A trauma is an intransigently incident accident—an event or occurrence that befalls someone by chance and that brooks no compromise to allow the one to whom it happens to pass through and beyond it.
Read moreIdol Worship, Idle Worship (4): Ending the Exchange
If one worships by adopting prescribed postures of worship, and going through all the prescribed motions while reciting all the prescribed prayers, and does so in hopes of reward, then one is not really worshipping at all. Rather, those who “worship” in such a way are really just doing business as usual, trying to cut themselves the best deal.
Read moreIdol Worship, Idle Worship (3): God in Community
Worship, true worship, is always idle. It belongs to the sheer idleness of life simply to be lived, and given to us that it might be lived abundantly: life to be celebrated, not circulated. When we worship truly, which means when we worship God and not some idol, we take ourselves out of circulation.
Read moreIdol Worship, Idle Worship (2): Breaking the Circulation
Water flows. Money circulates. In flowing, water always seeks a way down to the lowest levels, where it accumulates to form wells, ponds, lakes, pools, and seas. The water that falls on the heights flows down to the valleys, to gather in such deep places. Human habitations can be built beside such places, the natural places of water, and along the streams and rivers that flow into them. In contrast, money in its circulation proceeds quite differently. Instead of flowing from above down to what is below, it rises upwards into ever more rarefied heights to accumulate there, where fewer and fewer people can survive.
Read moreIdol Worship, Idle Worship (1): The Trauma of Idolatry
Whoever does not worship God worships an idol, and whoever does not worship an idol worships God. God is the trauma of idolatry.
Read morePowerful Words: Freedom of Speech
It is not the voices of the oppressors that are silenced, but the voices of the oppressed. It is they who need to be freed to speak.
Read morePowerful Speech: Disempowering Language
Free speech does not coerce, nor serve the power that does. Rather, free speech frees from coercion: It empowers. The power of speech as such is the power to free, not the power to coerce. It is the power of the open hand, not of the closed fist: of invitation, not compulsion.
Read morePowerful Words: A Cop's Repentance
Like all too many laws, that one was selectively enforced. Basically, it was there to be used by those vested with authority for law-enforcement to bust people they wanted to bust, but could find no other legal grounds for busting.
Read morePowerful Words: A Confession
I was a cop once. It was only once, and only for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I must confess that once I was a fully-fledged officer of the law—with a blue uniform, a black duck-billed hat, a shiny badge pinned on my chest, a walky-talky hung at my side (this was long before the rise to ubiquity of cell-phones), a bully-stick in a holder on a leather belt studded with bullets, and a holster with a loaded handgun in it. I even bought myself a pair of mirrored sunglasses to complete the outfit.
Read moreWaiting for Politics to Begin Again (6)
Original and originary politics can only be a politics of “permanent revolution.” If the revolution is not “permanent,” it is no revolution at all. It’s just another flush of political waste
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