God's Debris: An Agnostic Thought Experiment by Scott Adams

Sermon

June 28, 2020

“God’s Debris”

In 2001, a man named Scott Adams wrote a 132-page book. He wasn’t sure anyone would want to pay for it, and he wanted as many people as possible to read it, so made it available free online.

Every year quite a few writers with more hope than talent make things available for free online, so what was so different about this short effort?

Well, Scott Adams is the same Scott Adams who has become internationally famous for drawing a funny comic strip called Dilbert, and this book wasn’t funny.

In fact, this book wasn’t like anything he had ever done before.

In an interview with The Tech Adams said: “God’s Debris is the first non-Dilbert book I’ve done. It’s not a regular book; it’s a thought experiment as I like to call it. Since I’m a trained hypnotist, I tried to write a book to screw with peoples’ heads. What I’ve gathered from test audiences is that it will either freak you out or make you very angry at me, which is a good sign. It’s part science and part religion. None of it is right, it’s just for you to figure out what’s wrong.”

So many people downloaded the free version that Adam’s publishers brought out a hardback copy within months. And then a paperback, and eventually a sequel. After almost 20 years, it remains #65 in Psychology & Religion, #31 in Religious Studies – Psychology, and #106 in Religious Mysteries (Books)on Amazon.

Scott Adams refers to himself as an agnostic, seeing atheism as too certain of itself. He is not religious, by any definition. He is, however, a former member of Mensa with a keen mind and a love of upsetting people.

And Adams loves to read. He likes to play with ideas, and to explore what rational and scientific people would say about almost any subject.

Bernard Haisch, a NASA PhD astrophysicist, wrote the book The God Theory in which he explains the creation of the universe as the transformation of god into the universe. This idea of the deity becoming its creation is called pan-deism.

Scott Adams doesn’t believe in pan-deism, but he believes in asking “what if.”

What if the simplest explanation is the best?

In the intro to the work, Adams dares readers to differentiate its scientifically accepted theories from "creative baloney designed to sound true," and to "Try to figure out what's wrong with the simplest explanation."

He dares you to think.

So what kind of book is God’s Debris?

It starts like any other novel, but it is not a novel. The work contains only two characters, the unnamed delivery boy narrator figure and an old man who reveals his name on page 122 as “Avatar”.

The delivery boy could be any one, he is the stand in for Everyone.

Tale begins when the delivery boy has to deliver a package at a certain address. The mail carrier who taught the delivery boy would always ring, wait 30 seconds, and then check the door- if no one answered he would set the package inside if the door was open. If the door was locked, he would mark the package as undeliverable and walk away.

The delivery boy ignores the rules, and when the door is open at this house he steps inside, only to find out that someone is indeed home.

Instead of complaining at the home invasion, the other man, Avatar, invites the young man in for a conversation and he begins with an odd question: “Did you deliver the package, or did the package deliver you?” The boy says that he delivered the package, but Avatar asks then whether he would have delivered the package if it did not contain an address. The boy denies he would, and Avatar then says that a certain cooperation from the package is required to deliver it. This type of Socratic dialogue is repeated throughout the rest of the book.

Then the man starts to talk about whether we have a free will or not. The package deliverer says we have, but after a few more critical questions from Avatar he admits we cannot be sure. Then Avatar switch to discussing whether god has a free will, and after a short exchange, the I-figure exclaims that the old man is an atheist.

Slowly Avatar explains his theory about god and the universe.

According to his theory, in order to be God, by definition, God must be both omniscient, or all knowing, and omnipotent, or all powerful.

He argues that an omnipotent being would have one question which prevented it from being omniscient- can I end? Can I be destroyed? And he posits that in order to answer this question and fulfil itself as God, the Divine being would have to choose to destroy itself, to cease to exist in order to know the answer to the question.

When god ceased to exist it’s “body” became the dust we and the universe are made from, becoming the title’s God’s Debris.

According to Avatar this debris from god consists of two things: matter and probability. This is not classic dualism where two things are eternally locking in opposition, not good/bad, God/Devil, Heaven/Hell. Probability is a process and matter is a substance. According to Avatar, probability is the remains of the mind of God, while matter is the debris of God’s physical being.

