Sunday Sermon: The Rapture

Hola Everybody,
According to Marjorie Traitor Greene, the rapture was supposed to be upon us starting today, April 8th. It seems like the rapture is upon us, proving that conservative, fundamentalist Christians have been right all along. Now, don’t you feel like an idiot for not purchasing this Rapture Survival Backpack© — Ha!

Jesus is Gonna Kick yo Ass

Quick! Look busy — Jesus is coming.

Every once in a while (in the U.S. that means every day) a religious nut predicts the end times are upon us. Google “rapture” if you want the details. If you’re too lazy, I’ll explain…

Pretend you’re a big time Hollywood executive and I tried to pitch you the following story:

“Okay, let me start with some context. It’s the 21^st century, but millions of people still believe in this invisible Super Ghost who lives somewhere way, way up in the sky somewhere. You see, he created everything, sees everything, knows everything, and knows everything that had ever happened and will happen. Think: a divine J. Edgar Hoover– a huge security camera in the sky.

The people who believe in him think of him as a magic helper who protects, punishes, and watches over them. It’s a take on the Santa Claus thingee: He sees you when you’re sleeping, He knows when you’re awake (and engaged in revolutionary activities), and so on.

Yet even though this ghost has, like, all the superpowers of all the superheroes rolled into one, he’s in actuality very insecure. He demands that you follow and pay tribute to him or else you get an eternity burning in a non-stop, super-duper fire, boiling in lava-like shit and being constantly stabbed by devils with pitchforks. Oh yeah! I almost forgot, two thousand years ago he sent his only son (which he conceived by Shtupping a married virgin) to earth in order to redeem humanity from their wickedness by getting him nailed to a cross (that whole Gospel According to Mel Gibson treatment).

Now, bear with me because this is where the story gets interesting: after two thousand years of watching humanity slaughter itself, getting really fucked up, and having wild orgies, and basically just slacking off, The Son plans to return to earth from outer space. But before he does, he’s going to beam up to Heaven all those people who have continued to have faith in him. Yup, levitate them right out of their clothes, wherever they are — on an airplane, asleep, having sex, on the toilet, and (get this!) from the freaking grave! That’s right, corpses and cadavers blasting out of the ground! Think: Saw meets Night of the Living Dead, with some touches of Superman and Terminator thrown in.

Meanwhile, the people left behind are freaking out. I mean, imagine you’re on an airplane to South Beach for a weekend of debauchery and suddenly the pilot fuckin’ disappears! Flies right by your window!

Dang!

Then you look and you see hundreds of naked people whooshing by (of course, we’ll make them up to be gorgeous-size zero-big-breasted-no ass-having-blonde-white-babes and maybe throw in an old dude just for laughs). And then the plane just nose dives, crashes smack into the side of a mountain. Families are broken up and companies have to close because, like, the entire sales department just flew through the AC vents out the window!

Meanwhile, the people left behind are in a mass panic and MSNBC-CNN-FOX is blaming it on woke Black and Latino people, DEI, the Muslims, and the liberals. An orange-tinged former president is pissed because he thinks it’s some secret pentagon weapon he wasn’t informed about. Cut to a religious secretary as she tells him, ‘Mr. President, it’s the Rapture.’ Since he’s secretly a Hitler-loving groupie narcissistic fascist who’s never read the Bible, he’s never heard of the Rapture. The secret service sweeps him away to an undisclosed location where they fill him in on the details.

And this is just the first seven minutes! In the rest of the movie, the people left behind are going to suffer a seven-year nightmare of wars, plagues, attacks from supernatural creatures, asteroid collisions, and rivers of blood… ”

Would you buy a pitch like that? Well, considering the really inferior crap that gets produced these days, maybe a studio would produce such a story. Wait… you mean they made that movie?! Damn! LOL

Seriously, if I insisted that I actually believed the story to be true, most of you would have probably called security and have me kicked to the curb or shot by a posse of Colin Kaepernick-hating cops, right? Right? Right?

As many as a hundred million Americans admit that they believe in this story, which is known as the Rapture, a scene lifted out of the last book of the Bible. Yeah, that part, the crazy, hallucinogenic part. The part with the Apocalypse and its Four Horsemen, the Whore of Babylon, a seven-headed dragon, and crap that looks straight out of a badly crafted segment of Lord of the Rings.

It’s hey-Zeus (!) on steroids come back to kick some major Muslim (and Jewish, Atheist, and Wiccan, and… etc.) ass!

If you’re a Christian and never heard of the Rapture, then shame on you, you didn’t read the Bible all the way through to the end. In any case, this book isn’t for believers of the rapture. It’s for you, Heathen! Unbeliever! Doubter! Satanist! Secular Humanist Socialist liberal! If you’re curious about what 100 million of your neighbors find so compelling about the Rapture, then this book will do the trick. If, on the other hand, you’re the kind of person who values reason rather than myth, then this book will literally make you laugh your ass off.

