FictionComedy FictionReligion & SpiritualityExplicit

Heretic Hereafter Podcast

Katharine Strange

Heretic Hereafter is about figuring out how to live the good life after leaving Evangelical Christianity. Whether you're religious or not, join us for a weekly dose of humor and reflection that helps us look past the superficial for life's deeper meanings.

heretichereafter.substack.com

Play

Open in

20 episodes
weekly
Avg 5 min
English

Episodes 20

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

S3 · E23
Wednesday · 6 min
Love in the ER
Two weeks ago, my husband shook me awake at 4:00 a.m. “I’m going to the emergency room,” he said. I tried to blink myself awake. Never much of a complainer, Ryan had grown increasingly miserable over the past few days due to a pain in the roof of his mouth. That night, the pain had kept him from sleeping. I think I mumbled something along the lines of, “What? How?” as I sat up in bed. “I’ll take an Uber,” he said. My sleep-fogged brain considered this. My pillow was calling to me. And Ryan had taken himself to the ER alone before—Boxing Day 2014 when we had a toddler and a newborn and he’d stepped on a (shockingly sharp!) toy excavator, slicing a deep gouge into his toe. Then, like now, I knew it was a gray area sort of injury: requiring immediate medical attention, but not something life-threatening. And here he was giving me an out to back to sleep… “No, I’ll take you,” I murmured, mentally running through the tasks this would require, what I needed to bring, whom I needed to notify. ***This summer I’ve been thinking about what it actually takes to make community work. Much has been written about the loneliness crisis, growing rates of estrangement, how we are replacing eye contact with screen staring. Somewhere in the past few months I heard the phrase, “Everyone wants a village, no one wants to be a villager,” and I wonder, could it really be that simple? Is our lack of community simply our own fault? *** Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Ryan and I wound up at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. It’s a level one trauma center that I only knew from newspaper write ups about gunshot victims. I’d hoped that 4:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning would be relatively quiet, that he’d get a quick exam, maybe some pain medicine, and we’d be on our merry way. We were greeted by five security guards, two police officers, and a metal detector. The waiting room benches hosted sleeping forms surrounded by piles of plastic bags and dirty backpacks, the tell-tale baggage of homelessness. Nurses seemed to know many patients by name—frequent fliers, I guessed. This ER felt like the last, fraying threads of a broken safety net. Here were the disabled, the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted. And yet people fell through the cracks here, too. As we waited, I witnessed security eject two patients who were acting aggressively. Even as I was relieved at their removal, I wondered where they would go. ***Culturally, we are going through a profound shift in the way we understand relationships, and I think this has a lot to do with geography: for most of human history, community was not chosen but default. It was the people in your tribe, your extended family, your neighbors. Humans were tied to land and to ancestral homes. Waves of migration and industrialization disconnected many of us from the lands of our ancestors. Increasing economic pressure pushed generations of striving young people towards college education and the metropolitan hubs of various industries. Now, many of us have unprecedented levels of choice in where we live, what we do for work, and whom we associate with. The digital revolution, helped by the pandemic, further fractured the connection between place and relationship. Now your closest confidante might be someone you only chat with online and you may spend more time focused on parasocial relationships with podcasters or influencers rather than with friends you see in real life. Real life? Who has time for that? *** A few hours after arriving, Ryan was finally taken to an exam room—and by “room” I mean “tiny alcove with curtain.” En route to our alcove, we walked through corridors lined with patients on gurneys—there didn’t seem to be a spare inch of space. Some patients slept in chairs hooked up to IVs. In the alcove stood a bed crowned with a variety of tubes and monitors. I looked around—there was no place for me to sit. The expectation, I realized, is that people come to this hospital alone. Indeed, no one I’d seen in the waiting room was accompanied. *** In the course of my 40+ years, I’ve said many goodbyes. I’ve moved 16 times. I have clashed with church communities whose beliefs I no longer held. I’ve gone no contact with family members. Maybe all of this had led me to a certain amount of overthinking on the topic of relationships and community. I notice how much time people in my community spend trying to optimize ourselves and our kids: we’ll do anything for work, anything to give our kids an extracurricular edge, even if these things (like travel sports) make us broke and miserable. There’s always a fear of being left behind. On the rare occasion that I’m able to get together with my neighbors we always find ourselves saying things like, “this is so fun” and “we should do this more often,” and yet…we don’t. We’re too busy, too tired, too introverted, too awkward. We’ve forgotten that the most important part is just showing up. *** The doctor apologized for the lack of chair and found one for me. Ryan and I spent eight total hours in the emergency department. Apart from fetching snacks, I was pretty superfluous to the process, but Ryan thanked me for coming. His pain improved. The doctor examined and scanned him before referring him to a dentist because apparently, doctors don’t do mouth stuff? Ryan felt silly and annoyed that we’d wasted so much time in the ER on what was likely a dental issue. “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Remember last summer when I thought I was in anaphylaxis and called 911?” The paramedics had been very kind as they showed me my lack of swollen lips and tongue in the mirror. During our 19 years of marriage, we’ve interacted with emergency medical services 6 times, with only half of those being necessary. Sometimes you just don’t know. ***In a culture that’s obsessed with productivity and efficiency, it’s a radical act to choose inconvenience. That’s the story of the Good Samaritan, and the best of our caregivers and teachers. Most times I opt for efficiency—I am hurrying along my kids or growing impatient with the elderly person slowly climbing the stairs in front of me. I like getting things done, checking off tasks. But in the ER, I was reminded that presence trumps productivity. As we waited in our alcove, I heard a procession of doctors and nurses trying to cajole an elderly patient into getting an MRI. She was scared of the machine. One by one, the staff used active listening skills to validate her feelings while offering potential solutions. It was a terribly inefficient and deeply loving process. ***Thinking of those lonely people in the ER, I can imagine that it was a complex web of circumstances that brought them there—trauma, poverty, systemic racism and other barriers. It would be facile to think that deciding to act more “villager-like” would solve these complicated problems. And yet, I know that small moments of presence actually do help. We all need to be seen; we all need people we can rely on. That trust-building is a slow, inefficient process AND it’s the only way we make progress towards solving big problems like homelessness and addiction. So, even in this hectic season of back-to-school and various professional upheavals, I am going to try to be an inconvenience and let myself be inconvenienced, too. Missed a Post in our “Stuck Together Summer” Series? Here They Are! * Stop Threatening to Move to Canada * “We’re Doomed”: Great Card Game, Terrible Outlook on Life * A Post for When You Hate Everyone * Text That Friend You’re Thinking About * The Hardest Goodbye * A Police Defunder Has Some Regrets * The Other Third Places We Need Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E22
August 12 · 8 min
The Other Third Places We Need
Wild Waves/Enchanted Village, Seattle’s schlocky amusement park, is closing and I couldn’t be sadder about it. While significantly crappier than a Disney Park or even a Six Flags, running around Wild Waves is a rite of passage for many Seattle-area adolescents. It is THE end-of-year good behavior field trip that makes students think twice about racking up detentions. It’s not just Seattle—since 2020, at least 10 major American amusement parks have closed and many regional parks are struggling to return after pandemic losses. Nor is it just the rollercoaster lovers that are in trouble, other classic teen hangouts like malls are in serious decline. High school dance attendance is down too, blamed largely on teens preferring screen-based activities like gaming and scrolling. Where are the teens supposed to go? Is this just another sign of the times? Am I merely weeping for my own Millennial nostalgia, shaking my fist at a generation that would rather be playing Roblox? Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Online Connection is Still Connection…Right? It’s not like kids these days are digital hermits. Observing my own teens and their friends have showed me that many of their online activities are, in fact, very social. My sons love to game with friends while chatting away over headsets, alternatively strategizing and trash-talking. Likewise, technology enables teens to stay connected outside of school in ways an elder Millennial like me could only have dreamed of. Heck, we were confined to the world of desktops, dial up, and, if you were lucky enough, AIM chats. (Pity the rural kids like me, who were beyond the reach of AOL.) This heightened connectivity is also seen in the sprawling online presence of events like prom. This dance, one of the few to survive the decline, has spread into cyberspace, with kids planning (and posting) elaborate “prom-posals” and girls hopping into online groups to share which dresses they’ve purchased so that—gasp!— no one shows up in the same ‘fit. And yet, while the average teen has a higher quantity of social connections, the quality of these interactions has changed. Instead of tying up a family landline with marathon phone calls, many kids now mainly communicate via brief DMs. And that text-based communication has its downsides: it’s both less stimulating to the brain and lacks context clues (like facial expressions and tone of voice) leading to higher instances of misunderstanding. Studies show, we need face-to-face interaction to form deep relationships, but our technology is increasingly crowding out this option. Gaming systems have shifted away from in-person together play (via shared account and split-screen) to siloed play on separate accounts and screens. While older technology like the Nintendo Switch makes multiplayer, in-person gaming easy (provided you have enough controllers), many popular games and systems (such as Roblox or Xbox’s Halo) set up a ridiculous amount of hurdles to in-person gaming. There’s also a serious downside to real-life events turning into social media spectacle. This technology is, by nature, performative—are you actually having fun at the prom or are you merely performing having fun for your followers? If so much of your social life revolves around your platform, can you ever completely forget the virtual audience? Teen brains are already wired to see peer acceptance as a life-or-death situation, adding parasocial pressure is like throwing gasoline on an open flame. Why Community Needs Physical Space No matter how much we enjoy connecting online, it turns out people need face-to-face interaction, and these interactions need to happen somewhere. In their book, The Great Good Place American sociologists Ray Oldenburg and Karen Christensen argue for the need for “third places”—spaces that are neither home or work (or, for kids we could sub in “school.”) Think cafes, barbershops, parks, gyms, or churches. According to Oldenburg & Christensen, the characteristics of a good third place are: * Open and inviting (drop-in vs. need an appointment) * Comfortable and informal * Convenient * Unpretentious * Has “Regulars” (and possibly a host of some kind) * Conversation is the main activity * Laughter is frequent Thinking specifically of kids and teens, third spaces ought to have fairly clear expectations for behavior and some light (emphasis on light!) adult supervision—i.e. you don’t jump in the mall fountain or security will kick you out. The Third Spaces Most Cities Are Missing Seattle, like many cities, has an abundance of third spaces that primarily cater to a particular type of person, namely, white young adults with plenty of cash. Think $5 cups of drip or $20 cocktails, pricey gyms with saunas and “wellness spaces.” Most don’t exactly fit the above criteria when it comes to being “unpretentious.” Each wave of gentrification strips away diversity from our variety of gathering spaces, like the Vietnamese pool hall and the Black barbershop, and instead brings in even more businesses aimed at hipsters. Even brew pubs that pitch themselves as “family friendly” are typically geared towards parents of young children. While it’s great that these often include a play space, they’re typically a snooze for kids over 5. Many parks are, similarly, lacking in features that appeal to older kids and teens. Basketball courts and baseball fields appeal to athletes, but it would be great to see more parks designed with spaces that are conducive to a casual hangout. Is there a landscaping equivalent of the 1970s “conversation pit”? Likewise, adolescents don’t feel welcome in many public spaces. Teens are often loud and prone to showing off, sometimes by engaging in risky behavior and boundary-pushing. When teens hang around playgrounds, they are often viewed with suspicion by parents of younger kids. I’ve been guilty of this, too, not sure when or whether to push back on teens’ rowdiness, reverting to passive-aggressive commentary when a kind, direct request would be more effective. The Future of Third Spaces for Teens Last time we were at Wild Waves, my kids having disappeared into the hoard of free-range teens, I lay on my lounger and frantically googled: “Wild Waves still for sale?” and “Wild Waves price?” fantasizing that there was some sort of crowdfunded future where I could help buy back the theme park, thus ensuring future Seattle teens the magic of janky wooden rollercoasters and overpriced hotdogs. Sadly, I discovered that Wild Waves and the surrounding parcel of land sold last fall for $456 million, which is a little out of my price range. I looked around at the diverse group of people enjoying the park—folks of all ages and races, folks who splashed out on the VIP cabanas and those who brown bagged it—and felt keenly the loss of this place. Communities need a variety of third places serving diverse groups of people, not just those who are willing and able to spend $10 on draft beer. If we want to solve the loneliness crisis, we would do well to look at our built environment and ask: do we have enough third spaces? And if so, who do they serve? Seattle has a few bright spots amongst all its tech bro-ification. Lately, I’ve seen more fliers for community centers which stay open for “Teen Late Nights,” providing recreation and hang out space with the kind of loose supervision kids this age need. Likewise, many teens in my area like to go for boba afterschool, which is sweeter than coffee and usually around the same price point. And I’m currently writing this while posted up at a picnic shelter near the skatepark where 3 tweens, including my son, are practicing their tricks. And yet I wonder if this is too little, too late. It seems to me we have two options: one where we are increasingly isolated, reliant on gig workers, exorbitant extracurricular activities, and overnight delivery to try and fill the void where community once was, or we can try to pull out of this late-stage capitalist nosedive and, instead, invest in each other. All people need networks of relationships and, therefore, we need a diverse ecosystem of third places. As for the future of Wild Waves? The investment firm bought the theme park with plans to demolish it. In its place, they’ll build a 1-million-square-foot warehouse. It feels too apt for a culture that puts so much value on accumulating stuff and makes so little room for people. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E22