Reviewer Mordanicus says: “According to Avatar an omnipotent and omniscient being cannot be motivated by the same motivations as humans, for example an omnipotent god does not require food and hence is not driven by hunger as we do. In fact, Avatar argues, that such omnipotent and omniscient being can only be motivated by one thing: the desire to experience his non-existence. One might wonder if god has really ceased to exist, how can he experience his own non-existence? Here is interesting twist, and also a distinction between Haisch’s pan-deism and God’s Debris, the non-existence of god is temporary. According to Avatar we are part of the reconstruction of god. Since our universe is made from the same components as god, these components can re-arranged such that god will exist once more. However, we might wonder what god would do after his reconstruction, but on this Avatar remains silent.”

There is a strong resemblance between Avatar’s theory and the teachings of Hinduism. Some schools of Hinduism believe that our soul is actually a piece of god’s soul, Brahman, which had become separated from it. According to this view the purpose of spirituality is the recombination of our soul with Brahman.

Unlike some other religions, however, the god of God’s Debris cannot be reconstructed without human help.

Avatar claims that the invention of the Internet is a sign of the upcoming reconstruction of god. He believes that god cannot be reconstructed without us, that our purpose is to be co-creators, engaging in the reconstruction of the Divine.

Because of this, it is essential that we learn to coexist with one another. Since we are essential to God, as long as we exist God can be reconstructed. If humanity destroys itself, or allows itself to be destroyed, the Divine’s hope of reconstruction could be ended. Avatar is particularly concerned about the numerous conflicts in the world combined with the existence of weapons of mass destruction. All these might lead to a new world war with the great risk of human extinction.

Interestingly this theory could provide a strong motive for space colonization. Space colonization might ensure the continued existence of the human race, even if terrestrial nations destroy one another.

The delivery boy is uncertain about any of these arguments, and reverts to classical religious belief- asking whether people have to do anything in particular in order to “satisfy” god. Avatar answers by saying:

“Every economic activity helps. Whether you are programming computers, or growing food, or raising children, or cleaning garbage from the side of the road, you are contributing to the realization of God’s consciousness. None of those activities is more important than another.”

Live your life. Do what you do. Just by being yourself you are reconnecting bits of the Divine.

No Holy Books. No commandments. No important holy prophets or sacred sites.

The boy asks how do we know or understand good and evil then? Avatar says this:

“Evil is any action that might damage people. Probability generally punishes evildoers. Since most criminals are captured and jailed, overall the people who hurt others tend to pay. So evil does exist and, on average, it is punished.

The boy finds that this is quite close to the Buddhist idea of causality, and notes the resemblance to the idea of karma. As they begin to talk about the possibility of an afterlife Avatar explains:

“Over time, everything that is possible happens. That is a fundamental quality of probability. If you flip a coin often enough, eventually it will come up heads a thousand times in a row. And everything possible will happen over and over as long as God’s debris exists. The clump of debris that comprises your body and mind will break down and disintegrate someday, but a version of you will reappear in the future, by chance.”
“Are you saying I’ll reincarnate?”
“Not exactly. I’m saying a replica of your mind and body will exist in the distant future, by chance. And the things you do now can either make life more pleasant or more difficult for your replica.”
“Why would I care about a replica of me? That’s a different guy.”

Avatar explains that there will be many more replicas of ourselves in the future, but he also states that some future people will have some of our memories, not necessarily all. This idea is  similar to the Buddhist idea of rebirth, which is distinct from reincarnation. Reincarnation is the movement of the soul from one body to another and Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging or eternal soul created by a God or emanating from a Divine Essence. The Buddhist idea of rebirth means that the sequential lives are related, but not identical.

But if the theory of everything as presented in God’s Debris is correct, what about different religious views. Are they right? Are they wrong? Is one less wrong than the others?

Avatar says that religions do matter, even if they are false. He tells the boy:

“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don’t believe their own religion any more than we believe ours. Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.

God’s Debris began as a simple conceit- Scott Adams asked himself “What if?”

What if I create an explanation?

What if I begin with simple questions, and look for big answers?

What if I examine religion from an outsider’s perspective?

What if we are all stardust?

Read God’s Debris if you get a chance. Engage in the thought exercise. Deconstruct religion and explore what it might look like if science and religion worked together.

God’s Debris is fiction, some of it is lies. Some of it is true. None of it is what Scott Adams believes.

At least that’s what he says.

What delusions help you to get through your day?

Amen.

