#i need to make more trans graves art to bring the people together | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

schroedingersk8 · 4 years

Note

First of all I want to thank you for this beautiful and interesting blog you have. I can imagine you have many requests for dating you. How do you know which one is sincere with you and worthy?

Answering as Miss K8 Morgan, of K8Morgan.com

Hello, and thank you very much for reading and enjoying this interesting blog of mine! :) And my Twitter, too! And thank you for giving me this opportunity to #dommesplain a few things to my kind followers and readers…

But back to your question, out of the many requests for dating that I get, how do I know which one is sincere with me and worthy?

Well, it is a good question, but I would expand the categories in it further. How do I know those requests are

sincere,

realistic,

acceptable, and

worthy.

For better understanding of the selection process, let’s take a closer look at each category individually, and examine them in detail, shall we?

1. Sincerity

I have this saying, “no one is more sincere than a man firm in his delusions.” This is ever-so-applicable to each and every stranger from the Internet who has ever written to me with an inquiry to date me… And even to some guys making such inquiries after meeting me a few times, here and there. What can I say, I believe that all of them are most sincere in their desires to date me, or someone like me, or the “me” they imagine – and even more sincere in using their offer to date me as a means to avoid paying my session or social fees. Sincerity is not a problem here, Delusion – or lack of realism – is!

2. Realism

So how do I know when somebody is being realistic? I suppose in the same way you, or anyone else would know. It just requires some common sense. For example, no realistic message has ever started with, or included, the following:

“Hello, Mistress, I am a real no-limits slave. I will do anything you want [except booking a session and actually paying me for my time] but I think pro dommes only do things for money, but I am looking for someone to dominate me for free as part of a FemaleLed relationship” To this particular kind of drivel you can also add things like “…but I am still a virgin”, “…but I am still married” “…but I have never seen a Mistress before” and a plethora of similar verbal identifiers.

“… I have an excellent life, career and social circle here in the [insert any US city] and am able to provide you with a life in which you wouldn’t have to work.” This particular statement is more common than you think, and is ALWAYS US-based. Somehow they seem to believe that we, here in Europe, suffer greatly from our free health care, non-GM, locally grown wholesome food, the quaint culture and history of our countries, the public transport and rights to privacy protection. And it implies that because the author of it is so “overwhelmingly generous” – with his words – I am going to drop everything: my job, my family, my life, my friends, sell my cats to the Circus, and move to the US, to be his…mail-order pet-bride??? Someone with no job, no independence, no voting rights and with a precarious immigration status. To be bored to injuries, until death do us part? NO THANKS!

“…I am not rich and do not have a fancy car, a palace for a house and travelling for me more often includes a backpack and a tent – I appreciate simple things in life…” Say no more, bro! I, myself, appreciate finer things in life, the finer the better, and the only way you would see me with a backpack in a national park is if some psycho has killed me, stuffed me into that backpack and is carrying me to bury me in a shallow grave there. I like fancy cars, I like rare timepieces, I enjoy luxury travel, fine dining, fine wine, fine arts… As a matter of fact, I unapologetically love all things fanciful and complicated, and am not looking to change that any time soon.

“…and I probably do not make enough to have you as a GF, but I thought I’d try anyway.” Mate, I wish you didn’t. I hear your pain, I myself do not have enough to buy me a Lamborghini Aventador S. Not even a stinky Murcielago… And every morning I wake up, and I come to terms with this harsh, cruel, unfair reality. But never once have I written to a dealership to try to get one anyway! Luckily, you can still book a session to enjoy me for a limited amount of time, and I can still go to the dealership and stare to my heart’s delight…

“…I do not believe in having to pay to date…” What are you doing writing to me, then??? You might as well try and tell me that you believe Jesus loves me, and that Earth is flat… Keep your beliefs to yourself, mate, no one here has asked to hear them – or I swear to Jesus that loves me I will bring out my pie chart again!