August 5 · 8 min
A Police Defunder Has Some Regrets
I’ve been following with rapt attention the new NPR/Seattle Times podcast, “We Keep Us Safe” which investigates the murder of 15-year-old Antonio Mays, Jr. at the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) in 2020. This summer, we’ve been looking at what it takes to make community work. This new investigation of CHOP highlights the challenges of building a society from scratch apart from traditional institutions like the police. What Was CHOP? For those of you unfamiliar with CHOP, it was a protestor takeover of Seattle’s Cal Anderson Park and several blocks around it after the Seattle Police Department abandoned its East Precinct station in June of 2020 after several days of protest after the murder of George Floyd. The media portrayed CHOP, varyingly, as either a Summer-of-Love-type sit-in or a lawless hellscape. Anxious to cut through the hype, I visited CHOP and witnessed both its promise and problems first-hand. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. There were many positive things happening at the park: tables offered free food and water to anyone who wanted them. There were medical personnel on hand and teach-ins using the “human microphone” technique many folks learned during the Occupy Wall Street protests. People were exchanging ideas and vigorously debating how to create the post-racist, just society so many of us were crying out for in those dark days. But while there were many in the park there to learn and vision together, the vibes weren’t exactly peace and love. Homeless people, some behaving erratically, had also streamed into the encampment. And as my friends and I sat eating tacos on the baseball field, we witnessed a group of masked men surround someone who was recording video. The group began shouting at the videographer, threatening violence. I’d seen enough and decided not to stick around past dark. Four days after my visit, 15-year-old Antonio Mays, Jr. would be murdered and his friend gravely wounded right in front of the abandoned police station. Questions remained: who killed Mays and why? And how had this protest against racialized violence ended up taking the life of a Black teenager? The Investigation In the days after Mays’ murder, rumors swirled: he was a gang member or a troublemaker, there to cause mayhem and possibly harm CHOP protestors. Having witnessed the various groups of people filtering in and out of CHOP, I all too easily accepted this explanation, figuring we’d probably never get the whole story. But reporters from our local NPR station and The Seattle Times were able to reconstruct a timeline of the murder using hours of security camera and livestream video scraped from social media. This, combined with eye-witness interviews, led to some startling revelations about why Mays was at CHOP and who likely killed him. The whole podcast is available now; I won’t spoil the conclusions for you because I think it’s worth a listen. The Aftermath The podcast begins and ends by interviewing Antonio Mays, Sr. As much as his son’s death has been held up as a symbol for this or that movement, we ought never forget that Mays was a kid. He was a musician, an aspiring BBQ pitmaster, a son, a brother, a classmate, a friend. As a parent, I can’t help but put myself in his family’s shoes. How awful to lose a child, how awful to not know why. Mays, Sr. wants justice for his son. No one has yet been arrested for the murder. Given the many errors in the criminal investigation, it’s unclear whether his son’s killer will ever face legal consequences. Here’s the thing I’ve come to understand about the push for police reform: it’s not all or nothing. While political polarization and media sensationalism painted the sides of the debate as either “the police are great, they can do no wrong” or “abolish all police,” many would-be reformers are just regular people like the Mays family who want the police to investigate serious crimes while not abusing their power to harass or harm people of color. Was Defund the Answer? I attended multiple Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. We were fed up with biased policing and with the government-sanctioned murder of unarmed civilians. We dreamed of a world where people experiencing mental health crises were met with a helping hand rather than guns drawn. One of our main chants during this time was, “Defund the police, 50% at least!” During this time, I tried to be careful about what I said in front of my kids, not wanting to overwhelm them. Still, they picked up on more than I realized. My eldest, then 8, saw a newspaper headline about the protests. He asked, “So they’re going to fire all the racist police and then we’ll have only good police leftover?” My heart ached at his question; I so wished that we could give him a justice system that was actually just. While many Seattle City Council members publicly commented in favor of drastically cutting the police budget, in the end, the budget was only cut by 14%, some of that in the form of individual salary cuts, but most coming from moving services like 911 call centers and parking enforcement out of the police department. Following the debate, the police chief resigned, and police officers left the department at a rate of about 150 per year between 2020-2022. While KIRO news reported this attrition was primarily due to the political climate, their sample size was small (12ish exit interviews out of 400ish departures). Other factors that could’ve influenced this wave of departures include things like poor staffing ratios and mask and vaccine mandates. Regardless of why police left, many of their positions wouldn’t be filled until years later, leaving Seattle with some of the lowest numbers of police per capita of any large city in America. These staffing drops have often been cited as the cause of increased response times and the feeling that, in Seattle, “the police don’t do anything.” Looking back on those “defund” demands now, what we were clamoring for was police accountability. Seattle had already gone through a federal consent decree and had an Office for Police Accountability, and yet little seemed to change. Taxpayers, were, understandably upset, particularly after police overreaction to peaceful protests in 2020, which included a small child being maced. To me, “defund” felt like a last resort, hitting the department where it hurt: its wallet. And yet, as much as the me of 2020 would’ve liked to chuck out the whole police department and start over from scratch, what happened at CHOP is illustrative of what can happen in the absence of police: namely, untrained vigilantes who self-appoint themselves as “security” creating the violence they’re trying to prevent. In my opinion, “defund” was too much, too soon. It was (understandably) reactionary, but it made little meaningful progress towards the slow, hard work of reform. What Would Justice Look Like? Reforming our institutions often feels impossible. There are entrenched interests heavily invested in preserving the status quo, including groups like police unions. Both communities of color and police often feel under attack, making dialogue difficult. But there are bright spots amid all this mess, people who are crossing party lines and doing the important, community-building work of accountability and relationship-building. The first person who gives me hope is Detective Cookie. She’s a South Seattle icon (she even has a park named after her!) a police officer who started an after-school chess club and is a frequent fixture at schools and neighborhood events. Even as the community has lauded her work to build trust between the police and the community, she’s faced discrimination within the police department and pushback for trying to hold it accountable. I’m so heartened to see the community rally around Detective Cookie; we need more police like her. The second group who give me hope are the teachers, counselors, and community workers I see engaging in restorative justice, a concept I hope will be more widely rolled out in our community. Groups like Community Passageways mentor at-risk youth, moving people out of the criminal justice system and towards productive employment. Is this reform work quick and easy? Absolutely not! Our criminal justice system is akin to a container ship that takes miles to come to a stop once the brakes are applied. Turning the ship around is a slow and arduous process. But, as tempting as it is to give into frustration, to throw up one’s hands and storm out of the city, we must stay patient, we must notice small steps and work towards creating more of them. If you want to help with police accountability and reform, there are options! You can host a block party or attend a community safety meeting. You can donate to groups in your area that are promoting restorative justice and advocate for it in your schools and institutions. As much as we grieve the injustice of police violence, we have to remember that this is generational work. As the proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is thirty years ago. The second best time is now.” Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E21
July 29 · 8 min
The Hardest Goodbye
This summer, we’ve been looking at commitment and what it takes to make communities and relationships work. Sticking it out has its place, certainly, but what about its opposite, calling it quits? Is there ever a time when we are justified in stepping away from relationships, even one as sacred as that between a parent and child? Content Warning: suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, please call or text 988 for help. During the summer of 2020, I debated going no-contact with my mother. While my social media feed lit up with photos of people retreating to childhood homes, praises for grandparents as backup daycare, and even intergenerational TikToks, I was staring at the bland cover of a self-help book that detailed the process of cutting off a loved one. I couldn’t even decide whether to read it. The library had been closed for months, so this book sat in a stack next to my desk, calling to me like the tell-tale heart each time I sat down to write. What was I going to do? Part of me was stuck in disbelief that things had gotten this bad. As a child, I’d idolized my mother. I remember going to JoAnne’s to pick out fabric for matching dresses, watching her lay out the pattern pieces on the fabric: her larger pieces in the center, my smaller ones filling in the gaps. I would ask her endless questions about her life before me, making note of how I ought to be in the world. My baby book catalogues my aspirations at various ages: ballerina, teacher, nurse, mommy—all her ambitions became my own. I loved her biting sense of humor and her creativity. Her smile, when she turned it my way, felt like stepping out of a cold shadow into sunlight. And if she often kept me at a distance, shooing me towards the TV whenever I broached the kitchen where she spent most of the day cleaning, cooking, and drinking white wine, well, I aspired to be less annoying, more useful. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We had our ups and downs. When I left home for college, she sank into a depression so deep I felt it even 500 miles away. She joked about how I “abandoned” her. When we’d lived together, I’d been adept at gauging her mood and avoiding her triggers, but on the phone it was difficult to take her emotional temperature and figure out the right thing to say. In the summer of 2020, our conversations felt like stepping on landmines. I wrestled with duty—what did I owe the woman who gave me life, who raised, fed, and clothed me? Who, as she often reminded me, “only lived” to be a grandma to my kids, then 8 and 5. I never doubted that she loved us. But I also could no longer ignore her increasingly erratic behavior. On our weekly Skype calls she was usually drunk and moody. One night, she accused me of not being grateful for the matching sweaters she’d recently sent my kids. I objected that I had thanked her on a previous call and promised to send a photo of the kids wearing them when the weather was…you know…more sweater appropriate? My explanation only enraged her further: she accused me of secretly hating the sweaters and her, before enlisting the help of family members to harangue me for my ingratitude. By now this was a familiar pattern. After many years of therapy, I’d begun to wonder about my mother’s drinking and the way my family readily accepted her version of events. As I’d worked towards having healthier communication in my own relationships, the difference between my household and my parents’ was thrown into stark relief. This new self-knowledge also made me question the past: had I always wanted to be just like Mom, or had that been my only safe option? I’d spent the previous several visits trying to set boundaries with her around her drinking. When confronted, she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about but eventually agreed to not drink around us, “since it’s so important to you.” But during her visits she continued to ask for alcohol, to purchase it under various guises (“it’s for the marinara.”) After she left, I’d find empty wine bottles hidden in various nooks throughout my house. After so much energy spent policing these boundaries, the forced separation of the pandemic came as a relief. I blamed our increasing distance on being COVID-cautious, but she could sense I was pulling away, which triggered more acting out. On a random evening, I might get half-a-dozen angry voicemails about what a terrible person I was. Sometimes she threatened to commit suicide since I obviously didn’t care enough about her to answer the phone. (When she did this, I’d contact family members who lived with or near her who would then call 911. Always take suicide threats seriously.) One of the hardest parts of having an addicted family member is the silence that surrounds the illness. In my family-of-origin, there was no accountability for what was said or done in a drunken haze. It was always explained to me that the alcoholic felt immense shame about their addiction, and we didn’t want to make that worse, did we? I was tired of being collateral damage. I dreaded each interaction with my mother. For a few hours before and after our weekly Skype date, I was tense and irritable, snapping at my own children. I realized I was displacing my own anger and grief onto them, the same way my mother had barked at me after visiting my grandma in the nursing home. But I had to do this, didn’t I? I was obligated to let my kids do a weekly videocall with their grandmother, even if she was drunk and sulking about God-knows-what? I was afraid of what she might do if I stopped talking to her. And I felt an ancient guilt: that somehow her addiction, her life’s many troubles, were all my fault. My therapist and I spent months gaming out possible solutions. She’d been the one to recommend that library book that had been gathering dust next to my desk. Finally, I got so fed up that I opened it and saw my feelings of fear, obligation, and guilt (FOG) reflected back at me. The author asked whether this could ever be the basis for any kind of healthy relationship? And I knew she was right. Still, it took several more months of hemming and hawing before I wrote my mom a letter. In it, I explained that the only way forward for our relationship was for her to work towards sobriety and to make a fourth step amends to me for the damage her alcoholism had done to our relationship. As I dropped the letter into the mailbox slot, I knew this was likely the end. I couldn’t remember Mom ever offering a non-sarcastic apology and I doubted she’d start now, even if it meant losing a relationship with me. The fallout was quick and predictable: more voicemails. Gifts and cards sent to my children. Other family members asking repeatedly what, exactly, I wanted from her, as if my demands had been complicated or finnicky. And then, quiet. Relief. The guilt is still there—I worry about her; I imagine what I could’ve done (could still do?) to get her to stop drinking. I still harbor fantasies that she will recover and we will rebuild our relationship. But as her disease progresses that possibility slips farther and farther away. Looking back now, I suspect that my mother suffers not only from Substance Use Disorder but also Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and that her lashing out at me was likely due to what she perceived as rejection, a major symptom of that disorder. I have a lot of sympathy for her and I don’t blame her. Given her genes and life experiences, it makes total sense why she ended up this way. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to step back into the line of fire. Much has been written about the “trend” of estrangement. There’s little actual data regarding the reasons family members become estranged or how long they contemplated it before initiating. Is it possible that people are becoming estranged for rash and selfish reasons? Sure. People vary in their maturity and ability to negotiate conflict. Still, I bristle at the assumptions that tend to be made about those going no-contact: that we are big, whiny babies who don’t value others. For some of us, distance is the only way we can truly love each other. I acknowledge that my choice deeply hurt my mother and also negatively impacted other family members. If I could’ve seen any way to preserve our relationship without sacrificing myself in the process, I would’ve done it. But when I think about the foundations of a healthy relationship, I keep coming back to accountability. If a person can’t take feedback and course correct, I don’t think there’s any hope for a real relationship. It’s interesting to me that questions of atonement and forgiveness are at the heart of Christianity. As much as my gag reflex activates when I hear the phrase “a personal relationship with God,” this parallel between human and divine relationships is striking: we all screw up, we all hurt those we love, we all need a way back. I wish the theology that formed my mother and me had focused more on healthy repair rather than the unattainable pursuit of moral perfection. I wish we’d experienced grace and learned that a well-done repair actually strengthens relationships. Maybe things would’ve worked out differently for us. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E20
