message to sisters and brothers by different mothers

The social media apps and texts started dinging around 6:30 this morning (we already knew).

Friends reaching out, grieving, trying to process.

I tossed a couple of scripture grenades on Facebook using the flawed “Swing the ‘two-edged sword’ so it means whatever you want it to mean!” methodology of exegesis to get it out of my system and kick a dent in the side of the moment.

Yesterday, and then again today, two Facebook “Friends” from high school (one of whom I honestly don’t remember) showed up, as if on cue, to reveal their theological obsessions with genitalia and scatology by regurgitating debunked lies in an effort to explain why it was necessary for them to vote into office—again—a white man who is a manifestly horrible human being, sexual predator, criminal, and traitor over a biracial woman who is a manifestly decent human being, the wife of one husband, law-abiding, and true to her oath.

Look, I’m no priest. Find yourself another confessional booth.

474 Facebook “Friends” left. I expect it to drop. Note to self: Remember to prune more regularly.

S. went with Micah 6:8, which is always a winner and probably everything in a nutshell anyway, and won the internet for the day.

A gay Jewish friend of hers from high school messaged her and told her how much her words and the passage meant to him and asked if she would make the post public so he could share it. That’s not without risk these days, but she didn’t flinch.

I’ve spent today reading the only book of the Bible I’ve read multiple times, Ecclesiastes, an existential stew of proto-Sartre, Kafka, and Camus with a pinch of god to soften the hard aftertaste.

That book is like a trusted friend to me, a “straight shooter” who “always told it like it was” in a manner that melded well with my god-given wiring and how, since childhood, my own eyes and ears have processed the world.

I have told others, and now I tell you, that over the years and tragedies of my life, that book has been an anchor that has kept me tethered—loosely—to my inherited Christianity, my thought being that inclusion of a philosophical, agnostic-leaning book in the biblical canon was a sign and a wink from god saying, “Hey, I thought of you, too.”

Absorbed in my American-Christian navel gazing egocentricity, I imagined myself saying in return, “Thanks! There must be something to this whole thing after all.”

As I’ve moved through the day, I am feeling lighter and am beginning to experience clarity.

It’s good to know the what’s what and the who’s who, to see and understand clearly, without a shadow of doubt, who we really are—the lost and wandering tribe of America.

Knowledge is power and agency. It is a “lamp unto our feet” as we step quietly and gently through the Upside Down, which, as The Preacher would probably smile wryly and say, “is just everything that always has been.”

S. is right. Micah 6:8. Focus. Start walking.