The Daily Dose

Today, The (not quite) Daily Dose of the Good (and Not So Good) Words is, oddly enough, about words, specifically one word. Any student of scripture (scripture broadly defined) worth her salt is going to examine closely how words are used (and abused). I am as salty as the Dead Sea when exploring a word’s buoyancy.

Today, I embark on a pragmatic study of the word shed. The old saw “context is everything” will be our watch words as we drop “shed,” as used in two articles in today’s edition of The New York Times, into the English channel to see if it sinks or floats.

“A child can shed flu virus for 10 days, Dr. Imperato said, an adult for 5.” Donald McNeil, Jr., Containing Flu, Is Not Feasible, Specialist Say.

“Mr. Pestronk’s group estimates that local health departments lost about $300 million in financing and 7,000 workers in 2008, a year when more than half of all agencies shed employees.” Kevin Sack, Local Health Agencies, Hurt by Cuts, Brace for Flu.

My first impulse, due to reading one article right after the other, was to be slightly miffed as associative leaps lead me to the conclusion that this writer thinks of employees as an infectious disease spread by sick health agencies’ sneezes and wheezes, which other business can avoid catching if they take preventative measures. While this may (or may not) be a flight of fancy, there is something about this use of the word that is important. So let’s dig a little deeper.

Are writers, tired of the more commonplace words for job loss- firings, fired, termination, terminations, terminated, layoffs, losing your job- and barred from slang- canned, shown the door, given a pink slip, axed, getting your walking papers, sacked (ironic that the author’s last name is slang for to fire)-, stretching their vocabulary muscles? Should we applaud Kevin Sack for using the thesaurus to bring out an oldy but goody?

Two quick Google searches reveal that shed and shedding as euphemisms for layoffs and firings have shed all over the internet. Google turned up 321,000 instances of “shedding jobs” and 7,960,000 of “shed jobs.” All those sheds are kindling for an awesome (in the old time religion sense of that word) funeral pyre of lost jobs and dashed hopes. Ironically, this Daily Dose will put more sheds on fire.

This shedding of the word shed got me to thinking about the meaning of the word shed and why it might be used to talk about firing people. Shed is a powerful little verb. It means to part or divide, to pour or make flow (as in bloodshed), to radiate or cast/give off, to allow to flow or fall (as in shedding tears) and the less emotive, more passive to let fall or be divested of.

Bloodshed and tears may be the result of some of this casting off of employees, but looking back at the parallel use of shed for an infectious child spreading the possibly pandemic swine flu might shed some light on why shed is being used by Sack and so many other writers. In both sentences the use of shed makes the subjects less responsible for what is shed. The sick child does not mean to be infectious; the health agencies did not want to cut their staffs. In both cases there the use of the word shed implies forces beyond the subjects’ control acting on and through them.

“The economy made them do it” is the excuse hidden out back, behind the shed. I understand why writers shield their subjects from blame by building sheds of sheds. But it diverts us from looking closely at what is happening. Yes, often the angry gods of the economy demand sacrifices. The throats of hundreds of thousands of jobs are cut each month. The Labor Department’s Employment Situation Summary reported that 663,000 jobs were lost this past March.

Yet, the excuse of forces beyond our control, this shed of shed, is a faulty construction. Employers are to blame for firing so many people, regardless of why they made that decision. They are not the only ones to blame, but they must be made to bear some of the responsibility for these firings. As businesses and governments shed jobs like a dog shedding its winter coat, we must not let their excuse of the “economy made us do it” blind the rest of us to the unnecessary firings, the ways that particular choices of which jobs to cut exacerbate existing inequalities and how the economic crisis is used as a feint to cover flagrant abuses of power and sheer stupidity.