Quick! Look Busy!

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Silent Night

Today’s story illustrates how spirituality can be a powerful force, even in the midst of unbelievable violence and insanity.

Photo: WWI soldiers in the trenches

The World War I Christmas Truce of 1914

On Christmas Eve in 1914, two lines of homesick soldiers, one British, one German, were dug into the trenches on the Western Front in the middle of World War I. Now, you have to understand that WWI was considered the “war to end all wars.” It was one of the most vicious wars because in those days, you had to look your enemy in the eye as you stabbed or shot him. You were more likely to die from starvation, exposure, and disease as you were at the hands of the enemy. So, there are these two front lines and between them was a fire zone called no-man’s land. On a moonlit, snowy night in this God-forsaken landscape, the Germans lifted army issued Christmas trees sparkling with tiny candles over the edge of their trenches and set them in plain sight.

The British shouted and cheered with delight. The Germans began to sing “Stille Nacht… ” and the British began to sing along with “Silent Night.” This encouraged the Germans and they set down their guns in the moonlight and heaved themselves from their trenches carrying candles, cake, and cigars toward their enemies. The British responded in kind, carrying steamed pudding and cigarettes.

These men met in the middle of the forbidden zone, exchanged gifts, sang carols, and played soccer. This seemingly spontaneous truce eventually extended for hundreds of miles among thousands of soldiers. The really funny thing was, having seen each other’s humanity, they could no longer shoot each other…

The war essentially stopped.

Horrified, commanders on both sides had to transfer thousands of men to new positions until the enemy became faceless again, something kill-able, not a human being — not a brother.

Almost a hundred years later, scholars are still studying this event, reading soldier’s journals and letters that refer to it, seeking to understand “the breakdown of the military mindset,” or attempting to understand how a fuckin’ spontaneous peace movement could spread even in the cold dark heart of war.

Today you will hear countless other stories. Stories of death and unspeakable cruelty. You will no doubt hear stories justifying, in the name of global economics or religion, the starvation and killing of innocent men, women, and children. You will see or read approximately 80,000 messages today bombarding you with the agenda to get you to buy something — most of it will fly under the radar of your awareness. But if you remember anything, remember this story because it is true and it speaks to who we really are and the essence of what it means to be a human being.

Most of all, remember that this story reinforces what is good in all of us, regardless of what or who we believe in, or where we find ourselves.

Happy Holidays.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [The Global Trance]

I wrote this six years ago…

[un]Common Sense

Hola Everybody,
We the people need a people’s party. We need to wake up.

Awakening from the Trance

In a society that profits from your self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act.
— Caroline Caldwell

I am a radical, but I understand that the only revolution that’s going to make a real difference is one that transforms us into human beings more capable of intelligent responses to the many crises we face.

Though we have confronted major problems throughout our shared history, the challenges we face today are unique in one important aspect — they now affect the entire globe as a whole system. Never before has humanity been on the cusp of wiping out the earth’s biosphere and crippling its ecological foundations for countless generations to come. Never before have we been faced with the very real prospect of being the first species to cause its own extinction…

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Redemption Song

Hola mi Gente,
I usually post this around this time of year… because it never fails, someone will tell me that reading the following helped them, or they shared it with someone they thought it could help. So… here goes…

My life is my message

The cliché that life is stranger than fiction is true enough. And believe me: my life has been pretty much strange. Thanksgiving Day has its own personal meaning for me, as I am certain it does for everyone. Thanksgiving Day has layers of meaning.

However, for me Thanksgiving holds its most significant meaning on a very personal level. You see, it was on this day thirty-one years ago that I experienced the first of a series of awakenings that would drastically change my life.

The exact date is November 26, 1990 and it often happens that it falls on or near Thanksgiving Day. A couple of weeks before that day, on a cold, blustery November day, I was so overcome with despair that I considered and attempted suicide. It is actually a little funny: As I climbed over the rail on the Brooklyn Bridge’s pedestrian walk (it’s not easy to jump off that damned bridge), I was so skinny from malnutrition and years of substance abuse that a strong Nor’easter wind knocked me back on my ass on to the pedestrian walkway. I saw this inability to take myself “off the count” as the ultimate failure which gives you an idea of my state of mind at the time.

I walked away from that only to opt for a more torturous route: the daily act of chasing heroin. Ensnared by my warped thinking, I had this fear that I would botch up my own suicide and merely succeed in paralyzing myself, condemning myself to pursue drugs from the disadvantage of a wheelchair. In fact, I remember an addict who copped drugs in a wheelchair. I decided I would make someone else put myself out of my misery.

And though I speak lightly today of that time, I was so miserable. During my 20s, I lived like a rock star. I partied hard, drugged harder, chased women – I was basically a speeding train of danger. Somewhere during this period, I lost control (if I ever had any) and I went from youthful rascal to a hard-core user.

