The Case of Amos Avery Blodget

The doctor lowered his hand. "Oh, Mr. Blodget, you know very well what happens. What happens when God becomes man, through Christ, is that He is crucified. He is crucified on Golgotha. And He is crucified here as we speak—in you, in me, in Matthew, and in this tree."

"But I'm afraid I don't see that, doctor."

Dr. Uyterhoeven nodded. "Well, I'll grant it may not be as obvious a notion, or as popular, but I promise you, if you look directly, you will see—" He leaned forward on his elbow and held up his hand between them, as if to display it. "In order that we may live, that we may have this experience, the Infinite has clearly taken a very finite, very limited form, a form which places such a tight yoke on its infinitude that it apparently must expend its captive energy by scrolling it out, so to speak, through time." The doctor closed his hand. "Or we may choose to look at it the other way: that Eternity has entered the moment—it has done this for our sake—but that the moment places such constraint upon Eternity that it likewise must expend its captive energy by spilling off this vast expanse of space."

The doctor smiled. "Either way, the same obtains for everything you'll ever know of this life, Mr. Blodget, everything you can touch and taste and smell—everything you can confirm—casts an otherwise infinite and eternal being, God, into a very limited, very fleeting and fatal existence. But such is man, alas. Such is our lot. Such is your lot, Mr. Blodget, that you should only ever seem to be where these vast planes of time and space intersect, here and now. That intersection would seem to comprise your existence, I know. It would seem to sustain you and distinguish you, but it also literally crucifies what is divine in you. Understand that much: man crucifies his Lord. He cannot help it. It is his nature, for man is his Lord crucified, as is this day, as is the whole of this domain—an infinite and eternal being, wrested into a finite, momentary world and pinned there, to live and die, over and over again.

—Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden

Who's a boy? Who's a boy? You are. →

Good works are the fruit that bear the indication God has sown the seeds of grace. Do not mistake them for goodness itself, dog. Would a dog who has experienced unconditional election bark at my stairs for no reason for thirty minutes? There was nothing on the stairs. Why, then, did you bark? Were you fulfilling the commandment found in Lamentations 2:19, “Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord”? Because I do not believe that injunction applies to my stairs.

A message from Reformed theologian John Calvin to my dog Murphy, who I suspect is not a member of the elect

Say it soft, it's almost like prayin'

Iconography for my new religion is coming along nicely

We don't remember the farmer, we remember the fruit

The whole thing's great, but the money shot's at the end:

A hip hop act that name-checks Bubastis and Aslan and Ramsay Bolton. A band that's named for a semi-obscure joke from "Avatar: The Last Airbender". Yet manages to be not remotely about nerd service and stays true to its roots.

Not to mention they have some badass grooves. And recognize warp drive technology as a valid counterargument to nihilism.

Damn near every time kids or marginalized people get murdered and the usual "thoughts and prayers" do-nothing calliope starts its familiar tooting and wheezing, I recite the last verse of this song in my head as an antidote. Damn near every time.

Whether or not there is a voice willing to speak for us, it's a good thing we know how to yell.

I keep coming back to these guys. It's all worth a listen.