The Golden Ass

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you…You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. – James 5: 1, 5-6 (NRSV)

In Part 1, I presented the Epst&!n files as a presumed story of the creation of the world by a cabal of rich, free men who control everything. And, I submitted that, as Christians tasked with immersion in and living out of the script for the world we call the scriptures, the properly ordered way to name and frame the story of the Epst&!n files is as one of child sacrifice. I argued that such a framing was important for three reasons:

First – the larger picture by which we understand who we are, and how we know our knowing in the first place. We are not the ground of our own being, and we are not left to figure out what’s going on by ourselves. To recognize the image of a cabal of free men who control everything as a shared fantasy is to properly order the relationships between mortality and divinity, and it is thus also to properly order our attention.

Second - Theology offers explanations of things we’re otherwise left either curiously wondering or interminably and reactively furious about. “Why is nothing happening? What the h&ll is going on!?” “Why are they speaking as though this doesn’t matter?” “Why is no one hearing the voices of the women?” The very need for such questions is because of the story in which we’re all immersed together. Thousands were raped. We’re all immersed. We all live in a world governed by ritual sacrifice of the chaos-enemy by the victorious hero who is himself fashioned in the image of fantastical idols that depict an unknown, powerfully terrifying, and functionally divine Master from above. Not only that, but the body, blood, guts, and soul of the silenced and vanquished enemy is the constitution of this world created by human hands, in which we’re all immersed together.

Third – how do we respond? Is there a world made not by human hands? If so, what is it like? If the story of the Epst&!n files is one of child sacrifice that creates and orders our world, what do we do? Ironically, it is the sacrifice of Isaac that teaches us how to respond in this moment. We need guidance, and it actually requires revelation. And, the revelation itself invites us into our response. That response is movement from terrifyingly shamed silence to the hearing of the Silence of wondrous awe that responds to the Word spoken. Of course, this means we will then, in the end, find ourselves living in a new world, hearing voices we otherwise could not, speaking a new language, and walking a radically different path.

HOW DO WE RESPOND?

We have seen that the answer to the question, “What the h&ll is going on?” is ritual child sacrifice, and in the specific context of a sex cult. We have also seen that naming it this way orients us inside the ancient script we call the scriptures that name and characterize the world we inhabit and that script the action that happens in it. When faced with the horrifically terrifying reality to which the Epst&!n files point, many of us want not only a language that gives account but also actual accountability. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that’s what we want when and if we actually do face the reality rather than deflecting from, covering over, or ignoring it. And, we want the abuse to stop. We want sanity and liberation from the false Master. We all want accountability, but the story itself is a linguistic account. The question is, what story? To name it child sacrifice rather than simply or only “abuse,” or perhaps even r@pe, is to answer this question. It is to place and thus find ourselves inside the tradition with which, if we are Christian, we identify.

And, because we are not the authors of the script, because humans are not and do not occupy the central position of and in the cosmos – because we neither make choices as freely as we imagine nor control outcomes as our vain fantasies would have it - to name the story in which we find ourselves, to orient ourselves in it itself constitutes a response. To name our position as that of the responsive rather than presuming to take up or grasp for positions of either the generative mover or final authority is itself a response to what we see happening. We are thus left with the question of what happens inside that story we inhabit when the Master’s desire for victorious ascent comes to the moment and place of fulfillment.

Collage: Top two photos of artist Nick Cave’s “Soundsuit” (photos by author). Bottom Left Window of Michelangelo’s Campidoglio, in Rome, Italy (credit mblage on IG). Bottom Right: Detail of Filippo Brunelleschi’s Cupola atop his infamous “Duomo” of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence, Italy (credit gogenevieve on IG).
When I visited Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art in Chicago in June of 2022 and saw Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, the curator directed my attention to Cave’s own story and response. It turns out to itself sound out to us as an echo and extension of the story we are here inhabiting and narrating. Cave’s Soundsuit is a kind of icon that helps us enter his story, to see the world he sees, put ourselves in the position of the character he plays, and to begin to learn the language he speaks. The museum curator teaches us that Cave’s Soundsuit came about as a response to the 1991 beating of Rodney King. As Cave was sitting in a Los Angeles park contemplating what happened, he starting gathering sticks. As the curator explains tells Cave's story:

“He later sewed the twigs into a garment envisioned as a suit of armor: a means of obscuring his identity as a queer Black man for protection while paradoxically amplifying his radical otherness. The origin of the name 'Soundsuit' came from the experience of wearing the garment. According to Cave, 'Once I put it on and moved in it, I realized that was the protest - the sound it made. In order to be heard, you gotta’ make sound.'”

First, notice that the mirroring double images of protecting and making sound depicted by the “garment” are those of a person taking up a character in the action of a story set in a world characterized by sacrificial violence by presumed heroes with fantasies of ultimate victory. As Pete Hegseth said it: "The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.” Of course a warrior who twists the image of Christ into its opposite is also tasked with the sacrificial slaughter of shamed enemies.

By contrast, the sound of the twigs rustling with Cave’s movement is the sound of his existing. And, in the context of his story, of our story, this sound appears on the horizon as not that of his slaughter, his silencing, or his shaming. It is not the immobilized silent scream of the shamed child locked in the dungeon of a Tower and penetrated by a sequence of banal men who, by and in the very act of penetrative violence, presume to render themselves representatives of the heroically victorious Master from above. The sound of Cave’s existing is the mirrored double to the tearing apart of his flesh with the butcher knife Abraham raised to heaven before the angel spoke. Cave’s Soundsuit is not the sound of burning flesh bound to an altar constructed in devotion to a falsely honored divinity Abrham didn’t know was false until the moment he heard the sound of all existing speaking.

In the same way that one can “hear” Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, these Italian architectural details, when they appear before you “here,” “in person,” very clearly and viscerally register (also) to the ear. That is partly because of a vicarious, formal association with the ear of the hearer. The form of these seashells is analogically similar to that of the human ear. In each of these instances in which we are invited to receive the sound of the Word of what appears before us, our hearing draws us upward. It edifies us. Edifying speech starts with hearing. Here, to hear and respond is the opposite of reaching and grasping for ascent. Architectural wonders from the contingencies of our Christian history and tradition thus themselves also appear as edifying guides. When we hear the sound of the angel’s speech, mirror images of penetrating death and unbinding liberation meet in their true center together with the image of Isaac resurrected, with the sound of rustling twigs, with the seeing and hearing of a vanquished teenage girl decades later vindicated into a life of dignified speech that edifies.

Such miraculously wondrous turns towards life require revealed guides. Because we are not transcendent individuals whose choices are not as free as we imagine and whose desired outcomes cannot ultimately or finally be controlled, because the elite cabal who controls everything really is taken up in and by vain fantasies, we all need such guides. And Cave’s story appears here for us as a guide that directs us towards the story we need to guide us. Abraham’s “Here I am” is also Cave’s existing. Abraham’s naming of his presence in response to the angel’s speaking his name aloud is Cave’s hearing the edifying truth of God rather than the lie of shamefully dark fantasies who make empty promises. And, as Abraham’s “Here I am” refrain makes space for the angel to respond to Abraham’s response by inviting him to hear and see the truth in the silent cessation of sacrificial violence, so also has Cave heard the full sound of the Word of Life. To hear the truth that this place and moment when and where “the Lord sees” is at once also the place and moment when and where the child victim of ritual sacrifice is seen and heard rather than defeated and slaughtered is to turn from the shamed silence of her blood’s cries heard from the ground to the wondrous awe of silent adoration rising to the heavens.^[1]

IT IS REVELATION TO WHICH WE RESPOND WITH SEEING AND HEARING IN AND OF A NEW WORLD

To have made this turn, to have responded to the speech of the revealed angel who reveals reality, then, is for the site and moment of sacrificial slaughter to appear instead as the site of new creation. This is to say that, for Abraham to go from having imagined the divinity who appeared to him as a terrifying Master from above who demands child sacrifice to obtain blessings of life and provision to, instead, seeing and hearing the true God of Israel who sees and hears, who is present with us in the appearing, is for Abrham to have been created anew. It is for Abraham to not only become a new person but to be created again. And, because creation is the domain of divinity rather than of the mortally human, Abraham’s turn that is also his creation is for us the disclosure that we are not the creators but are vulnerably in need of a guide. “His creation” here, of course, has a double meaning. His own creation is not his own but is his having been created. As we share his story with him, it also becomes our own creation. It tuns out that the man who crafts girls into the image of a chaos-serpent vanquished by a heroically victorious Master was telling the wrong creation story.

In the wondrous awe of this place and moment, we are given the gift of seeing that the guide we so vulnerably need is actually the Lord who sees and is seen. Our given guides are thus extensions into and through the course of historical time of the first guide. If we might be swept up into the contingencies of history by an elite cabal who controls everything, the Lord appears before us at history’s climax as also said history’s beginning and telos. Inside this beginning and telos, all such contingencies appear and find their place. This is to say that even the elite cabal who practices child sacrifices finds their proper place in the world atop Mt. Moriah. We are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts.