Did that corporation really need to fire so many people or could it have cut its lobbying budget? Why did that university president get a $200,000 plus bonus when whole departments with tenured faculty were axed, and will he get another one this year when even more jobs will be “shed” by the university? Why aren’t more in upper management losing their jobs? Keeping in mind that payroll generally is any organization’s largest expense, could state governments and local businesses find other ways to tighten their budgetary belts? If asked, will employees agree to a voluntary per cent cut in their pay so that everyone can keep their jobs? Have our state and federal senators and representatives cut their own pay? Why the hell did presidential staff spend $35,000 dollars on a photo- op that scared the bejesus out of people in New York?

Writers’ sheds protect business from scrutiny at the time when we most need to look closely. Let’s shed the sheds (at least in this context), cast them off and let them sink deep in our sea of words.

Confederate Jasmine blooms. A white star of a flower on a trailing green vines, it smells sickly sweet. To me Confederate Jasmine smells of decay. It evokes Strange Fruit as sung by Cassandra Wilson or Nina Simone. This delicate white flower has a penetrating on the edge of death smell that dominates any space. It smells guilty. The fact that I detest the potent perfumes of white flowers might be coloring my depiction, might be causing me ascribe a florid history to an innocent flower.

Flowers are neither innocent or guilty, being outside the human framework of morality. Any corruption we lay at their feet can only really be of a physical nature, when actual plants actually die and decay. Anything beyond the stink of real live, perhaps I should say real dead decay is a flight of floral fancy.

Flowers cannot be innocent or guilty, but we can.

Let’s pull the next two petals off my floral fancy singing a “he loves me-he loves me not” chant of “innocent-innocent not.”

For a long while, I was sunk up to my eyeballs in activist work. I noticed before becoming a super crispy burn out that many folks invested in the utopian but necessary fantasy that “another world is possible” often spend a fucking lot of their time trying to prove to others that they have been cleansed of their sins. Now these are not sins you will find laid down in traditional scripture, no they are the sins of racism, homophobia, sexism, classism, insert ism or obia here.

For some folks it is so important that everyone else knows they are among the saved, they- because of all their hard work- are newly innocent, that the slightest hint that they have sinned, the barest suggestion that they might have done wrong, wrecks their worlds. A few folks spend so much time trying to show that they are cleansed of sin, often by pointing out all the ways others are guilty, that they never get around to actually doing any work. Those sorts of people are some of most draining and demoralizing idgits I’ve ever come across, and I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. On second thought, I most certainly would.

Let Bishop Bishop save y’all some worry. Every single one of you is damned, at least in any black and white ideology where some are saved and others not, some innocent, others guilty. Even in my shifting shades of grey world view, I must tell you, we all remain guilty. The tainted perfume of Confederate Jasmine clings to every body in the United States, regardless of the color of our skins, regardless of when or how we or our ancestors got here.

Some people wear just the faintest whiff. Others have on a tad bit more than what’s welcome in polite society. A few try to cover the smell up by wearing a stinky pine tree shaped car freshener as an activist merit badge. Some smell like they spent a long while soaking in a bathtub full of its perfume. Others reek so much of this scent that we choke and gag on their odious odor.

And that is just one of the scents of which we are not innocent. We all are, in various degrees of closeness, embraced by flagrant fragrance.

I cannot save you from what it means to be an individual situated within shifting systems of power and privilege. Power and privilege shift around you, changing moment to moment. Sometimes you have more. Sometimes you have less. Sometimes you are innocent. Sometimes you are guilty. Sometimes, you are coated in such a muddled mix of innocence and guilt that you cannot tell which smell is stronger. Much of it is beyond your control. That ain’t an excuse to do nothing.

The next time you are tied in knots about whether or not you guilty of one of the various isms or obias- whether or not you have oppressed another in some way, shape or form- I hope you remember this mediations on innocence and guilt. I am not trying to get you off the hook; I am not suggesting that you ignore any wrongs you may have committed or the ways you have been privileged. What I am suggesting is that if you assume that you got squirted with all sorts of scents as you walked through society’s noxious perfume section, you will spend less time trying to prove your innocence and more time sniffing out the complex bouquet of your particular flagrance.

That understanding might, no promises but it just might help you figure out how to not spray your stink on others. That understanding , will not, cannot make you odorless. The scents of these sins are always with us, all of us, every single body. There is no fragrance free option.

Today, I deliver a dose of the Not So Good Words. A cant of can’t. Because sometimes, we all need to be told no. Sometimes, it does not turn out all right. We are limited.

Today, I remind you of the limits. Push against them. Relax into them. Remember them. For you have need of them.

Today, I tell you

You can’t.
This time, you should not “just do it.”
It is not possible.
No.

Today, I tell you

Don’t push yourself.
You will have to wait.
Be patient.
It takes time.

Today, I tell you

It is over.
It broke.
It cannot be fixed.
It never will be the same.

Today, I tell you

You didn’t get in.
You have to do it over.
You lost.
You failed.

Today, I tell you

You shouldn’t.
You don’t.
You won’t.
You can’t.

Today, I tell you

It is incurable.
You will die.
There is no reprieve.
None.

So my faithful readers are aware that I asked y’all to help me brainstorm a lovely list of possible topics/subjects/themes for my off the cuff editions of The Daily Dose of the Good (and Not So Good Words). This is to help me reach my goal of writing and posting Daily Doses every dang day. Besides which, it is a form of call and response with my online congregation, and I love call and response.

I got a, one, only one, just one, one suggestion. Someone suggested I write a Daily Dose about amputee porn. Now, you might think that person was being a smart ass, trying to trip me up by offering up a potentially shocking recommendation, but s/he wasn’t. No, the suggestion was made with a fairly straight face (or at least I assumed s/he had a straight face, since I couldn’t actually see the face in question).

Now in order to keep my writing time to 45 minutes or less (the major thing that makes a Daily Dose off the cuff is that I don’t spend hours and hours writing it), I will focus in on one key idea. I will not go into the complex, thorny, knotty issue of fetish porn that focuses on people’s body parts or lack thereof. No, I will follow one thought trail.

I think how someone responds to hearing the word “amputee” before the word “porn” tells us a lot about where that person is at. Again, I won’t go into all the possible reactions, since looking at just one reaction is enough grist for the mill. If the reaction is to snigger and try to make a (bad) joke out of it, then it is unlikely that s/he can imagine someone with physical disabilities or “non-standard” bodies having beautiful, hot, amazing sex with partners that- really and truly- find that particular someone attractive.

This is an extension of the shame of and hate for our imperfect, not always controllable bodies (with or without a significant disability) that most of us carry with us. Many people shudder at the idea of seeing their aging parents naked, not only because of the taboo most middle class American families have about parental nudity, but also because they assume that their parents’ aging bodies are ugly. And if you dare suggest the aging, wrinkled, sometimes fat bodies of our parent’s and grandparent’s generation and, depending on how old we are, our own generation can be beautiful fucking, you might have to deal with other people recoiling in disgust.

This makes me sigh.

I send this prayer out to you:

May we create a world where “amputee porn” is not the butt of jokes made to diffuse people’s anxieties about their own imperfect, sometimes out of control, bodies. A world where our first reaction to images of old, fat, wrinkled and/or physically handicapped bodies having sex would not be disgust. May we make a world where we could admit that we found those images beautiful and yes, even, arousing.

Amen.

Awomen.

Pretty please with sugar on top.

I move closer and closer to my goal of writing and posting The Daily Dose of the Good (and Not So Good) Words daily. I am not there yet, but I am closer. And one of the things I have figured out along the way is that if I want to administer Daily Doses to y’all every dang day, I have to find ways to speed up my writing.

Generally, any given Daily Dose takes me quite a long while to write. I’m more than a little bit persnickety. And arranging and re-arranging words is one of my all time favorite things to do. Combine those two traits together and you’ll understand why it can take me way longer than an hour to write a Daily Dose, though it will leave you puzzled over how I still manage to make so many typos and spelling errors.

I have decided to speed up the production process so as to reach my goal of giving y’all The Daily Dose daily sometime this century. One or two times a week, I still will slow cook The Daily Doses, until the meat of the matter is tender and falling off the bone. But most days, I will mix up quick, breezy, strawberry daiquiris flavored Daily Doses. These doses will be more off the cuff, more improvisational, written in 45 minutes or less.

I will write a bunch of possible subjects/themes/topics for future Daily Doses on scraps of paper and drop them into a bowl or bag or some such, mix them up, and then on short and sweet helps the medicine go down Daily Dose days, I will pull the living in the future tense dose’s topic out of my hat, set my timer for 45 minutes and see what Good (and Not So Good) Words I can pull out of my ass.

I need help. Send me subjects, themes, topics, words, concepts, names of colors or objects or places or people, images, ideas, etc. It can be as broad a concept as “the economy” or as specific as “tax resisters tea party.” It can be as serious or silly. It can be political, religious, artistic, academic, sexual, social or some strange combination.

Send your grist for my mill by commenting on this post or by emailing me, TheBishop (at) bishopbishop (dot) com.

Take care and keep on keeping on.

“Eroticism always entails a breaking down of established patterns, the patterns, I repeat, of the regulated social order.”

Georges Bataille, Eroticism: Death and Sensuality

Does it? Now I haven’t yet read the book from which this quote is drawn, but I came across fragments of it reading someone else’s writing, and I was able to find a few selections online. Despite my lack of material, I weave the tiniest bits of “yes, this works” and “ooh, maybe I can get away with suggesting this” into the fabric of this particular dose of The Daily Dose of the Good (and Not So Good) Words. Just don’t look at the underside- enjoy the well woven illusion.

I’m willing to concede that much that we define as erotic (personally and collectively) goes against the grain of “normal” life. This gives that which we label erotic power. Eroticism often is a sexual carnival in which the rules are overthrown for step right up, step right up for a limited and liminal good time. But it isn’t a free for all. The disorder plays out within certain constraints. Most limited-liminal transgressions act as a relief valve to let off some pressure in the social system. The rules/norms/standards are not changed by the eroticism’s breaking of “the patterns of the regulated social order” (at least not right away- they will eventually shift, but at a glacial pace). The social order is re-affirmed. Here I’m weaving in a little Mikhail Bakhtin and Victor Turner into my covering of the quote by Bataille. It actually is a bit more complicated than that, but my short hand summary will do in a pinch.

I wonder if eroticism “always entails a breaking down.”

Is noticing and enjoying the way your thighs softly rub against one another (pre-chafing when it still feels nice) contra the social order? Or the way a fresh piece of fruit feel in your hand as you bite into it? Or the glorious getting ready to get out of bed but lingering for just a moment more to stretch and soak up a little bit of the cozy covers feeling? Is that transgressive? Does eroticism ever build up instead of break down? It might. I haven’t thought about it enough to come up with any examples. But I have to pose the question. All those moments could be erotic. They could help us expand our definition of eroticism.

I suppose I should not expect a well rounded definition from the author of The Story of the Eye a freak fest of disturbing porn. Bad boys like Bataille really are romantics at heart. Instead of romanticizing flowers and chocolates and communion and warm fuzzy feelings, they romanticize shit and death and pain and isolation and deviance. I may have mentioned it before, but I’m suspicious of romantics- whether they are the happy-happy-joy-joy kind or the wallow-in-their-own-excrement kind.

While I have an appreciation for the grotesque, I find the shit-piss-blood-death romantics even more teeth grindingly annoying than the fluffy bunnies. Perhaps it is because I expect the prophets of perversity to be smarter than the average Joe Schmoe. I expect them to understand that their romantic notions are no more truthful than the happy-happy-joy-joy kind. They hold some of the truth but not all of it. So do the fluffy bunny romantics.

I think what is caught in my craw is Bataille’s use of the word “always.” If he had said “often,” I might have been more willing to nod and pass on by. But that “always” makes his statement troublesome. We need to set a trap to catch that pesky “always” and release it into the prosy wilds (that “always” deserves to live in an oxymoron). Let’s trap it, let’s free his sentence of that vermin, so that it can more closely approximate the semblance of a truth that might possibly tell us something about what eroticism is and what it does in our lives.

Today, laddies and gentlewomen, I must admit I feel put upon. Now there are millions of people in the world that have it much worse than I do; but when I feel put upon reflecting on how much more shit some poor schmuck has to swallow does not make me feel better. It just adds guilt to an already un-fun little head space.

Things have been a wee bit difficult at the headquarters for my mission to save the whole wide world and little old you. I am torn- figuratively and literally. I literally have a torn calf muscle, which is keeping me on my backside in bed, which you’d think with my proclivities could be a lot of fun, but unfortunately isn’t. And I figuratively feel torn about what to say and do next. What is the next step to spread The Good (and Not So Good) Words to even more people even further away from me?

Things have plateaued. This is normal for anything building up from the grassroots, but it can be more than a little frustrating. It stirs up all my doubts about this project. This is when I return to Alain Badiou, the French philosopher, and remind myself that the best thing that he said was to “keep going.”

‘Keep going!’ Keep going even when you have lost the thread, when you no longer feel ‘caught up’ in the process, when the event itself has become obscure, when its name is lost, or when it seems that it may have named a mistake, if not a simulacrum!” Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil

Y’all might think I harp on this but reminding yourself to keep going becomes very important when you do not have the certainty of conviction to prop you up. I do not know much for certain, even though I sometimes act and speak as if I do. It is easy for me to fall down into a puddle and slide off the path, even though it is a path I have chosen. My bossy as all get out voice and mannerisms belie it, but, in my heart of hearts, I am a true doubter. This means that I often get lost in a fog of my own dithering and doubting. Though sometimes, it is hard to distinguish real doubt from doubts trumped up by my reluctant, passive aggressive, don’t want to do much of nothing side to get out of working on something that may just not turn out the way I want it to.

It is not easy for me to stay the course. I have too many questions. I drop my bread crumbs down to mark a trail. I forge ahead. I secretly send birds questing to eat my trail. I cannot be sure of anything except perhaps where I am right now.

I find first person conversion narratives (doesn’t matter what faith) fascinating because they are about people connecting to something they believe in. I earnestly tried to be follow several different faith practices. But just when I started to think I could be part of this, whatever this was at the time, I found I could not let go of my doubts. I often appreciated other people’s devotion but could not devote myself. I was not called to be a follower of those faiths, even though I heard the faint echo of the reverberation of the call’s sounding for other.

I keep going because I believe- at least a little bit, some of the time- the world needs more preachers like me. More people to say that things are uncertain. More preachers to declare there are a million million shades of grey. More gurus to admit that there is no a clear cut set of four/seven/twelve steps/principles/laws that if followed will magically make everything all right. More people of the cloth to warn us that anyone who tells you there is One Answer is the worst sort of snake oil salesman. More religious figures to say, “I don’t know for certain. I’m making my best guess and seeing where that leads.”

Those of us who doubt, we just have to pick a path- knowing it is imperfect, knowing we will encounter contradictions while walking it, knowing that others will shake their heads and tell us we are going the wrong way. We say to ourselves, “Let’s try this.” Our faith is not in the particular path but in the walking of it. We have to move, one way or the other. We will be forced to move, if we do not choose. (Let’s not go into how our choices often are much more limited, more prescribed, then we would like to believe). Sometimes, it is useful to pretend that the path we chose is the “right” path, even if by that we mean the right for right now path.

When this mini-dark night of the soul is over, I will remain a doubting Thomas, but this time I am not letting my doubts- some useful, some worthless- completely derail me. I stay on track. I stay the course. I keep going. To spread The Good (and Not So Good) Words far and wide is my calling; the right for right now path I keep on keeping on.

In which Bishop Bishop continues to ruminate in a somewhat more serious and somber vein.

“I am a (wo)man of constant sorrow
I’ve seen trouble all my day”
Man of Constant Sorrow, traditional American folk song

This Good Friday, many Christians honor the Passion of Jesus, not that horrible excuse of a movie by Mel Gibson, but the story of Jesus’ trial, flogging, crucifixion and entombment. The story of the passion- passion meaning suffering, not passion meaning full of hot sexy feelings, it is important to be clear- of Jesus when mixed with verses from The Songs of the Suffering Servant from the Book of Isaiah gives rise to the image of Jesus as the Man of Sorrows.

Now there have been centuries of debate between Jews and Christians about whether the passages in Isaiah refer to the Jewish Nation or Jesus as well as various other quibbles to establish whose Truth will be confirmed in these here scriptures. Since the God I may or may not believe does not speak or prophesy, I can enjoy all possible interpretations without getting my theological knickers in a twist. Regardless of who thinks they own the meanings of Isaiah, I have to admit it is one of my favorite book of the Bible (Jewish and/or Christian). It is full of beautiful words exhorting us to seek justice.

This image of the Suffering Servant, the Wo/man of Sorrows is potent. The Wo/man of Sorrows, to paraphrase Isaiah 50:6:

offers my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pull out my hairs;
I do not hide my face
from mocking and spitting

S/he does not suffer just for the sake suffering. S/he does not suffer because of capricious fate. S/he suffers as s/he works to bring justice to the world. S/he is suffers as s/he serves. S/he is the wo/man of constant sorrows; her service means she sees trouble all her days. S/he in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr’s I see the Promised Land develops “a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”

Another Paraphrase from Isaiah, Isaiah 42, verses 3, 4, 6 and 7:

A bruised reed s/he will not break
and a smoldering wick s/he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness s/he will bring forth justice;

s/he will not falter or be discouraged
til s/he establishes justice on earth.

I, that cannot be name, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for all,

to open the eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

Are you a wo/man of sorrow? Are you the suffering servant? These are good questions to ask ourselves in the Passover/Easter season. I don’t think we can or should try to be a wo/man of constant sorrow, but sometimes we need to don the sackcloth of the suffering servant. To bring some small bit of justice to our world, we need to be the bruised reeds that do not break, the smoldering wicks that are not snuffed out.

This is my wish for this Good Friday: regardless of our individual beliefs about the facts, or lack thereof, surrounding the story of the Passion of Jesus, that we can find some inspiration in the image of the Man of Sorrows suffering in service. Perhaps in this season of renewal, liberation and rebirth, in this season celebrating freedom, we can revitalize our commitments to serve our world. Perhaps we can sing some of the verses of Isaiah’s song becoming, however briefly, Servants of Suffering, Wo/men of Sorrow.

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kippah”>kippah and gives just enough of a D’var Torah to renew her almost but not quite a Jew membership.

Many still lie groaning, digesting the second huge Pesach (Passover for my goyim followers not down with the Yiddishkeit) feast in a row. Chad gadya (one little goat) nags them over and over and over again, unless they are in the not to be envied position of having the chorus of Dayeinu stuck on endless loop in their minds.

It would have been enough for us. It would have been sufficient.

That is the gist of what dayeinu means.

Each verse of the song trots out another grand thing God did for the Hebrews when S/he brought them out of Egypt to wander for 40 years on the way to the Promised Land, and then the verse offers up something God could have left undone. Though we know according to the story of Exodus that S/he didn’t leave these things undone, S/he could have. S/he didn’t even though S/he could have. And so at the end of each verse, everyone sings the ridiculously long, repetitive, fast and upbeat dayeinu break down. Lots and lots of da-da-yei-nu’s. Probably hundreds before the last note is sung.

Over and over again, people sing “It would have been enough for us. It would have been sufficient.”

I don’t think the story of Passover is true to history just as I don’t think that the story of resurrection of Jesus is based on facts. But like Jesus rising from the dead, God’s Exodus miracles tell us a truth full story. There are truths here that we can use, even if we don’t (can’t) believe in some monotheistic god.

By saying over and over again, that it would have been enough, the singers are counting the chickens that have hatched in the previous verse not focusing on the eggs still incubating in the next verse. (The chicken comes before the egg? Hmm.) Each thing that goes right in our lives is in some ways a miracle. Regardless of what may or may not come after that thing going right, and whether or not that thing going right was caused by some Right (rite), right then it can be enough. It is sufficient, in a satori moment sort of way.

It is not that we should spend all our time counting our blessings; there are only so many times we can sing “dayeinu” before going bat shit crazy. It is not that everything is a blessing. But, sometimes, there is something to be said for focusing on what we did get, what did work, what is good, how we may be blessed. Our lives are enriched by being present to its gifts without worrying about uncertain futures, certain to contain joy and pain, but otherwise unknowable.

Dayeinu. It would be have be enough for us. It is enough for us. Right here, right now. Enough.

Sometimes I long to pull an Oral Roberts, to claim that Jesus is going to suck me up to heaven if I don’t get mega-millions donated to me, I mean to my mission to save the whole wide world and little old you, within in the next month.

I rather like the image of Jesus sucking me up, but that is the sort of comment that will have me writhing in the hell of some dang uptight-no-sense-of-humor-Christian. Ooh, I rather like that image as well, Jesus sucking me up followed by my writhing in some Christian. If hell and Jesus exist, and if Jesus is made in the image of your average fire and brimstone preacher, then I’m going there for sure. Betcha bottom dollar, I will have hell to pay.

I digress. As I was saying, sometimes I want pull an Oral Roberts. But while it is true that more money would help me spread the Good (and Not So Good) Words to a larger cross section of the whole wide world, and that someday, I’d like to cobble together a way for the faithful to donate some cold hard cash in the form of 0’s and 1’s flashing from their online bank accounts to my, I mean my mission’s, online bank account, it also is true that I dream of Oral’s trick when all the nifty things I could do on the cheap to spread the Good (and Not So Good) Words just ain’t getting done because life is full of too many things I think I need to do.

I fantasize about millions from heaven when I feel tired and cranky and overwhelmed by all the tedious little to do’s to do to make this particular dream come true. I envisage telling y’all that the god I may or may not believe in wants y’all to send me enough money to fill up my bathtub (ooh, that is another enticing image, me in a bathtub full of money that y’all have all touched), not because I need that much money to do what I’ve got to do, but because I want it to be easier than it is. I do not want to have to work so hard to find the time and energy to do the work that this extravagant (e)missionary movement requires. Of course, more money would help, but it cannot take away all the real world vexations stirred up when I attempt to (wo)manifest my dreams in a world constrained by material conditions.

There are times to shake the money tree. We should shake the shit out of all those corporate capitalists and politicians; we should make sure to spend our money to pay for education and health care and housing and the other basic necessities that ensure that all of us can contribute to our economy, not spend every damn dime bailing out the folks that fucked it all to hell. We should organize and unionize and agitate to make sure folks get paid a living wage.

My challenge to y’all, in this time of real economic trials and tribulations, in a time when some are paying a very high price for the sins of our financial fathers, my challenge to y’all is to suss out the difference between the money that you/we really need to live, hell the money you/we need to thrive, and the money you/we hunger for because y/our daydreams of millions from heaven magically taking all y/our troubles away. It won’t. It can’t.