge/plea, even calling God out for being asleep. Awake!:

All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way;
yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our belly clings to the ground.
Rise up; come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!

Indeed Christians are being killed all the day long. Communist and Islamist regimes seem to be the main sources of this violence our people suffer; though the real enemy behind it all is the spiritual enemy of God and humanity and we war not against flesh and blood. 70 christians in the Congo were massacred just a couple of weeks ago but these things don’t typically make the mainstream news.

Last month, on the ten-year anniversary of a holy day, a short animated film called The 21, was released. The 21, animated in the style of Coptic iconography, tells the story of the 21 Coptic martyrs who were killed by ISIS in Libya in 2015. It seems that the global Coptic community came together such that “more than 70 artists from more than 24 countries” worked together to create this brief masterpiece. I would suggest that this film is not for the very young nor for the faint of heart and yet it is also edifying, encouraging, hopeful, and very beautiful. I hope you watch it.

Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!

St Peter’s Four Tiers of Prayer

This passage of St. Peter of Damaskos, from the collection of writings of eastern spiritual masters known as The Philokalia (a text which we will come back to time and again), has got me thinking. Better said, this passage has got me staring out into the distance and praying wordless prayers that, if put into words, might sound something like, “Is this what we’re doing, Father? Will I experience this rapture…the blessings of the age to be? Will you take me with you?”

I have arranged this excerpt into a numbered list though that is not how it was recorded. These words may nonplus you, which is okay; time enough. These words may frustrate you, that’s okay too. Perhaps the best case scenario: these words will stick with you for awhile, you will roll them around in your mouth, you will ask questions like, “Why would the ‘contemplation of created beings’ come after the ‘imageless and formless prayer’?” I think these words are true; they convey riches of incarnation, christology, true Christian gnosis and ascent, panentheism, theosis, the dialectic and telos of creation; but again, there’s time enough for all that.

For it is said of God that he "gives prayer to him who prays";
1. and, indeed, to one who truly prays the prayer of the body, God gives the prayer of the intellect;
2. and to one who diligently cultivates the prayer of the intellect, God gives the imageless and formless prayer that comes from the pure fear of him.
3. Again, to one who practices this prayer effectively, God grants the contemplation of created beings.
4. Once this is attained–once the intellect has freed itself from all things and, not content with hearing about God secondhand, devotes itself to him in action and thought–God permits the intellect to be seized in rapture, conferring on it the gift of true theology and the blessings of the age to be.

Spiritus vobiscum.

Recently Tyler interviewed Ross Douthat, a Roman Catholic superstar columnist with the New York Times. Douthat’s latest book is called Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious and Tyler took the occasion to ask Douthat several questions about religious belief. I may give Douthat’s book a review soon; the title alone gets my gears turning like crazy. I think all people are inherently religious such that it is a basic part of human nature. Given we need to qualify this word religious, why should everyone be that way? Or are we talking about a belief in the supernatural? Is this another author getting on the reenchantment bandwagon? Etc.

I smoked my pipe as I listened to their discussion and sat on my patio in a bid to absorb precious sunlight on an unseasonably warm midwinter day. I found myself gripping the armrests of my chair as Douthat answered Cowen’s questions–not because I thought he was wrong–Douthat does a wonderful job–but because I simply wanted to answer Cowen’s questions my way.

In the early days of Conversations With Tyler, Tyler used to say, “This is the conversation with so and so, I want to have. Not the one you want to have.” I always liked that line. What follows is the conversation I want Tyler to have had with me, not the one he actually had, which was very good. I’ve taken the main questions Cowen asked Douthat from the transcript and then added my own responses. This is no criticism of Douthat’s apologetic prowess. Douthat gives a wonderful demonstration of how Christian apologetics might be redeemed from their deservedly poor reputation. I very much enjoyed Cowen and Douthat’s discussion and I recommend you listen if such things interest you. But I’m curious to find out how I would respond to some of Cowen’s questions so here we go.

Tyler: I have a basic question about, what does it mean to be religious? Let’s say I believe in the simulation hypothesis, which comes from Nick Bostrom. Robin Hanson has cited it. The notion that, if we can make a lot of simulations, there’s a pretty good chance we are ourselves living in one. How does believing in the simulation argument differ from being religious? Outside the sphere of normal life, how do we distinguish what we might call a god from what we might call — I don’t know — whoever created the simulation?

Anthony: So how does belief in Simulation Theory differ from religious belief, and how does the idea of God differ from the idea of a Great Gamer in the sky who is in some way running our reality as one would a computer program?

I find it helpful to place the thought exercise of Sim Theory alongside Harman/Putnam’s Brain in a Vat scenario as simply being a materialist version of Descartes’ Deus Deceptor or Evil Demon idea. Regarding the specifics of ST, they seem to reflect a lack of imagination in which, because we can simulate (in very limited ways) our reality with computer programs, we decide to take the wild and totally inexplicable leap of analogizing upwards to posit that someone else must be generating our reality also with computer programs. But there’s no reason to think that a higher reality would be anything like our own or that it should operate on the same fundamental principles as ours and, given our reality is really some kind of fiction, we have no justification (at least on purely materialist terms) for assuming we could figure out anything about the nature of that higher reality. So why computers? Why not the dream of a toddler of some higher power species who is dying of a fever? Let’s at least make our thought exercises creative. I don’t believe Brain in a Vat and ST add anything, because of their reliance on technologies and lack of supernatural plot device, to the original Evil Genius idea.

Importantly, ST and its ilk only kick the can down the road of contingency, right? If we grant that we are in a simulation, who made the Simulators, etc? It’s a similar question to where the Big Bang came from. With materialism, we are always avoiding the question of whence and why it all comes. The reality is that, at least from one perspective, reality is ultimately absurd and mysterious in that we live according to contingency and yet cannot avoid some implication of noncontingent origination or source and we must take some swan dive of faith no matter what we believe.

So Brain in a Vat, ST, and Deus Deceptor, are all asking the same questions: How can we trust what we think we know? How can we escape the solipsism and nihilism of radical skepticism? Am I safe? Is this real? Is it all a lie? Does someone really love me? What are we doing here? Etc.

There are two paths I’d suggest, one I’d offer to walk with you:

One. The Transcendental Argument for God or TAG. Personally, TAG is one of the more compelling ways of using reason to systematically build a case for the existence of God or at least the transcendent. Regardless of how far TAG takes one, it does irreparable damage to materialism/physicalism/Scientism. If you sit with the questions TAG asks us to ask about how we justify the things we believe, I think there is no way to remain a devotee of the philosophically bankrupt religion known as Scientism. In many ways, TAG asks the same questions as Sim Theory but instead of theorizing a void, running into it, and then trying to ask the big questions from that vantage point, TAG starts with fullness, sensibility, beauty, awe, and honestly faces the reality of meaning, information, predication, considering what they might imply. You can find books and YouTube videos about TAG so I won’t try and make the case here.

Two: The path I’d love to walk with you is the path of getting to know Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God, the god-man, the culmination of history, the beginning and middle and end of creation, the Logos, the one in whom we have seen the Father. I really believe that Christianity is the most satisfying story from every vantage point: from the philosophical and the most rigorous application of reason, from the ethical, anthropological, aesthetic, from the vantage point of your discipline, Tyler, the economic. In fact, I would almost say that you should become a christian and pursue the faith if only for the territory it would open for you as an economist. Economics comes from the Greek words oikos and nomos or Household Order. The universe is God’s house and the order and logic and stewardship of God’s house is of great importance to Him and has a divine end. You have actually chosen a sacred path in becoming an economist and I think following Jesus will create far more vocational satisfaction and enlightenment for you than wondering what it would mean if some pimply teenager of a higher order was moving you around with a joystick.

To invite you to learn more about following Jesus is not an avoidance of Descartes’ question. But it is an acknowledgement of the fact that radical skepticism is like the child who closes their eyes and covers their ears when their mother tells them it’s time for bed. But what they really want is to be picked up and held and taken care of. Reality beckons to you, it allures you.

You started with the question of what it means to be religious; this is a big question which we could pursue if you’d like but I would start with the idea that religiosity is fundamentally a part of being human. The word means different things depending on how we’re using it but I would say to be religious is to seek meaning and coherence as part of a community in relation to the divine.

Tyler: Clearly, you believe creation is possible, and you don’t dismiss Bayesian reasoning. How much weight you give it is an open question. Why not think there are multiple layers of God? What we think of as God is just part of the chain. In Bayesian terms, if a god created us, well, some being could have created that god. Why aren’t you led to that as a view with pretty high probability?

Anthony: I do think the Bayesian Fine-Tuning argument holds water. And no amount of appealing to unproven and inaccessible infinite universes can satisfy for me the miraculous nature of being, of reality, of creation, of us sitting here together.

But you’re asking a different question and I think, at a technical level, Bayesian reasoning has no seat at the table as we are talking about things for which we have no ability to grasp at the probabilities and no justification for their estimation. The very idea of probability and measurement and coherence and predication and intelligibility all depend on some transcendental priors for which we need to account; and re: the TAG logic hinted at above, I think the existence of all those things ultimately only coheres in the trinitarian God of Christianity.

But if we let go of the technical requirement for probabilities and think of Bayesian reasoning as simply a helpful argumentative structure, well, I still wouldn’t be the best interlocutor for you because I don’t think that’s how love works. I’m sure someone has worked through–let’s call them the bayesian syllogisms–in the apologetic tradition of adding to humanity’s body of knowledge through arguments for God’s existence, but I want you to know that God is Love and you are created by Love in Love for Love and Love is knocking on your door. Bayesian reasoning won’t teach your heart to receive Love and it won’t open your spiritual eyes but I can lay hands on you and pray for you to be filled with the Holy Spirit, if you wish.

Tyler: The Christian God is a demiurge. There’s some higher god who created that and maybe many other gods. It seems once you even consider the logic of the simulation hypothesis, you become fairly agnostic about the true nature of the ultimate god. Surely, it’s odd to, say, not dismiss the Trinity, not dismiss the intermediate elf beings, and then invoke Occam’s razor, right? You could just be a Muslim. There’s one God indivisible. That’s that. Or be a Unitarian.

Anthony: First off, let me clarify that I believe the Christian God, Yhwh, the great Three-in-One, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the higher God who created the many other gods, even the machine elves and forest spirits and the angels and demons and the gods of the nations. I think a more historically and academically correct use of the word “god,” though most people use that term to refer to their concept of the highest power, is basically in relation to any divine being.

So I think the Muslim god is real, it’s just that he doesn’t love you and is a created being in rebellion against the Most High God who is Love and does love you and is your source and highest end.

In a sense, the Muslim god is a unitarian god and this is one of the biggest strikes against him as candidate for the highest power. Nothing could exist if God were not the Holy Trinity. You might think the idea of Trinity has no special meaning or is arbitrary or is just one equivalent cultural fiction aside so many others, but it is actually the highest revelation of Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Love. That God is Holy Trinity and that Christ is both god and man, that God’s act of creation culminates in a kind of self-creation in the god-man and his self-offering on the cross, and universe-filling in the Spirit, and bringing into the body of Christ as their End all people and the universe, this is the highest revelation.

Unitarians get at least one thing right about God, God is One, but his oneness is that of perichoretic Love, which means God’s oneness is in his threeness and vice versa, in the eternal mutual self-offering and receiving of each person of the Trinity, the eternal divine dance, the happy generative family that God is and from whom all creation emanates.

Tyler: If I go to Sri Lanka, the children of Hindus tend to be Hindu. The children of Buddhists tend to be Buddhists, Muslims, some Christians even. That makes me very suspicious about our particularist intuitions. If you just showed up and said, “Tyler, I will save your soul. You should be a deist,” we’d have a very different conversation. But when someone puts forward a very specific claim, I just don’t trust their specific intuitions. They seem so tied to society, conformist pressures, family, what they learned as a kid. I just think we should look at all of Sri Lanka and figure, “Hey, these people ended up where they did because of how they grew up.” That’s fine. It’s maybe good for social cohesion, but then move on to just thinking about it more abstractly. Why is that wrong?

Anthony: The particularity of reality is very often offensive to our philosophical inclinations. If we want to, as I often do, make things philosophically abstract so we can model them in our heads, the Real and Particular will always be waiting for us to step outside and touch grass and run into the Other. So, like any good story, and certainly like the story we’re in, there are stakes. If kids grow up in a household of a certain faith, yes, they are more likely to adhere to that faith. The fact that we can measure this statistically, does not mean that it must or can all be boiled down to so many materialist and determinist dominoes falling. We are just measuring the effects of causes that exceed the materialist’s grasp.

It so happens that we live in a great spiritual war. The territory is the human heart. There are real spiritual powers that are seeking the destruction and allegiances of human hearts in an attempt to advance their side in that war. God is pursuing every human heart, from the stillborn child whose existence was never even known, to the Buddhist who lived their entire life without having ever even heard of Jesus or Christianity. He will be totally victorious in the end. Why the war? Why are things the way they are? There are answers, stories, and there is great benefit to pursuing these questions in their theological, philosophical, and mythological gravitas, but you will never escape (and in fact will only ever increase your awe at) how overwhelmingly big Reality is and how frustratingly small you are. We will never comprehend but may only ever apprehend the Infinite.

So maybe you’re right, maybe people only believe what they believe for materialist/determinist reasons, maybe everything is merely incidental; but maybe the stories are true, maybe the things we measure have more mysterious–outrageous even–origins; maybe you’ll find that if you start praying to Jesus Christ you will encounter the Love at the center of the universe and recognize your place in this great spiritual war.

Tyler: Does it worry you that when many people take psychedelics, they feel spirituality, religion, the presence of God, the supernatural? It’s obviously a natural cause…It could be that God is intervening every time someone takes LSD and giving you visions, but it just seems it’s the operation of the drug and that there can be quite naturalistic reasons why people feel religion, the presence of God, the supernatural, and it’s not, in a way, that mysterious or linked to an actual deity.

Anthony: “Obviously a natural cause”...What the hell kind of thing is that to say? [good natured, humorous tone, ha ha] On the one hand, I know exactly what you mean; on the other, your words break my brain. What is “natural”? What aristotelian levels of “cause” are we referring to and which are we ignoring? “Cause” itself is super“natural”. What is “matter,” even? Having a mind which can connect with the world and make judgments about what is obvious is obviously supernatural in some sense. By “supernatural,” for our purposes, I really mean transcendent in some way.

I’ve done a lot of psychedelics and certainly have had experiences one might call spiritual while under their influence, though of a decidedly negative quality. I think there are many things going on with our use of entheogens and intend to write about this for the Church. Many psychedelic effects are, to your point, simply artifacts of the chemical manipulation of our brains, yes. But there is ample practical evidence that psychedelic use opens many users up to the spiritual world. For example, psychedelic use often results in people becoming demonized or tormented by evil human spirits of shamans and the like. When evil demons or shamans haunt you for months after your ayahuasca trip it is hard to say this is just chemicals in your brain. My own psychedelic use opened a door to tormenting spirits that only let up in their torment when I encountered Jesus in a quite mystical and immediate way. Simply working with one’s breath can open one to spiritual experiences. Our material bodies are all bound up in spiritual reality and the sum total of reports about what people are experiencing on their trips only verifies a supernatural worldview of some kind.

Tyler: Monkeys can’t [have spiritual experiences] in your view, but do monkeys have a soul? Tree shrews?

Anthony: I don’t know what kinds of experiences monkeys can have but I do believe they have a “soul,” though probably not in the sense that you’re using that word. Tree shrews too! (Are tree shrews a real thing btw? I loved Shakespeare’s Taming of the Tree Shrew.) All things participate in God in different ways. I think a great translation of the Hebrew and Greek words for “soul” can be simply, “life.” That humans are, in a very special way, made in the image of God, does not mean that God is not expressing himself through the larger created order and that he is not sustaining animals with the same breath of life he does us. The Bible tells us that humans and animals are all bound up in the same grand narrative and structure of meaning.

Tyler: There’s some day of transition. That to me seems very weird. For a long time, everything operates according to quantum mechanics and Einstein and Newton. Then one day, there’s a monkey or a tree shrew. That animal eats a magic banana and is somehow infused with free will or a soul or the ability to contemplate the deity, but it’s still subject to all the same physical laws. It would be very odd to me. It’s like Descartes’s interaction problem, how one day is different from the next. Look, what does the day look like when the trilobite becomes the God-perceiving human? What’s the critical event in the middle?

Anthony: These are interesting questions: how does God create the world? Taking a theistic evolution perspective: When does the analog curve of the ape’s evolution make a digital, zero-to-one, leap and become a human person with spirit? To Descartes’ problem of interaction, how does mind interact with body if one holds a mind/body dualism?

My honest answer to these questions is, I don’t know. I like that people like Dr. Swamidass still take these questions seriously enough to write books like The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry, which I think you would enjoy. He is some kind of scientist of genetics who takes the scientific account of evolution seriously as well as the biblical creation narrative and develops a theory that is substantial, novel, and brings some blessedly fresh air into the space.

For my part, I am not a dualist like Descartes, though I don’t offer a simple alternative to his dualism that will satisfy many. I am simultaneously a massive idealist and a massive materialist and think it’s all more mind-bending and dialectically complex and compelling than that. So for me, there isn’t an interaction problem as all things head toward their fulfillment and end in God.

Also, isn’t it interesting that the same problem of your “day of transition” applies to each human subject? In one sense I think a human is a person from the moment of conception, when there is a unique (though not totally distinct) human life that has a particular telos; but in another sense, aren’t there multiple stops along the way of becoming a person?

