Sunday, December 5, 2021

Not Even Feet of Clay

 

I'm moved by Madison Cawthorn's sermon on the Capital mount to do a little bit of sermonizing myself, because as I have previously discussed, "I speak jive."  I get that many not-evangelical-adjacent people have assumed that earthen vessels pertain to women, specifically, as if indicating that their wombs only take on special value if imbued with the light from God--maternity. But that is not exactly it: humans are all sons and daughters of Adam, the original being formed from clay.

(He once was a little red ball of Clay! Adam! You should see what Adam can do today--ADAM! Name all the creatures of the field, with his little pal Evie, too. If you have human blood then mud is a part of you!

You just don't think a person who would also rhapsodize about the Eagle's Nest would be so apt a pupil to talk about mud-people, but here we are. The first time I was told about mud-people, it was from a proud son of Polish immigrants who liked Pat Buchanan. But I'm deeply skeptical of Cawthorn, so I'm taking the most uncharitable interpretation of his words--he isn't just talking about women who refuse to bear children because that was God's plan for them. He's also hinting at the "emptiness" of the vessels (the human pottery) who are refusing to do God's (or his conception thereof's) work on earth. 

Just pottery. Just beings full of Jezebel spirit, trying to do their own Lucifer shit instead of what G-D determines--to be decided by a court of people inclined to think you are already foul and fallen. 

But that isn't my religion. Not at all. 



My non-religion is about options. My non-religion admires the original spirit of Halakhic law about abortion, which the kind of evangelical Christian who blows a shofar for weird political reasons is dumb about. 

To me, you doing your best with the clay you have is amazing. To Cawthorn and them, I wonder if your clay is always under judgement for how productive it is at magnifying the light of God. The Thing your clay is supposed to be for. 

And I think your clay is supposed to be for you. Your body is your own. Your one Beautiful life is your own, and no one usurps its purpose or deranges it except by trying to corrupt you. You aren't a brood sow and and you aren't a moral slave. You contain multitudes. You are you. And by being your best you, what great things you might accomplish! 

This is my atheist morality. My apostate religion. You are not clay. You are a human being, a DNA intelligence. And you can be so many things for the world on which we live. You can be good for something set before you, or anything at all. We can love and live in freedom and peace. We can do better than the generations before us. We have choice and free will. 

We aren't tin gods and we aren't made to just be noisemakers for God. I would rather we not talk about human beings as clay, but as the image of God, and having the capacity for choice. For whatever definition of God, and whatever amounts to our capacity of choice. 

Madison Cawthorn's clay vessels reference seems to him like soaring oratory--a sermon. To me it demeans man. It makes our supposedly divinely bestowed volition so removed from our source we can not divine it ourselves, but have to be fulfilled with the spirit--have our empty little vessels filled from without, rather than having the will to figure things out for ourselves.  

And who decides what magnifies God? It will be men like Madison Cawthorn. Without the sanction of others, our "vessels" stay empty in their imagination, and can be so easily broken. 



3 comments:

Dan Kleiner said...

he's such a pathetic piece of shit. what a wanna-be. say what you will about the master race, but i always thought they could handle stairs.

someone should tell this little fuck what the nazis thought of the disabled.

Vixen Strangely said...

I may joke about Heil on Wheels, but his physical disability is well eclipsed by his youth and insufficient experience. It's a real issue that his upbringing and now his access to more radical influences will not trend well for him. He is convinced of the theocratic things he says, and believes this makes him an exception. I always think it wise to consider the exception in fascism is the privilege of being one of the last to get shafted. But the impetus in fascism is always to find an enemy, to feed Moloch, to sacrifice the weak. I don't care that he can't handle stairs, I'm nearly 50 and a little gimpy myself. He can't handle alternative viewpoints and people without his kind of background. He doesn't see women, LGBTQ people, and non-Christians as fully people. His ideological situation is so much worse of a handicap.

Dan Kleiner said...

i was joking a bit too, but my point is that like stephen miller, his allies hold him in extraordinary contempt. they may find him useful to spread their message, but into the camps he will go, if not straight into a ditch if they take full control of our country.

the thing that disgusts me the most about him, boebert and large marge is their incredible confidence in their ignorance. in a world where people can access the sum of human knowledge from their phones, their lack of intellectual curiosity just disturbs me on a fundamental level. they just have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, ever.

gaetz is different, he knows better but doesn't care.

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