Love at a Reasonable Price

What sneaky sleuth slays what mystery and dream
What rascal truth hollows sympathy and fame
?
Whose violence rings the heaping hills, where gleams
The red swollen setting sun, ‘midst a song of blame and shame
?

Who wakens slow to the stench of crime embraced?
How repeated lies, blessed by fear disdain ambition lust
So swelter swell so muddling mix in the caged-rat haste
of a people lost from each other and from their sacred trust
?

Who slipped into the keep with guard and judge asleep
Who turned the wheel to raise the gate, that sword might steal
Round our ramparts steep, might stroll across our moat so deep
To hack our joyous order, by ballots anchored in the commonweal
?

For what?
For power’s draw you serve power’s worm
For shared sureness you bow to lies
To splice sliced scripture to law, you turn
away the Light that makes a smile wise.

And so your grin grows jagged, cruel and coarse
I watch from afar yet feel the blade twist my gut
You think me such shit it’s not crime to force
Your will on me, no sin to choose lies over what
You’ve made me out to be.

But this our compass ship
Compact and delicate
Not invincible nor inviolate
Held together by nought
But honest speech,
careful effort,
good intention

This is all we have,
The both of us
To keep us safe
From might makes right
From “real” and “true” as empty weapons
From “God” as human will stealing human law

Come back to me, broke down though I be
Come back to us; remember, and again see:

We already share a culture and a purpose:

Aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent,
loving-kind, joyfully-sharing:

Together sharing
the rights and responsibilities
of a free people.
we nudge our speech and government
gently
carefully
lovingly
towards the better
and away the worse —
Never sacrificing
what we already all share
for what we tell ourselves we are

We are one in the Love that chooses all
We will not
— No matter the lurching certainties —
sacrifice the
rules, laws, institutions, norms and bounds
that keep we the people in power
and our leaders
serving honestly, with good will,
accuracy, competency,
within limits appropriate
temporary rulers and lifelong citizens
— equals under the law, partners in the joy.

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: Andy Watson

When do you know?
When it is too late?
How do you explain
what’s you-obvious but they-invisible?

Where will you go?
Will you move in time?

Can we yet reclaim
wider considerations?

All the clues assembled for all to see!
Have they lost their minds, their hearts?
Or are you completely insane?

You walk now through a whirl
upside down and getting upside-downer for years
every time you think the cruel silliness has played itself out
it doubles down and leaps up again — this time with more adherents, more normalcy

Surely this is an abuser groping first your shoulders
and then down your back
and then around your waist
and every step getting you
and all the witnesses
a little
a little more used to
a little more sympathetic for
a little more inured to
a little more resigned to
a little more ready for
his deeper purpose

Or are you just chicken little?

Are you a some crazy and/or corrupt wolf-crier?
Or are the wolves all assembled,
wearing now snazzy gowns of mere bluster
and
different but not therefore evil interpretations
of the
still of course
oh so treasured
government of by and for the people,
wearing now the merry certainty of politics as usual in a land where voters always get a say;
but underneath, some knowingly and others perhaps not so much,
carrying the tools their leader’s been warming us up to for the last eight years
loss of power prestige opportunity for those who oppose his will, prisons for those who really annoy him, a media tamed to follow his lead, a judiciary understanding the law must bend to serve only his greater ends, protests violently silenced, elections that he — or his chosen acolytes — always win because of course the winners must always win (only stands to reason!)
?

Who is crazy in this madness?
Who is sane in this unbalance?

In democratic republics (where the citizens serve as a final check on madness, corruption, incompetency, and mean lying rotten behavior), the government is incentivized to honestly, openly, and competently seeking win-wins for all the citizens.
In autocracies (where the citizens learn every day a little better that disagreeing only jeopardizes the safety and security of themselves and their loved ones), the government is incentivized to get and keep power — whatever the cost to the citizens of the nation.
The former is a spiritual good because the government and citizens are incentivized to together find a way forward for all.
The latter harms individual and collective spiritual growth because all day long every day one is deciding between the safety security and happiness of them and their loved ones and telling the truth, doing the right thing, saying no to corruption, cruelty, dishonesty, mean boring crime.

Where are we on the spectrum now?

Is not the RNC falling to the evil?
If they win here and now, is this GOP not likely to drag the us all into a great crime against ourselves, the world, and the soul of things?
Is this not a great folly?
Are the applauds in the RNC convention not a crime?
Not necessarily applauds for a certain and definitive termination of our democratic republic; but applauds nonetheless for happily subjecting us all to the very real threat of a transition from rule of the people to the rule of those politicians and oligarchs who are wise enough to get in now?

What is going on?
Who is crazy here?
I say you are risking turning the USA into Putin’s Russia.
You say I am full of baloney.
Who is crazy?

Or are you only saying I am full of baloney out loud?
In your heart of hearts has the worm turned?
Are you ready and even kind of thrilled to get in now, while the getting’s good?
But don’t you see (perhaps you see; but perhaps you do not yet feel): almost no one gets in and stays in when the law turns to crime.

The question of evil at this moment
is a vague question
a question about how the worm turns within mere ideas, mere stories, narratives, possible futures

It’s been a good run, USA
all these years of having our cake and eating it too
all these years of freedom to think, speak, create
The joy of being a US citizen
has been
the joy of
children caught up in the safety
of parents who provide and are kind and reasonable
in
the joy of
a happy home
the joy of
not being abused

No, this joy
has not been for us all in all our times
But a government of by and for the people
can and does
learn from its mistakes

If we can keep this democratic republic,
we can

what?

We can what?

America?

I see two roads,
the one almost certainly towards folly;
and the other probably away from the folly
and maybe even —
if chosen sincerely carefully and gently so gently, remembering the Love that makes everything Okay and without which nothing is Okay —
towards renewal,
towards a widening
of the consideration, of the joy, of the shared wholesome fun, of the happy home

What does it feel like?

It feels like
follow Trump and his current crew where they lead
and we will really have to fight to keep our shared sovereignty over this nation;
but we
lack the cohesion
and the fight
and the shared love
to really fight to keep our shared sovereignty over this nation

It feels like
maybe we could muster enough shared insight here and now
to yet stop this freight train from leaving the station

but after that
mmmm idunno doesn’t look good
well, it looks blurry: it doesn’t feel good

What should we do?

Am I crazy?

What is going on?

Author and Editor: Bartleby and Amble
Copyright: Andy Watson

Let’s separate republicans into those who would help Trump steal an election and those who would choose to instead protect the rules, norms, institutions, and rules of our shared democratic republic.

Then let’s only put those who would help him steal the election in his next administration.

And let’s get together a group of thinkers dedicated to figuring out how to manipulate the constitution to force their will on everyone else, and they can be the think tanks guiding Trump’s next administration.

And let’s rally the billionaires behind Trump so his coffers overflow.

And let’s have Biden’s mind slip and the democrats turn on him but not actually change our ticket, or maybe let’s change our ticket when it is too late to gather momentum behind a candidate.

And let’s graze Trump’s ear with a would-be assassin’s bullet, have him fist bump the sky, and so be both a hero and victim. How can you criticize a victim of and hero within the democratic process for trying to harm democracy? And not enough people believed you before. Why? Are you chicken little? Is the atmosphere too much he-said, she-said? Is the hate of the other side so clear and present that people can’t tell the difference between well-intentioned and essentially-honest and politicians and a man who lives for power and glory, who has no interest in or sympathy for democracy and the universal rule of law, who is interested in getting maintaining and exploiting power much more than he is interested in finding what’s best for everyone, and who doesn’t think the words “true” and “false” are anything except weapons?
Let’s do everything wrong.

And then see if we become Russia.
Another place where the only way to survive is through cynicism and/or silence, where everyone “knows” that politics is just always corrupt and that only fools speak out too loudly against the leadership.
A fun game, this Russian roulette.

How evil will it get?
Will innocent people lose their jobs for disagreeing publicly with Trump-or-MAGA?
Will innocent people lose their savings for speaking out against him?
Their standing in society?
Their access to good schools? To good food? Safe drinking water?
Will dissenters disappear like they do in Russia?
What will really happen if we give this fool the government in these terms?
Why do it to yourself?
Why does a nation shoot itself in the head?
Out of hatred for itself?
Like a mind at war with itself descends into vice, addiction, crime, violence?
Have we learned to hate ourselves so much that we would rather submit to the tyranny of a fool and his lackeys than to accept the imperfection of a workable democracy?
How bad will it get?
Surely best case scenario is real and lasting damage done to the structure of our government.
Why do we fall in line for that?
But it feels like we’ve become a mesmerized little mouse, waiting for the cobra to strike — certain that we can’t win and thus hoping against hope that cobras biting and swallowing you isn’t so bad after all, isn’t at all like we’ve always thought it was.
But no, that’s not it; the truth is we don’t know how much we’re risking by electing Trump.
Certainly, it seems that we are at least signing up to be in a desperate fight to try to get back to some normal baseline of democratic normalcy. How could it be different for a nation that has watched a man try to steal an election and then continue to double-down on the lie that the election was in fact stolen from him, and then not just elect that man, but also elect him now with the people who refused to help him steal the last election replaced by those who fall over themselves parroting his lies about a stolen (or at least somehow “suspect”) election, and with a plan to fill bureaucratic posts with political appointees motivated primarily by a desire to stay on the king’s good side, and … ???
Who is to blame?
How bad will it be?
Is there anything we could do now?

Jesus Christ engineered how many wars?
Jesus Christ demanded the Spanish Inquisition.
Jesus Christ was agitating for the conquests of the New World, the subjugation of the Natives.
Jesus Christ supported the slave traders and Jesus Christ was complicit in the Holocaust.
Jesus Christ supports the regime of Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine.
The list goes on and on.

And now Jesus Christ is helping to elect Donald Trump and to organize around him a group of thinkers who will help him to shore up power in ways that will — when paired to this man who has already shown a taste for thugocracy and a contempt for good government — almost surely undermine democracy, perhaps to the point where we must spend all our energy just trying to get back to a functioning democracy, maybe even to the point where that’s not really an option.

What can we conclude but that Jesus Christ is an evil genius, and we poor humans are all just pawns in the mechanisms of him and his fellow evil geniuses as they coolly smash the world to smithereens, not so much for private gain as for the joy of hurting people by helping foolish pride and incompetent feeling and thought rule.

Mike Johnson, you have spent your life worshipping which Jesus?
I think he was a great political leader, right?
A warrior who sought to restore Christian Kings to the throne, right?
A man willing to silence conversation to silence dissent to force people to mime faith in God and scripture — mime faith, or else! Right?
Jesus would’ve much preferred a corrupt but thereby perpetual theocratic reign over a functioning democracy, right?
Jesus believed that the ends justify the means, right?
Jesus Christ hates abortion but would love to fast-track the death penalty, right?
Jesus Christ can follow the logic of how we can say the 2020 election was not fairly won because states made some changes in good faith and under the current common understanding of the constitution — an understanding that was actually confirmed in a subsequent Supreme Court ruling — , changes whose impact on the election was not large enough to actually change the outcome of the elections in any swing states. Right? Jesus can follow how you should use a novel, after-the-fact interpretation of the constitution to throw out not only the votes effected by these rule changes, but the entire state’s votes — not in all the states where such rule changes happened (since they, due to the pandemic, happened in most states), but just in enough swing states to swing the election to Donald Trump. Right? Jesus pats you on the back and says, “My good and faithful servant!” when he watches you trying to undermine a still-functioning democracy with specious constitutional lawyering.
And this talk of how God chooses rulers? Only in the sense that God chooses everything, including every act of political evil and personal evil, every war fought for human power wealth lust pride, every massacre in the name of human pride power lust, every murder, every rape, every cruelty. Only in that sense does God choose rulers. Is there no other sense? What about the sense of God choosing through humans turning to God and becoming wiser, gentler, kinder, more loving, more alive? But God as the immediate souls-speaking rather than the external flow-of-history chooser of human events — that works so much better in a democracy than a tyranny, because in a democracy the people are given both the right and the duty to find the Truth in a way that is meaningful to them and to act on that Truth not just secretly, privately, help-your-family-stay-out-of-trouble-y, but publicly, together discussing and shaping their shared government.

Steve Bannon thinks we’re in the midst of a spiritual war.
He is right.
Because the soul loses when governments fall to the thugocracy of might makes right, “truth” and “false” are just tools for crushing the opposition, and hey: you have a choice: you can either go along with these crimes, or you can lose wealth, prestige, power, a safe place to live and safe food and drinking water, and maybe — if you persist — your freedom and/or life. In a democracy people are not forced to choose between the security of their loved ones and working for a more competent, honest, and just government. What a blessing!
And because the soul loses when the American experiment of a people bound by a shared commitment to aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving-kind and joyfully-sharing thought and action within a system of checks and balances and regular fair elections that allow the citizens to simultaneously steer their conversation and government, while most fundamentally serving as a final check on madness and corruption in government — The soul loses when that experiment is replaced by the same old boring culture of “us-versus-them”.
We already have a shared culture in this country: a commitment to an openness in government, democracy, freedom of speech and from reprisals for one’s speech, a government responsive to the people, justice and equality under the rule of law, and the belief that all humans are essentially the same and share certain inalienable rights — included, but not limited to, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That is the culture that makes a land healthy, not cultures that pretend xyz people “are not like us”.

But all this is by the by.
For Jesus Christ loves to parade, loves to pray loudly from the best seats in the halls of great power, loves to smile proudly as he uses any means — even to the point of replacing democracy with tyranny — to get and maintain political power. Jesus believes might makes right, that lies are useful tools and weapons for getting and maintaining holy power, that the only thing that really matters is winning and maintaining power.
And who are we to argue with Jesus Christ?

Why does the Knight of Faith believe he will get the princess in this life?
He will accept every moment as God’s will for that moment.
But yet he believes the princess is coming to him in this life.
Even after she marries another?
Even after she dies?

But Julian of Norwich said that God made her to understand that she should not pray so much about specific wishes, but more about loving and praying for everything all together:

And when God Almighty had shewed so plenteously and joyfully of His Goodness, I desired to learn assuredly as to a certain creature that I loved, if it should continue in good living, which I hoped by the grace of God was begun. And in this desire for a singular Shewing, it seemed that I hindered myself: for I was not taught in this time.

And then was I answered in my reason, as it were by a friendly intervenor*: Take it generally, and behold the graciousness of the Lord God as He sheweth to thee: for it is more worship to God to behold Him in all than in any special thing. And therewith I learned that it is more worship to God to know all-thing in general, than to take pleasure in any special thing. And if I should do wisely according to this teaching, I should not only be glad for nothing in special, but I should not be greatly distressed for no manner of thing: for All shall be well. For the fulness of joy is to behold God in all: for by the same blessed Might, Wisdom, and Love, that He made all-thing, to the same end our good Lord leadeth it continually, and thereto Himself shall bring it; and when it is time we shall see it. And the ground of this was shewed in the First [Revelation], and more openly in the Third, where it saith: I saw God in a point.

*[“A friendful mene” = intermediary (person or thing), medium]

All that our Lord doeth is rightful, and that which He suffereth* is worshipful: and in these two is comprehended good and ill: for all that is good our Lord doeth, and that which is evil our Lord suffereth. I say not that any evil is worshipful, but I say the sufferance of our Lord God is worshipful: whereby His Goodness shall be known, without end, in His marvellous meekness and mildness, by the working of mercy and grace.

*[i.e. alloweth]
[So God’s allowing evil to happen is worshipful??]

Rightfulness is that thing that is so good that [it] may not be better than it is. For God Himself is very Rightfulness, and all His works are done rightfully as they are ordained from without beginning by His high Might, His high Wisdom, His high Goodness. And right as He ordained unto the best, right so He worketh continually, and leadeth it to the same end; and He is ever full-pleased with Himself and with all His works. And the beholding of this blissful accord is full sweet to the soul that seeth by grace. All the souls that shall be saved in Heaven without end be made rightful in the sight of God, and by His own goodness: in which rightfulness we are endlessly kept, and marvellously, above all creatures.

And Mercy is a working that cometh of the goodness of God, and it shall last in working all along, as sin is suffered to pursue rightful souls. And when sin hath no longer leave to pursue, then shall the working of mercy cease, and then shall all be brought to rightfulness and therein stand without end.

[So sin is allowed that souls might prove themselves rightful? Or that they might be made rightful by quitting the sins and repenting?]

And by His sufferance we fall; and in His blissful Love with His Might and His Wisdom we are kept; and by mercy and grace we are raised to manifold more joys.

[So God allows us to sin, but all the while keeps us with his infinite Power, Love, and Wisdom? And through sinning and repenting we become holier than if we’d never sinned? Maybe because mistakes are part of life, and life is here that we might become both real and Real, might learn to span the mundane and the spiritual — somehow that training makes us more fit for the purely spiritual realm that is life beyond this life??]

Thus in Rightfulness and Mercy He willeth to be known and loved, now and without end. And the soul that wisely beholdeth it in grace, it is well pleased with both, and endlessly enjoyeth.

[Chapter 30, Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich]

God promised he would make a mighty nation out of Abraham’s sperm.
The nation would get the land of Canaan, currently occupied by others, forever.
And the covenant would be kept by cutting off the extra bit of skin at the tips of the penises of all the male children.
That is a stupid covenant.
It is shallow, mean, boring, and ridiculous.
So it looks to 21st Century eyes when they for a moment imagine that it’s not coming from some religion they’ve followed their whole lives, but is instead just a thought experiment:
“Hey, now imagine God does this … . Is God worth knowing?”
Or:
“Suppose there is a spiritual Reality and It can relate meaningfully to humans. Do you think It would do this … ?”

What? No! That’s dumb. That sounds like something a primitive people might come up with to explain why they’re more worthwhile than every other group — but the real explanation for why they think they’re chosen is tribalism: people’s inborn tendency to think they and their allies are the most special, most real.

Abraham falls down on his face before God, but does not initially believe God will do what God has promised.
But then Isaac is born to Sarah when she’s too old to bear children, so it’s looking like maybe God’s going to make good on his oath.
This is the story told in Genesis 17.
I don’t approve of this story and I think it has made a lot of trouble for a lot of people for a long time.
Still, without it, could we have had Judaism?
And did Judaism not refine itself?
If a people obsess about having a right relationship with God long enough, will they not, as the ancient Hebrews did, discover more and more that God is One and God is Love?

Luke’s account of the Greatest Commandment suggests that Jesus didn’t come up with the famous formulation, that it was already current in the thought of first Century Palestine:

25 And lo, a certain lawyer stood up, trying him, and saying, `Teacher, what having done, life age-during shall I inherit?’

26 And he said unto him, `In the law what hath been written? how dost thou read?’

27 And he answering said, `Thou shalt love the Lord thy God out of all thy heart, and out of all thy soul, and out of all thy strength, and out of all thy understanding, and thy neighbour as thyself.’

28 And he said to him, `Rightly thou didst answer; this do, and thou shalt live.’

[Luke 10:25-28, Young’s Literal Translation]

And think of all the trouble caused by the Christian notion that you can only attain salvation by believing that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, that he was executed for all our sins, and raised from the dead that we might all live. And yet, without this belief, would Christianity have happened? And doesn’t Christianity, like Judaism, also contain a true spiritual path?

No dogma, however perfect, when understood poorly, will lead to wisdom.

In time, if repeated enough, a good dogma is likely to eventually to point one towards a good understanding and thus towards an organization of one’s feeling, thinking and acting around Pure Love: that is what makes a dogma a good dogma. But when dogmas are turned into tools of power, wealth, and/or prestige; the temptation is to avoid understanding them so as to go on better using them to one’s advantage. For humans have an evil deep in their bellies — all day long they long to slide everything to their advantage; and witness how they cuddle with their little families and calling that “Love”, call it “Duty”. Not that one should not be good to one’s family, but “Love” is what chooses everyone equally and forever, and one’s “Duty” to Love involves first and foremost resisting the urge to slide everything to one’s advantage, to love and care for only those that love and care for you.

What are we saying?

We’re saying that Abraham was not chosen, and yet he was — for without the story of his chosenness, Judaism might never have grown in wisdom, flourished and spread. We’re saying that Jesus is not the savior and yet he is — for without the story of Jesus being the Way, his teachings (that we would argue are wise in their essentials) might never have been preserved, poured over, religiously followed.

People are tribal. We gravitate towards systems that justify and explain why we and ours are special, deserve more love, more care, more attention, more safety, more thriving, a more important place in God’s kingdom. We forget that the first will be last and the last will be first. We forget that the greatest commandment is to love the Love that chooses everything with everything we are; and to love everyone with the same gentle, Love-centered care with which we should love ourselves.

People are tribal. A good religion may use that tribalism to take root, but it will contain within it the seeds to grow beyond that beginning. For wisdom is loving God in all.

So why applaud Abraham for being willing to kill Isaac while believing God will yet spare Isaac and continue making a great nation through Isaac’s cum?

Why cheer on the knight of faith for believing he will get the princess, betrothed now to another who she appears to love and want to marry, at some point in this very life?

Abraham should’ve told God that Isaac is not his to sacrifice to God, that humans cannot trust their own wisdom well enough to murder another human in God’s name, that faith shades too easily into madness for humans to let faith overrule the inborn guardrails that God himself has planted in all humans: aware, clear, honest, loving-kind, joyfully-together.

The knight of faith should’ve let the princess go and find the happiness she’d chosen. He should’ve prayed that she find happiness in the path she’d chosen — even though that path was to take her away, not towards him.

These men were not heroes of faith. Heroes of faith see God in all. Heroes of faith know that God does everything and God is always right. Heroes of faith do nothing, believe nothing, attempt nothing. For Love is already all there is and Love is already exploding everything to smithereens, making everything only-Love forever and always; and one who has true faith in that, one flows with Love, flows with God-in-all.

So you, my would-be Knight of Faith: You are just another horny, greedy, lonely, scared man desperately begging for some perfect body to push mighty nations into, for a politics that keeps you and yours safe, for an art that seems great to you and others.

And yet, is that so bad?
Is the knight of faith stance perhaps not a reasonably good one, given the overall iffiness of human beings?
Maybe it is a personal path with the ability to grow beyond its all-too-human origins. The Knight of Faith maintains his earthenware goals but with the twist that he will depend fully on God; so maybe the Knight of Faith maintains his earthenware goals but with the twist that he will depend fully on the Love that chooses everyone. And maybe that twist will save him from himself.

I think, KoF, you’d do well to pray that God guide you to your baby girl and she to you, that God guide you and your nation to a healthy democracy, that God guide your art beyond the narrow confines of yourself into the wider joy; but all the while praying most of all to see God in all, to live in through and for Love. In this way your evil heart might lose out to your good heart in this very life.

Humans and their dogmas = humans and their lies!
But some dogmas are more conducive to better and better organizing one’s feeling and thinking around the Love shining through each conscious moment, the Love that creates sustains and ultimately is everything.

…

Julian of Norwich said that everything is in God’s hands and is therefore just as it should be, that everything is was and shall be well.

If Something Deeperism is correct, then human wisdom is possible, and even humans that aren’t terribly wise can to some degree recognize the inner vistas towards which wise testimonies point. For Something Deeperism holds that Love is Real, that we humans are all essentially the same, and that we humans can all relate our ideas and feelings imperfectly but still-meaningfully to Love = Reality. Something Deeperism holds that we all know that we are all infinitely-thus-equally crafted in the image of and chosen by an infinite eternal Love more fundamentally than we know our doubts or certainties. If we all share the same essential spiritual vista, then we should all have some ability to discern whether or not a given spiritual poetry is good or not.

How could Julian of Norwich not be wise? Wouldn’t that only be conceivable if wisdom was a hoax?

So how can we believe that it will be better or worse if we find a woman that fits us, or if the nation slips into a Russian-style dissenters-disappear kind of modern thugocracy, or if our art is Beautiful, or if we live or die?

Because Julian of Norwich said that God does all that is good and allows the rest and that God is in charge of everything and all is was and always will be well.

…

What are we missing?

Fundamentalist religion routinely confuses untrue dogmas for critical Truths and thus oversteps itself and makes trouble; but hippy-dippy spirituality routinely leads to empty platitudes about loving everyone while the adherent drifts undisciplined all over the place.

And so another essay never-minds itself as exhaustion falls like a heavy curtain or shadow o’er land and sea.

…

Author: Akhenaten Smith
Editor: Aten de Ra
Producers: B. Willard and A. Whistletown, in partnership with Skullvalley after Whistletown Bookmakers & Wild Promises Swift Disasters Studios
Copyright: AM Watson

What about it?
Why not?

My girl can catch me.
My country can find her way.
My oeuvre can unfold herself.

While I live by faith,
by a great faith
in Love —
by faith in the Great Way.

I’ve not given up on you, baby girl.
I’ve not abandoned y’all, land and world.
I’m still growing you, living art.

But no longer will I steer by reasons and feels.
No more shall hopes and fears rule my course.
From this day on I believe that Love is Real,
and act accordingly. Nothing will I force —
not even God.

