I was moved by all the self-doubt in your last letter, Wuck. You had me clicking to comment more than ever. Here’s yet another, longer reply:
I was on a FaceTime call with Kristen this past July. Rachel and I had just seen the ultrasound, I told her, and—contrary to our hopes for a little girl—our coming second child would be another boy.
Kristen began to cry. It was immediate.
“I’m so happy for you both,” she waved her hand at her eyes, looking surprised at her own response.
Now, KG Money can turn on whatever emotion she feels her listener needs from her, I’m aware. It’s a superpower I’ve observed with awe over the years (we reflected on this in the car with her, cruising down the 210 towards Raging Waters last summer: how she was raised to tend her parents’ moods and unspoken needs). So I gently inquired about her tears. “Why you crying, sister?” I smiled, and added with a laugh, “You bummed too that we’re not having a little girl? All us guys in the group creating even more guys?”
“No, Hoke. No,” she sniffed, wiping her cheeks with her palm. “It’s just . . . we need more good men in this world.”
The way she then looked at me, through the screen with a sad hope, has stayed with me for weeks now. What could be taken as flattery, as mere back-patting, has landed somewhere within me as the sweetest and most terrible challenge.
It’s as if your wife, Murph, with her succinct tears and words, performed a sudden baptism and benediction over me. More specifically, the liberal white male anxiety inside me.
Then she went further—maybe upon seeing the reaction on my face—that, yes, the guys in our group, whom she calls her brothers, are in fact the kind of good men capable of raising the boys she feels the world needs.
My response then and now: <quote-01>Really?<quote-01>
We’re a bunch of <quote-02>overgrown boys, knuckleheads<quote-02>, aren’t we? Especially when we get together. Board games and crass jokes. Softball games and Dodger text threads. Kickball and handball and even a round of “Down by the Banks”: grown men in suits standing in a circle beneath the Christmas lights in your frontyard, Murph, or in some restaurant parking lot, December after December, the growing pack of losers’ pink and frigid balls hanging out of our suits’ zippers as we cheer on the remaining challengers, all of us singing along like happy fools until we have a new winner whom no one will remember ten minutes later when we go back to the living room to open the absurd presents we got for each other. This group? Really?
Kristen, who’s seen our immaturity more than any of the wives or girlfriends who’ve joined this crew since her own inauguration in 2000, believes we guys bring a goodness that’s lacking in the world right now. Her tidy homily has me thinking, wondering, still. <quote-03>If that’s true, how so? Will we live up to her best estimation of us?<quote-03>
With our children—these boys we’re lavishing with kisses and putting to bed, teaching to swim and putting on their Velcro shoes, helping to choose their favorite books for storytime—<quote-04>how will we raise them any differently than the problematic men out there, to whom Kristen’s tears attest?<quote-04> What kinds of words, what kinds of eyes, what kinds of hands are needed to touch and raise these squealing blue babies into good young men?
I’m not reaching for a full parenting course here, nor a primer on the history of entrenched white supremacy, nor a review of the varieties of toxic masculinity. All those are good homework assignments in our time, of course. But as I watch men all around me—in the jail, in churches, in my circles, in my family history, in the news—I keep yearning for, or admiring, one single trait these days: the ability to say I was wrong.
I think Murph’s image this summer regarding child-rearing is helpful: by all means necessary, don’t thoughtlessly step in the wet cement of a child’s forming heart and imagination. Revere the preciousness of that wet cement. Honor the innocence of the child as if something holy were in your care. Murph might say it more simply: show the kid some goddamn respect.
But what happens when we do step in the cement? When we do, in fact, make careless moves? <quote-05>When we screw up, and only get a sense of what we did months, or even years, later?<quote-05>
My dad took me to so many tee-ball and soccer practices as I grew up, cheered louder than any dad on the sideline with his booming voice. He cheered not just for me but for every other kid on the team. His kindness was so loud and so rare, I didn’t think to be embarrassed. <quote-06>It was like he was hugging all of us for sixty minutes on the hot and dusty field or the wet and muddy tournament grounds, and nobody had a problem with it<quote-06>.
It takes me a while to dig for those memories, though.
My dad could also be explosive in his temper at home, going toe to toe with my mom and big sister in a way that made my heart go into hiding for weeks, made me bury myself in spaceship LEGOS and turn up my Percy Sledge cassette tape.