Tyler: There’s no interaction problem to explain. Whereas, when someone thinks that a godlike being is interfering all the time with the principles of quantum mechanics — it’s not impossible. It just seems, to me, very strange. [A view of quantum mechanics that implies an observer is required for reality to maintain] is not how I interpret quantum mechanics. I don’t think we understand what measurement means in the theory, but it doesn’t have to be a subjectively conscious mind. We don’t all have to be Bishop Berkeley — that you need God to prevent everything from popping out of existence because God is perceiving it all, all the time.

Anthony: I’m not sure most people of faith would say God is constantly interfering with quantum mechanics. Some people do have what’s called a “voluntarist” view of God in which everything God does is raw power and capricious exertion of will. I hate voluntarism with a passion and believe that the order of the universe instead reflects the nature of God. The principles and laws and predictability of the universe depend on him for their existence as do all things that participate in Being and are reflective of his nature.

Miracles, while being by one definition a “violation” or exception to the laws of nature, I think actually reflect a deeper expression of God’s commitment to all things being as they should and are actually a return to the created order and fulfillment of it when that order threatens to veer off into disorder in the course of its becoming.

I’d argue that there is certainly no meaning to the word “measurement” that does not depend on the Subject but I make no claim as to which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct. The scientific consensus is still out and so is mine, not that anyone cares.

Berkley’s view, while typically being less appreciated in its nuance and creativity than it often gets credit for, ultimately is unsatisfying in its lack of appreciation for the Real. I think God really created everything and we shouldn’t tell him he’s dreaming. On the other hand, God is Being and all things have their being in Him.

Tyler: I think I’m closer to the Colin McGinn view that we’re just not smart enough to understand consciousness. It’s a puzzle. It should make us more agnostic about many things, but it’s not an excuse to go multiply all these other entities.

Anthony: So far, it is self-evident that we are not smart enough to explain consciousness with the resources of science. Even philosophically and theologically it is challenging to pin these things down.

You’re saying, “If we can’t even figure out what consciousness is, why postulate about God?” Your point reminds me of a debate I watched several years ago between, if I remember correctly Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson. A wonderful exchange. Wilson at one point says something to the effect of, “Just because I’m trapped in Plato’s cave and can’t get out to reach God, doesn’t mean God can’t reach out and touch me on the nose.” That has gotten a lot of mileage with me.

You are made for union with God. It is most natural. Your grasp of God is not limited by your intelligence and ability to understand consciousness but by sin and fallenness. But Jesus pursues you and has made a way for you to know God and even to receive God’s very life into your mortal body. Jesus brought humanity into the heavenlies and brings heaven into you if you only call on him and follow him.

One more note: Why not let the mystery of consciousness serve in the more obvious way, as a signpost toward the God who is the source of consciousness? I think this is more reasonable!

Tyler: I think most of my decisions are made without my awareness. What I feel is my consciousness is some kind of blip or epiphenomenon. Skating on the surface of that, there’s a lot of evidence…Most of it happens beneath the surface, and I’m not aware of the decisions I’m making. There’s an ex post reconstruction of it that makes me feel like I’m in control, but I don’t think I am very much, if at all.

Anthony: You just said you’re not smart enough to understand consciousness and I agree. Me neither. The experiments around the chain of events in the exertion of human will: a stimulus, the body’s response, the conscious mind’s apparent post hoc decision to act, and things like that, are really interesting but I don’t think there’s enough to work with yet, and who’s to say that some prior source of spirit doesn’t rest beneath all the things we are capable of measuring? As I see it, logic necessitates that this is the case. I do look forward to whatever insight science can provide us in understanding consciousness as epiphenomenon but this would only add to my delight as we scratch at the surface of understanding how God gods through us.

Tyler: If there are many alien beings on other planets — as I would say now seems likely, whether or not they’ve ever come here — does that make Jesus Christ less important? We keep on discovering more planets that appear possibly habitable. We don’t know what’s on them, but it’s certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets, so we should be raising our probability. It’s a big place out there. I would be shocked if there was not other meaningful life in the universe.

Anthony: First off, speaking of things we’re not smart enough to understand, we don’t know what life is, so the Drake Equation and its general logic is totally meaningless. The Drake Equation is a good conversation piece, which I believe is what Frank Drake intended it to be, but it gets deployed as an established fact when it is missing one huge factor: WHAT IS LIFE AND HOW DID IT START? So we can only estimate, sort of, how many planets that might support our kind of life might exist, but not how many planets might exist that might host whatever caused life since we don’t know what that is, scientifically. We may be able to estimate how many planets like ours are in the universe based on some selection of factors of comparability, but we have no meaningful way of guessing the likelihood of life in the universe. So, for instance, if the answer was “panspermia,” which of course also kicks the can down the road, we’d need to account for the Sowers’ rationale in order to make any kinds of estimates.

I also wonder what “meaningful life” means to you but, sadly, this is an imaginary conversation.

Let’s grant your premise, though: there is extraterrestrial, meaningful, intelligent life in the universe. Many christian thinkers have thought about this. Theologically, we’re especially interested in what it would mean for other persons made in the image of God to exist on other planets. This might be where your question about the importance of Jesus would come in for most thinkers on the topic. But I believe that the entire universe is destined to be the temple in which the glory of God dwells, that creation is itself a kind of incarnation, that the work of Christ is cosmically significant, that the body of Christ is fractal, that, while it would be a different story in many ways, Christ would do some similar work of incarnation for the Martians. Jesus is the point of the universe and not just an incidental provision for sins though his setting us free from those is wonderful enough and so the Martians get to know him too.

If you haven’t read C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy starting with Out of the Silent Planet, you must! Out of the Silent Planet is all about the question you’re asking.

Tyler: If you’re weighing those probabilities that UAPs are alien drone probes   versus angels and demons, what do you bring to bear on trying to figure that out? Because even I would say this: UAPs have increased my probability that there’s a God because there are not many explanations for them. There’s China. There’s Russia. There’s craft of our own. There’s alien drone probes. There’s what you could call broadly supernatural. So, there are five explanations. That’s one of the five? So, it’s upped my p. I don’t know what that means, though.

Anthony: Regardless of what these phenomena are, it’s good that they are increasing your sense that the supernatural might be real. Soon, a good book, a baby’s cry, a symphony, will make us feel the same way. God is using everything in your life in order to draw you to Himself.

I accept your five explanations and, not to reduce the probability you perceive that God is real, would guess there are more good candidates. What if it was guaranteed to be spiritual in nature whether or not the UAPs themselves are supernatural phenomena? What I mean is, let’s say UAPs are tools of war being tested out by various nation-states; I would still view this as “spiritual” phenomena in that I believe nation-states themselves are spiritual phenomena. I believe humans and the spiritual powers are all caught up together in the story of reality and that kinetic war reflects spiritual war. I also would not be surprised at all if they turn out to be what we’d generally call “demonic” in nature. Who knows! I have my popcorn.

Tyler: In general, you weigh personal testimony higher than I do. Let me see if you can talk me into it a bit. Something is recorded in data sensors and confirmed across multiple sensors. Maybe I don’t know what it is, but I’ll believe there’s something there. But if people say X, Y, and Z — there’re all sorts of religions neither you nor I would sign onto, and plenty of humans who will assert, insist that there’s direct evidence for that particular religion..

The story of Joseph Smith, the plates from LDS would be one example, but there are plenty of religions that don’t even exist anymore, where there are very particular stories that people have attested to. We really do dismiss them in the numbers of the tens of millions or maybe even billions. So, if we’re willing to dismiss all those stories, isn’t David Hume right? We should not dismiss the stories, but they’re not going to budge us out of a more commonsensical worldview…It’s almost an Islamic doctrine you’re holding. There are these various tiers of prophets, and they’re imperfectly right, but they’re getting at the divine.

Anthony: The “commonsensical” worldview fails to ask enough questions. I don’t want to be redundant but all my comments on the transcendental argument for God, on the justification of prediction and predication and coherence and intelligibility and mind and life, would apply here. So Hume’s appeal to natural law cannot justify itself. And I don’t see why your trust in sensors and their designers and your mind’s ability to grasp information in the world should seem more reasonable than my trust in the Good News of Jesus Christ passed down to me through the Church and the scriptures and attested to by the Spirit. They’re both a little bit “out there” and we need to dig deeper and maybe bust out the cigars to get somewhere here.

While we do dismiss many stories told by people over the years, it’s funny how often materialists assume that the fact that something like 99% of all humanity have believed and attested to supernatural reality is not real data about the nature of reality. So at least we should consider that some sense of the supernatural is commonsensical, whether, to your point, any particular framing of it is. I assume most of the stories out there are at least based on real things.

But why should you follow Jesus rather than Mohammed? I do believe that there is some degree of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, in most faiths, but I also believe the Trinitarian God made known to us in Christ is the ultimate source of those things. To go further we’d need to have that cigar or a meal together.

Tyler: Doesn’t it worry you that for all of these instances of the supernatural, there’s never enough evidence accumulated to convince actual scientists? No one has captured an elf, as far as I know. You could switch the topic to some other instance of the supernatural, but there’s plenty of testimony of elves.

Anthony: I deny the premise, first of all! Of course many actual scientists are convinced of the supernatural.

Three points:

1. One need not deny the transcendent in order to be a great scientist and I would argue that believing in God would only improve one’s ability to think well and to seek the order of things. Scientism is, as I said, utterly bankrupt philosophically and cannot justify its own conditions or commitments or results in any meaningful way.

2. “Science” needs some kind of direction, some values, some sense of meaning. As you know, we are making value judgments every time we fund one study and deny another. The decision to manufacture bioweapons in labs is a purpose and (bad)spirit-driven endeavor even though it is science. The ethical, political, aesthetic, the Good, are all outside science’s purview and science should explicitly be subject to some higher call.

3. There seems to be ample evidence, though I’m not the most well-read here, that the scientific endeavor arose out of a history of men and women who believed in God and wanted to explore the universe he created. Science, at its highest expression, is worship.

Let us grant that a large percentage of scientists don’t believe, though; what do we make of this? To me it means that we need a resourcement, a renewal, a revival of the academy in every way. We need a better education system. Yes, atheistic scientists indicate poor education. We need a scientific establishment that repents of its commitment to unjustified claims about whether science and faith are compatible. We need to fix the flawed politics and coercive economics that keep our scientific edifice captured. We need philosophy of science (or math, etc.) and aesthetics and ethics to be part of the basic program of all STEM programs.

As to your point about the ratio of elf-reports to elf-captures: maybe elves are sneakier than we give them credit for!

Tyler: But this gets back to my interaction set of worries. People report seeing and hearing angels and demons, right? But there’s not an MP3 file or a photo where you would [say], “Oh, here we go.” That’s very odd to me. It’s not logically impossible. It just seems highly unlikely. None of them seem to have held up.

Anthony: You seem to have decided what is evidence of supernatural reality and what isn’t. So life, consciousness, existence, the world, a tree, the fact that the world makes sense and you can interact with it, love, a beautiful woman, a single breath, Chinese food, the logic of economics, none of these point you to the transcendent? And you’ve decided, “You know what? An audio recording of an angel or a demon, that would do it.” But I don’t think it would. Why would it? You could just say AI made it. I think what you need is not some kind of artifact such as a journalist would use to try and report on an event–a photo or recording–but what you need is to be filled with the Spirit and to have your spiritual eyes opened. St. Paul tells us that only through Christ is the veil taken away. So I pray that you would meet Christ. That you’d be haunted by him. That you’d become allegiant to him. That you’d encounter his love in exactly the way your personality and mind are designed to experience him. That your genius would find its fulfillment and source in him.

There’s this story of one of the first encounters with Jesus after his resurrection. These two disciples are walking to a town called Emmaus and the resurrected Jesus listens in on their conversation and joins them. They’re disappointed and scared because Jesus was in his tomb for three days and nights and it seems like he hasn’t come through as he promised. It seems like he’s just dead. Then Jesus tells them about how the entire Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is actually about him and about why everything that happened had to happen and what it all means. They invite him to dinner but he takes over as their host and serves them the bread and wine, the communion feast. Only when he breaks the bread and pours the wine, only then are their eyes opened. Then he disappears. Even Jesus’ own disciples couldn’t recognize him, even when they were face to face with him, not until they had a meal with Jesus and their eyes were opened. Luke writes, “he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” So what else can I say but do you want to get dinner?

Some guide rails:

• Kin Cairn is what I call my music; or maybe it’s the name of my musical persona. When you pair that with Sun Tongue, I guess I like names made of paired, crisp, monosyllabic words that you can imagine slamming your fist on the table twice while saying.

• I was 26 when I created this profile (40 now), and I feel it is cute to see how baby-faced I was in my profile pic. You, on the other hand, will probably find the idea of a baby with such a face to be quite monstrous. Also, it shows how comfortable with myself I’ve become that I have not scrubbed my bio from that profile but am instead bringing attention to it here: “I'm an acoustic storyteller from Colorado.

  A few of the things I'm into are flannel, cookies, books, beer, mountains, and family.” Cringe, yes, but my only feeling in reading this self-description is saudade for gluten. Also, I fear I may not have changed much in the last 14 years.

• These recordings are objectively bad and yet I honestly feel they’re really good. You very well may not agree with the later half of that statement. I’ve come to realize how deeply indy my artistic sensibilities are. I’d rather hear a crappy recording someone made on their phone than a perfectly produced piece, as long as it has some soul or verve and is for the love of God NOT BORING. Anyway, it’s okay if you don’t like these…let’s call them sketches of songs. They clip, they are not mastered, the gear is crappy, etc; so caveat auditor. If your device has poor sound you might have mercy on these songs and find a decent pair of headphones or whatever.

In what follows, I will share each of the four songs I found with a brief explanation and the lyrics.

Through My Door

It took about two months of marriage for my wife to get pregnant. We were told by some medical professional that we couldn’t have kids. We had shrugged our shoulders, assumed we would adopt someday, and turned the L into a W by enjoying the ability to ignore questions of birth control. Psych!

For reasons relating to family baggage and good ol’ fashioned immaturity, I responded with what I used to call my “9-month anxiety attack.” Then, on the morning of my daughter’s birth, I woke up with a sublime calm and resolve and have never looked back. Six kids (total) later, words fail me in expressing my gratitude and awe. So this song is about meeting my first child.

I wasn’t happy when I first heard the news
Felt like a sucker paying for something I didn’t choose
Immediately I began to hyperventilate
The only thing I wanted was to run away
Pleasant surprise it wasn’t, the word “terrified” it doesn’t,
Do justice to the way I felt that day
Immature I panicked, unprepared to parent
But later on I’d find He handed me a real good thing

For nine months, every night in bed, I’d lie awake
Thinking of everything headed my way
Of all the things robbing me of sleep, running through me head
It was a person who I hadn’t met that I couldn’t forget

Someone who came through my door
And I didn’t know who she was
And I didn’t know what was in store
But it was love, love, love

A daily delight to see the life in your eyes
A daily challenge to pick you up and lay down mine
Crazy being grateful for the way you’re killing me
Lovely the way you’ve become a reason to breathe
A fantasy it isn’t, sometimes it’s like a prison
But sweeter than any dream I’ve ever had
The fictional could never, no material could ever
Compare with the real life we share together

Everything that I thought I need that I said was good
Just wasn’t necessarily so
Everything that He gave to me and said I could
And now the good in my life overflows

Someone who wasn’t there before
And I didn’t know who she was
And I didn’t know what was in store
But it was love, love, love

It’s such a slow death, it’s such a sweet death
A thing that I need
It’s such a slow death, it’s such a sweet

Saint Verses Fool

Have you ever read C. S. Lewis’ sermon, The Weight of Glory (PDF)? If it’s been more than a year or so, get thee to it. Sometimes, once we see how we’ve erred and have joined the prophet in proclaiming, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips,” then the coal comes to cleanse our lips; only instead of a flying, bejeweled snake, the messenger comes in the form of a beautiful woman who shows you something divine by simply being noble and πραΰς, and you can only bow your head in veneration.

So this is one of three, “I’m sorry for breaking up with you,” songs I wrote for my now wife. I really like a good title that adds to the total weight of the song so let me just point out how lovely it is that Christ verses us rather than versus us is some good news like no other.

The way that I treated you
You didn’t deserve that
And I have been such a fool
But you have only been a saint
With elegance and grace
Your dignity it humbles me
You didn’t come crawling on your knees
Your gentleness, your self-respect
You’ve got the glow of a woman who has been blessed
And la da di di di di

And how did you react with such grace
When everything that I did
Was just like a slap in your face?
I’m beginning to realize
you must be the daughter of a good father
Who showed you how precious you are
How blessed you are to have a father like that
I wish my actions had shown you the same thing
And la da di di di di

New Organ

A phenomenology of gaining new divine capacity. The experience of hearing the guitar solo in this one was just delightful. I didn’t see it coming, and it felt like my past self was showing off to me and I was like, “Kick ass, bro!”

Let me summarize everything experienced
When I saw with my eyeballs the first of all sights
A lot of light, and everything that I could find
Was a glowing color picture–words to describe
Everything I never was there was there
I can’t close me eyes

How do you know that the soul has lost something should be missed?
How do you tell something’s missing when you don’t know it exists?

Let me tell you of everything that I could feel
When I heard the very first sound ever made
If you awoke and suddenly you found
That you had another organ let you feel a new way
Everything moving through the air was there
I can’t close my mind

How do you know that the soul has lost something should be missed?
How do you tell something’s missing when you don’t know it exists?

Let me sing about everything that turned around
When I found I had a new heart
It was soft, it seems to get softer with time
Makes me laugh, it makes me cry, makes me alive
Everything I never knew I need was free
I can’t close my eyes

How do you know that the soul has lost something should be missed?
How do you tell something’s missing when you don’t know it exists?
How do you get free to receive what you need to get free?
How could you find the clue when you never knew this was a mystery?

