🔒 You’re reading a paid subscribers-only post with free preview. Thank you for supporting this work.
Paid subscriptions make it possible for me to dig deeper, publish more frequently, and remain independent.
Prefer to offer one-time support? You can leave a tip to keep this project going by clicking the link of your choice: (Venmo/Paypal/Stripe)
Thank you for reading—and for making writing like this possible.
I sat here staring at the wall for several minutes before deciding to type a sentence about it.
I figured maybe it would break the spell to just splash a little paint around — metaphorically, I mean.
I keep thinking about writing about Michigan before the memory fades, and then I think I don’t want to write about Michigan because Michigan wasn’t so much a place as a chrysalis of some kind, and it’s where I got really close to re-considering faith and then couldn’t force myself to take the exit.
I think about writing about that, and how it will come across to the people who are really rooting for me to find my way back. Some have told me it’ll solve what ails me. Some have said I’m going through all I’m going through because I left. I’ve come to realize I have no idea which God is most likely the real one among all the warring versions Christians seem to believe in. The angry, wrathful, jealous one? The one who has infinite love and mercy and will look for any opportunity to save you, no matter how small? The one who intervenes in trivial things but not in big ones? The one who wants you to stay committed to a marriage where only one of you was willing to keep trying to fix it, and that one was drowning in the attempt? The one who wants you to be happy and not spend the rest of your life alone when you had no choice in the matter?
Is there a God who can sort out all these other gods people keep telling me about?
So anyway, yeah. Michigan. Soon. Probably. For now, you’re going to have to deal with a stream of consciousness multi-subject brain dump.
As the Pawn Stars guy says, “Best I can do.”
Pandora’s Box
I’ve never seen anything like the geopolitical storm that’s going on this week. Venezuela, Iran, Russian Tankers, Mexican Cartels, Chinese diplomacy, freaking Greenland — what does it all mean?
The short answer is: I’m not sure, but I have an idea.
