Following Jesus in rejecting empire
“Oh what savory satisfaction. What splendid joy. In one instant, all my anger dissipated and all the rot in my soul has been removed!” That’s how I imagined it. What freedom would taste like once the earth was rid of Frederick Johnson, and I had exacted revenge. Once I had exchanged my passive fist with…
When I think of the word pacifist I can’t help picturing myself standing passively by inside the bathroom door, holding a weapon in my fist while I watch my wife get murdered. Passive-fist is all I can hear now when that word is spoken. And I regret, many times a day, my blasted pacifism in…
The summer before my life disintegrated was lovely. There are Knoxville summers where the heat oppresses a person like a tyrant, but not that summer. Not the summer of 1997. Highs barely reached to 80 and the humidity must’ve pushed its way around us and into Georgia. I remember being happy, but only as though…
“You asked me if there would be dinosaurs in heaven.” I told Larissa. “I did?” She laughed? “I don’t remember that.” “You did.” I said. Larissa and I were working together on a stretch of road with about 50 others. We were tamping down gravel that had been unloaded from a large wagon and was…
I met Larissa Gardener the other day and the memory of my great transition came rushing back. She, of course, remembered nothing of our conversation in the church the day I died. I thought for my own sake I might try to describe it all as if writing to my beforelife self. (I vaguely recall…