The Hell with Thoughts and Prayers; Do Some Wor

We are in the middle of an undeclared war.

(Click “like” and share if you want world peace.)

There have been 255 mass shootings in the US so far this year. More shootings than there are days. The last two (at this writing) were 12 hours apart.

(@MahatmaGhandi just tweeted “Humanism is patriotism, the majority of humans do not support war yet it proceeds against our say.” I better retweet that right now; it sounds so deep.)

#stopwar #givepeaceachance #justiceforall

(ISIS says if they get 1 million likes on Facebook they will stop bombing Syria. Click like today!)

“I’m praying for peace.”

“The shooting victims have my thoughts and prayers.” 

You know what? Why don’t you stop thinking and praying and actually do something? No, really. God heard you- they want you to get off your ass. Really.

I’ll be the first one to admit that I use social media daily. I post about peace, and justice. I click like and share on other people’s stories of social justice work. Sometimes I pray to the God of my understanding to stop the violence and the hatred.

I can do all these things without ever stepping away from my computer or my phone. It’s amazing- I can dial in social justice.

And praying and liking and clicking and tweeting are often good ways to get information across and to slowly change perceptions.

But you don’t tweet to increase understanding of the dangers of fire when YOUR ACTUAL HOUSE IS ON FIRE AND YOU ARE SITTING IN IT.

Let me tell you a not-secret. Our house is on fire, infested with bees which are also on fire, and sitting on a pad made of lava.

The walls are falling in. The foundation is cracked. Our government has been sold to the highest bidder. There are weapons of war in our streets.

The work of the peace maker, the work of the justice seeker, our work, is to do more, to put out the fire, to rebuild soundly, and that job can look overwhelming, but it is ours to do.

I know it looks too tough. I know it does.

When the mountains are too high, and our equipment too poor, it is easy to stop climbing. When the goals are too large, and the rewards too removed from our own lives, we back away, break down, and grind to a halt.

We see this principle in action around social justice activism. It wears a variety of faces and it exhibits itself as a variety of other ethics.

“I know we need to fix it, but it’s too big. It’s taken on a life of its own. I don’t have time to tackle a project of that magnitude. I work, and there’s the kids… You don’t need me- you need activists, you know, people who do this right. Spend time working on it and whatnot.”

In other words, “I’ve got a job, a home, a life. I’m okay. Why should I risk what I have, to get something for someone else? I work hard, let me enjoy it ‘cause, honestly, that shit looks scary.”

White people, I’m talking to you.

Or how about this one: “I am just so impressed with those social justice folks. I could never do what they do. It takes a special kind of person to get things done like that, someone like Jesus, or Buddha, or those people you see on TV giving kids in Africa gruel while they play in garbage. I just admire them so much (not so much the gruel people but you know what I mean.) Those people are just living saints, like that short little woman (not Doctor Ruth but the other one), that Mother Theresa and all the work she did in Australia or New Zealand or China or wherever she was with all those little skinny people and buses.”

This is an ethic of discipleship- an ethic that says “It will take a messiah, a great teacher of some kind, to fix so great a problem- and I am not a great teacher, so I will wait right here until one comes and then I will follow him or her. They will show me how to clean the big mess up, and until they come, I am off the hook.”

I got news for you. They ain’t coming. Saddle up. Someone else just got shot.

Perhaps worse is an ethic of despair. “I could just cry over how terrible this all is- I mean, it would take 100 life-times to fix it ‘cause it is just so broken. There’s nothing that I could ever do that would impact this mess- someone smarter than me has to come up with a plan and maybe that will make sense to me and I can think about some ways that I could help.”

This ethic just basically says “I’m not even willing to try.”

You’ll be willing when it’s your kid. Or your brother. Or your mom. Avoid the rush, start now. Still waiting for you to get on that saddle.

None of these ethics allow anything much to get done. They are reasons to quit without really trying.

So what ethic does work? What calls us all to do the work of healing the world, without quitting when we see how large the problems really are?

Guilt may work briefly. If you have children, or possibly if you remember your own childhood,  you may know how this goes:

“Don’t you feel bad about what’s happened? Don’t you want to do something about it? Look at your brother over there crying- if you don’t share your cookies with him right this minute you are just as bad as the kid who stole his bike. In fact, you’re worse because you could make him feel better right now and you just don’t want to.”