When faith is a forced pairing of ideas and feels,
then faith grows harsh and vapid. The mind reels —
loosed from one’s own soul light
to wander lonely day and night.

However,
with faith in nought but one’s own notions,
then faith is nought but empty indulgent motions.

Where is real faith?
What is real faith?
Love is Real and that’s the Way —
or nothing matters anyway.

But how to live in and through and for
a Love that chooses everyone?

Knight of Faith, drop your burden and arise.
Knight of Faith, yield your sword and shield, and prize
henceforth and everafter
nothing over gentle Love.
I’ll know my woman by her laughter.
We’ll heal our land with armies of doves.
True tales themselves will tell
across and through my emptied, will-less will.

I did not advance through the ranks —
did not rise
from sensualist to moralist to man of God to man in God.
No,
But:
The sword outwears its sheath,
The soul wears out the breast;
A heart must pause to breathe,
that love itself have rest.

So then defeated,
with no answer and not breathe nor voice to carry one —
thus thoroughly unseated,
I beg to open and to listen, that Love might gush and overwhelm,
til I’m drowned and washed away,
til Love takes all my space and say.

Knight of Faith,
Your reason and heart are tools
that Love must wield that Love might rule
that you might live

So
let your angel find her man
let wisdom win all the land
let beauty flow like rivers:
Let Love all this deliver!

Or else what?
What better plan have you —
you who are anyway too crumpled and scared to stand up and fight.
Why pretend?
Why force a meaningless and dishonest stand?

Love is All or all is nought —
so put your cards where thought
can think, where heart can feel,
where soul can speak through these wheels,
the wheels of the human, the wheels of this life.
Knight, let true art, politics, and even wife —
Knight, let Truth reign and Love light
you, your way, your few moments
fa
ll
ing
from birth
to death
and out the door

Author: Tummnus of Tabletop Rock
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Sound: Bartleby Willard
Lighting: Kempt Whistletown
Production: Tun Whistletown & Arch Skullvalley
Copyright: Andy Watson

Dear God,

We — Bartleby Willard and Amble Whistletown — humbly submit our

Resignation.

We have failed and we will continue to fail
We know this
We therefore respectfully request that you take due not of the writing on the wall, and accept this, our humble

Resignation.

Why pretend?
Why mime the actions of real writers and real editors?
Why ape the thoughtful brows and careful eyes of men wise enough to help?
Why pretend?

It would be one thing if we were writing timeless essays for a workable, sustainable freedom under human law.
Then no matter which way the chips fell, we’d be yet fighting the good fight and worthy of this our daily bread.
But that’s not happening.
Honestly, nothing much is happening.
Amble is wasting time in alcohol and tainted loves.
I am wasting time in the introductions to essays I’m afraid to begin for real.
And everything swirls down the drain so regularly that we feel more like washroom attendants than writers and editors.
And so, God, let us hand your infinite hands — amazingly fresh and clean considering all the infinite dreck you wipe off all us infinitely grimy mortals — some towels (sturdy and soft enough to feel kind of like real towels, yet cheap and biodegradable [so the packages claim] enough to be thrown away after each use). And let us, infinite eternal and ineffable Lover of All, sweep this golden floor.

As if!
As if we were even fit
to work for lazily tossed tips in your divine water closet!
As if we’d even proven ourselves any kind of good and loyal servants to the Love that chooses everyone!

No, none of that.
Here, God in the Highest,
here is our

Resignation.

Not that we suppose it matters.
We never received a special dispensation, and we’ll go right on receiving the same infinite wages you pay everyone — regardless of the kind of job they’re doing here on this conveyor belt that carries us all into and out of life without so much as a how-do-you-do-? .

We wanted to help.
We saw well enough to see that trouble was coming.
We saw the storm clouds, felt blizzard approaching, smelled the whiteout and subfreezing temperatures; and we also saw how we all seemed to be outfitted in shorts, T-shirts, flip-flops, bold complaints boasts and oaths made possible and practical by a certain heavy sleepy certainty of eternal safety here in a time and place without bombs or political prisons, a sleepy-headed certainty that everything would always be as it had been.

We wanted to help.
But we didn’t have the discipline to even find out if we could think of ways to act that might help.
That’s why we are handing in our

Resignation.

We feel like recipients of a scholarship who used all the money on drinks and nice clothes in the hopes of impressing women and even just like passerbys who might be a tiny bit impressed with us because we look so cool and in control and funny and edgy.

Edgy! Edgy like a lie.
Edgy like a joke.
Edgy like a good little pawn who is free to preen and pomp and thunder and ironize just so long as we keep to our little square, from which we will soon be lifted, sent to another little square; where, if we survive this move, we are again free to find ingenious ways to pretend we’re doing something.