These are some of the most common examples of my dating wannabes, but that list is truly endless and ever-growing. But what would, then, a realistic approach entail? I would say a situational self-evaluation study: what you do, where you live, how much free time and disposable income you have, how much of it are you willing to spend on dating, if we live in different cities how often can you travel, and how often you’d need me to travel, what you’d ideally like to achieve with this relationship, when you’d like it to start, and whether you prefer it as a permanent or a fixed term contract. There, no rocket science, is it?

3. Acceptability

But what, then, would be the acceptable terms for me to favorably consider an offer? I think the main factors would have to be:

geographical compatibility,

time strain, and

relationship goals.

It is not a secret that I am in my mid-30es, so I am old, lazy, and by now I have visited most places I had an interest in. I no longer get excited about having to take a trans-Atlantic flight to see someone for a date because “we are going to see DisneyWorld!!!!!”. I stopped being excited about it some…20 years ago.

There are only two places in the US I am interested in, one is New England – in autumn or in winter, and another is Portland, OR in spring/summer. Part of my education took place in New England (I do not specify where for privacy reasons, so do not ask), and I have spent some time in Oregon in later years, too, both those are two places very dear to my heart. The rest of the US: seen, done, not much interest to revisit. And very little interest to return to live in the US at this point in my life.

Same goes for SE Asia and Middle East. Would consider visiting, would not consider moving. Would not consider having to take 4 connecting flights to reach the final destination. Would not consider getting stoned to death for being your house guest.

If frequent travel is required on my part, then it will have to be somewhere within a 3hr flight radius from Paris. I do have my pet peeve places, i.e. London. If you are someone who has tried to get me to come to London for a tour before, you’d be familiar with my “not enough money in the world to make me suffer through that indignity!” rant. I have lived there for too long, as one can tell, and I only visit when I absolutely must, as in, for legal obligations, deaths or weddings. I am somewhat more ok with Edinburgh.

I do have my “preferred” list, too! This year it features Stockholm (love that northern gem and the Swedish boys!), Zurich, Frankfurt, Vienna, Salzburg, Paris and most of France (once the strikes are over!), and I would love to discover Tunisia, Morocco and Israel (as I have heard very good things), but I am open to suggestions as long as there are direct flights.

As for time restraints, then really anything above cumulative 2 weeks per month is unreasonable. I want my space, and I want my time. You should want yours! If you want to have an overly-attached live-in GF – look elsewhere. I am all for fun and intense time together inter-twinned with time dedicated solely to work. A “weekend relationship” would work very well for me, for example.

And when it comes to relationship goals, I understand that these change with time. And I think a relationship with me would be good for someone single, successful and busy with his own professional life, who wants to enjoy some time with kinky stimulating company without having to buy into societal pre-sets. However, if the end goal is to get married and have 3 kids – once again, I am not the Droid you are looking for.

I would say I am an ideal life companion for a social renegade and adventurer whose end goal is the same as his intermediate aspirations – joy, stimulating fun and absolution from boredom and trivia. I will be wasted on others…

4. Worthiness of the Offer.

And how, then, do I decide if the offer is worth it? Well, this subject is reminiscent of my earlier post, 15. Let Me Draw You A Pie Chart, and the arising Mathematical solutions. As with any relationship, I expect to be better off with it than without it. The offer will have to consider the amount of travel necessary, the cost of it, and the cost of my time. But overall, I would say, for a successful candidate with an interesting offer, the cost of weekend-dating me, per month, for 3 weekends, one of them long, would more or less be the cost of booking a long weekend Private Tour with me at my work rate. Which may seem like a steal and it is certainly a bargain in relative terms, but it is an eye-watering amount of money, for most people, and it is definitely not available to just anyone.

As the matters stand, tomorrow will be the first time in a year that I have agreed to hear out an offer from an existing client, and I do not know whether or not we will be able to reach a consensus on terms. Alas, such is #DommeLife

No one, under the penalty of the EU copyright laws, is allowed to use or reproduce my blog or individual posts, or even passages, in any way, shape or form, be it for Netflix series, Amazon books, or anything of the kind, regardless of the credit given. If you have any questions, you may contact me via K8Morgan.com

#dommesplaining #dommelife

13 notes · View notes

eponymous-rose · 5 years

Text

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E50 (Feb. 5, 2019)

Are any of us ever, really, on the internet?

