I am taking Jack Lewis back from his fans, and you’re coming along.

Make Clive Lewis Weird Again

Nobody understands Clive Staples Lewis anymore. He was better, and worse, and stranger than you remember. I am the only one who can save us. I'm so sorry about this.

By Zack Grafman

First off: I owe an immense debt to C.S. Lewis

I love the man, his work, and his legacy. I’m a bit obsessed with everything he wrote and said. Oh yeah, real special. I’m not like other guys. Whatever.

But to drop the ironic schtick for a moment: I want everyone to love Lewis like I do. I want him to keep influencing generations for Christ. I want his mind to keep shaping the best Christian minds of the future.

But you guys are ruining him.

Cutesy quotes with adorable header images, but only the 5 most well-known and squishy things the man said. Winsome anecdotes, but only the 5 most lovable and squeaky clean. Pasted over the same 5 portrait photos or maybe a comfy painting of a teapot or an imaginary forest. Lewis as Lovable Harmless All-Grandpa. Defanged, testimony scrubbed up, collected works safely abridged.

Nah.

I can’t stand it any longer. We’re gonna do the biographical archaeology. We’re going to get real nerdy. We’re going to Make Clive Lewis Weird Again.

-You Can Just Make (Good) Things

-You’re Not Really Sailing

-Fanfiction Matters

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

We start with , whose recent conversation with on the collision of Medieval metaphysics with modern quantum physics had me fist pumping in excitement. I know, we’re all nerds. But something is moving in the world of science and I think you’ll enjoy Ben’s vision for what might come next.

• The Books We Didn’t Read

• The Queen of Sciences

• Irreducibly Complicated Beetle Farts

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 
~ 2 Corinthians 4:7

Oxygen molecules and bioelectric charges and millimeters of skin. It’s the only thing keeping you going. So many little ways for it to fail. Just a moment, or a breath, or a mistake. Life is frail and tenuous, a thread on fire holding immense weight. Certainty is impossible, reserves and replacements aren’t happening either. The mental image of unconquerable strength is a myth youths mouth one to another to push back the dark. Look anywhere and you’ll see it. It’s all just whistling amid the stones and bones well past midnight. Layer upon layer of gilt façade in front of an empty building meant to convey a sense of impressive Something in place of actually containing the reality it claims. Look in so many places and try to find the There that isn’t there. Nothing is promised because nothing can be. Trust and don’t verify. If you peek behind the curtain, you might find out something unsettling. Better to say honestly that it all looked legitimate and normal and functional, until someone else finally takes a look. This is all that so much of our “real world” truly contains. Promises unchallenged, options unexercised. One test away from disaster.

What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
~ Ecclesiastes 1:15

For most people, the appearance of the thing is enough. In fact, for many it is the entire operative point. When the voices of the Real World mock emergent technology for being “vaporware,” the things that the point to as exemplars are no more sturdy than the things they decry. In fact, in most cases incumbent technologies rot from the inside out, leaving the shell of appearance stubbornly in place until the last desperate moment. When cryptocurrency is derided as not “real, like a bank” the comparison doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. After all, one can simply search “fractional reserve banking” and discover the gory details, unless you prefer to leave that illusion untested in your mind. But calling banks “real” is a reference to something metaphysical, intentionally invoking the concept of a bank in the mind of the listener. Never mind that the towering Greek-ish columns and glass-baubled iron lamps don’t really mean anything other than expense and grandeur, nor that your particular banking establishment may not possess one of these edifices. The key is that the spell-binding word evokes this image in your mind. And that is enough.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
~ Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

We’re just so afraid of metaphysics that we avoid them until the last extremity, apparently. Anything rather than admit that so much of what we call “real” is unreal, so much of what seems strong is weak. Our trust in symbols and appearances scorches when brought to reality’s flame. But don’t get caught up in the pessimist’s trap. They think they have the courage to see the whole world as a sham, when really they lack the courage to see the reality just over the horizon from our shabby wreck. They can’t let themselves hope, and so they smash all and sit in the rubble with their useless bravery. What if you took a real risk? Sure, you could try and margin call the universe. But what if you let go, swam for the horizon, hoped for one point of salvific light. After all, just because everything human-made comes to a crash in the end, doesn’t mean we’ve exhausted all our options.

Hell is a state of mind—ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

We’re just going to have to get comfortable with not knowing. It turns out that we haven’t moved past all those outmoded notions we thought we could safely discard. We all have faith. Some of us just choose to place it in the Fed, or something. But not all faith is blind. Navigating metaphysical deep space places existential demands on everything you trust. You’re going to find out what is real. You’re going to discover just how weak we all are. Once you see it, you can’t ever go back. So I guess what I meant was, we are going to have to get comfortable with the idea that our knowledge might be limited. Flawed. Incomplete and partial. Seems pretty reasonable to me, given the fact that every day reveals a new moment of glaring daylight to dispel the darkness. It gets weirder from here. Don’t be surprised. Now exiting the brief blip of unreality, the bubble when we all agreed to repeat impossibilities to one another in hopes that nobody would speak the honest words to make them untrue. Where we’re going, faith isn’t going to be a lifestyle choice or a philosophical condiment. It will be a requirement of survival, table stakes in the dangerous game. Choose what you believe in however you will, but you might want to start learning the evidentiary laws and knowledge maps of the new place where you’re forced to voyage. When all of the earthly certainties start to look a little murky, you’re getting close to the Heavenlies. I hope you brought a good book.

You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner...you're in one!
~ Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Or maybe as you read along, that would be ok too. “Opus” by Eric Prydz is a meticulous and engrossing piece of electronic dance music, not the sort of thing I would probably have encountered in my life except for the influence of a niche Canadian television show about semi-pro hockey. But it's going to be central thread that's going to pull us through this whole meandering meditation. Are you listening?

Hockey began for me as a four-year old in a tiny Fairport, NY apartment. Dad worked at Xerox and would come home from the office to play floor hockey with me, flicking a plastic coaster around the dark brown carpet in our living room. My earliest memories connect hockey and my father, like it was a mystic ritual that he only shared with a secret society composed of his sons. You have to understand, Dad never played hockey in any capacity. We didn't have cable at the time and I don't remember a single season growing up that Dad seriously followed. None of us boys ever played organized hockey either; a 1995 move to New Mexico made it implausible, and the costs associated made it impossible for a single-income family.