July 22 · 5 min
Text the Friend You're Thinking About
By my early 30s, I’d moved 16 times. I’d transferred schools 5 times, lived in 14 different cities, and moved boxes in and out of countless apartments and houses. I’d always considered this my social superpower: I knew how to harness the allure of being “the new kid.” I was both extroverted and judgy; I sorted people quickly and built friendships that blazed quick and hot. (There’s nothing like an expiration date to cement intense friendships.) The cycle was: meet, befriend, leave, over and over again. It took me years to realize that this supposed “superpower” was holding me back from real, deep friendship. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Do We Still Need Friends? The Allure of the “Everything” Relationship It’s not just me who lacks friendship skills. From the “loneliness crisis” to viral content on “how to make friends as an adult,” it seems a lot of us are craving friendship. This lack feels baked into our culture. America doesn’t prioritize or center friendships, instead it’s largely oriented around romantic partnerships. (You can’t, for instance, share health insurance with a friend, no matter how close you are.) As many of our community affiliations (such as churches or civic groups) have dwindled in the past 50 years, more and more of our emotional and practical needs have fallen to our romantic partners. Our romantic expectations have never been higher: we want someone who will not only sweep us off our feet and do their fair share of domestic drudgery, they also need to also be our best friend. These expectations have given rise to what psychotherapist Esther Perel dubs, “The Everything Marriage”: “Everything that we wanted from a traditional marriage — companionship, family, children, economic support, a best friend, a passionate lover, a trusted confidante, an intellectual equal — we are asking from one person what an entire village once provided. And couples are crumbling under the weight of so much expectation.” (emphasis mine) Writing about this phenomenon for The Atlantic, author Rhaina Cohen calls it the “self-expressive” marriage: “spouses expected their partnership to be the site of self-discovery and personal growth.” (Gift link here.) As Perel and others have pointed out: expecting one person to be your everything generally doesn’t work. No one person is going to share all our interests, fill every single one of our needs, always be sexy and smart and interesting. Taking responsibilities for our needs means when one person can’t meet a specific need, we can find support in other relationships. I’m lucky to have a fantastic husband, but we don’t do everything together—he loves outer space and I love reality TV. I refused to see Project Hail Mary and he, in turn, doesn’t watch Love Island. We need friends to share our quirky hobbies with. We need them to help with care- and domestic work. We need people who’ll willingly listen to us complain about our spouses or our jobs or our kids. We need people to split the cost of a vacation house or a Netflix account. But for all these known benefits, many of us still struggle. Why Keeping Friendships Can Be So Hard & What to Do About It All the things that make friendship easy, like proximity and stage of life, can work against you as life goes on. That friend who lived down the hall in your college dorm now lives across the country. Things that were easy now take effort, and we only have so much effort to go around. Here is my Very Scientific List of Things that Make Maintaining Friendship Difficult: * Physical distance * Changing life circumstances: one friend gets married, has a kid or takes on other caretaking responsibilities, loses their job, etc. * Lack of clarity around the friendship. The label “best friends” hardly seems adequate for some of these relationships, which are more like platonic partnerships. But our culture/families doesn’t really understand ordering life around friendship vs. a romantic relationship. (More of this in The Atlantic article linked above) Yet maintaining friendships across these changes is possible! A highly scientific survey of readers on Substack Notes and on my Facebook revealed some great tips: * Embrace the awkwardness. If it’s been a while, things may feel weird at first. That’s okay! My tendency is to act like I know what’s going on, but I’m learning a better strategy is just to own your ignorance and ask questions (“What’s your kid’s name?”) People are, generally, pretty forgiving. * Get creative with technology: emails, group chats, Marco Polo, Facebook, and doing book clubs over Zoom were just some of the tools mentioned. * Reciprocity, but with grace. Friendships flourish when both sides do their best to connect while still understanding that sometimes it may be harder for one party or the other. * Irregular visits. Face-to-face time, even years apart, has a way of making it feel like no time has passed. * Understand there are different levels of friendship, and that’s okay. That person who used to be your confidante might be more of a casual friend now, and that’s okay. A healthy social network includes varying levels of intimacy. The Secret Friendship Ingredient? Accountability Growing up as the consummate “new kid” I was never lonely, but I also never learned how to work through conflict. I distinctly remember moving to my last elementary school in Missoula, Montana. My dad had retired from the army and announced: no more moves. Shortly thereafter, there was some kind of 4th grade blow up, and it felt like half the class was mad at me. I thought, “Oh well, I’ll probably move soon anyway, I can tolerate everyone being mad at me for a month or two.” Then I stopped short. There would be no more moves. Many of these same kids would be my classmates through high school! This was the first, but definitely not last, time I had to learn to be accountable (ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh) Accountability, I’ve since realized, is the secret ingredient that makes relationships viable. More on that next week… What do you think? Are you good at staying in touch? Do you have routines or rhythms for how often you’re in contact with old friends? Please share your stories, tips, and questions in the comments. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E19
July 15 · 5 min
A Post for When You Hate Everyone
Do you ever have one of those days where you fantasize about throwing someone out a window? Not that you would ever actually want to hurt someone, but there’s just that “leave me the fuck alone” feeling? Part of living in families and communities that doesn’t get a lot of airtime are the low-level irritations and resentments that can build up in long-term relationships. During this “Stuck Together Summer” we’ve gotta talk about feeling pissed off at the people you, ostensibly, love. Bruh, Why You Mad? I’m not immune from petty annoyances. When my husband was home with me for two weeks after a recent shoulder surgery, I might have, at one point, complained about how loudly he was breathing. When I find myself angry at people for doing things like breathing or behaving in ways that are intrinsic to them (such as my kids for being loud and argumentative) usually the problem is…me. In situations like this, some people like to use the acronym HALT (Am I Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired?) to check on themselves, I prefer the acronym SWaTHS: is the sun in my eyes? Do I have a wedgie (or other uncomfortable clothing situation)? Am I thirsty? Hangry? Sleepy? If SWaTHS doesn’t reveal a culprit, the problem is often boundary related. Many of us raised in high-control religions were taught to ignore our needs. The trouble is needs don’t magically disappear because you’re ignoring them! They just fester into irritation and resentment. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. What Boundaries Are (and Aren’t!) “Boundaries,” like a lot of therapy speak, is a term being widely misused across social media. People say “boundaries” to try and control others, to set ultimatums, and to generally say “this is a thing I don’t want to do and so I won’t because: therapy!” Boundaries, sadly, aren’t magic words that get other people to do whatever we want. Boundaries are decisions people make for themselves about what kind of behavior they will tolerate in order to protect their own mental and physical health. For example: Say your Aunt Bertha constantly brings up your bald spot and it drives you absolutely crazy. Not boundaries: You say “Aunt Bertha stop laughing at my bald spot or I’ll throw you the window!” Boundaries: You decide to mention to Aunt Bertha that her comments bother you. You decide that if she keeps bringing it up, you’ll have to cut your phone call or visit short. Notice here that your decision is about what you will do. You can’t control whether Aunt Bertha makes a crack about your appearance. You can control your response. Why Some People Hate Boundaries In my experience, most people are very respectful of boundaries if they’re framed in a gently, such as “I wish I could help you with your tuba solo, but I’m at capacity.” Some people, though, take boundaries EXTREMELY PERSONALLY because: * it triggers their guilt: were their previous actions hurtful and they didn’t know? * they have rejection sensitivity (common in ADHD) or other trauma related to boundaries * the previous arrangement (you being a doormat) worked well for them. When you set boundaries it threatens the status quo I’ve dealt with a fair amount of drama regarding pretty straight-forward boundaries around my kids’ needs for regular meals and bedtimes. It sucks to feel like you have to choose between good parenting and keeping the peace. But, regardless of how people feel about our boundaries, it’s important to stick to them. Their feelings are their issue, not yours. There are, however, more complex boundary situations. Boundaries with People Who Have Power Over You Boundaries are more complicated with people whom you depend on for housing, a salary, or other needs. It’s a lot easier to set boundaries with Aunt Bertha when she’s not the one paying your rent or watching your kids on the reg. For instance, if you have reason to believe that your boss will punish you for setting boundaries, you might have to take a different tack, such as lowering your expectations (“Bob always microwaves tuna, that’s just how it is”) or, if the situation is really bad, looking for a different job. Boundaries with People You Have Power Over For many of us, setting boundaries with people we have power over can be equally difficult. Having been on the receiving end of abusive bosses, I’ve been reluctant to do things like tell my babysitter to put her phone away and, you know, watch my kids. (We all want to be liked, right?) I have to remind myself there’s a difference between being clear about expectations and being a bad boss. Similarly, I’ve noticed how hard it is for many parents to set reasonable boundaries with their own kids. It feels easy to veer into being either over-controlling or too lenient. Newborns train us to respond to their every cry, but as kids get older, they need increasing amounts of what I’ve termed “brick wall parenting”: firm limits they can’t argue their way out of. Yes, you have to do your homework. No, you can’t play with fireworks. Setting boundaries isn’t being mean; it’s us acting as our kids’ frontal lobes until theirs have a chance to develop. Difficult But Worth It Most people do not enjoy conflict. For those of us who were raised to be doormats, setting boundaries can be especially anxiety-provoking. But being clear about boundaries actually improves our relationships—it teaches people how we prefer to be treated and shows us who is capable of honoring that and who isn’t. Failing to set and enforce boundaries often leads to resentment, which can poison a relationship. If you need a little boost for setting boundaries, here are a couple of mantras I employ regularly: * “Choose discomfort over resentment.” -Brene Brown * “Clarity is kindness.” -probably also Brene Brown? For further reading, I can heartily recommend therapist Nedra Tawwab, who offers down-to-earth, practical wisdom about boundaries in her book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace. She’s also a solid Instagram follow. How are you when it comes to setting boundaries? Do you agree or disagree that feeling “pissed off at the world” is usually the result of a boundary issue? Do you have any tips or tricks for setting and enforcing boundaries? As always, I love to hear feedback from y’all in the comments or via DM or email! Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. BONUS MATERIALS: * more about the importance of limits * this boundary-related humorous vid * and this one’s just for LOLs Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E18
July 8 · 6 min
WE'RE DOOMED: Great Card Game, Terrible Outlook on Life