This week’s guests are Taliesin Jaffe and Matt Mercer!

Brian shames Taliesin and Matt for (to be fair, accidentally) pouring coke in with their 22-year-old scotch. I am also physically pained by this. I may need a minute to compose myself. (@loquaciousquark: “I like how you’re Brian in this and I’m Matt.”)

Announcements: MAME drop airs three hours before Talks every week! Next week’s Between the Sheets will feature Will Friedle, and last night’s episode featured Quyen Tran! Critical Role will be taking this coming Thursday off, and Talks Machina will be taking next Tuesday off, but the show returns on Valentine’s Day!

But for now, let’s jump into Episode 50: The Endless Burrows

Stats for this week’s ep: Fjord got the 50th HDYWTDT in the 50th episode! The Roper’s crit on Caleb would have one-shotted him had Caduceus not reduced it by negating the crit. Spurt is the first on-screen guest player character death in the history of the show. Chris Perkins was at the table for 22 minutes and 15 seconds. Taliesin: “That’s an episode of network television right there.”

Chris was in town unexpectedly, and asked if he could come watch the show. Matt had written Spurt as an NPC character, just to see how the M9 would react to him. As he was driving to the studio, he realized it could be a lot of fun to let Chris play the character instead. Chris was on board, and Matt told him “You’ll know when to jump in,” and that was that. Nobody else had any idea he was going to be playing.

Caduceus is “in his element but out of his element” underground. “He’s looking for things to be excited about. Not a lot of things to be excited about here. It’s kind of awful.” Taliesin is trying to let him be a little more tactical, to just take care of things and do what needs to be done. “He’s on edge, but it’s a healthy edge.”

Matt clarifies that the party haven’t really emerged into the Underdark---they’re just skimming the edges of it. After spending a lot of time there in the last campaign, Matt didn’t necessarily want to bring it back there again.

Caduceus doesn’t see the group as being deceitful so much as just people who haven’t had the option of being open before. “He’s trying to make that option available.” Part of his training at the temple involved talking to people, helping them feel better, and helping them open up, so this is nothing new to him. Matt: “The solitary therapist.” Taliesin: “He really, really likes them.”

Spurt was originally intended to be a potential hindrance to keep the group from getting past the fire giants stealthily, if he wound up coming along with them. Turned out he... sort of removed himself from that equation.

On the parade of tragic backstories: “I don’t think Clay fully comprehends how bad this all is. I don’t know if he can comprehend art film horror. ‘That’s rough, man.’“ Matt: “He’s the Fred Tatasciore of the group.” Everyone is delighted by that comparison.

Matt was looking for opportunities to bring tragic backstories together. Taliesin calls it a “car crash” approach.

Why are D&D characters often so tragic? Taliesin: “It’s harder to make an interesting happy person.” Matt: “That’s true, but it’s not impossible.” He talks about how it’s natural to try to build something into a character’s backstory to propel them into the dangers of adventure. It’s also the opportunity for a player to work through something they’re going through out-of-game in a safe, cathartic way.

Caduceus is “still a little lanky”. Taliesin points out that this is to be expected because he’s a “vegan on the road”. There’s a long discussion about how the food he makes is “basically semi-firm tofu”.

Matt freaks out a bit about the unintentional callback... VM also being a mid-level party descending into the Underdark in search of a halfling and almost losing a rogue’s foot to lava. A lot of things had to go a particular way for that to happen, and he definitely wasn’t expecting it, especially since he was consciously trying to avoid familiar territory with the Underdark this time around.

Brian: “Which is funny, because the writers never even saw the first campaign.”

Taliesin points out that a trickster cleric is meant to be more of a toolkit, whereas a grave cleric build is more of a medkit.

Taliesin: “I’ve learned my lesson, and I have like three new character ideas ready to go, for this campaign or the next.”

There’s a lot of debate about where the hell Spurt got a skunk, which leads to the creation of the magical item Skunk Jug, which produces a skunk.

Caduceus enjoyed the romance novel, but it hadn’t “entirely clicked”. “He’s aware that: ‘Ah, they’re doing the hanky-panky stuff.’ It’s not really in his wheelhouse.”