Lullaby

What to say? I wanted to write a lullaby and maybe I failed in one respect and succeeded in another. I haven’t tested its putting-babies-to-sleep powers. I must have been in my teens or very early twenties when I wrote this. I love the guitar solo; the fusion of riffing and rhythm reflects the kinds of solutions I’ve come up with in lieu of a band. Can you guess what instrument comes in at the outro? I’m sure you will think it is a real trumpet.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath,
Let your head rest and let go of your fears
Breathe a deep sigh, unclench your teeth,
Don’t try to see what the future will bring
The sun is down, the moon is up
Either way you’re full of love
And there is nothing gonna come between us

We are close, we are close to the God who made us
And he is watching over us
We are close, we are close and he is growing us
Into the people that he wants

Today you lived, all that implies
And now it’s time to close your eyes
Whatever it is, let it be
It is in his hands and he wants you to sleep
When morning comes the birds will sing
But for now they know it’s night
And your should follow in their flight to your dreams

And when you dream he is close
And you should come to know
That fear has failed, fear must flee
In the child he is watching, it’s over now
Lay down, it’s over now

Jesus comes to give you his rest
Jesus comes to give you his best
Jesus comes to make you to be
An apple that won’t fall far from the tree

Voilà. I hope you found something to enjoy in all that. I’ll be posting much more music as time goes on–hopefully with some more presentable execution. Songs have been by far my most voluminous creative output and I’d love to share more with you.

—

Friends, first of all I want to thank you for subscribing to, reading, interacting with, and sharing Sun Tongue. This tiny publication has been a joy to write. As I’ve slowly started to ship the work, I have experienced the benefits of flow. As they say, the Dead Sea is dead because it has no outlets. All reading and no writing makes me a dull boy and getting to dialogue with you in this space has been good for my soul. So thank you.

Also, if you notice things look a little different around here. I am just now rolling out some new Sun Tongue designs. Hopefully it’s weird enough. I was privileged to work with a talented designer from Moldova and he must have incredible intuition because he perfectly translated the heart of this fairly abstract project into images.

I know many of you were staying awake at night wondering what became of the pumpkin I told you about in my first Komorebi post. It gave us great joy and did not at all feel like a waste to leave our autumn pumpkins on the picnic table so we could watch the squirrels grow fat. We laughed at seeing them poke their heads up from within.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my barber’s chair in the stall nearest the front door of the barber shop when a homeless man shuffled up to the glass door. He acted as if to come in and then changed his mind and continued out of sight. He had a box cutter in his hand. I told Mike, my barber, what I saw and that I expected the man to come back. I scooted forward in my seat and grabbed the armrests and sort of made my body like a compressed spring. I made a plan to grab the cue stick from the nearby pool table. The man came back a few seconds later and Mike called out, “Nope!” and grabbed the door handle. With one hand holding the door shut, he waved the man away with the other and told him to leave. The man tugged on the door and his face turned a deep shade of red; he made threatening gestures and vibrated with rage. When the man left, Mike locked the door, calmly shook his head and said, “I don’t care, I will kill that [mofo].”

Maybe a week or so later, I was sitting outside my favorite local coffee shop, talking to one of the regulars who goes by the name, “C,” and is around 70 years old though he looks much younger. It was freezing and two little towers of steam were rising from our coffee mugs. My friend, C adheres to some kind of syncretist belief set that I would generally categorize as New Age. He is always telling me about the movements of the stars and the patterns of numbers that he has seen that day and the significance of whatever natural disasters are happening. C lives well below the poverty line and is thin as a rail but he seems quite happy.

Another homeless man came shuffling by us as we talked. I think I nodded at the man but did not otherwise react. I was thinking about what I needed to do that day. C, on the other hand, with complete genuineness, acted as if the man was his beloved friend whom he hadn’t seen in a long time. C jumped up, greeted the man warmly, asked him if he wanted to join us, asked him what coffee order he wanted; he offered a pastry too though the man refused. The man looked confused. I realized I wanted to be treated the way C was treating this man and I want to develop instincts like his.

One of my favorite finds of the year: 55 Maxims of the Christian Life by Father Thomas Hopko.

What it says on the tin. Want to live a good life? Just do this. Normally, I would approach a list like this with the aim to improve it but in this case, I don’t have anything to add or subtract. We actually included a selection of these maxims in our church leader prayer book and I am making a nice print of them to hang up at my office and in my garage. This list reminds me of a season in college when I would lift weights and read from the book of Proverbs every day. Life can be simple.

If you dig it and want a way in, try something like this:

1. Read this list slowly

2. Ask the Spirit to highlight one or two of these maxims to you as you read the list again

3. Do what the maxim says and/or make a plan to change your life in response

Here are the first ten, just to give you a taste:

1. Be always with Christ and trust God in everything.

2. Pray as you can, not as you think you must.

3. Have a keepable rule of prayer done by discipline.

4. Say the Lord's Prayer several times each day.

5. Repeat a short prayer when your mind is not occupied.

6. Make some prostrations when you pray.

7. Eat good foods in moderation and fast on fasting days.

8. Practice silence, inner and outer.

9. Sit in silence 20 to 30 minutes each day.

10. Do acts of mercy in secret.

Maxim #37 is the one that stands out to me just now: “Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis, figuring things out.” Sometimes we need to let problem solving and optimization and philosophical labors cease and instead pray simple prayers and do the right things we are supposed to do next.

2024 Favorites

Though I read a lot this year, I didn’t read many books that were written this year. The new books I did read, I’d rather address in another format. Hence, I will only share some favorite music, movies, videos, and podcasts from the year.

Podcasts

My favorite podcast discovery of 2024 is called Jesus Speaks Farsi. Every episode features stories of Christian’s suffering persecution and imprisonment, and the advance of the Glad Tidings of Peace in Iran. I recommend going to episode 1 and listening straight through. I was in tears within about 5 minutes of hitting play and yet I come away from every episode feeling encouraged and enlivened. The tone of these conversations is profoundly irenic despite the suffering often described. You can find out more about Elam, the ministry that produces these conversations or just search for Jesus Speak Farsi on any podcast app.

Music

• Point / Cloud by David Crowell - A magnificent (classical? jazz?) album that is equal parts intellectually stimulating and relaxing which a favorite combo for me right now.

• Imaginary Conversations by Kevin Coleman - Three consecutively longer tracks of American country instrumental music focused on the guitar. I have recently become a little obsessed with cassette tapes and deeply regret missing out on the sale of this album in that format.

• Wasteland by Jim Ghedi - Ghedi is a long time favorite of mine. Just the single released so far so this will make it on my 2025 list as well. It’s a doozy, though. British folk artist with a longing heart for some kind of revival of spirit in his homeland.

• Landslide by Baby Rose - Landslide by Fleetwood Mac is the second fingerstyle guitar song I learned as a kid. Dust in the Wind was the first. This lovely cover by Baby Rose does what all worthy covers should do and makes it something totally unique yet recognizable.

• Keeper of the Shepherd by Hannah Frances - This album just slays. It might be my favorite of the year. Incredible guitar compositions with probing searching hopeful mourning songwriting. An album that you want to listen to in its entirety as a complete work of art.

• The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined by Laura Cannell - This one makes the list partly because I told you about Hildegard in my last Komorebi post. Cannell reworks compositions by Hildegard, adds a few original works, and creates an appropriately strange atmosphere.

• Landless by Luireach - Enchanting Celtic four-part harmonies with occasional spare instrumentation. Should be enjoyed with a pipe and an Irish whiskey.

• Scarlatti: 12 Sonatas by Matteo Mela & Lorenzo Micheli - Sonatas arranged for two guitars.

• Ballaké Sissoko & Derek Gripper - Artists and album names are the same. I’ve been in love with African guitar for many years now and my appreciation only grows. Derek Gripper is one of my favorite artists, a South African classical guitarist who plays on this album with Sissoko, a Malian Kora master.

• Banjo Mantras by Kendl Winter - A very aptly named album. She has such a lovely touch on the banjo and the compositions have a cooling effect on the mind.

• Stained Glass by HolyName - HolyName is one of my favorite bands (thanks, Jason). Worshipcore. In this single they team up with Heal the Hurt.

• Exhumed and Waltz of the Flowers by August Burns Red - The newest singles by my favorite band.

• When We Were Kings by Stryper - The beloved Christian (one might say very Christian) metal band continues to shred. I hope I can still bring this kind of energy when I’m in my 60s.

• Trail of Flowers by Sierra Ferrell - One of the best country albums of the year. I’m no fan of dysfunctional relationships and such but I Can Drive You Crazy just makes me happy: “Ask me on a date and I show up late, I can drive you crazy, yes, I can, Blow out your birthday candles, steal your cake, I can drive you crazy, yes, I can”

• 100% Sahara Guitar by Etran de L’Aïr - Speaking of my love for African guitar. These guys are some of the OG Tuareg players.

• Strings and Sonnets by Phil Keaggy and Malcolm Guite - The world class Christian 9-fingered guitarist with a heart of gold, Phil Keaggy, pairs up with Anglican priest poet forrest spirit of a man, Malcolm Guite, to make this treasure of a musical/poetic experience.

• Speak to Me by Julian Lange - Warm, slow guitar-centric jazz.

• Kabutomushi by Mei Semones - Experimental jazzy pop with sweet guitar licks and lyrics sung in Japanese and English.

• African Yontii by Tidiane Thiam - A Senegalese sahelian guitarist. Also calabash percussion and some electronic sounds.

• Acadia by Yasmin Williams - Happy folk fingerstyle guitar.

• U prozoru by Slobodan Mandić - Bluesy American-style guitar by a Serbian artist.

Videos

• Her Scents of Pu Er - A mesmerizing little documentary about Yu Hui Tseng, the first female tea master in the history of China. “If you are truthful with a Pu Er, I think it tells you lots and lots of stories. If it feels that you are nervous, it will just ‘freeze.’ But if you remain thoughtful and calm you can see everything it’s been through.” PSA: The preceding quote applies to many things other than Pu Er.

• Echo - From New Yorker magazine, the story of a teacher who has mastered echolocation and passes it on to other young people. I’ve been meditating on Jesus’ words in Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6:39 and the beautiful inversion of the blind leading the blind demonstrated in this story.

• Time Tides - I think about fractals way too much and this piece of art seems to me to capture something about reality. This one made my brain feel like it was hooked up to powered electrodes but in a good way.

• LUCID - A music video for the graceful work of Thomas Vanz. “Created by capturing microscopic chemical reactions, inks and fluids.” Puts me in a similar mindspace as Time Tides above.

Cinema

• Heretic and Conclave - I already wrote about these two.

• The Bikeriders - I generally like anything Jeff Nichols does. This somewhat cheesy movie reminded me of the kinds of films I grew up watching as a kid. I’m always intrigued by the ways we humans will create communities and aesthetics and ways of life that give us a sense of cohesion and meaning and rhythm. For the viewer who thinks, “how foolish for a bunch of grown men to create this fake community based around motorcycles,” you’d be better served by instead considering the ways you synthesize your own cultural expressions that seem so inevitable and reasonable.

• Trap - Josh Hartnett makes a compelling bad guy. Though the protagonist is the villain, I would not place this movie in the line of post-modern deconstructionist stories that make us side with said villain. Shyamalan doesn’t make a terrible movie for no reason. Suspend your disbelief and you have a great thriller.

• Bookworm - The director, Ant Timpson, must have an interesting relationship with his father. Bookworm is the older-kid-friendly and redemptive version of the very weird, uncomfortable, not kid-friendly mind-bender, Come to Daddy, by the same writer/director.

• Perfect Days - My second favorite movie of the year after Conclave. What a treasure. A Japanese public toilet janitor, played by the wonderful Kôji Yakusho, lives his life. This movie did something profound to me. After I watched it, my awareness was heightened as if I had just been meditating for two hours.

Cheers and blessings to you in 2025.

The slaughter of the innocents happens after a group of Zoroastrian priests, otherwise known as Magians, apply their astrological arts to the interpretation of a certain star formation and rightly predict the birth of the King of the Jews, and even more rightly decided to make pilgrimage in order to bow down before him.

These Zoroastrian priests start asking around for the King who was just born and word of their quest makes its way to Herod; Herod the Great that is. Herod was a Roman Jew who ruled over his kingdom that was a client state of the Roman Republic. So Herod ruled a kingdom that was subordinate to the greater empire of Rome. Herod was not called “The Great” for nothing; his story is complicated but let us just say he was incredibly rich and powerful and violent and tyrannical and built magnificent, monumental structures. It is also quite relevant to our story to note the he was the king of the Jews. And thus, Herod and all the people of Jerusalem are perturbed by the Magian's inquiries. Nothing like asking for the king in the wrong place to kick the political hornet's nest and disturb the peace. Not mentioned but in the background are the spiritual powers who parallel Herod in their realm of the air. Herod is the king of the Jews and Satan is the king of the age and both are due for a regime change. We should keep such parallels of the spiritual realm in mind throughout.

Herod knows that the figure foretold by the prophets, the Anointed/Messiah/Christ, is one and the same with the King of the Jews. The Anointed is the true king and Herod is sitting on his throne. Herod gets the religious rulers together and they all agree that the scriptures of the prophet Micah predict the Anointed will be born in Bethlehem of Judea. Herod summons the Magians and asks would they please tell him when they find the Anointed so Herod can worship him too. The Magians are not just astrologers but are also oneiromancers and so, after their visit to the Anointed, they are warned in a dream to avoid Herod on their return trip home.

And then the slaughter of the innocents happens. Herod goes into a rage when he finds out that the Zoroastrians made him look like a fool and he sends men to Bethlehem to kill all the boys in the area who are two years old or younger. Herod tries to brute force the Anointed out of existence. Jesus survives, though, because the Lord's angel had already appeared to Joseph and sent their family to live as refugees in Egypt until Herod's death. Though I don't have time to develop this thought, let us not fail to mention that, with the slaughter of the innocents, God himself becomes a refugee; God has to flee the pursuit of violent men. With the death of these baby boys a prophecy captured by a single verse (31:15) in the scroll of Jeremiah is fulfilled:

Thus says Yhwh, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”

And why this awful fifteenth verse; this pause for grief in an exultant song of redemption and rescue and restoration and rebuilding?

What do we make of all this? Why does the Church remember such a day every year in her liturgical calendar? The historical veracity of the story is debated of course. There is no other historical record of such a thing happening though it is in keeping with Herod's reputation. Various sects of the Church hold that the number of victims range from 14,000 to 144,000, with some estimates as low as 20 or so. Regardless of the facts on the ground, we know that the biblical authors are much more interested in giving us meaning and typological insight and a sense of the logic of reality than they are in giving us the "what it would have looked like if you had a video camera," material perspective. With this in mind, we can sadly see just how true the story of Childermas is.

We have the original version of this story told of the birth of Moses in Exodus 1:1-2:10. In that story, the Pharaoh sees that the Israelites in his land have grown too powerful and numerous. Another king is afraid his power will be taken away from him. Pharaoh fears that the Israelites might betray him and wage war against him and so he enslaves and tries to diminish them through forced labor; their numbers only increase. Then he attempts to reduce their numbers as a game manager would thin out a herd of elk. He tells the Hebrew midwives to murder all the boys who are born to the Israelites by throwing them into the Nile river. And so through the waters of death and chaos the great prophet and shepherd and type of the Anointed who was to come, Moses, is saved by three women: his mother, his sister, and Pharaoh's own daughter.

One might make any number of criticisms of the Bible but it's failure to acknowledge the brokenness of things would not be an easy case to make. Isn't the slaughter of the innocents still happening all around us? As the modern nation state of Israel has prosecuted its genocide in Gaza, at least 13,000 children have been killed with these estimates ranging from 30-50% of all the deaths in that war. The Ukraine war is approaching 2500 child deaths. Over one million pre-born babies have been murdered in the USA alone this year. We could go on and on and on. Children are so vulnerable, such an inconvenience, so often taken advantage of, always pay the greatest price in the wars of men.

So what do we do? Here's what I suggest for today: read the readings, pray the collect, grieve and weep with Rachel, and pray.

The Readings

• Jeremiah 31:15-17 (I recommend the whole chapter)

• Revelation 21:1-7

• Matthew 2:13-18

• Psalm 124

The Collect

We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ways to Pray

• Pray for comfort for the souls of all the babies aborted this year

• Pray for comfort for the souls of all the children killed in war this year

• Pray for the children who are experiencing solidarity with Jesus as refugees of war

• Pray for all the children in your city who are being abused and neglected

• Pray for all the children who are currently enslaved as child laborers, specifically, you might repent of your entanglement in oppression and pray for those children you are not aware of who have made many of the objects you own.

• Pray for the children in your local church

• Pray for all mothers, and pregnant women, and those that have suffered miscarriages

• Pray for the justice of the Lord to prevail and increase, starting in your own life

Eodem fine

After prophesying the slaughter of the innocents, Jeremiah goes on to say, "Hold back your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your labor said Yhwh, and they shall come back from the enemy's land, and there is hope for your future said Yhwh, and the sons shall come back to their place."

Herod turned to dust long ago. The kings of this world are already dying and their kingdoms are passing away. The shadow of the old world is being engulfed by a great tidal wave of light that has already come with the arrival of this God-man, Jesus. Nothing will go to waste. The labor pains will turn to joyous laughter someday. They will come back; they shall come back to their place. For now we breathe out with prophetic groan and grief.

Conclave

First off: If you want a much more substantial review of Conclave that will add to your understanding of the Roman Catholic church, then I refer you to my friend, David Armstrong, and his excellent Substack review.

