Hey man,

Heard you just won your first NBA championship in 53 years. Wow, that’s…that’s great. Yeah, no man, that’s awesome. Super good for you, yeah.

No no, we’re so happy for you. Handsome mayor and his hot artist wife. Freakin…universal preschool in the first year. Already on track for those grocery stores we 100% knew were going to flop immediately. Yeah no, it’s amazing, yeah.

Hey so listen, just some super quick questions for you before you go:

1. Super, super excited about Knicks in Five! Could you do us all a teensy weensy favor and stop spamming the group chat with basketball/fire/eggplant emojis? Thanks :)

2. Also, could you maybe turn down the volume on the Alicia Keys/Jay-Z hit “Empire State of Mind” between 10 pm and 8 am Eastern? DC is having enough trouble sleeping as it is.

3. And speaking of DC, do we need to tell you not to bring up the reflection pool in front of her? Extremely sore subject at the moment, so maybe just keep it in the other group chat without her in it.

4. And while you’re at it, can we tone it down just a skosh on the ticker-tape parade thing? It’s just that none of the rest of us get ticker tape parades. Which we kind of thought you knew? Hm.

5. Could you also maybe not mention the DSA sweep in front of L.A.? The Iranian World Cup team just left him a really sweet note, and after the whole Spencer Pratt thing…well, he needs a win, man.

6. And honestly, did you know you haven’t complimented Seattle for hand-carting all of her homeless people to Ballard so the Australians didn’t see anything untoward? Like it’s no big deal or anything, it just seems like you didn’t even notice.

7. Just making sure you got the $50 Venmo request from Indianapolis for last weekend? No biggie, just checking.

8. Sorry to bring this up again, but didn’t we talk about using the term “concrete jungle?” You know Chicago invented it. He’s getting really heated in the other group chat without you in it.

9. Philly just wants to know if you remember that he also has a basketball team? They’ve been to the finals more, is all. But like, great job!!!

10. Have you been hearing those bagpipes? Yeah, those are from Boston, who told us to say “fahk you.” Also, they’re saying Scotland agrees with them now, so maybe look into that?

11. Actually, could you do $60 on that Indianapolis Venmo? Thanks.

12. Could you maybe reach out to Oklahoma City? He told Detroit to tell Denver to tell the rest of us that he’s still not speaking to us, and especially not San Francisco. A word from you might go a long way. <3

13. Not to be rude, but could you please, please stop flirting with Miami? She’s the hottest of all of us and it’s literally not fair.

14. Like would it be soooo onerous to save some for the rest of us? What, now the budget is balanced and the potholes are fixed? You can’t have everything. FFS.

15. Can Indianapolis borrow $20?

—All the other American cities

P.S. Other American Cities are welcome to drop any additional questions below

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For reasons I fear none of you will like, I have never wanted children.

And I beg you to pause whatever you are already writing in the comments section. Pause to consider that I already know. I have already considered it.

I am in my mid-thirties. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. I’ve looked through all the angles. It’s settled.

Because long before I was in my mid-thirties, I was twenty, and fifteen, and twelve, and nine.

And at each of these ages, I felt the same. Children were not for me. There was no desire there. There was even, dare I say it, an aversion. For a lot of reasons.

And one of those reasons was that I had noticed a pattern.

Pattern recognition

Nine, in my world, is about the age when you start going to baby showers with any sort of sentience about what the whole process is about.

My parents (who I’m learning each day were more progressive than I gave them credit for) gave me the sex talk when I was seven or eight, which meant I now went to baby showers with the sense that I was in on the big, gross secret.

Thus relieved of my rose-colored glasses, nine-year-old me also began to pay attention to all the grown-up conversations people have at baby showers.

Have you ever been privy to these? In case you haven’t, I’ll enlighten you:

At baby showers, anyone who has ever given birth likes to tell the mother-to-be about what it’s like.

And what it’s like, apparently, is horrific.

At nine, I was hearing about 4th-degree tears, about emergency c-sections gone wrong, about shoulders getting stuck under pelvic bones such that a nurse had to push the baby back into the birth canal (“up to her elbow!!”)

Oh, you didn’t want to hear about this stuff today? NEITHER DID I.

But the pattern I noticed was that these women told each other the details of their terrifying experiences while chuckling. The details, to me, sounded like horror stories, but the tone was that of a funny anecdote.

And crucially, they always ended with a return to smiling, light-hearted laughter and a bracing statement: “but! It all worked out. I’m sure it’ll be fine for you, and you’ll forget all about it when baby is here.”

Even at nine, I remember thinking, “But you didn’t forget all about it.”

They were still talking about it with warning at every baby shower. Some of them carried it with them for decades.

Suspicion

The thing about patterns is that once you notice one, you can’t stop noticing it.

By twelve, I couldn’t escape those terrifying baby-shower conversations whenever a newlywed became pregnant (because I was Southern Baptist in the early 2000s, this was usually a) pretty quickly after marriage and b) pretty young.) And what’s more, I was starting to notice it in other places too: places like the books, movies, tv shows that were created for people in my age group.

Think for a minute about just how many otherwise family-fluff films and sitcoms include a harrowing birth episode. I’ll spoil it for you: it’s all of them.

Media that otherwise has zero medical, birth, or even dramatic scenes can ALWAYS count on a boost in their ratings by premiering a very special episode where a kooky character has a terrifying birth experience.

Media that generally is pretty dramatic makes sure that its birth scenes really crank up the trauma factor. The infamous at-home c-section scene from Grey’s Anatomy comes to mind.

Think of how few of these scenes include epidurals, soft lighting, or any of the other modern comforts of childbirth. Have you ever seen even one? I can’t find any examples.

No, it’s always “too late! No time for an epidural! We must deliver this baby NOW in this taxi cab/elevator/basement/ferris wheel!”

By twelve, I’d been informed that pain relief was very common, and most women labored quietly. So why did all of these lighthearted shows include episode-long montages of women screaming, scary tools, and, of course, intermittent laughter tracks?

The only, and I mean ONLY, acknowledgement I’ve been able to find of this phenomenon is from the show “Dickinson” in which Jane Krakowski finally put into words what I’d been noticing for years:

Twelve-year-old me wasn’t able to articulate this idea yet, but she was able to question: why did the tone, the lighting, the joking seem to imply that the screaming and fear and dire stakes were…funny?

No one seemed to see this pattern but me, but I saw it everywhere I looked. And without meaning to, all that pattern recognition knitted together to form in my mind the first hints of a suspicion:

People like this.

Well, they must like it, right? Or they wouldn’t keep putting it on TV! And there was something specifically about women here — because although TV did have plenty of male scenes of pain and torture and screaming, none of them were “very special episodes.” None of them was a source of delight, underscored with laughing tracks in the way these childbirth episodes were.

Suspicion Again

Twelve was also the year I officially hit puberty, and not coincidentally at all, the year I did “True Love Waits.”

Purity culture and the way it intentionally or unintentionally stunted a generation of evangelicals has been dissected ad nauseam, so I won’t rehash it here. Of all of the ongoing conversations about its far-reaching effects, my favorite is facilitated by , who uses real, peer-reviewed data to pinpoint why the messages were so damaging and offers better alternatives.

Because I was in the Pacific Northwest (where churches are smaller, fewer, and bereft of much budget), I made it through my time in True Love Waits without the extreme version that included purity balls and pledges to my father.

But I didn’t make it through entirely unscathed. And at the same time I was beginning to suspect that women’s pain was everywhere because it was in demand, I was explicitly taught that women’s pleasure was to be kept secret.

“Orgasm” was a word I learned from TV, not from any of the considerable number of True Love Waits conversations I had (obviously, I was quickly admonished to turn that show off). Masturbation did not come up, even once. All sexual activity outside of marriage is a perversion of God’s design—the purpose of which is to “be fruitful and multiply.”

All that to say, the fun part of the process was never discussed at baby showers.

And all the while, that suspicion in me grew stronger, no matter how much I tried to close my eyes to the pattern:

Pleasure = Secret. Bad. Sinful.

Pain = Normal. Funny. Up for discussion.

Validation

The curse of pattern recognition is that sometimes other people don’t have it.

In fact, you can actually be staring right at the same pattern as the person next to you, and they’ll still turn to you and say, “What are you talking about? There is no pattern here.”

This is, of course, the way every single person has reacted when I’ve shared with them my suspicion that we, as a society, love the idea of women in pain.

I get very strange glances. More than one implication that I’m a little crazy. I admit, it’s absolutely my least popular take (well, except for my take that only women should be allowed to be youth pastors, but WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THAT RIGHT NOW.)

And yet, what else could I conclude as I entered my teens and twenties, surrounded by women of every age who were constantly, constantly in some kind of pain?

Being a young female is like a real-life montage of Fleabag’s “women have pain built in” monologue. A parade of soreness, agony, and depression generally written off as hysterics—or worse, celebrated because “that’s what we do for our children, mama!”

Throughout my twenties, I saw my mother’s autoimmune disease brushed off by numerous medical professionals, learned that every woman in my large extended family had undergone a hysterectomy, bonded with my friends over the amount of time we spent doubled over a heating pad, and started to hear the “naturopathic” discourse that I now know as an alt-right pipeline:

“Well, isn’t that what our body is supposed to do?”

My own experiences, as it turns out, are echoed in the larger data. To this day, women are disproportionately more likely to suffer from chronic pain conditions, and between 30%-50% report that their pain is regularly dismissed by medical professionals.

Women also endure 29% longer wait times in emergency rooms, are less likely to receive adequate pain management, and experience more delays in diagnoses — especially when it comes to gynecological conditions. Many note that their pain associated with these conditions was “accepted as a natural aspect of being a woman and thus did not deserve medical attention.”

The problem only compounds for Black women, who face additional well-documented disparities in care for their pain (especially gynecological), and a maternal mortality rate three times the average for America, which is already high. As recently as 2016, studies showed that a significant number of medical professionals believed Black people don’t feel pain the same way white people do.

Getting my own IUD, which eliminated my miserable, 14-day period symptoms, was nothing short of miraculous. At my very first gynecologist consult to get one at age 29, I wept so uncontrollably throughout the appointment that the doctor handed me a full bottle of Wellbutrin right there on the examination table.

And yet, there was pushback among my friends from church. “But aren’t you worried about what it will do to your body? Don’t you think it would be better to deal with it naturally?”

The discomfort I’d endured for half of each month wasn’t something that needed fixing for these women — plus, wouldn’t the IUD give me a license to sexually sin?

Pleasure = bad. Pain = good.

Pain is what we’re made to do.

The most damning example of this is, of course, the horrific case of Adriana Smith in Georgia last year. Turned away from the hospital for what she knew was an emergency, Smith died a mere nine weeks pregnant.

But her body was kept on machines to incubate the 9-week-along unborn baby, despite the protests of her family. When Smith’s body was too decayed to go on, they removed the baby from her uterus in what some people insist on calling a “c-section birth.” He left the NICU more than a year later, and is still on oxygen to this day.

This part of the story was announced to me with joy. The baby was saved! Isn’t this what any mother would have wanted? Isn’t there nothing better a mother could do with her life?

Of course, I am happy that a baby is alive. But I am unable to celebrate as I think about Adriana Smith’s own mother, watching her daughter’s body deteriorate as people praised God for her sacrifice.

To be a mother, it seems, is to sacrifice one’s body, to have pain that is dismissed, and to shift from being a person to a vehicle for someone else.

Adriana Smith’s body was used as a thing, a utensil, a means to an end. And still, all that suffering was in service of this duty as a mother — a cause for celebration.

They love the pain.

Expansion

So I’ll come right out and say it:

I have noticed an underlying belief in the evangelical world that says women should be in pain.

I suspect that somewhere, so deep in our moral foundation that we cannot recognize it, many of us think of women’s suffering not just as “the way things are,” but as an actual moral imperative.

We think pain is the job of a woman. The ultimate performance of Biblical Womanhood.

If I had to guess, I’d say this comes from some bastardized interpretation of Genesis 3, wherein god tells Eve that because sin has ruined the world, childbirth will be painful. There’s a habit among evangelicals to finish that sentence with “…and that’s how it’s always going to be, so deal with it!”

The fact that this is pretty much the opposite of the actual ending of the passage is neither here nor there. To the rapidly growing far right (increasingly divorced from any Biblical foundation), women are “people who people come out of,” and they will have pain. It is what they do.

Women’s pain is good, and sometimes even funny or entertaining, because it reinforces the correct view about The Way Things Are.

Conclusion

Why am I telling you this?

Last year, the president’s administration announced that they think there’s a link between Tylenol during pregnancy and autism, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

Tylenol is one of the only pain management methods approved for pregnant women.

At this moment, litigation continues in the Supreme Court about banning the early-stage abortion drug Mifepristone. A South Carolina bill is already on the table that would effectively cut access to Plan B and IUDs.

The goalposts of allowable women’s health measures are moving rapidly, and I am telling you all of these uncomfortable details about my super weird pattern recognition issues to warn you:

I have a horrible feeling epidurals are next.

Listen, I know how it sounds. But look at the last few years and tell me you don’t see the pattern.

Look at the rise of anti-birth control rhetoric and its marked correlation to the rise of the home birth — both championed disproportionately in America by the evangelical right.

Look at the propensity of white evangelical women for self-martyrdom, their rising distrust of institutions, science, and facts in general.

Look at the immediate goalpost movement from Roe’s overturning to arrests for miscarriages. Look how quickly birth control came up on the chopping block.

Look at the MAHA-led demonization of Tylenol, despite the uproar of the medical community.

Look at the American right’s constant, bewildering moaning about the declining birth rate.

The very same pattern I noticed in my life is now playing out on the national stage: these people, on some fundamental level, believe women are supposed to be in pain, and they will use legislation to keep us there.

Yes, it’s almost certainly true that many of these movements are economic in origin: people are reacting to skyrocketing insurance costs, inflation, and stagnant wages. But I’m arguing that these movements are bolstered, strengthened, held aloft by this too-deep-to-recognize belief that women are meant for suffering.

And there is historical precedent here. Until the development of modern anesthesia, pain especially in childbirth was nearly always assigned religious meaning. When modern pain relief first became available in the 1870s, it was the Calvinists who strongly objected to its use — using the very same “women must suffer” interpretation of Genesis 3 I mention here. It took Queen Victoria’s own use override its stigma in popular culture.

These same beliefs are now much more than a fringe evangelical sect from my strange little subculture. They are becoming entrenched in the government and pushing into the American mainstream through media, propaganda, legislation.

I’ll remind you that Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of War, is famous member of that same church that made the “people who people come out of” comment. I’ll remind you that both are staunchly Calvinist. And of course, I’ll remind you that RFK Jr., current Secretary of Health, has already cast doubt on the #1 pain management method in pregnancy.