Matt was very proud of the group coming up with their plan to get past the giant, and he felt a bit bad that Nott rolled so low (although he also loves the “magnificent clusterfuck” moments that are the hallmark of D&D). Brian: “That’s just a testament to how bad Sam is as a player.”

Caduceus took Warcaster as his next feat. “This seems to be in-character and useful.”

Fan art of the week: Nott running across the lava! Taliesin: “I want to play that game. That’s an 8-bit game I want to play.”

Brian asks Matt if the game’s about where he thought it would be at episode 50. Matt: “We’re charging into Xhorhas earlier than I was expecting. We need to get Ashley back soon.” (They’ll get her back in a couple months.) He also points out that some story beats have happened in the world in the group’s absence. He didn’t want to tailor the story’s trajectory to manufacture a big moment in episode 50. The group’s involvement in the Empire has been less than expected, but the direction they’re taking is much more direct than he was expecting. Taliesin points out that if the group had been Vox Machina, they would’ve involved themselves in the politics of the war instantly. Matt reiterates that he loves DMing in a reactionary way when the players push in an unexpected direction.

All Taliesin wants to do right now is fix that sword. He’s expecting it to be, like, a +1 cursed sword that just sings constantly and can’t ever be put down.

Taliesin: “I’m enjoying corralling all the kids.” Matt points out that he’s a much-needed influence on the group. Beau is the one that Cad considers to be his best friend. Dani: “You two can’t not be best friends in this show.” Cad thinks of Fjord as an angsty teen. He thinks Caleb is occasionally up his own butt a bit. He hasn’t figured out that Jester’s an adult yet. “’Oh, she’s happy and fine. Thank goodness someone is.’ And obviously she’s not, but he hasn’t figured that out yet.” He’s disappointed in Nott for the amount of drinking, although he hasn’t said it out loud.

Taliesin: “Cad thinks dangerous things have wisdom. Sometimes just walking up to something and asking is very useful. Sometimes you can avoid getting arrested in front of a coffee shop by offering the officer a hot pocket.”

Matt talks about how getting players to avoid combat is a teaching process that involves incentivizing out-of-the-box approaches. That’s in direct contrast to the more traditional grind-through-fights approach to D&D that was prevalent in the early editions, so it can be a process. He points out that you can talk to players out-of-game, or you can change your own plans to allow players a non-combat win even if it’s a bit of a stretch.

Taliesin and Matt both own a pair of chaps. As you do.

Taliesin’s personal inspiration for Cad’s staff was very Dark Crystal-driven. The crystal comes from the land he lives on. He dug up the crystal and made the staff himself; the beetles crawl into and out of the stick continuously.

Talks Machina: After Dog

Brian: "Are you relaxed right now?” Taliesin: “Yeah, there’s something in this Coke that’s really...”

Taliesin got started with eyeliner in high school with Vampire LARPing. He had a (mumblemumble)”furk idee” that got him into goth clubs early. Matt first learned to apply eyeliner for cosplay, then wore it for the first time outside of cosplay clubbing with Taliesin (they also had an industrial goth karaoke night).

Dumbest way they’ve managed to injure themselves? Matt was editing There Will Be Brawl’s final episode, which was a bit too overambitious and he was the only editor, and he didn’t sleep for 72 hours and threw his back out horribly from sitting too long. Taliesin was doing a student film as a teenager, and was asked to do a stunt that involved holding someone up to a moving train (Matt: “What the fuck, Taliesin?”). He had really long goth nails at the time and managed to break all ten of his nails off entirely doing that stunt. “I didn’t drop him into the moving train!” Matt: “That’s why unions are good.”

Brian: “I lit myself on fire with a molotov cocktail.” Yes, really, but he wasn’t badly burned. Taliesin: “Did you at least hit the man? Did it stick to him?” Brian: “It was not a man. It was a porta-potty.” Matt reiterates how grateful he was not to have grown up with cellphone video.

Matt: “So you’re saying...” Taliesin: “I was Emperor Norton, yeah.” Matt: “Aw. I’m proud of you!”

