August 17th, 8:42pm

i passively think a lot about god. like i grew up going to a pretty progresssive church, so my theology had always been looming and constant, yet inactive. like, i believed in an abstract progressive god that did not abide by the human conception of gender, loved all, and whose image was distorted by more harmful practices of religion. as i grew older and began to intellectualize a little bit more, leaving my own theology as something so inactive became uncomfortable. i was forced to unpack it a little more.
and here we are, where i’ve become used to daily snippets of what and who i believe god does and is just floating through my thoughts to be caught and packed away in another little mental box of Theologies. in my ongoing effort to produce a more tangible, permanent record of who i am (more than just my own mind), i figured it was time to write it all down.
i suppose i don’t believe in god as presented in the early books of the bible. as a historian i am sure jesus was real, but i believe that the majority of his physical miracles depicted in the gospels were metaphorical. i’m still not sure where i stand in the trinitarian camps, but i do vibe with a general sense of trinitarianism, where jesus was less of the physical genetic inheritant of the father and the holy spirit. however, i understand it in a more abstract sense: who jesus was and what he symbolizes is comprised of the holiness that exists in the space between us all, the figure that holiness is, and the future that holiness will be.
i’ll do a separate musing on jesus, just to keep my own thoughts in order here
the concept of imago dei, that humans are made in the image of god, has long been used to justify the patriarchical interpretations of christian life and, more recently, to reject it. in my own vision of god, i don’t quite adhere to either. i think the reference is less to that of a physical or even spiritual manifestation of the individual, but to the gifts we have in finding love, kindness, and belonging with one another and with all other living things. to leave my assertion at this would be dangerous, though. as any mere awareness or observation of life will tell, we are capable of doing awful, evil things to one another.
to put it in an elevator pitch, i believe god exists in the in-between. the in-between of all living things when we truly show up in community for one another, with our interests solely being in that. that is the good. that is god. as our nature is, we cannot rid our lives of all else, but there are few among us who are innately and wholly good. those who do all that they do in the interest of living things around them, in the interest of their community, and free from the desire for personal material gain, are our messiah.
this is disjointed, short, and rambly, but that’s what this page is for, after all

August 17th, 2025, 12:17pm

lowkey i've been thinking about making some kind of horror arg/neocities experience based on the current times (tm) and the weirdness of the attention economy and inspired by Biblical descriptions of the 'end of days' or whatever...... that would be kind of cool

August 17th, 2025, 12:04am EST

my first musing or rambling or whatever
i've been in a weird place. it's somewhere between a funk, a depressive episode, the second year of graduate school, and just plain adulthood. because i have this incessant need to intellectualize my feelings, i'm choosing to believe it's because i have hit the one-year anniversary of moving to a new city, where i knew no one, and was naive enough to believe that the monster of crushing loneliness would somehow pass by me. (at least the choice to believe something a little incorrect is easier for me than the having-to-think-about-it-deeper-discomfort). i spent my 23rd birthday, just two months later, sobbing and praying my roommates wouldn't be able to hear me through the door. they were kind, recognizing that my first birthday all alone in a new city was going to be hard. i could feel how much effort they put into recognizing my birthday; as much as they could, without knowing me well.

honestly, living here got significantly easier when i told myself and my family that i wanted to move back after finishing my program. i told myself (and my family) that it was because my job market in this city is dwindling under the current administration (true), that i wanted to be helping my community through this sharp descent (true), that student loans would be easier to pay off in my home state (also true), and a million other logically-justified reasons. but the truth is, i had made my decision the moment i dropped my mom off at the airport. the panic that i felt as she walked through security, i know now, was realization. because of the way i am wired as a person, i try to avoid regretting decisions, because i know that dwelling too much on the what-i-shouldntve-done sends me into a tailspin of further paralysis. maybe it's the same wiring that caused my cosmopolitan naivete. in any case, i said it was a realization: that maybe part of growing up and growing out is learning that staying rooted is the best for you

i think what's getting at me now is the fear that when i move back, i'm going to learn that i was all wrong. that my crushing loneliness has somehow become a part of my core, and is not just a symptom of distance. that i'm going to get home, and people have moved too far away or that i've changed too much or that they've changed too much and my beloved humans and i have just grown in separate directions. or, i'm terrified that these two years of more loneliness than i've ever known will have dulled who i am, beyond what my close people know. i don't know. i think i actually just need to go to bed.