While I mostly am the guy who facilitates group outings to the movies, I’ve always enjoyed going to the theater by myself. It is a calming and introspective experience and sometimes it’s nice to witness a piece of art and enjoy the after effects without anyone else’s reactions as part of the mix. This was the case for my experience of Conclave, a film directed by Edward Berger (whose most important directorial works for me are his three episodes of season one of The Terror, one of my favorite TV shows ever), written for the screen by Peter Straughan (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), and based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris about whom I know nothing.

It seems a lot of christians, and especially Roman Catholics, have taken umbrage at Conclave but I’ve got to say I just loved this movie. Maybe my bar is too low for expectations of Hollywood’s portrayal of the faith and maybe I would feel differently if I was RC but I enjoyed every moment of this film and might even say I found it to be spiritually edifying. I have mostly noted a distasteful sense of defensiveness and lack of generosity on the part of the christian audiences of Conclave (not counting David’s review referred to above) so I feel the duty to come to the movie’s defense. Full disclosure: it was just me and three elderly folk in the theater and there were no cell phones or talkers or crinkling plastic wrappers so my elation may be unrelated to the film itself; etiquette is so often lacking these days that one feels a little high when one encounters it.

Conclave is about a Roman Catholic cardinal, Cardinal Lawrence, portrayed by the always captivating Ralph Fiennes, who is called upon to preside over a papal conclave in the wake of the late pope’s death. There are many complications that arise over the few days in which the cardinals discuss and pray for discernment and jockey for votes and generally try to influence the future of the RC church in ways that range from good to bad faith. I don’t want to give much of the plot away so here I will simply offer a few impressions.

How delightful to watch an artful movie, intellectually stimulating, made for adults and yet rated PG, serious (the funniest moments were when John Lithgow tried to speak Latin and when a nun called a cardinal out for his sins), and utterly thrilling even though “a bunch of catholic guys talk, mostly in whispers, about who the next pope should be,” is a fairly accurate synopsis of it. I was quickly struck by a sense of gratefulness while sitting in the theater; the mind does not want to be merely entertained but elevated and it feels like a sated thirst whenever an artist guides you up and in. Conclave is very beautiful; the score (Volker Bertelmann) and cinematography (Stéphane Fontaine, who shot one of my favorite movies, Captain Fantastic) were elegant and masterful; the performances were an interplay of seasoned veteran actors.

Oh the energy, sweat, and tears that the Church's servants expend on her behalf. Saint Paul speaks well when he speaks as a midwife or even as a woman in labor to describe his travails in seeing the church achieve her ends. Conclave hit quite close to home for me as an elder and shepherd in my own local church. We are a ragtag bunch; we have no grand buildings, we are not part of an institution that spans millennia (other than the great chain of preachers of the Glad Tidings through whom the story and ways have been passed down to us), we have no vestments other than our Colorado casual attire; yet I felt such solidarity with these Cardinals and nuns and others whom Conclave showed laboring to steward the church.

How moving to witness the labors of those who are throwing their life away for the sake of Christ in his Church. There are many times when I am sitting with the other elders of our church or when I am with our larger leader gathering and I marvel at the absurd liberality with which each person is pouring out their life for the sake of the people they shepherd; for the goal of seeing Christ revealed in the body that is coming into being and that we are all members of.

How we hope we are in step with the Spirit! Are we making the right decisions? Are we shepherding the flock faithfully? Are we utterly missing the mark? How can we best steward the resources God has entrusted to us? Is each person being seen and loved and aided? Are we giving our children and youth everything they need? Are we making disciples? When we say "it seemed right with the Holy Spirit and with us," what's the ratio of that mix? The list of existential questions that the church leader daily asks goes on and on. So watching a beautiful movie about church leaders making a big decision moved me deeply

I don't know how a church leader who is well acquainted with their own sinfulness and divided internal life can get too offended by Conclave. Maybe some of us are blissfully ignorant of moral failures in the Church. There is a scene in the movie where a group of cardinals are sitting in an auditorium, the lighting and blocking presents them like a fine art painting that you would find in a museum, perhaps one by Caravaggio or Edward Hopper. They each debate what should be done to ensure the wrong people (as they see it) are not elected and that their favorite candidates have the greatest chance of being elected. Isn't this just a picture of the interior life of each person? Aren't we each subject to numerous petty instincts and fears and a sense of powerlessness that leads us to play power games and ingrained patterns of relating we were taught as children and a fractured self that places us in each seat of the conclave? I think those offended do protest too much. And yet Christ is revealed in and works through us, heals us, and is bringing us, as a single human, to “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Somehow, healthy leadership and community can often still be found.

Major Spoilers in this Paragraph - Skip to the next paragraph if you'd like to avoid these.
My one criticism of Conclave is that some of the symbolism was a bit heavy handed and the plot twist at the end of the movie felt slightly contrived. And yet, after forgiving this, I've realized that the surprise that the person elected for the role of the next pope is intersex is almost the inevitable conclusion of the story and I can empathize with the writer’s decision. The new pope presents as a man and looks like a man from the outside but also has some internal female organs. It seems like a lot of people are interpreting the decision to include this in the story as "woke" but I don't think that's quite right and is probably based on a lack of familiarity with the difference between trans and intersex identities. This monkey wrench of a plot development might be the most brilliant way the movie could have concluded. The worst sin a filmmaker can commit in my book is to preach at their audience. Thankfully, Berger does not do this. The presentation feels like more of a thought exercise you would find in an ethics class. What if the next pope was intersex? Now discuss.

End of spoilers.

I hope you watch the movie and I hope you take it seriously. Rather than dismissing it because some of the characters reflect poorly upon Christianity or because you think it is woke or that it otherwise offends your political sensibilities, I think many of us would be better off for having engaged in the conversations and thought exercises Conclave invites us to consider.

Heretic

Heretic is written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the duo who brought us the Quiet Place trilogy. It is a horror movie about two Mormon girls who try to evangelize the wrong man while performing their missionary duties. Really, the movie is just one long debate about faith and nihilism. You might even think of Heretic as simply being a socratic dialogue.

Heretic asks many of the classic questions that challenge the faithful: Are you sure your faith is the right one? Do you just believe what you do because your parents did? Aren't all religions just invented systems of social control?

Despite the unusual and extreme circumstances of the movie's plot, I found the core conversation of the movie to be quite familiar. It reminded me of my apologetics phase as a teenager and of the internal debates I've had about the merits of my way of life as a follower of The Way. In a highly qualified sense given the crimes of the villain, I could say that all three of the characters in this film are in my own head at times.

I want to give away as little as possible about Heretic so as to avoid robbing you of the feeling of anxiety and dread that you are probably hoping for if you see the movie (which, btw, I am not advising you do; I'll leave that to your own discernment). I have a whole theory of horror movies many of my friends have heard me convey from my soapbox and at some point I will write about it but for now, I'll just say I think Heretic is an important movie and one of some artistic depth.

I came out of the theater with a deep sense of heaviness. While the writers left some ambiguity at the conclusion of the core debate of Heretic, I think the answer they give is probably a sad one though not without beauty. Nonetheless, I could see Heretic influencing one person in losing their faith while having the opposite effect on another.

As a movie, Heretic is just fantastic. Directing, filming, acting, score are all done with mastery. Most of all, I found the pacing to be just about perfect.

Bonhoeffer

While Heretic is intentionally designed to make people of faith squirm in their seats, between the two, Bonhoeffer is the movie most likely to make me abandon my faith if that were on the table. While the makers of Bonhoeffer certainly do great violence to the legacy of the beloved modern saint, their greatest sins (one might say crimes) are artistic. Here, I'm going to be at least as offended as those who got upset about Conclave were, so joke's on me.

I don't want to go on about how bad Bonhoeffer is as a movie–it's cloying performances, it's affected score, the fact that not one character felt like a real person, the 90s TV camera work, the cheesy-as-hell script–so I will only mention how boring the movie was. In fact, my favorite moment in this moviegoing experience was the scene where Dietrich was in seminary and his professor was droning on about some aspect of theology in the most soul crushingly dull way (think Bueller). There were several shots of the students looking tormented with boredom. This was the most emotional resonance I think the movie ever achieved for me. I leaned over and told my friend that I felt the way those students did. She nodded because she was thinking exactly the same thing. When, after the class, one of the students bemoaned of their teacher, "How could someone subject others to such torture?" I actually burst out laughing at the irony.

As an homage to the man and a faithful telling of his story, Bonhoeffer is almost completely trash. To call BS one need go no further than the movie’s subtitle: "Pastor. Spy. Assassin." Bonhoeffer, while a real man who faced challenging ethical conundrums and made nuanced decisions, was, I believe, ultimately faithful to his ethic of nonviolence and was not an assassin.

The darkest scene of the movie was not Bonhoeffer's execution but the scene where he and two other men, one of whom was planning to murder Hitler (and who knows what innocent bystanders) as a suicide bomber, pray together. Bonhoeffer prays that God would bless them in their endeavor and expresses how certain he is that they are doing what God wants. This is such an evil scene, such an insult to the real man, and such an insidious piece of propaganda designed to shape the viewer’s loves, that I feel the need to forgive the filmmakers for creating it. It is also historically inaccurate since Bonhoeffer was not involved in the plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer was indeed a spy but his only aims, it seems, were to save Jews from capture and to build a church network to support God's people in wartime.

The postscript during the credits is where the filmmakers present their motivation for making the movie. They give a sort of PSA that says something like, “The Holocaust happened. Now, in our time, antisemitism is on the rise. Let’s make sure the Holocaust never happens again.” While it is indeed evil that hate against Jews does seem to be on rise, I have the impression that the film’s rhetoric is aimed more at securing sympathies toward the Israeli genocide in Gaza than it is about teaching us not to be antisemites. What is the ultimate rhetorical aim of this film? My interpretation is this: to reappropriate Bonhoeffer’s famous dictum, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” such that, rather than being the call to death to self in the pursuit of discipleship that they are, Bonhoeffer’s words become a call for christians to support, condone, and perhaps engage in physical warfare and violence in their pursuit of the good.

I hope you read Bonhoeffer's works and engage with his legacy. If you want a good biography of the man you won't find it in this film and you won't find it in the work of Eric Metaxas either (sorry guys, DB was not an American evangelical).

Three alternative suggestions:

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge

• Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen

I’ve been a bit of a grump here, so let me say two positive things about my experience of this film:

1. The story of how Bonhoeffer continued to be a pastor and evangelist in prison is so moving and beautiful, not even the makers of this film could ruin it.

2. I watch Bonhoeffer with maybe 15 other people from my church. Afterwards, we all sat in a big circle and discussed the movie, its messaging, and the real story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer such as we understood it. This was a lovely experience and one I would recommend. Rather than each person being subject to propaganda in isolation, we got to inform each other and ask questions and engage as a community of disciples and pray for each other.

Finally, consider that if Bonhoeffer was killed because of his supposed attempt to assassinate Hitler, then he is neither a saint nor a martyr, he is simply a soldier. To retell his story in this way is a crime against the Church as it aims to rob her of one of her modern saints and martyrs in an age where she needs more examples of faithful, Christlike leadership.

Conclusion

Two outta three ain’t bad. I hope there are more movies like Conclave and Heretic in 2025! I also hope Christians stop making and supporting atrocities like Bonhoeffer.

I should be out looking for a bull elk right now but I came home early from the day’s hunt because of a great burning in my chest. Thankfully, it is not the kind of chest burning that sends one to the hospital and requires statin prescriptions; this is the heartburn I imagine Cleopas and his wife, Mary, felt as they walked with Jesus on the road to Hot Springs Village (which is what I am calling the town of Emmaus).

I woke up extra early this morning because my mind was writing parts of this essay of sketches you are now reading (many would certainly call this a sketchy essay based on some of the proposals I will make, but isn’t that always the case?). After driving deep into the mountains and very nearly stranding myself in the snow, I found my place and spent several hours peering through binoculars, talking with the Spirit, pacing back and forth on a magnificent rock outcropping, almost hoping a big bull elk wouldn’t present himself so I could come home early and relieve this pressure in my chest by sharing some of these dreams I have for the Church.

What follows is a series of what I am calling sketches of a positive path forward for the Church and for churches. And these are definitely sketches; as in rough, unfinished pictures of where the Church might go. I’ve been dreaming about a mega-project of books and resources and communities and events with which to pursue this vision, but I woke up feeling prompted to just ship some of these ideas as is. I intend this to be the first of a series.

Who Is This For?

These sketches are for anyone anywhere who wants to be a part of the revitalization of the Church, anyone who wants to participate in the grand work of Christ on the earth. On the other hand, as we’ll see below, I want the western church to repent of a certain worldly globalist, imperialist, magisterial tendency and thereby embrace the goodness and rightness of the existence of a variety of churches that are true to the unique glory of the people they are comprised of. For that reason, I will say that I am really speaking to the church in the USA, though I hope others elsewhere feel free to appropriate elements of these thoughts as they choose.

What is This?

“A new Christian future”, you ask? A path forward from where and to where? What do you think you’re doing? Great questions.

I’m just dreaming about where the Church could go. I hope and pray I am doing so in participation with God’s Spirit and with the people God has given me to share life with.

I see some possible futures in which the same, tired, divisive, zero sum, prideful, violent, patterns that are sadly present in the Church and do her harm, perpetuate and remain structurally embedded in our narratives and worldviews and assumptions. If the Church were a tree, I see some possible futures in which certain of her branches become deformed and pale and grow at unnatural angles because they are encased in a box. I see some possible futures in which network nodes reach their sad local maxima and stagnate.

But then I see the unstoppable Kingdom. I see dumb-as-rock people like me crying out, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” I want a Church like the world has never seen; or a Church again as good as the best day she has ever had; a Church that is so full of life that millions upon millions are drawn to her. I see a Church that repents and forgives and reconciles so much that people start to think we’re crazy but really they want in too.

The Church will go on doing what she’s always done: making disciples of all nations, pursuing theosis, bringing heaven on earth, remembering Jesus’ life and death and descent and resurrection and ascent and the sending of the Holy Spirit, until Christ returns. I am wondering what futures we might participate in on the way. I’m wondering what unique needs and opportunities we have now.

These sketches toward a new Christian future could be called a strategy for the Church; and a strategy is really just a series of high-level decisions made in pursuit of a goal. A strategy is a story of how we aim to get from here to there while solving problems.

If you’d like some examples of the kind of project I’m after, check out the work around Radical Orthodoxy led by Milibank, Pickstock, and friends, or consider the book, Center Church, by Keller. I also have in mind thinkers like Von Balthazar, Rahner, and De Lubac, who were all part of the revitalization of the Roman Catholic church after a season in which it apparently had developed some malaise. There are many others.

What follows is not entirely without meaningful order nor is it as coherently structured as I would like. For me, the challenge of publishing this piece is to resist sitting on my ideas for years while I try to get them in perfect order. I am running and gunning here.

Sketches Toward a New Christian Future

A New Church History, a New Church Future

The other day I was with a gathering of church leaders and my friend Blaine and I were talking about our research for a podcast we host in which we are discussing early Church history. I found these words tumbling out of my mouth:

We need a new Church future based on a new Church history.

Or was it, “We need a new Christian future based on a new Christian past?” 

Regardless, you’re probably equally skeptical. I was at first even though I said it; but my conviction is growing by the day. In our podcast, we were originally planning to do a series on the first seven “Ecumenical” Church Councils; these founding congressional events in which many of the basic tenets of the Christian faith were ironed out more or less over the course of about 800 years. The more I studied these, the more I felt like we were missing something. The logic of the councils was grieving me more and more. Btw, I am still a Nicene Christian. I just think we need a much more nuanced and repentant and active understanding and appropriation of the councils which I see as simultaneous treasures for and open wounds on the body of Christ.

Assuming the Christian is taught any Church history at all, the way many of us come to learn the history of the Church looks something like this:

1. Jesus founds the Church

2. Acts

3. Jews and Christians kinda split ways?

4. Christianity conquers Rome

5. Over some period of time a bunch of Church Fathers have a bunch of councils, each time the good guys succeed in casting out the bad guys who are polluting the Church.

6. European Christianity?

7. The Reformation

8. Protestantism

9. Etc.

I see problems:

• The story is too small. It is eurocentric. But the glad tidings of peace went all over the world very early on.

• There are a lot of people who were sincerely trying to follow Jesus who are left out of this story and even condemned to Hell by many within it.

• The real story of the Church looks much less like a linear series of inevitable and logically ordered events and much more like a diagram of biological life on earth but with one or two more dimensions than the ones you’ve seen on posters in school.

• Baked into the history and logic of the councils and divisions of the Church there is a lot of oppression, pride, violence, cursing, unnecessary breaking of communion, and many things that generally harm the unity of Christ’s body. Most of the stories of these councils assume that one side must have been totally right when I believe we should question the very foundations and the assumptions that resulted in such strategies in the first place. Maybe we can reinterpret the history of the Church and, together, start repenting like crazy and ministering to Jesus’ bride, dressing her wounds and doing some deep Internal Family Systems therapy with her. This is a real proposition by the way: who wants to work on the theory and praxis of IFS applied to the brokenness of the Church?

• There is also the more obvious problem of many Christians of all traditions having no idea what riches and complexity and variegated beauty, what proven strategies and more are available to them as those who are adopted into the wonderful story of Christ at work in his body.

If you’re a step ahead you’re realizing that the proposal for a new Christian future based on a reinterpreted Christian past is, in the same turn, one for a different Christian past based on a new Christian future. We need to take (at least some of) David Bentley Hart’s words to heart in his book, Tradition and Apocalypse: that the tradition of Christianity is not defined by the dead past but by the eschatological pull of the Church into the return of Christ for his bride where all who call on his name will be saved.

