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It’s 9 pm on a Friday Night

And I’m home. Not at all unusual for the last twenty-five years. Ben is out at the moment doing his Lyft thing to pay some bills. I don’t expect him back until around 3 am, by which time I will be deep asleep and probably won’t even hear him come in. I’m listening to some classic jazz on the radio while Bobo is sleeping in his bed and Sammy is running around the living room like a maniac.

Forty years ago however, at 9 pm on a Friday night I’d be heading out the door to go dancing. (We didn’t call it clubbing.) I’d most likely start out the evening by meeting my friend Kent at His Co. Disco because the cover charge between 9 and 10 was only a dollar. If the crowd got boring or if certain B-list DJs were spinning, we’d then head over to The Forum. But His Co. always seemed to play better music and have the new stuff sooner. It also had a slightly raised, lighted dance floor and a much better light show, so whatever else happened we’d always start out there. I can’t say I ever reliably got laid on a regular basis via either place (it wasn’t until many years later that I discovered The Connection and all that changed), but His Co. was where I met the great unrequited love of my life Steve Golden, and where I connected with Paul Bayfield and Ken Coyer, the two doormen—with whom I did have carnal relations on multiple occasions. Separately. (They couldn’t stand each other and were each aghast when they learned that I had slept with the other.)

Oh, and there was the boy who’d driven all the way into town from Gilbert (which was to hell and gone in relation to the club’s location back in the day and still is—just not out in the middle of nowhere like it was in 1978). My buddy Chas was up from Tucson that weekend and since I was still living at home he let me borrow his hotel room for a few hours to entertain Mr. Gilbert. “Don’t get anything on the sheets! I have to sleep on those!”

And come to think of it, His Co. also served up Craig—and his lover—whom I’d encountered at work as customers in the housewares department at Broadway Southwest just that afternoon. “You really should wear underwear with those Angel Flights,” Craig told me later that evening. “I could almost see veins!”

Good times.

Anyway, I bring this up because my previous post about Live and More triggered lots of memories of my wonderfully misspent youth.

And speaking of 3 am, forty years ago if neither none of us was busy getting laid, I’d probably be at breakfast with Kent and a drag queen or two before heading home…

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Quote of the Day

There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn’t just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They’d come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout, “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn’t have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.” ~ Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

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Christians Supporting Trump Aren’t Christians

From John Pavlovitz:

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride,

The first Christians didn’t call themselves Christians.

It wasn’t some congratulatory self-identifier as it is today; a way of loudly trumpeting one’s own supposed goodness, quickly slapped on Twitter bios and bumper stickers and t-shirts without forethought or personal cost or empirical evidence. It wasn’t about a place you visited for an hour on Sunday before Cracker Barrel, either.

The term Christian was originally a designation of the community of people following Jesus, by those outside of it after his death—and it was quite likely a slur; a scarlet letter attached to a marginalized group who’d traded comfy allegiance with Caesar for dangerous devotion to an itinerant Hebrew street preacher from Nazareth.

In the Roman Empire in which it was born, Jesus’ movement was fully countercultural; shunning its power and material wealth, breaking its barriers between the important and the inconsequential, fighting the stereotypes of the in and the out. It was a table builder and a wall breaker.

These “little Christs” as they were called, were derided by outsiders because the expansive, diverse, interdependent community they were creating stood in such opposition to Rome’s singular trickle down might—and their presence created turbulence there.

Being called a Christian then, meant ridicule and threat and oppression from the Government and the religious leaders. It wasn’t a cheap decal one adorned themselves with to declare their own righteousness; it was applied to them by powerful people who despised them.

Trump Christians wouldn’t be called Christians by these people, they would be called Romans—and those following Jesus then, wouldn’t recognize people supporting this President now, as their spiritual descendants.

There would be no bloodline to trace, no affinities to note, no visible family resemblance.

Christians then, destroyed social barriers between people—they didn’t fortify them.
Christians then, welcomed the marginalized and vulnerable—they didn’t harass them at school or in hospital rooms or on street corners.
Christians then, healed the sick and fed the hungry and clothed the naked—they didn’t resent them for being lazy or making bad choices.
Christians then, pushed back against the corrupt power hoarding wealth—they didn’t partner with it.
Christians then, loved their disparate neighbors as themselves—they didn’t wall them off and send them away and lock them in cages.

People aligned with a Jesus who said “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them”—would have been fully sickened by families separated at borders.

People connected to a Jesus who said, “You cannot serve both God and money”—wouldn’t be overlooking adultery, corruption, and bigotry just to pad their nest eggs.

People synonymous with a Jesus who fed a hillside multitude, not because they were right or saved or moral, but because they were hungry—wouldn’t recognize a “pull yourself by your own bootstraps” callousness toward those in need.

People associated with a Jesus who touched lepers and healed the blind and bleeding—wouldn’t be able to comprehend believers who penalized people for preexisting conditions or made staying alive a financial death sentence.

Most of all, people connected to Jesus they weren’t tripping over themselves to publicly claim their Christlikeness. Other people decided that.

People currently supporting this President can label themselves any way they want.

They can imagine themselves sanctified while perpetuating something that far more resembles Caesar of Rome than Jesus of Nazareth.

They can try and retrofit Jesus’ Christianity to the bloated, self-aggrandizing, malevolent Empire they’re currently wallowing in.

They can try and bastardize Jesus expansive’ “For God so loved the world” purpose statement, into a walled-off, gated community “America First” rally slogan.

They can even preach the angry gospel of white nationalism and contempt for outsiders—and call themselves Christian while doing so.

But no one in the time of Jesus would be calling them Christian.

Not the Romans.
Not the Christ followers.
Most of all, Jesus.

The first Christians were labeled Christians, because they emulated Christ—in all his compassionate, kind, loving, healing, welcoming, border-breaching, barrier-busting goodness.

These folks emulate someone antithetical to all of it.

Technically speaking of course, given the origins of the word, none of us should claim to be Christian—but if we’re going to, we should at least seek some spiritual synergy.

They may be self-identified Christians, but from the outside the title is suspect.
They aren’t “Little Christs”
They aren’t “followers of the Way.”
They aren’t even Evangelicals.

They are “Little Trumps.”

In that God of arrogance and greed and enmity, they truly trust.

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