We all learned... a lot today. See you in two weeks for episode 100 of Talks Machina!

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long text post

395 notes · View notes

studyinglogic · 6 years

Text

Quotes on friendship as trust and understanding

Between Chuang Tzu and Hui Shi (translated by Burton Watson):

Chuang Tzu was accompanying a funeral when he passed by the grave of Hui Tzu. Turning to his attendants, he said, “There was once a plasterer who, if he got a speck of mud on the tip of his nose no thicker than a fly's wing, would get his friend Carpenter Shih to slice it off for him.

“Carpenter Shih, whirling his hatchet with a noise like the wind, would accept the assignment and proceed to slice, removing every bit of mud without injury to the nose, while the plasterer just stood there completely unperturbed. Lord Yuan of Sung, hearing of this feat, summoned Carpenter Shih and said, ‘Could you try performing it for me?’ But Carpenter Shih replied, ‘It’s true that I was once able to slice like that but the material I worked on has been dead these many years.’ Since you died, Master Hui, I have had no material to work on. There's no one I can talk to any more.”

Between Jackie Chan and his stunt team (Jackie Chan, ed. John R. Little and Curtis F. Wong, Contemporary Books, 1999, pp. 130-132):

My stuntmen fight with me because if you were to fight with me–no matter how good you are–we’re unfamiliar with each other. So, when you kick or punch toward me, I’ll be pulling away too soon, or maybe I’ll be worrying about getting hit and, believe me, I’ve been hit too much already. I’ve been hurt so many times from people who were not my stuntmen; my nose has been broken three times because I trust people; my tooth is gone because the person I was fighting with did not have proper control of his technique, at least not as well as he needed it to be.

I’m not saying that I still don’t make mistakes. My own stuntmen have hurt me, too, but that’s okay–I trust them–and that’s an accident. If you hurt me or fight with me, then I’m scared [that an accident could happen]. But with my stuntmen, the chances of my getting injured are greatly reduced. We can go full out–[throws punches and kicks] bam! bam! bam! bam! bam!–we know each other’s rhythm and timing!

If today, you find in America a very talented Caucasian stuntman, like you or, like anyone, to fight with me, it will be the worst-looking Jackie Chan fight scene of all time. Why? Because when you go to kick me, I’ll be already flinching and turning away from you. If the scene calls for you to hit me across the back with a stick, I’m already covering up and trying to get away from you because I’m really scared that you are going to hit me.

But my stuntmen can hit me right across the back with a club–boom!–and you can actually see it touch my shirt, and I’ll stay there and take it because I know that he’ll pull it just enough to prevent me from getting hurt. That’s what we want in fight choreography. So that is why I always bring my stuntmen with me wherever I go. We have that timing together.

In Rumble in the Bronx, when they were throwing bottles at me–boom! boom! boom!–I was able to trust them and tell them, “Come on, now, hit me right here on the arm with it,” and they will. But if you throw the bottle, I’d rather be ten miles away because if I stand there, I might move because we’re not used to each other–or you might not throw it where I’m expecting it–and I’ll get hurt.

So this is quite different from some of the other action stars who might use one set of stuntmen for one film, and then a second set of stuntmen for another film–how can you create realistic looking scenes this way? You must fully trust the people you are working with, and you have to know each other, anticipate each other and know each other’s rhythm and timing. This is essential.

You could put two good fighters together in a fight scene, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be entertaining to watch in a movie. In the movies, it’s different fighting than what you would see, say, in a martial arts tournament or a boxing match. There, it’s bam! bam! bam! And that’s a good fight to watch, too, they’re really fighting and it’s exciting. But in a movie, it’s all rhythm, and that requires a different type of fighting.

Between Bo Ya and Zhongzi Qi (Lieh-tzu, 57, trans. Eva Wong, Shambala, 2001):

Po-ya and Chung Tzu-Ch’i were good friends. Po-ya was a good lute player and his friend was an intuitive listener.

When Po-ya had his mind on the high mountains while he played, Chung Tzu-ch’i said, “I can feel the grandeur of the Great Mountains!”

