"Fu*k Your Thoughts and Prayers!"
Jesus Christ elegantly reacts to the 376th school shooting since Columbine.
April fools!!!
Nah, Jesus didn’t really say that! As far as I know, anyway. Heck, maybe He did! One thing is for sure though, modernity has all but entirely hijacked one of the greatest technologies ever bestowed upon mankind, womankind, all winged ones and four legged ones who daily rise just before our father sun to join the interspecies choir offering up sacred hymns to the Great Mystery, not asking for “abundance” mind you but simply to say “thank you”, to elegantly offer praise and bask in awe at the never guaranteed arrival of yet another day.
We use to be better at praying. As someone who grew up in the midwestern evangelical realms and was utterly disenchanted by the absurdity of virtually all of it as soon as I journeyed but 20 miles from its intensely narrow sighted cultural epicenter, I feel lucky to have not entirely lost faith in the being we now refer to as Jesus for there is real wisdom in what he shared. After all my travels to places the world over utterly destroyed in the name of the Christian god, strangely enough I still do believe there was an excellent rabbi who once walked the earth sharing deep truths, that He knew how to pray, that He shared with those around him how to pray and did so more with the way He actually lived than with magical thinking inspired primarily by selfish requests. Considering how upset I have become with the Christian church after witnessing all I have in my travels, it is nothing short of a miracle that I still have faith in any of it at all. But I do. And I owe this to my mother, to my father, to my grandparents and uncles whom all allowed their faith to penetrate the actual, lived choices they made in daily life, what careers they chose to pursue (they all were social workers, Salvation Army officers and such who devoted their lives to feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, etc.), what companies they chose to invest in (they stopped purchasing items from companies they knew harmed people or land/water, etc.) and who they decided to vote for (They stopped voting for republicans when it was obvious the choices made by that party were harmful.).
According to a recent article in The Washington Post, over 348,000 children have experienced gun violence at school since the first fateful school shooting on April 20, 1999, in Columbine, Colorado. When you consider how many children are living in fear daily because they cannot have confidence that the adult leaders around them will take appropriate measures to protect their lives this number quickly rises into the millions. This is a very American problem. This doesn’t happen where I currently reside, in Thailand, for example. (Well, to be fair, there was a similar case of this happening recently, when a mentally ill ex-cop went berserk at a daycare in Northeast Thailand and starting shooting and stabbing with abandon, but we will save the whole critique on the modern state of policing for another time.) If seeking a simple reason for why school shootings, or mass shootings in general for that matter, are more common in The Land of the Brave and Free than they are here in The Land of Smiles, it’s that guns are not legal in Thailand. No doubt about it; Less guns, less gun violence. Simple common sense.
Yet, I am not one to oversimplify. It would be nice to just take away all the guns. And to be sure, we should do that. We should also demilitarize, legalize plants, live in eco-villages, grow organic gardens everywhere and sing songs together in perfect harmony. This is all very true. But the harsh reality is that none of the kumbaya fantasies will ever even begin to manifest as long our educational institutions (and I am not merely referring here to K-12 schooling but so too to the sum-total of all information society at large is bombarded with daily.) continue to be run by leaders and systems and ideas that actively promote ways of living that encourage violence in the world, be it via the enforced pressure on students (and society at large) to support the military industrial complex, the pressure to view Earth as but a chunk of inanimate dirt to be used however we humans wish, or by completely denying access to myriad alternative ways of living and thinking altogether, deeming all ways but the current white male dominated, modern western view as somehow backwards. As long as our collective actions honor the most violent in society, how can we expect children to act differently? Children do as we do. Period.
I won’t here detail the vulgar narratives omnipresent in our collective psyche that have informed all adults of what life choices are most sacred to us now. It’s all too obvious. Just take a peek at the billboards littering the rivers of asphalt piercing across the continent selling guns and chemicals and fast food and promoting lawyers who will make sure you get what you deserve and screw the other guy! The modern zeitgeist is in and of itself violent, an echo chamber incessantly teaching us directly and indirectly immensely destructive parables. It’s all encompassing. It’s in the food we eat, the way we eat food, the way we acquire food, the tastes we prefer. It’s in the way we define beauty, the songs we deem popular. It’s carved into the foundations of our cities and the way we extract resources from the earth. Its nasty narrative desperately attempts to drown out all other views so that we forget there are any other views to bear witness to in the first place. Most of us have become completely numb to it, even comfortable with it due to an inability to learn of anything else. Especially those who have never left American soil. How many people do you know who legit think McDonalds hamburgers taste good!? Or that Walmart is an ok place to go shopping, or for that matter Whole Foods? Or Gucci?? This is violence. Modernity is violent.