Summer started off with a bang in the Strange household—one of our kiddos pulled some epically bad behavior and, as a result, lost screentime privileges for two weeks! The one upshot of this arrangement is that he was B-O-R-E-D and willing to indulge in more boardgames than usual. Our new family favorite? A cheery little card game called WE’RE DOOMED! Why WE’RE DOOMED! Is So Compelling WE’RE DOOMED! imagines that the world is ending in 15 minutes, and only those who get a seat on an escape rocket will survive. The trick is, the rocket isn’t finished yet. The main choice on each turn is whether to contribute to the (shared) rocket project, or to perform actions which make it more likely that you, yourself, will get a seat on said rocket. Along the way there are fun complications like opportunities to steal or even “nuke” other players (thus eliminating them from the game.) Since the game is timed, all of this is all done with much shouting and rushing. I’ve played WE’RE DOOMED! a few dozen times now and have only succeeded in getting on the rocket once. Generally, everyone dies, but a few times we’ve managed to pull together and build a big enough rocket for all the (still-living) players. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This game is the right level of fun, challenging, and silly. But the secret, nerdy reason that I like it? It’s a perfect illustration of the “tragedy of the commons.” Our Most Common Problem? The tragedy of the commons is an idea borrowed from economics describing a situation in which a group shares a common, scarce resource. Any one individual can try to hoard this resource for themselves at a cost to the community. Think overfishing, deforestation, or climate change. Once you understand the tragedy of the commons, you start to see it everywhere: it’s corporations putting short-term profits ahead of long-term financial stability (the financial crisis), it’s countries wanting to industrialize (and pollute) to gain an economic edge in the short-term while contributing to climate crisis in the long-term. What makes the tragedy of the commons so interesting is that it taps into that eternal tension between the individual and the community. What is fair? Who gets to decide? And should I take my “fair share,” or do I try to get one over on everyone else? The term “tragedy of the commons” was popularized by the economist Garrett Hardin, who wrote (of overgrazed “commons” or communal land): “Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” — Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons Hardin’s view, it seems, is that all people are inherently selfish and that we are, in fact, doomed to ruin all shared resources. The only solutions, in his estimation, are privatization and top-down government management. But is that actually the case? Crabbing Lessons We were on a big group camping trip this weekend, playing WE’RE DOOMED! in the evening and crabbing by day, which provided an interesting view into the tragedy of the commons. When you crab in Washington, you must buy a $35 license. You’re limited to a certain number of crabs per day, of certain species, and you may not collect crabs that are too small, molting, or the wrong gender. This is top-down government regulation meant to prevent over-harvesting of crabs, enforced by park rangers. Due to a broken boat, we were mostly limited to crabbing off the dock this year. We were not the only ones doing so—the space was fairly crowded with a diverse group of people: immigrants speaking a variety of languages, experienced crabbers, newbie tourists, a precocious 12-year-old crustacean expert, and a very nice guy wearing a very obnoxious Trump t-shirt. The crabs were pretty scarce this year. Following Hardin’s logic, you’d expect that competition would be fierce and the strangers wouldn’t be very friendly towards each other. But you’d be wrong. While my crew only managed to catch 6 crabs over 2 days, we were given many more by folks who were doing better than us. Folks who preferred bigger crabs, or Dungeness versus Rock Crab, were giving us crustaceans left and right. Folks shared tools and tips and repeatedly helped each other. A sort of gift economy developed on the dock, partly enabled by those government limits. Ronald Reagan Was Wrong If you grew up like I did, learning that Reaganism was next to godliness, you probably learned that the best way to deal with the tragedy of the commons was to privatize everything. In this view, government regulation is inefficient, unresponsive to the market, and likely to spawn cancerous bureaucracies. Yes, according to economists, government regulation or privatization were the only choices. Then Elinor Ostrom came along. She studied rural, traditional economies from around the world and found that these groups were perfectly capable of managing their own shared resources without privatization or state intervention. In order for these systems to work, Ostrom found that certain conditions needed to be met, including systems for monitoring and enforcing rules. This research won her the Nobel Prize and opened a whole new area of study in economics. Like the tragedy of the commons, once you recognize this shared resource optimization, you can see it everywhere. It’s why Wikipedia went from being something you should never cite (according to my high school English teacher) to a pretty reliable source. How to Win at WE’RE DOOMED! Solutions are possible. Problems like climate change, while complex and large-scale, are not unsolvable. What’s required, whether we’re governing global CO2 levels or a small neighborhood park, is pretty simple: we need to agree on a set of limits, and we need to have folks monitoring and enforcing those limits. Above all, we, like the crabbers on the dock, need to talk to each other. So, if you want to win WE’RE DOOMED! I’d recommend you don’t start playing when the timer flips. Instead, you should talk amongst the players and come up with quotas of how many resources each player must contribute. You should appoint a monitor, and that monitor should have an enforcement mechanism, such as “if you fail to meet your quota, you will be nuked and removed from the game.” Would we actually play this way? Absolutely not, it would be no fun at all! But it does give me hope, in a world full of naysayers and cynics, that we know how to solve big problems. We don’t have to settle for a WE’RE DOOMED! mentality. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E19
July 1 · 6 min
Stop Threatening to Move to Canada
I hear it all the time: America is doomed! It’s a dumpster fire! Democracy is over, etcetera, etcetera! Let’s all move to Europe! Oh wait, they have far-right, anti-immigrant leaders, too? Okay…New Zealand? Or there’s always our good old friendly neighbor to the north, right?!?! Lefties have been threatening to move to Canada, off and on, since George W. Bush was elected in 2000. The cries grew significantly louder after Trump’s first and second elections. And I get it—these are two administrations that were elected despite losing the popular vote; two administrations who have launched unnecessary foreign wars while simultaneously chipping away at American civil liberties. And let’s be real, Trump’s greed, narcissism, and lust for power makes Bush look like a thoughtful elder statesman in comparison. Of course, we despair when it felt like our votes didn’t matter and as we’ve watched congress and the courts cede more and more of their duty to act as checks and balances. But I’m not ready to give up on America, and neither should you. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. America is Not Nazi Germany World War Two looms large in the American imagination, and with good reason. There’s been plenty of scholarship devoted to recording and sharing the stories of those Hitler persecuted, particularly Jewish people. Who upon hearing these stories of lucky escapes, doesn’t imagine themselves in their shoes, fleeing the Nazi death machine? Who among us doesn’t scan the headlines from time to time, wondering about our country’s own descent towards fascism? And yet, thankfully, we are not there. Yes, there has been persecution of certain groups, particularly Brown and Black immigrants. This is awful, disgusting behavior that we should not tolerate. And the good news is, most Americans (60%) don’t. We saw the power of resistance in the fight for Minneapolis last January. We’ve seen it in the national outcry against Trump’s thuggish policies. And we’ve seen it in Trump’s cratering approval ratings. Yes, there is a core of MAGA followers who, it seems, will follow their dear leader to the gates of Hell, but most Americans won’t. Using Our Privilege Wisely It’s one thing to stand in solidarity with those who are persecuted, it’s another to imagine ourselves persecuted when we are not. As I wrote about last month, we must always check our fears against evidence. And when I look at the evidence I see that I, a middle-class white woman living in Seattle, am not being persecuted. What to do with all this privilege, then? Move to Canada out of some fear of what could, hypothetically, happen? Moving would be a lot easier for me than for most of the folks reading this. Immigration is always—bare minimum—a huge pain in the ass, but I’ve lived in Canada before. Both my kids were born there. (Thanks for the c-sections, British Columbia!) But when I think about the people I admire, such as Martin Luther King and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, these were people who stayed and fought. Bonhoeffer came to America during the Third Reich to learn from American Civil Rights leaders. He could’ve stayed, but instead he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr (author of the Serenity Prayer): “I have made the mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people” Bonhoeffer was eventually killed for his acts of resistance against Hitler. And, of course, King was assassinated for his activism. Do I undermine my own argument by holding them up as examples? I must concede: resistance is never a safe road. For reminders of this, we need look no further than the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. And yet, I keep coming back to Kant’s Categorical Imperative. What in the What Now? Don’t be scared, I’m not going to pummel you with philosophical jargon. Basically, the Categorical Imperative is a way of asking if an action is morally permissible by imagining that everyone is allowed to do this action and then asking whether the resulting world would be better or worse. Take stealing. If I want to know whether stealing a pack of gum from the 7-11 is moral, I can imagine a world where everyone is allowed to steal packs of gum from 7-11. I imagine gum shelves gone bare and gum companies going out of business because no one pays for their products anymore. Probably there would be chewed gum stuck everywhere. Clearly this is a worse world; therefore, stealing gum is unethical. So what if I make the rule that every time a president comes to power whom you didn’t vote for who enacts policies you find unjust, you are allowed to move to Canada? In our current polarized situation, wouldn’t that mean half the country emigrating every 4-8 years? Who would be left to push back? Who would hold wannabe dictators accountable? Wouldn’t we just be ceding our country to extremists? Introducing “Stuck Together Summer” This question goes beyond where we live. I think our culture is one in which it is very easy to leave. We are people who move frequently, who can quit clubs, groups, or friends with few repercussions. We’ve seen this in the decline in religiosity and civic groups and the rise of going no-contact with family members. In some ways this is good and necessary—no-fault divorce saves lives. No one should be forced to stay in a relationship or a community that’s abusive. And yet, I do wonder if this era of The Big Sort has shortchanged us in some ways. If we’re always eying the exit, do we miss opportunities to repair and build deeper relationships? Are we becoming too thin-skinned and individualistic? So this summer, I want to look at the idea of Commitment, or what I’m cheekily calling “Stuck Together Summer.” Here are some questions I have: * when is commitment helpful vs. harmful? * how do you know when to quit a relationship or community? * how do various communities work through conflict? * how do groups set up rules and norms? * what about the Tragedy of the Commons and things like climate change? * should Liberals reclaim patriotism? * what role do progressive Christians have to play in fighting Christian Nationalism? (i.e. can we save the church in America?) * when is it a good idea to reach out to others with different beliefs vs. to stay in our own bubbles? What comes to mind when you think of commitment? (Fun fact: this word eliminated roughly half of the 7th grade during my middle school spelling bee.) Do you have communities or relationships where you glad you stuck it out? Or the opposite: times when you stayed too long? As always, I love to hear your thoughts (seriously, this group is the smartest comments section on the internet!) Feel free to comment publicly, or DM or email me if you’d like to share something more privately. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E18
June 24 · 3 min
The Scariest Thing I Have Ever Done
My Secret Fear For someone with an anxiety disorder, I have managed to do a lot of scary stuff. Things like: moving away from my family, getting married when I was a dumb 22-year-old, moving to another country without a job or a place to live—twice! having kids, and telling a deeply personal story onstage at The Moth. But the actual Scariest Thing I’ve Ever Done was none of those things. It was self-publishing my novel last year. Maybe that sounds like not a big deal, but honestly, during the entire 6-month process I was WRECKED, mainly because I have a giant fear of other people thinking I am stupid. Yes, I was the 6th grader who toted around a leather-bound volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare like it was a magical talisman that could protect me from porny 90s culture which treated all femme girls like complete bimbos. Yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, there’s still a part of me that fears being reduced to my reproductive organs. This fear stockpiles my shortcomings and whispers them back to me in the middle of the night. Waiting for my novel to publish, it fed me nightmares of all my Super Smart Literary Friends reading my book and thinking, “I can’t believe she thought this was good enough to publish, she must be delusional.” The fear was strong, so much so that I SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED not publishing my book at all. Like, I announced it and then thought maybe I ought to just take it back?! Lessons from a Border Collie When I was growing up in rural Montana, we had a border collie named Mickey who, in accordance with his breeding, liked to herd other animals. Sometimes this was cute, like on hikes when he would nudge laggards onward. (Nothing like a border collie snout to the backside to make you pick up the pace.) But it was a problem when Mickey started chasing our neighbors’ horses. My dad installed one of those invisible fences around our property and put a shock collar on Mickey. When Mickey got too close to the perimeter, he’d hear a buzz, and if he kept going and crossed the fence line, he’d get a small electric shock. The trouble was, Mickey soon decided that a small, short shock was worth the price of freedom. He’d take the charge and keep right on running. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Fear is a Fence Mickey’s shock collar came to me as I was reflecting back on fear and the scary decisions I’ve made. These past two months, we’ve been looking at the Problem of Fear—what is it? How do we learn to live with it? So far we’ve covered: -Being a Scaredy Cat -Fear of Being a Laughingstock -Sorting Out Rational vs. Irrational Fear -Fear of Travel -“Faith Over Fear” (and why I hate it) -Fear of Strangers -Fear of Hell I think fear is like that invisible fence, it keeps us close to home, stops us from exploring. Like with Mickey and the horses, that can be a good thing. But many times, our fears are a fence that is far too small, a rigid boundary that keeps us from growing. Don’t Forget: You Have Survived Worse Fear wants us to play it small, to never try. But we, like Mickey, can learn to take the shock and keep going. This is the biggest gift I’ve gotten from having an anxiety disorder: I now know that (most of) my fears are irrational and that I will survive doing the Big Scary Thing. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. So when I get scared, I try to imagine what my life would be like if I had listened to fear and “stayed inside the fence” so to speak. Would I have ever left my hometown? Met my husband? Had my kids? Had any sort of career in writing or activism? Once you decide to take the charge and keep running, you know you can do it again. And so, if fear is holding you back from something you want to do, something that would be meaningful to your life, that’s my advice to you. Embrace some corny Millennial #YOLO energy or your nearest Nike slogan and go for it. Remember that you have survived worse! Let each new feat pave the way towards a bold life. BONUS MATERIALS: -MY BOOK, in case you’re curious -want to learn more about how bad the 90s were for women? Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E17
June 17 · 7 min
Relax, Hell isn't Real!
