A Holy Fuck

Of a week.

Dear sorcerers, apprentices, scamps, dabblers, witches, heretics and friends of all stripes, it has been awhile, and a lot of it has been personal stuff. First, one of my partners, Lester, had “top surgery,” or gender affirming surgery to you straights out there. 

Second: I am changing my living situation to finish my PhD. The rent in the Bay Area is outrageous, and let's all be honest: there is a reason that only three percent of the academy is Black. Out of those three percent, cis hetero Black exceptionalism means no real scholarship or grants have come my way. I am not a well behaved academic negro.  

So I am in the middle of prepping for #Vanlife. It was cheaper for me to get a loan, rebuild a new Ram Promaster, and live in friends driveways, national parks, and totally not in the Graduate Theological Union parking lot sometimes. It was a cheaper way for me to live as Black academic in Berkeley, CA. 

I also have lovers, friends, and a lot of pesky ethnographic work to get done - and a PhD. The change made sense by judging how hard things are for me now. The Van rebuild also reduced travel costs, as I toured the South, Southwest, and parts of the “other” america. In writing this bigger story, it has become my dissertation (I think). It’s a people's history of magic, written hopefully in the secret, incandescent, neon, late night-whispered-story america. 

The magical america that still exists inside us all. Not the nation. The place.

All this to say: I missed you? I missed you, team. 

What a holy mess of a fucking holy week out there. Not to round up all the news, but if it isn’t images of cops beating fasting Muslims in the dome of the Rock, its another genocidal law to eliminate Trans people like me, my lovers and friends.Or, its a President who currently has many, many, many more felony charges than I ever had. (Jus saying.) Perhaps an ailing pontiff signaling the search for white smoke? 

Not to mention I have felt the pain and mourning of not having a community to serve this Holy Week deep in my bones for the first time. I can't deny my tears on Holy Wednesday talking to a mystical new love, a priest with the dreamiest eyes. 

My exile from the ELCA, started way before I resigned my call in that denomination, or left its roster. Ifelt like I was finally in a safe place to mourn the loss of the entire reason I got into the whole Miracle Chasing Business ™. 

The people, whom I didn’t have a chance to serve this week. I thought maybe I was projecting. 

But it doesn't feel like a Holy Week. Unless one is wholly unaware of the world, which is likely since most mainline denominations force pastors, deacons, and leaders to be worked way past their limit to exhaustion. You can't deny that, although there seems to be hope, there is also a lot to fear down the road. 

That, my friends, is the essence of this Holy Fucked Week. What the Christian today claims  as the gospel is the oral history of a traumatized and hunted people, written down at earliest perhaps 30-40 years after the assassination of Jesus the Nazarene. Over the last few years we have all experienced the timelessness, muddled memory soup, and emotional rawness of trauma. We have created mythos, stories, and whole ontologies just from the last few years as people, preachers, alchemists, prophets, and heretics out here. 

That's what happened. Their friend and teacher Jesus led a popular revolution that ended in his political assassination after being tortured by police. 

Some say that revolution lived on. Some say those people are full of shit. 

What say you? 

This Holy Week is like the first. Death stalks love, the oppressed are being hunted by the empire, and clergy debate the value of our lives. 

Which means magic, miracles, resurrection, and death awaits. 

May we all show the courage of the women on the first Easter morning, and never run and hide like the men. 

Amen. 

PS: Want to donate to my van life and help me through school? Cool! Here is my Amazon wishlist! https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3TF6VQFK20U3M?ref_=wl_share