One night, on the eve of my birthday, I was getting drunk with my stepfather. By that time I had progressed to the point that when I drank, I became mean and looked for fights and discord. That night, I instigated a heated argument between my mother and my stepfather, and I left once I saw my mother was about to drop kick me. For whatever weird reason, I went to sleep under a car in the garage. I am not clear, because I was so out of it, and other than a therapist, I have never shared that I vaguely remember my stepfather, Vincent, trying to wake me up, he begged to talk with me, but I did not want to be bothered and told him to leave alone. Later, my family found me only to tell me Vincent had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in front of his son, our youngest sibling.

I cannot say that Vincent’s suicide caused me to go off the rails, there were so many traumas (some intergenerational) competing for that prize, but it did serve to tip me over. I ran from my family and I used the guilt of my stepfather’s suicide and my running away to punish myself. It took me a long time to understand that Vincent was probably suffering from clinical depression and the horrible actions of that night were not my fault. But I genuinely believed I caused it and all the ramifications. The years passed as I fell deeper and deeper into my addiction…

I do not believe in a God in the traditional Christian/ Judeo sense — an anthropomorphic omnipotent super being. However, back then I would pray each night that some Higher Power would find it in its mercy to take my life in my sleep. Yet, every day I awoke to my pain and despair. I would always wake up sick and broke, but towards the end of my active addiction I somehow managed to spend $300 a day, feeding a merciless heroin habit.

If you are wondering, the source of income for my drug habit came about by ripping off drug-dealers, never a safe proposition. One day a victim of one of my scams threatened me with a gun. I grabbed the gun by the barrel, put it to my forehead, and begged him to shoot. All I asked was that he made sure to kill me because, “You would be doing me a favor, motherfucker.” This occurred in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded New York City street. I remember people screaming; but what I remember most was thinking that this was my way out. “Do it,” I yelled. He pulled the trigger and…

Nothing happened.

I don’t know if the gun jammed or if it wasn’t loaded, whatever the reason, the gun failed to discharge. My would-be “assistant suicider” freaked out, yanked the gun from my hands, and walked away. I called after him, letting him know he could get another chance. That is how much I wanted to die. And again, I thought, I could do nothing right.

That was not the worst of it, my life continued to bottom out until November 26th, 1990 when I experienced an incident so traumatic it would change me and my world in an unfathomable way. Actually, most people would consider the events that transpired on that cold, dreary November day as a defeat. Very simply, after being released from New York City’s infamous penal colony, Rikers Island, for exactly fourteen days, I was re-arrested. It was also that last day of my active addiction — the last day I took a drug.

I did not know it then but it was the beginning of a new life: a life that today is far from perfect, that has suffering, illness, death — the full catastrophe of life — but also encompasses an invincible joy at its core. This is part of the reason I do the work that I do. I know from personal experience that even the worst of us have the potential to liberate ourselves from socially constructed or self-made prisons. And let me be clear: we are all “doing time” in some way, we all wear shackles. To a degree, we all enact patterns of behavior or carry the proverbial baggage.

No, I am not a religious person. My personal view is that religion is for people who are afraid of hell and spirituality is for those who have already been there. And for me, at least, spirituality is really about connection. I simply try to be the best person I can be on a daily basis and oftentimes I fall short of the mark. However, my intentions are generally good and my direction somewhat orderly. I try to live a life centered on compassion for others, personal growth, self-actualization, and a passion for social change.

On that day, thirty-one years ago, I had no way of knowing of the possibility of life as it has manifested itself for me today. These past few years have been challenging. Some of that that has to do with being unemployed for a prolonged length of time. At one point, I almost lost all my property in storage, my cellphone had been cut off, I was living with my sister… well, you get the idea. Even now, my living situation is still tenuous though I have been working at well-paying job for some time. Yet, throughout it all, I have somehow managed to maintain some measure of sanity and achieve some serenity.

Amid all my problems, however, I never picked up a drug and was even able to find some measure of happiness. It is a happiness independent of any person, place, or thing. On the surface I can be sad, happy, angry, disappointed, sick, depressed, disgusted — I can be experiencing any number of attachments — but at the center, at the very core of me, there is an invincible joy greater than any drug-induced high I have ever experienced. And believe me, coming from me, that is saying a lot.

On that day thirty-one years ago, sitting there in the midst of total failure and utter humiliation, I came undone. And that was a good thing, because in experiencing complete obliteration I became open to something more than my small self. In emptying myself, I came to see that what I perceived as a void was in reality my innate and boundless potential as a human being.

I am genuinely grateful. As I said before, I have experienced sadness, frustration, happiness, love, rejection — all of it. I could easily surmise, if I were so disposed, that my life, that life itself, sucks. But that is a coward’s lie. Life is a gift, probably the most precious of gifts. My life today is like a redemption song — a song of freedom. And at the very least there is nothing worse (or better) than that fateful day thirty-one years ago. Today I woke up and I am… here… I am free… and for that I am most grateful.

May you all have as much to be thankful for.

My name is Eddie and I am in recovery from civilization…