unEFN believable

Everyday 

I almost die. 

(between dreams and close calls with reckless automobiles)

Not yet 

is still my defiant cry.

I skipped my Sunday rhythm of rebellious coffee conversations in the fellowship hall of Jacob’s Well Church this morning to join two zoom calls in quick succession where the Venn diagram in both content and community could not have been more moving. 

The first was a conversation via GCAS (Global center for advanced studies) hosted by Barry Taylor between John Caputo and Peter Rollins about Radical Theology. (3 of my favorite “cult leaders”, aka theologians, that I first encountered years ago at the Wake Festival in Belfast)  In a nutshell, it was a dance of Death of God philosophy and the idea regarding life’s insistence of anti entropic creative disequilibrium. haha. In other words, how to be productive disturbances in our own regularly scheduled programs, addictions, and communities of necessity/choice.

What do we do with religion without superstition and reason without reductionistic certainty? The “radical” part seemed to align with trickster narratives of old, where the welcome stranger provokes novelty and revelation from within. A joke eating at us by telling the truth. A haunting question eroding our absolutes. A provocative reminder of diversity within communities stanchly lacking exposure, education or inspiration. A surprise demonstration or eventual experience that shakes up the status quo. A parable that turns the tables upside-down. A love where conditions seem to no longer be found.

The emperor has no clothes! God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? John Raux, How do you live in middle America and not have a driver’s license? Or wait, did you say earlier that you still go to church?

For its own sake? God, No. Nobody likes playing devil's advocate all the time. Nor getting crucified for standing up against the latest big other. Nor is it appropriate to just proclaim “it is what it is” when our lives have gone to shit and the earth is on the brink. We may not be all powerful, but we can choose to not go it alone into oblivion and do something creatively productive in the meanwhile. Radical theology and its dethroned deities places the practice of what is done in the name of the unnamable as an ever ongoing and outstretching work in our lives confronting the seemingly immovable assertions to control, to fix and to win what we have been sold as our ultimate desires. It’s not above being wrong. In fact, being wrong and then evolving out of humility is its “resurrection” superpower.

My second appointment at Image, Word, Mystery was more praxis than theory. I first met Lisette Murphy on a zoom call for Burning Man in 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. She often hosts and facilitates participatory gatherings with symbolic, visual, and poetic prompts to create and share where the promptings (the oracle of the event ;) lead the group.  I love the surprise of new voices and views!

Today I was spinning in the mumbo jumbo of Zizek, Lacan, and the real time revelation of Caputo with my sacred cloak of a Melt-Banana punk t-shirt and my favorite mug by Karli Cash filled with mushroom coffee. In the time carved out for prompts, my heart poured out words.

Oftentimes the creative process feels like a possession. Its a flow state where our body takes the reins with our intuition and some trapped or repressed human wilderness finally escapes from captivity. Art and its poetics inform us retroactively, reflexively, and reflectively. I find myself caught up in beauty more so than being the one who captures it. I am moved. Haunted even. And thus I digress or rather transgress into esoteric practices that wrestle with meaning, feeling, symbol, and self through words, paintings and yes, even zoom meetings with friends, infamous philosophers, and strangers alike.

Trifecta. A prompting question, an unfiltered poem and an unfinished painting testing out an old process with new materials.

Why is relief so elusive?

“Turn towards the coming of what cannot be seen coming”

The horizon does not care for your reach but remains faithful to its calling. 

Insides pour out with loss, burning, marking, making. 

Poised in liminality

Relational oscillations billow with compound interest

Composting resistance

Arriving without destination

Together towards

Embracing the unknown

First day back with acrylic, recycled polystyrene and a new cementlike hardening slurry to make the foam rocklike and able to withstand the eventual moving and handling and accidentals that will inevitably come alongside me and my journey sharing my work in the world.