In our own little way, we are doing this work over at the Mount Vigil podcast which I invite you to subscribe to. Start with episode 30 if you want to catch the whole conversation.

God’s Punishment is God’s Healing

I have a weird theory about the many divisions within the body of Christ which you might find to be too optimistic and desperate in its search for the silver lining. But I believe this with a deep conviction: that the divisions within the denominations and larger traditions and within the many schisms of the church–while they are a real judgement on our sinfulness–are in the same turn, a source of salvation that drives the Good News ever further afield.

Do you think the dividing of tongues and the scattering abroad of the people at the Tower of Babylon is a punishment or a blessing? Yes, it is both. In the same act, Yhwh punishes the people for their pride and rebellion even while he preserves the mission for humanity which he established in the Garden of Eden. There, Yhwh told the man and woman to be fruitful, multiply, fill and cultivate the earth. But the people at the Tower did not want to be dispersed across the earth, they want to stay in one place. So Yhwh, in his punishment, is also preserving and saving humanity in their mission of participation in his work.

Another example; one more on the nose: Israel. Israel fails to follow Yhwh faithfully and keep his commandments and as a result Israel is divided between North and South. Then the Northern Kingdoms are conquered and swept away by deportation and their punishment from Yhwh is to be utterly destroyed. The northern tribes eventually lose their distinctions as they are diluted into the Nations and they become indistinguishable from the Nations. But Yhwh will be faithful to his promises! He has promised to preserve and restore and heal all of Israel and to make the people who are no longer his people his people again! But how, since the lost tribes are now the Nations, as in the Nations who are not God’s chosen people? Well you know the answer: the work of Christ; the Good News of salvation in Christ which goes out into all the world and makes disciples of all nations and thereby brings in all the lost tribes as all people and tongues and tribes become united in the Kingdom of God.

This presents us with an hermeneutic for interpreting the manifold divisions with Christ’s church: the very thing that is a judgement upon our pride and viciousness and foolishness is the wind that drives the seeds of the Gospel further afield. So you have probably only ever heard people use the fact of the thousand “versions” of Christianity as a negative thing, as evidence that the whole faith is nonsense. “I’d become a Christian but I don’t know what kind I should become!” But you can actually bless God for how he is saving the world and fulfilling the mission of the Church and preventing the Church from acquiring too much power in one place by letting us break and break again. Every week the bread is broken and passed around to us. Do you see the pattern? This is a truly revolutionary way to read the life of the Church in her many expressions. Bless her in her brokenness and givenness!

Radical Ecumenism

One implication of the above is that we should pursue a vibrant and vivacious ecumenism. “May they all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Let us call Christian Ecumenism an arms-wide-open posture in which we try to embrace as many people as possible who call Jesus Lord as our brethren. It is a posture in which we do not weight Paul’s occasional use of the word “anathema” in an improperly outsized way compared to his repeated exhortations toward Christian unity.

Ecumenism is one of the great things available to Protestantism more than the other houses of the Church though it seems to be on the rise in RC and EO traditions and may it be more so. It is at least a quality that exists in potential if not in always practice as many protestant Christians are all too eager to drop the “heresy” bomb but this can be repented of.

A Fourth Church Theory must have an even more radical, joyful, generous, ecumenism. May all Christians always be faithful to their consciences and may lively debate be had on the things that matter to them but may we also go through every possible effort to maintain unity and friendship and peace between the many expressions of the Church in Jesus’ name.

A Shift in Doctrines of Final Judgment

I think this shift is one of the most important aspects of a healthy and vibrant future for the Church; it is also one with the most baggage for many people. What follows is an extreme attempt at efficiency on a very important and touchy subject. If you’re still interested after this little introduction, Lord willing, there will be much more to come.

Where to begin? Here is how I imagine the current landscape of Christian belief regarding what is called Hell and all things regarding final judgment (these pie charts are not based on real data):

And here is where I hope we are headed:

First off, some definitions. All of these views of final judgement have many sub-versions so consider these quick descriptions as basic introductions to much more complex issues:

• Infernalism / Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) - Infernalists believe that God will cast into Hell and torture for eternity people who reject Christ.

• Annihilationism - Annihilationists believe the those who reject God and go to Hell will be destroyed. In some sense they will cease to exist.

•  Apokatastasis / Ultimate Reconciliation / Christian Universalism - Those subscribing to Apokatastasis (which means Ultimate Reconciliation) believe that, while “Hell” is real (in fact Hell is more real in some ways for the Christian Universalist because it is constrained within God’s salvific work), it is not the final say for those who die in sin and rejection of Christ. In some sense, Hell and Purgatory are the same, which is to say Hell is purgative and purifying. No person will be ultimately rejected by God but all people will come to salvation through Christ in the end.

Did I show my cards? Yes, I subscribe to the view of Ultimate Reconciliation. I could be wrong–the scriptures are vague on the question, in fact much more vague/complex/nuanced/open to interpretation than you probably think they are, regardless of your position–but, based on biblical exegesis, theological reflection, philosophical reasoning, and the invitation and attestation of what I perceive to be the more beautiful story, I believe Apokatastasis makes the most sense of the witness we have.

Did you know that Ultimate Reconciliation is and always has been one of the legitimate views many people in the Church have always held? What does that do for you? Believe it or not, Eternal Conscious Torment is not a bedrock doctrine of the Christian faith. It’s just one view. Looking back to the pie charts above, I dream of a Christian future in which the ratios change dramatically.

Let me be clear: I acknowledge as brothers and sisters those Christians who believe in ECT in good faith. I know and love and respect many of them. But I do hope their view becomes the minority over time. The ECT view has done great harm to many people’s consciences, it has been an unnecessary barrier to belief in Christ for many many a non-christian, it has traumatized so many Christians who try to rationalize and gaslight themselves into believing how a God who is Love could torture (perhaps most?) of his children for eternity.

While I do have a strong-but-non-dogmatic conviction of Ultimate Reconciliation, I left Annihilationism in equal measure in my dream pie chart above. First, most people who hold to the ECT view are simply not going to move all the way to Apokatastasis. Second, the biblical witness–especially narrative patterns established in the Old Testament–provide some potential validity to the view. I think Annihilationism ultimately fails for theological/philosophical reasons but I could be wrong and I believe annihilationism is far less harmful a view to the person who holds it than ECT and is far less of a non-starter for the unbeliever who views ECT it as a prerogative of the Christians faith.

There is a Christian future in which those who hold to the ECT view of Hell, while being loved and respected and valued, are the minority. There is a Christian future in which, when the evangelist gets the question, “But how could a good God…” from an unbeliever, the evangelist is able to tell them just how good the Good News really is. You have permission to be part of this future. You will still be a God-fearing follower of Christ. You will find the biblical witness and faithful reasoning are on your side. You will find there is less dissonance in your soul.

A Fourth Church Theory: A New Room in the House and A New Political Theory

Here I want to reappropriate a framework for political philosophy created by Alexander Dugin. Dugin is one of the world’s most important living political philosophers. You may not know who he is but, if you do, don’t freak out. For our purposes, the ideas below have nothing to do with Dugin’s past, political affiliations, etc. Let us flex the ability to isolate a good idea without needing to litigate the life of the person who developed it, without attributing guilt by association, etc. This idea is very precise.

Dugin’s simple and winsome thesis of a fourth political theory looks like this: We all live in a world in which the three available political theories are Communism, Fascism, and Liberalism. All three of those ideologies are evil and destructive. Why not come up with a fourth political theory that avoids the evils of the other three and creates the possibility of a new wholesome future?

In this fourth theory every people group has a unique political project which flows forth from their own geist or spirit; their own culture and vibe; and every global region and every country must develop an adequate level of self-understanding and actualization and receptivity to and interpretation of their story so that they can realize their own authentic political telos without succumbing to the totalizing and globalist tendencies of the other theories.

I think this idea has relevance to a new Christian future in two ways:

First, let’s apply it to what I usually call the “rooms” of the Church. Most of us will have a tripartite grid of Christianity that includes Roman Catholicism (RC), Eastern Orthodoxy (EO), and Protestantism (P). We can visualize it like this:

I’m honestly quite sick of that picture. It just isn’t true. What if we came up with a fourth Church theory?

Problems With “Protestantism”

First off, don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate the Protestant project. I am truly a beneficiary of it. I think the original P claim not to be creating a new church but to be the authentic expression and reclamation of (non-Roman) Catholic and (non-Eastern) Orthodox Christianity was overall a good endeavor though it had its negative externalities. I also think the low blows and cheap shots and uncharitable judgments that many (not all!) RC and EO Christians make about the poverty of Protestantism are often just that. As an example, it is common right now to hear EO thinkers decry the disenchanted and non-mystical nature, as they see it, of Evangelicals. Maybe it is the bias of my charismatic upbringing, but this one makes me chuckle. Ever met a charismatic? My people are quite mystical. It’s all too easy, though not productive, to straw man your perceived opponents rather than steel man them.

Anyway, what follows is not another diatribe against Protestantism but against the violence of stuffing all non-RC/EO Christianity into this room which, as big and beautiful as it is, cannot adequately contain the work Christ is doing and will do in the world.

So here are some problems with the P term:

• The term is an anachronism. Most of the denominations that continue to be lumped into this category are in no wise any longer defined solely by their relationship to the RC/EO churches. We are no longer living in a context dominated by RC/EO magisterial claims. We now live in a world in which all expressions of the church have more or less equal amounts of air to breath and equal freedom to be themselves.
  
  To be clear, many Christians are not only fine with being labeled as Protestant, they are actively trying to breath new life into the term. First among this crowd is Gavin Ortlund whom I greatly appreciate. I basically listen to and read everything Ortlund does and God bless him in his work to pursue a revitalized Protestantism.
  
  Nonetheless, I contend that there is a coming Church future based on a Christian past, reinterpreted, in which the narrative shackles of of the RC/EO/P framework fall off.

• “Protestantism” as a word is negative, spent, and not very compelling. We need all of our big words to do things for us. Yes, at one time, our ancestors protested what they saw as Church corruption. It is finished. Let’s move on.

To be clear, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox designations also need to be critiqued but I am speaking primarily to Christians who would be otherwise shoehorned into Protestantism. I assume (though I really can’t know and have no preference) that the space this Fourth Church Theory creates will be primarily occupied by people who would otherwise be labeled as Protestants.

It’s such a simple but powerful idea! Guess what? You don’t have to be RC/EO/ or Protestant! By adding this fourth dimensions to our narrative structure we create some breathing room, massive potential for new life and, Lord willing, a new wineskin for some delicious new wine.

Does this idea do something for you? Do you feel creative space opening in your mind? Do you feel some relief? Then this is for you.

I pray that the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions may thrive and grow and evolve and burst forth in flowers and fruit. I claim them all as brothers and sisters in Christ. I also pray that a new place may be opened up for the rest of us; that a new perspective on the story of God may be heard.

The Kingdom of God as Fourth Political Theory

If you’re keeping up, then you are waiting for the second way I think Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory has relevance to a new Christian future. This second point takes Dugin’s question head on. Dugin’s question is something like, “What possible political theory can we turn to if Communism, Fascism, and Liberalism are all wrong?” I believe the best answer we can provide is: the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom, this invasive weed (mustard plant) of Love and Truth and Goodness and Beauty that is growing under everyone’s fences. It is all over breaking into the world’s kingdoms. Christians must repent of all allegiances to regimes that are communist, fascist, liberal, totalitarian, and otherwise at odds with God’s justice, even while they seek the welfare of the cities they live in and sometimes even serve as governmental leaders in those nations and celebrate the real goods, however broken, contained within those systems. Even in the midst of so much evil, there is still Truth and Beauty and Goodness in communism, nationalism (I won’t try to convince you there’s transcendence in fascism), and even liberalism. As exiles in Babylon and ambassadors of the coming Kingdom, we are generously embedded inside the political systems of the world, simultaneously resisting their overtures, seeking their welfare, elevating their goods, diminishing and critiquing their evils, subverting their false claims to supreme authority, while submitting to their God-given and temporary true claims to limited authority.

Liberalism

For the majority of the people I am writing to, the big boss of repentance into a greater revelation of the Kingdom will be understanding, grieving, repenting of, and resisting the charms of Liberalism or Western Liberal Democratic Capitalism. Far from being faithful to its claims of freedom and democracy as supreme virtues, Liberalism is profoundly oppressive to the souls and bodies of those within and without it’s boundaries.

Btw, I will never use the word “liberal” to describe people who are  progressive/leftist/democrats. Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians are all Liberals. Right and Left, apart from submission to Christ, are just two arms of the great beast of Babylon.

There is certainly a place for the two broad personality types that typically become rightist and leftist but they need to be conformed to the pattern of Christ so they can be mutually submitting members of his body and stand shoulder to shoulder in his army declaring allegiance to the same King and citizenship in the same Kingdom.

Anti/Globalism

I believe the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom destined to take over the world. Even now all nations have been folded in as the Gospel has gone out. I believe that, on some blessed day that I almost weep to imagine, every knee will bow and every tongue, with real love and sincerity, will confess that Jesus is Lord.

I also believe that the Kingdom–at least when faithfully expressed and unpolluted–is the least oppressive, least imperialistic, least violent, most humble, most generous and loving government on earth. Which is to say the Kingdom is, in another sense, anti-globalist.

So the Christian Church must simultaneously be the most globalist and most anti-globalist project on earth. The beauty of the Fourth Political Theory (in its baptized form here expressed) is that it is inherently anti-globalist in the way that the Church must be. This has implications for a new theory of missions, for global ecumenical dialogue, and more. This is why I want to say that I am speaking first to the churches in the USA and not hoping to capitalistically export my worldview and dreams onto other sister churches in other parts of the world.

House Church Networks

I think we are moving into a new Christian future defined by an ecclesiology that places a high regard for church gatherings in houses. My church is actually a network of house churches that meet together as a monthly large gathering. The whole church shares an eldership team, an oversight team that supports our leadership, a set of catechetical and other resources, and a community of house church shepherds and other leaders who all commune regularly to be sure that we are following Jesus together. Going all the way with the anti-globalist (which is to say unique-glory-honoring) nature of the Kingdom, each house church in our larger church has its own unique culture and practices while at the same time sharing a common DNA and similar liturgical life. Kingdom life is neither individualistic nor collectivist but a trinitarian both/and.

A Plan for Faithfulness in Total War and/or Soft-to-Hard Totalitarianism

WWIII, am I right? We don’t know what is going to happen. Maybe WWIII will go hot in a way that will leave no one wondering; maybe we will somehow continue to live in a world at war in a way that is sanitized and normalized and is so numbing and ambiently traumatizing that we struggle to maintain our humanity despite relative comfort and stability. Whatever version of life in a world at war we are given to live, the Church must, for starters:

• Accept and acknowledge reality. The Church’s reality is a heavenly reality and we do not succumb to the narratives of the world. On the other hand, we do not shy away from what is really happening in the world and pretend everything is hunky-dory. We cannot prophesy the now-and-future Kingdom into the kingdoms of the world if we refuse to gaze upon them and acknowledge their destructive tendencies.

• Have a plan for faithfulness in the midst of war. Many churches outside the USA are all too well acquainted with war. The churches in western countries should look to them for examples and instruction and ask them for prayer.
  
  How do we help our people maintain fidelity to Christ and the pursuit of his Kingdom when the nations of the world are vying for our hearts and seeking to enslave all of humanity to the work of nation-states that are doomed to pass away with the arrival of the coming Age?
  
  Think of the habit of nations to force military conscription and to draft the youth of their populations into the service of their death machines. Whether or not the country you live in chooses to conscript the youth into their militaries, they are always and everywhere trying to conscript their souls. The Church needs a plan for helping her children remain Kingdom citizens while embedded in the midst of a Babylon that sees them as actuarial inputs in a bureaucracy of death and oppression.

• Have the cross as her insignia. How tragic and ironic that the cross was painted on the panoply of war for the crusaders; the symbol of God’s willingness to die for his enemies. In a world at war the Church must refresh the symbol of the cross and be prepared for death, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement in christlike witness.

• Be shrewd as serpents. The Church must level up in her ability to quickly discern and adapt and solve problems creatively. The systems of total control being built all around us are mostly built on bureaucratic niceties and are like a python’s slow squeeze. The Church needs to be on her toes. She must learn to wiggle out of a trap like a crafty snake, all while remaining innocent as doves.

Rule of Life

The work of teaching Christians how to live has continued throughout the life of the Church, beginning with Saint Paul in texts like Ephesians 4-6 and Romans 12-16 continuing with examples like Saint Benedict and his order, recently brought to life by Rod Dreher in his book, The Benedict Option, and more recently brought into a wonderfully vibrant movement of the Church by the work of John Mark Comer via his project called Practicing the Way.

The work of making disciples has never ceased but it has lacked a certain coherence and tangibility for many of us and now, more than ever, the Church needs a Rule of Life: a whole life plan for discipleship. If the internet were the only shaping force in our lives we would be in desperate and dire need for Rule of Life. But there are many more forces of chaos in our lives than just the internet. Whether Rule of Life or another name is used, there is no vibrant future for a Church that does not create systematic, comprehensive, life-giving programs for discipleship.

A New Vocabulary

Whether by adoption of new words, or by a rich catechetical, sermonic, and liturgical education that undoes a lot of bad teaching and thinking, the Church needs a new vocabulary with which to narrate our way into a beautiful future. For many of us, “faith” is mere propositional assent, “freedom” mere choice, “truth” mere facts, “love” mere preference,  “eternity” a mere infinite succession of moments, “God” merely the biggest object, etc. Far from pedantry, a careful and thoughtful rebuilding of the Christian’s vocabulary is essential for a beautiful and theologically rich Christian future and internal life.

