You’re still alive. Good job. Not all my friends achieved that this week. I’m glad you made it. Let’s talk?
I was up since 3 am talking folks down from panic all day November 6. It’s understandable: 51% of the nation just chose a leader who has promised to eradicate us from existing in society. His appointed judges recently declared state governments have the right to coercively sterilize us. My friends who are diabetic know they will likely not survive many years under his anti-healthcare regime. My elders whom I love and respect know their social security and all financial stability is effectively gone. Folks in West Virginia already have such polluted tap water that it’s killing their babies, poisoning breast milk, and burning their skin badly enough to make Flint, MI look easy. Now, they’ll likely never get clean drinking water, with kinfolk-betraying JD “Vance” and his EPA deregulation on the horizon.
Almost half the country is in fear for our lives, while remaining confused as to how so many of our own neighbors could vote for our deaths, especially while calling themselves pro-life.
Our neighbors, families, and coworkers – at least 51% of them – hate us enough to prefer us dead than happy or healthy. The most heartbreaking of them tell us to our faces that they love us, all the while.
Many folks have asked me similar questions this week, prompting the series of articles ahead. I understand some of my readers have sensitivities to religious trauma, so here is your full disclosure that the rest of this one article proceeds on the basis of observable scientific evidence, which includes the existence of God. My future articles also proceed on the basis of observed evidence as well.
I’ll cover the following, in parts:
- How can God be both moral and also allow this to happen?
- What is going to happen?
- What do I do now?
- Why are the Democrats just letting this happen? Aren’t they going to do something?
Why Would God Let This Happen?
Fun fact about astrophysics:
Stars are in a constant struggle between two opposing forces: the gravity pulling their mass inward, trying to collapse them, and the pressure from nuclear fusion at their core, pushing outward. Gravity compresses the star’s gas, creating extreme heat and pressure, which fuels nuclear fusion — the process that releases energy, light, and outward force. This outward force balances gravity’s inward pull, allowing the star to exist in a stable form. If fusion slows, gravity begins to win, and the star can collapse or explode, but as long as fusion resists gravitational compression, the star endures.
The star’s work, or in Buddhism this is called its dharma, is to engage in nuclear fusion, producing warmth and light. Nuclear fusion begins the moment the star’s heart starts beating. The star continues this work for eons until there is no more work; and then it disperses all its produced work into the universe, so baby stars can pick it up and use it for their own learning, growing, and transforming processes.
As a being made of starlight in a human form, you have a unique dharma—your essential work or purpose—that is innate to your spirit. You know what you are by whether or not your work feels right to you.
If you are a warrior, you feel right about being a warrior. Sometimes it can be hard, but your heart is at peace with your role, because it’s what you were made for.
If you are a world-class saxophonist who eats, breathes, and sleeps saxophones, you know that about yourself. Your heart is at peace with that, because it’s true to what you are.
Bhagavad Gita 18.47: It is better to do one’s own work, even though imperfectly, than to do another’s work, even though perfectly. By doing one’s innate duties, a person does not incur sin.
For those of us raised in Evangelical, Christian Nationalist, Southern Baptist, or other flavors of Christian/monotheistic households — to say we have experienced religious trauma is the understatement of the century. For many of us, this means turning away from God. Few of us make our way back to God, and those who do rarely have an interest in the church after all those years of witnessing our churches use God’s name in vain to abuse us.
A key challenge people express is:
How could a God who is good let such a bad man become our leader and terrorize us?
My answer is this:
God is both the source of the star’s energy and purpose and is the unrelenting gravity that tries to squash it out of existence.
If you think God is some dude in the sky who looks down and judges us, I can see why you’d be mad at God.
But God — like us — is just energy. God is the force of nature that holds everything in balance, and is all of creation. God is the magnet that arranges us like little flecks of iron into a natural order and balance to keep the universe flowing. The more we resist our true nature, and resist the force of divine energy that is God, the more we suffer.
This brings us to this context from the tonalpohualli — the sacred calendar of the Mexica people that has kept people in alignment with God for a good 10,000 years or so. The day a person is born, according to this calendar, strongly influences the person’s destiny — their dharma, or purpose for being here on Earth.