If someone really wants to make you feel rotten, they may even bring up Martin Niemoeller, and quote at you his famous poem:

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

We all know guilt works, at least for a while, but most of the time it is misplaced guilt. Guilt should be for those things you have actually done wrong, for those times you should be ashamed of yourself. Guilt is one of the indicators that lets us heal wounds we have created. It works with our personal actions, things we are responsible for.

There is nothing to feel guilty about when you are not responsible for the action. I don’t feel guilty about 9-11, or police shootings, or the bombing in Syria. Normal guilt calls me to act when I have caused hurt, or directly allowed hurt to happen through my lack of action. It does not motivate for long when we did not cause the pain.

If we are truly acting out of loving compassion for other humans, out of the Buddha’s enlightened all-encompassing love, out of the Christian Agape, or unconditional love, then we are called to engage in social activism from an ethic of risk.

So what is an ethic of risk?

An ethic of risk says that there are too many variables in any complex situation to really be sure what the outcome of our actions will be. Two people getting married embrace an ethic of risk and uncertainty whether they know it or not- they cannot know that their decision to have a formal ceremony will cause them to live happily ever after. That goal is too big, too far away to make any real connection. What they can know is that is pleases them both today, and may, MAY position them to live together well. They do it because it is a positive step- the process becomes the point.

If we are talking about social justice work, we often do things to make other things happen. We protest to gain marriage equality, we teach farming to end world hunger, we give up eating meat to promote animal welfare.

Climb the mountain until you reach a place to camp- don’t insist on reaching the summit today.

Admit that the big goal may or may not be reachable by doing what you are doing, so just do what is right in the immediate situation.

If we look back at the other ethics I mentioned, you can see why they make it almost impossible to make gains in some areas.

“I will save the world by doing everything right, and if it isn’t all done the right way I quit!”

Take a chance, accept the small wins, do what is right when you can and when you can’t, work to make it possible to do what is right.

“That’s too big for me – you need special people for that.”

No we don’t. It begins here. It begins now. It begins with you.

“I’m waiting for the Great Leader to arrive.”

They called- they’re not coming. It’s on you.

“It just makes me want to cry. I’m not able to handle this.”

Yes, you are. Blow your nose,

 and get started.

“I’m afraid.”

We all are. Hold my hand and we’ll go together.

Embrace an ethic of risk. Do what is right in front of you. Begin today. Do it because it is the right thing to do, not in expectation of a grand and glorious eventual worldwide outcome.

Impact your house, your block, your school. These problems took generations to create- you will not fix them by Wednesday, but you may fix a piece, that leads to another piece, that begins a cascade, that fixes it in ten years or twenty or a hundred.

You may fix the piece that ends the killing.

Hold one person close to your heart and dry their tears. Do it today.

VOTE.

Organize.

Rally.

Legislate.

Attend one protest.

Do it today.

Take the risk.

Human hands. Human hearts, human lives.

One risk at a time.

God called- they aren’t coming today. It’s on you.

Celebrate peacemaking.

-Rev. Amy Petrie Shaw

The United States of America is Dying

What does it take to end the Great American experiment?

Well, this, for a start. What's happening now, all of it.

And before you jump up and ask to speak to a manager, sit down Karen. Or Steve. Or whatever your name is, because this one goes out to all of you.

Look around. Just for a second let go of whatever fucking political hobby-horse you are riding and take a look around at the smoking ruins you are living in.

Take off the blindfold you have been given by religion, and class, and political party, and who knows what else, and for the sake of your life, LOOK at the reality.

These are facts. You can look them up on both left and right wing sites. You can find them in books and magazines and online. These are facts. No one is arguing that there are not more facts than these, but these are REAL.

1. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour."
2. Eight rich people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race.
3. The distribution of wealth in the United States now more closely resembles the situation in Russia and China than in other advanced democracies such as the United Kingdom and France.
4. The richest 0.00025 percent of the American population now owns more wealth than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60 percent

In case you are wondering, you are not in the top 1% in the US. And no, you probably don't know anyone personally in that group.

They get richer every year under the current government policies and tax breaks. They aren't "the boss" who drives a nicer car than you and shakes your hand on Family Day at the office.

They can buy small countries. They literally wouldn't notice or be impacted in any real way by 10 million dollars suddenly missing from their accounts. Your life is very different from theirs.

