dear friend,
i wanted to write something about 2016 since everyone is talking about it right now on social media. here's what i remember:
obviously i was an evangelical at the time. i was going to my local megachurch, and because i was doing unpaid labor for the middle school ministry, i got to see what was going on behind the scenes. i guess you could say i started to deconstruct at that point, because i found out a lot of messed up shit. for example, the year i started being a small group leader for a group of sixth graders, the youth pastor was let go. you know what they told the parents? that he was getting a divorce and was no longer qualified to lead. you know why he was actually let go? because he was inappropriately texting the fucking middle schoolers. i remember being weirded out by him because of his twitter page. i don't think he knew his likes were public (he was/is a real dumbass irl and online), but they were. you can imagine what i found.
i remember being really upset about this, and also upset when i found out exactly how much money the church had and how much it was spending on these stupid fucking events, like silent discoes. one time the church (i'll refer to this church as nlc, those are the real initials and i don't super care about protecting this corporation's privacy).
but there was also political stuff going on (obviously). i remember the day trump was elected. i remember finding out how many white evangelicals voted for him. i feel like the masks came off after that. 2012 had impacted me in a big way when Trayvon Martin was killed because he was my age. i thought that white people were starting to wake up to racial inequality. i really thought the people i went to church with would at least be apprehensive about voting for trump, but no! and you know why they told me they voted for them? because of fucking abortion. that was the rationale. unborn babies mattered more to them than the suffering of living people.
so i started going to this new church, called fellowship (they were less bad than nlc, very sincere people and i remember finding friends who were also upset at trump's election).
i definitely became more politically progressive at this time, and wanted to change the church from the inside. however, i was also super fucking calvinist at this time, due to some close friends who introduced me to reformed theology a la paul washer, art azurdia, charles spurgeon, martin lloyd jones, rc sproul. if those names mean anything to you i hope you're doing better now. if they don't, just know that their most important contribution to my sense of self was a deeper sense of wickedness and depravity than i can describe with words.
so 2016 was a dark time for me. it was a point of conflict, where all these parts of my life -- my theology, my politics, my worldview, my relationships, my community, my family -- were coming into conflict with each other, and i couldn't keep them all. to spoil the story, it all came crashing down in 2020.
what happened to you in 2016?
love always,
han
dear friend,
since I last posted here, a few things have happened, both personally and politically. ice killed a white woman named renee good in minnesota. i've been watching the traitors. me and my partner (z) went to see lord of the rings: the two towers in the movie theaters since it's the 25th anniversary. i saw ibram x kendi speak at my university. my sister's having a baby. i'm teaching a class on social media (which is weird to do because social media is changing so quickly). i'm making a quilt. i learned some family tea from years ago. i had an aunt who lived in texas, around the sixties, who married a Black man. well apparently the husband was killed (most likely lynched), and then my aunt allegedly killed herself, except my uncle t doesn't believe it. i think she was lynched.
i also gave this blog/diary/thing a name, "meditations in an apocalypse," which i ripped off from the frank o hara book, because i think about the apocalypse so much. i've thought about the apocalypse ever since i was little. probably due to the fact that my parents, grandparents, and every adult around me believed that every catastrophe, geopolitical conflict, EVERYTHING was a sign of the times that the world would soon be coming to an end and Jesus would return and usher in a new yadda yadda yadda yadda ya
that part, i know, is bullshit now, but something in me holds onto the apocalypse thing. maybe because the evidence i'm seeing tells me that i am living in a time where humans (read: corporations and governments) have done irreparable harm to the world i live in, and there is absolutely nothing i can do to change that.
i started thinking about the word 'apocalypse' differently when my native friend m shared a conversation on christian nationalism and the apocalyptic rhetoric that so often accompanies it. she shared with me that the word 'apocalypse' hits different for her, because her lineage has endured multiple apocalypses in many different forms. after that conversation, apocalypse stopped just meaning "the end of the world" to me.
so what does apocalypse mean to me now? i think it just means the end of a world. in that sense, i've come to accept the end of the world i was born into. and maybe the end is elongated, and will happen and keep happening long after i'm dead. i'm not settled on this definition though, so let me know what you think. anyway, i hope that wherever you are, that you survive this apocalypse, that you are laughing and that you feel comfortable and safe in your bed at night.
love always,
han
dear friend,
i should introduce myself. posting to the internet confuses me because i don't know who i'm writing to. so i'll write to you. maybe you live somewhere far away. maybe we went to elementary school together. maybe you're reading this two hundred years from now. maybe you're in this timeline with me
i suppose the first thing you should know about me is that i used to be super religious. like, purity ring wearing, go to church at least three times a week, devote my whole life, and entire being to God sort of thing. it was my whole world, and now it's not.
related to that, i used to get on tumblr a LOT. and this place reminds me of that place, at least from what i've seen so far. i gave up tumblr to God in 2012 when i was in high school because, you know it had gay stuff on there.
i'll keep this short, because i'm still trying to decide how i want to use this. but there is something here that reminds me of why the internet was so magical (and dangerous) to me at the time. i'm a lot less scared now than i was then, even though the world i live in is scarier than it was then. weird how that works out. everything i was afraid of came true. i lost God, all my friends, my family after 2020. but i had some things left, and i had an entire world to discover, people to meet, and things to learn. and that's what brought me here.
what else should i tell you about me?
love always,
han