Unpopular Opinions 3: Church Edition

As if you thought I was done running my mouth or something. Shame on you for thinking of me as modest. There's too much work to do.





The 95 Reeses. Picture credit to r/dankchristianmemes. They're phenomenal.

I. The church will change its theology to meet its economic needs.

You can read the Bible and get anything you want out of it and it's been appropriated in such a manner ever since it was being passed around its early reading communities. It isn't going to change now a few thousand years removed from those early communities. If the church didn't primarily meet its economic needs from tithing and charity then maybe this grievance of mine wouldn't exist (I doubt it but run with the idea for a second). How do you think the church pays for its liabilities? If your answer is anything other than "I pay for them" then you need to fix that because it's plain wrong. Your tithes cover the church's operating costs. It makes the church a communal success and a communal failure if its congregants don't fund it, our money goes where our values go. Except people are people and perversely insist on being people at all times. We're petty, selfish, insecure, unstable, and think much too highly of ourselves. And our cash flows reflect our fears. People will get up and go church shopping to a church that "preaches the gospel". All churches preach the gospel. It may not preach the gospel you like but they all preach the gospel. They take their money with them. Pastors, being dependent on tithes and charity from the congregation to pay for salaries and cover church operating expenses and liabilities, will preach comfortable messages to keep wallets in the seats. And sometimes they get a bit on edge in the message, like the one time the pastor will say "damn" in a message and may go "Yeah I said it! I'll say it again!" and suddenly people like him "telling it like it is" (and it's usually a "him" in this case, no disrespect meant to the female ministers in the church of course, as my mother is one). This is why I'm convinced that churches have become LGBT tolerant. Not accepting. Tolerant. Why? Because that's where the money goes. Preach a message of diversity and being inclusive because it brings in more people that are seeking that message and then work the following messages to get their money. I have a hunch this is why a lot of the aging denominations seem to be moving towards accepting these sorts of people into their churches. The UMC is famous, or infamous depending on your angle, for "accepting" LGBT members. PCUSA made the move to allow same-sex marriages and now they have a waiting list to leave the denomination that lasts years. It belies the point that these churches, heavy with an aging demographic, are seeking for ways to extend their economic life cycles. They still have expenses and they'll find ways to read scripture differently to bring more people in, something that will continue to be done until the end of time.

Now I'm not against different readings of the Bible. That should be obvious by now. Read the Bible differently for the objectively right reasons. Not to seek more money to cover church expenses.

Also. This tithing thing. 10% is the floor, not the ceiling. You give that base amount and then give more. To missions hopefully. Those people need it.

II. The Biblical authors would've hated each other.

Paul hated Peter. Matthew and John would've hated Paul. Luke disagreed with Paul. Genesis and Isaiah would've disagreed with each other. Ecclesiastes doesn't care about any of the books around it. Job throws all our ideas of God out the window (when was the last time you listened to a sermon on Job or Ezekiel or Jeremiah or Numbers or Revelation?). And the disconnect is a feature, not a bug. Matthew and John are the most Jewish gospels ("I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it"-Mathew 5:17-18, which is only said in Matthew by the way, John pegs Jesus into Jewish philosophy with John 1 echoing Philo, and John claiming Jesus to be the Jewish messiah they've long awaited). Paul says we don't need this legal Judaism anymore because Christ came and gave us the system of grace that we're currently under, overhauling the system that Paul was taught. Paul identifies as a Pharisee after all. Luke sees the baptism of Jesus as a pneumatological event, Paul sees the baptism of Jesus as a Christological event. Genesis talks of God as corporeal, walking through Eden, having a voice that Adam and Eve can understand, having human emotions that are easily expressed and readily understood. Isaiah encounters God as something completely other, the temple being filled with His robe, and Isaiah freaking out (Paul Tillich opened his courses on religion with Isaiah 6, the moment here being his idea of what religion really encompasses). These clear disconnects are supposed to be there. Luke traveled with Paul and still disagreed with him on areas of doctrine. Why? Luke is his own person and can disagree with Paul. Maybe he thought Paul talked out of his ass sometimes. All Christians do. These moments of disagreement matter. Don't ignore them. The Bible has contradictions in them. What do you expect from a book that is filled with writings that span centuries, life-worlds, perspectives, and authors that probably had zero clue any other book was being written? Much less that their own writings would survive for thousands of years after their death? The "contradictions", the disconnects, the clashing personalities in the Bible and implicit interbiblical disagreements, are all supposed to be there. Don't tame or undermine them.

III. Babylon Bee isn't that good.

It's The Onion but with conservative Christian elements. I never found The Onion all that funny to start. My sense of humor lies somewhere between George Carlin, Tom Segura, and Fool House Productions (look them up). When they're funny they're funny but nine times our of ten it's hit and miss. Satire is meant to be subversive so I expected a bit more from a site like theirs. But I will admit their article "Larry-Boy confirmed for Avengers: Infinity War" had me laughing pretty hard.

Short Story: Cinnamon and Sugar

There’s a few things that came out of New Jersey that are actually good. The Dillinger Escape Plan, Phil Grippaldi (silver olympic weightlifting medalist in 1968, 1972, 1976, and also should’ve been recently released from prison for selling crack), My Chemical Romance, and Meryl Streep. But they have Chris Christie so that cancels out having Meryl Streep. If you find yourself driving through New Jersey then you’ve messed up somewhere in your life. Especially when you find yourself driving in New Jersey traffic as an eight year old and you’ve been in the car for ten hours. Flying was never much of an option for us. My younger brothers and I never cared to behave ourselves and lord knows we wouldn’t have suddenly cared about proper behavior ten thousand feet in the air. We always traveled by car. Mom and dad didn’t want to spend the money but my youngest brother is special needs. His behavior was unstable on the ground let alone sitting behind an air marshal on a Delta flight. Even at eight years old we didn’t like New Jersey. There was always this one gas station that my dad would go to when the van needed filling up. We lived in Staten Island and we weren’t too far away from the bridge to take us into the one place we’d consistently go to in New Jersey. A BP gas station that he’d go to just to cheaply fill up the van. At the time New Jersey was the state with one of the lowest gas taxes so he’d drive just to fill up there and also get a Cuban sandwich from one of the local places. If you want a solid Cuban sandwich you go to a bodega run by a guy that always blasts the same reggaeton, has an uneven cut from the same barber for at least a few years, and has some random animal running around the store. The animal is also the assistant manager. They may barely pass sanitation requirements to serve food but dad still bought it and we haven’t died from some dirty bread. To be fair the “we haven’t died from it” bar is a low bar to try and meet but I’m convinced it’s the only bar that matters.

Cinnamon. Sugar.

It’s distinct. Seasonal for some, especially when you move to the south. We left the confines of the north to the south when mom and dad got tired of the cold in their bones. They said it was because they felt the move south was what needed to happen years ago. I’ll never agree. Cinnamon and sugar is a seasonal thing down here. Eggnog for sure has both and I grew up loving the stuff. Dad, of course. He has the sweet tooth in the family. Mom doesn’t really. She was never big on confectionaries. I was too big on them in college. They’ve given me dental issues but hey I’m here for a good time, not a long time. In New Jersey there’s these big stops that are a mass exodus of people at any given time. Rest stops in the north and the south are the stuff of legends. In the south it’s vending machines and parking spots, usually taken up mostly by tractor trailer drivers that need their rest. Bathrooms. Then you get back to moving. New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and New York all know what it means to have a rest stop. For Virginia, I consider Wawa not just a rest stop but a national treasure. New Jersey has this trend of naming service areas after people. Clara Barton and Woodrow Wilson. Cinnamon and sugar. It’s distinct. Gas station lines clogged with cars trying to get their fill. And the north, for those that don’t know, have people to pump their gas for you. Which is great in the winter but complete crap when you move south and don’t know how to pump your own gas. That was never the case with us. Growing up I always thought pumping your own gas was what adults do. Growing up means you realize that always paying for gas is what adults do, pumping it is a chore. At least it is when you’re at Valero.

I wish I had a specific story about visiting these places. The stops were meant for us to not die in the car on the way back to Staten Island from visiting family in North Carolina. Memorize the exits. Guess the distance between the exit and the border to the next state. When you’ve traveled in a car all of your formative years you quickly tire of road trips. In some way it’s against the millennial zeitgeist, lacking a love affair with the open road and traveling to far away places. To hell with that. Road trips are the bane of my existence. I’ve had enough time sitting in my car for one lifetime. I don’t like air travel all that much more (I work on planes so I don’t want to be on them anymore than I need to be). I might like trains. Aside from the MTA, which doesn’t strive to be the paradigm for railroad travel, I’ve never been on a train. After traveling on the road all my childhood I don’t want to remember much about it except what my brain won’t let me forget. Traveling home from grandma’s funeral. The sheer silence for half a day. Silence my parents prayed for when we were younger. Silence they got but not on the prayerful terms they requested. Driving through Manhattan because I’m a sucker for the city aesthetic. Yes I’m a child of my generation and I’ll fight for that until my dying breath. Driving to Atlanta with all my stuff when I moved out of their house. And getting hit by that drunk driver my senior year of college. I can’t forget that one.

It’d be cinnamon, sugar, and a bunch of people in line for coffee. We grew up around coffee being the adult drink of choice. Then you become an adult and learn the drink of choice is alcohol. They didn’t want us drinking coffee, fully persuaded of the lie that it would stunt your growth. There’s no proof of that but that belies the greater point of us being here only for a good time and not a long time. Dozens of people in line for milk and sugar to get them to the next place to pay another five dollars for another cup of milk and sugar. We only travel from coffee place to coffee place on the road. Staying at home just makes it a more prolonged excursion from coffee place to coffee place. Cinnamon and sugar weren't holiday moments for us elementary school nomads. It was a “we know why you’re here” capitalist thing. I’m sure my memory is morbidly obese because my memories of places are beholden to the slow death of fast food. When I moved to the south the trips back home grew scant. Sordid. Mom didn’t want to go back to New York when grandma lived. After the funeral all her meaningful reasons to go back left. I can’t say I blame her. Growing up means you understand why some doors, doors like that, may be better off closed.

I was around nine years old when I had cinnamon and sugar uppercut a Mike Tyson-esque punch in my sinus for the last time. Forest Avenue. You southerners knew nothing of Perkins. Right by a Shoprite plaza. Perkins was a place you’d go to eat but they also had their own in-house bakery so your nose would be slapped with the scent of freshly baked breads and rolls. A favorite smell for the person with an obese soul. That location closed earlier this year. If you drove by and easily gained weight, smelling those calories would pack them on you in a cholesterol laden heartbeat. Even at nine years old I knew those scents wouldn’t last forever. I haven’t found a place like that down in NC or GA yet but I’m not really looking. I want New York to stay  a place for food. Last week I found that cinnamon and sugar smell again down in Atlanta. Somewhere in Midtown. If I could find the person who made that smell again I’d shake his hand or marry her in a clogged heartbeat. I can’t remember where. From nine years old to twenty-four. Close your eyes. Have that stress-free moment to yourself. Nobody knows you’ll have that moment but yourself.

I found it again. What language shall I use to thank thee, cinnamon and sugar, memories, dear friend?

Unpopular Opinions 2: Church Edition

A link to the previous post: https://paviddagan.blogspot.com/2018/06/unpopular-opinions-church-ediion.html



post credit from r/dankchristianmemes

In the first and previous edition of this I forgot to mention my credentials to actually create my authority to talk about church matters. As follows:

-Both parents are pastors. Yes. Mother and father. They're a mean tag team duo.
-Both parents are hispanic pastors.
-Attended Baptist school for years in Staten Island
-Pentecostal undergraduate
-Methodist graduate school

My background is church heavy. These pastor's kid rant are coming from a deep insider in this community.

I. Jesus' divinity doesn't override His humanity. It's not a get out of jail free card.

Just because He's Jesus doesn't mean He gets a pass solely because He is fully divine. Yes I believe that He is very God of very God but the gospels play coy about His humanity and divinity. Mark seems to read Him as human with a hue of divinity, John makes Him to be more divine than human, and Luke and Matthew have subtle moments of divergence from Mark (considering that 92% of Mark is in Matthew and 87% of Mark is in Luke, I can't imagine they disagreed on a lot of what they read in Mark but the devil yes a bad pun is in the details with Luke and Matthew's opinions, they're sometimes words apart in the gospels). The only reason we can talk about Jesus in any way is because He's human, the fact that we can't understand Him fully is because He's divine. There are moments in the gospels that will forever have no good explanation to them but be written off as "He's Jesus". He doesn't get off easy just because He's the son of God. We place a lot of stock in His divinity because it's easy to do. As if that's a demonstration of faith. It isn't. It's a demonstration of laziness to learning about how messy it is to believe in Jesus and how you're not supposed to clean up that mess. It serves a purpose.

II. God is not the culmination of the stability and security that you grew up with as a child.

Basic human needs are wrapped around the idea that stability and security are important. We want consistency, we want comfort, we want meaningful correspondences within created spheres of stability and security. None of what I just said is God. God told Abraham to leave His home and go to a random land that He'll show to Him, God delivered His people out of Egypt and sent them (after some serious detours) to their promised land. Paul was going to persecute more followers of Jesus and then he has a conversion experience on the way to Damascus. Jesus said no to healing the Syrophoenician woman's sick daughter and afterwards He went to preach and perform miracles to the Greeks, prior to that point all of His ministry were focused on the Jewish people. Peter kept the old Jewish customs of restricted eating until God came to Him in a dream and told Him otherwise. Samuel anointed David, a shepherd, to the Israeli monarchy. If there is anything that God is, it's unstable. If God is anything, He is the breaking point of security and stability. 

We want to cling to what we know and what we grew up with because it's easy to go back to in our minds. Losing our security and stability is hard and scary sometimes. You'll never find a verse that has God asking if He cares about us being scared of losing our stability and comfort. Clinging to what we know like scared animals cling to their mothers doesn't let God be God through us and in us. It makes Him to be the symbol of the comfort and stability we had growing up but with Jesus talk slapped on it like stickers. God isn't a placeholder for human comfort and systemic security. In the Bible He doesn't care for it and I don't see why the church should care for it either.

III. Your faith is petty.

Oh I'm going to have fun with this one.

People are petty so it's no surprise to me that faith becomes petty. It's a low blow to God to read the Bible, to read doctrine, and to read church tradition as though it somehow chains God. For someone as conflict crazy as me (I do love a good fight and a good shouting match) this is my trigger happy moment. You may or may not be surprised at how many people read the Bible in a literal, absolutist, historically accurate way (this is somewhat the job of Biblical inerrancy). The Bible is not the arbiter of all truth. I'm not convinced for a second that Jesus went forty days and nights without food. Jesus, being fully human (being fully human, read that again but slower), couldn't have done that (and He doesn't get a pass for it because He's Jesus). It's biologically impossible. More than likely it's an idiom the writers used to mean "really long time". Their audience wasn't going to fact check them. They could get away with it to a certain degree. If you put your faith into these moments then your faith is inherently petty. If Jesus had to starve Himself for forty days in order for Him to be Jesus then your concept of Jesus is petty and weak. If you believe in a literal seven day creation, and if God can only be God if your idea of a seven day creation is maintained and fixed, then your idea of God sucks. If there had to be two thieves between Jesus in order for Him to be the Messiah then you're limiting Jesus. The details don't matter when it comes to salvation. I'm not sold on that for a minute. Jesus saves. Your concept of Jesus saving doesn't save, Jesus saves. We don't have the ability to limit grace with our potentially petty faith.

Unpopular Opinions: Church Edition

This will hopefully achieve the same goal and affect that Monopoly does: Ruin relationships irreparably and leave a bad taste in your mouth.

One: You don't need the Bible to have faith.

Abraham didn't have a Bible and he somehow knew it was Yahweh telling him to go into the wilderness to this random place. Isaac and Jacob also had deep and meaningful moments with Yahweh and they didn't have a Bible. They were pre-Judaic so they didn't have the Torah or the Mishnah. The Torah wasn't even in its final stages until Jesus had began His ministry. So how did they know it was Yahweh specifically? How did they know it was the God of Judaism and Christianity? They didn't. It's that simple. They were all hearing voices. We typically frame our ability to experience God through the Bible or the traditions of our respective churches. The Bible serves as the manual to how most people in humankind experienced God and this is what it tends to look like. But Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Samuel, Saul, Joshua, Caleb, Noah, Moses, etc. had no Bible and somehow knew it was God. Which makes a strong case for us not needing a Bible in order to have exemplary faith. They followed. Which means Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac by a voice in his head. I'm leaving that there and moving forward.

Two: You don't need a verse for something to be "Christian".

The Bible isn't prescriptive. Sorry. It isn't. The authors weren't capable of imagining, let alone capturing, every single instance of human behavior and thought to list in the Bible. The Bible is a template, a guide to help us rather than a rule book to tell us everything to do in every little instance. You don't need the Bible to tell you to be good to people. "Good" existed way before Judaism and Christianity came around and I can only imagine that people were being good (however "good" took shape back then) long before the Bible came around. You don't need an entire religious book, and a church dedicated to teaching that book, in order to know how to be good to someone. You don't need a verse to tell you how to love someone. Yes it helps but that doesn't make the verse a necessary requirement. If Christianity, boiled to its mere elements, is faith, hope, and love, then you don't need a verse in order to be faithful and hopeful and loving to someone.

Three: The church and its congregation members tend to rationalize their crappy behavior as good. Stop that.

When you sin you look at Christ up on the cross and say "You belong there". When you knowingly sin you look at Christ and go "I'll put the nails in myself". Augustine whines about this in Confessions, his choice sin of stealing pears even though he didn't even need them or want them, himself saying that he had better pears at home, as "sin for its own sake". The worst type of sin to Augustine. If you're going to knowingly sin, then commit to explaining to Christ that you chose to nail Him to the cross. Because that's what sin does. Don't hide from it. Don't sanitize your crappy behavior with rationalizing processes. Own your sin. You did it. You're held accountable for it at the end of your days. The church would be taken more seriously if it collectively went "Yeah we did all of this crappy things and it isn't pretty but it's us". More on this point later.

True faith.


Four: Heresy doesn't really matter.

My favorite one. Strap in kids, it's about to get wicked.

Heresy is a political move. It's a term we use for anything we don't like when it comes to our secure and stable notions of Christ, the church, and all it encompasses. It's a moving target, orthodoxy and heresy constantly shifting with generations and culture. Heresy typically is based off a true moment taken from the Bible and its taken in a contorted direction. Docetism makes sense (The idea that Christ appeared to die because Christ, God incarnate, can't die). Monophysitism makes sense (Jesus had only one nature, not two). Adoptionism makes sense (Jesus was adopted as the son of God at His baptism). Heresy doesn't limit grace though. God's grace is for all people, not the ones that commit to the Westminster Confession or the people that only use the KJV (the 1759 edition no less). I doubt God exactly cares about how we understand Christ's nature or the Trinity and its internal workings. As long as we care for the least of these then we should hopefully be good. Leave the Trinity explanations to God (seriously guys, that stuff is confusing).

Five: Saying "the church isn't perfect" isn't a get out of jail free card towards an aggressive pursuit of being better.

"We aren't perfect". "The church has a long way to go". And then you go back and continue the same nonsense you did last week. Changing is hard. It's scary. It's an uncomfortable, insecure, unstable process. We're used to sinning. We like it. It's fun. Christ isn't fun and He wasn't very likable in the Bible (He came off as an ass in the Bible and no Christ doesn't get a pass because He's God incarnate, He was fully human too so He can be an ass too just like everyone else). So we hear "the church isn't perfect", seek that as passive-aggressive validation for the remission of our crappy behavior for that week, and then go back out AND DO IT AGAIN. Repentance means being better. It means committing to being better. It means going through the ugly moments and forcing yourself to be uncomfortable. It means seeking the discomfort and not sanitizing it, deodorizing it, or bleaching it away. It means committing to the process of becoming more like Christ and less like us. If Christ was comfortable then He'd be a waste of time. But saying "the church isn't perfect" isn't uncomfortable. It still leaves Christ on the cross. And that's a comfortable place for us to leave Him because He can't get down. If He can't get down from the cross then He can't give us hell for our behavior.

But He did come down.
But He did see His disciples. His friends. His brothers. He saw them.
But He didn't give them Hell.

He broke bread with them. He ate fish and bread with them. Bring Him down from there so He can help you be better. The church, believe it or not, can one day say "we're on the way to being like Christ". And mean it.

I Lost $1250 In Three Days. This is Why You Need an Emergency Savings Fund

Time hop back to November 2017. My teeth have never been a stellar section of my health. I had braces back in middle school until high school and lost both retainers so my teeth shifted out of place over time. The result is that I have slightly crooked teeth that are also sensitive since braces make your teeth sensitive. Sometimes you just can't win. My teeth have never been the best example of my health. My wisdom teeth were a gamble. Back in 2016 my wisdom tooth, bottom right of my mouth, started giving me trouble, but only for a day. One day. I can ignore that. Take Advil. Sleep. Gone. 2017, early November, I started having pain that didn't go away but because I was being stubborn, a motif in my life for sure, I didn't go get it checked out because I was too busy being at work. I was also too busy trying to wrap up my first semester of grad school. So I gambled that the pain would go away.

Nope. Don't bet on your teeth. You'll lose every time.

The wisdom tooth became infected because it was impacted and didn't break through the gum line. It grew more painful and my tongue and the nearby tonsil became infected. This went on for weeks. You'd think I would've taken care of it immediately. You and I thought wrong. I clearly don't think though. Fast forward to the Friday before Thanksgiving and it finally reached apex discomfort. I couldn't close my mouth properly. I was losing sleep because of the pain, my appetite in full disarray. I was at school and tried eating something because I still had to eat. I couldn't eat much solids so meat was out of the question. Extensive chewing was painful. Bread was hit and miss depending on if it was sliced bread or a hard loaf. So I went for only soft foods. I found a place that had banana pudding.

Pro tip: Never and I repeat never eat something as sugary as banana pudding when you have a mouth infection. Good banana pudding is pure sugar. This pain was pure nightmare.

The resultant feeling was like pop rocks sizzling under your skin. My tonsil, already suffering from a residual infection, swelled to the size of a jellybean. If I wanted to close my mouth I would be biting into my tonsil. That's it. I need this tooth out now. I found an orthodontist that was willing to do the procedure the same day. A modern day saint. He took the tooth out in an hour. My part time job gives me dental insurance. I'm also on my parent's plan because the law allows me to be (thank you far reaching government). Despite that insurance covered half of the procedure, I still had to drop $300 to cover the other half. That day I felt two types of pain: The pain of money and the pain of having felt a lidocaine filled needle having been shoved into my jaw three times. The next few hours had me suffering from the most pain I've ever felt in my life. And on top of that I was out $300.

Fast forward to the Monday of Thanksgiving week. I'm still dying but at least I have painkillers for the suffering. I still have to go to class but I'm having car issues. Great. What fun. How convenient. A valve cover gasket needs to be replaced. Well I'm stuck now. But what do I need to drop? $400? Let me stay in bold for a second. This is why I'm convinced that Mondays are cruel reminders of how hard life likes to hit. Rent was due that Monday also. $550. I lost $1250 in the span of three days. You don't want to know how hard that was to take. All the money I had worked hard for, suddenly gone. Because life likes to time my weak moments and coalesce other events to occur just to kick me when I'm financially weak. Now, I was able to cover all of that and still have enough left over for the next month's rent. This is why I work as much as I do.


You don't need this to be you when life decides to get expensive.

Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, if you saw "$300" and cringed and then saw "$1250" and your butt clenched so hard that it tore the upholstery in your seat, then you need an emergency fund. I'm 23. An emergency fund for someone my age doesn't need to be extensive. I don't have multiple family members I need to financially think for. But I do have expensive things like rent, health, and a car. Which is what most people my age have. I had enough saved up to where I could cover $1250 of expenses in three days and still cover next month's expenses. Granted, I would've been on some seriously thin ice with my money but I was still able to do it. 

Now go and do in remembrance of my pain.

Short Story: Embarrassed

I found a way to pop my lower back while sitting in my car driving to school from work. If you learn how to breathe into your stomach and shove your tongue into the roof of your mouth then your core will lock hard and somehow pop your back. I learned that from Dr. Layne Norton. At least it does to my back after work. You can load planes all day long and feel fine that day, but the moment the next day comes then your joints start calling your tab. On especially cold and windy days when I get up from my car my kneecaps feel like they're splitting in half, pinned against a table. A splitting feeling. Removal. My lower back takes a hit because people want to ship car parts in broken boxes and we are expected to lift these things safely yet quickly. You cannot do a quick job safely and you cannot do a safe job quickly. I'm sure my bosses know that but they also don't care because it's not their lower backs, or their hands, or their legs that are taking a hit. But it was Friday so my resentment was curbed because it was pay day. The American ritual of us forgetting labor pains and we get what we're told we deserve: money for our toil. No amount of money can give my joints back my cartilage but it can buy me coffee. I can make good of coffee.

I walk into a coffee shop, knees sore and lower back slowly forming arthritis, just to have a pure moment of my own. I get to pay for this with my own money. I get to have this moment because of my own labor. It's the lie I tell myself to make me want to go back to work on Sunday. It doesn't make the coffee taste any better. It's the lie I tell myself to motivate me to work harder for a job where I can die. A 3000 lb. container can crush me at work and I would be replaced the same week that I died. You sort of have to lie to yourself to hide the futility of your efforts. We were all numbers, easily removable and easily hired. At least I had my marginal moment for myself. I still don't buy into this self-care and loving yourself crap but at least I could have this one all for me. I had my backpack with me so I can do a little bit of reading. I was up since 3:00am that morning so I didn't know how much of this reading I would retain but it was worth a shot. I had to commit to the process of learning about the future I wanted, even if I was tired and in pain. But my left hand had coffee in it so I was somewhat okay.

A gothic vibe of sort. More slow moving. Smoky without the smoke although I wouldn't mind the smell of cigarettes. I grew up in a city so I was used to the smell of cigarettes. I didn't have enough money to smoke, I always found it cool because the friends I wanted to be friends with smoked religiously. Addiction is expensive. I left that to the ones with more money than me. Filled with dress shirts and high heels, faces caked with foundation and eyeliner clumped over itself like crumbs falling off a hard cookie. Clean hair and veneer teeth, glasses aiding glazed over eyes, mouths that moved a lot but said nothing. They were really good at saying nothing. I was impressed at the utter energy committed to nothingness. I don't know how Heidegger would feel about it. He probably wouldn't even want to be here anyway. Sip. Still too hot. Take the top of the cup off. Let it sit there for the next fifteen minutes. Crack open the book. Great. Asset-liabilities ratios. My favorite. Why isn't there a font for sarcasm?

Fifteen minutes later. Coffee is still too hot but my age has taken away the sensitivity. My job wasn't the pain I wanted to feel, hot and cold food burning my tongue or slapping my sensitive teeth was my preferred choice of torture. If anyone was going to make me hurt it was going to be me and by my allowance. If only that was a rule I had for my life. Sip. Eh. Still boiling lava but okay. Chug. Dyson Ball it into my system. There were no survivors. It's not that I hate my job. It's that I recognize physical capital is sustainable to a point. I don't want to wake up reaching for the Tylenol. I don't want to wake up and dread moving because my knees won't allow me to do much. I only have one back. I only have a few joints. I don't get a rebate for the wear and tear I put on me. I want out. So I'm trying in the most complicated way to put myself into a new industry. An industry that is run by people that forgot their package jockey days. To love your wallet with all your mind but not all your strength. I put music into my ears but shut it off. The talking atmosphere and music are too much for my ears to handle. Working at an airport and listening to six planes take off and taxi in during an operation destroys your ears. Even with hearing protection it only does so much. Even with Tylenol I can only take so much. Even with motivation and being headstrong I can only take so much. Sip more coffee. A lot more.

I finish another chapter and its commentary. I don't feel smarter. I'm a package jockey. What business do I have of reading this sort of stuff? We ship broken phones, car parts, sex toys, letters from soldiers to parents, advertisements for discount specials at Walmart and Gamestop, bulk orders of Almond Milk, and boxes of oxycodone and percocet, which I'm convinced are being bought and sold to employees. I can imagine that a lot of my coworkers might run to painkillers a bit too fast after work. It scares me, I want out. I work with a lot of people that can go somewhere incredible but won't, don't know how to, or can't because life circumstances don't allow it. Life bends our arms more than people think. Almost done with the coffee. At this point I check if my broker is open. I tried playing a fantasy of making money on the market but realizing I don't have the wherewithal to do so. I'm not smart enough yet. Not yet. Timing. I'm a package jockey. We don't get much respect, if we do it's really just pity masked as respect. I get up, pack my things into my backpack that I've had since 8th grade, and start walking from Peachtree Street to the other end of it. I grew up in Staten Island and I was finally back in the city. I was back to where I wanted to be. Lost and dreaming.

And I'm still new to this area of life so I recognize that I have zero concept of how far away things are. Nobody told me that my Vans weren't suited for this. I was ready to discover. I always was. I walk down and to the right for what felt like a mile. I had no idea where I was going but I committed to memory the Google Maps directions I pulled up on my phone before leaving the coffee place. I felt out of place walking past banks and skyscrapers and lovely cars and lovely people. Me with the callused and cut up hands and pop rocks joints and the sawed kneecaps and shredded ligaments. The wear and tear disqualified me from even looking at this sort of life. This white collar life that I wanted to get into somehow. I'm a package jockey. We're up at 4:00am loading planes and moving people's gifts for them around this time of year. Gifts they don't even want. Maybe I thought too much for an unskilled laborer. It made me feel daring. How dare I, some worker, try to think about higher things? I'm me. That's who. I give myself authority. And so I walked with this unearned sense of pride. I have my small money. Maybe I really do think too much about these things.

My work shirt still damp with sweat, me wearing two shirts and a sweater and shorts under my jeans, a pair of socks with wool socks on top of them, all just to keep warm. It never worked. You were always freezing. 9 degrees cold, you were still outside. 12 degrees and windy and raining hard then you were still outside waiting for all these planes. I didn't have gloves for a very long time and the gloves the job gave me were no better than having no gloves at all. If you were giving your all to work that you could be killed at, mainly by being crushed, wouldn't you want to get out? If you were in a position that had you running your body into the ground day in and day out and you could be injured and replaced in the same week you were fired, injured, or killed on the job then wouldn't you want to put yourself in a better position? Wouldn't you want the money you make to work for you in the best way possible? This was my walk to this brokerage firm. My way, however insignificant and small to these people that handle billions of dollars by the hour, people with incredible academic training and high social standing, an institution that stands as monument to the capitalist system I'm tired of working so hard for, and I'm only 23, that can also take my money to try and help me go somewhere else with it so I don't have to work this hard later on in life. Let's be real, nobody is reading it the way I am. As if it's some sort of intense battle against some larger than life foe. They just see it as taking my money. I see it this way. It's the lie I have to tell myself to go after my daily bread.

I walk in and I feel even more out of place. What the hell am I doing in here? I shouldn't be here. I should be spending my money on items and trinkets like a lot of my coworkers do. On a given day while we're waiting for the planes to come in I might see them pulling up photos of some of the shoes and cars on their wishlists. But I want the stuff I want to buy to matter in the future. I want them to matter now. I want out of this exhausting work. I want out of this job that was created to keep you here. Some of my coworkers were in my position, in grad school and pursuing something else entirely and they end up at this job. You don't go to work here. You end up here. Like Denny's. You don't go to Denny's. You end up there. Usually because where you really want to go, Waffle House, is either too far away or you don't have enough money to get there so you can only afford Denny's. I looked a mess, I hadn't showered that morning since I slept over at work the prior night. I usually shower after work because that makes more sense. When you're up that early you're not trying to impress anyone at 4:00am and if you are then I bet they're not someone worth impressing. The man who helped me figure a few things out, Dan, was nothing short of friendly and professional. He could see some of where my money was, though a bit odd in some places, worked. I shook his hand. It was only a measly $60 or so that I gave him. But it was $60 that can turn into $100 if you give it time. Decades. I was willing to do it. He didn't ask me what job I had. Thank God. I was embarrassed to mention I was a package jockey. Embarrassed to give my laborer money to a brokerage firm that might be able to help put me into a better spot in life soon.

                                       I mean...if the photo says it then is it wrong?

Maybe it is a fight to be made. Maybe you should seek this conflict. I walked back to my car. Uphill. It wasn't snowing but I loved every second knowing that I'm somehow going to make this ugly mess some people call life work. Even if it will work out decades after this point. I still looked and felt out of place walking past these banks and lovely faces and lovely bodies and expensive status symbols. I'll get there. Not without some more Advil first.

Go Be Scared. It Might Be The Time You Live.

Be scared. You won't die from being scared.

Even going into 2018, the same things that scared me at the beginning of this big move continue to scare me now. I don’t seek to remove the fear. I don’t care about being scared. It isn’t unique to me since everyone is scared of something. I’d rather be scared. At least the fear makes me go “I’m David and I’m about to do…” It forces me into the moment and that’s where we truly live.

If you’ve ever moved out of your parents’ house to another state to do anything else and begin the whole starting your own life sort of thing, it’s scary. Whether it is supposed to be scary or not is another thing but it’s stepping out into the unknown in a more dynamic way. You leave the nest, you separate from the herd, you become the lone wolf for a period of time and try to make your own way. I couldn’t sleep for more than two odd hours a night because it was so quiet in my new apartment. I have two younger brothers that are as loud as I am and I’m not used to much silence. I had to fall asleep with my music on because my room doesn’t have a fan in it and I’m one of those sleepers that needs the white noise to know that there’s something else there. I never understood the psychology behind why some people can’t fall asleep in pure silence but eh that’s for another time. I fall asleep with the bathroom fan on most days after work because I literally cannot fall asleep in pure silence. For the first two months I was scared of somehow just being buried under stress. Which is stress itself. Can I make ends meet and continue to save money? How will I handle grad school on top of working this much? How much more punishment can my body take because less than three hours of sleep a night adds up to your body either getting sick or not recovering properly and you end up constantly dragging your feet 24/7. The worry hasn’t gone away. I still constantly worry about that. I don’t trust that it’s going to be okay soon enough. I don’t trust that I’m somehow going to figure it all out or that it, “it” referring to life right about now, will all work out in some weird form.

AND THE GREAT THING ABOUT IT IS THAT I DON’T NEED TO.

It's like Yosemite Sam met philosophy.

Call it bleak or negative or whatever else you want. It doesn’t make sense to me why I have to constantly seek harmony when it comes to work, socializing, fun, grad school, and anything else I want to throw into my day. Jeff Bezos mentioned in an interview he gave that he doesn’t like to call seeing a work-life balance a “balance”, as “balance” implies a strict trade. He calls it harmony. That presupposes that harmony can be found. My first semester of seminary told me that harmony is usually a coerced presumption when we read the Bible or look at church traditions and try to make them systematic. Why do we act as though we can’t, and I mean lack the ability to function in any way or shape or form or manner or mode or concept, live in the tension? I don’t have to know that it’s going to be okay. I don’t have to lie to myself that it WILL be okay soon enough. I’m here now in some strange city at a strange school trying to live dynamically but I don’t understand why you have to not be scared. The fear never goes away, usually you’ll be told to mitigate it and to me that makes little sense. Maybe I’m a strict Nietzschean in this regard. Trying to become something truly special, becoming the best possible version of yourself, hurts. It’s supposed to hurt. You’re supposed to suffer. Don’t reconcile it with yourself. Be scared. You’ve been scared before. Children might be scared of the monsters under their beds but we grew up to recognize that we face monsters everyday. Instability, fear of loss, death, fear of poverty, failure, not becoming something special, failing your loved ones, recognizing your potential may have been realized already and you have nothing more to contribute to your immediate communities, you know, the typical existential dilemmas we all have at some point in our lives. If you’ve ever been in line for a roller coaster and felt scared while being in line and STILL WENT ON THE ROLLER COASTER WHILE YOU WERE SCARED, you know that being scared won’t kill you.

*gets off pulpit*