I really can't remember exactly when he taught us all the ephemera and snatches of vernacular that he did. Hockey was just always there. Pretty soon I graduated from the floor to the street. Dad bought a tiny stick with a plastic blade for me and my brother to share, and invested in a real composite wood stick for himself. We flicked around a roller puck in the empty parking lot spaces. Forehand and backhand and deke, wrist shots and slapshots. He even taught us his favorite celly, the Pumpernickel, an elaborate gesture involving a simultaneous fist pump and leg kick designed to really let the opposing squad know you were demonstrating your superiority. I don’t remember where it came from but I distinctly recall the four-color illustrations of an old boys’ book about the sport, intended to provide a smattering of the rules and explain basic techniques. I pored over it, memorizing the referee's penalty signals like an arcane thieves’ cant. Boarding and interference and elbowing and roughing. Icing and offsides and the now-obsolete Two Line Pass, whatever those meant. A world that meant something to my dad, and so it meant even more to me.

In the way of most cornerstone childhood memories, I’m sure that if I could review the tape of my first eighteen years hockey would play a miniscule part in terms of minutes. For all I know, Dad passed that roller puck around with us a couple times during those Fairport years, a couple more on the concrete pad beside our house in New Mexico. Maybe it was more, maybe it wasn’t. I only remember that it happened.

The first notes of the song drag out repetitively until they almost frustrate you. Four notes repeated, monotonous, metronymic. Ba da, da dum. Up one step and back down. A synthesized countup that never seems to move quite fast enough. It takes a while but the pace builds by just one step, and stays there. Then another. The tension stretches as the rhythm remains unbroken. Just four notes. Ba da, da dum.

I’m a pretty public proponent of the axiom that “all truth is God's truth.” That's the only reason even discussing Shoresy here makes sense to me. When I stumbled across the show, the first season had made its way south of the Canadian border, and my life felt distinctly stuck. I was married to the love of my life, I had beautiful children, and that was about it. A dream job was slowly turning into a nightmare. The goals of my twenties were turning into the albatrosses of my early thirties. I hadn't done much that wasn't bare minimum required of me in years. I wondered a lot about how good of a husband and dad I really was, once you filed off the niceness and the simple fact of my presence. If I was the kind of person who allowed myself to think about depression, I would have been depressed.

It's not exactly a situation for which I'd prescribe gritty, raunchy international TV about minor league sports. But God works mysteriously. The first season of Shoresy put me on notice. Have you ever had your life rewritten in a way that is so profoundly stupid, so embarrassing, that you hesitate to share it with others? The first season of Shoresy made me laugh at myself. A shockingly profane senior hockey player tries to stave off his team's imminent demise by teaching them the power of hating to lose. The show spent that first season constantly walking right up to the line of ironically dismissing its’ own premise. Then everything would stop dead to let the audience linger, totally earnest, really and truly hoping for this ragtag crew of degenerates to find something new inside themselves.

The beat begins to pick up tension. Every few repeated four-note measures you can feel the tempo stutter forward, awkward at first, unresolved. Ba da, da dum. The song is in less of a hurry than you are. Every ratcheting metronymic move of that four-note mantra up and down the scale begins to build a story, an arrow pointing. The measures group themselves into repeated bars, each new configuration slightly different than the last, slightly accelerated. Ba da, da dum. Get ready.

Dad took me on a business trip to Dallas when I was about ten. He needed to meet with a supplier, some adult ritual of the world that he entered and left each day at 8 and 6 respectively like clockwork. But since dad had carved his own corner of that world, risking himself on a bet that took us across the country from Rochester to Albuquerque, he had gained the freedom to do things like bring me along. And get us tickets to watch the Stars play the Panthers just a few rows back from the glass. I don’t remember whether we drove or flew across the massive expanse of desert that separates the adjacent states. We just appear in my memories, walking through the rain-soaked pathways between the DFW triangle's stubby skyscrapers. Somehow I also remember that our seats were about $80 apiece, which as a father two decades removed from my Dad carries new and inflated meaning.

Dad and I watched the Stars lose and ate overpriced snacks. I remember feeling the dry chill inside the rink at first, until the pure exhilaration took over. It was probably my first live hockey game, and I drank it in. We shared a few hours, Dad teaching me to cheer for our team to “light the lamp,” me surprised to discover that baying for fighters like gladiators of old was perfectly acceptable behavior if they wore skates. Then we somehow arrived back at our hotel in dreamlike travel, floating through the memory-shrouded mists of Dallas.

Shoresy doesn’t ever give you enough. Six-episode seasons at twenty minutes apiece. You always wonder how the writers will manage to tell any sort of meaningful story. Especially when the first few episodes of a season always seem to linger on all the wrong beats, spending whole minutes frivolously dragging nonsensical jokes to their illogical ends. There's never enough time. But then they do the magic trick. Every premise from the first few episodes is paid off with stunning emotional depth that cashes in each wasteful moment of character development. Everything matters. And we only have a few hours.

I watched the Sudbury Bulldogs pull their sorry franchise back from the brink and then run a record-breaking season winning streak while my life started to shift uncomfortably. Season Two ended and then everything blew up. Solid laptop job jerked away just weeks before Christmas. Grinding multiple gigs while the kids got bigger and my temper got shorter. I could feel it all slipping away, the perfect life I thought it had been up to me to build. Tired and exasperated, sometimes my truly unbelievable Godsent wife and I would look at each other and say “this team will never lose again.” I told it to friends going through hell and repeated it like a prayer while our church went through one setback after another. I spat it into the wind and waited for God to answer. I felt like He was running out of time.

Now each bar adds elements and instruments to the mix. Faster and faster, plodding to stumbling to galloping. A breathless riot of sound that celebrates wildly without ever quite getting its feet underneath itself. Where are we going? Did you hear that? Every ratcheted shift in tempo and orchestration bringing new challenges. Keep up.