Donald Trump’s birthday — his dharma — is governed by the God of Deception, the Trickster.
If you’re a Star Trek fan, think of this day as being governed by Q — the Fool who is constantly creating the obstacles which shape Captain Picard’s and the crew’s character in The Next Generation. He treats nothing as sacred, and in so doing, points out the sacredness of everything.
The significance of the house has to do with how each of us chooses our spiritual home: Our culture, our values, our nature, our ways of holding safe space for one another, our ways of resting and permitting rest to one another.
The rabbit is a symbol of service to something greater than oneself. “Service to something greater than oneself” doesn’t just apply to him. It calls each of us to commit ourselves to service to something greater than ourselves, as well.
Donald Trump is fulfilling his divine purpose in life to muck everything up and make us get impeccably honest with ourselves about who each of us is and what each of us values enough to put in the work to achieve — just like the gravity that tries to squash stars out of existence is fulfilling its purpose. He is clearly devoted to being exactly what God created him to be. He is Jesus’s polar opposite, the anti-christ.
“Polar,” like the other end of a magnet. Magnets cannot physically exist without a polar opposite.
Thus, in Matthew 25:32-46, Jesus in his extensive understanding of basic physics, magnetic attraction, and energy, says:
32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
In this parable, Jesus separates us all into two groups at opposite ends of a spectrum. One kind to one side, and the opposite kind — goats, who eat everything without concern for others and are, frankly, mean —to the other side. Goats are the metaphor he chose for those who who do not feed the hungry, clothe the poor, invite the stranger in, and look after the disempowered. Then he says he will rebuke them and have nothing to do with them, sending them away to the opposite pole of the magnet they chose instead of him.
Both these guys’ energy will lead their followers into eternity. Your actions align yourself with one or the other of them. Which of those two eternities is right for you is your dharma. Let the others continue to choose theirs. One cannot exist without the other.
I’m not talking about Heaven with golden gates and angels playing harps, or Hell with burning sulfur and a pointy-horned demon running it. I’m talking about places that accumulate energy and take on the characteristics of the energy people bring to them. Your energy will magnetically move toward the people most like you.
If you think you’re liberal, but you don’t know what you’re fighting for, there’s a good chance your energy ain’t too different from the folks you’re fighting against. Anger begets anger. Greed begets greed. Wanting begets wanting. Krishna warns against Anger, Lust, and Greed as the three gateways to Hell that must be avoided at all costs. Not because you can never leave Hell, but because once you stew in those feelings long enough, you become too bitter to want to leave Hell.
Hell is defined by the absence of God; the absence of Hope, Faith, Trust, Mutual Respect, Care, Compassion, and Kindness.
Hell isn’t a punishment; it’s what people told God they want for their lives. God only gives us what we show that we want, in the long run. For people like Donald Trump, our idea of Hell is their idea of Heaven. They are internally wired to gravitate away from Jesus, toward that other pole of the magnet which is also God, but is very different from the God many of us serve.
What is your idea of Heaven?
Are you doing God’s will on Earth today as it is in your Heaven?
If the Bible ain’t the book for you in figuring out how to navigate this — as it is surely not my preferred or most helpful text either — I really encourage reading the Bhagavad Gita. You’ve got options, though. God is directly observable, no ancient texts required.
If you’re too angry at God to read any wisdom from any religions, I found that Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, and its subsequent trilogy series by an author called Jed McKenna, was more illuminating than I’d bargained for in discovering the absolute, evidence-based, inarguable truth.
This was the January 2017 Inauguration Day. Seems self-explanatory. Except for one little detail:
Five is solid.
The history of the United States has so consistently upheld the kind of behavior and character seen in Donald Trump that we had effectively shown God by this point in time that this is who we are and is the house we choose to live in. Whatever spiritual home you were living in in 2017 is solid.
And then we have our most recent election date. This is an auspicious day for the most active party, which was investing the most energy. Money is called currency because, like an electrical current, it conducts energy from one position to another.
It was a bad day for the passive principle — the kind of white women who are now eager to wear blue bracelets to signify to Black women that they are “the good ones” and are “safe.” That’s as passive as it gets. If you had already been doing the work of making this nation safe for Black women in the first place, they would already know it. No bracelet required. White women, and white liberals at large, were very passive in assuming a Black woman was going to save us this time.