Welcome new subscribers! This week, we’re continuing our series on FEAR. There’s a bit on parenting here, but if you’re looking for a more parenting-specific article, I can recommend The Extreme Weirdness of Trying to Buy a Bible for My Kids. You can also search “parenting” in the archive. Obsessing Over the Afterlife Growing up Evangelical, there were a lot of things to be afraid of, including but not limited to: * being “left behind” at the rapture * demons * tarnishing one’s purity Simultaneously, we were shamed for being afraid and told that our fear was due to a lack of faith. By far though, my biggest fear was Hell. Would I forget to confess a sin and be cast into eternal damnation? Could I “backslide” and lose my salvation? I worried about friends and loved ones and even strangers on the street. It seemed to me that no one else was taking Hell seriously enough—it was ETERNAL, after all. I wondered how my fellow churchgoers could believe in this vision of Hell and not spend every waking moment obnoxiously evangelizing every single person they met? God was love, I was often told, but God was also perfect and He demanded perfection. Trying to be perfect was the only way of ensuring I wouldn’t be condemned. God was the Big Angry Man in the Sky who was just waiting to drop the hammer on all of us. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A Change of Heart It took a lot of life experience, theological study, and therapy for me to admit the truth: Hell makes no sense. Penal Substitutionary Atonement (the predominant way of looking at Jesus’ crucifixion in most American churches) makes no sense, either. Once I became a parent, I could not imagine God (who is supposed to be the perfect parent) subjecting any of his children to eternal punishment or coercing them into loving him by threatening to torture them forever. I can imagine hackles rising even as I write this. If you are a believer in Hell and PSA, you probably want to stop reading right here. But I want to challenge you to consider the alternative—can you imagine how your faith and your life would be different if you let go of these beliefs? If, at the end of my article, you’re unconvinced, that’s fine. Just give me five minutes, if you please. Do All Dogs Go to Heaven? I’m not alone in doubting Hell’s existence. Christian Universalism (the idea that all people will eventually be saved) dates back at least 300 years, if not longer. (For reference, the modern belief of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture is only about 200 years old.) Author and Methodist minister, Derek Ryan Kubilus, explores the arguments for and against Hell in his book, Holy Hell: A Case Against Eternal Damnation. Kubilus examines the Bible verses commonly cited as evidence for Hell, pointing out that many English translations put a thumb on the scale. For example, certain words are sometimes translated as “Hell” and sometimes simply as “pit” or “grave.” He also points out that our modern understanding of Hell comes more from Dante’s Inferno rather than the Bible. The Ancient Jews and Greeks who were writing and reading the Bible had very different schemas of the afterlife. In Kubilus’ telling, even the Bible’s allusions to fire and brimstone aren’t about torture, they’re part of a series of metallurgical metaphors, speaking to the process of refining ore into gold rather than punishing baddies. Wait, What About Hitler? Kubilus, like some Universalists, believes in Purgatory—that is, that based on our sins, we will all be subject to some process of “refinement.” For someone like Hitler, it might take 5 million years, but eventually even he could be saved. I was surprised to find a Protestant version of Purgatory. Is it necessary? Couldn’t God just choose to forgive, like we humans do? But I admit, it does deal with the problem of justice: we don’t want people like Hitler to go to straight to Heaven, do we? It just doesn’t feel right. When You Punch Your Friend in the Face for No Reason This question of justice became real for me recently, when my 11-year-old, T, got in trouble at school for punching his friend in the face for no reason. (Ironic, given that this is the first ethical example used in Michael Schur’s How to Be Perfect, which we read last year.) T was experiencing test anxiety and he took it out on his friend. T felt horrible afterwards, and his friend forgave him, but it still felt like something was missing from the process, like the scales needed to be rebalanced—we needed… justice??? Given that T couldn’t un-punch his friend, was there a way of making things right? After talking with T, his friend, and his friend’s mom, we decided that making amends would look like a three-day screentime ban, an apology letter, and a Roblox gift card, purchased by T with his allowance. I also stressed to him that the biggest part of making amends was not repeating this behavior. This justice isn’t perfect, but I hope it does three things: * emphasize that this behavior was not okay and is out of bounds for our family & community * give T meaningful consequences that will help him not make this choice in the future * attempt to repair the relationship and reestablish trust between friends But these attempts at justice are for an ongoing relationship during, well…life. What would afterlife justice look like? I have no idea! Nobody Knows Anything Let’s be real, neither me, nor Derek Kubilus, nor the most obnoxious street preacher you’ve ever met actually knows what happens after we die. We won’t until it happens. It’s incumbent on us to be humble about our beliefs, no matter how strongly held they are—we could always be wrong! Maybe the afterlife is closer to The Good Place. Maybe we’re reincarnated. Maybe we just stop existing or maybe we rejoin the universal life force. I didn’t believe in any sort of afterlife when my brother, Karl, two years ago. Then I had a weird experience with a bald eagle that made me less certain. What Can We Know? What I do know is that there are people living in Hell right now. Addiction is Hell. War is Hell. Divorce is Hell. Serious disease is Hell. I wish the church would triage the suffering people are currently experiencing rather than some far-off Hell that probably won’t happen. What I know is that all “right” beliefs must lead to increasing love of others and ourselves. When I believed in Hell and that I needed to “save” people from it, I saw them as numbers, not full humans with rich inner lives, not equals who could teach me as much as I could teach them. Not people I ought to get to know and form relationships with. And yes, #NotAllEvangelists, but I gotta say, most evangelism efforts I’ve been part of have felt more transactional rather than relational. Christianity Without Hell When I was an Evangelical, avoiding Hell was the whole point. I was a Christian because of my fear. You may think that without the threat of Hell, most people will stop being Christian. You may be right. But is believing in Jesus solely for purposes of Hell avoidance really the kind of spirituality we want to encourage? For me, letting go of the fear of Hell has opened a whole new world. I can choose to run towards rather than away from something. I am learning more about my interconnectedness with others, with the natural world, and with God. I am more open to learning from people whose beliefs differ from my own. And that’s a journey I can recommend to anyone. Do you believe in Hell? An afterlife? Why/why not? Have you ever had any FREAKY WOO-WOO EXPERIENCES after a loved one’s passing? As always, I love to hear your thoughts. questions, rants, and ramblings in the comments, via DM, or email. BONUS MATERIALS: * ughhhh this article about YET ANOTHER scammy Seattle megachurch * Happy Pride Y’all (slightly NSFW) * Where my Love Island fans at? Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E16
June 10 · 8 min
'Stranger Danger' is Bullshit
I was out with a group of mom friends recently when the conversation turned to how much we have to schlep our kids around—driving/walking them to school, to sports practice, to lessons and day camps. There was broad consensus that: * we hate it * it feels mandatory as “good moms” AND * we wonder whether our kids could…just maybe…be a little more independent? This last point was uttered cautiously, as if everyone was reading the room, terrified of being judged. And with good reason. All too often maternal suffering feels like a competition; if you’re not having a bad time, you must not be doing enough. And don’t your precious little babies deserve EVERYTHING? Moms are expected to make sacrifices to our careers, personal interests, and even our health in order to ensure that our offspring are protected from every imaginable risk AND maintain dominance in the extracurricular arms race. The end goal of this is… unclear. Harvard, I guess? Some magical career that will guarantee a comfortable, middle-class life with zero upheaval? Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Arrested for Leaving Her Kid Alone in a Car Author Kim Brooks knows firsthand the consequences of being judged a “bad mom”—after leaving her preschooler in the car for 5 minutes while she ran into a store, Virginia police put out a warrant for her arrest. This led to a two-year legal tussle, which she admits, could’ve been much worse if she weren’t white and middle-class. At first, Brooks kept her legal problems a secret. She felt weirdly ashamed even as she recognized, logically, that her son had been perfectly safe. It was a cool day; she’d cracked the windows. She could see the car from the checkout counter, for crying out loud! But when she began sharing the issue with friends, the mommy judgment machine went into high gear. Again and again, people told her she should never have left her son alone, not even for a minute, because of the risk of STRANGER DANGER, “anything could have happened” was a common refrain. Reality Check Brooks chronicles this saga and the wider panic around American childhood in her book, Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear. In it, Brooks interrogates many of our modern parenting fears, including the obsession with Stranger Danger. She notes that stranger abductions make up a mere 3% of all child disappearances (many of which are parental abductions, runaways, or simply kids who are lost for a few hours.) American historian Steven Mintz has called Stranger Danger a moral panic, saying that, following economic upheaval in the 70s, “Focusing concern on threats to children may have provided a solution to this psychological dilemma [of job insecurity and growing wealth inequality.] Anxiety about the future could be expressed in terms of concerns for children’s safety.” Brooks adds that focusing all one’s energy on children’s safety rather than an uncertain economy, “feels more manageable.” How Stranger Danger Harms Kids The practical effects of the Stranger Danger moral panic were a vast reduction in childhood independence. Whereas kids in previous generations often walked or biked themselves places and organized their own games and pastimes with other neighborhood kids, nowadays there seem to be two options available to children: overscheduling hell or screen zombiedom. Case in point: my 11-year-old wants to learn to skateboard. If he were living in a different country or a different era, I’d drop him off at the local skatepark (or, even better, tell him to bus there himself) and let him hang out with older kids who could show him the ropes. But the skateparks near us sit empty most of the time, unless someone is being directly supervised (and, let’s be honest, nitpicked) by a parent or there’s a skateboard day camp ($$$) in session. Today’s kids are rarely unsupervised. This lack of independence hurts kids. It makes them more anxious and worse at handling interpersonal conflicts. And having adults hovering nearby prevents kids from gaining self-efficacy (a feeling that they can handle challenges and influence their environment.) And self-efficacy, it turns out, is one of the biggest preventive factors for kids developing drug and alcohol addiction. How Stranger Danger Harms Adults It’s not just kids who suffer the effects of this moral panic, I think it’s a huge contributor to what I call the “Parenting Misery Spiral”: the more that parents must do for their kids, the less time they have for basic self-care, hobbies, and maintaining romantic and friend relationships. Children act out because no one likes feeling controlled, and parents are exhausted and miserable. Is it any wonder why so many people are opting out of having kids when parenting looks like such an awful slog? And the fewer people who have kids, the more having kids becomes seen as a “lifestyle choice” like pet ownership or an expensive hobby, rather than something necessary for a functioning society. In many largely child-free cities like Seattle, parents and kids feel unwelcome in public spaces (or even in apartment buildings) leading to further isolation. How We Fight Unnecessary Panic I know all this, and yet I’m not immune from the fearmongering. My 13-year-old son is one of the few kids in his school who doesn’t have a phone, something I feel great about until he gets lost riding the city bus, which has happened several times this year. In a city with multiple open-air drug markets and a large number of unhoused, mentally ill people, it’s easy to panic when my son is not home on time. Luckily, my husband talks me down when I start frantically researching tracking devices. I’m glad because my son’s confidence has really grown since he’s been able to get himself where he needs to be. He’s even started having more spontaneous, after-school hangouts with friends, which is a huge win for all of us! A Caveat I don’t teach my kids about Stranger Danger. I tell them that 95% of strangers are kind people who would help them if they got lost. The one exception to that is that I think kids need to know how to spot someone who’s not in their right mind. Big city kids learn: we do not make eye contact or talk with folks who are tweaking, muttering to themselves, or otherwise seem off. But that dude staring at his cellphone? He’s fine. That mom with a stroller? Great choice. The bus driver? Helping is part of his job! My own lived experience (including several pre-smart phone years getting lost on transit) has shown me that most strangers are kind and willing to help, especially if it’s a kid. Advice For Setting Your Kids Free What if you want your kid to be more independent but you’re scared of judgment or, God forbid, someone calling the cops? Here are a few tips: * Resist fearmongering. Bone up on a couple of stats and reassure your friends. Remind them about what used to be normal! * Scaffold independence. Kids don’t walk themselves to school overnight. Teach them how to cross the street safely, practice walking with them, then practice hanging back a block or two, until it’s enough to wave them goodbye. * Observe neighborhood norms. Is there a particular age where free-ranging kids are generally accepted? If your neighbor kids are going to the store independently at 12, can you work backwards and figure out some appropriate milestones like walking to a friend’s house or playing without grownups at the park? This will also depend on your kid’s personality and abilities. I emphasize to my kids that being dependable = a longer leash. * Get a group together. If your kid walking alone makes you nervous, can you draft a buddy? A group of kids? Can younger siblings tag along with older ones? * Know your rights. If you’re harassed by police or “well meaning” citizens (as Kim Brooks was) groups like Let Grow and Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids can offer advice. They also have other great resources on their sites! A Final Thought I’ve spent the past several weeks thinking and writing about fear and how we respond to it. Do we run towards it? Away? Pretend it’s not happening? One of Kim Brooks’ quote about over-researching things that scare you struck me as very wise: “Knowing, as anyone with an anxiety disorder can tell you, is one step away from controlling.” Her point is, of course, that we can’t control what’s going to happen to our kids. We can’t protect them from everything, nor should we. At the end of the day, kids are other humans who are only temporarily in our care. BONUS MATERIALS: * curious about self-efficacy and preventing addiction in kids? Jessica Lahey is my go-to resource * want some parenting newsletters that are reassuring and funny instead of judgy and scary? Pretend You're Good At It and Middle-Aged Lady Mom are two of my favs! Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E17
June 3 · 5 min
Why "Faith Over Fear" T-Shirts Creep Me Out
