GeoStories

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It’s been a rough start to the new year so far. I spent nearly the entirety of yesterday nonverbal and in a lot of pain, thanks to a sneeze (never a good thing for my TBI) I had in the morning, and my voice didn’t come back all the way until just a little before I went to sleep that night. My health’s been rough since the start of November, so I’ve had to take some time off of school, which would be frustrating even if I wasn’t on the home stretch with my degree. While I think it’s fair to say I’ve had meaningful improvement in the past couple of months, I’m still very nervous about starting up again for the new term on the day before Epiphany; even though I also really, really just want to get back to my studies.
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At the end of the day, all of my everyday problems feel ridiculously small compared to the suffering of so many of my fellow Americans targeted by this fascistic regime—not to mention the people around the world who have suffered and died because of Trump’s idiotic warmongering, his administration’s cruel cancellation of international aid; and a foreign policy easily bought by the likes of Putin, Netanyahu, Prince Al Saud, and other authoritarians. What discourages me the most is that, even though Trump and his personality cult will eventually die out (I pray sooner rather than later), I have no real reason not to expect half the country to vote for a tyrant again when given the chance. We have a serious cultural problem on our hands, not just a political or economic one, and there’s unfortunately no quick solution to it—no matter how much we desperately need one. Our last presidential election was our chance to show the world who we really are, and unfortunately a majority of voters did exactly that. Seeing resistance to commonsense public health measures earlier in this pandemic, I realized how dangerous ignorance and apathy could be; but I still strongly believed both were more widespread issues than hatred. Now, seeing so much cruelty for cruelty’s sake, I’m not so sure. What I am sure is that Hillary Clinton was right on the money calling Trump’s supporters deplorables; who’ve proven repeatedly that they’d rather vote for a sexual predator (a legally convicted one this time around), serial fraudster, open racist, and leader of a violent coup over a qualified woman. Harris didn’t run a perfect campaign for multiple reasons, and I know that her and Biden’s inability to hold Netanyahu accountable for his genocide especially lost them support they desperately needed, but anyone who expected Trump—the man responsible for the Muslim ban during his first term, who used the word Palestinian as a slur on live TV during his debate with Biden, and who openly fantasized about displacing Gazans to build resorts over the blood of their children—to more effectively keep peace in the region isn’t living in reality. There were other factors that affected the presidential election; I could blame most Democrats in Congress for consistently failing to meet the moment, the American media’s constant sane-washing of Trump’s hateful rants of word salads, the fact that there’s been a significant crackdown in many states on voter access, or the dismal state of American public education—but it doesn’t change the uncomfortable reality that voters watched Harris talk about actual policy when she debated Trump, while he screamed canards of immigrant communities eating pets; and the majority of voting Americans (including majorities of White women and Hispanic men, as well as an alarming percentage of Generation Z) picked him over her. While I have plenty of disagreements with the Democrats, some over things I’d consider quite important, voting for Harris was a no-brainer for me; it took little to understand her administration would respect my right to disagree more than a man who openly ran as a wannabe dictator. Trump ran on raw hatred and spite, and hatred and spite won; America became a fascist state because too many of us were too stupid, apathetic, or downright hateful to prevent it. In a twisted way, it was majoritarian democracy doing what it says it does; cruel idiots elected a cruel idiot, again. The behaviour of my pro-Trump relatives during the election season that year ranged from more obnoxious than usual to downright bullying—and all of them still defend Trump and the GOP to this day, even as their mad king commands our military to occupy American cities; and even as we’ve all watched Republicans in Congress publicly do everything they can (including holding welfare benefits hostage from the needy and refusing to swear in a popularly elected representative) to shield Trump, Epstein, and their fellow pedophiles from facing a millimeter of justice. It’s equal parts infuriating and downright depressing seeing how damningly amoral my own nation is, very often in the name of Christian values or even liberal civility. In some ways, the whole situation would be emotionally easier if I had walked into it with a simplistic “America bad” attitude (which felt like just an inverse form of American exceptionalism to me); but I did consider myself patriotic, albeit in a “God mend thine every flaw” sort of way—and I still love the people of this country and the beautiful land we share, I’m still enraged by the way my neighbours and their families are being treated by bullies in power, I can’t not care. I know that we won’t get out of this mess without caring, or without believing a better world is possible; but it still feels like the one I believed in was a lie on some level, that there may be a systemic reason why liberal democracies keep descending into fascism, that a Napoleon rises again and again so soon after what was supposed to be a revolution for the people. Still, there is at least one species of patriotism I feel, even if it’s somewhat localized. While I still hope to get my family into a safer country some day sooner rather than later, I’ve weirdly become significantly more motivated to stay here and fight since the occupation of Portland especially. It’s a sort of possessive patriotism specific to my own state, or even the Left Coast generally, a voice that says, “These are my communities, this the land I grew up on, the people and trees I know; nothing here belongs to Nazis!”