A Wise Response to “Enchantment” Narratives

Whatever you think so-called “Re-enchantment” is, it matters to the Church. For my part, I think Re-enchantment is simultaneously just a conversation and an objective move of spirit, it is both a fiction and a true story, it is both a fad and a persistent reality we have only barely begun to understand, it is happening both within and without the Church to different results. Re-enchantment is a body jerking back to life after the doctor yells “Clear!” and applies the defibrillator pads.

What does it assume? Re-enchantment at least assumes a prior Enchantment and subsequent Disenchantment of some kind. That “Re” does a lot of lifting. The word implies some kind of story in other words. But what is the story? Is it good or bad? The idea is tricky because it means something different to nearly every person you talk to and most people think they know more about it than they do.

Since I hesitate to define the term, let me just say that this movement more and more people are calling Re-enchantment, which has something to do with a growing sense among western peoples of the spiritual/magical/non-materialist in their understanding of reality, is an extremely significant movement that will define the context of both life in the Church and life outside her bounds for the foreseeable future.

The Church needs to acknowledge the complexity of this whatever-it-is we call Re-enchantment, theorize it, develop loving and generous ways to guide people through/in/out of it, joyfully appropriate it, warn against it, and so on. 

Divine Counsel Worldview

Short shrift as ever, let us just say that the Church needs to embrace a Divine Counsel worldview and hermeneutic. Re: the work of the late Dr. Michael Heiser (evangelical) in his book, Unseen Realm, and the first few episodes of the Lord of Spirits (EO) podcast for starters. If you don’t understand the significance and coherence of ideas like God’s Divine Counsel, the gods, the Sons of God, and more, then you are missing major plot elements that you will need if you are going to move into the future without getting off track at some key turns.

Developing a Divine Counsel worldview has also brought me a lot of joy. The world as it is is much more interesting than we give it credit for. A Divine Counsel worldview makes the Bible make more sense, adds richness and depth to things like baptism, salvation, sainthood, and so much more. For a rich Christian future it is incumbent upon the Church to embrace a story of God in which the weird parts of the Bible are not left out and we are not “selectively supernatural.”

We’re nearing thirty pages here and there are so many more sketches I would like to sketch. But I’m getting terser by the minute and what’s the rush?

Where Do We Go From Here?

There’s nothing in this essay that will convince anyone of anything but I hope that some of you feel something; something like a door opening in your heart, a glimpse of the pink glow of a sunrise, a word that has been on the tip of your tongue now springing to mind. This is all by way of whetting your appetite. This is all an invitation.

For my part, there are follow-ups to this essay already in the works and I intend to develop each of the above sketches and many more into more substantial works. I have a roving mind, endless curiosity and interests, and a nice case of ADHD so know that Sun Tongue will in no time soon do what one is “supposed to do” and solely focus on a single topic or theme. I will, however, make sure and structure my web content in such a way that those interested in only one topic can home in.

If you’re picking up what I’m putting down or if you’re way ahead of me:

• Share! Share some of the books/projects/communities/leaders who you think are already doing this kind of work to revitalize the Church and prepare a lovely future for her. Share your own work.

• Pray! Pray for your own church, pray for the churches in your town/state/country, pray for a vision of how Jesus wants to work through you to edify the body. Pray for more of the Spirit. WE MUST BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT. THE WORK OF THE CHURCH MUST FLOW FROM PENTECOST.

• Repent! Whatever the Spirit brings up; repent of it! Confess before God, your oversight, or spiritual helpers, whatever is weighing you down.

• Become a disciple! The work of the Church is to be done by disciples, that is, apprentices to Jesus. Which is to say the work of the Church is to be done by losers and outcasts and rejects and average people and midwits who have nothing on their CV other than the fact that Jesus loves us and called us and we are now following him.

• Dream! Make! Do! Now, more than ever, the world needs a Church full of dreamers who have the courage and discipline to pursue their dreams. One of my big crazy dreams is that I could create a writer’s/creator’s/teacher’s residency, funded by donors and nestled as a program within the nonprofit I steward called Mount Vigil. If you have access to grants or donor resources and feel so led, then please reach out.

• Reach out here on Substack! I’d love to talk.

Soon there was a knock on the front door. Even before my dad answered I felt a pit in my stomach. When I saw the police officer in the doorway, I tried to slink away to my bedroom. My dad called my name before I escaped and my fate was sealed. The police officer and my dad proceeded to lecture me and, once I realized I wasn't going to jail, I relaxed considerably. The situation had changed from "don't be incarcerated" to "survive a boring lecture." I remember how all the adults were trying to hide their amusement and to put the fear of God in me. And I remember how unimpressed I was with the policeman's scolding voice and demeaning tone.

When the officer asked me, "Have you heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?" and I quickly answered, "Yes," really hoping he would not tell me the story. But he responded, "I'm going to tell it to you anyway," glancing at my dad who nodded in agreement. I've always been a fairly teachable person but I felt jail time would have been better than hearing this man go on about Aesop's famous fable.

So the policeman told his tale in the most boring way and I tried not to roll my eyes. He and my dad made me promise never to repeat the offense and, after enough time had passed, the story became one in our family's catalog of humorous anecdotes.

The good news for you, dear reader, is that there are other, more interesting versions of this story which you may not have heard but offer valuable lessons and maybe even invitations into a deeper reality.

Every child should know the original, of course. The boy tells lies about wolves to his community because he is bored and his punishment is to be ignored when a real wolf attack occurs. It's a story worthy of some analysis: What does it mean that the sheep are harmed as a result of his lies? What does it mean for the community that the sheep are lost? How are we caught up in the web of sin, what we call iniquity, in which all are punished and no sin occurs in a vacuum?

Having mined the gold from the original, let's then see what we can gain from the other-worlds versions of our fable.

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Once there was a boy who kept a herd of sheep. Often he would sit on the grassy hillside where his sheep grazed and would look out over the village below. The boy felt at peace in the countryside and mostly avoided the village but every now and then he had to go down in order to trade or pay his respects at the church on holy days.

The boy was only a boy but in his time he had witnessed a creeping decay of spirit amongst the people of his village. It made him ashamed and angry and sad. He saw the decadence and complacency that dulled their minds. Teachers of wisdom were being replaced with voices of influence; watchmen with those seeking entertainment.

The boy felt deep down that something was coming, some force or event or enemy, and he worried the people of his village were not prepared. So he decided to put them to the test.

One day the boy ran into the village and cried, "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" Some villagers chuckled, some glanced up with glassy eyes, some made excuses. But some of the villagers followed the boy. They grabbed what weapons were available and ran after the boy who led them to the hillside.

When those who followed realized there was no wolf, they scolded the boy. "Don't cry wolf where there is no wolf!"

Then the boy spoke:

"My people, there is indeed a wolf that hunts the sheep only you sleep and cannot see it. Open your eyes. Many of us have grown fat of body and fat of mind. A time is coming when you will need to be ready to battle the wolf and, indeed, the wolves of the soul have already begun to feast. You who followed me here today must work together to see that the sheep are saved."

Once there was a boy who kept a herd of sheep. One evening, as he sat on his haunches and stared into the heart of the fire that kept him warm, his sheep became alarmed and their movement and bleating made him look up. Darkness was setting in. On the far side of his herd he saw a large black shadow moving toward his sheep. The boy knew it was a great black wolf. The boy stood and turned to the village in the valley below. He took a deep breath and made to cry out to the villagers but he knew they would not hear him. Then he made to run down to the village but he knew there was no time. Some of his sheep would surely be killed and the herd scattered before he could return with help.

So the boy took a deep breath and mastered his fear. He already had his staff in his hand as he almost never put it down. He turned back and squinted until the black shadow moved again. Then the boy ran toward the wolf. His sheep parted to make way as he ran through the herd. The wolf crouched and growled and when the boy was close enough the wolf leapt into the air. Time seemed to slow down and the boy's eyes grew wide when he saw how large the wolf was with its body stretched out in the sky. The boy felt a strange mixture of dismay and ecstasy but he did not hesitate. With both hands on his staff he thrust it forward like a spear and caught the wolf right under his chin. The deep, rumbling growl quickly turned to a high pitched yelp when the staff made contact and the wolf went tumbling. The boy felt spirit fill him now. He felt possessed by some great joy as he set upon the wolf with his staff and clubbed it over and over till the beast went panting away into the dark.

The boy slept peacefully that night though he knew the wolf would look for an opportune time to return.

Once there was a boy who kept a herd of sheep. On a cold, windy night one autumn the boy was woken up. He turned over in his knapsack to see what had roused him. A thin curl of smoke was still rising from the fire pit. The sheep were asleep. The moon shone with a cold light on the hillside. The great wolf sat perfectly still, his eyes aglow with a bright yellow light. He stared directly at the boy.

The boy sat up with a start. A wolf! Instantly the boy was up and running. He cried out, "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" as he ran to wake up the shepherds in their hut. The shepherds roused with grunts and shouts and came tumbling out into the night. They asked the boy where the wolf was and then set off running with their staffs but when they got to the sheep, the wolf was nowhere to be seen nor was any wolf sign to be found.

The men grumbled and scowled at the boy as they returned to their hut. The oldest shepherd patted the boy on the shoulder.

"You just had a bad dream, boy. Go back to bed and don't wake us again unless there is a real wolf or the other men may want to teach you a lesson."

The boy went back to sleep but again he was woken and again he saw the wolf, sitting in the same spot. The wolf was wagging its tail. Perhaps more eager to prove himself to the other shepherds than to save the sheep, he ran and cried out and woke them up again. Again they went in search of the wolf though they cast sideways glances at the boy. Again they found no sign of a wolf.

The men made threatening gestures at the boy as they returned to their hut. The oldest shepherd looked compassionately at the boy,

"Well, be ready for some rough treatment tomorrow from the others. You'll be alright though."

The boy went back to bed, embarrassed and angry. It took him some time to fall back asleep and when he did, he was only able to nod off for a moment before the wolf woke him again with its stare. The boy stared back for a moment at those glowing yellow eyes and that tail wagging almost as if the wolf wanted to play. He then walked down to the shepherd's hut, snuck in quietly, and shook the shoulder of the oldest shepherd. The shepherd opened one eye and did not look surprised. The old shepherd put his finger to his lips before getting up and they walked a ways away from the hut.

"This is no ordinary wolf, my boy. A spirit has called on you. You must see what it has to say. When the wolf comes again, I want you to go ask it what's what. Keep your staff ready but do not threaten it. Call out for me if you need help."

The boy could not fall back asleep. Soon he felt the wolf's eyes on the back of his neck. He turned back and it was there, sure enough. He sighed. It was colder now and he could see his breath. The boy stood with his staff in hand and walked slowly but confidently toward the wolf. The wolf's yellow eyes widened a bit.

"I'm here now, wolf. What message do you have for me?"

The wolf leaned its head back and opened its mouth and began to sing the starlight down into the boy's heart.

There once was a boy who kept a herd of sheep. One day the boy was so out of sorts that he shouted, "Wolf! Wolf! A wolf is chasing the sheep," even though there was no wolf. The villagers came running to the hillside where the sheep grazed only to be greeted by the boy's derisive laughter. Most of the villagers shook their heads and scolded him and waved their hands dismissively at the boy. But one man saw the boy for what he was. He was a lonely, sad boy who wanted attention.

The man had pity on the boy and decided to join him on his hillside. The man carved a staff for himself so he could help the boy keep the sheep. He got used to sleeping on the ground. He learned the tones and grunts and whistles the boy used to direct the sheep. The man would spend hours sitting next to the boy, staring into the heart of the fire.

Slowly, the boy came to believe that he was not alone and the boy found he did not want to tell lies anymore.

There once was a boy who kept a herd of sheep. One day a wolf came and stole one of the sheep. The wolf snatched up a straggling lamb in its toothy jaws and ran away. The boy saw what had happened and he set off running after the wolf, leaving the other sheep behind. He would run and would keep running and would not return until he had the lamb safely in hand.

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I’m sitting on the curb of a gas station parking lot in some suburb on the south side of Denver. I just purchased a bottle of water, a candy bar, and a little notebook I am writing my thoughts in as I wait. I wait for three friends who are driving almost two hours from Colorado Springs to rescue me.

One mile away on I-25 my car has died and rests on the gravel shoulder. As I was driving back to camp all of my car’s electrical systems stopped working. Alternator. Energy had slowly drained from the battery until I was forced to exit the flow of traffic. As the car came to a stop a very bitter, sarcastic “Thanks a lot, God,” left my mouth. I immediately felt guilty.

I walked back along the highway, headlights screaming by me, and reached Lincoln Avenue. I followed Lincoln to reach this gas station I am now waiting at. The impromptu mile long hike gave my childish tantrum time to subside. I began to try to praise God instead of blaming him–my desire to walk in faith pulling against my anxiety and desperation. I made up a bluesy song as I walked. I praise you God even though my car is dead. I trust you God even though I’m broke.

There are many more “even thoughs” and I make a mental list as I wait for my friends to arrive. I really need that vehicle for school this fall. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. I don’t have the money to repair the car, whatever the problem is. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I look up into the sky which I know must be starry but is washed with city light and I hope to hear God tell me how he will take care of me.

I arrived in Denver last night. As soon as I finished work I got in my car with a backpack and a guitar. I drove down from the mountain camp where I’ve been living and working all summer and headed north. I visited my friend Aaron who also lives where he works at a drop-in center called Sox Place in downtown Denver. Sox Place is a refuge for druggies, homeless people, anyone who needs food and a safe place to hang out. Aaron’s job is to serve the people who come to Sox Place.

Sox Place is essentially a large garage with a few rooms attached. In the main area there are a couple TVs, several couches, a pool table, some tables and chairs where food is served. Adjoining there is a kitchen, an office, and bathrooms. Every wall at Sox Place is covered in graffiti. There are large works of art in the lounge area and hundreds of scrawlings on the walls of the hallway. Some of the writings are hopeful and poetic. Some are despairing and poetic. There are eulogies written to deceased friends, a few Bible verses, and proclamations of self-affirmation that all, in essence, say, “I exist.”

Sox Place was closed by the time I arrived so Aaron was the only one there. We spent the evening walking around the city. On the 16th Street Mall we met a few of the friends he’s made this summer. One man was missing most of his teeth and had a large hiking pack with grocery bags tied to it for extra storage. He held a large Chow dog on a leash. The man and the dog both had similarly matted hair. Later, after playing guitar together for awhile, Aaron and I bunked down for the night in the lounge area of Sox Place. I slept on a couch and Aaron made a bed of cushions on the ground.

We woke up late in the morning when two of Aaron’s coworkers, David and Lee opened the garage door and came in. David had a large ring in his nose like you might see in a bull’s snout. David was bouncing around the room and I quickly got the impression that he would be a teacher’s worst nightmare and a child’s best friend. Lee was quiet and exuded an aura of violent capability. He had a tattoo on his neck. My first thought was that I would not like to fight Lee.

A mother and her two teenage sons showed up with a minivan full of groceries. I helped them carry the food to the kitchen and introduced myself to the boys. I tried to make small talk but they seemed shy. The mom was one of those women who never departs from her role and she talked to me like I was one of her sons. The family was there to prepare lunch for the people who would come to Sox Place that afternoon.

As I talked to the family I found myself slipping little pieces of information into the conversation like where I go to college and giving little explanations for why I was at Sox Place. I felt anxiety that someone might think I was the one who needed help. I thought about how Jesus would not have felt the need to differentiate himself from the people he loved in order to make sure everyone knew he was better than them.

The volunteer family made burritos and the building filled with smells that made my mouth water. A few people were waiting outside when the garage doors opened. At first they trickled in and later guests began to arrive in larger numbers. They got in line for the food and began to eat. I sat on a couch at the end of the room and played my guitar.

I saw lots of tattoos, piercings, unusual haircuts. I could detect the unmistakable signs of drug abuse in many of their demeanors and conversation styles. I used to be a druggie myself but in all my time spent in that world, I was never fully exposed to the life these people were living. I never lived on the streets. My stint with substance abuse lasted less than three years but many of these people had grown up in a culture of drugs and poverty.

A guy sat down next to me and asked the questions that a guitarist asks another guitarist: What kind of guitar is that? How long have you played? Another guitarist will always give himself away by watching your hands as you play. I offered him the instrument and he excitedly accepted. His head was shaved and he looked like he was in his late twenties. His name was Chris. Chris was good. He played a unique fingerstyle full of blues and soul. His talent was raw and passionate.

Chris asked if there were any other guitars around so that we could play together. I left my guitar with him and went to get Aaron’s guitar out of the office. When I got back, Chris and my guitar were missing. My alarm grew as I began to search the room. I thought, I should have known better. I found Aaron and told him what had happened. It may have just been my conscience but Aaron seemed a little disappointed as he turned and pointed at the garage door. There were several people sitting in chairs and smoking cigarettes just outside the door and Chris was with them, playing my guitar. After borrowing a pick from David, I joined Chris outside with Aaron’s guitar and a stomach full of guilt.

We jammed for a long time. I played rhythm while Chris played lead with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I played a few songs that I had written and then began improvising some blues riffs for Chris to play around. Making good music with other people gives me this feeling of euphoria that climbs up my back and the back of my neck and fills my chest. Chris and I played until it was time for Sox Place to close. David and Lee began yelling for everyone to leave. I shook Chris’s hand and tried unsuccessfully to communicate how grateful I was for the experience and then he was gone.