Most of the things you learn from your father are silent lessons, and many of those don’t fully make sense until years after the fact. It never seemed odd that Dad occasionally peppered his vernacular with out of date Canadian sports slang, it was just a part of him. Dad hadn’t allowed very much of his old life to survive into his thirties, carefully pruning away the dead wood and bad memories. But hockey never left. He never once sat me down and said, “Now Zack, hockey is about brotherhood and tenacity and hard work and aggression, that’s what I want you to learn. Keep your head up, defend your teammates, and do something you’ll be proud of.” I don't think I learned what he saw in it fully until I found myself in his place, my own first period over, trying to scramble for the bouncing puck of my life as it caromed off the boards. You start to remember little things, later on, when they really matter. Like how, when dad wanted to remind us that life was short, he’d intone “Last minute of play in this period” as if he could still hear it echoing through the old Rochester Americans barn.

I never realized how hard he was working that decade until I reached the same one myself. He had to dig deep to find that extra gear. He wanted it bad enough to do what it took. He played tired, played hurt. He hated to lose.

Season Three was the one that changed me. Everything was starting to get serious. New ministry job, new pressures, the spotlight on. Success can be just as terrifying as failure, and I felt it. The season follows Shoresy as he captains the Bulldogs through a national tournament and ends on one of the single most wrenchingly poignant moments I've ever seen on screen. A cycle composed of cycles, they managed to bring the full emotional weight, three seasons of disjointed and slightly manic sketch scenes and inside jokes, crashing down on a single sequence, leaving you gasping for breath and wondering.

How many shots at this did I think I was going to get? Every single second is a gift. The clock isn't stopping. This moment in time, these friends, these children, these images of joy frozen below layers of memory like lines beneath the ice. What if I failed to soak up even one second of this time? How bad did I want it?

Just as fast as the blinding chaotic crescendo arrives it begins to subside. A brief moment of ecstatic energy bleeding away before you can fully grasp it. Winding down, ticking towards the finish. Backwards through each successive stage towards the start. Were you listening? It's almost over. Ba da, da dum.

Everyone has players that define their sports childhood. Mike Modano, the seasoned veteran of the Dallas Stars, was one of mine after our business trip. You can catch him as a babyfaced cameo in Disney’s Mighty Ducks, sporting the sweater of Dallas’ predecessor squad from Minnesota. But his age meant that he wasn’t prominent in the league for long, and I quickly gravitated towards the face of the next generation.

When Alexander Ovechkin stepped on the ice during his rookie year, the building shifted. You cannot understand it if you weren't watching him at the time. One of the first of a new era of forwards, Ovechkin would swarm through the neutral zone with like a cyclone, all windmill dekes and fearless intensity. He approached defenses like they owed him money, and every shift was an exercise in breathless ferocity. Equally capable of throwing explosive forecheck hits or dismantling goalies with breathtaking creativity, he brought a passion I'd never seen to the sport. He played like it was his last time stepping on the ice, skating downhill inches from sprawling disaster at every moment. He seemed to believe that the balance of the game was on his shoulders, and he alone could conquer through desire alone. And then he did.

I grew up, changed states, graduated college, got married, had kids, and Ovechkin played for the Washington Capitals. For twenty years. The other night, I sat on the couch with my children and watched him pass Wayne Gretzky's career goals record. He's an old man now, especially in hockey terms. His game is less energy and more precision, getting to the exact position for the perfect shot. But you can still see him there, the same fresh wonder under the years of punishment. The kids asked me who he was, and I tried to explain. But how do you tell them that a hockey player helped teach you how to live? Every time he touches the ice, I still catch myself holding my breath.

The other day I took the kids down to the driveway and taught them to use the sticks and roller puck my Dad had gotten them for Christmas. I’d love to tell you it was some sort of Kodak moment where everything snapped into focus and electric joy ran to the tips of my fingers. There were a few too many complaints and a little too much chasing errant pucks into last year’s leaves for that. But you just need seconds, sometimes. A sheepish smile. “Dad, show me how you make the puck jump like that.” They copy your slang, just once. Two weeks later, they ask when we’re going to do it again.

The final notes bleed into the air one after the other. Gassed out and lilting, all gone in joyous spendthrift energy. In the end, everything filtered down to this. Only a few moments really mattered. Did you take the shot?

I still tell myself and my family and my friends that “this team will never lose again.” Nowadays it’s inexplicably coming true. I wonder if God is like a coach watching me slow-skate my way through the biggest period of my life. Whispering under His breath as I take half of the last chances I’ll ever have. Asking me what I’m really playing for. Willing me to find something more, just one more time. Knowing it’s in there, dragging it out of me shift after punishing shift. I’m glad He put my line in. Everything we got now, boys.

Last minute of play in this period.

This essay was originally a contribution to the Social Club Symposium, on the theme of Nostalgia.

In the chaos of a turning world, it is common for our people to look to the age now passing away for comfort. We can clearly see the failures and flaws of our present, and begin to suspect that our forbears inhabited a finer and grander world, free from the shackles that bind our souls to mediocrity. We are to be pitied, for we live in the shadows of great beauty and yet can produce none. Fear of the unknown possesses us and we convulsively grip whatever identifiably shards of past culture and life remain accessible, brandishing them as talismans against the eye of the void. Of course, we know that this is foolish; conversely, rejecting anything before our generation as hopelessly primitive is a fool’s reaction also. But the temptation lingers. And many succumb without knowing it, hoping that by following the patterns and ordering the steps just like we were taught them we can resurrect the age of our fathers. Restlessly clacking and clattering the bones of our mausoleums, asking for breath to stir them again.

Well then, what is the difference between worshipful, inaccurate nostalgia and learning the best lessons from the past? Some of our generation have eagerly begun to sift the ruins to seek out artifacts and practices they can carry away, ferreting out and imitating the mannerisms of a bygone era. Are they wrong for their small acts of ageless rebellion, for larping as the generation they wish to be? I believe I’ve argued (perhaps even persuasively) for this sort of imitation before. I fault no-one for attempting to copy the best things of the past, and believe intensely that tradition properly maintained is one of the deepest responsibilities humans have. The crucial difference is not in the action of imitation, but in the source material being imitated.

Asserted: Nostalgia is differentiated from tradition by the efficacy of the thing honored.