Listen, people whose skin isn't the same color as yours aren't the problem. The problem is that as long as poor and middle class people refuse to work together and unionize together because of race, the rich get richer and the wealth imbalance gets worse.

But moving on.

               5. US students are 38th out of 71 countries in Math
               6. They are 24th in Science
               7. The US is 27th in the world in education and healthcare

US News and World Report released a 2018 report on the "10 Best Countries to Rise Children In"
(which are also coincidentally the best countries for: education, quality of life, women, most modern, most business-friendly, headquartering a corporation, transparency, and green living).

We didn't make the cut.

Not in any of those areas.

As of 2018, the US Healthcare system ranked worst in the developed world. It's ratings have now fallen further.

We also have the worst maternal death rate in the developed world.

We are the only advanced economy which does not guarantee workers paid vacations; when we do offer vacations, we offer less than every other developed economy except Japan.

Our sick days and maternal/paternal leave days are on the very bottom of the heap too.

18% of American children live in poverty.
27% of children have parents without secure employment.

There were 323 mass shootings in the US last year, with 387 people killed and 1274 people shot.

Three of those mass shootings were at schools.

By 2016, death by gunshot was the second-highest cause of death in the United States among children and adolescents ages 1 to 19, according to a study released in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The United States now leads the world in the rate of firearm deaths in youth (among countries with recorded data). The rate in the US was 36.5 times higher than in a dozen comparable high-income countries around the world; the rate of firearm deaths was five times as high compared with a sampling of low-to middle-income countries." (CNN)

We are not the hero to the world.

The lamp beside the golden door has gone out and we are holding children in cages on our borders.Inside our country we hold black and brown people in for-profit cages and we call them prisons

We are living in the left-overs of the rich, who take 99 portions out of 100 and then tell us that the problem is that the people of color, or the LGBTQ+ people, or the handicapped people, or the old people, or the undocumented people, or the young people, or the indigenous people, or the whoelsehaveyougot people have taken 0.02% of our 1 portion and so they are the problem.

They are not the problem.

We have sold our souls for cowboy hats and guns.

I admit we win on freedom units. Here you have the perfect, heart-breaking freedom to own all of the guns you want. You can own all of the knives you want. You can go out and buy a tank if you are so minded.

You do not have the right to housing or food, healthcare, meaningful education, transportation, childcare, mental health services, reproductive services, clean water, or feminine hygiene products, but boy oh boy can you shoot stuff.

Awesome.

America is dying, and it won't be guns or military force which stop Her fall.

It will be solidarity. It will be poor and middle class people of all colors, orientations, identities, and physical abilities working together to break the stranglehold of privilege for the ultra-wealthy and the mega-corporations. It will be humans recognizing that unless we learn to begin together we are all going to end together.

The hour is "a minute till too late" and the time is now. Give birth to revolution, or begin to dig a grave.

Come Out Come Out

Everyone has the right to decide for themselves how visible, how vulnerable, they want to be in the world.

Some of us want to run naked through the streets banging on a drum so that more people come see us.

Some of us are uncomfortable if the cat reads our journal page.

Both of these are fine options, and so is everything in between, as long we are the ones defining exactly how much of our entire self we want to show to the world around us.

But that is often a fantasy. We don't always get to decide. And it's worse if we're "different."

So let's talk about that.

In May of 2015, the Harry Potter series of books became the best-selling series in history. 

It has sold more than 450 million copies worldwide. To give you an idea of how many that is, the Bible has sold about 5 billion copies, or about 11 Bibles for every Harry Potter series sold. 

The Bible has been sold since 1450- the Harry Potter books since 1997.

Sit there and blink a minute at that one.

Many of you have read Harry Potter, or you've seen the movies. 

The story takes you on a journey. It's about the real stuff: good and evil, friendship and love, trust, and growth. It is about wizards and witches. It has spells and potions, goblins, centaurs, and werewolves, an amazing magical school and even a flying motorcycle.

And it all starts with a little boy who lives in a closet under the stairs.

Harry’s family is normal, as normal and dull as could be. The first book repeats this until J.K. Rowling is sure that you've got it.

Normal. Capitol N, small "ormal" normal. They work at normal jobs, and his cousin goes to a normal school, and they never stand out in any way. His family doesn't WANT to stand out in any way, thank you very much.

And then there is Harry, in his closet.

Yeah.

A little different. A little strange. If you asked his aunt and uncle, they would tell you that he was an unwanted and embarrassing edition to the family, that is, if they admitted he existed.

At 11, Harry would have agreed with them. And then gone back into the closet, because as long as he stayed in that little closet, life was safe. Lonely and sad. A little dull. But  safe. Just him and the spiders. 

When he came out of that closet for good, his life changed forever. It was dangerous, and exciting. It had new friends and bitter enemies, sparkly robes, and even a love interest or two.

Something about this sounds suspiciously familiar.

In 1869, one hundred years before the Stonewall Riots in New York City, a German homosexual rights advocate named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs first said that self-disclosure was a means of emancipation. He pleaded with homosexual people to be open about their attractions, and said that invisibility was a major obstacle toward changing public opinion.

But in 1896 homosexuality was still illegal in most places, and being honest could result in a prison sentence or stay in a mental hospital. As you can imagine not many people rushed to throw off their invisibility cloaks. In fact, the closet and even the spiders seemed like a fine idea in comparison to how openly LGBTQ+ people were treated.

Before 1950 the idea of “coming out” as lesbian or gay was directly seen as a mirror of a young debutant’s “coming out” in society. Coming out as gay meant that you entered into a society of your gay and lesbian peers. It was about being recognized and included within your own homosexual community, not the greater world. Coming out as LGBTQ+ usually meant leaving the greater world, because there was suddenly only a tiny place for you there, and it was in a locked room.

After the 50’s, and especially after the Stonewall Riots which fueled the gay rights movement, “coming out” became “coming out of the closet.” The emphasis changed from entering into a small welcoming circle of people just like you to escaping from the oppression of a small dark box.

Not entering into, but getting out of. Not a warm little cozy circle of friends, but a big wide world.

Coming out of the closet as non-straight wasn’t easy; for most of us it was often the most terrible thing we had ever done. A friend of mine told me “I’m not coming out of the closet. Girl, I am staying so far in here that they will hang coats in front of me and somewhere behind me there will be people looking for Narnia.”

My friend never did come out to the world. He couldn't budge from his closet under the stairs. He missed the Hogwarts Express. He missed the magic.

The world outside was too dangerous to risk.

For Harry Potter, coming out of his closet began with a simple phrase, “You’re a wizard, Harry.”

After years of not knowing what to call his differences, his label gave him a key to finding his own people.

But coming out means more than sticking a label on yourself. There is an AND here. Coming out means both defining yourself in one way AND proving that you are always more than that simple label or definition.

We all have our closets.

We all have the dark safe places where we sit, safe and alone, protecting ourselves from the world around us.

Maybe the world is really dangerous for us. For my friend standing behind the coats it really was. Or maybe we don't want to deal with it. Or maybe we don't want the losses to decimate us. Maybe we are protecting our children. Maybe we are protecting our jobs.

Maybe we don't want other people to define us.

We all have labels that fit parts of our lives, and some of them we try to wear in secret where no one can see.

Because the world has a way of stripping us down to our labels, of removing all of the other definitions and pieces that make us who we are and reducing us to a series of words so that we can be easily defined.

Understood.

Accepted or cast away based on what is currently popular or exotic and new.

But as Ash Beckham says, “Closets are nowhere for a human to live.”

Look at the labels you are wearing. The ones you have chosen for yourself and the ones you have been born into. The ones that just happened. The ones others have written on your skin with words and actions so painful that you think you will wear them forever.

Each label comes with its own closet building kit. Sometimes the spiders come along.

Each closet has the potential to close you in and lock you away in the dark until you can’t imagine how the light would feel. Or maybe just to sap your joy as you try to make sure that no one pays attention, that no one notices the label.

But labels and closets are magical, did you know that? The longer you hide who you are, the longer you let others and their expectations define the labels you wear, the larger they become. The more they weigh. The more they become your only definition.

The more you hide in the dark the safer that dark feels, and instead of knowing you, people only learn the shape of your closet walls.

Those walls get thick over the years. They’re built out of labels. They say lots of things that start with “I am.”

I am queer.

I am divorced.

I am an addict.

I can’t cook.

I am biracial.