I think it happened a few months into the pandemic: I started seeing the phrase “faith over fear” popping up everywhere. It was in social media bios, on protest signs, and emblazoned across t-shirts. The phrase’s ubiquity seemed to correlate with anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests. While the phrase in itself could mean many things, to this day if I happen to see a person wearing this tee, I tend to assume “they are probably not vaccinated.” It’s like the inverse of one of those “In this house we believe” yard signs that sprung up all over Seattle after Trump was first elected. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Merging of Political Party & Religion It’s tragic that COVID safety measures became so quickly polarized. I wonder how many lives were unnecessarily lost because wearing masks and getting vaccinated became associated with being liberal. I still believe that if we’d been able to have productive dialogue, we might have reached a middle ground on things like school reopenings. Instead, each side dug in their heels, painting the other as completely unreasonable. “Faith over fear” feels of a piece with the Christian Nationalism that is ascendant in our current administration. It feels untethered to reality, as if magical thinking can protect us from bad things happening. It’s like those unsympathetic church ladies who tell you that your cancer or car accident is “part of God’s will” and that your dead grandma is “in a better place.” Or maybe the phrase is a justification to do whatever you want wrapped in bad theology: people will die, but probably not me, so who cares? The Two Types of Freedom I remember learning in high school government class that there are two types of freedom: freedom to and freedom from. i.e. if any rando has the freedom to own an assault rifle that means some of us won’t have the freedom from being shot. Freedom from masking might mean others don’t have the freedom to survive COVID. I’m not saying it’s an easy calculus. Life is packed with risks that we as both a society and as individuals choose to mitigate or ignore. The same CDC that pushed masking also strongly suggests you never consume raw cookie dough. Riding in a car is one of the most dangerous things many of us do every day and never think about. Is there a spiritual yardstick we can use to assess risk? Are there some lessons from the Bible that can help us determine when fear is a reasonable response? The Bible on Fear… The Bible talks about fear often. “Fear not!” is one of its most-repeated commands, often uttered by some kind of angel/supernatural being to apparently terrified mortals. Yet this reassurance is contrasted with oft-quoted Proverbs 9:10, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” So which is it? Fear God or fear not? Should we just have faith that everything will work the way we want it to just because we’re Christians? (And obviously bad things never happen to Christians!) …Is Profoundly Misunderstood As I set out to explore fear as a topic, reader Darla recommended the book How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Life Feels Terrifying, by Gareth Higgins. Higgins knows fear well, having grown up queer in Belfast during The Troubles. In this wise little book he covers a gamut of fears from rejection to death. I really enjoyed this book (the audio version is read by the author, in a beautiful lilting accent.) I’ll probably buy a hardcopy so I can vigorously highlight and reread, but what struck me on first listen were two points: * The verse “Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” is profoundly misunderstood. Higgins writes: “It doesn’t mean that there’s a scary, bearded guy in the sky who loves you so much that he will kill you if you don’t agree with him. It means that becoming wise begins with honoring reality. There’s a healthy way to be afraid that helps us live better and an unhealthy one that makes us sick. There’s a well-worn, but sometimes hidden, path that can help us discern the difference.” (emphasis mine.) As someone who grew up with alcoholics and saw first-hand the destruction of denial, this idea of “honoring reality” strikes me as wise. We can’t get anywhere unless we are willing to face things as they are, even when it is scary or hard. And having discarded my own ideas of God as a “scary bearded guy” I like thinking of God in these more abstract terms: God is ultimate reality, God is the love that underpins the universe. God as the source of all creation. * That “Our fears are reactions to the stories we believe.” Higgins is a big believer in examining our stories. Why do we fear this thing? What are we telling ourselves about it? Is it possible another story is true? It’s not that we should never be afraid of anything, rather, we have to hold the hand of fear and bring it to reality, asking ourselves: is this thing I’m afraid of actually that scary? On Discerning the Difference Yet all this wisdom is often easier to hear than implement. In the case of COVID, it was difficult to figure out what reality actually was. Was COVID “just another flu”? Or was it a catastrophic, world-altering event? Much of peoples’ individual responses hinged on how they answered that question. To make a play on a George Carlin quote, “Have you ever noticed that anybody who masks more than you is an idiot, and everyone who masks less is a lunatic?” Much of the trouble with COVID was its novelty. Scientists were doing their best to give us good information, some of which proved useful (social distancing, masks) and some of which didn’t (wiping down groceries, zoom school.) Perhaps in situations where we don’t have the full information, all we can do is give each other grace and try our best. Yes, grace. Even for those wearing “faith over fear” tees. What do you think of “faith over fear”? Am I alone in thinking this is an antivax shirt? Looking back on COVID, what do you think we should’ve/could’ve done differently? As always, I love to hear feedback from readers in the comments, via email, or DM. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E16
May 27 · 4 min
Everything I Feared About China Was Wrong
When my husband’s friend invited us to his wedding in Chongqing, China, I was hesitant to RSVP in the affirmative. It was far and plane tickets were expensive, but mainly I was anxious. China’s government is scary, right? I’d read plenty of news reports about government corruption and the lack of due process, not to mention the Uygur genocide. I’ve long followed the career of Chinese dissident artist, Ai Weiwei, and was horrified at his arrest for making art criticizing the government’s response to the Great Sichuan Earthquake. Even discounting my probably irrational fear of disappearing into a Chinese prison, I worried about more mundane things: government surveillance, unsafe drinking water, a language barrier Duolingo couldn’t even, and I did I mention squat toilets? While my husband and I have been lucky enough to travel extensively in Europe, China felt like quite a leap. Some family members privately nudged us to skip the wedding, or at least leave our kids safely behind in the U.S. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. My anxiety was not unique. In his book, Travel as a Political Act, Europe guide and certified baddie Rick Steves notes that when people left for a trip, we used to say things like “bon voyage” and “have a good trip.” Post 9/11, we’re more likely to say things like “be safe”—as if to imply that the world is more dangerous than ever, when the truth is, a person is over 30,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than in a terrorist attack. You’re probably safer walking in a foreign city than you are driving around your hometown. Despite my fears, the Millennial #YOLOs got the better of me. We booked the tickets. In the meantime, I tried to calm my anxiety by panic buying travel gear. As I prepared, I thought about Scott Samuelson’s framing of the three ways of dealing with pointless suffering: fix it, face it, or forget it. I wondered if these approaches applied to fear: you can deny your feelings (forget it), you can try to learn more to alleviate your fear (fix it), or you can simply accept your fear (face it.) In my usual fashion, I opted for a combination of fix it/face it. On the research front, there was little information for American tourists visiting Chongqing. While it’s a city of 30 million people, most tourists tend to be Chinese tour groups visiting old communist sites. YouTube was my main source of info, but even American vloggers’ takes felt somewhat dystopian as video after video proclaimed, “I love how there are cameras absolutely everywhere, it’s SO SAFE!” A friend who had traveled to China confirmed some eerie “coincidences” that led her to the conviction she was being surveilled during her trip. My husband and I prepared as best we could, scrubbing our phones of sensitive information, packing portable soap and toilet paper, reminding our kids to drink only the bottled water the hotel provided. And then there was nothing to do but face my fears. And? China was totally different than I expected. As I dined, shopped, and visited a kitschy theme park, I was reminded: people are people everywhere. It’s easy to get hung up on culture clashes, but our commonalities are much greater than our differences. No matter where I’ve traveled to, I’ve met people who are excited to share their culture and food, people who will stop to help a clueless tourist find her way. There was the proprietress of a noodle stand who spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make sure I understood the different spice levels of a dish, and a bunch of excited kids at a theme park who wanted to chat with us in English. At our friend’s wedding, Chinese uncles plied us with alcohol, and hotpot waitresses babysat us as we failed to comprehend proper cooking times. During times of political strife, Americans often stoke each others’ fear of traveling. We imagine whole countries of people who hate us. We joke about sewing Canadian flag patches to our backpacks or think we need to introduce ourselves by apologizing for our president. But in my experience, people generally understand that we are not our government. In turn, we ought to remember that others are not their government, either. These person-to-person connections are what makes travel, as Rick Steves puts it, “a political act.” It’s a lot harder to vote to bomb a country once you’ve met its people. Travel puts us in touch with all of our wonderful commonalities: desire for beauty, for safety, for community, for reverence. And still travel offers novelty and surprise! Here are some things in China that surprised me: * -people offering my 13 -year-old son alcohol (repeatedly!) * -many people asking to take our photos because white people were exciting * -all the bathrooms had toilet paper! (but yes, most were squat toilets) * -an abundance of high-protein snacks * -a Chinese drag queen performance at the theme park * -taxis driving wherever they felt like (ditto motorcycles on the sidewalks) * -Don’t speak Chinese? You can get pretty far just pointing and nodding, Google Translate also worked in a pinch. BONUS MATERIALS: * -looking for more travel inspo? I loved this post by friend of the Stack, Skylar Renslow * -this comedian parses cultural differences to hilarious results * Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E16
May 20 · 6 min
How to Make Friends with Fear
Maybe you’re thinking to yourself: why would I want to do that? Maybe that phrasing strikes you as odd. Don’t we want to get rid of fear? It’s not only an unpleasant feeling, it’s one that we judge ourselves for. We want to see ourselves as brave, so we try to ignore or resist feeling fear. The trouble is, the more you try to resist an emotion, the stronger it gets. Our bodies were designed to keep us alive, not happy, so the more you try to push away your fear, the stronger it will become. The trick, then, is recognizing and accepting our fear. But…how? Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Four T’s of Snakebites Growing up in Western Montana, part of being in the outdoors was preparing for encounters with wildlife such as grizzly bears, mountain lions, and snakes. As a camp counselor, I took classes in wilderness first aid, where I asked many questions about snake bites, being VERY SCARED of stepping on a rattler enroute to the bath house in the middle of the night. The instructor laughed at my questions. “You want to know what to watch out for so you don’t get bit by a snake? Let me tell you.” He pivoted towards the white board and wrote: “AVOID: * trailer parks * tank tops * testosterone * tequila” His assessment was rather classist (#notalltrailerparks) but the point was that most people who get bit by snakes are those who deliberately mess with snakes. Their innate fear had been lessened by peer pressure and/or alcohol. The results were predictable. Fear is a powerful emotion that exists deep in the most primitive part of our brains. It’s the same part of your brain that makes you jerk your hand away from a hot stove. The response is designed to be quick, bypassing the logical, slow part of our brain. The truth is: we need fear. Tigers vs. Trump But what if the thing you fear isn’t a wild animal hidden in the grass, but something slow, vague, and chronic, like the erosion of our democracy by a wannabe dictator? You can’t physically jump away from fear like that. Such modern-day fears can be overwhelming and leave you feeling powerless, which is, honestly, the goal of Trump’s whole “flood the zone” strategy. In their book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking Stress Cycle, Emily and Amelia Nagoski take this kind of chronic stress and break down what our bodies need to recover from it. They point out that our bodies don’t know the difference between a tiger hiding in the grass and your boss yelling at you. In either scenario, our “stress cycle” is activated and we need to complete it by doing things like: * moving our bodies * venting to a loved one * restoring a sense of physical safety Fear Isn’t a Virtue During the pandemic, I spent a lot of time talking through my fears with my EMDR therapist. It felt like our country was on the brink and I had no faith in the Trump administration to adequately deal with the many problems we were facing. My therapist pushed back, “How is this affecting your life?” Every time I brought up death rates or product shortages or civil unrest, she asked me to refocus on myself. And I had to admit, my family were healthy, I had what I needed, my neighborhood was safe. Sure, it was a pain in the ass that my kids weren’t in school, but all in all, we were very lucky. Sometimes Liberals fall into the trap of thinking that fear is virtuous. “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention,” is a common refrain. But caring about a problem and letting it dominate your emotional life are two very different things. It’s a privileged take to say that I can choose to tap in and out of problems that others are facing chronically, but it’s also a means of survival. We are not useful allies if we are overwhelmed and unable to handle ourselves. The bottom line is: everyone needs safety and rest. Lightning Round! So, we need to identify and accept fear. We need to calm our bodies. We need to let ourselves recognize safety. But what if we can’t stop ruminating? Here’s a grab bag of other tricks I’ve learned to let go of fear. * Stick with statistics. What are the odds of that thing you’re fearing actually happening? Whenever parents in my neighborhood start freaking out about imaginary child abductions, I remind them that, statistically, the odds of your child being kidnapped by a stranger is about 1 in 1,000,000. Your child is more likely to become president, so maybe focus on preparing them for that. * Look for “thinking traps.” This one comes courtesy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Check your fear for one of the following misbeliefs: * Label intrusive thoughts. When you’re driving, do you ever have the sudden fear that an oncoming car is going to swerve into your lane? Congratulations, that’s an intrusive thought, which is a fun feature of some anxiety disorders! When I envision a grim scenario like this, I’ve learned to just say “that’s an intrusive thought, not reality,” and then let it go. * Remember that, to your body, fear and excitement are the same. This is an especially good strategy for stage fright. When I used to get scared before a storytelling show, I’d remind myself that the adrenaline flooding my system was helping time feel slower and sharpening my senses, which would aid my performance. * Personify your fear. Just like in Inside Out! Thank it for keeping you safe, but ask it to step back for now. * Make a “God Jar” for things you can’t control. Whenever you’re anxious about some outcome you can’t control, write it on a slip of paper and put it in a container. Once it’s in the container, you’re not allowed to worry about it anymore. (And no, you don’t have to use the G-word if that’s triggering.) Read through the slips once or twice a year and marvel at all the things you used to worry about that don’t actually matter to you anymore! Have you ever used one of these tricks to deal with fear? How did it go? Are there are other tricks we should know about? As always, I love to hear from you in the comments, via DM, or email! Did you find this post helpful? Help others find it by clicking the “heart” button and/or sharing it with a friend. BONUS MATERIALS: * this 2-minute explainer on the stress cycle * JUST WATCH THIS, YOU’LL THANK ME Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E16
May 13 · 4 min
What Will People Think?