I put the guitars away, grabbed a broom, and started sweeping. Everyone but the staff members left the building. Eventually I said goodbye to Aaron and departed on a drive south that would be unexpectedly short.

When I fished in my pocket for change to call for help I realized I still had the guitar pick I borrowed from David. I’m under no illusions that my contributions to Sox Place were significant. I helped out as much as I could but they didn’t need my help. In transactional terms I swept the floor in exchange for a place to sleep, a burrito, and a guitar pick.

In this moment I feel homeless and needy. I watch every pick-up truck that drives by hoping it is the one I’m waiting for. SUVs and luxury sedans drive through the station and fill their tanks with fuel.

I am surrounded by affluence and I worry about what these people think of me; these people who I’ll never see again and who glance at me as they walk in and out of the convenience store. Earlier, I used a pay-phone to call Luke for a ride because I don’t own a cell phone. Now I sit on the curb like a bum. I distill my many irrational thoughts into a single fear. What if these people think my life is going nowhere? I look deeper and find the true fear. What if my life is going nowhere?

An old, weathered car parks at a pump. A teenager rolls down his window and reaches out to open his door from the outside. My car has a door just like that. I feel an instant camaraderie with this guy. Stay strong brother.

Luke and the others finally arrive in Luke’s silver truck and I breathe a long sigh. I jog up to the truck and when Luke gets out I give him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. He tells me to take it easy cowboy and I laugh. Cammie and Richard say a quick hello and then rush inside the convenience store to use the restroom. It amuses me that they came along for the heck of it. When they return, we all cram into the cab. Cammie and I face each other in the back with our knees staggered. Conversation is minimal and we all stare out our respective windows as we drive south. When we pass it, I turn to watch my lonely, broken car fade into the night behind us.

I am in a diesel truck with Luke, Keith the camp director, two ratcheting cable pullers, four blocks of wood, a flatbed trailer, and three cans of soda. We are driving north once again. Keith and Luke are relaxed while I am anxious. I left my car on the side of the highway five days ago and it may have been towed. Keith talks about what God has been doing in his and his wife’s lives recently.

I’m getting tired of being grateful to people. That Keith would take half a day to help me and provide the truck and trailer is a huge gift. He even bought me a soda. Then there is Luke who drove four hours in the night to rescue me and now returns to help get my car. There is a guest of the camp we work at who donated enough money so all the camp staff got a one-hundred dollar bonus. That bonus raises my cash assets to one-hundred dollars. There is a very long list of others to whom I owe thanks.

We near the place where my car died and I strain forward in my seatbelt saying a silent prayer. If my car has been towed away I don’t have the money to reclaim it. I see a lonely maroon spot on the side of the highway and I give a loud shout for joy that makes Luke jump.

We take the exit and pass over the highway to turn south again. I have the irrational fear that a tow truck is going to arrive and try to take my car just before we get there. Keith pulls onto the shoulder in front of my car and lines the trailer up with the headlights. Luke and I jump out and grab the ramps and hook them to the end of the trailer. Keith grabs the cables and ratchets and begins to attach them to the frame of my car and then to the front of the trailer. The sun is hot today and it feels good to be outside.

Cars roar by. A few hundred yards behind us I notice a man approaching on a bicycle. As the man approaches I see him more clearly. He wears glasses, a pair of cut-off jean shorts, brown leather loafers, and white socks that go halfway up his calves. His chest is bare and he is very tan. He appears to be in his late forties or early fifties and he is covered in sweat. He pauses to assess our work.

“Where you boys headed?” he asks.

“The Springs.” I answer.

“You care if I throw my bike in the back of your truck and ride along? It’s damn hot out here and I’m getting tired.” Luke and I look at Keith.

“What’s your name?” Keith asks.

“Leland,” he says.

“Where you headed?” Keith asks.

“I’m on my way down to Cañon City. This is my daughter’s bicycle and I need to give it back to her. After that, I’m taking a bus down to New Mexico to pick up some paperwork.”

“You been down on your luck?” Keith asks.

“Yes sir, life’s been hard for a few years now.”

“What’s your story?” Keith asks.

Leland recounts a story I don’t fully understand but it involves a wife-slash-business partner who laundered him into poverty and IRS trouble. Leland tells his story without bitterness or blame.

“I still love her but she’s just not a good person,” he says. His shoulders curve and his back bends as he speaks of the great failure of his life. At this point, Keith, Luke and I have stopped messing with the car and are listening intently. Leland takes off his glasses and wipes the sweat from his face.

Keith speaks, “Leland, me and these men are Christians and we’d like to pray for you if you don’t mind.” I cringe and smile.

“Yeah, yeah I’d like that,” says Leland.

“You got anything specific you’d like us to pray about?”

“You can pray for my family—that they’d be okay and just live a good life.” He pauses.

“There’s a bunch of people up there in Denver you can pray for too. I just left Denver and there’s a bunch of people there who are hurting and need help. They’ve just got nothing.” Leland suddenly gets tears in his eyes. He lowers his head and breathes deeply. His voice shakes.

We each put a hand firmly on Leland’s shoulder and Keith prays aloud for him.

“God, we thank you for connecting us with Leland today. He’s had a rough go of it for awhile and he needs your help. We just pray that you’d meet him where he’s at and show him how good you are. We pray for Leland’s family, that you’d bring your healing, forgiveness and redemption into their relationships. Finally, we do pray for the city of Denver and ask that you’d energize your people there to love those who are in need. Amen.” We all echo the amen.

When Keith finishes, Leland thanks us and then we all get to work on my car. Leland cranks the ratchet while Keith steers. Luke and I dig our heels in behind the car and push. Leland works the cable puller, throwing his body into the press and pull. I can tell he’s a man who knows how to work hard and I like him for that. Inch by inch, the car climbs the ramp. Once the front wheels are on the bed things get easier and finally the car is in place. We use straps and blocks to keep the car in place and I double check the parking break. Leland seems really excited to have been of help.

The three of us climb inside the truck and Leland jumps in the bed. Keith starts the engine but I tell him to wait. I want Leland to ride inside so he and Keith can talk more. I jump back out of the truck.

“Leland, why don’t you ride inside?” He looks surprised.

“I appreciate it but I’m alright brother—I’ll be okay.”

“Leland, it’s not fair for you to be the only one to work on his tan today. Don’t hog the sun. There’s some water in there for you and a nice, cold AC.”

“Well thanks man, I really appreciate that.”

Leland hops out of the bed and gets into the cab. I get in and take off my shirt and use it for a pillow. The truck starts and we begin to drive. The wind catches some dirt in the bed and I close my eyes. We accelerate and I’m surprised by how comfortable I am. I cross my arms beneath my head. A hawk passes by. I start to talk to God. I feel helpless and strong at the same time. I stretch out and feel the heat of the sun and watch the clouds pass beneath an infinite sky.

Earlier this year, Ted Gioia shared a post called 13 Observations on Ritual at his Substack, The Honest Broker (which is not about finance but music btw). It’s worth a read. Gioia discusses the forces of technology, various media, capitalism, culture, as they appropriate ritual devoid of the transcendent.

Ritual is fundamental to anthropologic which means it is part of our Creator’s loving design for us creatures made in his image and destined for theosis. The ritual that sustains the world, the basal ritual of Christianity, occurs at the table of Eucharist. There are many other rituals–those particularly Christian and those of common grace to all people–that give our lives meaning and form and poetry. What does it do to us to live in a world in which this human and divine good of ritual is profaned and used to extract value from us?

I’d suggest taking a moment with each observation to really think about them. What comes up?

Hildegard of Bingen is hard to describe. For now I’ll just say she was a German Christian mystic of the Benedictine order in the 12th century. She saw things. I imagine she looked like the German woman from whom I bought this picnic table I am sitting at: hands leathered from farm work, skin golden from a life in the sun, soulful eyes that have seen beauty and tragedy. Anyway, she was a nun so this may be way off.

I found this poem (prayer?) of hers, translated by Barbara Newman in a collection of spiritual verse and it has been running through my mind. The last three lines are like a nice packet of snus, stimulating; I keep rolling the words around in my mouth. Your power like a wheel around the world, whose circling never began and never slides to an end.

Song to the Creator

You, all-accomplishing
Word of the Father
are the light of primordial
daybreak over the spheres.
You, the foreknowing
mind of divinity,
foresaw all your works
as you willed them,
your prescience hidden
in the heart of your power,
your power like a wheel around the world,
whose circling never began
and never slides to an end.

WWIII! Solar flare! Elections! Scandal of the day! Economy-crushing strikes! Totalitarianism! And so on.

All these things matter. They matter to me and to you. I believe they matter to God. And I believe we can actually influence our reality through prayer and through our life. But it can be a little shall we say overstimulating/exhausting/nihilism-inducing/absurdifying to try and keep up and take it all in and, worst of all, to let the world tell us how to interpret and prioritize and respond to the facts of the world’s state. Instead, followers of The Way are called to live out the logic of a different world that we believe has arrived but is still arriving. Want to learn more about this logic? Well then, try this lovely little 36-minute movie called Godspeed: The Pace of Being Known (no not that Godspeed you crazy DC comics nerd you).

Summary: an American priest learns to encounter Jesus in the Other while serving in Scotland. This one is good for your soul. It is relevant to our time. You will encounter a wild, redheaded, elemental spirit of the Scottish braes who will make you want to change your life. Shout out to Patch, for the reminder.

The neighbor who lives behind me planted a garden this year. His pumpkin plant grew under our fence and has fruited a nice little pumpkin for us. We plan to harvest it soon. I’ve tried to write a poem about what this means to me but I cannot get the voices of Wendel Berry and Robert Frost out of my head so here I will simply tell you that I think it is a good omen. “Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.” I welcome that something. The master is not a hard man and lets me reap where I did not sow.

Some good things:

• I wrote this while drinking a Ghostfish Grapefruit GF IPA. As a gluten-challenged person I have missed the refreshing bitterness of a good IPA for a long time. Ghostfish has done the impossible and made a very good IPA with no gluten.

• While I did not write this message by hand, I have been clicking my Japanese GS01 Ohto pen at every pause and with great satisfaction. It’s a wonderful little artifact that draws a fine line and fits nicely in a pocket so one can, for example, capture writerly thoughts at a mountain creek while your kids dash about.

Thanks for reading.

Spiritus vobiscum.

My wife just delivered our sixth child which has got me thinking about people-gifts.

In my first year of college I was gifted the friendship of the man I usually refer to as “my Buddhist English professor.” One of my only real friends in that season of life, he was a poet with long hair and a big beard and would have made an excellent Orthodox priest had his eastern longings not taken him in a different direction. My Buddhist English professor and his wife introduced me to The Smiths, Mark Eitzel, poetry, wine, classy parties with intellectuals, and most importantly, they treated me like an adult who had a perspective that mattered. I was 17 and neglected so this was enormous for me.

One of the many things my professor taught me is the Japanese concept of Ningen Kokuhō. He had gone to Japan to explore becoming a monk and had brought back his love of Japanese philosophy and ritual which he shared with delight and generosity. When I went to his house he asked that I remove my shoes at the genkan (house entrance) so I would not “burden the spirits” (I think this is more of a Shinto idea than Buddhist); and in one of those many free cultural community events that are such an underrated portion of the value one receives in a college career, he once hosted a short lecture and demonstration of a Japanese tea ceremony. I remember being quite moved by the pains the host took to honor and serve his guest.

My professor introduced me to the concept of Ningen Kokuhō as, together with a group of students, we watched the 1980 National Geographic documentary on the Living Treasures of Japan; I love that the title includes “VHS rip” which we shall also read as “VHS RIP”:

The idea of Ningen Kokuhō, or the Living National Treasure, is that a nation of virtue should identify, honor, and support the people who possess certain “intangible cultural properties” that represent the nation’s heritage. In other words, the people who have dedicated their lives to the perfection of a regionally local traditional art, and who have further made sure to preserve that art by teaching it to others, should be honored. Their people owe them and rely upon them in some way.

My understanding of the idea of people-gifts has grown since I first watched that documentary but I still remember the yearning the seventeen-year-old version of me felt then. I think this ache I felt was three-fold. First, I winced at the total generosity of these artists who gave their lives to their people in the preservation of beauty; the thousand sacrifices of a life spent pursuing mastery of one thing. Second, I felt the dull empty pain of the absence of such Ningen Kokuhō in my experience; where were these generative gray hairs? And finally, it was the hunger pang of hope that I might become the kind of man my people, or really anyone, might consider to be a national treasure.

In the Old Testament Yhwh repeatedly tells the people of Israel that they are his treasured possession. When his people rebel against him, Yhwh declares he will take away the material treasures of Israel and give it to someone else as a consequence. Yhwh wants to be Israel’s treasure just like they are his. All material treasure is ultimately valuable as an analogy that points us to the treasures of the divine life and as an aid that supports us in our pursuit of it.

One translation of Psalm 17:14 says, “You fill their womb with treasure; they are satisfied with children…” People-treasures.

In the book of the prophet, Haggai, Yhwh tells Zerubabel, a leader of the Israelite return from the Babylonian exile and a laborer in the rebuilding of their temple,

Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says Yhwh of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares Yhwh of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says Yhwh of hosts. And in this place I will give peace…

But most everyone admits that the temple they built, the Second Temple, was inferior to the first. The real fulfillment of God’s promise is in the temple that is the Church, and the treasure, the silver and gold that comes in, is people. The wealth of the nations comes into Israel in the form of people-treasures. This is you.

Paul says some interesting things about people-gifts in his letter to the Ephesians.

Paul begins the second half of Ephesians–the part that talks about Christian ethics–with an exhortation toward unity. In the beginning of chapter 4 he says that a person who has understood the cosmic significance of the revelation of Christ should respond by walking in a worthy manner. And walking worthily looks like going to extravagant lengths to do what we can to put up with each other’s foibles and to relate to each other with humility and gentleness so that we can maintain our unity. Because every person, though broken, has been gifted with a unique and indispensable portion of Christ. We are all, in part, Christ gifted to each other. We are all, with each other, Christ’s body.

Paul then alludes to a very mysterious story in Ephesians 4:8. In that verse, he intentionally misquotes Psalm 68:18 which says, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men.” Paul’s misquote or, to be less inflammatory, his “reworked” quote says, “Having ascended on high, he led a host of captives, he gave gifts to human beings."

The misquoting occurs when Paul changes the original passage from “receiving gifts from men,” to “gave gifts to humans.” The point is that, while it is traditional for the people to give a conquering king gifts of tribute, Jesus is the conquering king who instead gives gifts to the people. This is all in the context of a story we will talk about when the wheel of the year rolls back around to Holy Week. For now, let us just say that, after having descended to the Underworld, Jesus conquers the Underworld and rebellious spiritual powers and then ascends to the heavens (spending forty days with his friends as a pit stop on the way up). In his Ascension, Jesus leads captivity captive. Ten days later, at Pentecost, Jesus and the Father send the Holy Spirit down to fill the new temple, the temple that Yhwh told Zerubabel about, the Church, with the life of Christ. And in this giving of the Holy Spirit, Christ fills all things (Eph 4:10).

But what are the gifts that the conquering king gives to people? It turns out, the gifts he gives us are other gifted people. So in Ephesians 4:11 Paul describes some of the people-gifts he gives to the Church in a list that has come to be known as the fivefold ministry: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers. Better yet, let us translate, rather than transliterate, them into something more interesting for English speakers: Ambassadors, Foretellers, Good-News-Bringers, Shepherds, and I don’t have a better word for Teachers (it would have to be something like “Learner-Makers”.

What does this fivefold team do? They serve God’s people and help them achieve their end in Christ.

To summarize: Jesus, in his crucifixion, descent into the Underworld, defeat of the rebellious powers, resurrection, ascension high above the Skies, enthronement with the Father, and Spirit-outpouring, is the conquering King who, in his victory, gives treasures to his people by the Spirit in the form of people-gifts who serve to restore his people and build up his body and help her achieve unity and completion as the body of Christ. Re: Ephesians 4:1-16 for the whole passage.

So, I guess in a way he is the conquering King who receives gifts from people. The gifts he gives to us are the gifts he gives to himself inasmuch as the Church is his own body and bride that he seeks complete union with. In giving people as gifts to each other he gives us to himself.

And while this passage highlights the fivefold servant-team, the real beneficiaries and subjects of the passage are the people of the Church, otherwise known as the saints or “holy ones.” While these five ministering roles are foundational there is no reason to think they are the most important or that the list is exhaustive. Every person is a gift of Christ’s own self to the world.

In the middle of this writing some of our co-church leaders visited and brought steak and veggies to grill as part of our newborn-baby meal train. They are people-gifts to my family, to our church, to the world. As we grilled and drank whiskey, I mentioned I was writing about the idea of “people-gifts” and my friend, Tim, told me that this term came into our community through a man named HB who is something like a grandfather to my local church. He and his wife spent years and years serving as people-gifts to the Church, pouring themselves out in establishing countless people in the way of Christ. Their DNA is part of our community’s life and their stories are part of our lore. While the nations of the world might have no idea who they are, my friend, Tim, our friend HB, their wives, they are all Ningen Kokuhō in God’s Kingdom. I know many others.

As I hold my newborn daughter and marvel at her soulful gaze on the new world, I wonder about the nature of her giftedness to us. I marvel at the extravagant gift of my wife’s life for this baby girl, poured out in sleeplessness, suffering, and constant care. I wonder too about all the other babies on the way (new babies are competing with mission to the lost for which will be the greatest vector of new life into our church this year). I also wonder about the children my wife and I have lost through miscarriages and the children others in my community have lost. What particular expression of Christ are we missing out on in their absence? But then I like to imagine our departed little ones as they exercise their giftedness for our sake in intercession. I like to imagine them cheering for us.