But neither his loud goodness nor his roaring darkness stuck with me as much as this one memory: one day, late in high school, out of nowhere, he told me I needed to know something. I don’t even remember the scene, but the message was so clear: he told me I was a good kid growing up and that, looking back, none of the times <quote-07>he spanked me was it necessary or called for<quote-07>. It was just in time: I hadn’t yet left home, gone to college, <quote-08>begun any critical thinking about my childhood<quote-08> nor about corporal punishment. It just caught me off guard. I said, <quote-09>Gee<quote-09>, thanks for saying that, Dad, and went back to one of my teenage obsessions: Karin or my youth group or the literary magazine. But I often think of what a remarkable moment that was, and how it changed what would become my young adult relationship with my father: unasked, unprompted, he said he was wrong about something and asked forgiveness.
My respect for him has always been the better for that small reckoning. Though I wish he’d maybe own and apologize for other things since then, it still made an impression on me. It took the sting out of any belt or brush or wooden spoon on my little white bottom as a boy. It cleansed the memory. Not sure how this works with the wet cement analogy, but I dare say it repaired that misstep, the impression left inside me, his boy.
That’s what I’ve been considering all this year: the power in owning our mistakes, especially since Kristen’s tearful trust in me, in us, and the boys in our care. <quote-10>How can I raise a boy who has the courage and muscle memory for repentance?<quote-10>
Not false shame, false guilt, self flagellation, none of that. I’m just talking about the courage to see it and call it: Oh fuck. I fucked up. Or, sans profanity: Wow, <quote-11>my bad<quote-11>. How do I—or we—make this right?
There’s a word I hated when I was growing up, a word wielded often by browbeating moralists and mean, manipulative fundamentalists. <quote-12>I’m thinking now, though, that I’d like to reclaim it<quote-12>, this word used also by the prophets—by Jesus himself:
Repent. What the Astros failed to do after they got caught for cheating throughout <quote-13>the 2017 season and World Series<quote-13>.
Repent. What our President refuses to do with every fresh coat of lies. From the highest seat in the country, he’s quickly making this proud behavior—what the biblical prophets called “stiff-neckedness”—a trend, a brazen norm.
Repent. What American leadership too often refuses to do regarding the savage history of genocide and slavery that laid the foundation for this country, insisting instead on stories of our blessedness and greatness.
Repent. What the police refuse to do, even as they’re caught on camera ruthlessly brutalizing Black individuals or coolly executing unarmed humans, even as normal citizens take to the streets enraged.
<quote-14>Repent. What Lulo still refuses to do<quote-14>, not admitting to any of the chaos he created, pointing still the finger at me and others. He’s now back in the Skagit Valley, actively fundraising for his new work at Sallie’s farm with a few new homies, playing the victim when our board members or anyone else mentions past problems that still need addressing, never having admitted any of the shit he got caught doing, never having apologized to any of us.
Without acknowledging something was wrong, a gross emotional incoherence spreads.
<quote-15>Repent. What I failed to do<quote-15> a few times in our letters this year. I made you mount more of a case than necessary, Murph, when I could have just said, “My bad. I can see how sharing your letter about your dad’s death and your mom’s grief with Rachel could feel too exposing. I made a bad call.” Why couldn’t I just say that? I tease you about your rage around the famous Utah water bottle in the fridge, but it would be so much simpler if I could say, “My bad, man. Sounds like you really looked forward to that water bottle in the fridge, and I didn’t even think about taking that shit. That was lame. Next one’s on <quote-16>me<quote-16>.”
Is it the fear of losing?
<quote-17>How do we teach our boys to not be afraid of losing? To not be afraid of being wrong?<quote-17>
Abram is still young, so I can still do a little spoon-feeding of phrases. Like when Abram sneers at the food we offer him: “I don’t like that!” “How bout, No thank you, Daddy.” “No thank you, Daddy.” He tries it with his little voice. And his posture is beautiful: like, ok cool, that works too. “Much better!” I say. <quote-18>“Thanks, bud.”<quote-18>
This parroting tactic will only suffice for so long, though. Moving forward, I myself will have to provide the model.
Like when he wants to play when I get home, but I have to take another call. I’m trying to stop and apologize, close the loop with him afterwards, rather than defending myself, like he’s got some nerve being upset. Or when I yell too sharply and see his eyes startle. “Abram, I’m sorry I yelled at you and scared you.” His face says he absolutely remembers. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you like that. <quote-19>Will you forgive me, bud?<quote-19>” “Ok,” he usually says, and is quick to put his arm around me. Sometimes he just stares at me, not yet resolved inside, and I have to accept that.
I’ll admit: it takes everything in me to stop myself and kneel down and say the obvious—that I was wrong.