When Po-ya thought about flowing waters while he played, his friend said, “How deep and wide are the Yellow River and the Yang-tze!”

It seemed no matter what was on Po-ya’s mind which he expressed in his music, his friend shared the feelings right away.

One time the two friends were wandering around in the north slopes of the Great Mountains when a rainstorm hit. They found shelter in a cave, and, waiting for the rains to subside, Po-ya took up his lute and played. Seeing the mist and rain hiding the mountains, Po-ya had a feeling of sadness and composed a piece about the unending rain and rising mist. Then he changed his mood and improvised a song that painted the splendor of an avalanche crashing down the mountains.

In every piece he played, Chung Tzu-ch’i could grasp Po-ya’s feel of the music without fail. His mood and state of mind were identical to those of the player.

Po-ya put down his lute and sighed, “This is more than my wildest expectations. You can read my mind by listening to my music. From now on, how can I hide anything from you?”

Po-ya and Chung Tzu-ch’i were not only good friends but kindred spirits. They could reach into each other’s minds not just because one of them was a good player and the other an intuitive listener. It was because they had dissolved the barriers that separated them from each other and the music was simply a bridge that allowed them to communicate their hearts and minds.

From Wikipedia:

Bo Ya was good at playing the qin. Zhong Ziqi was good at listening to the qin. When Bo Ya's will was towards high mountains in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, ‘How towering like Mount Tai!’ When Bo Ya's will was towards flowing water in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, ‘How vast are the rivers and oceans!’ Whatever Bo Ya thought of Ziqi would never fail to understand. Bo Ya said, ‘Amazing! Your heart and mine are the same!’ When Ziqi died, Bo Ya broke the strings [of his qin] and vowed never to play [the qin] again.

Between Guan Zhong and Bao Shuya (Lieh-tzu, 64, trans. Eva Wong, Shambala, 2001):

Kuan-chung did not let his success affect his friendship with Pao Shu-ya. Often he would say, “If not for Pao Shu-ya, I would not be where I am today. When we were children, I always took a larger share of everything we found. He didn’t argue with me and never considered me greedy because he knew I came from a poor family that never had enough of anything.

“When we made plans together for our little enterprises, Pao Shu-ya accepted my advice, but when things did not turn out, he never blamed me for stupidity, for he knew that success and failure often depend more on luck than effort. As a young man I served in the civil service three times and each time was fired from my job. Pao Shuya did not think I was worthless because he knew the opportunities were just not right for me.

“Three times I went into battle, and three times I escaped rather than face capture. Pao Shu-ya did not think that I was a coward because he knew I needed to look after my aging mother. In the final battle when the princes fought for the throne, when my fellow advisor chose to die with his lord and I surrendered, Pao Shu-ya did not consider my actions shameful, because he knew that heroics are sometimes folly. Therefore, although my parents gave me life and nourished me, it is Pao Shu-ya who really understands me.”

Two of these are mentioned in the Huainanzi, 19.7 (trans. and ed. John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, Columbia University Press, 2010):

When Zhongzi Qi died, Bo Ya broke the strings and destroyed his qin, knowing that in his times no one could appreciate his playing.

When Hui Shi died, Zhuangzi ceased to talk, perceiving that there was no one else with whom he could converse.

#Chuang Tzu #Hui Shi #Jackie Chan #Zhuangzi #Bo Ya #Lute #zither #qin #Guan Zhong #Bao Shuya #friendship #quote #quotes #friends #Huainanzi

15 notes · View notes

revmolly · 7 years

Text

Resist/Dance ~ An Easter Sermon

My first Easter sermon at First Church Berkeley! It included compulsory group dancing. And I still didn’t get tomatoes thrown at me!

Rev. Molly Baskette ~ First Church Berkeley UCC “ResistDance” ~ John 20:1-18 Sunday, April 16, 2017 ~ Easter Sunday

I know a lot of people named Jesus.

There is, obviously, the person who brings us together today: the radical, brown, refugee, outsider, preacher, prophet, child of God who could not stay dead no matter what they did to him.

But I know others. There is Jesus, our cheerful and capable janitor here at Beth El. And I just met another Jesus, the undocumented man I met at the sherriff’s office on Thursday, when Rev. Rachel and I went to advocate for the rights and dignity of our immigrant neighbors. Jesus is everywhere, if you have eyes to see.

When I graduated from seminary, my husband Peter and I moved to Mexico for a year, to work at an orphanage, the Casa San Jose. As problematic as we now know orphanages to be for child development, the Casa was a pretty happy place, all in all. I’m Facebook friends with many of the kids we tended back then. They are young adults now with families of their own, some of them in LA, with or without documents, making a life. And they unfailingly talk about the joy of that time in their childhood--how much fun they had, how they took care of one another, how in spite of the trauma and burdens they bore, they felt safe and loved.

When we lived there, there were 141 kids on site. And three of them were named Jesus. Clearly, we had a problem. How to differentiate between all the Jesuses? The eldest, a handsome teenager, got to be, simply, Jesus. The next youngest became Chuy, an affectionate nickname for Jesus in Mexican culture. And the youngest of all was 4-year-old Chuyito, little tiny Jesus. Chuyito was a dead ringer, I imagine, for the original model, childhood edition: curly brown hair, winsome brown eyes. He barely ever said a word, and always hung his head to the side, in curiosity or skepticism, as if anticipating the day when he would be debating the Pharisees.

Chuyito loved to crawl into my lap and stay there for hours, and I loved him there, because we were both pretty homesick and lonely, and when life is hard you need a soft place.

My favorite memory of Chuyito is not from that year, but a couple years later. When Peter and I left the Casa to go home to the US, we discovered we were homesick for Mexico, and so we’d travel back with a group from whatever church we were inhabiting, and give them a chance to fall in love with the kids the way we had. On our first trip back, our group brought a backpack for each of the hundred-plus kids, stuffed to the brim with clothes, art supplies and toys, and handed them out on our last night together. The boys, including Chuyito, put their backpackson immediately and refused to take them off. Then we strung Christmas lights, rented a DJ and a speaker, and had a giant dance party on the patio. Bankers and little boys do si doed and swung one another wildly to salsa music and Madonna alike. Chuyito, now a full-on boisterous 7-year-old, danced like a maniac for hours with his backpack on, until his movements finally slowed, until he fell asleep, face down on the tile. With his backpack on. Even Jesus needs to rest.

I have a friend, a UCC minister, who suffers from pretty debilitating depression. You’d never know it. She seems happy enough, and is one of the funniest people I know. But her depression has almost ended her marriage; it has hobbled her parenting; it caused her more than once to reconsider her career as a person who has to be hopeful as a profession.

My friend told me something once I’ll never forget. There are times when medication doesn’t do its job, when prayers fail her, when nothing is working to shift the great gray elephant of depression that sits on her soul. And this is what she does in those moments: she changes one thing. Just one thing. “If I’m lying down, I get up. If I’m standing up, I sit down. If I’m inside, I go outside. If I’m outside, I go inside. If I’m alone, I get with people, if I’m with people, I get alone. If I can change one thing, then I can change more things. If I can change more things, then perhaps I can change everything--or, God working in me can, anyhow.” All she has to do is make one little movement.

I myself have never suffered from a lasting or truly devastating depression. To be perfectly annoying about it, being happy has always come pretty easily to me. But this year has tested me severely. Some mornings, including this week, the news has flattened me to the bed, immobilized me as surely as a deep depression. Pick your poison: Syrian children sarin gassed, America making mushroom clouds in Afghanistan, North Korea testing ICBMs, flying coach while Asian on United. Health care under threat, public schools under threat, the rights and lives of immigrants and refugees, black folks, Muslims, queer and trans under threat. We don’t know who will live and who will die before this bitter cup has passed from us. All this against a backdrop of winter rain, such needed rain but a rain that now feels like it will never end, a perma-rain that chills the soul as well as the body, a new and possibly forever climate-chaos abnormal.

I’m trying to remember that this is an Easter sermon.

If I often feel despair these days, I who have every advantage, how must it be for those who don’t share my privileges? Those who face actual and immediate threats to their lives? The undocumented, the brown-skinned, the broke? I have my whiteness to shield me from ICE and the cops, my paycheck to shield me from poverty. I even have a faith to shield me from sorrow if I choose it, to hide in a La La Land of Easter joy where everything turns out all right in the end.

And yet I have met so many people, who no matter how systems and circumstances might conspire to kill them, have mastered the art of defiant joy. I guess that’s what you do when people want you dead--staying alive is your only countermove.

And Jesus, himself broke and brown and unhoused, is the best example of living big and beautifully in the face of violence and death. I’m always amazed by his capacity for resurrection. Jesus made a decision. He could have stayed dead. He’d discharged his duty to the human family. He taught us everything he knew, offered us an entirely new way of being human, he loved us hard in spite of our frailties, and in return we rejected, abandoned and crucified him. Who would sign up for more life in the face of that?

I confess that sometimes it just seems like a whole lot less WORK being dead. If you’ve had a near death experience, or even surgery under general anesthesia, you know what I’m talking about. There is something truly compelling and even seductive about the idea of slipping away, into a place beyond pain, beyond suffering. A place of eternal rest that no fear or sarin gas can touch.

Jesus lived through the worst we could do to him; he reached that moment of peaceful surrender, and he made a decision to come back.

And he didn’t do it by half-measures, either. He didn’t shamble out of the grave, explaining himself. He didn’t try to stay under the radar to avoid the authorities. He came back in a BIG way. We cut him down but he leapt up high. He made resurrection into a Broadway show tune, complete with the choreography of hapless disciples running all over the stage.

The early church fathers came up with a word to describe the Trinity: perichoresis, literally, circle dance. They understood God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit as movement, constant flow from the beginning of Creation. And being dead did not exempt Jesus from his place in the dance.

Did you know that some researchers at Oxford did a study? They taught a group of volunteers, each in private, the same dance moves. Then they taught another group, individually, all different dance moves. They noted everyone’s pain tolerance levels by putting extra-squeezy blood pressure cuffs on them. [who comes up with these studies? I have no idea] Then they set them all free in the same room, on a dance floor, with headphones on.

The ones who had learned the same dance began to sync their movements. The ones who knew different moves, or heard different music, each did their own thing. And when the experiment was over, they measured each one’s pain tolerance again. The ones who had moved in sync were able to stand significantly more pain than before. But the ones who heard different songs, or were taught different dance moves to the same music, experienced either no change in pain perception, or actually felt more pain than they had at the start. Perichoresis, dancing in sync, had legitimately made the synched dancers able to bear more pain.

Of course, they didn’t control for people who find any kind of dancing in public painful. :)

Dance is the body’s jazz hands for the soul. Dance is God on the move. We dance our babies around the kitchen. Practice the moves to Thriller in our bedroom for hours. Dance is the mosh pit, the all night rave, Asian grandmas at Zumba class--all of them just as much church as where we are right now. Dance is the 7-year-old Mexican orphan tearing it up on a tile patio; a 3 year old in the aisles at church who will not be stopped but just HAS to dance to every hymn. Dance is Ghost Ship, the young ones gathering before the fire that night, ready to worship at the altar of joy, and now dancing at home with God; and dance is this community, today on Easter, rising from our own ashes.

Dance is resurrection: the mom in chemo doing a three minute dance party around the living room in defiance of her white blood cell count. Dance is a flash mob practicing for the Climate March, to show how the Earth will rise up against us if we don’t rise up for Her.

Dance is what we do when we have too many feelings and not enough words. Dance don’t cost a thing--it belongs to everybody without regard for ability to pay. To dance is to let God move through us, reanimate us no matter what grim reapers are haunting us, the perichoresis that began before everything, the music still playing, healing us, body and soul.

Dance is THIS GUY. To dance is to laugh in the face of death, and all its minions. They have not won--whoever “they” are--if we can still dance.

Every day, someone, somewhere, faces the powers of death. But then they change one thing. They make one little move. They put down the bottle. They call the therapist, the DV hotline, the immigration lawyer. They pack a bag. They write their name on the application. If they are lying down, they get up. They join the dance.

youtube

1 note · View note