It is a blessed thing that death does not separate the members of Christ’s body. Indeed, the Ephesians story of the people-gifts to the Church is established in the wake of Jesus’ invasion and lovingly hostile takeover of the Underworld. If I ascend to the skies, you are there, O God. If I make my bed in the Grave you are there. If we die you maintain the gift, O God.

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

I am an open door through which winds of a new Time are blowing.

What wind blows through you? Is it the pale, damp wind of a courtyard that no longer holds life? Once there were children playing games and fresh laundry and harvests to process but now an odor of mildew and dust. The old wind does not even carry the tang of death or decomposition or ready soil but only pallid clay.

Or does this wind of a new Time blow through you, too? Whence and whither this wind we welcome? What harmonic joy to remain open to this movement. What giddy terror to wonder about its nature. What exquisite suffering to continually cry, “if only!” If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!” My every breath is this if(in) only(out). A pathetic wishing would not ache so but this prophetic if only bears upon us, makes demands of us, gently destroys and saves us, bends and straightens us in a sustained note that time reveals as a melody ancient and future. I am a string I fear will break at the turning and yet I want to keep singing.

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world

Do you and I share the same eschatological naiveté? Are you a dove who knows where the olive tree grows? Can you fly by night midair between formless waters of sea and storm? Can you navigate by starlight? Can you hear the voice blowing through you? Can you hear the silence in the midst of the roar? Can I yield to this wind ? Can I loan myself to this wind with no knowledge of what will be returned? If only I am a winged gift.

Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Therefore I have set my face like a flint. I am a stone which breaks other stones. What is the edge of a blade but a vibration that cleaves. How water and wind can break a mountain in two. How a man who knows stone can, after getting to know the stone in his hand, tap at the heart line of it to create a resonance that opens, like a plectrum plucking a string.

Can you withstand these invisible blows that drive us? I think I cannot but I am held together and summon power to harden myself as a steel chisel, dumb until the hammer falls and then singing and ringing into the rock until the white, chalky spot becomes a dark crack which then becomes a bolt of light.

I see a three-tree grove of poplar, elm, and willow sharing the same roots. Daughters of evening, give me a golden apple. I was made to eat it.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

I call to my soul: simus fontes. I am a source in this world though I am not the source. Do you have the courage to make this claim? Look at me, divine waters are pouring out of me. I am the infinite, briefly. Look at you, living waters flow from your inner place. You are the transcendent, contained. We are waterfalls of a new Time inbreaking; watery footprints in our wake.

Can you let go of yourself enough to claim, with no fear, no control, no shame, that you are a good fountain? Whisper more clearly. Do not pollute your wonder with reservations.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them

Was it three fists rapping in unison or a single hand that woke me in the night? Was it a thief or a lover? Was it a single voice or chorus that called my name? Let these messengers sing their song of doom and bloom

I used to live and work at a camp in the mountains several miles outside the city. This poem describes an experience I had during one of my summers there. The perspective is that of a much younger version of myself. I didn’t write this poem intending to connect it to an ongoing series on Silence but I think it fits the theme.

I’ve always had a place in my heart for the angry young man. The one who is full of desire and energy and hates the modern world for giving him nowhere to direct it. Such young men are the source of a fair portion of death and destruction it is true. But I think an even sadder world is the one in which all the young men are Last Men as Nietzsche described or Men Without Chests as Lewis prophesied. As long as there is still some Eros, some life-drive, some desire, there is still the opportunity for it to be aimed at the divine.

While that line about this poem being from the perspective of my younger self is technically true, it’s a lie in that it implies my current perspective is somehow more mature or settled. There is still that boy who is always threatening to set something on fire just to get his dad’s attention.

Vigil

Wasn't I looking for you
when, just ahead of the storm,
I grabbed my pack, sleeping bag,
headlamp, tarp,
and ran out into the night?

Weren’t you proud of
how I scaled the mountain,
unafraid of being alone, or the storm,
or the effort,
or having no reason to get there
so quickly or at all?

Didn't you see me as
I climbed the rock face in the dark,
working by feel
the wind pulling at my pack,
testing my grip,
my feet slipping in the rain?

Didn't I secretly hope
that wind would tear me from the wall
and hurl me up into the heavens
to disappear into that
darkness backlit by stars?

Wasn't I looking for you–
for something–
a theophany, a transfiguration,
my spirit animal;
a bear to place his paw on my chest
and give me a secret name,
a lion to slash my eye so through it
I could see invisible things?

Were you or were you not
blessing me, holding out on me,
when lightning was striking
every surrounding peak
and I looked up, waiting to be next,
standing at the center
of a great ring of fire
until the rain picked up?

Was it you who commanded
the storm to withhold its anger
until the moment after
I unfolded my tarp and unrolled my bag
and lay down and covered myself,
at which point the reservoirs of rain
were fully opened
and I fell asleep to the roar?

Are you in this mountain
with its ancient gravity?
Are you in this rain
pressing down on me?
Is this howling wind your icy breath?
Do these lightning bolts extend from
your palms, your fingers, your eyes?

Didn't you come in the the night
and lie down next to me
back to back to keep each other warm?
Did you wake me by running
your fingers through my hair?

Do you love me? Do you hate me?
Did you forget you made me?
Don't you sustain me?

Share Umbrella's Bones

Several winters ago a friend and I went to the mountains in order to take a sauna. We drove his extreme beater of a car full of wood burning stove, stove pipe, a box of firewood, and an insulated tent to a snowy campground about an hour away from the city. Or was it my beater of a car? Whichever of us drove we were certainly testing the mountain gods’ patience by taking such a vehicle in winter. Twenty plus years old sedans that were low-riding, two-wheel drive, 4-cylinder, rusting away. Both cars are now long ago deceased but they lived lives of adventure beyond what their designers intended.

Since the snow was deep and our intended sauna site down a steep hill we had to leave the car on the side of the road and hike. I tried not to think about the work it would take to pack everything out as we made multiple trips carrying the sauna gear two hundred yards down to the riverside. We built the sauna tent in what I would later learn was a campsite. At the time it just seemed like a flat spot in the snow, tucked between the boulders at the foot of a huge rock outcropping and a creek that had frozen over.

We built a fire in the stove and soon the tent was hot. We got down to our swim trunks–normally we would be naked but hikers might pass by–and began the ritual. Enter the tent and sit on a log or bench. Keep the fire fueled with pieces of waste hardwood from a cabinetry shop. Occasionally pour water to make steam on the hot stones atop the stove. Sweat.

Once we were hot enough we would go outside to cool down. The river was mostly frozen over but there was an opening in the middle and my friend would go to it and immerse himself in the water. I was less gung-ho and would merely sit on the edge with my legs in the water and splash my face. Once we were cool enough we would start over.

With each round of the sauna our conversation became more sparse until, for our final sweat, we sat in silence.

On the drive home we enjoyed the feeling of vitality and the beauty of the mountains and our conversation began anew. I asked my friend what was happening in his interior life and he told me how amazed he was at the grandeur of the story of God. My friend said, “I just think the story is so beautiful. At this point, I wouldn’t even care if it turned out not to be true. I would still believe it because this is the most beautiful story.” He was laughing.

I told him how I was struggling to believe that a God who is so silent could be good or there at all. I said, “The question I’m asking is, how is it Good News that God is silent in the way that he is silent?”

A week or so before I had been driving down the city highway in my beater of a car. I was so angry at God for not talking to me that I wept and screamed until I thought I had done permanent damage to my vocal cords. I yelled at God, “You are terrible at relationships.” The way I felt at the time was that we all know that communication is the foundation of any relationship and yet here I am staking my whole life on a relationship with this God who won’t even answer a simple question or speak a word to me.

I imagine how some of you reading this are responding right now.

“God doesn’t talk because he doesn’t exist. That was your cognitive dissonance catching up to you.” To me, this is the most boring answer.

“Well God gave us the Bible, that should be enough. This conversational relationship with God that you want isn’t a thing.” This answer is the most heartless and sad.

“He probably seemed silent at the time because you were walking in disobedience or just weren’t listening.” This answer begs the question. It is in such a state that I most need God to speak clearly. Also, before committing to this explanation, one should read the book of Job and consider which characters in that story one sounds like when employing it.

“I deny the premise. God does speak. He isn’t silent. He told me such and such this morning and gave me such and such dream last night.” This is the most annoying and challenging answer out of these options. It may offer the greatest chance of helpfulness. But it also reflects a limited understanding of the saints and the pattern of formation their lives reflected. I would venture to say that a struggle with the silence of God is a staple of the Christian way and has been for millennia.

We could go on.

Now, if someone were to bring such a struggle to me–the struggle of the silence of God–I would not hope to give an answer. I would hope to have a little wisdom to share and to ask a few good questions but mostly, I would want to sit in silence with them.

Another friend and I recently met for an hour of silent prayer. We sat in his living room. I was impressed with how engaged my friend seemed when I opened my eyes during our prayer. I glanced around at the details of his space, bounced me knees, tried (failing for a minute) not to fall asleep. I was aware that I probably did not look very contemplative on the outside. When the hour was done I asked him how it was. He said, “Honestly it felt completely empty.” I replied, “Same, but I think I’m learning to encounter God on the other side of the emptiness.” I laughed at how annoyed the version of me driving and weeping in traffic would be at the me that said that.

I recommended a book to him, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise by Cardinal Sarah.

I am happy for the Catholic Church that men like Cardinal Sarah exist and, though I have no real stake in the matter, he would have been my pick for that church’s 266th Pope. The Power of Silence is a fragmentary collection of meditations on God’s silence.

Here are some of my favorite fragments from the book:

2. At the heart of man there is an innate silence, for God abides in the innermost part of every person. God is silence, and this divine silence dwells in man. In God we are inseparably bound up with silence. The Church can affirm that mankind is the daughter of a silent God, for men are the sons of silence.

12. Silence is not an absence. On the contrary, it is the manifestation of a presence, the most intense of all presences. In modern society, silence has come into disrepute; this is the symptom of a serious, worrisome illness. The real questions of life are posed in silence. Our blood flows through our veins without making any noise, and we can hear our heartbeats only in silence.

165. The silence of God is understood by faith, in meditation on the communion that can exist between him and men. The divine silence is a mysterious revelation. God is not insensitive to evil. At first, we may think that God allows evil to destroy men. But if God remains silent, he nonetheless suffers with us from the evil that tears apart and disfigures the earth. If we seek to be with God in silence, we will understand his presence and his love.

174. I can imagine that a person who never prays is incapable of understanding God's silent speech. Nevertheless, when we are lovers, we always notice the slightest gesture of the one whom we love. It is the same with prayer. If we are accustomed to praying often, we can grasp the meaning of God's silence. There are signs that only two fiancés can understand. The person of prayer is also the only one to grasp the silent signs of affection that God sends him.

I don’t believe Cardinal Sarah’s book solves the problem of God’s silence. But his book does make it sweeter. It creates some wiggle room. Whatever the experience of God’s silence is, it is not the kind of thing you solve or the kind of thing you apologize away. A pat answer to the question of God’s silence, even when given in good faith, really misses the point. The pat answer fails to see the space for the gift that it is and attempts to fill it. A little bit like trying to eat a flower bouquet.

This message has taken a very long time to write. I meant to send this in March so it’s almost five months overdue. Much of that delay can certainly be accounted for with failure to prioritize. But a fair amount of that time was spent making many more pages of notes than you would think given the length of this work. And there is something about the thought of God’s silence that, when given a moment, is like getting caught in a mystical tractor beam into God, which makes for lovely meditations if not productive writing sessions.

There could be a book on the other end of this conversation but I have sent this message to you with what may feel like an abrupt ending rather than delaying further. There are so many things the silence of God could be and so many things the experience of it could do in one’s life. So consider this Part 1 of an ongoing series we will return to on occasion.

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Maybe God is not silent at all. Maybe his silence is a punishment, a rebuke. Maybe it is an invitation. Maybe God’s silence is romance. Maybe you have never and will never encounter God’s silence or maybe it is a daily suffering you undergo for a season. Maybe it is spiritual warfare or a pollution we are sickened by as people of our time. Maybe it is an evil enchantment or a divine vision. Maybe God’s silence is your deafness and his rescue mission. Maybe God’s silence is emptiness, fullness. Maybe it wounds, maybe it heals.

I know talking about the silence of God is dangerous. There is a risk in talking about silence. It is like walking to a precipice and jumping into what will prove to be either Nothingness or a vast wave of the all in all of Christ. Many faithful Christians would deny the premise entirely, defending God as the one who speaks. On the other hand, many would use talk of God’s silence as an apophatic weapon of deconstruction, seeking the occasion to fill the void with any number of destructive lies.

Let me affirm that I believe God speaks. Jesus is the great Word of God. All creation reveals God. God has spoken to me. God speaks through the scriptures, the Church, the prophets, the stars. What is there that God has not spoken through? But can God speak to you through silence? Can you meet God and be with God in the silence?

Something unlocked for me when I voiced that question to my friend, “How is it Good News that God is silent in the way that he is silent?” Before that moment I had not considered that God might be loving me in this place that hurt so much. I still struggle with God’s silence at times, especially when God is silent in response to a request for physical healing. But mostly, I’ve come to love the moments where I get to experience God’s silence. Everything God does is love because God is love and so, whatever God is doing when he seems silent is love.

Zohar Atkins wrote my favorite poem,

The world answers me at all turns,
But you God, it is your silence I long for.

Friends and family, I am writing to you, first of all. While I hope this newsletter goes far and wide and eventually brings in a little revenue, I consider this journal to be more of a series of private love letters than a public or commercial endeavor.

Secondly, I write for myself. There is a quote that’s often attributed to E. M. Forrester (who popularized it) but should actually be credited to an anonymous young girl who lived in the early twenties. The story is captured by Professor Graham Wallace in his 1926 book, The Art of Thought:

The little girl had the making of a poet in her who, being told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke, said, “How can I know what I think till I see what I say?” A modern professed thinker must, however, sooner or later in the process of thought, make the conscious effort of expression, with all its risks.

I like that phrase, “the conscious effort of expression, with all its risks.” By “risks,” I mean, least of all,  risks like cancellation and political backlash as is the subject of so much conversation these days. More on point, “risks” gets me thinking along existential and relational lines: the risk of spending one’s life on a painstaking endeavor that may come to nothing, the risk of letting others into your head, the risk of being “wrong,” the risk of being “right” but ineffective, the risk of unrequited love.

But the main point of the story about the young girl with the clever question is the question itself and not the risk. The question is, “How can I know what I think till I see what I say?” I write for myself inasmuch as I crave clarity of thought, deep understanding, maybe someday wisdom, and I perceive writing as a path to these goals. And isn’t it seeing what you say surprising sometimes? Writing as path to discovery.

Finally, I write for myself in that I have this sense of guilt that won’t be expunged until I create a rule of life in which writing occupies a place of primacy and consistency it currently lacks. Currently, I am a writer like a man who comes home once a month is a husband. But I have considered myself–at a deep layer of identity and calling–a writer since I was 6 years old or so.

Jesus told a story about a man who went on a journey and left his three slaves with three sums of money: 1, 2, and 5 measures of silver, respectively. The unit of money is identified by the Greek term, talenton, which is a specific weight of metal like “ton” and from which we get our English word, “talent.” I don’t think that story is about our talents as we normally understand them so much as it’s about the degree of revelation of God’s Kingdom that we have been given. Importantly, even the slave who was given only one talenton was given as much silver as might take twenty years to earn. When the man came back from his journey he required an account of the slave’s stewardship of the silver they had been entrusted. The slaves received either great reward or great loss based on their stewardship and on the quality of their perception of the master and his character.

I share this parable of Jesus to say two things: First, while I don’t think it’s primarily about “talent,” I do view my talent of writing (whatever its measure) as one I should be more faithful and generative with if I’m to be a good slave of Jesus. And aren’t we all launching our substacks so the Master will be pleased with us when he returns from his journey? Second, I think the parable Jesus tells of the traveling master and his three slaves is about our stewardship of the revelation of the Kingdom such as we have it. And this revelation, such as I have it, is something I want to be more faithful in sharing. Which brings me to what I intend to write about and what you, dear reader, can expect to get out of your subscription.

I’ve spent most of my time here talking about what I hope to get out of this journal but what can you hope for? I can’t promise you a tight focus on a single topic or a consistent format. So I’ll begin answering the question by giving a short list of some themes, topics, and content types I plan to share and discuss over time:

• Philosophy, theology, culture, religion and spirituality, the arts

• Long and short form essays, poetry, interesting shares from the internet, discursive wanderings, ephemeral musings, book and movie reviews, etc.

• Songs. I’ve been much more faithful with my songwriting than any other form of writing over the years. I plan on sharing some home-baked recordings and lyrics from time to time.

• Podcast. This is speculative but I foresee a podcast in the Sun Tongue future. Mostly I would love to have some justification for reaching out to schedule a conversation with people who have influenced me or who’s work interests me

But none of this really helps you if you’re looking for the elevator pitch. What is Sun Tongue about?  I think the easiest way to sum it up is with a little one-sentence story Jesus tells elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel:

And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been made a disciple to the Kingdom of the heavens is like a master of a house, who brings forth things new and old from his treasury.” - 13:52

This is what I hope we can do together. I hope this whether you are allegiant to Jesus or not. Whatever you believe, I hope we can do this together. I have a picture of us as children exploring a great house full of many rooms which in turn are full of dusty unopened boxes, overstuffed bookshelves, secret passageways, mysterious sounds.

The above may just be a long-winded way of avoiding a simple question but here we go.