The historical lesson of the cargo cult teaches us that we need to think carefully about causation before we begin to idolize one or another of the supposed benefits of a golden age. For an updated example, let’s suppose that your earnest desire was to compose intricately crafted worlds in a cycle of mythical fantasy novels. As your patron you look to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, deservedly revered as one of the best examples of this art. Making a simple list of some of his attributes, you begin to attempt to shape your life and habits around his, thinking that this will produce in your art the same greatness. We can already see the problems inherent in this practice. Tolkien was an intensely devout Catholic, morose and anxious, a war veteran, a linguistic scholar and Oxford professor, a devoted father and a passionate user of tobacco. He also dressed in a style typical of someone born at the turn of the 19th century and had a known aversion to being photographed or tape recorded. Now, which of these habits and patterns will make you into an accomplished author? We might laugh at this, but the internet teems with peddlers of morning routines ripped from the biographies of powerful and successful business moguls and style habits and reading lists of our grandfathers, all with the express notion that these things will produce in us what we feel we lack.

Again, there is nothing inherently the matter with this practice of emulating those we admire, and in fact it is often vital to do so. But we have to understand that panning quickly across vast spans of history with our rose-colored binoculars and selecting a few half-remembered glimpses to use as our formulae is not much wiser than trying to pattern our life after a Norman Rockwell painting. We must go beyond images. Perhaps we are right to look to a figure from our past as a unique and lost pinnacle of achievement; if so, we cannot risk thinking that cheap shortcuts will allow us to refashion our soul. Lazily envying the results of a lifelong process will not get us very far. As we add any element to our lives we must ask ourselves: am I very, very sure that this will produce the kind of person I ought to be? Or am I ascribing power to something properly viewed as a meaningless affectation, or worse?

Asserted: Nostalgia is a degeneration resulting from failure to understand greatness.

Remembering that your heroes were human and lived in times not all that different from your own will prevent you from dissecting their daily routine to slavishly adopt. “If you want what they got, you have to do what they did” is a good saying, but only as you are confident that any specific thing they did influenced what they got. When lesser people such as ourselves are in the presence of people we suppose to be truly great, we tend to search for answers telling us that after all, we are not so different from them. Seeing tradesmen with rippling physiques and mastery of craft borne of lifelong devotion to a single repetitive set of skills, we hope to become like them with a gym to build the body and a Youtube playlist to educate the mind. Both are good, but the best work is to seek to understand the soul of the person you admire. Knowing that they were faulty and flawed will help you sift what is tangential and cling to what is essential. The whole process ought to fill us with humility, not pride or despair. We will realize that it isn’t the decade or the dress or the schools that produce the people, but the choices they make and the legacy of labor they leave.

Misremembering the best elements of an entire period, we tell ourselves that it was all different then, but now it is impossible. No, the opportunity before us is the same that was before every generation. We are free to see the chaos of our time and persevere anyway, sacrificing much which is good to gain what is best. Look closer at your heroes and heroines. Realize that they were in their time rejecters of what had ceased to be helpful from their sires, quick to respond to their perceptive understanding of the need at hand. No-one thinks of their own age as golden. Everyone has the chance to make theirs better. And the people we remember from history are the very few who chose to submit to the painful process of transcending their generation.

Resolved: To stand at the crossing of ages and choose what is best.

That is truly the immensity of your calling, if you are willing. To pick up and lay aside, to carefully chose which treasures we will carry onward and hand to our children. A weighty task. Emotional attachment, a longing for a childhood never finished, is not a worthy guide. I owe my children a better future than to simply try and regurgitate the fading memories of what seemed best when I saw the world through young eyes. Face the storm now, as it is. Secure the things which are about to be torn away by the tide, but know that you cannot save everything. Some memories will drift, and perhaps we never should have been clinging to them in the first place. We can only carry the best things, and even those may have to be fashioned and repurposed to suit our needs. As a passionate believer in the timelessness of Scripture and creed, I am free to dismiss many other things as suitable for their time. We cannot beat back against the waves, because that is not where we are going. Find the best things, and know why they are best. You’ll find the Power behind those you admire is totally accessible to you, if you will allow yourself to be changed as they did. After all, they inhabited a chaotic and broken age, and had to choose their way forward amidst the wreckage of their ancestors.

Just like us.

To study the past does indeed liberate us from the present, from the idols of our own market-place. But I think it liberates us from the past too. I think no class of men are less enslaved to the past than historians. ~ C.S. Lewis, “De Descriptione Temporum”

Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with "normal life". Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. ~ C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-time,” 1939

Security provides readiness for action or counteraction and is greatly enhanced by flexibility. ~ Marine Rifle Company/Platoon Manual FMFM 6-4

No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins--and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins. ~ Mark 2:21-22

I used to think I had to write these songs just so;
For heavens sake and for my own I put myself through hell
But I quit striving for perfection; surrendered up to it instead
And now the songs keep pouring out and I cannot contain myself
I've been thinking of how You wept for Lazarus
Tears on Your cheeks, resurrection on Your lips
Sometimes mercy feels just like abandonment
You let my heart die, but left Yours beating in my chest 
~ My Epic, "Lazarus"

If you sit on the porch long enough, you can almost see the spring exploding into life around you. Greens so bright they almost pulse in the morning, birds and bugs screaming as they go about their professions. You can watch the steam smoldering off your coffee, vanishing traceless like a morning incense offering. Sit long enough and you almost forget that you're dying. Not now, not for sure. Not that you know of, any way. But imperceptibly, the seeds of your murder are gestating. What will it be, do you ever wonder? Mr. Drunk Driver on the avenue with a four-door? Mr. Uncontrolled Cellular Reproduction in the hospital with metastatic Stage 4 inoperable? We'll all know soon enough. Rushing headlong at sixty seconds to the minute. Barreling through the known universe and frantically hoping to cram every last shred of helpless hopes and stupid dreams into your suitcase before you leave it on the platform at the station to the beyond. Why aren't we all and always hysterical?

If you really are a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would not that fact itself strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures. Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ('How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married? I can hardly believe it!') In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal. ~ C.S. Lewis, letter to Sheldon Vanauken, 1950

Death, the central fact of our visible universe, is a strange nacreous intrusion, stuffed away in the corners of our mind. Humans are simultaneously avoiding all confrontation with the terror while obsessed with managing the consequences. Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil and Vitalik Buterin are our modern prophets crying "Peace, peace" with promises of vat-grown and antiseptic solutions, medicalized transcendence tortured out of Nature with profane hands then dripped into our tired veins. Aren't we ashamed? Our legends remind us that all our great heroes die, manfully and with a song in their heart. And yet not a single one of us can forget the first time we saw a human form laying on a table or in a box or in the ground, a stretched and folded old sweater of flesh that used to hold a soul. Remember what you felt? Something was cosmically wrong, like a singularity had been stuffed into the funeral parlor. How do we bear that kind of duality within ourselves?

I fight in vain, try to deny, to push back the years, and the weight, and the gray
But it’s in my face, the edge of the infinite, and we’re all just inches and seconds away
My eyes are wide and I feel the weight
Sit down, breathe out, and try not to faint
Or be crushed by the scale of everything
What is man in the scope of existence?
Just a blink on a dot in the dark
But the patterns that weave through the distance
Bear a voice that proclaims who we are  
~ My Epic, "Lament" 

Yesterday was Easter but today is Monday. And the observable universe gains focus when I accept the fact that death is a present reality but an unintended one. Death is the cancerous results of a failed human experiment in promethean transcendence. Over and over we've attempted to scale the heights and rip God free, to install ourselves at the summit of existence. I do it in my petty kingdom, as I snap pictures and stack sats and lift iron to deny the progress of time. But like every soul in existence, something's chewing at my mind and telling me it isn't enough. The reason I devote myself to Christian life is the realization that my only hope for immortality is Christ Revenant, the Daybreak and the Deathbreaker. I've lost hope in everything else, you see. But I can't let go of the most human of spiritual drives, the clanging echo of paradise still awake in my bones.

"I want more life, father." ~ Roy Batty, Blade Runner

Of course I understand the irony of the quote. But Prometheus wasn't wrong for desiring the fire of the gods, just for stealing it. And Christianity doesn't teach renunciation of desire. It teaches you to look along the path of your desire like a spotlight in the dark until you find what you were meant to want. You probably don't desire fiercely enough. When you've glimpsed into the infinite your desire sharpens with each passing minute. Eternal Good and Infinite Love are drugs which demand lifestyle change to support the habit. The wildest fever dreams of the transhumanists aren't strange enough for you anymore. You have to hunger and thirst to be satisfied. You have to realize that each material possession and experience is a beautiful signpost but a terrible goal. You have to die. But staying dead would be very improper, for a human. Against the manufacturer's specifications.

And behold
You whom no eye could yet bear
Nor any mind yet conceive
And I’ll take hold of You there
And then let go of belief
Somehow, made new
I'll be like You
A song begins
Without an end
Beloved, behold
Forever 
~My Epic, "Arrive"

And Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." And the people did not answer him a word. 
~ 1 Kings 18:21

Somewhere along the way we were taught to shun the flicker of recognition that accompanies certainty of action. Trained, or perhaps self-schooled, to ignore the moment where the call sounds. That virtue lies in the endless moral procrastination of indecision. We are rarely so honest as to admit this obsessive waffling, so we cloak the shame in high-sounding layers. We are analyzing, considering, processing, planning. Trammeling ourselves in enough snags to plausibly excuse our returning to our seats unchanged and unmoved. We’ve associated the quick thought, the instant decision, with foolishness and failure. Wisdom has been so tied to long thought that they now seem equated in our minds. And perhaps in many cases, the association is warranted. But that's enough caveats. The reality is that you usually know almost instantly which is the right path. You then spend the rest of your time considering and planning how to avoid it.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.
~ James 4:17

Perhaps those found on the narrow way are the ones who never reconsidered their first instinct towards righteousness. Now isn't the time to bicker over fine theological differences. All people know how to reorient their lives to God. Whether it is the grating knowledge that He is displeased or the certain peace of knowing what would please Him. We are on the whole less confused than we pretend to be. Much of the grinding psychic static thrown off by our Anxious Age is merely the friction created when our certainty towards good action collides with our fear, laziness and selfishness. If you would learn to be more certain, if you truly seek peace with God, you must first heed what you already know.

In the same way a sacred calling is not limited to ecclesiastical functions, the man who is weeding a field of turnips is also serving God.
~ C.S. Lewis

For all this I have come across so far but one algorithm. A simple sorting mechanism that has truly helped me come to grips with my mortal fear of doing what is right. Let us say I feel an impulsive desire to action. To care for a loved one. To serve my neighbor. To build something great. At this point comes a branch leading towards further consideration, and a branch leading towards action.

Do the thing. Do not wait. Why would you hesitate? Will you ever regret doing what you know is good? Has there ever been a moment where you wished to take back those instantaneous charities, desired to reclaim time heedlessly spent on others? Do the good thing without giving your foolish mind time to convince you otherwise.

And if the thing is not good, procrastinate religiously. Always delay your temptations. Fritter them away. Keep them off for later consideration. When you return you will find that they have often melted away and revealed themselves for foolishness. Grimly seize on the few good flickers of thought in your spastic and corrupt mind. Let most other passions stream hurriedly by. But do not fail to seize upon those which you know to be aimed in the right direction.

When faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.
~ Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Of course, this assumes that your compass is in working order, your map is clear, and your destination is in mind. Those are rightly questions for a trusted and wise leader. A pastor, not a productivity mentat or philo-sophist. If we learn anything from our obsessive moment, it is the failure of purely mental frameworks to account for or determine what is good. Ineffective altruism and glorified greed are not guiding you to heaven, either here or hereafter. Reacquaint yourself with parts of your being that you may have worked most of your life to silence. Behind and above your thoughts you will find a pair of broken clockwork traffic cops. We used to call them Conscience and Flesh. Flesh digs its merciless cogs into your being, grinding until briefly sated. It has legitimate needs but often must be ignored. Conscience is also not authoritative, and is subject to your particular spiritual flaws. But there will be moments, flashes, when Conscience instructs you quietly and steadily onto a certain path. Not the rote mumblings of your brain, or the angry clamor of your body, but another thing. Heed it. Recklessly. Do not allow yourself to lose the holy opportunity.

And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, "Get up quickly." And the chains fell off his hands.
~ Acts 12:7

We are so prideful and self-reliant that we really think we have unlimited opportunities to do what is right. We imagine that these little whims are self-produced, bubbling up from our finer natures, the true self we always knew lay dormant within. In fact the opposite is true. Each glint of grace, coming from absolutely Outside ourselves to pierce the murk of the heart, is to be treasured for what it is: a totally undeserved gift. One that may never come again. We are not promised another instant of right feeling or moment of romantic zeal. Too many have eased into the path of cold lethargy fully intent on rousing themselves again. We have found ourselves buried in regret for decades of “I ought to” without a single “I have done.” If we have received the grace of impulse, gratefulness demands our response. Lash yourself violently to the mast and make for the last point on the horizon where you saw the light. We don’t have a moment to spare.

What indeed can we imagine heaven to be but unimpeded obedience?
~ C.S. Lewis

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Reminded of my personal need for growth in leadership yet again, I return to this cornerstone of my personal analog metaverse. Jocko Willink may be a part of the increasingly cringe-filled Stoic Sheepdog corner of our digital realm, but I think I may be able to convince you that he’s one of the more genuine thinkers in his neighborhood. At the very least, he has personally earned far more of his observations and insights than most so-called practitioners. His work accomplishes something that few Business and Leadership Books manage: arming the reader with practical tools that resist useless sloganeering, and are out of step with the anodyne nonsense of majority corporate thought. In a world of manipulation, posturing and lies, this refreshing blast of uncompromising wisdom is bound to cause protest. Good. Our communities, organizations and families are floundering in a season of change. We exist in the liminal transit between ages, and we are beginning to suffer from a severe lack of true leaders. Perhaps it’s time to stop looking around. Take the mantle.

Acting as something of a summary and implementation of several previous works, this Field Manual allows Willink to articulate his particular brand of adapted military leadership concepts for the layman. Some of these leadership principles may seem elementary or simplistic, while others are countercultural in their extremity. But the most surprising thing about the book is how completely applicable it is to almost any situation. This uncomplicated, inescapable set of drop-forged excuse-shattering hammers brings the power directly to the individual. You are free to excuse yourself from the responsibilities they entail, but at least you can’t say that you were unable to make a difference. So you see brokenness and corruption everywhere? Time to take some action. Precious few of us will receive a signed mandate, so we’re going to have to strike out into the dark.

I. Cover and Move

A leader puts themselves at the bottom of the priority list. The good of the mission and the good of the team outweigh any personal concern a true leader has for themselves. ~ Jocko Willink, Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual

If you recognize failure inside any structure, recognize also that success will be the result of coordinated effort and communication. Oh wow, so innovative. Teamwork. But the reminders wouldn’t be necessary if this was being perfectly executed. The fact is that actual transparent communication, unselfish action, and open exchange of ideas is almost unheard of in most workplaces, in many families. The Cover and Move principle refers to the method of movement used by a military fireteam when executing “bounding overwatch,” one team member providing covering fire while the other sprints forward, providing their own base of fire in turn for their teammate’s movement. What differentiates this principle from every other “work together kids, there’s no I in team” saccharide is the fact that Willink’s leadership mentality requires much more of us. This is both an intense awareness of one’s own identity, responsibilities and capabilities (there is in fact an I in team, and I am the only person I can control), while simultaneously a willingness to sacrificially risk ourselves so that the mission can succeed. It is a counter-modern approach that elevates the mission above both the team members as units (radical individualism) and also above the team as a whole (radical communalism). Blandly submitting your thoughts and drives to your manager for correction since The Team is paramount would be abject failure according to Willink. Instead, every team member must be able to critically evaluate their immediate circumstances and select a target that will enable their comrades to succeed, while trusting that their comrades will do the same for them.

If you sense the failure of your team, perhaps the simplest immediate action you could take would be to cover someone else. How can you immediately give your boss, or a subordinate or colleague or family member, room to maneuver? Doing this, and doing it selflessly, will bring an instant shot of adrenaline to the situation. Things will become clear, solutions will be uncovered, tension will at least stop ratcheting upward. Are you guaranteed to receive reward? Absolutely not. But remember that this whole thing only works when you are pressing towards a mission that you count above your own gain and ends. You are reserving your ultimate effort for people you would die for, right?

II. Simple

The easy path leads to misery. The path of discipline leads them to freedom. ~ Jocko Willink, Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual

Complication and analysis are conspiring to kill you and your team. The corner cases and exceptions aren’t your friend. They’re just comforting crannies for you to hide away from your fear. Ruthlessly demand simplicity of yourself and others so that you increase your chances of actually accomplishing your goals. This is especially true if you find yourself in a chaotic or leaderless situation. If everything is coming apart, and you are the one who sees it, then it is time to step into the breach and take radically simple actions. Ensure that the people you want to follow you can completely understand and support what you’re doing. Leave nothing to chance or assumption. Don’t allow yourself the luxury of detailed plans, obsessive self-protection, and carefully maintained lines of responsibility. The failsafe and underengineered way is the way of the crisis leader.

You will quickly realize that it is in fact much easier for lazy and fearful leaders to cloak their lack of tactical and strategic mastery with layer upon layer of complicated cruft. That way, failure can always be attributed to anything or anyone else. But Willink constantly boils leadership down to the concept of Extreme Ownership: that which is in your control is your responsibility, and therefore failure of the team is the leader’s responsibility. Simplicity removes excuses and distractions. Clarity is difficult to attain, but there is freedom beyond the fog.

III. Prioritize and Execute

While there are many similarities between leaders and manipulators, there is one glaring difference: manipulators are trying to get people to do things that will benefit the manipulator, while leaders are trying to get people to do things that will benefit the team and the people themselves. ~ Jocko Willink, Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual

While you are waiting for someone else to lead, or for the rest of the team to get their act together, or for the situation to change in your favor, time refuses to be on your side. Act, now. Willink’s action-biased “Default Aggressive” stance is not an excuse for reckless disregard for appropriate risk, but rather a reminder that waiting for decisions to be made elsewhere is most frequently a decision to allow team failure while preserving personal lack of culpability. The Field Manual provides abundant examples of how to observe, triage and pursue solutions. The beauty here is that simply by forcing yourself to default to positive action, you will find yourself in de facto leadership almost instantly. The lack of clear and authoritative guidance in most situations we encounter leaves people desperate for a calm and reasoned voice to dispense some wise counsel. If you can let go of your prideful need for titles and positions, you will find yourself doing what Willink calls “leading up and down the chain of command.” As the rock steady pivot point for your team, you will enable and activate others by stepping back from the situation, identifying the immediate need, and moving towards the solution. Even verbalizing this process in stressful moments can unstick others, giving them the space needed to regain focus and reengage. The people around you don’t require a perfect leader, they just need a beacon to converge around.

IV. Decentralized Command

Solid relationships up and down the chain of command are the basis of all good leadership. ~ Jocko Willink, Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual

This final principle immediately establishes leadership as something that must be practiced, not just at the top of the organizational chart, but at every level of any team that hopes to succeed. What you see is your responsibility. What is your responsibility is able to be executed from your position with the help of others. Leadership is convincing others to work together with you towards what you see. And absolutely none of this requires official permission or status. You are free to stop complaining, right now, and throw yourself on that brokenness in your marriage or failure in your workplace. Aggressively, decisively, ignoring the voice of fear. The excuses you are conjuring right now sound safe and reasonable, but they are all, as Willink loves to remind us, lies. The reality is that the world consists primarily in nexuses of soft power. Master the art of the gentle bit of advice, the careful observation, the perfect example that inspires imitation. Act, and trust that others are watching. Even in the most hierarchical and suffocating of structures, individual action is able to break up impasses and cause positive impact. If this is true in adverse circumstances, then the good leader’s job is to create an environment where leadership is spread across the entire team by design.

Now that you’ve taken command and begun to move forward, are you hoarding outward business and responsibilities as markers of your importance? Force yourself to step back and allow the team to function. Call others higher, expect more of them than they know is possible. Hand them the important tasks and make failure a badge of progress. Demand of yourself the humility to give the credit and spotlight to others. Let go of every goal but the true mission. The quests worth our lives are open to even the humblest among us.

Of course the biggest secret of the whole leadership discussion is that Willink, while he does a fantastic job of explaining and exemplifying, is inventing nothing. In fact, he has essentially rediscovered the Servant Leadership ethos exemplified by Jesus Christ and, at their best, His disciples and Church. If you substitute the nomenclature, you immediately realize that there was a reason the whole thing sounded familiar. In decentralized leadership where personal responsibility and personal sacrifice are demanded in pursuit of the vital mission, the first are indeed the last. But the last are also the first. The upside-down Kingdom requires no binding power stronger than the authority of love. When all are mutually submitted to the Word of God, then no one of us dares claim unique supremacy, but all serve in positions of various responsibility to one another. And so the Spiritual War is fought. True humility is willing to suffer for the brother rather than see him suffer. By this sign, we conquer.

As usual, you are free to appropriate the software and install it wherever you feel it will operationalize. And yes, you really can put these things into practice in your own life. Today, in fact. While it may be vogueish to discount the voices of our past as simple and backwards, we would do well to heed those who have suffered for the advice they give. If it works in environments of maximum stress, do you really think your office park presents a new and insurmountable challenge? Humility teaches us the more excellent way. Look out for those around you, and accept the weight of the leader’s yoke so that they may thrive in your wake. Take up your cross daily. Many even weaker than you are watching in hope. Will you disappoint them?

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” ~ Mark 10:42-45

Soaring Twenties

A triweekly newsletter and monthly magazine run by a collective of creatives, collaborating to make the internet human again.

By Thomas J Bevan

It is entirely possible that you are dreaming far too extravagantly. This is not popular advice, and I'm sorry to be the one to bring the news. But there is a certain dysfunction of the human spirit that thrives on daydreams and intricate plans like a termite feasting on lumber. You see, those dreams of yours might be nourishing your despair.

It's not intuitive but there it is. I see it almost daily in my corner of the world, the American South. When we fixate on the Big Problem and won't settle for anything less than total victory. The Big Problem is so serious that small solutions just won't do. In fact, you'll know you're headed towards the Slough of Despond when you begin to push back reflexively against all small victories. "Well that doesn't make any difference" and "that's not going to really change anything" are the antibodies that protect the heart from hope of change. Paradoxically, we want to stay in the realm of our dreams, safe from the risks of failure and the requirements of success.

It was while watching the excellent and heartwarming series "Welcome to Wrexham," reviewed here in masterful style by a writer with real knowledge of the town and people, that I began to realize just how tempting the Big Dream really can be. In order to rebuild a dying sports franchise, and by extension reinvigorate an ailing town, two immensely wealthy people used to getting their way had to "settle," over and over again. Settle for an imperfect roster, an in-process marketing strategy, tentative and cautious local support, barely-sufficient facilities, a few disappointing rebuilding seasons.

No single one of those incremental successes produced the eventual team-promoting victory lap alone. In fact, it would be impossible to judge which were vital contributions and which could have been safely neglected. Victories accrete together until suddenly the trend becomes exponential, the tug-of-war becomes a rout. If you avoid the successes too small to measure, you'll never experience the success too big to ignore.

Now don't misunderstand this as yet another tired appeal to 10,000 Hours or meaningless exhortation to hustle or whatever. I'm simply pointing out that our natural tendency to avoid any step that doesn't immediately produce total victory should be suspect. As my pastor says often, a complicated problem that you've worked years to create won't disappear after a counseling session and a few hasty sweeping changes. You need to get ready for a war.

I'm not switching metaphors haphazardly (well, not too haphazardly). After all, your enemies love incremental solutions. They thrive on them. They live in the neglected corners of committees and the forgotten realms of process. And yes, you do have enemies. All complicated systems gain parasitic status-quo maintenance officers, often self-selected. If you see a Big Problem and want to make a serious effort, they become your enemies whether you desire it or not. They'll strangle your dreams of overnight renovation. Insist that the path forward is too intricate a thicket for any adjustment to the way things are. Lovers of the fog of war, they shun sweeping change because they know the inherent drawbacks of the Big Plan. You'll need to learn from your enemies if you want to win.

Now, I've actually read a surprising amount of military history for someone who's never earned the right to wear a uniform or fired a shot in anger. And if I've learned anything about warfare (an open question), it's that battle is an exercise in bluffing. No position is impregnable, no force distribution is overwhelming, and no operational plan is unstoppable. The stubborn survive. Victory is often a function of selecting an objective despite the enemy's efforts at deterrence, then proceeding with the attack until the true weakness of that enemy is revealed.

Your enemies want you to believe their press clippings, but you need to advance until they are forced to deploy their supposed reserves. You'll find that every complicated system there is, from banks to armies to municipal authorities, relies on fractional reserves. If you can only force the first gap in the line, you'll be surprised at just how little opposition you might meet. The key is to not get caught up in the all-or nothing bid for glory.

When you take the first step and don't quit, you're calling the bluff of every force arrayed against you. Expect opposition. But just about all you can control in your life is your own decisions, including when to quit. So just...don't. Your enemies are looking at their meagre reserves, begging and praying you don’t realize their true situation.

Make them pay for the ground they're holding.

Don't expect those around you to support you, at first. Some of them may have a lot personally invested in their hopeless attitude, and see your success as a rebuke to their inactive indifference. That's ok! Let your early moves forward galvanize them. Be the first one over the top. Others will follow once they realize that incremental wins can happen and do count.

If you need an incremental win to pursue, look no further than your nearest big system "hopelessly deadlocked" in tradition or misaligned incentives. Listen to the veterans and old hands complain. No, really listen with a humble heart. Hear their wisdom and problems, gain their experience. Then humbly suggest a few simple steps forward. They'll inevitably filter out at least one as completely impossible, not even worth trying. Somehow that solution is simultaneously too small to make a real difference but also too big to have a hope of succeeding.

Then do that exact thing.

Sometimes your status as an outsider or a newcomer is more of an asset than a liability. Sometimes you really are the only one in the situation who can see the full picture. Don't let the lack of an easy path to perfection intimidate you away from the clear next step.

It's time you learned to love the committee meetings, position papers, letters to the editor and offline conversations. Your enemy does. Lunch meetings and simple plans and rapid execution are your new playbook. If you want to destabilize what's wrong, you'll need a lot of patience for slowly doing what's right. Long live the grinders, the footsoldiers, the back-benchers and the concerned citizens.

What if you really can just do things?

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it. 
~ Deuteronomy 1:39

They never told them exactly who they were fighting. Because that’s not how you raise an army. Causes are simple, and loud. As long as the boys were moving and angry, they could be directed easily enough. Because it really doesn’t matter whether they’re fighting The Liberal Agenda or The Conservative Death Cult or Big Brother or The New World Order in the end. Everyone knows, deep down, that the boys are born to fight. Anything but let them sit still. Then they might think about where they are, and what’s happened to them, and what’s come before. If you don’t keep pumping them full of the cocktail of video essays and social threads, they might read history. As long as the boys fight the bogeymen, they can’t die for something real. Something really dangerous.

Immortan Joe: Once again, I salute my Imperator Furiosa, and I salute my half-life Warboys, who will ride with me eternal on the highways of Valhalla! I am your Redeemer! It is by my hand you will rise from the ashes of this world!
~ Mad Max: Fury Road

You see, they promise salvation. They hoist their fattened carcasses up to the heights and swear they’ll be as a god to the broken boys. And you’re supposed to give the real God everything. Because He promises you that He loves you. So the Warboys give it all, innocence, future, mind, spirit. Obedience to the powerful because the powerful promise protection. Deference to the wise because the wise promise guidance. And it would all be worth it, if any of it were true. Counterfeit gods don’t love you, or even know your name. And they certainly aren’t around to hear your supplicating call when you have no more strength to feed them. Adolescent child soldiers stagger through every one of the suburbs and boroughs. See them. Ask and they’ll show you the scars of the culture war, their battle ribbons and commendations earned frantically trying to crush the ephemeral night terrors of their decrepit generals and captains. You don’t lose limbs in the struggle to retake the Internet for Our Side, but you also cannot find a crutch for a shattered mind. The good little soldiers did it all and looked to their leaders for the promised salvation. But there’s never enough ersatz eternity to go around when all the depositors claim their share. The Warboys lives weren’t protected, they were spent.

JoJo Betzler: Stop offering me damn cigarettes! I'm ten!
Adolf Hitler: All right, sorry, I'm stressed out!
~ JoJo Rabbit

Everyone feels bad for how they used the Warboys, if they’ve got any heart left at all. So they cocoon them with adult pleasures to dull their pain and control their anger. When they’ve broken your world and taken your adolescence, the thoughtless bliss of fantastic realities seems kind. Ask the twenty year old newlyweds competing with their grandfathers for Viagra prescriptions if the deal was worth it. Nobody wants soldiers around, not in the comfort of the real world. It’s too much of a downer to listen to their rambling and see their broken lives. So if they make too much trouble, they can always be shoved away; covered in shame for the very things that society demanded they become. If you’re thinking of a political party right now, then you might be causing the problem. Every corner of society keeps their own stable of boys on a leash. And then insists that we not see the other side’s Warboys for what they are. Empathizing with them is dangerous. Stay safe, and let them live out whatever time they have left cordoned off in university ivory towers or rusting industrial wastes.

Elsa: You’re not a Nazi, JoJo. You’re a ten-year-old kid who likes dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club.
~ JoJo Rabbit

They were all just little kids, once. They don’t want your pity now. After all, the mutant and the twisted can see something that the darlings of society might never glimpse. The Warboys know they can’t have peace in the arms of any of their old gods. That all of the world’s promises can’t be cashed out. That the influencers just use you as exit liquidity and the gurus only want your eyeballs. The Warboys might not have much life left in them. They might never make it to the milestones that were achievable for their forbears. They know that they are capable of doing great wrong. They will seem to you awkward, separated from your world, still clinging to foolish or problematic ideas. What set them out on their journey towards false glory was the inescapable feeling that they had found something worth dying for. They are slowly waking up, lost and ashamed. Won’t you tell them there’s still one chance? As pitiful a people as we are, I wonder why we ever thought we’d be sent more than one Savior. Will you teach the Warboys how to die well?

Don’t you know?

Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” 
~ John 13:36-37

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
~ Matthew 10:38-39 

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to , a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to , a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to , a shared voyage into the future of the kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God, to the ends of the earth and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go.

Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now. 

Welcome to Infinite Dominion, a shared voyage into the future of the Kingdom of God. Each episode, I'll introduce you to a new pioneer following the blazing call of God to the ends of the earth, and beyond. I hope you'll catch a spark from these futuristic fires and nurture it as you venture off where only you can go. Thanks for listening. Here's our next stop now.