Early in my blogging career, I pitched my first-ever interview. I wanted to ask a local butcher about ethical meat buying. In emails, he seemed eager for the exposure. I don’t know if he checked out my itty-bitty blog before agreeing, what I do know is that I walked in with my notebook, recorder, and my toddler son in a stroller, the butcher took one look at us and doubled over laughing. I’m not exaggerating—he laughed at me for an uncomfortably long time. Long enough for my patient smile to fall off my face. Long enough for a thousand doubts to swirl through my mind: who was I to call myself a writer when I couldn’t even afford a babysitter? I was a fraud and a failure and just a mom. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In that moment, all I wanted was to turn around and wheel my stroller back out the door. Being laughed at is, I believe, a universal fear that drives many of our decisions. It’s why public speaking is so scary and why picking out new clothes or a haircut can feel dire. Deeper than that, fear of being laughed at is the reason many of us avoid pursuing things we’re passionate about. We don’t want to look like idiots or weirdos. We don’t want to be gossiped about or excluded from the group. You want to do…what? Getting laughed at during my first professional interview was what came to mind as I watched the documentary Maintenance Artist at Seattle International Film Festival this past weekend. The film explores the career of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a visual artist who, upon entering motherhood, pivoted from sculpture to developing the idea of “maintenance art”—reframing acts like cleaning and care work as art. The documentary traces Ukeles’ evolution from invisible housewife to the creation of her Manifesto for Maintenance Art, which ties in the personal, professional, and environmental importance of maintenance. In documenting these overlooked forms of work, Ukeles elevates them to something worthy of notice and praise. In order to make these artworks, Ukeles had to risk being laughed out of the New York art scene. As you can see in the clip above, at first, many of her collaborators did not take her seriously. She had to be the first believer in her own work. What would you do if you were not afraid to fail? It’s cliche to ask, but how many of us hold ourselves back out of fear? The Stoics, as always, have a bit of advice here. They break the world into two categories: things you can control and things you can’t. And they squarely locate “reputation” in the category of things outside one’s control. When this fear arises, they advise refocusing on something you can control, like your own actions. In the immortal words of Marcus Aurelius: haters gonna hate. That day in the butcher’s shop, I fended off the urge to flee. Instead, I calmly waited for my interview subject to get ahold of himself. Finally, he stopped laughing. Then we went into his office and I conducted the interview. My son was quietly absorbed in his toy and did not disrupt the interview, as I knew he wouldn’t. At home, I wrote up my article and shared the link with the butcher, who thanked me profusely. He never broached his awkward laughter, but I hoped as he bragged about the interview on his social media, he learned his lesson. Here’s the thing with trying something new: you never know where it will lead. I couldn’t have known that that first, embarrassing interview would eventually lead to me writing articles for local and national publications, or to a career as an author. It’s terrifying to stick your neck out. People might laugh at you, they might ask, “Who the hell does she think she is?” But here’s what I know: you can survive it. And the more you’re able to overcome the low opinions of others, the more your confidence will grow, until the idea of being laughed at isn’t so scary anymore. Is there anything that fear is holding you back from doing? What would it look like if you failed? What about if you succeeded? Imagine you’re 90 years old, would you regret trying or not trying more? BONUS MATERIALS: * in case you want to geek out more about Ukeles. (She’s also discussed in Angela Garbes’ excellent Essential Labor) * this glorious anthem of losers who try hard! Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E15
May 6 · 3 min
Confessions of a Scaredy-Cat
Here’s the thing no one warns you about healing: once you stop numbing all your feelings and start facing yourself, you’ll be confronted with a lot of ugliness. You think you’re a nice person? Look, here are all your petty resentments! Pretty sure you’re capable? Here are all your failures and shortcomings! Think you’re rational? Behold your bizarre late-night fears! I speak from personal experience. As I’ve worked towards mindfulness, I’ve noticed how much fear dominates my thinking. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Here’s a shortlist of things that scare me: murderers, climate change, whether my kids will have economic opportunities, Manfluencers, military drones, my husband getting hit by a car while he’s cycling, AI replacing jobs, AI replacing MY job, school shootings, scary noises in the middle of the night, professional failure, war, raising sons who grow up to be Manfluencers, getting diabetes, raccoons, losing my kids on public transit, the US becoming a theocracy, my parents dying, losing the right to vote, my neighbors being harassed and/or deported, things never getting better. And, yeah, I probably shouldn’t be surprised; during my tenure in therapy, I received a litany of fear-related diagnoses: everything from post-partum anxiety to Generalized Anxiety Disorder, though those were before my eventual C-PTSD diagnosis, which made more sense of things. In the last 20 years, I’ve worked hard to tamp down my anxiety. So when mindfulness dredges up even more fear it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. I just thought I was better, ya know? It’s so hard to know what a normal level of fear is. If I feel safe walking home by myself at night and my neighbor doesn’t, am I foolish or is she paranoid? But I know it’s not just me. We live in an age of fear: if it’s not our sensationalized media ecosystem (everything from TV news to social media), it’s rampant consumerism that says buying more stuff is the only thing that can save us. And even if you manage to dodge all that, there’s our whole government chaos operation run by Fearmonger in Chief, Donald Trump. Is Iran about to nuke us? Are our streets being overrun by violent gang members? Every week there is some new threat which only Trump can save us from. All this is for a purpose: fear is the ultimate tool for manipulation. As the historian Anne Applebaum shows, authoritarians (and wannabes) try to consolidate power by creating a culture of fear. Just like those Fox News commercials selling gold bars and emergency disaster kits, Trump sells us vague doom that only he can rescue us from. How do we opt out? How can we notice when we are being manipulated and resist it? I want to be a reasonable person unswayed by fearful rhetoric, but it’s easier said than done. It’s embarrassing to admit how much of my inner monologue is fear. Nobody wants to be a scaredy-cat. So, this month, I want to look at fear. Here are some questions I have: * is it possible to be less afraid? How? * how do we carry on living in what feels like a constant state of emergency? * do Exvangelicals experience more fear post-faith deconstruction? * how do we sort out appropriate vs. inappropriate fear? * why does fear feel so bad? * can we make friends with our fear? * how do we avoid being paralyzed by fear? Are you, too, a scaredy-cat? What tips, tricks, or recommendations do you have for handling fear? As always, I love to hear from you in the comments or via email or DM. BONUS MATERIALS: * this overview of Anne Applebaum’s Psychology of Totalitarian Control is a great starting point * my brain every time someone says “face your fears” Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E15
April 29 · 3 min
The Sacred Power of an Off-Key Beatles Song
“There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.” -Wendell Berry A few years ago, I was hanging out with a friend who’s an Episcopal priest, when the topic of wedding music came up. I told her that I’d walked down the aisle to The Beatles’ “And I Love Her,” played by my brother, Karl, on acoustic guitar. My friend explained that, in the Episcopal church, “only sacred music is allowed,” so no Beatles for weddings. I wondered if she was right. Ought I have marched down the aisle to Bach or Vivaldi? Indeed, the switch from organ prelude to my brother’s acoustic and his off-key singing was a bit jarring! Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Still, her response rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was because I’d ingested enough bad Christian art (Christian contemporary music, Kirk Cameron movies, THOMAS KINCADE) to last me a lifetime. The problem with this sort of Christian “art” is that the artists feel the need to clobber the viewers over the head with The Message. There’s no nuance, no subtlety, and certainly nothing that could offend the delicate sensibilities of the largely Evangelical audience. (You’ll never hear someone swear in a Christian movie, for instance.) Thomas Kincade aside, this division between sacred and nonsacred art offends me as an artist. The point of art (be it visual art, film, literature, music or the humble Substack) is to reveal capital-T Truth. In my opinion, the primary measure of artistic success is how effectively Truth is revealed, if at all. The idea that art has to be explicitly about God or Jesus for it to be sacred strikes me as absurd. Why should the church (or anyone, really) gatekeep what others find transcendent? This argument about The Beatles is what came to mind when I read the above Wendell Berry quote last week. Whereas I was raised to believe that certain places, times, and things were holy (i.e. the sanctuary, communion wine, etc.) Berry challenges us to find holiness in the ordinary places and things around us, something echoed in the work of Father Richard Rohr, who writes: “Over time, we move beyond a dualistic view of God being ‘up there’ while we are ‘down here’ to a vision where God is up there, down here, in others, and within ourselves, all at the same time…In taking this view, we start to see that all things are sacred, including the masks we wear, the shadows we seek to hide, the wounds we carry, and the parts of ourselves we consider profane. Every thing is sacred.” The truth is, sometimes I get wrapped up in my own cosmic significance. I want to save the world and create great art and be capital-I Important. But mostly my life is not these things. Mostly I am washing dishes and making meals and chaperoning field trips. It’s not prestigious or even paid, not seen as having much purpose in the grand scheme of things. Can I find sacredness in such work? Thinking back to Karl’s performance on my wedding day, it was so many things: jarring, off-key, sincere, lovely. I remember standing in the narthex, vibrating with nerves because Holy shit I am 22 years old and going to promise to do WHAT for the REST OF MY LIFE?!?!?!? I was totally spiraling. And then my brother’s voice crackled over the PA system. And it was so goofy and sweet and I remembered who and where I was and who was around me and what I was doing. I took a deep breath, my dad squeezed my hand, and the church doors opened. In that moment, my brother and The Beatles grounded me. And that’s sacred, too. The more I explore my spiritual practice, the more I see that the challenge is not in finding right answers, in parsing this or that doctrine, the challenge is in unlearning the artificial divisions created by labels and striving to see God in all people, places, and things. Even The Beatles, even bad singing. Even myself. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E14
April 22 · 4 min
Why Rules-Based Morality Falls Short
