Thank you for this. I agree 100%. I am also wondering about the faith institutions that are shaping our children. What message did we offer this beloved child of God about who they were at their core? Why rage against the church? This makes me weep as I listen to the scapegoating of the trans community. Lord, have mercy 😔
I am aware that our collective global “civilization” is both ecocidal and genocidal.
We manufacture small machines that we call guns.
These machines are made to kill as many people as possible, as fast as possible.
We make as many of these as we possible can- and we distribute them as widely as we can.
This is who we are - no matter what we say.
We make and distribute killing machines with more commitment and enthusiasm than we make good food, health care services, schools, or community centers.
(I challenge you to look up Ike Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace” speech.it is not hard to find.)
When Abraham Lincoln wrote to Minnesota Governor Ramsey about the problem with the indigenous people who already lived here, he noted that they must be removed at all costs, and that “necessity knows no law”. That is a direct quote.
“Necessity knows no law.”
Look at Gaza now.
At the time Lincoln wrote to Ramsey, the St Paul newspaper was calling the people, who were already here on this land “vermin” who must be “exterminated”.
Sound familiar?
Ike Eisenhower noted in his “Chance for Peace” (April 16, 1953) speech that we humans were preparing to “crucify humanity upon a cross of iron” with our focus on war and weapons.
Eisenhower was right.
We are now crucifying our own children upon a cross of iron.
Chalmers Johnson - a great scholar and wise counselor -noted that the brutality that any empire employed in the colonies would sooner or later be required in the homeland. In his “Sorrows of Empire” trilogy he clearly noted the trajectory we are taking.
Luke Kemp - with “Goliath’s Curse” - and others like Emile P. Torres who writes the “Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter” - and Gil Duran who notes over at The Nerd Reich that Peter Theil is offering a 4-session lecture series on the Antichrist at the Commonwealth Club of California - are doing important work that is ignored in churches and seminaries, but which actually DW dines the spiritual and religious forces giving shape to our religious and political culture.
I keep thinking of “The Divine Economy” by Paul Seabright.
He essentially notes that the real significant change in religion over the past 120 years or so is the change from village and earth-based spirituality to the corporatist-based spirituality of today.
Our churches compete for wealth and power. They do not love and serve the whole Creation as our sacred beloved community, and they do not enter into Kin-ship, but rather try to buy solutions to what are seen as technological problems.
We see churches who cannot speak the truth about the global ecocide and genocide that we USA citizens are complicit in carrying out.
We see churches who worship and fear the NRA and the armaments industry more than they worship or fear God, and who love war, violence and money.
We cannot serve God and mammon.
We have chosen rapacious, avaricious greed over love and life.
We have created churches that serve the military industrial complex and that refuse the humility, poverty, and simplicity that Jesus modeled and taught.
The stock market soars with money generated by the genocide on Gaza and the money made stocking the war machines that now enclosethe globe in the bloody fist of our self- terminating culture.
Emerson noted that the human species would die of human civilization.
Thoreau noted - in paraphrase- that we think we ride the railroad, but the railroad rides us.
I attended the beautiful vigil here in Minneapolis on Wednesday evening.
The key question for me in this time is simply: “who do I choose to be for those who are here with me?”
Salvation and liberation begins with our ability to realize that we have already created a rapid mass extinction event that - while it may not take out life on earth, or even all of human life - is already killing off species and humans at a very rapid rate.
Salvation and liberation become manifest when we choose to give up the need for control, trust the Universe, and create very real local beloved community through increasing chaos.
I feel like more people, are awakening with great grief and suffering to the reality of how violent we have become.
I feel like some people are even awakening to the reality that real satisfaction in life comes from the vulnerability of loving relationship rather than from the illusions of control.
I grieve as the narrative around this tragedy is politicized, and the simple message is lost:
What is we chose to nurture the one rich, diverse, living organism that we are all a part of with as much enthusiasm as we now choose to manufacture weapons.
What is we grew really good food and made really healing care available for people instead of cultivating the arms industry?
But you won’t hear this preached about in church, will you?
And you won’t see mobilization done to make a real change either, at this time.
The people who can make the change are too comfortable, and will refuse to become vulnerable in the way Jesus taught us to do.
Most of our churches are dominated by people who are deeply settler-colonial and so are deeply ecocidal and genocidal.
Even so, I love the people in my neighborhood and the people in my faith community.
If we want a peaceful, loving world, we need to live in peaceful, loving ways.
We are very, very far from that.
I keep wondering why our seminaries and church he’s are so silent about our own complicity in the violence.
These shooting won’t stop until the weapons are melted down and we make “tools for livingry” instead of weaponry.
Thank you .
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidofallon/p/this-is-no-winter-now?
Annunciation is just blocks from me. This is my painful response
Thank you for this. I agree 100%. I am also wondering about the faith institutions that are shaping our children. What message did we offer this beloved child of God about who they were at their core? Why rage against the church? This makes me weep as I listen to the scapegoating of the trans community. Lord, have mercy 😔
This has been a hard week in Minneapolis.
I am tired and grieving.
I am aware that our collective global “civilization” is both ecocidal and genocidal.
We manufacture small machines that we call guns.
These machines are made to kill as many people as possible, as fast as possible.
We make as many of these as we possible can- and we distribute them as widely as we can.
This is who we are - no matter what we say.
We make and distribute killing machines with more commitment and enthusiasm than we make good food, health care services, schools, or community centers.
(I challenge you to look up Ike Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace” speech.it is not hard to find.)
When Abraham Lincoln wrote to Minnesota Governor Ramsey about the problem with the indigenous people who already lived here, he noted that they must be removed at all costs, and that “necessity knows no law”. That is a direct quote.
“Necessity knows no law.”
Look at Gaza now.
At the time Lincoln wrote to Ramsey, the St Paul newspaper was calling the people, who were already here on this land “vermin” who must be “exterminated”.
Sound familiar?
Ike Eisenhower noted in his “Chance for Peace” (April 16, 1953) speech that we humans were preparing to “crucify humanity upon a cross of iron” with our focus on war and weapons.
Eisenhower was right.
We are now crucifying our own children upon a cross of iron.
Chalmers Johnson - a great scholar and wise counselor -noted that the brutality that any empire employed in the colonies would sooner or later be required in the homeland. In his “Sorrows of Empire” trilogy he clearly noted the trajectory we are taking.
Luke Kemp - with “Goliath’s Curse” - and others like Emile P. Torres who writes the “Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter” - and Gil Duran who notes over at The Nerd Reich that Peter Theil is offering a 4-session lecture series on the Antichrist at the Commonwealth Club of California - are doing important work that is ignored in churches and seminaries, but which actually DW dines the spiritual and religious forces giving shape to our religious and political culture.
I keep thinking of “The Divine Economy” by Paul Seabright.
He essentially notes that the real significant change in religion over the past 120 years or so is the change from village and earth-based spirituality to the corporatist-based spirituality of today.
Our churches compete for wealth and power. They do not love and serve the whole Creation as our sacred beloved community, and they do not enter into Kin-ship, but rather try to buy solutions to what are seen as technological problems.
We see churches who cannot speak the truth about the global ecocide and genocide that we USA citizens are complicit in carrying out.
We see churches who worship and fear the NRA and the armaments industry more than they worship or fear God, and who love war, violence and money.
We cannot serve God and mammon.
We have chosen rapacious, avaricious greed over love and life.
We have created churches that serve the military industrial complex and that refuse the humility, poverty, and simplicity that Jesus modeled and taught.
The stock market soars with money generated by the genocide on Gaza and the money made stocking the war machines that now enclosethe globe in the bloody fist of our self- terminating culture.
Emerson noted that the human species would die of human civilization.
Thoreau noted - in paraphrase- that we think we ride the railroad, but the railroad rides us.
I attended the beautiful vigil here in Minneapolis on Wednesday evening.
The key question for me in this time is simply: “who do I choose to be for those who are here with me?”
Salvation and liberation begins with our ability to realize that we have already created a rapid mass extinction event that - while it may not take out life on earth, or even all of human life - is already killing off species and humans at a very rapid rate.
Salvation and liberation become manifest when we choose to give up the need for control, trust the Universe, and create very real local beloved community through increasing chaos.
I feel like more people, are awakening with great grief and suffering to the reality of how violent we have become.
I feel like some people are even awakening to the reality that real satisfaction in life comes from the vulnerability of loving relationship rather than from the illusions of control.
I grieve as the narrative around this tragedy is politicized, and the simple message is lost:
What is we chose to nurture the one rich, diverse, living organism that we are all a part of with as much enthusiasm as we now choose to manufacture weapons.
What is we grew really good food and made really healing care available for people instead of cultivating the arms industry?
But you won’t hear this preached about in church, will you?
And you won’t see mobilization done to make a real change either, at this time.
The people who can make the change are too comfortable, and will refuse to become vulnerable in the way Jesus taught us to do.
Most of our churches are dominated by people who are deeply settler-colonial and so are deeply ecocidal and genocidal.
Even so, I love the people in my neighborhood and the people in my faith community.
If we want a peaceful, loving world, we need to live in peaceful, loving ways.
We are very, very far from that.
I keep wondering why our seminaries and church he’s are so silent about our own complicity in the violence.
These shooting won’t stop until the weapons are melted down and we make “tools for livingry” instead of weaponry.