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I’m not sure if what I have left to go on is actual hope or just stubbornness; but, whatever you call it, it has to be enough to fight for a better world. Like millions of other Americans, I’ve tried to resist where and when I can in the past year—but, even though I’ve stuck to nonviolent means (admittedly more for the sake of practicality than principles at this point, if I’m being fully honest, given how little time it took for us to reach the minorities-being-rounded-off-the-streets-by-the-thousands-and-imprisoned-in-concentration-camps stage of fascism), I’m not quite so naïve as to think I can talk about any of my work in detail on a public blog with the current state of things; although being sufficiently vague about it all probably makes what I actually do sound more impressive than it actually is. It can all feel like a drop in the ocean, but it’s one that will always be missing if I do nothing. I know I’m limited in what I can do because of the reality of my disability; but, able or not, my ancestors didn’t shed their blood—both theirs and the enemy’s—defeating fascists, slaveowners, and the followers of idiotic autocrats for me to sit back and do nothing while my neighbours suffer. I was raised to stand up to bullies, no matter the stripe, no matter the odds; and the importance of standing up to those who mistake power for strength is clearer to me now than it ever has in my life. If I’ve learned anything in the past year, it’s that there is no real liberty without solidarity; our rights may be God-given, but those rights can’t be realized as more than nice words on paper in this fallen world without a community full of people who stand up for each other and our right to exist together. It often feels like a losing fight, but it’s the only one worth being in; and I know that America will only become the land of the free if she truly is the home of the brave.
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I really wish I had more encouraging words to share, and that I had higher hopes for this new year. There are days where I feel up to the fight, and there are days like today; where I’m just so overwhelmed by the sheer awfulness of widespread cruelty rising out over any semblance of sanity that civilization itself feels fake somehow. Sometimes it literally just makes me want to run to the forest and just try to live there, protesting this horrifying empire we’ve built. It’s true that the world’s such a dark place right now, and it so often feels like hatred is winning, that humanity’s losing our connection to each other and this beautifully strange planet we share more and more. Sometimes it’s little things that make it all hit me at once; it might sound silly, but this afternoon it was this nightcore version of an old Celtic Woman woman song. I had to stay lying in bed to rest my head most of the day, so I just listened to the song on loop and just let myself cry for a good half hour or so, because it just genuinely made me want to run away to fairyland. I think there’s something deep inside each of us that is supposed to recognize glimpses of it; to know that we don’t fully belong here, that the world is sick, that people aren’t filling our role in it the way we must. So many cultures around the world seem to remember a better one, a timeless space where the Earth is as she should be; where evil can not grow, where humans are at peace with our sister species, and where life itself belongs more than it does to this realm of alien entropy that never feels quite like home. My tradition would say that we long for the days when we are no longer outcasts of Eden; but there are many myths where we glimpse a vision of the Garden, from Arcadia of the Ancient Greeks to Mt. Penglai in the legends of the Sinosphere. Today, that vision for me was of Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth in Irish myth; and the story of their immortal Princess Niamh with her beautifully tragic love of the human warrior Oisín, who left a timeless land of everlasting life for a doomed return to the land of mortals. Deep down, I believe that there is something inside of us that will always long for fairyland, love that lives for love in the kingdom come. While we may not be able to reach the Otherworld yet, I think the best we can do is make the little corners we find ourselves in this present one a little more like it; just bringing the everyday magic of love and solidarity to the souls planted around us. It might not feel like much in the face of cruelty, but it might just be enough to find fairyland someday.
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-Isaac““
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Almighty God,
Who in Your love gave to Your servant Nicholas of Myra
A perpetual name for deeds of kindness on land and sea:
Grant, we pray,
That Your Church may never cease to work
For the happiness of children,
The safety of sailors,
The relief of the poor,
And the help of those tossed by tempests of doubt or grief;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
One God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