I’m here to tell you that the random anti-Tylenol takes, the abandonment of contraception, the sharp increase in maternal mortality are not big mysteries to those of us who grew up evangelical.

They are not about protecting babies, making healthcare more natural, or sticking it to Big Pharma.

No, they are each an inevitable outcome of the deep-seated, far-right theology now breaking into the mainstream — a theology that hates women’s pleasure and loves women’s pain, and always has.

Application

This is not an idea you can bring up, say, at the dinner table or coffee shop or really any social setting I’ve found. People really do not like this idea or its implications.

I don’t really like it either, if I’m honest. In fact, I really, really hope I’m wrong about this.

I hope epidurals are not the next trusted, foundational piece of medicine forced onto the chopping block (after birth control, of course, which is already there.)

I hope I’m wrong, and this weird conclusion is just me projecting my frustrations with my niche upbringing onto society at large.

But I don’t think I am. I think we’ve seen enough of the Heritage Foundation’s influence to know that they are enacting their pro-natalist will in full force — one that has not heretofore prioritized women’s wellbeing at any point.

I think it’s obvious that anti-epidural rhetoric has been a staple of crunchy mom internet forums for years. I think it’s even more obvious that the crunchy moms’ favorite administration holds a majority in all three branches of the U.S. government.

And if I am not wrong, if I’m tragically just too early, I think this means we need to be very, very intentional in the way we speak about women’s bodies right now.

Just as the pattern I saw as a child started in conversations, then expanded to media, then found grounding in statistics, so too will its antidote.

In our conversations, fellow Christian women, women’s pain should not be funny. Relief from pain should not be cheating. Pleasure should not be shameful.

Among us, Christian women, our bodies are not machines. We are not things. Our bodies are good. Given to us. Made holy in Christ.

We must not react to our friend’s harrowing stories about bone-cracking contractions and failed anesthesia with laughter. We must not tell her that her pain isn’t worth looking into. We must not dismiss her when she is afraid.

And critically, we must examine this belief we have that about the grand ideal of constant self-sacrifice. Is suffering, in fact, “just what mamas do?” Is your suffering actually noble if you have no other choice?

If it turns out I am wrong about this, that far-righters somehow do see the personhood of their women, that Republicans do lose their appetite for legislating reproduction as soon as birth control is out of the way, you are all free to tell me I was being dramatic. I hope I am.

But just in case I am right, take a moment to examine the way we talk about women today: our bodies, our humanity, and our pain. Maybe you will begin to see the ways we can alleviate suffering in a million small conversations.

Maybe, like me, you will see something you can’t unsee.

And now, for those of you supporting me so faithfully (thank you!)

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To our brother in arms, upon the occasion of his crowning as the world’s first man worth $1,000,000,000,000, or $1000 billion — a number which, when converted into seconds, spans 317 centuries.

We, your brothers among the world’s most enlightened, heroic, and genetically pure, offer you our sincerest and most enthusiastic congratulations on your achievement, for which we know from your constant barrage of tweets that you’ve worked very hard for.

We are so looking forward to the many ways in which we will partner together for the world’s advancement, including but not limited to: retiring to a colony on Mars, introducing private equity into 401(k)s, and achieving trans-humanism in our lifetime.

In pursuit of that mission, the committee requires clarification on just 15 of the following points:

1. We trust you received our congratulatory gift of the small island nation last week. When may we expect its renaming to “X,” and how many of the locals will you be keeping? Do let us know, as we’d hate to waste them.

2. When can we expect you to pick up your bespoke human skin jacket from April’s Poor People Hunt? We know Jeff pitched a bit of a fit, but you won it fair and square.

3. Can we assume all is forgiven for any cross words exchanged at the St. Barths Ketamine poker night? We’ve changed our minds and agree “I am become meme” was uproariously funny both then and now.

4. A small procedural note: per the bylaws, achieving trillionaire status does entitle you to one (1) pardon from the Committee for any crimes committed prior to or after your ascension. Please submit your selected crime in writing, as we understand the list may be considerable.

5. Have you visited Peter’s South American HQ? We can attest the decor is divine — and completely impregnable by both Molotov cocktails and the screams of the damned. Might you be interested in a timeshare?

6. Can we expect you at our upcoming Father’s Day banquet? We so apologize for our gaffe last year — this time, the menu will include real fathers.

7. When may we expect an update on the self-cloning project? Though we wish to advance the cause of perfecting the human bloodline, many of us prefer our favorite personal pastime to touching a woman.

8. Speaking of those, might you be willing to forward the contact information of any of your concubines surrogates to Larry? One of his own recently tweeted that he was “creepy,” and it’s really destroyed his confidence. It’s tough to see him like this.

9. Should we be concerned that the Vatican has not sought our approval before publishing its latest encyclical? We are obviously not concerned. We simply want to know if you are.

10. At what point in your journey did you realize no one would ever answer you honestly again? Several of us worry that we are approaching the line, and we would like to schedule the despair around ski season.

11. Per your recent request, we would be delighted to oblige you in changing your place card at the next Bohemian Grove — would you prefer “God-King” with or without a hyphen?

12. When can we expect your selection of children to be sacrificed before the Lizard God at the Grove this year? We have an especially fine crop this year despite our previous supply chain disruptions around Little St. James.

13. Have we considered sacrificing Peter to the Lizard God? Just a thought.

14. Did you see it, brother? Did the lights of Valhalla open unto you? Have the delights of a thousand virgins melded into your being? Have you reached enlightenment? Have you finally, after all of our striving, supped upon the succulent wine of immortality? Have you dampened the screaming silence of the unfillable hole at the core of you?

15. Does it help? Any of it? At all?

—Exuberantly,

A humble committee of lowly billionaires.

P.S. Please note that the committee has voted 7-4 to formally request you stop referring to the rest of us as "my little guys." The four dissenters have asked to remain anonymous for reasons that should be obvious.

To the brothers and sisters who have voted their conscience on the Truth & Unity Amendment, the third attempt to ban women from pastoral leadership, this time in both office and function:

We, your sisters in Christ and fellow members of the Southern Baptist Convention, accept your conviction that both the office and function of pastor was designed and ordained only for men.

In the spirit of truth and unity, we request clarity on just 15 of the following issues, so that we may continue to work for the advancement of the gospel in the correct order of God’s design for us:

1. Where can we drop off the lesson outlines for this Sunday’s children’s church? A reminder that both crackers and juice need refilling, and little Timmy is gluten-free.

2. Similarly, who will be filling in for the now-disfellowshipped preacher at the upcoming women’s luncheon? The topic is “Jesus and the bleeding woman: faith after miscarriage.” Please send your most knowledgeable male pastor on this subject.

3. How much did it cost for the most recent increase in your wife’s Lexapro prescription?

4. Will Medi-Share be releasing group discounts for Lexapro prescriptions for the rest of the wives?

5. Will the investigation into megachurch pastors’ wives with Instagram devotionals, podcast appearances, and co-authored marriage books begin before or after the annual meeting? We have a list.

6. Where in the parking lot should we be burning all of our Beth Moore material? Please answer quickly, as they are all currently in a wheelbarrow in front of the fellowship hall, and we fear this may be mistaken for endorsing them and want to avoid the appearance of evil.

7. Also, should the proceeds from these books be tithed back to the church, or simply burned with the inventory? Please advise.

8. At what point in next year’s annual meeting will we be retroactively disfellowshipping Lottie Moon? Has anyone considered renaming it “The Dr. Albert Mohler Christmas Offering?”

9. When will the new SBC translation be officially changing “Priscilla” to “Priscillus,” and when can we expect a formal correction to Apostle Paul’s notes?

10. Instead of a third worship session at the annual meeting, might we spend that time next year burning Beth Allison Barr in effigy? We have a petition whose signatures we are happy to provide.

11. Since we know pastors’ wives are especially drawn to acting in the function of a pastor, would it not be more efficient to encourage the hiring of unmarried pastors? We have recently come across a wonderful piece of church history called “The Second Lateran Council of 1139 A.D.” that we are eager to discuss.

12. When may our sisters on the mission field expect their SBC-appointed examiner to assess their functions in their house churches? Will the SBC be paying for their tickets home, post-disfellowship?

13. Similarly, many of our sisters in rural areas are run by bi-vocational pastors who can only be present at service twice per month, while the wife handles the rest. Might we receive a flow chart about which one is the pastor and what we should do about it, to keep on our refrigerators?

14. As we scour our church library for any scriptural interpretation written by women, should we include Growing in Gratitude by Mary Mohler? We’re pretty sure there’s Bible teaching in there, but we are not sure this counts.

15. At what point do you think you’ll be able to look us in the eye again?

—Warmly,

A humble committee of your SBC sisters.

P.S. Other sisters of the SBC are invited to leave any additional questions below.

(”Fridge cigarette” is the Gen Z term for “Diet Coke,” and I think it’s the funniest thing that’s happened in about 15 entire years. But we don’t have time for that right now.)

The Pickme Girl is important. She abides.

She existed long before Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, and the Boomers before them.

Actually, in every rise and fall of every empire in history, there has been the Pickme Girl. And she has played an important, terrible role in each.

The origin of the phrase "Pickme Girl" is technically adapted from the famous Grey's Anatomy speech wherein Dr. Meredith Grey begs Dr. Whatever-His-Name-Is to leave his wife for her.

Much like Dr. Grey in this scene, the Pickme Girl, defined, is a woman who is willing to hurt another woman for the sake of a man (or, more broadly, male validation in general).

I think “Pickme Girl” is an excellent name for her. She has had many names and many faces, and part of her allure is that she shape-shifts depending on which community she’s in.

Sometimes she is the Cool Girl, as immortalized in the stunning opening monologue of Gone Girl, who hides her desperation for male attention under a constant façade of “chillness.”

She might also be the Becky, as immortalized in the stunning opening monologue of the Sir Mix-A-Lot classic “I Like Big Butts” — the young, white woman who puts down Black women for attention from men

But the one I encounter most often (the one with whom I have particular beef) is the young, white Evangelical Christian Pickme Girl.

I call her Becca, borrowing from this absolutely fabulous breakdown of the different types of Beckys from 2017. (Author: , doing brilliant work.)

And Becca is having quite a moment right now.

How to recognize a Becca

I am seeing Becca everywhere I look these days: on the news, on my feed, with alarming frequency in my own in-person circles. She is, I believe, one of the most dangerous weapons of the far-right Christofascist movement, just as Pickme Girls have always been some of the most dangerous weapons of authoritarian regimes.

The most famous fascists of the 20th century loved their Pickmes. You may have heard it said that Nazi women “carried water” for the Third Reich.

What that means is that, while women may not have been the ones stomping around in jackboots, wearing tiny mustaches, or acting as the ultimate face of the regime, they performed the less explicit, essential duties that made the regime possible. They did the dirty work.

Nazi women helped legitimize the movement, soften its hard edges. They provided not only children, sex, and labor, but also the social currency the male leaders needed to draw in more young recruits. (See how beautiful and happy and agreeable our women are? Aren’t they so much better than those other women? We must be doing something right!)

And this isn’t me reading between any lines; this was explicitly done in every case of 20th-century fascism. The 1994 Rwandan Hutu regime famously created propaganda extolling the beauty and grace of Hutu women compared to Tutsis in the months leading up to the genocide. So too did the Portuguese government under the Salazar dictatorship and their neighbors in Francoist Spain.

Goebbels, famously, was specifically obsessed with the role of women in the Nazi vision of the future: as wives, mothers, and quintessential Aryan keepers of the home. In both cases, the women were happy to betray their own, so that they could climb higher in the ranks of the regime that promised them a future.

And today, as the powerful American right lurches further down the same road, the women of the movement are doing exactly the same thing. With Becca.

Becca’s particular flavor of Pickme can be hard to spot at first. But I’ll tell you from experience that once you see her, she’s hard to unsee.

Here is how to spot her:

1. Becca is sweet.

And I mean sweet. Becca has mastered the art of the gentle countenance. She never raises her voice. She never seems angry, and when she does, it feels really, really weird.

Becca’s sweetness is her shield, just as it is her weapon. It gives her the ability to pretend she’s harmless. It makes you doubt your own reaction — surely someone this nice couldn’t be saying something that bad? It makes you the problem if you push back, because look how kind she’s being, and look how aggressive you’re being in response.

What happens when Becca’s sweetness is refused?

Inevitably: tears.

Giant, often real tears that ask, how could you talk to me like that?

Any damage Becca was doing before becomes moot. Her sweetness protects her.

2. Becca is pure.

Yes, this always includes sexual purity, but it’s also more than that — a kind of aspirational moral cleanliness that she performs constantly.

Becca knows the script (she is never dumb. Dumb Beccas are not useful). She is extremely careful with her language, and even more careful with her tone.

She has memorized the party line, and she delivers it perfectly: softly, and with a smile, even and especially when it is terrible.

Becca’s purity, like all purity, is relative. It only exists in contrast to someone else’s impurity. That’s because authoritarian politics is always about hierarchy, and Becca has learned to climb that hierarchy by stepping on other women on the way up.

Her “not-like-other-girls-ness” is her currency. With it, she purchases power. The purer she appears, the more valuable she is to the men running the show, the more influence she has, the more she gets to be one of the “good ones.” The exception among all the other “women these days.” The woman they trust.

Why else do you think all the far-right women share the same face?

It’s not about looking good. It’s about signaling that they’re part of the in-group. They’re ideologically pure. They’re the ones you, as the man in power, can and should pick to carry out your plans.

The reason Becca can so sweetly condone (and even advocate for) abject cruelty is that she really believes in her own purity. If those other women would only act as purely as she does — if they were only as sweet, as put-together, as beautiful, as holy, as submissive — maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Which leads us to our biggest Becca tell.

3. Becca is sure that she will be saved.

This is perhaps the most defining characteristic of all: Becca has absolute confidence in her own safety.

She really believes that her choices — her submission, her sweetness, her purity, her loyalty to the system — have secured her a reward. She has made a deal, and she believes that deal will be honored.

Becca has decided that her best chance at safety, security, and salvation (both earthly and eternal) lies in perfect compliance with the version of Christianity she has swallowed (I call that version of Christianity “Jesus Points.” More on that here.)

She has decided that the women who resist, who question, who push back — they are the ones in danger. They are the ones who will be punished, excluded, left behind. And they’ll deserve it.

But not Becca. Becca has done everything right.

Becca’s certainty makes her particularly effective as an enforcer. She genuinely believes she is helping when she lambasts a murdered woman, happily reports that she “doesn’t need the right to vote,” or calls others to stop with all the empathy. She sees herself as pulling them to safety, not pushing them under.

It’s her God-given role, after all. And what are you going to do? Question God?

But Becca’s certainty also makes her vulnerable in a specific way: she cannot afford to look at evidence that her deal might not be honored. She cannot afford to notice when men in her community abuse their power, because that would mean the power structure she’s pledged allegiance to is rotten.