I am the parent of an incarcerated child

I am a felon

I am fat

I am anorexic

I am sick

I am poor

I am rich

I am an abuse survivor

I am an abuser

I am profane

I am sacred

I am scared

I believe in miracles

Hundreds more. Thousands more. All the things we don’t want to talk about. All the definitions of ourselves that are only pieces of the whole and yet we let them become so much more. The labels become a story, your story.

You own that story. Not every closet must be opened to everyone at every moment. Some pieces of you are not safe for public consumption at a given point in time, and only you control when to open a closet door.

But closets are not for humans.
Closets are not for long term habitation.

If you cannot be who you are, where you are, begin looking for somewhere else to be. If the people around you wouldn’t love you if they knew, maybe you need new people.

You are who you are. You can’t be anyone else.

You have to be you because there isn’t another option. Respecting the worth and dignity of every individual begins with you.

Take off your invisibility cloak whenever you can. Be authentically yourself, in all of your messiness, and pain and brokenness.

We’re all broken too. It’s ok. You’re different, just like all the rest of us.

Be honest about who you are, be direct. If you can’t read, don’t take the book and tell the person “I didn’t get to it yet,” week after week. Say “I’d love to, but I can’t read.”

Don’t be sorry for who you are. Don’t apologize for it. If you hurt people, apologize for your actions, but not for your being.

There will always be people who are angry at you, maybe disappointed in you, for being who you are. That is their problem. They have learned to love your closet walls- give them at least a chance to love the real person inside.

No one else gets to write the story of your life. No one else gets to put their expectations before your reality.

You alone have your hand on the doorknob, but you are not alone in the room. There are so many closets. So many people listening for the sound of another door opening, waiting to come out themselves, waiting not to be alone.

Come out, come out wherever you are.

It's magical out here.

America Has Fallen

America has fallen.

Or at least the America we thought existed.

But the important word in that last sentence is "thought", because that America never was real, not for anyone.

Today, right now, the Left and the Right are locked in a battle for hearts and minds and votes, and both sides claim they are fighting for the very soul of our nation.

And both sides are wrong.

To understand the problem, we have to go back, all the way to the founding of of the country itself. We have to understand where the gap began.

This is over-simplified but you'll get the idea.

The framers of the Constitution were educated, intelligent, and, in general, of good intent. They wanted to build a country where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were indeed possible.

But that is our first problem.

They were all wealthy or at least solvent. They were white. They were male. They were land owners. They were Christian, Atheist, or Agnostic. Some were Trinitarian, others Unitarian or Universalist.

And they were children of their age.

They saw the world through a particular set of lenses.

In their time, men were the head of the family, and women were expected to do as they were told by father or husband or brother.

White people were the only "real" people; everyone else was either an animal or a noble savage with almost no in-between. People of color who proved their intelligence and skill were treated as exotic rarities, all other people of color were treated as zoo exhibits, slaves, servants, or cannon fodder.

Handicapped people were treated as children, or furniture. The mentally ill were a shame to be hidden. While LGBTQ people existed, the idea of their needing to be recognized in any way would have been met with blank incomprehension.

The problem is that when "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" were discussed, there was a base assumption that the rest of the sentence didn't need to be spoken, and the rest would have been "for everyone white, male, over 18, and a land-holder, who happens not to have any mental illness, physical handicap beyond a certain level, and religion other than Christianity or humanism/enlightened atheism."

But they didn't write that. They couldn't imagine needing to.

When they wrote about the right to bear arms, they looked around and saw a world where almost every man and some women grew up holding a gun. Where guns were essential for survival.

In their world it was laughable that a man might not know how to shoot a gun; that would be like saying today that someone had never touched a television, or bought things at a store.

And the trained militias were essential if England attacked; they could not afford to keep a huge standing army. Men needed to go home and plow and plant.

They were trying to protect their citizens from armed invasion by an occupying foreign power, one which had already demonstrated that it preferred to remove access to weapons from countries it colonized.

They were keeping guns in the hands of trained men, not giving them to an untrained population.

And religion? Freedom of religion? That was designed so that no one could be told how to be a Christian. No one could be forced to go to a church they didn't want to attend.

There was no concept that one day there would be mosques and Buddhist temples in the United States of America. The most they could conceptualize was a man who didn't like the local preacher, or who was a naturalist or an atheist.

So they didn't write that either. They didn't make the USA a Christian nation because they couldn't imagine a world where other religions actually were present enough to require consideration at all.

The right to protest? That was intended so that educated men could argue with a despotic king or president. In a world with limited wide-spread communication, they could not conceive of poorly educated people somehow finding out about obscure points of law or process and wanting to complain. They could not conceive of "the poor" telling the landed class what to do. Protest was for them, the landowning white men, to stand up for their rights.

So they didn't write more specific boundaries on it either.

And the free press? In a world where paper was expensive and a horse could only pull so much?

Right. You had better be sure it stayed free, otherwise no one could tell you that the British had landed again, or sway the opinions of the populace toward whatever the aristocracy thought they needed to believe.

But here we are in 2018. And we still have the same set of governing documents.

The Right believe in much that the original framers would probably agree with, but which they did not put in the actual documents. The Left believe in the words as written in the actual documents, without understanding that the whole society has always leaned more toward the "understood" bits which were left out.

And the fight goes on and on and on.

What the framers wrote, and how they envisioned it working, is not today's vision of a world in right relation. Women, People of color, handicapped people, LGBTQ people, people who are not neurotypical, anyone but white monied males in fact- none of these were considered or even considered for consideration by the writers of  our foundational document.

America has fallen to her knees, because it was never possible to survive this long under a Constitution written in 1775 or 1776.

Today, legally:

• States are gerrymandered until votes no longer matter.
• Schools are underfunded and only the wealthy are learning.
• College debt is crushing, and college no longer accessible for most.
• Water is undrinkable in major urban areas.
• Eight rich people, six of them American, own as much wealth as 50% of the entire human race.
• The President is partisan, and sides with a foreign power against his own people.
• The press is accused of lying when they print verified truths, and threatened by the state when they ask questions
• Megachurch pastors demand private jets, and hide behind tax-exempt statutes as they build mansions and tell the poor that God wants them to send their rent money to the church
• Corporations are considered people.
• Money is considered "speech."
• Prisons are privatized and while the USA is only 4.4% of the world's population, we now hold 22% of the world's prisoners. We have continued slavery by another name, arresting and holding people of color for crimes where we routinely release white people with fines
• 60% of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills
• Children are being stolen from immigrant asylum seekers and released into a for-profit adoption system. Other children are being held in concentration camps with no plan for reunification with parents who have been deported.
• People openly voice beliefs that the earth is flat, science is fake news, vaccines cause autism, the earth is only 6,000 years old. Politicians have openly said they don't know why a woman can't just "hold" her period until she gets home, and claimed that a body can stop pregnancy from a "legitimate rape."

Idiocy has become a point of view. Racism a position to consider. People die or become homeless from lack of medical care.Teachers are on food stamps while the Secretary of Education has nine family yachts, plus her own personal $40 million dollar yacht which sails under the flag of the Cayman Islands for tax purposes, of course.

The government is corrupt and broken; overwhelmed by rampant cronyism and profiteering at almost every level.

Thomas Jefferson said:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

He also said, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

We cannot wait, still and silent, as our country falls farther and farther behind.

In 2018's World Happiness Report, Norway ranked No. 1 for happiness, the U.S. was No. 14. In a LexisNexis study of success in securing measures of life, liberty and happiness for their citizens, Norway was also No. 1, while the US ranked 19th, behind the Czech Republic, Japan and France.

In education rankings for developed nations, we are 40 of 72 in mathematics, 25 of 72 in science, 24 of 72 in reading.

We are sick, poor, over-worked and under-educated. We cannot access healthy food at reasonable prices. We cannot house our people. We do not pay a living wage.  We have the world's largest military, our police forces are becoming militarized, we have guns in our streets and shootings in schools and churches and festivals and stores.

The law has been sold. The government is for sale.

Money talks and bullshit walks and there isn't a thing we can do as it is because the corporations are people and money is their speech and...

Enough.

Say enough.

Because it is time to get up off of our knees.

It is time to recreate our country, with all parties seated equally at the table and with liberation centered in the place of white masculinity.

It is time to do this by any means necessary because you cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools and the same people who watch as black people die in the streets are not going to let go of the reins of power without a little shove.

I am saying the word and I am saying it loudly.

Revolution.
Revolution.
Revolution.

And this time the revolution will be televised, for everyone to see, and so you need to decide how quickly you will rise.

Because there are no bystanders in a combat zone.


Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness.
For all of us this time.

Join the revolution.