We can be known by our fruits. We don’t get good fruits from the work we neglect. I’ve got things to say about the Democrats, but that’s another post.
We had just begun the new year of the House 12 days earlier, when Oct 22/23 shifted us into the trecena of Death, ruled by the Mexica sun god. There also happens to be a Mexica prophecy indicating that Mexico and Israel would be at war with one another sometime real soon. I learned about this from elders during an Indigneous ceremony at the 2018 Spring Equinox. It seemed rather absurd to me, at the time. Now I feel embarrassed for doubting their wisdom and ways of knowing.
This is the catalyst for those who are starlight — you and me — to reflect more deeply on what our purpose in life really is.
What did God create you to be?
Are you being yourself with as much clarity and consistency as Trump is?
What is sacred to you?
It is not your dharma to concern yourself with how irreverently he treats the sacred. It is your dharma to invest in, protect, nurture, and preserve that which is sacred to you.
For the Christian folk: Jesus already came back. Done happened. So here we are.
Revelation 3:8
“I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door, which no one can shut. For you have only a little strength, yet you have kept My word and have not denied My name. 9 Look at those who belong to the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews but are liars instead. I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and they will know that I love you.”
Revelation 3:15
“I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. How I wish you were one or the other! 16 So because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!”
This right here describes the physics of starlight.
You can be a star, doing the work you were made for, shining light and giving warmth to those around you. You can pursue Justice sincerely and consistently. You can listen to Native Americans and Black leader who have been organizing resistance against nationalist and white supremacy values for centuries. You can put your efforts in behind their leadership rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with your name on it. You can place yourself as a barrier that calls out bullying when you see it, and stop it from becoming culturally acceptable in this national house we share.
Or you can be the cold, harsh, unrelenting gravity trying to crush the stars out of existence.
But you cannot be a fleck of iron trying to exist in the middle between the two poles of a magnet. You cannot be lukewarm in a galaxy dependent on hot and cold forces of nature harmonizing in balance with one another. You cannot put a blue bracelet on your wrist to win the trust of Black women when you have never volunteered at a Black-led organization and lent your support to nurturing Black lives.
God spits that out. So does every person who walks with God consistently enough to be a shining star.
You were made for a purpose, and God — equally, the laws of physics — requires you to step into your purpose, and to fulfill your purpose. Be the light shining in the darkness, or be the darkness.
There is nothing else to be.
You cannot be a light while using the dark, cold, unrelenting gravity’s tactics to succeed. Your silence and complacency are a choice to be lukewarm; and your choice to side with whiteness as a cultural survival strategy is a choice to be cold toward those who give warmth and light to the world.
Proverbs 3:31 — “Do not envy a violent man or choose any of his ways.”
If what is sacred to you is existence itself, then devote yourself to promoting life and well-being. Black lives matter. Say that out loud, if you believe life is sacred. Water is life. Say that out loud, and work diligently to protect water and respect its personhood.
At the same time, understand that God — the forces of nature which hold us in balance and thus admonish us to pursue Justice — puts barriers such as Trump in our way not out of spite or punishment, but as a maze in which we have opportunities to perfect our hearts and more robustly fulfill our dharma. We took a wrong turn 500+ years ago that we never corrected earlier, and now we’re having to turn around at this dead-end in the maze, and figure out an entirely different way forward.
And if you’re white: Let’s listen to the folks of color this time about which way to go through this maze, eh?
Yes, grief is a fair, valid, and appropriate response to half the country voting to kill you. But don’t let it stop you from doing the work that keeps you shining. The galaxy needs your light. So do your neighbors, your friends, and countless children who have never known a life beyond this cold, harsh, gravity well of pressure.
If “God” to you is the God of Truth — if Truth is sacred to you — then let the God of Deception carry on about its business while you deepen your roots in service to the way, the truth, and the life.
To be continued in Part 2: What is going to happen?
If you feel moved to buy me a cup of coffee in support of my work, you’re welcome to CashApp $BrandynRiver accordingly.
The Front Porch 