Ah, but we forget that,
or we tried to ignore the fact that
God doesn’t accept resignations.
God accepts all our bitching and complaining and giving up and flopping on the ground with a great display of fluffing dust and thud and groan,

but God never signs resignations,
God always laughs them off,
God always kisses our boo boos and tells us it’ll be okay and now
we should
try again

But how?
Because this time we just don’t know how to even begin?
Life feels like molasses and we feel so sleepy and heavy, we think we are
sinking down into the
thick gooey sweet sticky slightly tangy
answer
to all our questions
the answer is
hopeless it is hopeless let yourself lose let everyone lose let the evil win
or
maybe you and everyone won’t lose, maybe the evil won’t win
but
in any case
you are
de trop
you don’t matter
you are not involved in this equation

What is true, God?
What should we do here and now?
What would be any good?

If you will not accept our
oh so humble

Resignation,

could you maybe
give us just one little tiny

Hint?

Author: B Willard
Editor: A Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

To in the imagination brave the danger, the violence, the folly
While remembering the joy in the heart and the songs that sing it true
That insight might be learned through empathy and contemplation rather than disaster and bitter experience

I see you walking through the city

Sometimes you put your little hand in mine
and I put my palm behind your shoulder
and we move together for a few bars

Otherwise I never touch you
but only see you and think
oh please marry me
oh please be my wife my editor my little girl

Because a man needs someone to push against
someone to contain and redirect his seething cauldron

Not everything that pops into his heart his mind his gut his loins his fire
is a good idea

He needs his baby
to border him delimit him
prune him emend him
help him be himself better

But these men we’ve become
grown as we have like the tree around and through a chainlink fence
cut and disfigured in the core
they seem even more ramshackle and precarious than men always seem

Men are the worst
Their strength is violent and foolish
Their beauty is violent and foolish
Their love is violent and foolish
They are greedy with their bodies and like to keep their minds/hearts turned off so they can better feed their greed

A man needs a wife
or at least a friend who loves him beyond his violent foolish greed, and who he loves beyond his violent foolish greed — a friend who loves him enough to tell him to cool it, and who he loves enough to listen to

I have seen all these men
steal all these worlds
disappoint all their girls
oink and root and squeal in their pens

What would you, woman?
Where would you, honey?
Please if you could bind, baby doll, what’s better in me to what’s better in you, what’s wiser in me to what’s wiser in you

If you please, woman, could we reroute what feels like everything?
Because it isn’t everything, it’s just a part of human life
And if it found a friend
and they together reached a safe place
then they together
could dissolve the myths that passions weave themselves
and could be together for real
and together remember
what is Real

How does a man know where to lay his head?

The son of man has no place to lay his head, but we aren’t so world-historic
We’re fruit flies flitting desperately from rot-winnowed apple to gangrened peach
We’re fruit flies rushing maniacally from generation to generation
We’re fruit flies swarming the old fruit now tossed into the garbage bag now sealed in the garbage bag
What do we care? A garbage bag has enough oxygen and food for a hundred generations of mindless little fruit flies

How does a man know whose lap to rest his weary head upon?
And how does a woman know whose head to accept upon her lap as she, tulip butt upon the mossy ground, leans against the rough bark of an old oak in the woods where the creek bends and no one bothers two souls who’ve stepped for a moment out of time, out of space, out of the coming and going of fruit fly generations

Surely God
we’re not just fruit flies
Surely God
we humans have such wide conscious spaces
that we bridge the soul and the mundane
Surely God
we humans can do better or worse
in a way fruit flies just can’t
What could a fruit fly moral victory possibly look like?
What parameters might they be aware of?
And the Love shining through everything shines how well through conscious moments so tiny in space and time as to be scarcely present at all?
We’re not fruit flies
and we need each other
and I need my woman
before I go crazy
but what does that mean?
why do people end up together?
what is the system?

Author: Job Merrifolk, Artist in Residence of the Winding Staircase in the Old Stone Tower by the Old Stone Bridge over the Forgotten River within the Shady Glen
Production: Amble Whistletown, Director of Internal and External Loneliness at the Institute for Slowly Growing Older as the sun sets within the clank of more and ever more building projects and less and ever less youth there in the little town with a creek a Main Street an elementary and a high school some churches two bars that served only domestic pilsners and whiskies a couple restaurants that your mother thought were not really clean enough to take her kids to lots of parks the creek was wide like a river crawdads in mudbanks shale cliffs and wooded areas along the banks
Editor: Bartleby Willard, great author who never existed, self-told tale that lost the thread and stopped paying attention to his own narrative of his own self
Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson, person I used to be, now a legal entity who holds copyrights and opens bank accounts, who has credit cards and a picture IDs, who becomes documents in the river of documents in the sludge of information in the bureaucratic stories we back-up on servers and hope to never lose because then it would just be chaos everywhere

What does it all mean?
Except that I’m tired
so tired
of being alone
of failing at the project

Calling for submissions
for a higher art
for a wider vision
for an art that holds us all together here in this moment
to see things as they really are
that we might be wise alone and together
wise enough to see
that Donald Trump is lying and stealing
and that that is not okay
and it is not normal
and that
it is not how it has to be,
that
we can choose a better way here and now

Calling for submissions
for a deeper art
for a kinder vision
it’s not all six of one half dozen of another
who were those young men face down dead in bloody mud for democracy and freedom?
who are we who’re called upon to pay a little attention think a little clearly act with a little gentle aware resolve
to save the land
from
might makes right, money talks louder than competency and good intentions, “true and false” as meaningless weapons — heavy blunt instruments with no value beyond fooling people into submission –;
from what is obviously both foolish and mean

Calling for submissions
for an art that loves sharing more than winning
for an art that remembers we are all in this together
for an art that chooses fun and joy and creation all of us together here and now
for an art that says No to rage and certainty,
an art that says No to everything
that contradicts
gentle aware clear accurate competent loving-kind joyfully-sharing gentle

Calling for an art gentle enough to save us from ourselves
to weave us back into each other and the heart of things
to sing us back into enough shared clarity to gently but firmly say,
No, Donald Trump,
No, we won’t hand a charlatan, liar, cheater, oath-breaker, mean-spirited bully the keys to the kingdom.
No, Trump 2.0,
No, we won’t hand collaborators in the lie, excusers of idiocy and meanness, we won’t hand fools who would put our democratic republic at risk for a moment of power and glory the keys to the kingdom.
No,
we’re not mad,
we’re just saying gently No to your foolish impulses — such impulses do not deserve power or prestige.

Corruption is when bad impulses are encouraged and selected for and good impulses are suppressed and shut down.
Corruption is a thing of degrees, but
A Republican Party that lies along with Trump and whose wonks figure out how Trump can further consolidate his power and have the tools needed to make good on his promises to weaponize the DOJ — such a party has become corrupted to a democracy-threatening degree.
The nation now has a choice:
Do we say, No, we’re not going to let that corruption infect the wider body? Do we tell this group of eager fools to please go sit on the sidelines until they can admit that the 2020 election was lost fair and square and that Trump should not have tried to manipulated his own DOJ to stay in power.
Or do we say,
Okay, sure guys, whatever, let’s just see what happens when we let you help Donald Trump replace 50,000 career bureaucrats with political appointees (read: people who think their job is first and foremost to satisfy Donald Trump) and otherwise consolidate power. Maybe that’ll work out great!
Okay, maybe, one never knows; but we the citizens of a democratic republic are not called upon to play Russian roulette with their nation, but to pay attention and make educated and thoughtful guesses as to which direction the nation should move.

When the Republican Party acts like Biden is the liar and the threat to democracy, and that Trump is the victim of a weaponized DOJ; then the Republican Party is agreeing with The Donald that “truth” is just whatever you say to help you win whatever you’re trying to win on a given day. That Republican Party has decided become part of the lie machine. Why would we give them more power? Why would we give them the power to institutionalize the lie machine? Don’t we know that the lie machine is a foundational and key element of repressive regimes? How is this happening, America? What is the art that will pull you out of your collective sleep?

Yes, a nation at sleep: for even those who see the danger do not see how it clear and true enough to mirror it fully to themselves and their neighbors. We don’t like to see it, to feel it in our gut. We scream at “them”; but what is needed is to perceive the way Reality mingles with this particular political reality well enough to reflect this moment so clear and true and bright that we find the voice that helps.

Calling for an art wise enough
to mirror this moment
to enough people
well enough
that we
en masse
gently sidestep
Trump and his would-be collaborators,
and gently together
reassert the primacy of democratic values

Why is democracy a spiritual good?

Because democratic values are the values without which none of our worldviews are meaningful to any of us:
aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving-king, joyfully-together, creatively discovering win-wins

Because anti-democratic values are the values that make meaningless empty mush of all human thought and action:
lying, stealing, cheating, anything to maintain power, might makes right, “truth” is not “true” but just another weapon, zero sum us-versus-them with an ever-shrinking pot because we the rulers aren’t worried about competent stewardship of the whole so much as we are interested in holding power

Because in a democratic republic the citizens serve as a final check on madness/corruption/tyranny in government while together gently evolving/nudging their shared conversation and government towards the better and away from the worse.

Because sharing rights involves sharing responsibility and sharing responsibility involves sharing rights.

Because in a liberal democratic nation, both the people and the government are encouraged to seek win-wins rather than fight to the death over shrinking rights and privileges — in a liberal democratic nation the citizens are not forced to choose between doing the right thing and protecting themselves and their loved ones from the ruling corruption, don’t have to choose between doing what’s best for everyone and getting clean water and safe food and freedom from political prisons for them and their family.

So many for so long have dreamed of a stable, peaceful government where you don’t get bombed and where you can speak your mind without fear of reprisal. People sacrifice for the dream. They even sacrifice their lives. We are called upon to pay attention, think clearly, and move honestly. That’s it. But how to do that together? How to do that together in time to prevent a great folly? In time to together choose an imperfect but workable path over an error that will almost certainly harm our nation and its citizens, and that has a nontrivial chance of harming democracy enough to make that harm either impossible or at least extremely difficult to reverse. Why? Why side with that when we really don’t have to?

How about we stop asking our politicians what they can do for us
and start asking ourselves what we can do to help our politicians help everyone?

How about it, USA?

How about not failing this gut check?

Where are you
spiritual art
art that is fearless
that is not afraid to love everyone?

Where are you art
strong enough to save art
from those who love power more than Beauty = Truth = Goodness = Just-Order?

Where aer you art
strong enough to save art
from those who love winning more than Love?

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson