I Picked Gregor Samsa As The Bug Transformation Reference For A Reason Besides Recognizability: In Kafka's

im fucking sobbing why did they kill him twice in a row in the community notes

shoutout to my best buddy in highschool who once told me "you speak like how tumblr users write their textposts" and i was mortified for a second but then realization hit me and i rebutted with "wait how do YOU know how tumblr users write their textposts???" and we were both like

does anyone know what i came in here to post

A new myth. A myth is not meant to be accurate history, but to tell a story that conveys a deeper spiritual truth. Stories are powerful.

This myth is the over-arcing story of Genesis to Jesus.

I'm not trying to save you or anything. And I don't think God is waiting for us somewhere else. God is always with us, walking with you and me and every other person through time and never turns away. But home is where the heart is. And God wants us to come home to the heart of God where there is Love, kindness, justice, generosity, Creation, the poor, the oppressed, etc. The things God loves and cares about.

I don't even really want you to believe the truths within the story. I just want you to consider the possibility and see if it resonates for you with history, our experiences, scripture, and who we know God to be as revealed in Jesus. You need to wrestle with this angel and make it make sense to you. Especially if you can't understand. The less you understand the more I beg you to listen again and sit with it.

You might hear a bit of anger or derision especially in the first few minutes. I'm not angry or derisive towards you or Christians in general or Jews at all. Any anger or derision towards people/powers towards those much, much higher up the food chain than you or anyone you know (probably).

As I tell the story, I am using lots of voice inflections to tell the story and that include sometimes a sing-song or sarcastic tone. The tone of the story is never to make fun of the reader or Christians. It's never to say that I'm smarter than anybody or put people down or anything like that.

The purpose of the incredulous voice inflections is occasionally to draw your attention to a joke, but usually it is to highlight the absurdity of the story we were given. The absurdity of the theology we were given. And the absurdity of the judgmental, autocratic, 1-strike picture of God we were given.

I really don't want to convince you of anything. If you have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and understanding, you'll probably be able to recognize the messages in here.

Rather than looking to confirm or reject the ideas you are expecting to find, please just consider. These are brand new ideas (for you anyway) using old pictures and familiar stories. But they are not the same ideas or messages. I'm telling a different story.

See how it is different.

Consider what's different about this story & consider a few of these as you go:

-what is different from the original stories we were given (as you know them)

-what is different about the meaning

-is it more or less likely to be true than your present understanding of things, given all we know?

-Does it resonate with who we know God, humanity, creation, & the World to be?

-Does it seem truer in meaningful ways?

-Does it somehow misrepresent God or Truth?

-Does it encourage more things of God?

-Does it more things of the World?

-What do you think of the Paul and Philemon story?

Every mosquito bite is an itchy way of joining yourself with nature.

A little bit of you becomes mosquito.

And then becomes a hundred mosquitoes.

A little bit of you then becomes fish and dragonfly, bluebird and bat.

A little bit of you will become grass and trees after that.

That itch is the itch of becoming one with Creation.

Sip by Jarod K Anderson

I've been ruminating on the Garden of Eden and what was the point of the magic fruit.

Tumblr

If the Jews wrote a new creation story, why did they keep the horrible original? A perhaps:

i was worried my cat is dehydrated because i never see him drink water so i’ve started leaving a cup of water that’s “mine” (aka he sees me drink out of it once before he does) in my room so he thinks he is being a rebellious naughty by drinking out of it but rlly he is just following my plan & being hydrated .

Friends of ours lost their 22yo son to suicide recently. He was struggling, but kept the depth of it hidden. There are no words of comfort to give, only grieving alongside those who have lost one that they love.

A good friend pointed out that in the midst of this weeping, while it does not diminish the grief, perhaps something good might come out in that those who are similarly struggling with thoughts of suicide might get some perspective that their lives matter beyond the tiny world mental illness traps you in. Your life matters and is worth living.

Our brains are a precariously balanced mix of meat, electricity, and chemicals. Sometimes because of our experiences and/or biology our brains begin to lie to us. It withholds joy and pleasure. "It’s like trying to laugh at a joke that isn’t funny. Trying to smile for a photo you don’t want to be in. It’s like waking up in the morning and hating that you actually woke up. It feels like someone is just draining the energy out of you all the time, every moment you are awake." Doing anything requires immense willpower. Just plain old staying alive becomes a conscious choice made over and over again. You are just so tired and everything is just too much to deal with. The constant state of suffering leads one to try various ways to feel something positive, feel anything, or just escape the emptiness. It's why depressed people try so hard to bring joy to others and help others- they want to prevent others from suffering too and it allows them to feel some happiness vicariously.

The inevitable diminishing returns on the attempts to feel better, feel anything, or just escape eventually lead to the conclusion that there is only one way out of this hell. And depression shrinks our awareness of our own meaningfulness and inner world. The void is all we can perceive. The knowledge that we are loved, cared for, or important is lost. We can sincerely believe that our loss will not so drastically affect our loved ones and escape through death is a viable option.

These are all false of course. Falsehoods our sick brain tells us with honesty, because suicide is quite reasonable given what we are perceiving.

If you are feeling like you don't want to be here, wishing you would not wake up, desiring an accident, imagining about killing yourself, drugging yourself into oblivion, or seriously thinking about if or how you might kill yourself, you need to talk to someone. I got lucky. Someone who loves me more than I love myself saw me spiraling into self-destruction and made me get help and continues to support me in spite of myself. I spent years where my full-time job was not research or teaching, but just keeping myself alive. It's still my job now and then. But the difference now is that after many years of therapy and prescriptions I know that feeling is temporary and false.

I'm sorry it hurts so much right now. When you have some distance from these feelings (I hope that you will give yourself the chance to), I hope you can see that your life is worthwhile and important because you are.

But the only way out is through and that requires talking. I hope you have people nearby who love you you can talk to. If you do, talk to them. If you don't, this will be harder. Either way, you should also get into counseling. A good counselor will help you find ways to survive, build better mental pathways, & develop tools for processing emotions.

Brutal honesty- American mental health treatment system is shit and difficult to navigate. We have far too few professionals in many areas and online is often the only option. But you are a fighter. Look at you all alive and shit when depression has been trying to kill you 24-7. Live a little bit longer. You can do it. And if you are going to live a little bit longer, counseling can help you live it a little bit better.

I think one big reason why we don't consider the stars as important as before (not even pop-astrology anymore cares about the stars or the sky on itself, just the signs deprived of context) is because of light pollution.

For most of human history the sky looked between 1-3, 4 at most. And then all of a sudden with electrification it was gone (I'm lucky if I get 6 in my small city). The first time I saw the Milky Way fully as a kid was a spiritual experience, I was almost scared on how BRIGHT it was, it felt like someone was looking back at me. You don't get that at all with modern light pollution.

When most people talk about stargazing nowadays they think about watching about a couple of bright dots. The stars are really, really not like that. The unpolluted night sky is a festival of fireworks. There is nothing like it.

Email to my first year students about the career assessment the university forced on them:

A little over half of you have not taken the assessment yet and you are making the presenter on Monday nervous. Please finish your SII Assessment before the Monday class so you can have it to look at during the class.

To help you find it: on 1/10/24 the link to the Strong Interest Inventory was emailed to all [redacted] students with the subject "SII Assessment,”  sent by [redacted].

A note on the results you will get:

These results tell you about yourself now. You are not carved in stone and you will not be the same person (at least in several important ways) as you are today. The career you choose, the work you do, and the life you live will all change you and you will change and adapt to live and thrive in those places as best you can. In some places, your personality will still be stressed no matter how much you adapt. There are parts of you that won't change. The person I became in the past few years to do life in the way I do today is not the same person I was when I was happily chasing mosquitoes around and helping run our restaurant back in early 2000's. Or the person I had to be to thrive in a research lab a few years ago.

The main point is that this assessment tells you about yourself now, but not who you will become or what kind of job you must work to be happy and fulfilled. 

You will adapt, improvise, and overcome. Use the assessment to learn about yourself. Maybe you do want some career ideas. Maybe you just want to see which directions you want to grow in based on what you already know you want to do. You realize you don't spring forth from your mother's womb ready to be a nurse, doctor, or research scientist. Or father, mother, spouse, or whatever. You suck at those things in the beginning and learn to do them better. And your personality grows and changes to meet your new challenge.

Our ability to adapt and find unexpected solutions are the keys to human success. (along with being highly social and always having community/help)

If you have dreams and desires that don't line up with what the assessment says, or life goes sideways on you and you end up driving a taxi, understand that for most situations you will change and adapt and learn to become amazing and happy in that new situation. Even if it has a rough beginning.

So take it all with a grain of salt and treat it as a tool, not an oracle.

Peace,

Yours Truly