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“I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once their hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.”

James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” 1955

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Hey. You. The American teenager inexplicably reading this. Don't join the US military. You're better than that. The military is a bunch of cops. Are they technically diverse and inclusive? On some level, kind of, almost. But their job is to kill people. They kill innocent people every day. They abuse their own members, especially their members who aren't white cis het middle class Christian men. The US exists through perpetual violence against the global working class, including its own working class. The military is how it carries out a large portion of that violence. You deserve better. You're better than that. Don't join.

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“Did not the Lord make all men and women upon the earth of one mould, why then should there be so much honour and respect unto some men and women, and not unto others, but they are almost naked for want of Cloathing, and almost starved for want of Bread?”

— Hester Biddle, early Quaker, The Trumpet of the Lord Sounded Forth,1662.

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I’m a big fan of people finding a spiritual or religious practice that works for them but if you’re required to pay money to a particular person or buy a certain thing regularly from a certain place I don’t think that’s a spiritual practice. You may have been scammed.

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ANDROGYNY NEXT TO GODLINESS, four and a half feet long, the most difficult to photograph piece i've ever crocheted. inspired by this article about Michelangelo's women.

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Why should any man have power over any other man's faith, seeing Christ Himself is the author of it?

George Fox

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“Indeed, it was the message of the church for hundreds of years that things would not change, and that one’s task on earth was simply to accept wherever one was on the social-economic scale as God’s will. But now the poor are discovering that it cannot truly be God’s will for most of God’s children to suffer. God wills life and love and fullness for all and not just a few. And God wants our help to bring that about.”

Excerpt from Liberation Theology by Robert McAfee Brown

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God does not hang back as a mere spectator when power is utilized to oppress the weak and crush the poor. God does not keep sovereign distance in the face of human crimes. God's angry voice echoes through the centuries: "Cain, where is your brother?"

Leonardo Boff, Way of the Cross--Way of Justice

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“All of the so-called hard sayings of the Sermon [on the Mount] are designed to remind us that we cannot live without depending on the support and trust of others. We are told not to lay up treasures for ourselves, so we must learn to share. We are told not to be anxious, not to try to ensure our future, thus making it necessary to rely on one another for our food, our clothing, and our housing. We are told not to judge, thereby requiring that we live honestly and truthfully with one another. Such a people have no need to parade their piety because they know that in a fundamental sense it is not theirs. Rather, the piety of the community capable of hearing and living by the Sermon is a gift that God gives them through making them learn to serve one another. Such a piety exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.”

— Stanley Hauerwas, “A Sermon on the Sermon of the Mount,” Unleashing the Scripture, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 69

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“Faith is not acceptance but protest— against the world that is, in favor of the world that should be.”

—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

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“Faith is not acceptance but protest— against the world that is, in favor of the world that should be.”

—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

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“Faith is not acceptance but protest— against the world that is, in favor of the world that should be.”

—Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

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my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

and she told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and i would go to heaven, and i would be able to talk to the worms, and i would be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident out of excessive Love, and that they would forgive me, because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

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The GI Rights Hotline is a non-profit run by civilians that offers free, confidential counseling and resources for anyone trying to leave the US military, whether by conscientious objection, going AWOL, or any other means. Their toll-free number is 1-877-447-4487 

The Center on Conscience and War is a non-profit run by civilians collects resources for people who might be targets of the US military’s predatory recruitment process, including this list of alternatives to enlistment, organized by state, that offer the same benefits that the branches of the military (claim to) offer, such as experience, travel, money for college, etc - without killing people in the name of western imperialism. If you want to register as an official conscientious objector or otherwise avoid combat in any way, their toll-free number is 1-800-379-2679

War is a racket. Don’t throw your life away for a government that doesn’t care about you. If you know anyone who’s considering enlisting or who’s already enlisted and considering getting out, please talk to them and share these resources