<quote-20>Why is it so difficult?<quote-20>
So much easier to turn in a first draft and fault the reader who sees the flaws. Revision is humble work. And the greats know all about it. Isn’t it only the immature who defend their first work?
<quote-21>I wonder if that’s what we’re practicing here, as friends<quote-21>. Are we helping each other grow up? Are we reparenting ourselves, both drafting and revising, staying up late, getting up early to return to this conversation, the labor of becoming what Kristen believes we, the guys, and our boys can be in the world?
<pull-quote>overgrown boys, knuckleheads<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Who better to raise boys than those who haven't forgotten what it's like?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>there’s a side to each of us that others don’t really get to see that is probably important here: us as spouses/partners. i’d imagine this has a lot of to do with the health of the child as well.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I dig both of these.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>And what's this "knuckleheads" garbage?<p-comment>
<p-comment>I'm a goddamned doctor, bro. You literally run a non-profit.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i keep wanting to compare us to what other groups like ours must be like, then i realize that i know of no other groups like ours.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>If that’s true, how so? Will we live up to her best estimation of us?<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>A side-effect of thinking the best of everyone is that you don't realize how awful they are.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>yeah, if only kristen knew what a fraud hoke is.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>The thing Kristen hears most often from newly ex-girlfriends is how much they'll miss not so much their former significant other but our group.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>how will we raise them any differently than the problematic men out there, to whom Kristen’s tears attest?<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I mean, look at what you've just unthinkingly written. How many fathers do you think are lavishing their children with kisses and putting them to bed?<p-comment>
<p-comment>Did your father do these things? Mine didn't.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i’m with murph here, hoke. you answer your own question.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Murph, your last two words give me a long pause. My dad did, sometimes, yes. He tucked me in briefly most nights: with his end-of-the-day stubble, he'd burrow his chin with kisses into my little neck and I'd squeal and laugh, whole body. He called it giving me "sugar." I remember him then saying, warmly, briefly, "God bless my boy, give him a good night sleep," his hand heavy on my chest over the blanket. Then he'd turn and shut the door on a dark room and I felt such a calm, after the jolt of laughter, and the simple, familiar blessing.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Lovely.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i constantly think about what my hands or my arms or my stubbly face must feel like to ben.<p-comment>
<p-comment>my father is not at all that comfortable with physical affection. i remember being a little boy and being told to stop stroking his arm hair as he read to me. i’m not a dog, he told me, the poor guy.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>When we screw up, and only get a sense of what we did months, or even years, later?<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>this is precisely my issue with the wet cement adage, that it doesn’t acknowledge the inevitability of stepping in the cement. murph will say, don’t needlessly be careless, to which i’ll agree; but then i’ll ask, how aware are you of when you are needfully careless? and might we show ourselves better care than shouting at ourselves to get hell out of the wet cement? to do so is to show our children how they ought to handle their own mistakes, and might we do better as parents? keep in mind, they see way more of what we go through and how we handle our emotions than we do; they are more invested than our therapists.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Yeah, these questions live inside me constantly. I think it's what I try to address below, practicing simple apologies, like lay-up drills.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Accidentally walk through the cement? Accidents happen, little guy. Let's patch it up together. What's that? You did it on purpose? I'm telling Mr. Hoke and Mr. Webber. Go get the belt.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>It was like he was hugging all of us for sixty minutes on the hot and dusty field or the wet and muddy tournament grounds, and nobody had a problem with it<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I've certainly felt this way whenever I've played games with or around your father: Kwanza softball and 4th of July beach volleyball immediately spring to mind.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>or soccer in washingston during your bachelor week. i believe it was he—he, a pathetically small makeshift goal, and my lack of facility with either my feet or the soccer ball—that answered murph’s plea: not nick webber! not nick webber! i was on a breakaway and he blocked my shot.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>He really loves you guys. Maybe he wishes he had a group of guys like ours in his own life. He was a missionary kid in Tokyo, and the inevitable diaspora of the MK's from the small missionary school left him adrift in what some people call the "reverse culture shock" of "third culture kids" coming home.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>he spanked me was it necessary or called for<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I don't think you've ever mentioned that he spanked you—certainly not in these letters.<p-comment>
<p-comment>If I were you, I'd pretend to be offended or something that you never confided in me. In reality, I see very plainly why it's not the kind of thing you'd willingly share unless the conversation demanded it.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i, for one, now, love you less, hoke.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>begun any critical thinking about my childhood<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I think we've mentioned this before, but this is something that differentiates me from the both of you as much as my not having an older sister. Not a day went by between the ages of twelve and eighteen that I wasn't ruminating on some aspect of my childhood.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Gee<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Laughed out loud at this. I'm sure you said, "Gee!"<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>he probably got a spanking for talking fresh.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I mean, I hope so.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Seriously, though. Spankings for the Webber children, Wuck?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>yup, both from hand and spoon. not frequently, but we got ‘em.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I just assumed we all did back then.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Not a once. The threats came in the snapping of a belt or the wielding of a wooden spoon, but never the two did meet.<p-comment>