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Happy St. Nicholas Day, everyone! Pray for peace, stand in solidarity, and live lovingly.
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-Isaac““
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Dorothy Day,
November 8th, 1897—November 29th, 1980

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What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute… we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.

-Dorothy Day (June 1st, 1946).

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I came across someone online asking if anyone had an interpretation of this beautiful song by The Oh Hellos that they’d like to share—of which I am sure there are many meaningful ones out there—but it really made me think this afternoon, so I thought I’d share what I told them here as well. I originally typed it up on my phone, but it’s only been very lightly edited in a couple of places to correct typos or grammatical errors. To anybody who might read this, I’d love to hear any of your thoughts on these lyrics as well!
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To me, this song brings to mind rewilding and radical acceptance. We’ve forgotten who we are in relation to the ecosystems we are a part of—having spent generations constructing false binaries that separate humanity from the spaces we live and breathe in, leaving us feeling disconnected from the wider web of living things, and making us forget the interdependence of life in all its forms. We may find ourselves craving control out of fear—perhaps even seeing the world around us as a space to dominate, as nothing but potential resources to utilize or gain from—but this fear ultimately stems from a yearning for the stability our species has lost through our divorce from the natural cycles of our common home. Something deep in our spirit looks at the broken empires we’ve fought so hard to build—at landscapes of cruel steel and cold concrete we’ve created in a desperate attempt to delineate the sylvan from the settled, to separate what we fear from what we can understand, seeing meaningful differences as threats to overcome or sort away—and feels that wrongness, knows we weren’t meant for this way of life, yearns for the wilderness. Yet we can’t hope to rejoin it, to effectively right what so many generations have wronged, to grow again with this planet that cradles us, before we’ve accepted her full reality—the cycles of beauty and pain, growing and dying; life, death, and new life again. To live at peace with each other, with our inner selves, and with our siblings of every species, we must recognize that our desire for stability can only be fulfilled by letting go of control and accepting our melody once more in the Earth’s rhythms. We have a lot to learn, but it’s never too late to start.
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Peace, hope, and solidarity to you all!
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-Isaac““
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I am so unbelievably proud of my beautifully weird state, and of all of the Americans standing up to this cruel, power-hungry regime from coast to coast! Yesterday’s No Kings Day protests constituted one of the largest single-day protest events in our nation’s history, with millions making their voices heard on the streets—even in deep-red states. Seeing the amount of international solidarity has also been genuinely encouraging, it feels like we’re less alone in this fight.
They may occupy our cities, disappear our neighbours, and make a mockery of our republic; but fascists will not have the final say in this country, and they can never silence us all. Godspeed, Resistance!
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-Isaac““
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There is no good news in a gospel that preaches right belief over right disposition,
Nor is justice that loves a correct creed over correct conduct just or loving,
And a god who prioritizes orthodoxy over love is not worthy of worship.
I will have no place in a heaven that excludes those in most need of her,
Nor give my heart to one who forgets the forgotten.
I will place no faith in one who promises eternal life,
Yet fails to bridge forever with the now,
Or live immortally in the mortal.
Just as Pascal bet on belief,
I will stake my salvation on God-the-Love,
Worshipping Him in my neighbour,
Finding the Invisible in the unseen,
Loving the Infinite in the finite,
And toppling tyrants for the Kingdom come,
For another’s eternity is worth less than this ephemeral present,
And a heaven without love is Hell.
Give me the strength of the gentle,
And the fierceness of the meek,
To hear the voice of the silent,
And see the sacred in the sinner,
To praise God in the godless,
And be His Heart for the Other,
That God-the-Love in me,
May meet God-the-Love in you.
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-Isaac““
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Our Lady, Undoer of Knots, Virgin Mother of God, overflowing with mercy, have mercy on your child and undo the knots in my life.
I need your visit to my life, like you visited Elizabeth.
Bring me Jesus, bring me the Holy Spirit.
Teach me to practice the virtues of courage, joyfulness, humility and faith; and, like Elizabeth, to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Make me joyfully rest on your bosom, Mary.
I consecrate you as my mother, Queen and friend.
I give you my heart and everything I have; my home and family, my material and spiritual goods.
I am yours forever. Put your heart in me, so that I can do everything Jesus tells me.
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Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for me.
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Eighty years of the nuclear threat is enough.

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Nero fiddles in the city’s fire,
His faithful fallen pass Mammon’s plate,
Rome sinks into the mire,
A tuneless hymn of hate,
Spiteful servants of a rising God,
The first to fall from the Tempter’s mount,
Praising their lightning rod,
Cheering its body count,
Chasing each wandering wind of might,
They sought gods of gold in quake and blaze,
Heedless to the Christ-light,
Whispered in foreign gaze,
Swept by this kingdom of cowards’ flood,
Hard hearts of hate and rotten leaven,
Damned by their brother’s blood,
Crying out to Heaven,
What of past patriots’ ichor bled,
Victors against slavers and pharaohs?
What of the silent dead,
Freedom in their marrows?
What of the Mother of Exiles lost,
The shining city upon a hill?
What of the tempest-tossed,
Huddled masses’ goodwill?
End the reign this heartless Herod clawed,
Our sweet land of liberty restore,
Shores with no king but God,
Succor of the tired poor,
Praying for the Red Sea to be filled,
The dawn when all craven cruelties cease,
Drowned in the blood they spilled,
Sic semper tyrannis.
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-Isaac““
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No thrones, no crowns, no kings in America: Impeach and imprison Trump for his crimes.
May the Author of Liberty restore our republic, redeem the soul of a fallen nation, and save her children from a callous Christianity that crucifies Christ in the vulnerable. As we build peace in the years ahead, may we always remember those who took a stand against tyranny—and never forget the cowards who followed the cruel whims of an idiotic autocrat.

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nokings.org.
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