So she doesn’t see it. She can’t.

Becca’s psychological survival depends on maintaining the certainty of her salvation, and so she will ignore any evidence to the contrary.

And her certainty is contagious. She makes it sound so simple: just follow the rules, and you’ll be fine! Just submit and stay pure, and you’ll be protected!

And if you can’t…well then, you deserve what you get, don’t you?

Becca believes that the system devours women who deserve to be devoured.

Which is what makes it all the more tragic when, inevitably, Becca encounters the one truth about Pickme Girls that outlasts them all:

Becca is Never Safe.

Unfortunately for Becca, this is the one ultimate, enduring commonality of every Pickme in every story:

Eventually, she will be devoured, too.

And no amount of good behavior will be enough to save her. The system Becca is propping up doesn’t actually value her. It values her usefulness. And usefulness, under patriarchy, always has an expiration date.

Becca will always, always, always start believing too much in her own power. Or step out of line. Or mouth off to the wrong man. Or ask too many questions about Israel. If nothing else, she will get too old.

And when she does, the other Pickmes will swarm upon her like gnats on a 12-day-old kiwi fruit, tearing at her with the exact playbook she’s been using to tear down other women. Using, in many cases, the exact same words.

The deal Becca thinks she’s made — compliance in exchange for protection — has never been honored in the history of the world. Not once. The men at the top don’t see a difference between her and those women. It’s all the same to them.

What Becca has really purchased, instead of safety, is the feeling of safety. And the price of that illusion is other women’s freedom, other women’s bodies, other women’s lives.

So Becca, in the end, is doomed to become the women she spits on, except a little bit worse: she will not have her integrity to comfort her.

She’s Pickme-d Too Close to the Sun

Tell me you don’t see it, even now.

Tell me you haven’t noticed that the only members of the bumbling Presidential cabinet who’ve faced any consequences are the women?

Not Patel, the one caught spending taxpayer money to fly his definitely-not-a-Mossad-agent-girlfriend around on a private jet. Not Hegseth, who I’ll remind you literally texted secret war plans to the liberal media.

These men were never going to be the first to go, despite making more obvious, more illegal blunders. It was always going to be the women first because, in addition to being incompetent, the women have committed the sin of stepping out of their Becca boxes.

They’ve stopped making the regime look good. Outlived their usefulness.

And so our current Becca crop is about to be replaced with younger, shinier Beccas, just as their predecessors, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Sara Palin were before them.

Oh yes, remember them?

It was only about 6 years ago that we saw our last crop of Pickmes moving through the cycle.

Remember Kellyanne Conway literally sitting at Trump’s feet in the White House?

You don’t hear much about Kellyanne these days, do you?

You don’t hear much about any of them, because they’ve all been discarded — the final step in the most predictable pattern of all time.

Before Kellyanne, there was Ann Coulter. And before Ann, there was Phyllis Schlafly. And before Phyllis, there was Magda Goebbels, and so on, and so on, and so on, back to the beginning of Pickme history. A tale as old as time.

Becca Beware

I confess that I have been bit of a Becca in my lifetime. We all have, in one way or another.

If you’ll forgive me for the buzzwordiness, it’s an inevitable consequence of being born under patriarchy. You’re promised (through culture, media, religion, etc) that if you simply follow the rules, cater to the ones in charge, and be sweet, feminine, or pretty enough, you’ll be special. You’ll be rewarded. I certainly thought I would be.

But I found out, like all Beccas eventually do, that this isn’t true — and that all the time and effort I’d spent believing the lie generated a whole lot of benefit for the people who put it in place.

This inevitable reckoning is an unpleasant experience. But the sooner you have it, the better.

What I see around me now, even as America’s most prominent Pickmes begin their prescribed downward spiral, is a new crop of Beccas springing into action — as sweet, pure, and certain as ever.

What I feel, when I look at them, is pity. They think they are here because of their purity of heart, the overwhelming strength of their belief.

But they, like their foremothers, have really only been put here to be used. To say things the men can’t say. To make submission look like empowerment, and erasure sound like noble self-sacrifice.

They do not realize that they themselves will be erased, and no amount of their self-sacrifice will stop that.

But the other thing I feel when I see Beccas in my comment sections, on my TV screen, or around my dinner table, is anger.

I am angry at these Beccas. I’d like to tell them so.

Becca is a victim, yes. But she is also a particularly dangerous perpetrator. The regime doesn’t exist without her.

Which is why it is my duty to bring her existence to your attention.

I have been Becca. I speak Becca’s language. And I now have very little patience for the particular kind of bullshit she’s peddling. I am not afraid of her tears.

But I am, ultimately, for Becca. I want her to escape the ideological prison she’s helping to build. And between me and the regime, only one of us will still be there for her at the end of her shelf life.

That’s the last thing about Beccas you need to know: when they fall, the ones who catch them are often the exact women they spent years disparaging.

Each of us being at different milestones in our Pickme sobriety journey, we former Pickmes are capable of surprising compassion for the ones who’ve kept us down for so long.

The call for Becca is to open her eyes. Stop betraying herself (and the rest of us) for the lie. Repent, and use all that sweetness to work the other way.

The call for the rest of us is to name Becca whenever we see her.

It’s a pretty easy call.

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Sister Mary Ignatius visits me most mornings in the garden, looking nothing at all like she did on the day she died.

I remember so vividly her face that day, beneath all the tubes and the tape, so unlike herself in the gauntness of her disease’s final days. It had eaten away at her rapidly in those last weeks — all the jolly plumpness of her cheeks gone, her sparkling eyes hollowed out until she looked alien and frightening — a strange, yellowed skeleton there where she had once been.

We sat huddled in the stark whiteness of the hospital, silent as we listened to the constant beep of the machines, each thumbing through our rosary beads with varying rates of ferocity, as we had done a thousand times before.

I confess that I wept as I thumbed through my rosary, slower than most of the others. I confess that my prayers were not wholly excellent.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

Please ask the Father to bring Sister Ig back.

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Or please ask Him to take her away more quickly.

When the beeping finally stopped, and it was quiet in the room, I confess with horror that what I felt first was relief. To this day, I feel the weight of the guilt around my collarbones.

But when Sister Ig visits me in the garden, her cheeks are plump and her eyes are mischievous. She is younger than she was when I knew her, with none of the lines about her forehead, not a single white wire among the mass of black hair. She sits with me as I weed the flower beds. She makes comments about the room. She laughs her raucous, babbling laugh.

Today she is laughing because a small garden snake, frightened from the bottom of an azalea bush, has slithered across my toes and made me topple back, screaming. I’m so put out that it takes me a moment to laugh with her.

“That little snake wasn’t going to hurt you!” Sister Ig cries between giggles, “He’s more scared of you than you are of him.”

“I beg to differ,” I grumble, hobbling to my feet and patting the dirt off my bottom. “I’m pretty scared of him.”

“Who are you talking to?”

This question does not come from Sister Ignatius, but from an unfamiliar female voice behind us.

I turn casually to see her: professional and dark in a camel blazer and canvas tote bag, with curly chestnut hair falling into her eyes. Young but exhausted-looking, her expression is confused. Apprehensive.

We do not get many visitors, and I confess I wasn’t much in the mood to chat. I turn back and continue patting off the dirt.

“Just keeping the ghosts company,” I say.

The visitor eyes the mosaic on the fountain across from us. Christ Encounters the Demoniac. “You believe in ghosts?” she asks, an eyebrow arching just a touch.

I wink at Sister Ig, who is giggling, and decide I must indeed have a conversation with this stranger. “I believe in hedging my bets,” I say, stifling a grin. I turn fully to face the visitor. “How can I help you?”

“I’m hoping to find someone who can help me identify this.” She pulls from her canvas tote bag a small parcel wrapped in ancient-looking newspaper.

She unwraps the parcel noisily, a few flakes of newspaper falling to the garden’s tiled floor. I will have to sweep that later, but I put it out of my mind.

When it’s mostly unwrapped, she tips the parcel to me to reveal a small, old book bound in greenish-brown leather. A pink rosary peeks out of its pages, acting as a bookmark.

I freeze.

I am suddenly miles away from this garden. A decade and a half younger. I am looking at this greenish-brown leather book and putting the rosary bookmark between the pages of Psalm 58.

Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord.

Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.

As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

In my memory, my hands are shaking as I place the rosary, close the psalter, wrap it in the newspaper that isn’t ancient, but fresh from my doorstep just this morning. I know, somehow, that Sister Ig can see me here in this memory too.

I come back to myself quickly. Here I am in the garden, next to the fountain and the mosaic of Christ and the demoniac. Sister Ig, no longer giggling, approaches my left shoulder. The greenish-brown psalter is old and unassuming in this stranger’s hands.

I take a moment to really look at the stranger. Her curls are untidy, but not as wild as Sister Ig’s, cropped sensibly to her chin. She is tall and lithe, and has the look of someone who, until recently, wore large glasses. She doesn’t look like me at all.

The stranger squints against the sun, but her expression remains open. There is no triumph or “gotcha” in her eyes as she shows me the book. She has not brought it to me as some sort of test.

“It’s a book of the Psalms,” I say to her. “a psalter. Probably of little value, unless it’s sentimental to you. Did it belong to a family member?”

“No,” she says. Something heavy has removed itself from my chest. “But I need some help finding its owner. It’s important.”

In the corner of my vision, I can see Sister Ingatius step up beside me. She is not laughing now. Not smiling. Neither am I.

“I think,” I say to the young woman, “you should come have some coffee.”

“Two sugars,” says Sister Ig.

“Two sugars,” the stranger says, too.

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A very fun fact about me is that I am a human woman. This has caused all kinds of problems for both myself and other people.

This is especially true, it seems, because I am a human woman who was born and raised in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest and most powerful Protestant denomination in the United States.

The SBC will be the first to tell you that they absolutely do not have a problem with women, per se. Per popular Southern Baptist theology and the many men who represent it, women are made by God and are allegedly the spiritual equals of their male counterparts.

There are millions of women within SBC ranks — over 6 million if recent numbers are correct. Their two most prominent ministry offerings (Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon) were named after powerful, beloved, unmarried women leaders.

The SBC has produced plenty of strong, smart, capable females who really do love Jesus and want to do good in the world, including Beth Moore, Beth Allison Barr, my mother, my sister, and me.

But the SBC definitely has some kind of problem with something about women, because their leadership absolutely cannot stop complaining about us for even one single second.

Women are the subject of SBC podcasts, sermons, Bible studies, and annual resolutions.

This June will mark the third (yes, third) attempt to ban women from pastoral leadership by rewriting the denomination’s constitution — a decision so big it requires a two-thirds majority vote from all 46,000 member churches, two years in a row.

This year, the resolution that would force this to a vote is coming from one Dr. Albert Mohler, and it’s receiving a lot of attention.

Al Mohler

To the evangelical world, Al Mohler is a name that commands a lot of respect. He’s seen as a pillar of leadership, a successful champion of biblical literacy that stemmed the tide of liberal theology in the 1980s, and the president of Southern Theological Seminary.

To me, Al Mohler is a man I once met in a church in Nashville whose wife very much expected me to recognize her last name.

I did not, and it was awkward.

Mohler is also the man who, per his resolution and clarifying comments thereof, is as tired of all this “should women be allowed to be pastors” debate as I am.

And therefore, in his amendment (published on his blog a full month before the actual meeting, which is fairly gauche), he is attempting to make it a foundational belief of the SBC that women can hold neither the title nor the function of a pastor.

And if you’re not into the SBC language, let me translate: Al Mohler wants to make it so that women can a) never be called “pastor” in an SBC church and b) never preach, teach, or shepherd in such a way that they’re acting like a pastor.

Commit either one of these offenses, according to this amendment current SBC practice, and the church will be disfellowshipped (ahem, kicked out) and cut off from the considerable resources that a 46,000-church collective provides.

Are we talking about this again?

It’s not an unfamiliar argument to me. The SBC has been having some version of it since the Annie Armstrong days, resolving not to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment in 1983 or any year afterward, and bringing “the women question” to an org-wide vote for three of the past five years.

The total ban on women pastors was not approved at the last annual meeting that discussed it, and I (like most people who have to hear about these things) had kind of hoped that would be the end of it.

That’s because I myself have been having some version of this conversation since my childhood: Should women preach on stage? Should they be allowed to read scripture, or lead worship, or pray from the front-of-house? Does my father, a 30-year SBC pastor, read books written by women? Even if they’re about theology? Does he allow his wife to teach men in Sunday school?

Those are all real, non-exaggerated conversations I have actually had at some point in my life — and according to Al Mohler, the answer to all of them is “no".

Mohler’s amendment, for once, does not waste our time caveating with the usual claims about women being valuable-but-different creatures who we love and can serve in their own way, just not the most important way. Mohler actually makes no mention of the female sex of any kind, which is refreshing in its honesty if nothing else.

No, Mohler’s proposal is a true out-and-out ban. In his May 15 podcast, he goes so far as to denounce a woman appearing on her church’s podcast to answer spiritual questions after a sermon. Too much like teaching, he says.

In a couple of weeks, at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (the biggest to-do of the year, when delegates from all SBC churches gather in one place to confer, pray, resolve, and politick), Mohler’s resolution will be up for a vote for, essentially, the third time.

And I suppose my biggest question for Southern Baptists is this:

Did y’all know it doesn’t have to be like this?

Did you guys know that most other people are not terrified of women at the front-of-house?

Did y’all know other organizations do not fight over this every single year?

Have you guys ever noticed that y’all are being absolute weirdos?

Have you ever considered how much time you’d get back if you could chill for even one single second about the 50% of your population who’ve become such a problem for you? Time you could use for, I don’t know, the advancement of the gospel or something?

Did you know there are whole churches, right now, in the world, that have women in leadership — and are not only not on the road to hell, but growing, and baptizing, and thriving? Have you ever noticed that they’re all a lot happier than you?

Do you ever get tired of all the extra effort it takes to convince your women to believe what you say about them, and not what you do to them?

Do you ever get the feeling it’s not working anymore?

Figure It Out, Guys.

SBC leadership, like Al Mohler, probably doesn’t know all of these things, but I’ll tell you who does:

Their women.

In the SBC, as in all Christian denominations, women are leaving in unprecedented numbers. The Gospel Coalition reports that only 38% of millennial women attend church in America anymore, compared with 55% of men.

Among Gen Zs, 54% of people who abandon their formative Christian faith are women.

Al Mohler, in that same podcast where he denounced the women answering podcast questions, celebrated this never-before-seen moment in America.

For the first time in history, more men than women in America attend church.

This, to him, is a victory.

To me, it’s a signal of something I’ve been grieving for a long time.

Problem Child

Another fun fact about me is that I have been to an Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is a fascinating experience. In many ways, it’s pretty cool.