<p-comment>That said, I spent my preschool years in the care of a Mormon woman we called Aunt Donna. She spanked the shit out of some of my contemporaries, poor Steven most of all. I remember her pulling down his pants and underwear and all to really give it to him sometimes, there right in front of the ten or so of us, right over her lap. I wonder what poor Steven is up to these days.<p-comment>
<p-comment>If Aunt Donna ever spanked me--perhaps early on to let me know what's what—I don't remember it. All I can recall is spending a couple minutes in the corner from time to time.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Reading your description of poor Steven's humiliation before his peers, and the disgrace you all were forced to watch—I've got some feelings.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>How can I raise a boy who has the courage and muscle memory for repentance?<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Bud, I bet you're doing fan-fucking-tastic. Really and truly.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>That means a lot.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>my bad<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>What a wonderful phrase this has become for men our age, sons of fathers who rarely said they were sorry. When I hear it tossed in my direction, I feel all the goodness of "I'm sorry" or "I apologize" and none of the embarrassment for the apologizer, the embarrassment I always felt as a child when forced to apologize.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I agree.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>makes me think of how i wish hoke would offer an alternate word for repentance.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>I’m thinking now, though, that I’d like to reclaim it<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>a hurculean task! instead, what might you reach for in a game of new choice?<p-comment>
<p-comment>or is the act entirely a religious one?<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Naw, man. It's not a religious act, in the surface sense. See my suggested examples below. I have no desire for the Astros or Trump or Lulo to have a single religious act.<p-comment>
<p-comment>New phrase? Maybe, "Own your shit. Learn how to say you're sorry. Clean up your mess."<p-comment>
<p-comment>Single word? Remorse. Responsibility.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>the 2017 season and World Series<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You've both seen the quotes from these assholes now that they've advanced to their fourth straight ALCS? Worthless fucking Twins and A's.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i haven’t. i’m bracing myself in asking, but hit me.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Here's one from Correa after they won the DS, with bravado: "I know a lot of people are mad. I know a lot of people don’t want to see us here, but what are they going to say now?”<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i shouldn’t have asked.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Repent. What Lulo still refuses to do<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>maybe the problem with repentance is the assumption that it’s a one time thing.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Good shit, Wuck. Where's Repenters Anonymous?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i like this connection. “hi, i’m nathan, i’ll be your repentance sponsor.”<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Yes. Sobriety, like repentance, isn't just a one-time heartfelt statement. "Keep coming back. It works if you work it."<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Repent. What I failed to do<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i have a hard time equating this with the other examples because these acts were not premeditated. these are more akin to your son hitting you in the nuts lower down on the page. this lack of awareness of other’s pain, however—how crippling murph’s post-activity dehydration in utah; how many IV bags was it?—is another matter. at its extreme, it is sociopathic, no?<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I have a hard time not pushing you down the stairs.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>cheers. good to know.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I don't drink (because Hoke stole my water).<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>me<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Is it insane that reading these two hypothetical apologies—weeks and years removed from these incidents—makes me feel better?<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>How do we teach our boys to not be afraid of losing? To not be afraid of being wrong?<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>"My bad" is such a helpful ejection seat out of this downward spiral for me. I'll do my best to make it part of Grammar's vocabulary, for sure.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i too love my bad, and i love the merits of its use as you’ve described them. i don’t see it demanding a making right, however, which can be quite a task. for instance, i don’t believe the ‘17 astros should be allowed to play the game. surely this is more than a my bad.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>“Thanks, bud.”<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>this sounds a lot like the jane austen manners you like to thumb your nose at, hoke.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>So different. Concerns about cussing is ettiquete. Learning how to apologize is an act of love.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>not at my folk’s dinner table they are not. you want to look into debbie’s eye after dropping an f bomb? be my guest, you’re not gonna like it.<p-comment>
<p-comment>i think all etiquette begins from a place of love, but i like that you see how it can be weaponized. how treacherous the poison that looks the salve!<p-comment>
<p-comment>for me, it is no longer etiquette at this point; it’s posturing.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Very well said. Yeah, I haven't been at your dinner table since freshman year of high school. What an evening it would be!<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around your mother voting for a man like Trump, considering the things we have audio clips of him saying.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>oh, tell me about it. i thought the jig was up with the pussy comment before the last election, but alas...<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Voting for Trump is not a deviation from the evangelical faith; it's completely consistent with their theology.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Evangelicals, at root, have been discipled to bow and worship and not question a violent, narcissistic, controlling Almighty (John Calvin's deity that boomed across America's religious landscape). It took me years of theological recovery and then political head scratching to realize this. All the purity moralism is an act, court manners in front of the King. But the King can do whatever the fuck he wants, and they appreciate this value of God. Torture people eternally? Say he created all reality just to sing his praises? Giving his worshippers in his courts a view of the people being tortured endlessly--in fire--as they sing an eternal chorus of gratitude, fear and awe at such power? This is the evangelical God, when you take the saccharine coating off and listen to the story being told. As I have for decades. <p-comment>
<p-comment>This psychology forged by every song and sermon within evangelicalism has prepared the 81% to not budge nor waver in five years: a liturgy to bow and adore a personality such as this. Trump embodies their God. There's no contradiction in the deeper logic of what and who they worship. <p-comment>
<p-comment>Jesus, it turns out, for all their slathering his name on everything, is not at all the kind of person or God evangelicals worship, let alone respect. He's just the sweet mascot the King tortured instead of them, they are told, and so there's a perverse trinity in evangelical doxology that's much more like Abuser, Victim, Enabler. They are a movement of traumatized, obedient enablers who coo the name of the victim they don't want to be.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Trump rallies match the evangelical descriptions of heaven I heard about most my life. The worship never ends.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Ok how about this? Just last week, Eric Metaxas, one of America's leading evangelical thinkers and now pundits, who believes God has lifted up His Chosen in Donald Trump, raved on social media at Trump's apparent feeling-better after a few days of COVID, singing his praises for conquering the plague liberals have feared all year: "Who is like unto him?" Metaxas tweeted that with zero irony. This is what I'm talking about.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>This is helpful. Thanks, bud.<p-comment>
<p-comment>In the end, I'm just so very embarrassed.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Yeah, no shit.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Will you forgive me, bud?<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i wonder about this asking for forgiveness. the same with apologies. how can they be given sincerely when requested? and can we ever except them with awe and humility after we’ve requested them? i have my doubts.<p-comment>
<p-comment>we receive them when we give them.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I think asking for something is normal. I learned from Murph three letters ago: when I want more quality time with him during Upland visits, he says I need only ask. I assume when I will, he will give it quite sincerely.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Permission vs. Forgiveness. I've talked about this before, no? I wonder if there's more here now.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>what you tell your students on the first day of class.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>But why I am so quick to give permission and so hesitant to forgive? Is there something strong in asking permission and weak in asking forgiveness that determines my gut reaction to these moves? And why do so many people lead their lives thinking it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>perhaps forgiveness is entirely personal. if i forgive you, it's not for your benefit, it's for mine. if i can't forgive you, it is i who suffers. permission, on the other hand, requires a response.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Why is it so difficult?<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Beats me. You're wrong so often too.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Seriously, though. I get it. For me, it's difficult not to defend myself in most cases, even when the criticism actually rings true. Thing is, I'm actually pretty receptive to criticism, just not in real time. It's like slow working poison.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>this is the wonder of ideas: they have a will of their own.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>I wonder if that’s what we’re practicing here, as friends<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i love this. well found.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I'm growing to love the word "practice."<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>This is all very thought-provoking, Hoke. If my commenting seems sparse, it's only because I'm storing up thoughts for a response.<p-comment>
<p-comment>I'm grateful for your big-picture talents.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>amen y amen. even when i am critical of them.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Well, it's what I got called "fag" for much of my youth. Better for letters than around a living room of video games, I've learned.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You both could use some work in reading a room, for sure.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Really?<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>What the fuck is this "really?" Should we leave it to the Trumpers and the hippies?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i think hoke here betrays a simple humility in the face of such an honorable task.<p-comment>
<p-comment>and i’d be careful lumping trumpers; my parents are not the sort you wish to reference, but they did vote for him, and will vote for him again. as parents, they could have done a lot worse. to ironically play on an abhorrent phrase of trump's: lots of good people out there gonna vote for him.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>wuck: they could have done a lot worse.<p-comment>
<p-comment>wuck: they could have done a lot better.<p-comment>
<p-comment>a third wuck: [rolls eyes]<p-comment>
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