Christ’s history climaxed on the same Mt. as Abraham’s. In our sharing in the stories of history’s vulnerable contingencies, that place and moment becomes the crux of our story, too. In Nick Cave’s Soundings, and in edifying architectural echoes of hearing and being heard, we hear echoes of the angel speaking. The guide of guides gathers our other guides up into himself for the pleasure of helping us to see, for the delight of revelatory gift. We are given to see that the gift is pleased to reveal himself at the very site and moment of slaughter.

By “pleased,” of course, I do not mean to say that he is pleased with the slaughter. Quite the opposite. He is the reason for Isaac’s resurrection from death’s binding. I mean to say, then, that His love is revealed to be such that he desires presence with us even in and at the site and moment his own slaughter. The site of Isaac’s resurrection is, after all, also the site of the slaughter of God in the flesh. When he appears again, we thus already know how to recognize him. We know we hear his voice again as the Epst&!n files appear before all to see. We know this, because he himself has been pleased to have revealed it to us. “Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’” – Gen. 22: 7 (NRSV)

SACRIFICIAL CRIES OF THE VANGUISHED AS ECHOES OF THE VOICE OF GOD

As the logic and flow of Jesus’ brother James’ words implies, it is Isaac, yes, but also Christ himself who is seen and heard in “the cries of the harvesters [that] have reached the ears of the Lord” (James 5:4). The presumed Master is being tested in a trial. The revelation is his trial itself. The girls victimized by penetrating shame are being vindicated by the true Master whose penetrated suffering is itself their endured purification. It is at this place and moment when and where we are given to see that he makes our sacrificial lifeblood his own. That it is He himself who is revealed here in the hearing of a sacrificed girl’s cries is why James’ very next words in chapter 5 of his letter – these particular words directed to the rich cabal of elites who fancy themselves the masters who presume to control everything - are: “You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you” (James 5: 5-6). Of course, this framing of girl sacrifice implies that it was not the Father who slaughtered the child on Golgotha. Instead, it was the fantastical idol of heroic victory by way of sacrificial blood.

If we are asking who plays which parts in the story, we do not see God’s solidarity with the oppressed. We instead are gifted with disclosure of God as the sacrificed child itself. In this version of the story, however, the central actor of the story does not slaughter another but submits to it. As Abraham and Nick Cave have responded to this image that appears as radically other in a world that seems to be constituted by the shameful silence of vanquished enemies sacrificially slaughtered by a heroic victor, so we, too, are invited. The invitation is life into a new world, one radically other from the world created by fantastical idols. For us to accept the invitation of life in a new world born of Revealed disclosure is to itself, like Abaham, respond as one created anew. And, to respond as one created anew in a new world is to have heard the voice of a God revealed to be radically other than the Master towards whom fantastical dreams reach and grasp.²

IN A NEW WORLD, WHAT PATH FORWARD DO WE TAKE?

To know what this response is, we need only to read and hear the language of the story. And, in the story, we find the prophetic forbidding of child sacrifice. God’s act of gifted disclosure constitutes revelation of a divinity whose act of creation in the moment and place of his own sacrifice constitutes the end towards which all child sacrifice moves and in accordance with which all child sacrifice ceases. The divine language that speaks the creation of a new Abraham is also the creation of a new world. Abraham’s birth is not only of himself but into a different world. As Isaac was resurrected into the new world that had come into order by the voice of a newly-revealed divinity, so is the sacrificial girl who was bound up to horse stalls in the dungeon of the banal’s Tower, the child who had previously only heard shaming insults. As Abraham is born into a new world, so is she if she shares in his story with him. To wit -

In the story, we also find the creator’s divine command to live along a trajectory that makes appear the revealed Lord who sees and is seen rather than demands sacrificial slaughter in order to obtain blessings of life and provision. Accountability at a systematic, institutional level is not the answer but is itself a response. This is to say that, if we manage to find ourselves in a world and a moment when and where true accountability happens, then we can know it to be a revealed response rather than a free choice whose outcome any of us accomplished or made happen. We know this, because we’ve already been given the Revelation. Epst&!n and Trump’s idolatrous fantasies that demand sacrificial blood not only give shape to but constitute a Mt. Moriah moment we are all now inhabiting. Many will of course blindly continue the slaughter. These devoted ones will continue to speak in confused languages as though they live in another world of their own making. As Abraham heard and responded in sacred awe that gives sight of a new world, we are also so invited. Who else will accept the invitation of and to wondrous awe? How about the vindicated girl?

We are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts. Of course, then, the ceasing of slaughter on Mt. Moriah has profound implications for how we all relate to one another in everyday life. Adoration that rises to the heavens also takes up the form of devotion along a path. To inhabit a world created by the language of a divinity whose speech reveals his own caring presence of seeing and hearing is to relate to one another with the caring presence of seeing and hearing. And, if we ask about the ceasing of the ritual of child sacrifice in the specific context of an elite sex cult, then profound implications again arise, this time in everyday relations between men and women, or between men and girls. To inhabit a world created by the language of a divinity whose speech reveals his own caring presence of seeing and hearing among men and women, men and girls, means not only the cessation of ritual humiliation of the chaos-enemy but, instead, mutual relating in enactment of edifying care in response to the hearing and seeing of the One whose seeing and hearing creates a world made of faithful Love Incarnate. This is to inhabit the wondrous awe of Mt. Moriah. To simply love and dignify appropriately according to the decreed reign of properly ordered relating in mutual hearing and seeing in a given circumstance is not the final account. But it is itself to give an account of the story of the Epst&!n files. Who can give the final account? We expectantly await the Word again.

 

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. 2 Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure during the last days. 4 Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. 7 Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. – James 5: 1-8 (NRSV)

Dream Building Ensemble, by William Christenberry, 2001.

One person who appears repeatedly in the Epst&!n files is Steve Bannon. One of the revelations there is their mutually bound relationship to shared goals. While Epst&!n helped Bannon shape our larger shared environment in the image of his far-right populist project, Bannon worked to rehab Epst&!n’s public image by means of a film production (ref. here). Do note the mirror images presented to us by, on the one hand, Bannon’s description of the media’s exposure of the truth about Epst&!n to public view as a “sophisticated op” and, on the other, the film projector extending Epst&!n and Bannon’s shared image for the world out into it.

What the doubling in that mirror presents to us is that, while thousands have been r*ped by Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epst&!n's sex cult of sacrificially ritual shaming, all of us are immersed in their environment of abuse and lies. Each of us is left to respond or react in some way, whether towards healing and presence in grace and truth or towards dissociation that mirrors the abusive violence. We are not all only witnesses to Epst&!n’s child abuse. We are immersed in a cosmos made by attentive devotion to sacrificially violent idols made by human hands.

I want to clarify and specify, however, that abuse is only one term for what's happening right now. Abuse is a psychological or neurobiological term, as well as a sociological one. In theological terms, however, the reason I referred to it as a sex cult of sacrificially ritual shaming is because what we're all witnessing by giving attention to the very public news of the Epst&!n files is child sacrifice. I take framing it in such terms to be important for a number of reasons:

First – the larger picture by which we understand who we are, and how we know our knowing in the first place. We are not the ground of our own being, and we are not left to figure out what’s going on by ourselves. Second – story and framing. Theology offers explanations of things we’re otherwise left either curiously wondering or interminably and reactively furious about. It helps us interpret what’s happening. Third – response. What to do? The sacrifice of Isaac teaches us how to respond in this moment. We need guidance, and it actually requires revelation. And, the revelation itself invites us into our response.

WHO ARE WE?

Metaphysics and epistemology. It is true that we're immersed in a patriarchal environment of male violence. But these men are not the evil. They are men, and they are utterly banal. Trump is literally sh!ttin in diapers in the White House on national television. The evil is not flesh and blood. The masks and gowns they wear carry a terrifying brightness, but the eye holes have always struck me as strangely disjunctive for a reason. It is merely a mortal man under the hood. The wrestling with which are tasked, however, is against principalities and powers. Yes, it turns out there really is an elite cabal pulling strings. But the cabal itself is governed and engulfed by vain fantasies whose promises only make for destruction. The scriptural name given to these fantasies is idolatry.

Portrait, by William Christenberry, 1983.

This is not to decleave the evil from the world we inhabit. It is not to separate soul and body, world and spirit. It is to properly order the things and categories to which we give our attention. It is thus to properly direct our attention. To wit -

WHERE ARE WE?

Why is our response to public disclosure of the Epst&!n files is so woefully insufficient? Why is nothing happening? What the h@ll is going on? How is this being swept under the rug!? Why does it seem like authorities speaking as though they live in another world? Why are the regime’s supporters imitating their same language? Where are the voices of the victims? If it is true that we are immersed in an environment of male violence, it is also true that the truth is being actively covered up. If it is true that these men are utterly banal, they are also actively working to envelop their deeds in darkness. They have agency, and they are using it. Predominant secular categories offer pathologized explanations as to why, but I take these to be too neat and tidy, and with answers and solutions that are too easily and freely chosen. Secular political explanations of partisanship or ideology follow a similar pattern that churns out simplicity, ease, and free choices. These men have agency, but their choices are not the whole story. And, their actions are hardly "free." All who sin are bound to sin.

Abraham ascended Mt. Moriah to offer his only child to what he had understood since he was himself a child to be a powerful Master from above whose full truth was terrifyingly cloaked in darkness on the other side of the horizon of what can be sensed by humans. Abraham's offering was bound to the altar in order to obtain blessings of fruitfulness and life from this terrifyingly powerful Master. And, it was said by all that this Master brought the world into order by way of sacrificial slaughter of its enemy and rival, who was depicted as a chaos-serpent.^[1] This was the language of Abraham’s ascent up Mt. Moriah. The Master's Law was violent victory over chaos, and the means of victory was blood sacrifice. Not only that, but the language of the land from which Abraham sojourned decreed that the shamed and vanquished enemy-chaos was what the Master then used to make the ordered world Abraham inhabited. This is to say that the slaughter of blood sacrifice constituted the creation of the world, and to practice the child's immolation was not only appeasement of the Master but participation in said Master's original and ongoing act of creatively bringing order out of chaos in the world.

If we frame Epst&!n’s, Bannon’s, and Trump’s banality inside Abraham’s ascent up Mt. Moriah, then, some key things come to light that are otherwise hidden. These men don’t know what they are doing. They have been on a trajectory towards appeasing an unknown and terrifyingly powerful Master since they were themselves children. As Abraham was born into, formed inside, and came from a land of figures towering towards the heavens, so, too, did Epst&!n and his cabal. That is why William Christenberry’s “Portrait” makes clear that the fantasies of bright light in which these idols clothe themselves take a similar form to that of the Babylonian Towers that dominate the horizon of the world we all inhabit together. Our character takes form in relation to the forms of our environment.

As Abraham was bound to terror of darkness from the other side of the horizon, so is the cabal of banality. Abraham was once a child in a similar position to Isaac’s. So were they. As Abraham sought blessings of fruitfulness and life – sought “the precious crop from the earth” (James 5: 7) - so do these banal men grasp for it in the only way they know. “The only way they know” is why the term “bound” is key here. They are bound to the only confused language they’ve ever known. They are thus also bound to the world that language decrees and references. As I said, their choices are not as free as we tend to imagine.

Why we imagine it that way is itself a matter of our own binding, a matter of the language we speak in the world we inhabit. Many point to downstream effects of the US’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as key triggers to our current populist moment that’s characterized by fears of cultural loss attributed to mass immigration. Those wars being retributive responses to 9/11, it makes sense that our fears of loss are not at all exclusively but definitively from and of Muslim “sand n!**ers.” The story of the current moment, then, cannot be told without accounting for the fact that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, too, were religious acts of child sacrifice enacted at systematic scale. Thus, that we imagine our choices to be less free than they really are is a matter of our own binding to a world and its storied language is precisely part of why this theologically storied framing of creation and cosmology is important. Brian Tyler Cohen posted: "BREAKING: Ghislaine Maxwell PLEADS THE FIFTH when asked about Donald Trump." To be clear, the specific question was whether Trump ever engaged in sexual activity with anyone introduced to him by Maxwell or Epstein. The presumably divine story by which St. Paul refers to our shared environment as “the world” was created and brought into order should not be a breaking surprise.

Besides the obvious need for accountability, part of why we are frustrated in this Epst&!n (and Trump) moment that “nothing is happening” is because we imagine that we freely choose everything that’s happening. If we are confused by the regime’s language, it is because the languages of this place in which we are all immersed together are themselves confused. I do not say this to downplay the need for accountability but to explain why it appears toweringly impossible. The language of Abraham’s ascent up Mt. Moriah is a confused language of the Land of Towers from which he is sojourning. Because the languages of this place are confused, the place’s purposed end can never see its completion. That’s why the handing over of Iraq to their own governing structures was not only so awkward but violent. It’s also why the story of withdrawal from Afghanistan was not only so confused by characterized by contested stories told by warring parties who speak different languages. The current “sophisticated op” of the populist far right will likely see a similar end.

The terrifying Master from above, after all, resides at the unreachable head of the Tower. And, this divine, all-powerful Master is the first hero. His violence establishes the way the world works. His is not the rule of law but Law and Order. The reason why 70% of those rounded up by ICE having no significant criminal background is irrelevant here in this environment is because of the story being told in the first place by that language of Abraham’s ascent up the mountain of the world. In their banality, Bannon, Epst&!n, and Trump are all seeking to ascend towards an ensemble of dreams closer to the Master. Like the rest of us, Epst&!n and friends want to know what is, if not for their cultic rituals, otherwise cloaked in the tempting brightness of terrifying darkness.

It is no wonder, then, that their deeds are mirrors to and extensions of their divinity’s sacrificial violence that brings order out of chaos in the world. It is no wonder that their wonder is consumed by images of enemy bloodshed, of sacrificial violence. As Tawny Dragon said it on Threads: “It's f*cking wild we need a dead man's emails to believe the testimonies of 1000 women.” The women and the dead man are not even speaking the same language. Interestingly, Ms. Dragon also posted this: "They don't care about child sacrifice because the god that they worship killed his own son and called it love." I, of course, don’t take that to be what happened at Golgotha. Ms. Dragon does, however, seem to know her role in the story the dead man tells about himself, about the world, and about her. I am confident she knows the dead idol’s story far better than I, in fact. To the point of her knowing, the chaos-serpent is often depicted as a Dragon. The story of St. George slaying the fire-breathing dragon to return the village to proper order didn’t appear out of thin air.

The reason it seems “nothing is happening,” then, is because something is happening. There may very well be an “Epst&!n class,” but it was the children of the lower classes who were sacrificed among ancient Israel’s neighbors, too. To call it a class war is to place ourselves in a different story and to thus invite a different response. The story on which Gen. 11 and 22 constitute a commentary is that the shamed and vanquished enemy-chaos that the Master used to make the ordered world Abraham inhabited appear before all of us is being made to appear before all of us by those who are bound in devotion to the One who invites shaming humiliation of enemies. This invitation is commanded by the Master by not only doing it first but by creating the world with it. We seem to be enveloped in darkness, because the “sophisticated op” of a projected world we inhabit is constituted by the darkness of a sacrificially vanquished enemy’s shame.

Yes, this is to say that 14 year-old girls tied up and blindfolded, shamed and insulted in horse stalls in underground dungeons, bound ones who are expected to “perform” well enough to obtain the blessed privilege of instead being r*ped upstairs in a higher level of the Tower (ref. here) represent the shamed and humiliated chaos-enemy who the Master not only sacrificially vanquished but who constitutes the very world we inhabit. “Why is nothing happening? What the h&ll is going on?” “Why does the language spoken by authorities not seem to give a proper account of this?” “Why are women’s voices being unheard and distrusted?”

Here, we also have to remember that greed is idolatry. And, the victim is not the greedy one but their resource. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre, however, “Pleonexia, a vice in the Aristotelian scheme, is now the driving force of modern productive work.”^[2] The Greek term pleonexia, as it is used here, refers to the insatiable desire to not only acquire but accrue what is rightfully due to another. We are all tempted to such idolatrous blessings whose bestowal requires sacrificial violence. Abraham wasn’t the only one who desired ascent. We all inhabit and participate in the same world. We have from the beginning. The elites might be pulling the strings, but they are no more in control than you or I. Thousands have been r*ped. All of us are immersed. We are immersed in a world and the language spoken in it.

That’s why Bannon wants to envelop voting polls with ICE agents in November’s mid-term elections. As he said it: “You’re damn right. We’re gonna’ have ICE surround the polls come November. And, you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want. But we will never again allow an election to be stolen.” The Big Lie is not just a lie. It is participation in our collected testing by a fantastical idol that demands blood sacrifice. The lie is more than a lie. It is a whole script they tell, inhabit, and live. Their Master is Ba’al. Or, perhaps we can call him Molech. Bannon is his servant and prophet. Epst&!n was his priest. Trump is his kingly representative. These idolatrously deceitful fantasies cover over their banality. Their Master continues working. Bannon, Trump, and Epst&!n are not the only ones who theology frames as violently heroic victors and rule of law names criminals. But we are all immersed in the same world. We are all intimately familiar with the language. It may very well be a system, but first it’s a story. Many refer to it as the scriptures.

The Epst&!n files suggest that a newborn baby was perhaps thrown off Trump’s yacht into Lake Michigan, and that a limousine driver was about to pull over, end the trip, and give Trump the beating the driver felt he deserved because he was so disgusted by hearing Trump, while talking to a “Jeffrey,” threaten to murder a girl he had r*ped. We’ve all seen potential evidence that Virginia Giuffre was threatened with binding not only herself but her family to the terror of death’s darkness *** like another girl who had been disappeared off the edge of the horizon beyond which humans cannot sense or know. These are not just the worst of what we know. They are not aberrations. Nor are they only data points that demand further investigation rather than cover in shame of darkness. They appear as graven images of the logical terminus of a linguistic script that shapes a world inside of which we’re all immersed.

"Quiet piggy" "You are the worst reporter. CNN has no ratings because of people like you. *turns away from the woman* You know, she’s a young woman. *turns back to the woman* I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. But I’ve known you for ten years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face…” Both were Trump’s responses to questions from female reporters about Epst&!n survivors. These can be said to be words of verbal abuse. But they are at least also the telling of a story of heroic victor’s shaming of the vanquished chaos-enemy. This is how we know that such acts of verbal shaming are not separate from the sacrificial slaughters of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The shared world we inhabit together is constituted by the darkness of a sacrificially vanquished enemy’s shame.

Being “graven” images, they of course make a strong impression upon us. It may be a system, or “a sophisticated op,” but first it’s a story. Whether the story is true or not, how would the image of a girl whose head had been blown off not make such a lasting impression? The reason it makes an impression is because we are all impressed with a sense of the story that governs and orders our mutually shared environment. If it did or may happen in a whole separate world, to which we have no connection or in which we have no part, or if this were merely an academic exercise of objective observation, then we would be left unaffected. But we are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts. The question, then, is of our response, to which we will turn in Part 2 (of 2) of this blog series.

Endnotes

1. Eliade, Mircea, 1981, A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1, pp. 70-72. Here, Eliade is simply summarizing the Babylonian creation myth / story. I am drawing from this story in much of what follows in this blog post. For a relatively short and concise essay on the Babylonian creation story’s cultural influence today, see Wink, Walter, 1999, The Myth of Redemptive Violence. The Bible in Transmission, Spring, 1999 issue. For a helpfully generalized and short summary of the differences and similarities of the Jewish and Babylonian creation stories, as well as the scholarly fallout in the wake of the discovery of the Babylonian one, see the May 18, 2010 blog post from Pete Enns from the BioLogos website, “Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story: Found among the ruins was a Babylonian creation story referred to today as Enuma Elish. How people viewed Genesis would never be the same again” (Enns, 2010). For a concise outline of the Enuma Elish, see Webster, Michael. (Unknown date). The Babylonian Creation Story (Enuma elish). [Class handout]. For a helpful summary of the Babylonian creation story, see Wink, Walter, 1992, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, pp. 13-17. ↑
2. MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1984, After Virtue, p. 227. ↑

I'm part of an "Architecture Shaming" group on Facebook. Often, it's hilarious. But, it has also spurred some rather interesting - or even intense - discussions, posts, and thoughts. I realized they might often be helpful in ways that speak to worlds outside that of Architecture. So, I decided to start writing some of the lessons down. It makes sense, then, that I swiped a couple of the above screenshots from THIS FACEBOOK POST in that group.

A false comparison of similarity between Architect Louis I. Kahn's Salk Institute and Expo '67 is helpful for instruction in a lot of ways. I think the massive differences between them are easy for us to miss, but hugely important, in many ways.

Here is that false comparison typed out as a description of the Salk Institute, in case you can't read it in the collage here:

"[W]ell, the part shown here is dreadfully drab and must cook in the scorching sun. It’s a horrible, endless mass of concrete, with no plants or shade anywhere. I hate it for the glare of all the damn concrete and tile (besides which it’s just a bunch of boxes, like back at Expo ‘67). Nay, verily."

This can help teach us about our everyday perception and interpretation of our built environment, as well as about how said everyday lived environment is shaped by and reflects influence from larger socio-political concerns and discourse. What does something so simple that we take take it for granted, such as our perception of a building, tell us about ourselves? How does it tell us this?

Let's take this person's response to Louis I. Kahn's Salk Institute as a kind of microcosm where these questions play themselves out:

1. On the topic of "lack of shade," the entire central Plaza at Salk was originally a garden. An Institute of human learning was to point indicatively back to the Garden where the relationship between an intimate knowing of God, "nature," and one another was distorted and disordered by a vain search for a different kind of knowing. Kahn changed his design, however, after touring the site with another famous architect named Louis Barragan, who said, "That's not a garden. It's a façade to the sky."

This change was made for completely different reasons from why the Brutalism of Expo '67 presents as "just a horrible, endless mass of concrete." (See #4 and #5, below)

And, this decision to change from garden to "façade to the sky" speaks to our relationship with simplicity and complexity. Humans, like Architects, can have a complex and competing set of concerns that are ordered towards a common end or aim. Decisions are often made with those competing concerns in mind within a larger desire for one aim or end. This can be very complex. We tend to imagine that our decisions are and must be more simple or simplistic, and made towards competing ends.

Our bodies and our perceptions inhabit and are interwoven with this complexity of our mental, written, historical, and built environment. Growth into our humanity, discipleship, is, just as in Architecture, a matter of giving order to this complexity towards the good and beautiful. This complexity of concerns and decisions with either varying or similar aims has parallels for how we make decisions of how to relate communally, politically, on social media. If we imagine all decisions simplistically towards competing ends or desires, we are more likely to relate antagonistically. Just as the person above likely imagines that Lou Kahn is unconcerned with providing shade, or that Kahn's only desire is for an aesthetic artifact, actual humanity be damned (which is actually completely untrue about Kahn), progressives and conservatives often imagine that the other doesn't care at all about what they care about or has completely antagonistic desires rather than varying means to desired common goods (which is often, though not always quite untrue about "the other", in either case).

And, speaking of the relationship between knowledge and intimacy: just as the above person who hates the Salk Institute would have a more "correct" understanding of Lou Kahn's work if he took the time, effort, and care - in other words, the love - to relate to it more intimately, so Progressives and Conservatives may be able to work together (at least a little) more harmoniously if they were to function with an imagination for a different and better relationship between knowledge and intimacy formed by and in love.

With a fuller imagination for the relationship between complexity and simplicity, intimacy and knowledge, we can better work towards the good and the beautiful - like Lou Kahn here at Salk.

2. Said plaza in question has a small artificial stream running through it, down to a pool at the end closest to the ocean. The entire building site is a microcosm for how the elements of nature relate to one another. A bit like how science is meant to function.

In everything we do, humans always tell stories that interpret the world.

I grew up in a fundamentalism that believed it was not interpreting the world or the scriptures but, instead, only gleaning "the facts" and then teaching them. I've seen this in our political discourse, as well.

The Brutalism of Expo '67 also doesn't believe it tells organizing and interpretive stories. Expo '67 is a Fundamentalist. It believes it is presenting to you the "bare facts" of human experience. It's not; that's a lie. The abstract form and volume of its supposed visual appeal IS ITSELF the telling of a particular human story. So Architecture is what first began to teach me about my own Fundamentalism. This was, for me, a humbling.

The reason this is important, besides my humbling, is because the question of what story we are inhabiting is a question of whether our path is aimed towards life or death. And, once our humanity is abstracted, we are already dead.

3. The wood that you can see but is downplayed in the photos here of Salk is vitally important in person. The wood brings the image of human nobility in the concrete - that appears at once as having both glorious weight and wings of light - down to the scale of human touch. So, when you are there "in person," it's not alienating.

Brutalist buildings, on the other hand, do not tend to these questions of touch. And, they only tend to the questions of human scale in order for the abstraction of their form to meet their function.

When we presume to "just give the facts," we rely on abstracted information in a mediumless vacuum for our alienated knowing inside a loss of intimacy. At this point, we have lost the importance of human touch. When we do this as Christians, we have lost the humanity of Jesus. This means we've lost our own, as well. The story Lou Kahn tells us as a Jewish Architect about our relationship to our body and to the elements of creation can teach us not only about the Incarnation of Jesus but its importance to our humanity in our everyday experience, perception, and interpretation of the world.

4. Salk is not "a horrible, endless mass of concrete" ALSO because it invites us to listen while a material and it's weight, the elements of creation, powerfully and movingly speak for themselves - specifically rather than needing to be plastered, painted, or otherwise "covered" in order to put on a dead display of visual appeal. Paul talks about this in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1 & 2).

Brutalist buildings tend to revel in the visual delight of changes and movement of abstract form and volume. They do not "speak" to us of the inextricably interwoven relationship between the mass of earth and light of heaven, body and mind. Expo '67 told no story about and had no purposeful relationship with the weight of the body and the earth in figurative relationship with what's "above" and lighter, gravity in relationship with levity, heaven in relationship with earth. It purposefully defied that story, actually.

In comparison, that's one of the primary things Louis I. Kahn is doing at Salk, and in the rest of his work - is telling the story of the relationship between "heaven and earth." He's Jewish, with a history of relating to the Temple as the place where the Spirit of God comes to rest here. And, the difference between the second photo here (more open, more air, more light, more "seen," rising like fire towards the fire of the sun) and below photo (more closed, more heavy, more shadow, more mystery, standing firmly upon the authoritative glory of the earth) speaks to this (discussed in #4 here and in #5, below), particularly about the inextricably interwoven relationship between gravity and levity, earth and sky, body and mind. But, again, this is more easily "heared" and "seen" "in person" as compared to in photos.

Our secularism isn't merely ideological. The story it tells is woven through the senses and perceptions of our everyday experience of the world. As Christians, our ideological culture wars thus miss the boat when they respond to what happens in the everyday of our materiality and our body with abstracted ideological pursuits. Our ideologies cover over our unrecognized shame and visceral disgust with disembodied information about the world in the same way that we think we need to cover over concrete with white paint rather than allowing ourselves to submit and receive it into our senses.

5. Salk Institute is not "a horrible, endless mass of concrete" ALSO because it faces and reflects, submits and bows to the elements of nature which make it what it is in the first place. Concrete imitates stone, from mother earth. The entire appearance and edification, or presentation and construction of the building is a microcosm for relationships between the ground of existence and what appears, and between "nature" and humanity - as Kahn discusses in his piece of writing called Silence and Light (which can be read HERE, if interested).

Even the way he organizes and plants the trees in the middle of miniature rock-gardens that appear between the parking lot and the building, which do provide shade, participates in this dynamic of allowing a thing to "speak" for itself in an ordered fashion, rather than getting lost in our usual cacophony of chaotic sound.

Indeed, the light and shadow that plays upon the building and ground itself is key to this dynamic, as well - in relation to the sun. And, it's stunningly powerful.

Expo 67 has no interest in re-organizing the economy of our sense and perception. Expo 67 is content to be shaped by our default drive to raise our investment through higher "interest." This is accomplished with a multiplicity of purely visual changes (without concern for the weight of the body or the earth, which is not seen in photos). Expo '67 "steals the show" from the elements of nature and carries an abstract message of "form" and "volume" rather than allowing what stands before us to BOTH ACTUALLY speak for itself AND step back in submission to earth and sky. Lou Kahn was a prophet who "saw the world differently" and taught me to do the same. He died $5000,000 in debt. Expo '67 is a member of the King's court using the default tools of the world's powers for its own (visual) "interests." Whether architects or not, we all have such choices to make. And, we are presented with them in our everyday sensory and perceptual experience of the world.

6. Brutalist buildings like at Expo '67 are not figurative. No figures appear. Again, they are all abstract form and volume.

In Kahn's work in general, and at Salk Institute in particular, subtle human figures appear as mirrors before us, mirrors of and to the humanity who makes it appear. This is difficult to see in photos, because what is meant to appear is an embodied figure who carries weight upon the glory of the earth, in relation to the levity of air and fire.

Kahn's buildings, in the same way as his Jewish Torah, thus point us to he who is the fulfillment of his scripture, the figure who is the fulfillment of all con-figurings. We actually and actively sense this in our very bodies as we stand before and behold the figures themselves. Vacuumed abstractions, whether presented to us in the form of buildings, sermons, or political speeches do no such figurative pointing.

Salk Institute is to Expo 67 as Theological readings of scriptures such as Typological or Allegorical interpretation is to the Historical-Critical method of exegesis.

7. In our Romanticism and in our capitalism that concentrates all intimacy upon the nuclear family, we associate love with "coziness" or comfort. This is one of the primary things we are often reacting against with our repulsion from Expo '67.

Lou Kahn's purposeful and explicit "Monumentality" apparent in, by, and through his buildings teaches or reminds us that love is (at least also) about edification and dignity. Love "builds up," like an "elevation."

The "elevation" of Expo '67 is a drawing on a piece of paper. The "elevation" of Kahn's Salk Institute is an invitation to you and me to be lifted up, to be edified, to be loved. Where is the "elevation" of our sermons and political speech embodied, and how do we discern this?

8. The person whose response I am highlighting here had not been to the Salk Institute. Kahn's works in general are not made for photographs but for embodied relationship (i.e. to be "experienced in person").

Humans and disciples are also not made to learn and be instructed by images or words on screens or on paper but through, in, and by embodied relationship. Architecture was what first taught me about Incarnation.

"Just as we never leave the presence of the Spirit in Luke's narrative, we never leave sight of the prison. It is always with us, always offering the antithesis to the good news. The prison always announces worldly power and reveals those intoxicated with the lust for violence, but not primarily from the site of the cell but from the place of the warden, the guards, and those benefitting financially and politically from the mechanisms of incarceration. The church cannot and must not ever seek to hide itself from the prison. Confrontation with it is fundamental to our ordination, our way of following Jesus." - Willie Jennings, on Acts 12 and Peter's imprisonment by Herod

The following is my reflecting on some revelations that came upon me in my conversation yesterday morning with my friend Michael Gonzalez, who is African American and has gotten involved in some prison abolotion work in his home city of Philadelphia. These reflections will be interwoven with quotes from Willie Jennings' commentary on the book of Acts. Through this interweaving, I am being taught that my relationship with prison and the "justice system," whatever my relationship with them, is inextricably interwoven with my discipleship.

To that point, I have never been able to face, name, and own what happens in my body WHEN I AM NEAR A PRISON, whether in person or through a screen. Whenever I am in the presence of one, I can now recognize that what my body experiences is FEAR. When seeing someone actually ENTER a prison, if identifying with a character on the "safe" side of all the fencing and other mechanisms of "security", I feel a safety that feels just as unnameably uneasy as safe.

Why was I not able to name this fear? Why is the feeling of safety so uneasy? Because trauma. Because we need angels to awken us to our full humanity.

John 20:
"19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for FEAR of the Jew[ish authorities], Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced..."

Jesus shares in our trauma, and we are called and invited to follow him - by, in, and through His Spirit - in overcoming it. The disciples WERE IN PRISON, and Jesus was CALLING THEM OUT of it and INTO FREEDOM.

Why was I not able to name this fear? Why is the feeling of safety so uneasy? Because we need angels to awken us to our full humanity.

"Nothing speaks of dehumanization more than the stripping away of familiar clothing, the exposing of the body to nakedness and shame, and the donning of garments that remind the prisoner of a suspended identity and a loss of story. But here the angel demands Peter dress himself for the journey and prepare himself for freedom. The angel tells Peter to put back on his clothing and take back his life...God frees and God prepares Peter for freedom. We must do the same with those who seek to liberate." - Willie Jennings, on Acts 12 and Peter's prison break

My takeaway: PETER'S PRISON BREAK IS NOT SEPARATE from Peter's original invitation and call to discipleship. Just as Peter needed Jesus to call him out of his shame and into life, to call him out of his distorted image of God, reality, and of himself on that lake, so Peter needed the same as he lay in prison, bound to shame, death, and alienation. So, speaking of Peter's original call, I've really missed the boat on this! Just as Peter did when he tried to fish by himself.

When I was first exposed enough to prison abolition to become interested in it, I thought it was a complete thing I tie or bind myself to, an accomplished or finished thing in the world with which I identify. This was partly a function of my inability to name both my fear and our call as disciples out of it. But we don't become an abolitionist. We work towards abolition. We are becoming abolitionists. Abolition isn't a branding, a commodity I possess. We don't choose it by ourselves.

Why was I not able to name this fear "in my body" whenever I came near a prison? Why was the feeling of safety so uneasy? Because I imagined myself detached from it.

"Of course, people do horrible things worthy of prison and tied to capital punishment.

But Christians are given a wider lens than media fictions of crime and punishment. We have an inheritance born of life inside the cell, and the intimate knowledge of power misused through the facile foolishness of equating crime and punishment with wickedness and righteousness. The state wants us to forget what we know and see only singular bodies, dangerous and detached, kept from us and our possessions only by the iron power of kings and rulers. But the church is formed in a pedagogy of prison that we must never forget, lest we forget ourselves and forsake our mission." - Willie Jennings on Acts 12 and Peter's Prison Break

My takeaway: FREEDOM FROM PRISON IS INEXTRICABLY BOUND TO AND INTERWOVEN WITH OUR DISCIPLESHIP. If I am a disciple of Jesus, I cannot possibly be detached from it. I cannot be kept safe from prison, nor from all the mechanisms and levers that keep some people in and others outside the bounds of "the system's" jurisdiction. I am either the guard, or I am Peter. But either way, I am INSIDE the story.

When I was first exposed to prison abolition, I thought it was idealistic. This was partly a function of my detachment, and of my forgetting of our mission. But prison abolition isn't a detached ideal. It's a work from inside.

"Great tragedy ends this story beginning with the fate of the guards. To be a guard is to be bound to violence and death. It is work, but it is not good work. Anybody who claims its goodness is lying to themselves. The best thing that might be claimed is its necessity in a system that wants us all to confess its necessity....These guards were there to maintain the captivity of other human beings, and once Peter escaped, the obvious question pressed on the guards was one of allegiance: Are you working for the opposition?...Could it be that the church must now seek the deliverance of not just the prisoner but also the guards?" - Willie Jennings, on Acts 12 and Peter's prison break, and on the death of the guards

When I was first exposed to prison abolition, I thought it was an alternative justice system. I was thinking of it that way in my abstracted Whiteness that thinks everything together - figuratively, "from above." I was reading the story of Acts 12 as a prison guard, as as master who is in charge of detached surveillance of our world to maintain its safety and beauty. But abolition isn't a work a guard gives himself to. And abolition isn't a system. Abolition is a fragment work of entrusting myself to a God who invites me into nonviolence and embodies the crumbling of the system. It's not a system, because I don't know the outcome. It's not a system, because, with it, I touch my creatureliness.

"We are all ripe to be made prison guards whether we work in prison or not, because we are slowly being desensitized to prison horrors, slowly being baptized in capitalist logic as the natural order of things, and slowly being brainwashed into believing that Christianity goes hand in glove with the pseudo-morality of our judicial and penal systems. Every increase of the guard population is an increase in the power of death, every new hire who draws a paycheck from prison work draws more death into society, and every church that sits silently at this expansion denies the power of deliverance given them by our risen savior." - Willie Jennings, on Acts 12

MY TAKEAWAY: OK FREEDOM FROM (the nakedness, shame, and alienation of) PRISON IS INEXTRICABLY BOUND TO THE WORK OF OUR DISCIPLESHIP.

When I was first exposed enough to prison abolition to become interested in it, I was hesitant. When there were gunshots in my parking lot, and when my downstairs Latino neighbor was abusing his significant other (and they both later ended up in jail later for grand larceny), I called the police. Now I'm seeing that I did that as an act of convenience for me. Abolition is a commitment to sacrificial love. Now I'm seeing that as an act of hopelessness. I had no imagination for any other way to relate to my neighbor. But abolition is a commitment to the crumbling of the system that lynched God, an embodiment of hope.

It's true that I did call the police partly because those neighbors showed me who they are and what they want. They do not care about other people. But hope is hope in restoration. And what is love that doesn't hope? What is love that doesn't center the other? These questions are inextricably bound to my discipleship.

These questions are bound up in my discipleship for all the reasons I've already said. If the scriptures are our script for the world, then I'm either the guard or Peter. This is difficult to see and touch, because prison is a system that traumatizes. And, trauma dissociates. Jesus shares our trauma and invites us to overcome it with him. He even demands it. In the grace of his presence with us, he reaches out and extends to us the overcoming of his fear and the facing and naming of my vain sense of safety and security that does not love. He calls to me for my awakening from the sleep of my discipleship in Gethsemane when our humanity - which is stripped from us by the carceral system that crumbles in Jesus' hands - is at stake. And, in His very person through the powerful work of the Spirit, he shares with us a re-membering of the body from which we dissociatively detatch in allegiance to our American idols of false justice that shames, alienates, and kills. These questions of care, hope, and restoration in relation to my neighbors are interwoven with my discipleship in all of these ways.

But, the FIRST reason these questions are firstly about my discipleship is becuase my calling the police on that couple and when there were gun shots in my parking lot was my functioning as though our police, "justice," and prison system are my true gods. I was inhabiting a world governed by those systems, and I was responding to events in my life as though those systems have authoirty over me, as though I have given my allegiance to them. If, however, that system destroys hope and drains life, if what it does is bring shame, alienation, and death - if it lynched God - then my living according to my fear and my convenience is my idolatry. It's a lie. The system that is crumbling between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday is built on, depends on, and in fact is MEANT to perpetuate precisely the fear, self-centereddness, and hopelessness by which I function when I can't even begin to imagine prison aboltion. If Jesus is king, then obedience means freedom.

"You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.'" - Louis. I. Kahn

A building is a figure or image, and an extension of the humanity who makes it. Brick is our sexuality, our desire for intimacy.

Our word orifice comes from the Greek (and Roman) myth of Orpheus. An orifice is an opening in the body, or in a building. Sex is about openings in the body and in the heart. And, in the end, Orpheus was torn apart by the Bacchantes, companions to and servants of Dionysius.

Drawing of a window in a town in the desert in Spain between Bilbao and Barcelona (drawing by me):

The use of a lintel to create an opening is Orpheus “looking back.” Listening to the brick is Jesus as our true humanity. Orpheus uses and trusts in his power to obtain the impossible. A pastor friend of mine has a history of using compassion and curiosity, the practice of listening, as a tool to obtain the intimacy he wants. I can tend to use my muscles and my words to do the same. Orpheus used the power of his song.

So, appropriate to the way I can tend to practice obtaining intimacy with my own power, I'm noticing that part of me wants to skip ahead to the most intimate expressions of what love means when I first meet someone. This moment is a good lesson in the fact that love is embodied and cultivated over time. But that image of the fullness of intimacy that appears in the mind isn't necessarily a bad thing. It belongs to the nature of such relationships.

Notably, though, it's our technologies of the global village that have trained me to imagine that such a "skipping ahead" can be fulfilled "in the flesh" rather than as an image in the imagination that belongs within the limits of the nature of the embodied, sexually intimate relationship that is cultivated over time.

I am imagining this "fulfillment" of aspirational wishes as an analogy to the late modern fulfillment - through sociology, ideology, science, and the power of technology - of early modern aspiration to greater and higher levels of human mastery, with new modes of speculative knowledge.

In other words, I am trained through the power of the technology of digital internet media that shapes me to put myself in the place of God, to make my imagined aspirations immediately appear on earth as they are in heaven, rather than to patiently cultivate what all of humanity desires in the embodied flesh of humanity over time, Incarnationally.

In other words, the speed and ease of, and the power required in the making of any orifice of any size, any where, and at any time, with a lintel, is, in my analogy, the arrogance of “manifest destiny” taking shape in the order of sexual intimacy.

"God wept, because human nature had fallen to such an extent that, after being expelled from eternity, it had come to love the lower world. God wept, because those who could be immortal, the devil made mortal. God wept, because those whom he had rewarded with every benefit and had placed under his power, those who he had set in paradise, among flowers and lilies without any hardship, the devil, by teaching them to sin, exiled from almost every delight. God wept, because those who he had created innocent, the devil through his wickedness, caused to be found guilty." - quote from a fourth century Christian leader, Potamius of Lisbon from THIS BLOG POST, by Mako Nagasawa.

Here - in our specific technological context of the global village - the fall to mortality from immortality is inverted to the desire for immediate delight as an aspiration to overcome humanity's relationship with time, with and under our own power (i.e. - "it had come to love the lower world").

Just as Orpheus, relying on the power of his song, “looked back” out of fear and anxiety of the loss of his love, I am similarly tempted – out of a fear and anxiety of being “exiled from almost every delight” from an intimacy and care that otherwise stands before me as the fullness of creation itself, an intimacy and care whose power I inherently carry and bear in my body - to reach above the humility of my station to an immediate place in the intimate glories of heaven. Orpheus, Nimrod, and myself all have this temptation in common.

The beautiful, patient crafting of an arch over the weight of time in accordance with the nature of the brick, however, is proper and appropriate human cultivation of intimacy embodied slowly in and over time. It is my tending to what I had imagined I was exiled from. Jesus shares his power and presence (intimacy) with us and leads us to life, shares his life with us. We could say he is our master mason who invites us to do the same, to follow him in this, to build (intimacy) the way he builds.

I say, “You see all those people coupling up. Yeah, that’s not for you.” God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

To use a lintel to create an orifice is to conceive of and treat the wall as an abstract, mechanical plane and to then, of course, use foreign material to mechanically create an opening where you want. It was around the previously referenced time of late modernity’s powerful technological, economic, and political fulfillment of early modernity’s vision when steel and concrete began to carry the structural weight of a building, and when brick began to be treated either as a mere abstracted mechanical plane, or exclusively as a performative display of “outer” flesh. A building is a figure or image, and an extension of the humanity who makes it, so these bifurcations of our humanity between natural and supernatural, body and soul, spirit and flesh that appeared in modern anthropology also appeared in our modern buildings. Or did the image of humanity in our buildings also appear in our anthropology and in our epistemology?

Our history is my history, so this is both narration and confession.

A lintel is sexual intimacy with anyone, anywhere, any time, and any how – because my body is conceived of and treated as a mechanical abstraction. To quote Willie Jennings: “[B]odies are rendered in this vision of intimacy into dumb machines activated only by and through narratives of sexual consumption.” Speaking of consumption, as Lou Kahn noted, a lintel is cheaper and more efficient.

To listen to the brick rather than to treat it as merely abstract plane or performative display, however, is to conceive of and treat the wall as a body, to listen to the desires of my body. An arch is hearing built into sexual desire also desires for care and economic security, intimacy and connection or belonging, and faithfulness and dignity. And it is to enact sexual desire as though it is joined to them (i.e. marriage). An arch lovingly tends to the limits of the brick as gift rather than to either desire to reach beyond them or to imagine one’s self constrained by them. This acceptance of the givenness of the nature of the brick is extraordinarily “expensive” and “inefficient.”

A lintel is abuse of the brick (even to the point of often cutting it, if need be). It is tolerating my sexuality being treated as an efficient tool and a cheap possession – and treating others that way, too. The arch is the honoring of the beauty and dignity of the brick, of our sexuality, of the intimacy that’s built into our very bodies. I am aware that the drawing above is of neither an arch nor a concrete (nor steel) lintel. But, when my Architecture professor saw it, he recognized the orphic nature of it, the call and invitation into intimacy and our dignity, and he said, “THAT is an elevation.” He said that, because it elevates - as compared to the fact that the myth of Orpheus ends in his very body being torn apart, his falling.

To use a lintel is to exert power and control over the brick (even to the point of cutting it if need be), to be trapped in the tension between patriarchal heroism and control versus reactionary freedom, between purity culture and liberation. An opening carved out of the unity of the body with the reconciling joining of the two sides of the opening with an arch, however evokes the beauty of mutual desire that gives shape to the burdens and efforts enacted upon and by my body.

The lintel is the status quo, the norm. This is part of why Louis I. Kahn died $500,000 in debt. It’s why healthy sexuality is so difficult for me, for us. The arch is the disruption of our current technological, economic, and political power systems and structures.

In the making of an arch, life and death are at stake. A master mason “stood under” the scaffolding of an arch as it was being removed. This is the root of our word “understanding.” This is our reliance on the scaffolding put in place by the Master of our desires in the “Word that comes from above.” This Master is the fulfillment of our humanity, the full union of dirt and divinity. In the placement of a lintel over an opening, we use power tools to enforce our will, and we are able to imagine that life and death are never encountered. But this is only because the building never really lives and moves; it doesn’t really carry its own weight. Here, “the building” is dignity and beauty of our sexuality and our intimacy that is inherent to all of our relatings.

With a concrete or steel lintel, the brick has no inherent dignity; it is only a tool to get what I want. It is using both the brick and the lintel to get what I want, which is presumed to be reached for and grasped towards from outside the brick itself, from outside the intimacy woven into all human relatings. Remember that Orpheus uses and trusts in his power to obtain the impossible. Jesus, on the other hand, shares his power and presence (intimacy) with us and leads us to life, shares his life with us. He invites us to do the same, to follow him in this.

So, to forego the use of a lintel and to tend to the nature of the brick is to create an entirely new and different building. It is to die to the old person and to become new in the one who shares his full humanity with us.

With an arch, then, we are lovingly tending to the nature of the brick to follow the plan of the body of the building. We are using our agency to direct the intimacy that’s woven into all human relating and inherent to the brick itself. Intimacy is about openings in the body and in the heart. Some intimacies belong and are ordered towards different rooms of the house. An appropriate relational order is established over the time of the relatings. We invite people through orifices into the appropriate rooms: porch, den, dining room. And, the particular intimacy of the husband and wife is framed by the orifice leading to the bedroom. “Tend to your heart with all diligence; For out of it are the ways to life.” – Proverbs 4: 23.

In other words, this blog post is like an architectural plan to help me find my way through the intimacies woven into creation.

So, in masonry, the wall and arch are not built brick by brick, individually. The bricks are woven – turned and mutually mirrored – as groups of three into a unified mass that, in the end, acts as one together. In order for this to ring true, with a building that stands upright and beautiful as a harmonious union with integrity among its elements, the joinings have to be tended to with love - just as in human joinings.

“Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” - 1 Peter 2

The Conception of God

Echo of eternity, this warming moment
Like the burning bush fire
For an unexplainably extended time

Penetration of the Silent Word speaking
Felt as soft wind on her skin
As the angel's unexpected light departs

Surprise imagining in Silence coming
Seed planting into my praying
Mary's joyous Annunciation

(poem by me, inspired by the the breath of God outside as I was praying today, on Chritmas Eve, 2020)

This week, in the context of Advent, of the stories of Mary, Joseph, and the Virgin Birth, and of Zechariah's silence, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist, I've been thinking of the connection between their stories and ours.

I've been meditating on how salvation isn't and can't be of ourselves and is and must therefore be found in our waiting on a growth and edification that, yes, we participate in and consent to but whose seed, no, we don't plant. I've been pondering in my heart that and how salvation does and must thus be in our waiting like in a pregnancy for it's climax and fulfillment, and that in it, we bear and carry Christ around our path along the world with us, in seed form, joyously and yet with some trepidation and fear that comes with any pregnancy, hoping, longing, and expecting a birth that will radically change our world to such a disorientingly just extent as to change who we are.

In other words, reflecting on my own death and life, I've been, like Mary, "pondering in my heart" what it means to say "yes" to the Holy Spirit who wasn't only present and at work in Creation, in the desert, in the Judges, in Solomon's Temple, or 2,000 years ago in the form of a messenger sent to His Mother but, in a grace we are now given to see, hear, know, and touch, we are called and invited ourselves, always and this very moment, to practice responding and submitting to with a Creative "Yes."

Then, some guy in some group I'm in gave voice this week to those things I've been, like Mary, "pondering in my heart", when he said the following:

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A spiritual reading of the doctrine is that the virgin birth is an analogy for Theosis [if interested, click here for more information on "theosis"].

"When I see the image of the Theotokos in the eastern apse of the church, either with the Child in her womb, which is what the medallion shape signifies, or holding the Child, I see an image of every Christian soul in whom Christ has been born, in whom Christ has taken His place. As far as I know the first ecclesiastical author to have said this is St. Gregory of Nyssa in On Virginity where he says what took place in the Virgin physically or materially must or will take place in every Christian soul spiritually. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the actualization of Christ in the womb of the Virgin and the actualization of Christ in the soul of the believer."

- Fr. Maximos Constas

Met Kallistos Ware says the following, when discussing Mariology:

"Orthodox honour Mary, not only because she is Theotokos, but because she is Panagia, All-Holy. Among all God's creatures, she is the supreme example of synergy or co-operation between the purpose of the deity and human freedom. God, who always respects our liberty of choice, did not wish to become incarnate without the willing consent of His Mother. He waited for her voluntary response: 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be as you have said' (Luke 1:38). Mary could have refused, she was not merely passive, but an active participant in the mystery."

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Pictured here: Icon of the Theotokos (meaning "birthgiver-of-God") from St John the Baptist Orthodox Church, Warren OH (pic stolen from here).

As Christians, we are taught that Jesus is love. We are also, of course, taught to follow Jesus. However, I have spent most of my life having a very impoverished imagination for what that even means. I am still learning. My training in love through Gravity Leadership has opened my eyes to some ways that Jesus practices love to which, previously, I was mostly blind.

We all live in a shared socio-communal context. Rival and antagonistic groups of people frame said context in terms of different problems and solutions that are linguistically or discursively irreconcilable to one other. Said context has a particular history that positions or situates different people and groups of people within it in very different ways, ways that lend themselves to the very linguistic antagonisms of competing problems and solutions in the first place.

Even our history of the shared context we inhabit is itself is a subject or object of antagonistic framing with our speech that we direct towards one another. And, since our history is at stake in the language and narrative framing we choose, so is our future. This antagonism is so deep that if I even begin to name the history and trajectory of our history and future, I am understood to be engaging these antagonisms. What happens in your body if I say the word “racism”? How about “freedom”?

These discursive linguistic antagonisms that serve as rival stories of the truth of our shared social context in question (and its history and future) tend toward totalizing theories / schemas by which people find themselves and their place in said context. In other words, I am tempted to want my story to be THE story, to be everyone’s story. Hence the above noted irreconcilability.

So, if we are Christian, we are called and invited to grope towards practices of truth telling and caring in this social context where our language is predominantly tempted to irreconcilable temptation to essentially win a war. How do we train ourselves to practice love in such an impossible situation!? Well, one of the lessons in Gravity Leadership’s Workbook that we train through is called, “Seeing Jesus Practice Grace and Truth.” The idea here is that, when we try to embody and enact the love of Jesus, we are immediately confronted with a tension between, on the one hand, being truthful and honest and, on the other, being “nice.” We have a very difficult time imagining a love that embodies both truth and grace bound up together in the person and work of Jesus, who shares his life with us as we participate with him in the coming of his kingdom OF said love.

The Authority of Love

The lectionary reading last Saturday was Mark 11: 27-33, when the chief priests come and ask Jesus "by what authority do you do these things?" (Temple cleansing, etc). Jesus is like, "By what authority did John baptize, the power of men or of heaven?"

Similar as for us, there's here a shared context (political exile under the thumb of Rome) with rival sets of linguistically framed problems and solutions. And, there is an entire shared tradition of discourse (rabbis / teachers) by which people vie for authoritative telling of the history and future of the people who are subject to this context. People find themselves and their place in this context by clothing themselves in these authoritative stories.

All along, Jesus has been not only hinting that the story is ABOUT HIM, but also practicing truth telling and care IN THE GATHERING A PEOPLE TOGETHER AROUND HIIMSELF. By showing them what it means to live the story with himself as the central actor in and of it. The religious leaders, predictably - in either their context or ours - are like, "Hey YOU'RE not the center! The institution we run is! Don't you know - that's where God is present and at work? What's your deal?" “By what authority do you do these things?”

Notice that this episode in Mark 11: 27-33, in the wake of the Temple Cleansing, didn't start with Jesus "calling them out." The religious leaders were the ones calling Jesus out. They were coming to him with a harsh truth at the cost of relational connection and belonging. They were seeking to dominate and over-power him. They were in a war they wanted to win. He had just been busy showing his disciples what it means for the story of our shared context to be about himself (including in the Temple cleansing). Then others come along and are like, "umm...wowah dude."

Note how one of our possible temptations in response to people calling us out is always to justify ourselves, to, in my friend Gino’s words, “spit facts” and win the argument or the war established in the antagonism. As Gino noted in a recent sermon, they even ASK him for SPECIFIC "facts." They ASK him for an "argument." He doesn't engage in that antagonism. He doesn't engage that temptation to prove himself and his place (in the story / world).

He also doesn't call them out in return. He doesn't shame them, over-power them by telling them why and how wrong they are. In the predominance of our antagonisms, we tend to imagine that Jesus’ asking them, “by what authority does Jon baptize” WAS his “calling out” the religious leaders. But, he doesn’t. He also doesn't shame them in another way. He doesn't disempower them by taking and stealing their responsibility and agency away from them.

He instead puts them in a position - EMPOWERS THEM - to name and own their real desire. They find themselves unable to do this. If there is any condemnation or death dealing, he lets them step foot into it themselves (just as in, for example, Matt 12: 22-32 and Mark 3: 20-35, "the binding of the strong man" / "the unpardonable sin", which is about my being bound to foreign powers of nation (and family)). Where they come to overpower Jesus, he does not return the favor.

Parables of Love

Then, in both Matthew's and Mark's versions of this episode in Mark 11: 27-33, Jesus follows this up with parables - of the two sons, of the wicked tenants - that do a number of things that are relevant to what we're talking about:

1. They give responsibility and agency to those in his audience. They empower them. We tend to miss this, because, in functioning in our discursive or linguistic antagonisms, we again focus on or imagine that these are stories of Jesus "calling out" the religious leaders. We imagine that the he’s giving the harsh truth that’s much needed.

2. They are foolishly extravagant INVITATIONS into an ongoing practice in time of faithfully reciprocal RELATIONSHIP. I.e. - the CARE into which we are invited to train as disciples of Jesus. This is why it's a parable about SONS. It's why the tenants are given such an important responsibility in relation to and in representation of the Master. Such tasks imply a binding relationship of mutual caring. Again, we tend to miss this, because, in our habitus of functioning in a space of linguistic or discursive antagonistic theories, inside of totalizing stories over our context(s), in our modus operandi of fighting to win a war, we skip in our minds to the failures of the tenants and the religious leaders. But, the INVITATION is not only primary but remains implicit as a choice in the telling of the parables to their audience!

“And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’” – Mark 12: 4-7.

In other words, these words from Mark 12 aren’t just about obtaining pie in the sky. They aren’t just about God declaring us “righteous” because of Christ’s dying “in our place” on the cross. They depict an extravagantly abundant, to the point of utter foolishness, desire of God for relational unity with us. This is “the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12: 2).

Again, we tend to imagine that Jesus was “calling out” the “tenants” and the “disobedient son.” Obviously, the parables are also the practicing of truth telling. But, per the above, we tend to miss the invitation to relationship of care - itself in the context of Jesus' gathering a people around himself in the first place (some now call this "organizing?") - that is the real and first thrust of the stories. In fact, "truth" in those parables is inconceivable as a category without the graceful imitating of the person who is the Truth. Truth is also inconceivable as a category here without the previously established empowerment, agency, authority, or responsibility GIVEN to and SHARED WITH those in his audience BY the telling of the parables!

Speaking of parables, the CBN story depicted above has this caption:

“The [Jericho] march was centered around Joshua 6 where God gives specific instructions on how the corrupt city of Jericho is to be conquered.

"But the Lord said to Joshua, 'See, I have handed Jericho over to you, with its king and the valiant warriors. And you shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once.'"

As another friend said in conversation about this, “it’s not as if Jesus shied away from pointing out people's guilt and/or shame when that was needed.” This is correct. “Peter do you love me?” “Is there anyone left to condemn you?” “May he who is without sin cast the first stone.” “The baptism of John - was it of man or of God?” “Zacchaeus, I'm staying at your house tonight.”

Coming to a place where truth and grace meet in the presence and work of the King means facing and naming our shame and guilt in the space of safety in the presence of the King who we come to trust not only desires us but cares for us. Jesus often purposefully facilitated his disciples facing and naming their shame and guilt BY connecting with them relationally. He does this with the intention of dignifying and edifying us RATHER THAN by exerting power over us (or Rome) in such a way as to cut off relationship with us and, well, "shaming" us (or Rome). In the love of Jesus, as my friend Matt Tebbe taught me: “The first truth we tell is about ourselves.” This is the Christian practice of confession.

Going Away Astounded

After the two parables of two sons and of the wicked tenants - in Matthew - the religious leaders continue to come and "call out" Jesus. They continue - in Matt. 22 - to come and “test” him. They continue to act on their desire to over-power him and put him in his place. He continues to point in the direction of their agency or empowerment and to an implicit invitation into relationship in the larger scheme of the history of Israel. They keep "going away astounded" (lol?). This continues until Jesus finally goes on the offensive with a recapitulation of the original thrust of the community he’s forming and shaping: that the story of our shared context centers on and is oriented around him. I’m speaking here of Matt 22: 41-46, on the "question of David's son.”

THEN, in Matt. 23, he goes into something that very easily LOOKS LIKE antagonistic "calling out" of the religious leaders. But, it says he's talking "to the crowds and to his disciples." He's not even talking to the religious leaders at this point. How could he be “giving them the business” if he’s not even talking to them? So, if he’s not “calling out” the religious leaders with a long series of “woes to” them, then what IS he doing?

What he is doing is actively engaging in teaching of the crowds and disciples - those who had gathered around himself in invitation and care - what it means and looks like to follow him. Doesn't look like seeking out the places of honor, doesn't look like converting seekers into death dealing ways, doesn't look like making arbitrary and random oaths that render your word meaningless, are self-indulgent in the value they place on the things that are about you and what you have power in or over, and don't honor God with wondrous awe, etc. Speaking of agency and empowerment, woe if you take that path!

All of this implies that (even) the central actor of the story is placing himself INSIDE it. My friend Glenn Runnalls often says, in reference to 1 Cor. 13: 8-13, “A 1 Corinthians kind of loving requires a first Corinthians kind of knowing.” This speaks to the question of totalizing schemes - of my wanting my story to be THE story, everyone’s story. Even Jesus wasn’t seeking to win the war of the antagonisms of his day by making his story THE story. I mean this in the sense that Jesus wasn’t standing above and over his context. Instead, he Incarnationally situates himself inside it and, in sharing our context of warring antagonisms with us, also shares with us his Way of life and love.

Hearing this in the space of the text, I “go away astounded.” My “astounding” is accompanied by a desire to put this training into practice, to engage in a fuller love where grace and truth are bound to one another in the embodied person of Jesus, who shares himself abundantly with us. This is repentance.

Please don’t imagine that this “fullness” of love is limited to the territory of politics. A female Catholic friend just shared with me this weekend how there is antagonism in her relationship with her apparently agnostic or Deist boyfriend around questions of religion. This summer, another friend shared with me that she had found herself speaking harsh truth to someone who she thought was "in a cult." After reflecting on that experience and hearing the scriptures invite into a different kind of love, she was wondering how to relate to someone in such a situation without being harsh or offensive. In what other territory of your life, where antogonisms and pretentiousness otherwise reign, might Jesus be whispering into or reaching out and touching your soul with this sharing of the love embodied in the whole of power and grace of his person?