What is happening in America today is a matter of morality. The way in which evangelical America offers “thoughts and prayers” is a clear indicator of this. When my hosts here in Thailand observe from afar what is happening in my native country, they can’t help but view it as some Hollywood horror film that is strangely comical. And considering virtually everything we have done over the last decade, who can blame them? Take for example the way people reacted during COVID lockdown, when toilet paper was increasingly hard to come by and people were acting as Armageddon had finally come. For people here in Thailand, where washing your body with water is not seen as disgusting but the logical, and conveniently economical way to refresh, this was considered hysterical, unbelievable, and ultimately, downright ridiculous. Yet as the world observes from a distance American adults allowing multiple decades to pass by without making real efforts to prevent children from shooting each other in schools, the reaction is not laughter. It isn’t even disgust. There simply are no words. Only tears and utter befuddlement.
I don’t wish to suggest Thailand or any other place in the world is any less immune to mental, moral corruption than we are. Modern Thailand’s approach to the teachings of the Buddha, for example, have been just as wretchedly watered down by the gross agenda of modernity as anywhere else. In some ways, even more so. Yet, the belief held here that prayer must be more than just magical thinking, that it must entail at least some iota of genuine action to drive it is still very noticeable. Even, as I shared a few weeks ago, when villages gather on auspicious holidays to perform rituals that ultimately do little more than offer devotees an opportunity to make grandiose requests for bigger cars, abundant crop yields, etc., there still is an activated understanding here that you must back up your wish making with tangible, thoughtful action. If you want something big, you must give something of equal or greater value to the Spirit of whom you are praying to. You can’t just close your eyes and make a wish. It doesn’t work like that.
Recently, a man in Thailand won the lottery. To him, and indeed to many peoples of the world, food is the most important thing, not money. You can’t grow or eat money after all. So, when he made his prayer to Buddha asking to win the lottery, even though he was ironically investing in what Buddha pointed out wasn’t ultimately a vehicle for happiness, he offered to Buddha that which meant the most to him. Not just with his heart, but tangibly. Being a poor man, he rightly valued food. Thus he promised Buddha that he would give back his most cherished thing, pork.
We in the so-called “Global North take for granted the availability of such important things as clean air, clean water, and protein. Here in Thailand, such things are never certain. I myself, along with my family, have been on the road for over a month now escaping air pollution. We are for all intents and purposes, climate refugees. When you aren’t guaranteed health conveniently, you learn how to pray the right way. When you are really in need of things, you cherish them, you see what is truly important, clearly. When you are hungry, you see deeply the value of protein. So, when this man won the lottery, he followed through and gave back what to him was everything. He promptly offered 100 pig heads to the temple, all of which were ceremoniously blessed up and properly ritualized in a prayer that ultimately fed many.
Personally, I don’t think the Buddha intended for his followers to offer golden images of himself 100 severed pig heads. However, what is unique about the Buddhist tradition is that there are thousands of ways to pray. And when praying to Buddha, you are not merely thinking magically. Buddha taught that there is no god somewhere up in the sky who is offering handouts for anything whatsoever. Eternal life cannot be attained simply because one was obedient to him. Buddha merely observed reality as it was and told people how to interact with reality wisely. Therefore, he spoke deeply about science. Therefore, he spoke deeply of prayer. He did not claim that the unseen world did not exist. Nor did he make any of the unseen realms magical and suggest it could be interacted with without the mature implementation of wise action mixed with personal responsibility. Enlightenment comes only when the person seeking enlightenment takes self-initiative and gets involved directly, not only for the benefit of oneself but the collective as well. The man who gave 100 pig heads to Buddha was not merely thinking magically, he was very literally feeding the spirits and many human bodies as well.
Sitting on your ass in a pew in some air-conditioned room with a steeple on the top, raising a hand with eyes closed while swaying slightly, nodding in unison with a few like-minded others might make you feel better but it won’t stop kids from being killed. Neither will trolling around on social media, attending a rally for a quick little march down main street, or printing out some pro-peace bumper stickers. And sadly, I don’t think merely preventing people from purchasing guns will end the needless murders of children either. A full-blown spiritual reckoning seems to be in order at this curious juncture in our collective human unfolding dear friends. And it behooves us to look more deeply, far deeper than I reckon we have likely ever dared to look before. Can I get an “Amen!”?
Hmm… I’m inclined to go back and delete that reference to the pig heads being offered to the Buddha. It will no doubt be misinterpreted, seen as a joke, or worse yet, seen as a call to action suggesting we all go offer images of The Christ 100 cow heads. Please, don’t do any of that!! These are indeed rather strange days. Every time anyone says anything there is a risk of another conspiracy theory taking foot. Let me make clear again as I have in previous newsletters; I know very little about anything at all! I’m simply a fellow human in training, in this case a father of a little girl, who is heartbroken and confused by the event that recently took place in Nashville. An event that is increasingly common. I merely share with you what my curious human experience thus far has interpreted all of this as meaning, which is thus: We need to put ourselves in the game. And if by putting ourselves in the game this means to offer “thoughts and prayers”, then we need to take the time to look more deeply at what prayer actually entails.
I recall stories as a child of my father mentioning how, when Jesus wanted to pray, He went into the wilderness, sometimes for weeks a time, alone, and fasted. He made self-sacrifices. He denied himself much of what he loved for the benefit of others. He put himself in the game. When bankers were pulling some bullshit, he called them out! Aggressively so, at times (He sure as hell didn’t bail them out!!). I imagine he was scared to do all this. I’m sure it wasn’t convenient for Him. It certainly wasn’t a popular thing to do. But he did it anyway. And did so always, with the well-being of others, including the wellbeing of those who hated him, and the natural world, in mind. He wasn’t the type of guy who would simply update his Facebook profile pic with a filter that said, “I am on Gods side.” and call it good. No ma’am, Jesus nailed himself to the mutha-fuckin’ cross. Let that sink in.
What if, like the landless, impoverished parent praying for a winning lottery ticket (Note* I don’t know for certain if this is the backstory of the man who offered 100 pig heads to Buddha, I am admittedly regularly making up mythologies as I go along that offer me meaning as most of the diluted, grossly commodified and Disney-ified ones no longer offer anything more than a way for over-worked moms and dads to distract their kids when they become exhausted and hand over parenting to Arjan YouTube) whom actively offered that which he most cherished (i.e. life itself in the form of protein packed pig heads), when we offered “thoughts and prayers”, we also offered an abundance of that which we genuinely cherish most for the benefit of others. Alas, this begs to question, what would that even be for the modern affluent American?
Have we become so civilized, so trapped in an illusion of security, so blinded by false narratives suggesting we are somehow owed something, that we are “guaranteed” certain inalienable rights merely because we exist, that we have atrophied and no longer even recognize that which matters most? When you are poor, you know damn well what matters most. But for the well-to-do of the Global North, can we still notice what is most valuable? I have literally seen images of parents scrolling away on their cell phones from within the convenience of their fancy air-conditioned cars while safely parked outside of a school that is actively being occupied by an armed shooter. What does this suggest? Over 20 years since the Columbine shooting and we barely budge. If seeing our children shot to death doesn’t move us to real action… can anything? Is this the final episode in the several thousand year march of empire to some grand euphoric horizon on the hillside where we can order everything we want easily on Amazon, never be annoyed by screaming kids because we sent them all off to be “educated” by government funded schools backed by corporate interests while we slither away into worlds of self-righteousness adorned in a t-shirt made in China that says “Jesus Love You.”? Yuk.
A bitter, sarcastic, uncreative hipster on my right shoulder whispers, “What do you expect in a world driven primarily by the pursuit of finely framed selfies? We deserve this.” Yet, a Still Small Voice on the opposing shoulder says, “Fuck that!” Who knows, maybe it’s Jesus.
All blessings to the souls of those who lives were needlessly taken recently at the Covenant Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee. May they be well remembered, properly grieved for and may their journey to the other shore be swift.
Evelyn Dieckhaus, age 9
Hallie Scruggs, age 9
William Kinney, age 9
Cynthia Peak, age 61
Katherine Koonce, age 60
Mike Hill, age 61
May we offer more than mere “Thoughts and Prayers”…
**I am going to begin adding a Song of the Week each newsletter. This weeks song is:
PIGS IN ZEN by Janes Addiction.