There were more than 20,000 people at the gathering I went to. I got to see my dad speak with people who have had a big, positive impact around the world. I got to see those people brag on him.

And like any big group of people, the SBC I experienced wasn’t a monolith. What I experience amongst the individuals (largely open, kind, intelligent, generous) is shockingly different than the experience of the institution (cold, wealthy, powerful, self-interested).

It is a whole ecosystem with lots of diversity within it, but it is mostly created and led by many different kinds of men: kind men and selfish men, men who love Jesus and men who love attention, men called to ministry by the voice of God and men called to ministry by their mothers and their pocketbooks. And working underneath, between, beside these men, millions of women have carved out a place for themselves — most frequently, beside their husbands.

I am not a man, and I do not have a husband. I left the experience with the familiar conviction that this was a very large club, doing some very big things, with absolutely zero room for me. Since that year, after which each following meeting seems to get more and more blatantly anti-people-like-me, my conviction has only been reinforced.

So, I suppose I am one of those women from the statistics Mohler opines about. I don’t attend an SBC church anymore, even though I had the option to.

Instead, I attend a place where nobody asks any questions about whether I am allowed to read scripture, or teach things to men, or write books that men read.

I didn’t choose this church because we have a female pastor, although we do. I chose it because it was so clear that there was room for me here.

Did you guys know it could be that easy? Ain’t you tired of making it so hard?

Anyhow

I don’t know what’s going to happen at the upcoming SBC annual meeting, and I suppose I don’t have much of a say there anymore.

But of course, I never really had one, did I? And neither did Beth Moore, or my mother, or my sister, or the 6 million women carving out their place like Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong before them.

Their conviction is to stay, and keep carving out space, and do the good work no matter how the men work against them — to uphold God’s design for the role of women, and in loving submission continue minister under the headship of their men, even as the restrictions clamp down harder upon them with each passing year.

My conviction is that none of that is necessary to follow Jesus, and we’d all be happier if y’all would just chill out for a sec.

Both they and I will reach the end of our lives and present the sum of our deeds before God, an offering. Neither theirs nor mine will be enough to save us, but that’s all right. There are no points, and Jesus has’t been counting.

I, in the meantime, have stopped counting, too. And I’ve got to say, everything is better for it.

So, if any of you have got any connections in the SBC, tell them to try my angle some time. They might like it.

Because I am a red-blooded American to my core, I love shows about hunting down Nazis.

I can chalk this up to a deep, abiding patriotism and a formative encounter with the Memorial Day Band of Brothers marathon on AMC.

I will hear no Band of Brothers slander, to this very day.

One of the other shows I love about hunting Nazis is called Hunters, and there is an episode of this show that sticks with me to this day.

Hunters is a show with Al Pacino and Logan Lerman that I would not watch around children, and it’s about a group of Jewish people in the 70s who hunt & kill Nazis (what’s not to love?)

But in this episode, the gang puts a pause on all the Nazi killing to go to a wedding.

Logan Lerman’s character is upset about this. He complains to Al Pacino that he doesn’t have time for this dumb wedding.

There are Nazis out there that need killing, Al Pacino! How could you ask Logan Lerman to do something happy at a time like this?

But Al Pacino forces Logan Lerman to go anyway, because Al Pacino has been doing this longer than Logan Lerman. And Al Pacino understands a crucial foundational principle about revolutionary work:

Resistance must include celebration and joy. It is not a distraction from the work, but an vital pillar of the work itself.

Celebration gives us something to fight for.

Here’s the scene:

Hear that? “The hunt is not just about death. It’s about life, too.”

Al Pacino notes that rituals (like weddings, or funerals, or other important milestones and cultural moments) are the exact things the Nazis have been trying to stamp out — these moments, however “trivial” we might frame them, are actually some of the most dangerous to the Nazi ideology.

This Jewish wedding, therefore, is not a distraction from the hunt, but a glorious act of defiance — it laughs in the face of their enemies, and it ultimately makes them who they are.

The wedding is the point. It’s why the hunters are doing all this.

Downers

As I mentioned in The Ministry of Being Inconvenienced, I’m a person with one foot in Christianity and one foot in Leftist America. And one of the things I’m forced to reckon with as I walk that ever-widening line is that there are a few ways in which the Religious Right just has the Left beat.

One of them is this (please allow me, Leftists, to hold your hand while I say this):

We can be pretty miserable to be around.

It’s the most common problems that ex-Jesus pointers face.

Instead of freeing ourselves from one Jesus Points hamster wheel of having to do everything right all the time, we’ve simply replaced one impossible standard with another. Constantly pointing out the problems, the impurities, who’s problematic now, why we can’t and shouldn’t be happy about something that feels like a win.

And I would daresay that exvangelicals are the worst about this. We somehow keep the heavy-handedness and shame of Jesus Points, and deconstruct from the fun of Christmas and Easter. We don’t allow ourselves to enjoy things, and we make fun of people who are enjoying themselves.

“What?” I can hear you saying, “No we don’t!”

Yes you do. Yes you do.

And if I haven’t lost you yet, allow me to ask this: who would want to join a movement like that?

And how long can you last in a constant barrage of darkness without any joy to hold onto?

The answer is not very long, and your enemy knows it.

Celebration sustains the resistance. It remains unbreakable by the oppressor.

And in this world that profits from your misery, joy is a revolutionary act.

What I am suggesting to you, beloved, is that celebration is not a distraction from the fight, but a crucial and essential part of it.

So, you want to do something about the state of the world? You want to get better at standing up to empire?

Get better at celebrating.

Celebration as a discipline

“But Ames,” I hear you asking, “How do I do that? When things feel so dark? When it’s all getting so bad, so fast?”

I’m so glad you asked.

I was lucky enough to have my formative years shaped by several priestesses of the ministry of celebration — women around me who made it their mission to celebrate well, wherever and whenever they could.

And through their faithful ministry, I learned a few things.

So if you are a Leftist feeling defeated by the never-ending onslaught of very bad news, allow me to take my evangelical upbringing and use it for good.

Rules for Celebrating

Look For the Moments, Or Create Them

As it turns out, there is actually something in your life that you could be celebrating. Yes, even yours.

The first sunny day of the year. Finishing the laundry that’s sat stagnant for eight weeks. Your terrible boss finally hitting all the boxes on your “terrible boss” bingo card.

A few months ago, some of my friends threw a party for one of our number who had moved in to a new apartment several months before.

The occasion for this party? We were finally peeling the plastic off his new cabinets.

There is opportunity for celebration all around you, if you are willing to look for it. Yes, even you.

If the people of Gaza can find a way to create a celebration on the literal bones of their ravaged city, pronouncing joy in the face of the occupying force that oppresses them, you can find a way to create a celebration in the small corners of your life.

Build a habit of looking for reasons to celebrate. These are moments of resistance. These are moments of revolution.

Start looking for them. You will find them.

Be Prepared

Of course, noticing things that are worth celebrating is not the same as actually celebrating them. To do that, you’re going to need some supplies.

Celebrating = doing something extra to make things special. So if you’re going to be ready for all the millions of reasons to celebrate every day, you’re going to have to set a little extra aside.

A little extra time. A little extra money.

An extra-loud volume on the playlist. An extra box of cake mix at the back of your pantry. An extra bottle of bubbly in the back of your fridge.

Whatever it is that makes the moment feel special, the Ministry of Celebration commands that you keep a little extra on you for when the moment strikes.

And while this probably includes some material things, the more important thing to put aside is your time. Moments of celebration hardly ever occur on a schedule. They are inconvenient, as most things in real-life are.

Good celebrators are interruptible. Build enough time into your day that you are, too. (For more on that, see The Ministry of Being Inconvenienced).

Make it Easy

The easier you make the Ministry, the better at it you’ll be.

And if you can make it automatic, so much the better. Two examples that have worked for me:

1. I like having a Birthday Box ready for all birthday emergencies. I keep this in the trunk of my car (or, now that I have no car, in a canvas bag ready for the subway). It includes candles, party hats, plates, and a garland or two. Just the stuff you need for when someone mentions “oh, by the way, it’s my birthday today,” and staying silent just won’t do.
   
   You’ll be amazed at how someone’s face lights up when you produce a birthday party out of nowhere.
   
   It’s come in handy more times than I can count.
   

2. I also keep an ongoing sinking fund in my little budgeting app specifically for The Ministry of Celebration.
   
   This is a small amount (about 2% of my monthly income) for those times when I need to buy a friend a coffee, or when someone mentions they’re tight on funds for the month, or when someone has reached a milestone that only a priestess of the Ministry of Celebration has noticed.
   
   There’s no guilt, stress, or even second thoughts about using this money for celebrating. It’s been designated for this purpose. It’s easy.

The Ministry of Celebration does not have to be loud, fancy, or expensive. But it does have to be a part of your resistance. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Look, You Can Even Start Right Now

I’m going to try something that I’ve never tried before on this Substack, so that you can leave here having made an actual contribution to the change.

I have found in my new home in Lisbon so many reasons to celebrate — and more than that, a group of people who have long been serving faithfully in the Ministry of Celebration.

That group of people are found at a place called Lisbon Project, and it’s where I go when I am overcome with the weight of the world and overwhelmed by the direction it’s heading.

To migrants and refugees here in Portugal, LP provides language classes, employment help, immigration assistance, and community events. It is one of the few NGOs doing the actual, real work of integration and belonging (and I’ve worked with several, most of whom have not).

And guess what? Lisbon Project is having a birthday. Which means, fellow Ministers of Celebration, that this is our time.

If you, like me, find yourself drowning in the ocean of horrible news constantly on our screens — if you care about immigration, refugees, Black and Brown families, and the rising tide of fascism around the world — one of the best things you can do is take a small step toward doing something about it.

Something like celebrating.

Right now, Lisbon Project is working toward an ambitious goal: 9,000 euros by its birthday, June 19th. I’m going to put the link below, because I have seen how far a $10 gift can really go. It’s a lot farther than you’d think.

Celebrate with Lisbon Project

Here in Portugal, too, there is a growing faction of right-wing, anti-immigrant sentiment that threatens members of our community each day. Lisbon Project understands the power of joy in fighting this.

If you do, too, I’m asking you to take your first step in the Ministry of Celebration by laughing in the face of empire and giving directly to the good work.

Welcome to the resistance. Let’s get to celebrating.

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Contrary to popular belief, I think being a man is ultimately a good thing. It is a noble goal to have. Not as noble, I’d say, as being a good man, but noble nonetheless. “Be a man!” can, at its root, be a positive exhortation.

But the problem, as always, is in the details.

My running theory is that there are two kinds of men in the world:

1. The kind of man for whom “be a man!” means “don’t be a woman.”

2. The kind of man for whom “be a man!” means “don’t be a little boy.”

(If you are currently poised to write “Actually, I’m a mix of both” into my comment section, go ahead and put yourself in Column #1.)

This foundational difference in belief about what “be a man!” means might seem small to you, but it’s vitally important.

I’d go so far as to say that this difference in definition can be found at the root of every single one of the Big Scary Problems we’re barraged with today.

Allow me to explain.

Don’t be a woman.

If “be a man!” is what you want, and being a man = not being a woman, then proving you’re a man must include distancing yourself from everything you think is feminine. Otherwise, you’re failing at being a man.

In practice, this almost always means demeaning anything you think is too womanly, no matter how much your words might say the opposite. If man = good, you’ll inevitably start acting like woman = bad.

The problem, of course, is that there’s a whole lot of debate about what exactly “womanly qualities” are.

Take dancing, for example.

Is it manly to know how to dance? Ask your average white American evangelical man, and they’ll tell you no. Ask a right-wing internet incel, and they’ll call you something like a leftist cuck soyboy for asking.

Dancing is for girls. Real men don’t dance.

But if you ask a man from virtually any part of the global South, they’ll likely tell you something else. Men have danced in virtually every culture since the beginning of time — after battle, as part of worship, as a display of virility. Dancing, in many moments and places across time and space, has been a reinforcement of manliness, not a detractor from it.

And if dancing isn’t your thing, what about nurturing?

Nurturing, in recent media, has been talked about as an almost uniquely feminine quality. Tenderness and affection displayed in men is derided as “weak and gay” by almost every right-wing influencer. Real masculinity, according to this sect, shoots first, asks questions later, and does not cry.

But of course, it doesn’t take very long to see that civilizations across the globe have often expected, even required men to nurture in some way.

It’s true of Western culture, too. We have fathers, after all. Our cultural narratives are riddled with kind, tender grandfather-figures (Mr. Rogers! Dumbledore! Santa Claus!)

Our Christian God, almost exclusively referred to as male, is constantly described as a loving father, His son and equal member of the trinity famously described as a shepherd — tender and gentle with children, women, and animals.

And yet, to the manosphere, nurturing is just not for men.

And if these two examples aren’t enough, you can pick virtually anything else Look in any direction for just a couple minutes, and you’ll see that the number of things the manosphere calls “feminine” can be absolutely anything they want. The goalposts are constantly changing, and ‘feminine” or “weak and gay” qualities have included, to name a few:

• Sunscreen!

  

• Letting your wife drive a car!

  

  And yes, even…

• Enjoying heterosexual sex with your wife!

Thus, in the absence of any real definition, the men in Column #1 are forced to deal with a constant barrage of new requirements of manliness, with never-ending derision from their peers if they don’t meet them.

What are you, a sissy?

I don’t envy the men in Column #1. It seems like an impossible way to live: constantly having to prove your manliness, while other men add new “feminine” things to the list every single day.

It is no wonder that anger (the only universally agreed-upon “manly” emotion) spills over. You’re given a job, and then strategically kept from doing it.

And the irony, of course, is that all of this inevitably leads men to act in passive, cowardly, decidedly un-manly ways — waiting for the orders of whatever bigger, stronger man is in charge rather than standing up for what they know is right.

It’s true of every hyper-masculine regime in the world: individual men sacrificing their consciences (and sometimes, their neighbors, friends, and family), in order to submit to the more dominant man in charge.

It is no wonder we’ve got a loneliness epidemic on our hands.

Don’t be a little boy.

But if, instead, your definition of “be a man!” is “don’t be a little boy,” you get to escape all that.

If your goal is to be a man, and man = not a child, then your enemy is no longer femininity.

It’s immaturity.

And immaturity is far less changeable in its definition than femininity is.

Maturity, in every culture and time, has meant “acting like a grown-up.”

Grown-ups take care of themselves. Grown-ups can take care of other people. Grown-ups contribute to society. Grown-ups work, build, and grow. Grown-ups can regulate their emotions.

Grown-ups do not throw temper tantrums, hit their brothers and sisters, or rely on another grown-up for their most basic needs (like, for example, their identity).

And none of these things are very hotly debated, anywhere in the world.

When we apply this definition of masculinity, we don’t have to bother with the question of dancing, or nurturing, or wearing sunscreen. Real men can, of course, do any of these things and more. None of them make him less of a man. What makes him a man is his maturity, his independence and interdependence, and his ability to protect and care for others.

Column #2 men, therefore, enjoy a much higher level of freedom than Column #1 men. They do not have to test their manliness against a constantly changing standard. They are given a job (“be a man”), and they know how to do it.

No, I don’t think I will.

But the best part about Column #2 men is that they, as grown-ups, do not require the validation of other grown-ups.

And that means they are not automatically required to submit to whatever bigger, stronger man is in charge. These men answer, first and foremost, to their own conscience, which is something they have developed in their lifelong pursuit of maturity.

This is what grown-ups do. It is what real men do. It is likely why you count famous Great Men of History as great, and why you perceive the particularly negative connotation about the ones who were “just following orders.”

It is also why it’s so easy to tell Column #2 men from their Column #1 counterparts. Their fundamental definition of “Be a man!” makes them secure (“I know how to be a man.”); it makes them value morality over authority (“I answer to my own conscience first”); and it makes them free to form relationships with other people (“I take care of others. I contribute.”)

Similarly, you can see a Column #1 man coming from a mile away, because he is by definition insecure (“I have to prove I’m a man.”); he values authority over morality (“Should’ve just complied!”); and he is often unable to form strong relationships (“being vulnerable is gay.”)

Men and the world.

As any historian will tell you, every single fascist movement in the 20th (and now 21st) century is explicitly about masculinity at its core.

Scholar Jason Stanley provides plenty of examples of the way manliness is “so strategically central” to fascism, from 1960s Spain to 1994 Rwanda to modern-day Poland and Hungary.

Himmler and Goebbels spent a lot of time talking about men, explaining that they “want to make it clear to our men” that “we want to make our people proud again.”

It’s all sounding very familiar.

And of course, the fascist definition of “be a man” can only ever be the Column #1 definition. How else do you get “we were just following orders” from men who used to have consciences? How else do you control them so completely? Authoritarian rulers depend on submissive men, and Column #1 breeds them.

Men and the Moment

So, at a moment so completely fraught with messages of manliness, with a swelling tide of increasingly-horrible world events looming, I want to submit that the best thing a man can do is decide.

What is “be a man” going to mean to you?

And will that definition include unquestioning submission to bigger, stronger men? Or will it include standing up for what you know is right?

Will it have room for you to enjoy things? To be vulnerable? To build relationships? Or will it confine you to the endless chase of an ever-changing set of standards? Will it allow you to be kind?

And will it, at the end of the day, leave you assured in the knowledge that you are a grown-up?

Or will it simply leave you with something else to prove?

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In his own little niche in the world, my dad is just a little bit famous.

He came to Oregon from Oklahoma in the 80s, and was the pastor of a Southern Baptist Church outside of Portland, Oregon for all of my childhood.

My parents worked in this church for 23 years, and my dad was incredibly beloved in both his church and in the Northwest Baptist Convention, which is the idiosyncratic little outpost of the SBC that serves the Pacific Northwest.

And for much of my childhood in a church of two hundred, then five hundred, then seven hundred people (1,000 on Easter Sunday), I experienced just a little tiny itty bitty sliver of what it might be like to grow up as a celebrity.

And one day during the Obama administration, our service was interrupted by protestors.

There were just two of them, both women, and I’m unclear to this day whether they were from the assisted living facility across the street (we sometimes had disruptions from guests from there).

This was the first Sunday after Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage across the country. My dad went up to preach, as he always did, and his topic of the week just happened to be marriage.

It was the week gay marriage was legalized. We were a Southern Baptist Church. I’ll let you connect the dots.

Looking back now, I can see just how heavily I was propagandized in the years leading up to this. In my young 20s, I was inundated with messaging about how this would make it illegal to preach from certain passages, how pastors would be sued or thrown in jail for not letting gay couples be married in their churches (why would a gay couple want to be married in a Southern Baptist Church? Who knows).

It was always stressed that this case was significant NOT because we hated gay people (we love all people regardless of sin, and all sin is equal in God’s eyes), but because of the precedent it set. It was a slippery slope before pastors were persecuted for not condoning polyamory, or polygamy, or anything the culture wanted to punish us for.

Ten years on, of course, none of this has happened. Many of my gay friends have gotten married. Many of my trans friends have gotten married. None of it has interfered with my dad’s job, or my ability to practice the Christianity I always have.

But on this day in 2015, two women got up and approached the pulpit loudly. Shouting, angry. They left some objects on the stage (a basket? I don’t remember. It was weird). My dad stopped his sermon and said, “I respect you. Let’s please sit down.” They shouted a bit more before walking out the door, security a few steps behind. And I truly, actually believed, “this is it. Exactly what they said would happen.”

And I started crying.

That was my dad! He wasn’t a fire-and-brimstone guy! He was nice, and someone was shouting at him! And who knew what this would mean for the future? Surely, like everyone said, it was only going to get worse! Maybe we were going to be thrown in jail, just like they’d told us.

But I wasn’t thrown in jail. No one was.

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Cities Church

Yesterday, a group of protestors in Minnesota interrupted a service at Cities Church, which is part of the same organization my dad worked for.

Cities Church is led by Pastor Jonathan Parnell, but one of its associate pastors (David Easterwood, who is not the lead pastor) is a field director for ICE — the federal agency that is, even at this moment, actually throwing people in jail.

The protestors were shouting loudly. They were demanding the removal of David Easterwood (who, it seems, was not there).

In the videos of the incident, I see in the lead pastor’s face the same expression my dad made from the pulpit that day back in 2015.

There is fear, yes. There is quite a bit of shock. There is also, undoubtedly, grief there as he tries to figure out what the right response is. I cannot help but feel compassion for him, as I did for my dad, who had been flooded by the same messages I had for the whole of my Christian walk: “they’re going to come persecute you. Someday, someone is going to come and take you away.”

But he wasn’t taken away. No one was.

Trials and Tribulation

I’d posit that Pastor Jonathan Parnell was absolutely afraid of being taken away, imprisoned, or beaten because he has been inundated with all of the messages of persecution I have, only more ubiquitous and more extreme.

How do I know?

Well, Cities Church was started by Joe Rigney, who is the author of 2025’s The Sin of Empathy and is swiftly becoming one of the biggest names in the far-right, heavily Calvinist theobro universe.

And like most far-right, heavily Calvinist theobros, Rigney’s theology is hyper-masculine, hyper-rigid, and almost always talking about violence, war, and battle in some way. He is a notably loud voice in the alarmism about persecution.

In response to yesterday’s incident at his former church, Rigney said this:

Jonathan Parnell likely had messages like this in his head while the protestors were shouting at him. The party of lawlessness, cultural decay, and death was trespassing on holy ground! Take up the sword! They are coming to take you away!

In the videos, the congregants stand around, shocked and unsure what to do. It’s pretty chaotic. Pastor Jonathan shouts back for a while, tells them they should be ashamed. Reminds them that this is a house of God. A couple of the younger congregants start crying, like I did. There doesn’t seem to be a conversation or a resolution. Eventually, the protestors leave.

The North American Mission Board put out a statement saying they “stand with” the leadership of the church (no mention of David Easterwood at all). The White House, of course, quickly jumped on to the vitriol:

And the Southern Baptist/wider evangelical community has rushed to condemn these actions, mourned the stripping away of their First Amendment rights, and displayed their compassion for the children in the pews who were traumatized.

Today, I’ve watched many pastors who, just like Rigney, are calling for the sword.

Mercy for me, not thee.

I have compassion for the young version of me who cried as someone shouted at my dad in 2015. I have compassion for the kids in Cities Church who cried, just like me. When you’ve been taught forever that someday, you’re going to face persecution, it really is scary when someone is shouting at you. You’re afraid that someone will take you away.

But the truth is, I wasn’t taken away.

My dad wasn’t taken away.

Nobody at Cities Church was taken away.

Do you know who was taken away?

Just a few miles from Cities Church, hundreds of people have been detained, beaten, gassed. 170 American citizens have been deported, and who knows how many legal immigrants. (We’ll never know. There is no due process.) Two people are already dead. No investigation from the Justice Department for those.

Evangelicals like me are afraid to be yelled at.

Our neighbors (the ones Rigney called rapists, criminals, the party of Death), are afraid of being killed.

We are traumatized by our services being disrupted.

They are traumatized by the beatings, imprisonment, and death.

And however much compassion I can feel for Pastor Jonathan in that video, neither he nor NAMB has yet contended with the real issue:

A pastor at his church is responsible for directing this.

The very thing he is so afraid of, his colleague is currently perpetrating against his neighbors. It is something we Christians are now famous for.

And the moment we receive pushback — at a fraction of the volume, the intensity, the violence of what we dish out — we perform persecution. We call in the police. We opine on the internet.

Suddenly, we are no longer afraid to speak out about the injustice of it.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.

I can see now that I was not being persecuted when those protestors disrupted my service in 2015. My dad was shouted at, and it was scary. But it was not anywhere near as difficult as what my gay friends in the same pew went through in the following years — many of them abandoned by friends, derided by other congregants, and even rejected by their parents.

Similarly, the members of Cities Church were yelled at and harassed on Sunday, and it was scary. But it is only a fraction of the terror one of their pastors is directing against their neighbors.

And what I’d like to propose to you today, Christian, is that the cries of persecution, the calls to arms, and the immediate appeal to the government are not the hyper-masculine, warrior-like responses you might think they are.

They are, in fact, the coward’s way out.

And what I wish I could say to Pastor Jonathan, to his staff, to his congregants, and to anyone who aligns themselves with him is this:

Be braver than that.

Joe Rigney and his constant calls to the sword sound big and strong when they’re directed at his neighbors, armed with whistles and bad language. No such calls exist for the people doing the actual snatching. The ones with actual weapons.

You tell me. Is that brave?

What I pray happens instead — what I pray for Pastor Jonathan as he deals with fallout and tries to figure out how to respond — is that for once in our long evangelical history, this pastor will take the approach that demands the most courage:

To find those protesters who interrupted his service. To listen to them. To start changing the way he operates.

Listen to their shouts. Have mercy. Stop closing ranks. Remove the ICE director from staff. Have the courage to hear uncomfortable, loud feedback from the community. Be brave enough to look into the face of the harm you’ve done, so you can remedy it. Lead your congregation to lay down their lives down for their neighbors and friends.

Do not be afraid. Remember the Lord. Fight for your neighbors, their families, their sons and daughters, and their homes.

It is a much scarier solution. It is much braver.

Remember the Lord

And it is not a solution I expect to see, if I’m honest.

I have served under several right-leaning, hyper-masculine leaders. These are not the kinds of solutions they pursue, and I am not the kind of person they listen to.

No, if past data is any indicator, what we will see in the next few days is this disrupted service being passed around as another reason the Left deserves whatever violence they get. We’ll see things like, “they tried to silence us!” paired with ever more cruel remarks about Leftists, Black people, immigrants. We’ll see some more guns in the church.

It would take a miracle from the Biblical God for an all-white, Southern Baptist Church started by Joe Rigney to sit down with the Black-led, leftist protest group, listen to their concerns, and make tangible (or really, any) changes.

It would take an earth-shaking Divine intervention for a church flooded with alarmist, Christian-persecution rhetoric to let go of its fear and begin placing themselves between their neighbors and the people persecuting them.

I’m not stupid. I know all of this would take an actual, bona fide miracle from a God with more power than any being in the universe.

But I happen to believe in one of those.

It’s Lonely Out Here

“Community” is such a lovely buzzword. It has so many lovely meanings these days.

Once upon a time, it was English’s primitive attempt to grasp that deep-knit fellowship of the scriptural κοινωνία. Today, it is a word we use mostly to mean “any group of people,” from a race/sexuality/other identity marker to a fancified name for a Facebook group (“join our EXCLUSIVE online COMMUNITY for $49 $27 per month!”).

Community is also the #1 thing people seem to be lacking in the Western world these days, and you can ask anybody you know. We are feeling increasingly isolated, lonely, and divided from each other. We have lost our village. Our hyper-independence is killing us. It’s one of the few things the left, right, rich, and poor all agree on.

The problem is that creating such a community means we have to work together with other people.

And other people are, quite famously, the worst.

They ask you to help them move their couches. They text you at the weirdest times and expect you to text back. They almost never plan their weddings or funerals at a convenient time. They do things we don’t like, in ways we don’t like, way too close to us.

And yet, I think you know what it feels like to be without them. The longing that sets in after a few days of doom-scrolling. The sort of sick feeling you get when you realize you have no one to call.

So powerful is this need we have for each other that we are willing to sacrifice huge parts of ourselves to belong to a group that scratches that itch. This is a large part of the reason the Jesus Points Systems remains so powerful, even though it’s made up: the threat of losing community is so terrifying, so incredibly painful, that it’s a serious motivator for staying in line, even when it hurts.

Even in the hundreds of responses I’ve gotten to this very Substack series, community is the #1 thing people say they miss when they leave the church.

In a very big way, it’s also one of the reasons I haven’t left. In the heaviest years of my deconstruction, I searched pretty fervently for a community like the one I could find amongst Christians — Jesusy ones and Jesus Pointsy ones alike.

If there was one to be found in a more liberal, post-religious life, I expected it to be in a place like Portland: famously both leftist and nonreligious, with messaging about the importance of mutual aid steeped deep in its culture.

But Portland has the same problem experts note of most leftist spaces: an inhibited ability to effectively organize its people on a grand scale/for the long term. It has a huge loneliness problem and a mental health problem to match.

I can certainly attest to it. I remember vividly the fall of 2023, when I was moving out of my house and hoping to invite people to help me eat my remaining groceries. My three best friends being out of town, I discovered the city I’d spent 30 years in had left me with not a single person to call for the task. I gave the food away, and I don’t miss my hometown very often.

As I note in Part 5 of this Jesus Points series, Christianity just gets community in a way that leftist, non-religious spaces simply do not. Unless that changes (or unless Christianity will get its head out of its you-know-where and start working with Leftists), we will be unable to make any meaningful change in removing the Points Gods currently running American hegemony. Like it or not, the Religious Right is beating us in this area.

But as I’ve noted several times, I am seriously invested in bringing about death to the Points God. And as an ambassador with one foot in Christianity and the other in Leftist America—one who has about three decades of community-building experience, I might add—I’d like to offer some of my best advice when it comes to building the kind of people organization that changes things.

And my first piece of advice is this:

Community is a little annoying.

It is a feature, not a bug.

The small inconveniences of building community with other people are the friction points we need to make forward motion. Otherwise, we keep doing what we’ve been doing — flopping around in one place and tweeting about it.

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What Community Isn’t

When I say community, I am talking about something pretty specific, and it’s not a Facebook group.

I also do not mean “friend group” when I’m talking about community. Although this is important and usually part of the deal, I’m not talking about the 2-3 people you go to happy hour with, or carpool with, or jog next to at the park.

When I say community, I’m talking about that larger group of 50-100 people wherein you can take on roles, make collective progress, and create a relational economy outside of cash.

These are the people who form the meal train when you have a baby, raise money to cover your surgery bill, and come to your funeral when you die.

They are also the people who show up at the town hall meeting, who raise the money to keep the rec center afloat, and who, in some cases, put their bodies on the line when a neighbor is snatched away.

This is the “village” people are talking about when they say “it takes a village,” and it’s what I tried (failed) to build for several years outside of the church.

And it requires an absolutely rock-solid foundation built on two non-negotiable principles.

Community requires The Two Things:

1. A Shared Foundational Vision

You need a capital-V Vision that people connect to, and you need everyone to have the same idea of what that Vision is and why It is valuable.

2. Ego Subversion

You need each individual to continuously put the Vision (and the Community) over their own desires.

Where communities fail, it’s almost always a failure at one of The Two Things.

Either there’s a failure at Thing #1, and The Vision isn’t shared:

• “Wait, that’s not what I thought we were doing here.”

• “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

• “I thought this was about ___. But it’s really about money.”

• “We all have a different idea of what we’re doing! Nobody’s leading!”

Or it’s a failure at Thing #2, and the individuals aren’t willing to put the Vision over themselves (also known as: “The Vision/Community isn’t as valuable as me getting what I want.”) :

• “I mean, that idea is nice, but I’m not going to pass up this opportunity.”

• “I don’t know, I’m just feeling too lazy to help with ___.”

• “You’re asking me to do what? For free??”

• “I mean, it was a cool idea. But let’s be realistic.”

Abuse, which is a common reason communities fail, actually breaches both Things.

• An individual in power skews The Vision/Community to serve themselves (They change The Vision),

• OR they start sabotaging the Community secretly, because they care about themselves more.

Where Jesus Comes Into It.

As you’ve probably guessed, religion (read: Jesus Points) is GREAT at the Two Things.

1. Jesus Points literally gives you a blueprint for what Thing #1 is. You get a whole book about it. You get scholars whose whole job is to delve into the minutiae and tell you what behaviors give (or lose) you the most points. No wonder we’ve got megachurches with 5,000 people signing up to join.

2. Jesus Points uses shame and fear to motivate Thing #2. Easy peasy. You must stay in line and put everyone else over yourself, or you lose points! And lost points = no more community! You’ll be alone forever, AND ALSO you’re not really a Christian and you probably never were. (Effective, right?)

I continue to argue that Jesus himself, who is the complete opposite of Jesus Points, offers even better motivation:

1. Jesus gives you a blueprint for Thing #1. He gives you a whole sermon on the mount about it. He preaches it so often and so loudly that the Points God Followers of his day have him put to death. (This famously does not work.)

2. Jesus uses belonging and joy to motivate Thing #2. Give generously to the community, and watch how it affects the world! Put the group’s needs before your wants, and watch how you all make each other better! How beautiful that what we do together is so much more than the sum of our parts! Watch how our love can change the world! Put yourself first, and watch how that growth is limited, stymied, hurt. Why would you want to do that?

Community Is Inconvenient

All of that to say: The Two Things are amazing.

When you get a group of 50-100 people so in love with a Vision that they are willing to subvert their own goals to lift up a group, magic happens.

20,000 people lie down on a bridge.

We circle our “enemies” to protect them from bullets.

We conduct 24-hour services to keep our neighbors safe from deportations.

It is humanity at its most beautiful. Us at our very best.

And it requires that we let ourselves be a little annoyed every now and again.

Think about it.

Are you more likely to stand in front of a bus for a stranger, or for the person who brought you a meal after your surgery?

Are you likely to see your spouse’s funeral paid by a stranger? What about 100 people you’d served with before?

Would you eat chicken with a friend moving to a new place? What if she had stayed up all night with you during your last depressive episode?

The thing is, giving, sharing food, and staying up all night all require a certain amount of inconvenience.

You must be willing to give some food away.

You must have some time to spend.

You must plan to have something to give.

And it’s inconvenient, yes. It’s annoying, often. It means going to parties you don’t feel like going to, putting a little money aside each week, and cancelling plans so you can go to that wedding, that funeral.

It means giving of your time, your money, your resources, and understanding that you might not see an ROI from that gift.

It means redrawing your boundaries just a touch further outside your zones of comfort and convenience. It means dealing with people who are not ideologically pure, often incorrect, and sometimes pretty nasty. Yes, you might need to work alongside a MAGA.

But the Ministry of Being Inconvenienced says that this is the work. This is the difficult part of living with other people. The reward, the beautiful part, is what happens when all of us do it at the same time. When we are willing to be just the tiniest bit annoyed at each other, for the sake of something bigger.

The Religious Right knows the power of this. When is the Left going to get it?

We’ve seen the movements take over. We’ve seen the power people wield when they’re all working together in the same direction.

How much better will it be when we do the same — not because we think we have to, but because we want to.

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She doesn’t mind the routine.

Wake up, brush teeth, and clean face.

Lean out the window and take three deep breaths.

Water the four carefully crafted fairy-houses in the window-box. Whisper to the fairies a quick “good morning.”

Dress quick…

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Ugh. You know how you wake up with that “Ugh?” That’s what I have right now.

Just a little “Ugh” behind the eyes. I’m a little “Ugghy” around my left temple. Taking a little time to focus my pupils through the Ugh.

I am often unable to shake off the Ugh until about 6 in the evening, unless I have ingested the proper amount of stimulants.

(To give you an example of the Ugh, I just tried to spell “ingested” with a j. Why would I do that? Only the Ugh.)

There are days when the Ugh wins, and I lose the whole day. I either float about, meaning to start a dozen different projects and only barely beginning each, or I go back to bed entirely, flip on a movie, call out of work, and order a Glovo.

This second kind is much more preferable. It’s a sign that I’ve accepted the Ugh. I’m working WITH the Ugh.

At the end of these Ugh days, planned and accounted for, I alert my job, give myself permission to put things off another day, and take an Advil.

This way, it feels much more like a sick day than an “I-don’t-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-something-is-wrong-but-I-am-unable-to-function-properly” day.

Work doesn’t understand those days. Neither do the people at the bank.

And, worst of all, neither do your friends who seem to have never encountered the Ugh.

“Are you sick?” these friends ask, shocked and concerned, “Do you have a fever?”

I do not have a fever. I have the Ugh.

“Have you tried drinking more water?”

I have. I have tried drinking plenty of water. I have eaten protein and gone for a walk and breathed deeply from an essential oils diffuser.

Nothing helps. It is the Ugh.

I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who simply do not experience the Ugh. Can you imagine what life must be like for these people?

Who see me spending a full day hibernating in a filthy blanket and say something absolutely incomprehensible? Like, “why don’t you just get up?” or “why don’t you get a different blanket?”

How do I explain to these types of people that they’re asking questions that are simply not doable on this physical plane? That these questions feel like a personal insult, even?

I can no more get out of this bed than grow wings and scales, or end world hunger, or speak Japanese.

It is simply not in the physical realm of possibility for me. My body is unable to get it done.

The fact that it seems like a simple, everyday task to these people who have not experienced the Ugh is irrelevant. The Ugh wants what the Ugh wants, and what it wants of me now is to be horizontal and unreachable by phone.

No, I have found that the only way to overcome the Ugh is to stop trying to overcome it. To welcome it like a friend or, more realistically, an irritating relative who ultimately means well.

Welcome again, Ugh. No, it’s not a great time, but come in all the same. I’ve saved some food for you, the kind you like. I’ve just learned to keep it on hand for when you come around. Put on the kettle, please. I’ve got to clear my afternoon.

I am pleased to report that since moving to Lisbon, out of the rain and the dark spiritual energy of a small city with two ex-boyfriends prowling around, I am encountering the Ugh less and less.

But I do not think I will ever be fully free of The Ugh. I have a feeling it lives in you the way Chickenpox does, swirling around dormant until your guard is low or you have something very important to do.

And for those days, I think it’s best to keep some emergency Ugh-stoppers on hand. Some easy-to-eat calories in the cupboard. A warm beverage in the microwave. And a little emergency stash of kindness in your bottom drawer, reserved for yourself and the Ugh that’s come calling.

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Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a ruiner.

I’ve always had a natural talent for it. A gift, you might say.

I’d show up to a spot where men were having an excellent time, and just absolutely ruin the whole experience with my very presence.

Birthday parties? RUINED. CAKELESS DUE TO FEMINISM.

Sports games? RUINED. 100% COED OR NOT AT ALL.

Frat parties? RUINED AND NOW YOU CAN’T MAKE YOUR FRESHMAN EAT A GOLDFISH ANYMORE.

When it came time to take the SATs (which I enjoyed ruining for all the boys with my demand for more feminine test-taking facilities), I knew without a doubt that I had a promising future in ruining that holy grail of masculinity: The Workplace.

The Workplace would be an excellent place for a young, gifted ruiner like me, and not just because of the objective fact that only men had ever had jobs before then. (Before 1980, there were no women at all! Anywhere! We were all at home, quietly not ruining anything. Look it up.)

It’s just that The Workplace has so MANY things to ruin! Think of it: A pristine boys’ club of multiple centuries, where men could create rigid hierarchies in peace, set the air conditioning to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, and fistfight each other in the boardroom when they encountered any conflict. Back when the world made sense.

What a perfect environment in which to bloom into my true self: a hotbed of feminine vice who delights in spoiling the good old-fashioned fun of every man around me.

And spoil I most certainly did. A group of men having a good time at work?? Not on my watch.

Within two years, I was advocating for paid overtime and sick days, just like the female ruiners of the labor movement before me. A group of grunts putting in the work all night while their bosses sleep? RUINED.

And after that, I wasted zero time in bringing about paid parental leave, which means all of the men at work had to go home and spend time with their stupid babies for months! A stunning victory for ruiners, since obviously, the whole point of working is to not have to look at your kid for too many minutes in a row. RUINED.

But by far the biggest achievement of my ruining career was the absolute worldwide castration that was the anti-sexual harassment movement.

Don’t you remember how, pre-2018, men could just joke about their private parts to their female colleagues all the time, for funsies? Don’t you remember what a good time it was to be required to give sexual favors to your boss for any recognition? Don’t you remember the good, clean fun of an after-hours unwanted advance from a man you thought was a trusted friend and mentor?

Well, I do, and it’s exactly the kind of innocent, guys-being-guys fun that I absolutely love to destroy for the whole organization. Like all women of the #metoo movement, I simply hate when men enjoy themselves! And I love when women can accuse men of whatever made-up story they want with zero consequences. Which happens all the time. Definitely. Look it up.

Yes, it’s clearly the pre-#metoo world that the poor conservative feminists speaking to the NYT are yearning for, and of course, I feel for them. It can’t be easy to have your carefully-crafted hierarchy topple beneath you after all you’ve done to climb to the top (well not the top, obviously, which is only for men. But pretty close).

But I, a professional ruiner, have to make tough decisions in my vocation to destroy everything men love. And since one of the things men love is a woman enabling their bad behavior, I pushed ahead in my goal.

RUINEDDDDDDDDD.

In the years since 2018, I can confidently say I’ve only improved on my ruining skills. I’m now working every day to demand that workplaces do outrageous things like: pronounce people’s names correctly, not make assumptions about their personal lives, and give them an option to work remotely.

I personally have forced HR departments across the globe to spend dozens of minutes per year explaining that harassment is bad, actually. Minutes that could have been spent on masculine virtues like quarterly earnings! Or cigars with the boys!

Thus, it’s with immense pride that I accept the formal acknowledgement of The New York Times as the actual reason The Workplace sucks so incredibly hard these days.

I’ve spent countless hours honing my craft, and I’m so humbled to see all my fellow ruiners and I getting the credit we deserve.

But I have to ask you, fellow ruiners: can we afford to stop here?

Are there, perhaps, other bastions of masculine virtue we’ve yet to drive out of society? Could there be other corners of male behavior we’ve not thoroughly policed?

I, personally, shudder at the thought.

As long as we have such formidable enemies as conservative feminists Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, I believe we cannot rest.

There are simply too many people committed to seeing men enjoy portions of their lives, and we ruiners cannot afford to see that happen.

We cannot stop until we’ve ruined every single thing that men might enjoy, in all of the places they might gather.

Thus, I propose an immediate ruining beyond The Workplace (which, as the NYT acknowledges, we’ve already fully destroyed). Such a ruining can include such disastrous activities as:

• Salaries you can actually live on!

• Health insurance that covers health!

• Bosses who’ve read even one single management book!

• Meeting agendas!

• A return to remote-only!

• Someone fixing the coffee machine who is not me!

Together, dear sisters, I believe we can ruin them all.

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One thing about me: I like to tussle.

I’ve got one of those streaks. That particular debate team, should-have-been-a-lawyer-but-I-don’t-like-alcohol enough element in my personality. Real argumentative-like. I have a soft spot for the free exchange of ideas.

It’s fun for me. It’s like a game.

If you only know me from my online presence, this is not a surprise to you at all because the internet is where I do my very best tussling work.

If you met me in real life, though, I might surprise you. I like to make friends, and I don’t seek out confrontation. None of my exes (even the bad ones) would call me aggressive or passive-aggressive. I am really, I promise, very chill in person.

It’s the sport of argument that I like. I like placing a thesis and then building up the supports. I like poking holes in the foundation, testing it against the rest of my worldviews.

As discussed at length in the Jesus Points Series, I find it valuable and productive to argue with my own people (evangelicals), both because it forces them to reckon with the cognitive dissonance I provoke in the Christian right and because I know my unbelieving loved ones can see me. I do it often and would argue that you should, too.

But there are people with whom I don’t debate, ever. I don’t even really engage in conversation. Those people are: actual fascists, people who are in cults, and 30-year-old reformed American Calvinist men with beards. (Redundant. They all have beards.)

And this is because of the principle of the good faith argument.

Good Faith

A good faith argument is one in which you make a claim, and then you and the other person spend time examining and debating that claim. There is an element of partnership in a good faith argument, even if you disagree on the point.

You start with common ground:

• “Can we agree that ____?

• Okay, then is it fair to say____?

• Shouldn’t we therefore also agree that ____? Why or why not?”

They teach you this in both debate and apologetics. It’s called the Socratic Method/Dialectical Reasoning, and you can bet that if you see any of the above sentences on the internet, the writer has read a lot of C.S. Lewis.

Still with me here? Arguing in good faith is productive, important, and structured. The goal is to come to a common understanding by taking apart each link in the chain until you come to a conclusion.

To make it possible, you have to follow two cardinal rules:

1. Respect your opponent as equally human, valuable, and relevant. You do not have to like them. You do have to believe they’re a whole person.

2. Be willing to change your mind. If evidence demands it, be willing to concede. Otherwise, what are we doing here?

Bad Faith

Bad faith arguments break both rules:

1. They don’t have respect for the opponent as a person.

2. They have no intention of changing their minds

Bad faith arguments are always unproductive, usually hostile, and often very damaging to other people — especially when applied to large groups of people at a time. As a tussler, I want to avoid bad faith arguments as much as I can unless I’m feeling realllllly spicy.

And what I want you to know today is this:

There are certain belief systems that are always in bad faith.

And many, many important philosophical tusslers have written about this at length. Certain schools of thought are bad faith in their very nature, and even the most skilled and accomplished tusslers should not engage with them.

Why? For the same reason you can’t sell heroin at the farmer’s market.

The Farmer’s Marketplace of Ideas

(I did not come up with this analogy but I love it so much. I am taking it it from this video by Zachary, who I think might be a genius.)

Farmer’s markets are great because you can find all sorts of new and exciting things to look at, examine, and perhaps buy. They are safe, lovely, communal, and a good place to spend a Saturday morning in overalls.

You know what you don’t find there? Heroin.

A heroin booth would really ruin the vibe. It’s a product that hurts its users and causes them to hurt the people around them. It has been well documented to decimate not only individuals but also whole communities. By allowing your local heroin business to have a stall at the farmer’s market, you’re putting all the other booth owners in danger (as well as all the customers).

Now, maybe your local owner of Super Great Heroin, LLC is upset by this. “I thought this was a marketplace!” He may cry. “Why am I being excluded? Why am I being victimized?”

And of course, you know the answer is that he is not being victimized. His Super Great Heroin business still exists, but he is not allowed to put everybody else in danger. Otherwise, the marketplace would no longer be free.

Now. Replace the word “heroin” with, say, the word “fascism.”

The Marketplace of Ideas

In the marketplace of ideas, fascism really ruins the vibe. It hurts its users and causes them to hurt the people around them. It has been well documented to decimate not only individuals but also whole communities. It exists on the premise that all of its opponents are less human and less valuable (ahem, violation of rule #1).

By allowing your local fascist to have equal space in the debate, you’re putting all the other ideologies in danger. So, for the good of everybody in the room and for the good of the argument itself, we do not give fascists equal space and time in the debate. Get it?

Your local Aryan Brother is probably upset by this. “Why am I being excluded?” he may cry on Twitter, “Isn’t this supposed to be a free marketplace of ideas? So much for the tolerant left!”

(P.S. Did you catch the DARVO?)

But of course, like the local heroin dealer, we know that the local fascist is not in any danger at all. He can still exist and have his wacko ideas. He just can’t sell them here, where we sell good faith arguments only. Otherwise, the debate quickly devolves into total bad faith. The marketplace is no longer free.

Where the theobros come in.

My least favorite kind of intellectual heroin dealers are the ones who pretend to argue in good faith, while actually arguing in bad faith.

It will not surprise you to learn that there are a lot of these in the more extreme versions of Christianity. Take, for example, the right-wing Calvinist crowd.

You can spot them pretty easily because they use all the structure of the Socratic method, with a heart of dehumanization at the core of their argument.

• They’ll say things like “I’m just arguing logically,” or “I just don’t react emotionally,” while arguing some of the most crazy-wacko-Nazi claims you’ve ever heard of.

• Example: “Can we agree that there is nothing inherently immoral about a physical structure of wood and cement? Shouldn’t we also therefore agree that there’s nothing inherently wrong with a prison building in the Everglades created to house 5,000 people without any due process?”

I do not have much time for these people. Their ideas are bad. And if I engage with them, it is not to argue their points, which are also bad. It is only to call out what they are doing, which is being a hypocrite, so that other people don’t fall for it.

30-year-old reformed Calvinists with beards, for example, do not really think I am a person. They ascribe to an all-or-nothing dogma about predestination that inherently positions them as The Elect, and everyone else (me) as “antithetical” to Christianity.

This is of course, at its core, Jesus Points — which means there is always a deep well of shame keeping them in line. They cannot change their ideas, because to do so threatens to cast them out of The Elect (and really, would mean they never even Elect at all.)

See? Violation of Rule #2.

I would perhaps be tolerable to these right-wing Calvinists if I stayed within the boundaries of their Points God, worked hard to up my Jesus Point count, and maybe shut my mouth/wore mascara/baked them cookies.

But even if I did all of this, this particular brand of right-wing Christian would not see me as equal to them. Their theology in practice famously treats women as less than men. In recent days, one of their Favorite Guys, Doug Wilson, has reaffirmed his belief that women (me) are “people who people come out of,” and his followers continue to beat the drum that only men (not me) should lead, hold office, or vote.

Plus, and I cannot stress this enough: They are not fun to hang out with. Like at all.

So it doesn’t matter whether they wear the trappings of the Socratic method, claim to argue logically, or pretend to be “just exchanging ideas.” It’s bad faith to its core. Peddlers of this ideology do not get my time, and they shouldn’t get yours.

To allow them space in the debate is to allow them to set up their heroin booth at your lovely neighborhood fruit stand. It’s bad for everyone.

An example ripped from the headlines

To conclude, I’ll leave you with a recent example of an online exchange with a Theobro pretending to open a good faith debate. My response isn’t very polite. It’s not an argument. It’s a refusal to engage at all.

And it’s something I’m going to keep doing as this theology continues to rear its head.

It’s not because I think of them as less than me. It’s because I like farmer’s markets too much to let the heroin in.

And now, to my beautiful subscribers…

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Background: Living in Lisbon

So what you really need to know is that I live in Portugal, and I love my life. This was not always the case.

I used to live in Portland, Oregon, which is my own city and has many great qualities that I cannot think of right now.

I also used to really hate my life. So I changed it.

I got a remote job, started a side business to supplement my income, sold my car, got a digital nomad visa, and moved to the capital city of the oldest country in Europe: Lisbon, Portugal.

And I love it so much. I want everyone to experience it. That’s why I have created this: your guide to saying you’ve really “done” Lisbon.

Like, if you’re here for five days, and you’re like, “Hey Ames, what should I do during my workweek in Lisbon?” This is the list I would give you.

Your Free Guide for Visiting Lisbon

Originally, this was a little Google doc that I would send to my friends and family who were planning to come visit. After much demand, I've turned it into a true guide with links, recommendations, and maps to make things a little easier. When I first came to Portugal, I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, you get to learn from my mistakes.

I provide even more recommendations every Tuesday on my Substack--complete with Bourdain-style deep dives and additional feedback from readers. Subscribe for free to get those in your inbox!

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And, if you have questions about Lisbon, writing, marketing, or any of the millions of things I get myself into, you can always schedule some 1:1 consulting time with me here. I can help you plan your trip, create your content, or lend a helping hand for whatever you need help with.

Book time with Ames!

Bem-vindo a Lisboa! I hope you enjoy the guide.

Things to do in Lisbon, Portugal

1. Walking Tour (Absolutely the best way to learn the city)

• I like GuruWalk. It’s free, but BRING CASH to tip your guide afterward.

• I recommend doing this on the first day, and then you can make a note of all the places you want to check out for the rest of your trip.

2. Tram 28E (This is the famous tram that goes along the most scenic route in Lisbon.)

• The actual tram is always PACKED with tourists. I actually recommend getting the tram 12E, which goes on a similar route but isn’t as famous, or walking the tram line! It’s not that far and you can take your time.

• Trams basically work like buses, and your metro pass should cover it!

3. Baixa/Chiado Neighborhoods

• SUPER touristy but awesome to walk around and look at them. Also, they’re in the middle of the city so super helpful to get your bearings.

• “Baixa,” [Bye-shuh] means “low” or “down.” (So like, “downtown.” Get it?)

• Chiado [Shee-ahh-doo] means like “hissing” or “squeaky” and is named after a street performer who famously worked there and had a squeaky/hissy/weird voice. You’ll see his statue next to “A Brasileira,” the fancy coffee shop at the top of the hill. There are usually also street performers here, in Chiado’s honor.

4. Castelo do São Jorge (The big castle. You’ll see it.)

• Don’t stand in the big line–buy your tickets online and walk right in.

• The best way to do the castle is to take a picnic, because it’s basically a big park in there. Bring sandwiches or bread/cheese/wine and hang out.

5. Feira da Ladra (famous giant flea market, open Saturdays and Tuesdays until 1 or 2)

• It’s huge and cash-only, so MAKE SURE you head to an ATM first. There’s only one at the market, and there’s always a huge line.

6. Alfama (The oldest neighborhood in the city. Pre-dates Rome! Lots of stairs though, so be prepared. It’s a maze.)

• Bring a couple of 1 euro coins to buy a shot of gijinha in a chocolate cup. Locals sell it in the alleys of Alfama.

• Take a break at Fora or Alfama Doce.

• Alfama Doce is run by a guy whose kids are musicians. They told me where to find live music, so definitely talk to them.

7. Belém (Suburb of Lisbon with big history and lovely waterfront)

• Tour the monastery and cathedral.

  • Get tickets online so you don’t have to stand in line.

• Try the famous pastries at Pasteis de Belém.

  • Pro tip–don’t wait at the takeaway window. It’s actually faster to get a sit-down table because it’s bigger than it looks and they’ve got Disneyland-level efficiency.

  • The famous ones are called “Pasteis de nata” but everything there is good.

• Go to the Torre de Belém

  • Again, online tickets = no waiting in line.

• Get a drink at one of the outdoor bars by the waterfront

  • They’re gonna be a little more expensive, but it’s so nice.

So there you have it, folks: your one-week, must-see guide to visiting my favorite European capital. Do 1-2 of these each day, and you get a lovely, full visit full of the history, the cultural foods, and the many (MANY. SO MANY.) climbs up and down the hills.

Would you like to see this list in a beautiful PDF that my assistant created for you? You can get it FOR FREE here and share it with your friends:

Get my beautiful free PDF guide!

Detailed Lisbon Itineraries and More

But Ames, I hear you saying, What if I don’t want to do the basic stuff?

What if I want to get more specific and go to one or two hidden gems that tourists don’t see? What if I get stressed out choosing a restaurant, and I want recommendations from someone who really lives there?

My answer: Not to worry, darling! I keep a detailed list of all my very favorite tips, tricks, and spots (including what I firmly believe to be THE BEST PASTEL DE NATA IN LISBON). I update it every month, and I get real into the details.

It’s available here for $6 and includes places to stay, restaurants to book, and all the weird little tips no influencer is going to tell you.

Get my $6 Guide!

And of course, if you have any questions about what it’s like to move, travel, or live in Lisbon, just leave me a comment! I’ll answer. I love to yap.

—Love, Ames

First, a little background.

As some of you may know, I own a small business.

It is a nice little business. It has moxie. Gumption. I named it after the yellow kitchen in my first apartment, which was the happiest place I could think of as I shuffled my depressed hindquarters to file my LLC in the deep, dark depths of 2019.

It has taken me every single minute since 2019 to turn this little business into something I am proud of, rather than something that makes me want to lie facedown in the carpet for an afternoon.

This year, I’ve finally gotten there. I’m proud of my work. I’ve been able to take the business full-time, hire my own assistant, and double the income I was making at my old W-2. It has not been easy.

I have taken hours and hours of courses, worked more than a handful of all-nighters, fired clients and been fired by them, been ghosted, stiffed, chewed out, and broken up with.

And worse than all this, I’ve had to be on LinkedIn.

You know, LinkedIn.

That place where you used to go to get a job, which is now a place where corporate CEOs use ChatGPT to proclaim the absolute lukewarmest takes of all time, answered by thunderous applause from a few thousand of their closest friends employees.

Scroll for any amount of time, and you will see these corporate CEOs proclaiming the virtues of destroying remote work (no, no, it has nothing to do with their real estate portfolios), squealing in delight at the thought of replacing their entire workforce with AI, and promoting the idea that yes, sometimes 80-hour weeks should be normalized (why does nobody get our vision?).

The number one rule on LinkedIn is that you must stand out from the crowd and break the mold with every post while absolutely never revealing a single piece of your actual personality. Vulnerability is outwardly encouraged, and also immediately mocked. This is for business! Why would you show me a photo of your dog?? And also: This is for networking!! Why are you always talking about business???

And just like any overly restrictive environment, this level of cognitive dissonance inevitably leads to either a) the most boring sequence of words ever flung onto God’s green internet or b) some of the most cuckoo-bananas material I have ever seen.

This, for example, is a real post I came across the other day:

Okay, you may be thinking, but at least they’re warning people of the dangers of a culture that feels too cult-y.

Unfortunately, I’ve got some bad news. This event is actually about how to make your culture more cult-like.

I’m serious, LinkedIn is home to some real-life supervillians, and this is far from the only example. In fact, as a survival tactic and fun little hobby, I’ve started keeping a folder of any best-of-the-best insane LinkedIn posts that I come across, just so I can remind myself that someone, somewhere, does actually hold this opinion. I just might make a post about this in the future.

Yes, as someone who spends concentrated hours on LinkedIn every single day as a part of my job, I can assure you that if there is a Dr. Evil-level misanthropic take out there, you’ll be able to find it on LinkedIn.

And it’ll probably have about 2,000 likes.

The Real Heroes

So, in the midst of this AI- and supervillain-dominated landscape, it becomes even more impressive to encounter creators putting out actual good stuff.

One of the best parts of my business is that my clients are some of the people doing this.

A moment for these shameless plugs (I am so proud):

• Gina Clementi, a CMO, Creative Director, and client of mine, has broken the internet more than once with her takes on branding, athletics, and narratives about women in the world of sports marketing.

• Rich Nazarro and Andy Worobel, longtime Salesforce leaders turned transformation consultants for some huge tech brands, are sharing instructions with real value about how project problems are usually people problems.

• Steve Tusa, an entrepreneur and consultant who created his own school of thought about safety in the world’s most high-risk industries, is talking about how to lead a traditionally program-forward industry with person-centered care.

• Molly Hough (who is not really a client but I did consult for one time), is absolutely killing it with her real-world advice for baby lawyers in their first couple of years of practice (side note: the lawyers are not okay.)

Each of these beautiful people have really found their own niche, voice, and point of view on LinkedIn. They put out work that actually helps people and still reflects who they really are and what they want to talk about.

I, unfortunately, am too much of a gremlin for this.

It’s Not a Phase, Mom

Remember, the cardinal rule of LinkedIn involves erasing any shred of evidence that you are a human person with feelings, as well as demonstrating daily that you foam at the mouth with passion about, say, B2B martech stacks.

Our supervillain overlords are watching at all times, after all, and when they’re not busy putting the “cult” in culture, they’re using our LinkedIn data to determine whether we’re hirable.

Unfortunately for me, I am a human person who is made of at least 90% feelings; I only care about B2B martech stacks insofar as they help my clients and I have more of those feelings, and I am full of many, many extreme and unsettling points of view at all times.

In short, I am not sure LinkedIn could handle me.

But if it could — if, say, LinkedIn was like all of the other social media platforms and rewarded cringe, outlandish takes, and vulnerability — I really think I could kill it.

And in that imaginary world, this is what I’d write:

3 LinkedIn Posts I Wish I Could Write

Sales are my passion

I’m slowly dissolving in a vat of hydrochloric acid. Here’s what it taught me about B2B sales.

It was a regular Tuesday. Mundane. Boring, even.

Then, everything changed when I had my last sales call of the day at the Hydrochloric Acid Factory.

We’d done everything right: Studied our ICP, created a targeted drip campaign, added value in every post.

But somehow, the CEO of Hydrochloric Acid, INC, still didn’t see a fit.

Instead of closing on the deal of a lifetime, he ended up throwing me in a vat of acid that will slowly eat away at every cell in my body.

That hit me hard.

It was an important lesson for a young B2B salesperson like me.

Sometimes, all the prep in the world doesn’t account for the real-life person behind the brand.

That’s why I tell all junior salespersons: make sure you think of your clients as people first. Not just vat of acid owners.

That’s how you build trust that lasts.

That’s how you avoid being dissolved into nothingness in a glowing green vat of acid.

I’m curious: How are you using your acid-related sales calls to motivate your sales team today?

#B2B #SaaS #sales #call911 #Iamalreadyseverelydisfigured

Hot takes are my passion

Can I get real for a second? I think locking your employees in the basement is bad.

So often, we’re told: go ahead. Lock those employees in the basement. They don’t want to go outside anyway.

But if I’m honest? I think employees want more than cold basements to sleep in and soda crackers to eat.

I think they want something real.

Something big.

Something like the opportunity to own internal processes that bring real value to the shareholders.

That’s the kind of underlying motivation that will transform your team’s momentum.

That’s how you motivate people with their underlying WHY.

When you flip the script on the old school models, you don’t just lead teams. You inspire them.

And when your team is inspired, they won’t live in the basement and eat soda crackers because they have to.

They’ll live in the basement and eat soda crackers because they want to.

How are you inspiring your team today?

#basement #inspiration #morale #leadership #thoughtleader

AI is my passion

My entire team is now AI.*

*AI stands for Actually Ian. Ian is my nephew who just dropped out of film school. Ian has no money, an anxious attachment style, and was really excited for this opportunity to be paid in exposure in a new industry.

I’ll admit that at first, I was hesitant to jump on the bandwagon.

What if AI didn’t do a good job?

How would people react when they found out that my entire creative agency was AI?

What if AI gained sentience and tried to overpower me?

But then I paused and took a deep breath. And it hit me:

Life isn’t about playing it safe. It’s about taking big risks.

It’s about leveraging AI for free labor at the intersection of technology and creativity.

About using AI’s intelligence to cut expenses and maximize shareholder value.

AI never asks for help, breaks, or even a paycheck.

That’s why AI is the future.

And if he does a good enough job this quarter, there’s a GREAT letter of recommendation with his name on it (and that means a lot, coming from me).

#leverageAI #nepotism #bigbrainCEO

And now, for my lovely subscribers…

I.

Three months after I graduated from college, I went to live and work in an Iranian immigrant & refugee community in Vancouver, BC.

I was pretty stupid in the way most 22-year-olds are: still round enough in the cheeks for it to be endearing and absolutely 100% rock-solid sure about the nature of God, the universe, and everything.

I hadn’t yet realized that the god I knew was one I’d largely made in my own image: abiding by my (American, white, 21st century) rules, acquainted with suffering in theory but in practice more concerned with doing things the right way (see also: the Points God.)

It was through my experience with this Iranian community that the very first tiny cracks in my Jesus-points theology began. My experiences among these people set in motion what would become a ten-year journey through the painful deconstruction and glorious reconstruction that would define my twenties.

And the reason it happened was Shima.

II.

Shima did not live in my little Iranian community in Canada. We only numbered about 30-50 people at any given time, from a handful of families, most of whom had left their country under threats of persecution I’d only ever read about.

They would tell me about it in bits and pieces. Midnight raids of their bookshelves from secret police. Interrogations in dark basements. “Vacations” to Turkey they knew they’d never come back from.

They were so casual about such terrible details sometimes.

• “Yes, we lit a heat lamp on the living room floor and propped a blanket up like a tent. We pretended it was a game because the kids were small.”

• “Oh, you know, you had to run across the border exactly when they told you, because they were shooting and they had search lights.”

• “Well, they put this written warrant for my execution on the table. I was probably 18.”

At 22, I remembered the DC Talk-branded book, Voice of the Martyrs, which I’d read in the fourth grade (wayyy too young for its intended audience.) In the 90s, we were raised with stories of contemporary Christian martyrs. We were asked monthly, weekly even, what we’d say if-and-when someone held a gun to our face and demanded that we deny Christ. (This was a very real thing that happened to most of us during adolescence.)

I had spent much of my childhood trying to be the kind of person who appeared in those books: so consumed with holiness that I’d respond to my impending death with a laugh. I nursed a well-intentioned, deeply ingrained savior complex and a conviction that purity was something I could actually attain.

Meeting the real-life saints humbled me quickly. When I met the people who’d had this life-or-death experience in real life, they were so much more than just beautiful, sanitized stories for young evangelical zealots to consume. They were real people — ones who squabbled, danced, yelled at each other, threw fun and raucous parties, languished in the cold Vancouver rain.

I was languishing, too, but I didn’t know it. I was living on ministry donations, keeping my grocery budget to $25 CA per week, soaked to my socks because I wouldn’t buy new boots. On cold days, I would turn on the oven in my beloved yellow kitchen and nap, since my apartment didn’t have any way to turn up the heat.

These very same people I’d read about in Voice of the Martyrs (or seen on CNN and Fox) cut my hair for free, called me when I inevitably got sick, chatted away as I tried (failed) to get the rhythm of Persian into my ears. They chastised me for never answering my phone (which I absolutely deserved). They blew up at me a few times for the stupid 22-year-old things I did. I blew up at them, too.

They were teaching me, even though they didn’t know it, about being a grown up. The way people will surprise you. The way we are never just one thing. They told me where the good grocery stores were, sent me home with tadigh, told me to stop eating fesenjan because of my acne-prone skin (I did not listen to them because I love fesenjan).

And sometimes they told me about Shima.

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III.

I never met Shima. I don’t even know what she looked like. And by the time I came to join the small group of immigrants in Canada, she had already died.

But everyone in my small, formative community had been touched by her in some way: spiritually, emotionally, financially. She played a crucial part in many of their stories of emigration and escape. As I asked more about my neighbors’ lives, their journeys to Christianity, to Canada, to each other, Shima’s hands were everywhere. She became a sort of legend for me: the off-screen character who puts the story in motion. Hamlet’s father in Act I, scene I.

And the more I learned about her, the more I wanted to be like her.

Like the horrible details of my friends’ escapes from the Ahmadinejad regime, the details about Shima came in bits and pieces.

She was an elder at the church in Tehran to which most of my friends belonged.

She was a little older than most of the people I worked with in Canada (mostly young families). She’d built a steady little life, and she kept the books at the underground church.

Each person I met seemed to have interacted with her in some way.

• She had given Masoud money when she learned about his “vacation” to Turkey.

• She had been praying for Reza as he agonized over whether to leave his family.

• She had let Laleh stay with her when her mother kicked her out.

• She had been the keeper of the church’s roster and documents. A literal death sentence if the government ever found out.

I think she had a husband once, but he’d either passed or been ill for a long time. Mostly, Shima seemed to exist on her own terms. She was the kind of person, everyone said, who just kind of knew things.

I believe it was Shima who introduced the two founders of our church in Canada—a married couple and the bedrock of our community. Had she not simply known which woman God had for this man, we wouldn’t have had a group to begin with.

And it was like this with everyone. I was continually shocked at how far Shima’s influence had spread. It was like every new Iranian I met knew about her. Young twenty-somethings discussed her like something between a beloved, cool aunt and a grandmother. Grumpy babas cracked a craggy smile about her under usually stern, perfect mustaches.

I remember that when I finally had the courage to ask about her for real, Firuzeh, proud and beautiful in her forties, sat on a couch opposite me. She took an inhale through her nose and leaned her head back against the wall while she thought. “Shima was…” eyes closed. Another deep inhale to think. “Warm shelter.”

IV.

This was really how people talked about her, in that almost songlike tone of voice that Persians use for poetry, which has no English equivalent. Thoughtful. Reverent, even. Special. Shima was someone who was like home. Someone who made people feel at home. And I, twenty-two and a little dumb and full of certainty about the type of Christian Soldier I would be, was broken open by this description. I was bowled over at how much of what I was learning, unlearning, becoming was due to the faithfulness of a woman I would never meet. A woman who was, on paper, so ordinary.

Shima was not a pastor, not a deacon. I like to imagine she would have laughed in the face of the regime, but in the end it was a sickness, not the secret police, that took her. She was not a glamorous, stylized story in my Christian Rap-endorsed book. She was just this regular person who had shown up in a million little ways, for dozens of people around her. Over and over and over again.

Warm shelter. A friend.

She never left that church in Tehran, and she probably had no idea how many people in Canada owed parts of their lives to her.

She definitely didn’t know about me, stomping to Persian church in soaked boots, examining my faith for the first time, and learning how to be a grown-up.

And yet, so much of her remained. And as I absorbed new theology and ghormeh saabzi, as I learned, unlearned, came into my adult self, I started to think of her as the kind of person I wanted to be. No longer a fictionalized martyr pure unto a fiery death, but the kind of person who feels like home in a million little ways. Over and over and over again.

V.

I am the second generation of Shima’s influence. You are now the third.

Together, you and I are part of her legacy, which now spreads across two decades, an ocean, and at least five countries. That’s what happens when someone is faithful in the little things, willing to be inconvenienced by the needs of the people around them, willing to play the off-screen role in the big, exciting story.

Now, a decade older and a whole different person, I still think of her when I consider the kind of Christian, the kind of woman, the kind of person I want to be. Someone who is there for you in the small things. Someone who feels like home.

And someday, when I am in heaven, I’ll get to meet Shima and tell her.

You don’t know me, but you changed me. I want to be just like you.

Warm shelter.

A friend.

Characters

Miriam

Staunch, old woman of indeterminate but advanced age, standing slightly stooped and stout on thick ankles in a pressed cotton dress. The cotton dress is faded, but cle…

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They don’t tell you this, but there’s a moment in everyone’s life when you become too old for hostel travel.

Since I am suddenly at an age where I write about being too old for things rather than being too young for things, I remember the exact moment I crossed that threshold and graduated from a young, cool “backpacking traveler” to an elderly, uptight “hotel traveler” with arthritic knees.

Unfortunately, this moment happened to me on my very first day in Lisbon ever, when I had about three sprawling months left in my extremely cheap hostel reservation.

I had arrived in Lisbon fresh from a two-week trip to Italy with my best friend from high school, who has had the good sense to be incredible at things from a young age and has therefore been a hotel traveler for much longer than I have.

That is to say, she has taste.

Which is also to say, the transition from traveling with Abby in a gorgeous boutique Hyatt twenty steps from Trevi fountain (THE Trevi fountain!!!) to the one-window traveling house in the middle of Campo do Carmo was…steep.

I did not take a photo of my one-window traveling house because I didn’t want to worry my mother.

(As an aside, do you remember the word “hovel” from English class? It is a very good word, in my opinion. We don’t use it enough today. So descriptive. Hovel.)

But I was determined not to be a sissy about this. It was my very first day on my very first trip to Lisbon ever. I was being a big brave girl and taking my first step on a journey I’d been promising myself for years.

And so, it did not matter that I had to carry my enormous suitcase up four flights of stairs and arrive soaked through my sundress at a dark green, grime-covered front desk/common room situation, only to procure a key for a mold-smelling 7x7 room with not a single window. I was on an adventure! I was LIVING! IT WAS ALL GOING TO BE FINE.

And this attitude carried me pretty well for the next eighteen hours as I slept a fitful night in the 7x7 room, woke up to scavenge a cafezinho for what I would later learn was a disgustingly high price, and climbed the enormous hill outside to peruse chocolate cups of ginjinha and books I definitely could not read. I was a TRAVELER. This was ROMANTIC. It was ALL GOING TO BE FINE.

And then, of course, I found the bugs.

And in the span of a single second, the final undeveloped bits of my frontal lobe clicked into place, and I felt myself instantly walking the graduation stage from hip, grungy backpacker to fully-grown adult hotelier.

I threw all my worldly possessions back in my suitcase, sprayed everything I could find with bug spray (not recommended in a windowless room), and swept several of the critters into a jar for the purposes of politely blackmailing the front desk into giving me some of my money back.

It worked, and in 15 minutes I had a wad of cash in my fanny pack as I sat on my suitcase in a quiet, steep alleyway off the main drag at Campo do Carmo, working hard not to panic and planning my next move.

And into my life waltzed Lisbon Cheese and Wine Suites.

That is its actual name.

Lisbon Cheese & Wine Suites is a beautiful, bright hotel. It has an elevator. It has a wonderful concierge named João, who took in my disheveled appearance with a keen eye and handed me a water bottle. It has a complementary cheese and wine social for new guests to mingle.

And, most importantly, Lisbon Cheese & Wine Suites was going through some renovations, meaning they had some lower prices than usual. Somehow, by the grace of God, they had a room available for less than 80 euros per night, which actually, legitimately made me tear up (although I was quick to hide this so as not to embarrass myself in front of João.)

And this was the place that I called home for three beautiful days before my long-term room in a student apartment was open for move-in.

João could not have known this, but he was the first friendly Face I’d met in Lisbon—just as he couldn’t have known that I was in Lisbon to see whether it might be a city that wanted to house me in my new life away from my hometown.

The city did not know, at this point, that we were on a first date, but it had just done the equivalent of pulling up to the door with a bouquet of flowers for both me and my mom. I blush at the thought

In that beautiful yellow room in Lisbon Cheese & Wine Suites, jet-lagged awake at 4:30 am, I made ramen noodles with my complimentary electric kettle and wrote down what I might want my life’s second act to look like.

It was the first time I let myself get serious about this whole I-am-going-to-live-here idea. Could I do it? Was it worth it? Did the city like me back? And a few hours later, when I walked out to THIS breakfast spread, I was pretty sure the answer was yes.

Thus began a series of moments in which Lisbon surprised me with how good it was. Even a year later, out of the honeymoon phase and willing to acknowledge its flaws, I am still surprised almost daily with the little pockets of magic it has for me. This little boutique hotel just happened to be the first.

The second time Lisbon Cheese & Wine Suites changed my life was the time my apartment got double-booked and I accidentally lived in the 800-year-old castle, but we’ll cover that next time.

For now, please do complete this little exercise (everyone is welcome!)