Several years ago, I was moderating a local online parenting group when a post made me do a double take. It wasn’t any of the usual controversies about sleep training or “rehoming” dogs. Instead, it was an ouroboros of antiracism, which became, incidentally, kinda racist? I’m paraphrasing, but this was the gist: “I need advice on hiring a nanny. My partner and I are white moms committed to antiracism. We don’t have many people of color in our lives, except for a housecleaner who comes weekly. We don’t want our kids to grow up seeing people of color primarily in subservient roles to white people, so we are thinking we should hire a white nanny. However, we are unsure how to explain this in a job listing. Any advice?” Hoo boy. Where to even begin? I stared at my computer, dumbfounded, for a few moments. I was sympathetic to this anxious white mom who wanted to get antiracism “right,” but felt pretty surprised by where her conclusions led. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. While I debated what to say, other commenters were quick to point out that posting a “whites only” job listing was not only immoral but actually illegal. Things got heated, as internet comment sections often do. Eventually, I decided to shut down commenting while sharing a link about state laws against employment discrimination. But long after the comment frenzy, I found myself wondering about this poster. At the time, I was working with an organization teaching parents and teachers about antiracism and I’d seen many other instances of well-meaning white people blundering into racial faux pas. What most of these instances had in common was a failure of empathy: white people thought of what they could do to or for people of color but did not stop to ask what those people of color actually wanted. I wondered if the poster could’ve imagined a person of color reading her theoretical job listing, would she have understood the problem? It wasn’t just well-meaning blunderers that left me worried. Worse were those who were frog marched to mandatory antiracist training. These folks tended to spend the entire workshop sitting there with their arms crossed, rolling their eyes. They left me wondering whether company-mandated training might actually make workplace racism worse? After all, you can’t force someone into empathy. The problem is that, for some, antiracism has come to mean a series of rules against microaggressions. But rules can’t get us where we need to go. In some of the schools where I led workshops, I’d hear stories of white teachers who, afraid of over-disciplining Black students, didn’t discipline them at all, instead relying on their Black colleagues to do it. (Yikes!) In situations like this, we see how easily rules can become tools of shame or manipulation. Don’t get me wrong, rules can guide us in the beginning, but our goal should not be perfect adherence but rather building relationships. And in all relationships there will be mistakes. What matters is how we repair. It’s not just in neurotic lefty circles that we see this sort of legalism, of course. Earlier this month, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed a law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools. This follows similar laws proposed in Texas, Tennessee, and Arkansas. (And let’s not forget Alabama supreme court chief justice Roy Moore, who campaigned to be “The Ten Commandments Judge” while also allegedly committing tax fraud and being sexually inappropriate with teenaged girls.) For many Christians, the Ten Commandments have become an idol, a litmus test for who is good and worthy of respect. Rules-based morality often deteriorates into self-righteousness and exclusion of the “unworthy.” That’s because this sort of morality is focused on controlling a person’s outward behavior rather than producing inner change. What we all need is to become people who are more loving towards others and ourselves, but that’s a long and arduous process, (probably involving therapy!) It’s much easier to point to something outward like, “We don’t have premarital sex; therefore, we are good people.” And is it any coincidence that people who are spiritually immature and worried about appearing well-behaved are much easier to control? Spiritual maturity also requires role models and mentorship, which are often in short supply. Our churches are filled with elderly people, but how many of them are actually spiritually mature? Growing into wisdom is a tall order. We have to be able to let go of simplistic, rules-based thinking and wrestle honestly with difficult moral questions. Stories, art, and therapy can help lead the way, as can healthy relationships. How about you? Do you ever find yourself clinging to certain rules? What (or who?) helps you figure out the right thing to do in tricky situations? Who in your life displays wisdom? As always, I love to hear your thoughts, gripes, and recommendations in the comments or via email. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E14
April 8 · 4 min
Progressives Need Better Stories
How do you feel about these “secular saints” candles? Are they a funny joke? A cringe Millennial trend? The desperate grasping of a culture that has lost its way? I’ll admit, I’ve owned a few of these (Harriet Tubman, RBG.) My husband received a Jeff Bezos one as a gag gift that I keep threatening to smash. This is one of the problems with living heroes—they keep revealing problematic behavior. It’s why every Tesla bumper in Seattle now looks like this: Maybe this is why Roman Catholics require at least 5 years pass before canonization can begin, time for all the skeletons to emerge from a potential saint’s closet. And yet, the recent revelations about labor organizer Cesar Chavez have shown that it can take a long time (33 years in this case) for the dark truth about a “hero” to come out. For years we’ve been having a conversation about how to deal with heroes who have done monstrous things. Is it still okay to listen to Michael Jackson? Watch Roman Polanski movies? Ought we still have statues of great American statesmen who also enslaved African Americans or slaughtered Indigenous Peoples? Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Many conservatives seem intent to put their fingers in their ears and stress that it was a different time, that Thomas Jefferson, for instance, couldn’t possibly have known that it was wrong to father children with his teenaged slave, Sally Hemings, then enslave those children until their early adulthood. (To be sure, many white American men at that time had no problems with this arrangement, which was common enough to have the moniker “shadow family.” Nevertheless, abolition has always been part of American political thought. The truth is always out there, if you know who to listen to.) On the other hand, liberals have been anxious to be seen tearing down our national mythology without anything to replace them with. Remember when the San Francisco Board of Education spent the pandemic debating school names instead of, you know, focusing on reopening schools? It’s important to be able to grapple honestly with our history and culture. At the same time, I wonder: what does it mean to be American without The American Dream? Without glazing George Washington and his ilk? Where are the stories that a multicultural, multiracial, religiously plural society can unite around? The more polarized we become, the harder it is to find common ground. It seems to me there’s a hunger for mythology and heroes, whether it’s the eight billion movies in The Avengers franchise or the enduring popularity of Greek mythology. And I do think we need common stories. Whereas lectures and laws dictate, stories invite us in. They have a way of sneaking past our defenses and engaging us at an emotional level—we empathize with the characters and find ourselves weighing moral questions we would never otherwise consider. Stories are also not black-and-white. As any English teacher worth their salt would tell you, stories ask us to bring our lived experience and external knowledge to our interpretations. In discussing stories together, we learn to question our preconceived notions and see through others’ eyes. I mean, it’s no coincidence that beloved religious teachers like Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad taught in parables and analogies. But the problem with idolizing living folks is the “man in the hole” problem. I believe it was Kurt Vonnegut who said there are basically two story structures: man falls into a hole, and man climbs out of a hole. In either case, you need a change in status—the lowly are elevated, the lofty are brought low. Maybe human beings simply aren’t fit for life on the pedestal. If Martin Luther is right, we are each sinners and each saints. This duality, or “and-ness” as I like to call it, can’t be ignored for long. Saints will disappoint and sinners will surprise. Maybe we need gods and mythologies. At any rate, if the Left is going to win the culture war against Christian Nationalism, we need a grander illustration of moral imagination. What do you think? Do we have common stories/heroes anymore? Who would be on your personal Mount Rushmore of great Americans? As always, I love to hear your thoughts, ramblings, pushback, and recommendations in the comments or via email/DM. Thanks for reading Heretic Hereafter! If you enjoyed this post, why not share it? This helps others find the Substack. BONUS MATERIALS: * Ugh the Cesar Chavez revelations…still, this article provides some interesting context * ICYMI, this podcast is a reliable hit with the kiddos Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe
S3 · E13
April 1 · 5 min
Easter for Doubters & Skeptics
It’s Holy Week for many of the world’s 2.6 billion Christians (for Eastern Orthodox, it’s next week.) Easter marks the most important holiday in the Christian calendar—the date of Jesus’ alleged resurrection. But what if you don’t believe? Or if you have major questions about it? Does Easter still matter? Can this holiday still be meaningful if you’re not sure about the whole bodily resurrection thing? Fifteen years ago, I would’ve said, absolutely not. If you don’t believe in the resurrection, there’s no point and you’re not in the club!!! For those of us who were raised to read the Bible literally, questioning the resurrection is dangerous territory. In these traditions, miracles are proof of God’s existence, the very cornerstone of faith—if you don’t believe in them, everything else falls apart. In this black-and-white worldview, any speck of doubt can put you on the path to Hell. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I spent years trying to convince myself to believe Bible stories were factually true, even as scientific evidence and my own lived experience contradicted this interpretation. I was the red-faced teen who tried to argue her high school biology teacher out of teaching evolution. Luckily, I lost. During this era, I felt constantly at war with myself. How could I silence my doubts while still living in integrity? Answer: I couldn’t. It was a losing battle. And so I went to the opposite extreme: scientific materialism. My family quit church. I stopped believe in God or anything else that couldn’t be historically or scientifically verified. But that didn’t satisfy me either. Science is a wonderful tool, but it doesn’t provide a moral framework or answer big life questions about meaning and purpose. I had torn down my old belief structure that was no longer serving me, but I didn’t have anything to replace it with. The 3+ years of this Substack has been me finding my way to something new—a new way to think about ethics and morality (and how to teach those things to my kids) and to feed the spiritual hunger that’s always been a part of me. And one of the conclusions I’ve been circling is this: belief is not the most important thing. It might not even be top 10! Basing an entire theory of salvation on belief seems hopeless, because beliefs fluctuate. They evolve. Any system that encourages people to stay frozen at the moment of conversion is, frankly, ridiculous. Imagine, for example, a marriage where the wedding ceremony was the most important part. Every day that you loved your spouse as much as you did on your wedding day counted as success. But every time you fought with them or checked out a stranger at the gym or envied a single friend meant failure. People under this situation would likely grit their teeth and try to avoid changing (which is impossible) or just give up and get divorced. In marriage, we recognize that feelings fluctuate. Staying married is arguably more about what you do than what you feel or believe at a given moment. You honor your promises, sometimes joyfully and sometimes sulkily. The point is: you show up. I think the church (and, TBH, society as a whole) would be a lot healthier if we stopped prioritizing litmus tests and instead focused on showing up. Sure, you might say, showing up is important, but what about the resurrection? Isn’t belief in the resurrection kind of a dealbreaker for being a Christian? Eh, I don’t think so? And I’d argue there’s good evidence on my side. In her latest book, Miracles and Wonder, religion scholar Elaine Pagels argues that the authors of the gospel, the apostle Paul, and many of the early church patriarchs disagreed on what actually happened at the resurrection and what it all meant. Pagels reminds us that the gospels were constructed with the intent to persuade particular audiences, as well as to refute disparaging remarks that were circulating about Jesus in the years after his death. In the hands of these gospel writers, the most shameful marks against Jesus (his out-of-wedlock birth and his execution by the Roman government) were transformed into holy and miraculous stories that highlighted his divinity. Keen readers will recognize that this theme of reversal is present in many beats of the gospel stories: the formula is typically “Society/religion/the government values ___, but what’s really valuable is the opposite.” The story of Jesus is, again and again, about the foolishness of those in authority and the wisdom of the poor and marginalized. Pagels offers up plausible alternate theories about Jesus’ birth and death, but never rules out the miraculous, telling us that’s not her lane as a historian. And I like that approach. I think it’s okay to say we don’t know how these events unfolded. Even if we don’t believe they literally happened, we can appreciate the value these stories have held for people throughout history and for us, today. And I get it: your mileage may vary. Some of you never got into Christianity; maybe other stories speak to you more. For those sorting through heavy religious trauma, maybe you opt out of Easter. (Too gory!) That’s okay, too. Personally, I’m enjoying finding new ways of looking at these old, tired stories. Maybe that’s because they’re what I was raised on. Or maybe I just find Jesus to be a compelling ideal. At any rate, this month, I want to look at stories as spiritual tools. Here are some questions I have: * do stories express our values better than laws and rules? * does the Left need better stories? Do we lack moral imagination? * why do we keep building up heroes only to tear them down? * what role do stories play uniting people from different cultures and religions? * what stories (religious or not) hold special meaning for you? What do you think? As always, I love to hear your thoughts, complaints, questions, and recommendations in the comments or via email. Heretic Hereafter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. BONUS MATERIALS: * I’m really enjoying the daily meditations from The Center for Action and Contemplation (of Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren fame) * as I’m gearing up for spring break with my teens, this song is my mantra Get full access to Heretic Hereafter at heretichereafter.substack.com/subscribe

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes