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I’ve had a Fitbit for about seven years now. Prior to that, I had an old-fashioned pedometer, the kind you clip onto the top of your pants. It fell off on a road trip, sadly. I don’t think the Fitbit brings more to the table than these old-fashioned devices. And I also don’t believe it’s necessary to count your steps at all.

Let me qualify that last sentence. We are, as a society, sedentary. Most people would not argue with that. If wearing a pedometer helps inspire you to move, it’s no doubt a positive tool in your arsenal. But that comes with a huge caveat, which is that ignoring other aspects of your health or becoming obsessive about steps can be counterproductive. Plain pedometers don’t have bells and whistles, but Fitbits will give you a special shot of happy hormones every time you get a notification that you’ve achieved your goals. You don’t get a star or fireworks if you achieve 9,735 steps though; you have to achieve those 265 extra steps. And does pacing up and down the hallway at ten till midnight in order to achieve fireworks really improve your health?

No, it does not. In fact, rest of the mind and body is probably better. Obsessing is not healthy; the health benefits of reaching an arbitrary number of steps a day does not exceed the benefits of a restful mind. In addition, neglecting other types of exercise will not ultimately be a net good. If you are not doing stability and strength style exercises because they won’t greatly increase your steps, you will open yourself up to falls and weak bones and muscles as you age.

All of that doesn’t even touch on the inaccuracy of all types of pedometers. Old-fashioned pedometers were limited, obviously, only detecting movement. But Fitbit does a terrible job of counting steps accurately, as well. The disparity between my husband and me when we take long walks or hikes together is astonishing. He’s three inches taller than I am; he shouldn’t have 16,000 steps when I have 10,000. If the Fitbit were accurate, I would have more simply because I have to take more steps to keep up with him. It also doesn’t catalog sleep or activity levels accurately. I regularly have several-hour gaps when the Fitbit does not pick up on any of my activity, despite my walking around, sweeping floors, etc. The sleep function is almost useless. It tells you how long you slept and what cycles of sleep you were in by your activity level and your heartrate. I have a low resting heartrate and it takes a lot of movement to get my heartrate up; therefore, I’ve had the Fitbit mark my wandering around the house (when I couldn’t sleep) as sleep. This is probably also the reason it doesn’t detect hours’ worth of my house chores and movement as activity.

So, I will reiterate: use it if it helps inspire you to be more active. For my mental health at this point, I’ve taken it off…again. I’ve done this several times, and then it lures me back because I’m obsessed with exercise and counting things. But I think my established routine is enough. I exercise first thing in the morning and walk in the afternoons or evenings. It’s enough; it really is.

***

I hit the publish button earlier when I wasn’t quite done. I’m coming back now to complete my thoughts. There is a modern song floating out there with a line that goes, “Blame it on my ADD, baby,” or something like that. It might also add “OCD.”* These are common modern self-diagnoses (they can also be real diagnoses; that is not what I’m talking about), stemming from a lack of mental discipline and perhaps other issues as well. The conditions are circular, one feeding the other. Many modern people fall into this never-ending circular loop, which goes about like this: I can’t focus; there is too much going on. I’m overwhelmed because I’m scattered, and I can’t decide what to do first or next to get things done. Because I can’t control my surroundings, I’m going to do what I can do. I’m going to count things, follow repetitive patterns that will make me feel in control even though I’m not.

The Fitbit, unfortunately, feeds into this thinking. However, what really needs to happen is better mental discipline, so that you can learn how to compartmentalize a job list and complete the first and then the next item on the list without being overwhelmed by the bustling atmosphere around you or the length of the to-do list.

If that’s you, I’d recommend putting exercise into a compartment and keeping it there–and I’d also recommend taking the Fitbit off. It will make you feel better; I promise.

*It only says “blame it on my ADD;” I looked it up. The song is called Sail and is by AWOLNATION. Apparently, I filled in OCD…because the two go together. Reaction–>overreaction.

This is what most of country music is composed of, phoned-in folk songs. As a genre, it’s about as tepid as other pop music. It tends to wash through the brain like sludgy water going through a drainpipe and down into the septic field, carrying the concepts of the little bitty people leading little bitty lives with it.

My children have told me the music I like is basically Mexican country. Once, they happened to make this accusation while one of the Mexican stations was playing on the radio. Well, I suppose one said it and the other agreed because Mexican radio was playing. The best part of knowing a language nobody in your house understands is being able to employ plausible deniability, even though the lyrics pouring out to the cadence of a fast two-step are all about the ranching life, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, and riding horses. Still: deny, deny, deny. It’s not country music!

Folk music, of course, isn’t always phoned-in. It has a history of incorporating all aspects of a given culture, even the very uncomfortable ones. Well, those uncomfortable stories can be phoned-in, too. This is no doubt because the average person doesn’t like to expand their audio interests with complex or unusual instrumentation and sound, even if the edgier songs are on their radar of life existence. So, it’s quite possible that musically dull pop country songs tell emotionally exciting tales of the fallout from adultery and drunkenness, for example.

This is igual to the Mexican music I listen to: in both regards. Despite that banda and mariachi can be very complex musically, many of the songs sound similar. Similar arrangements, melodies, etc. I have often bemoaned that they pulled out the twenty-piece band members with their lavish, matching suits just to play a song that sounded like the last three I heard on the radio. There also happen to be many Mexican songs about adultery and drunkenness. One concept that seems peculiar to Mexican folk, though, is the narcocorrido, that is, songs about drug dealers. This is a harsh reality that is eulogized in numerous songs, made famous by bands such as Los Tigres del Norte. I don’t have a problem with these songs as others might. They are cataloging a lifestyle that often leads to prison or death. This is quintessential to folk music. Now I suppose they will have to write songs dedicated to the dark tales of the narcocorrido singers who were murdered because that is also history, raw and dark, in the making.

I used to love singing American folk songs such as Long Black Veil, but I would shudder when I contemplated the stories. At some point, the story in songs like that happened: an adulterous man went to the gallows because he wouldn’t admit he was sleeping with his best friend’s wife the night of a murder. It’s probably happened many times in history, actually. Now, of course, I occasionally sing narcocorridos — maybe because I’m learning to play one on the accordion or because it’s a catchy tune. To be honest, most narcocorridos don’t reach my heart like other Mexican songs. I’m partial to the ones about love. Who isn’t?

Love songs cross every genre, don’t they? From banal to classical to heartfelt singer-songwriter (otherwise known as folk singers), love fills the lyrics. Love is truly the universal theme among humans in every walk of life, at every stratum. If you want to meet true folk music, you will find it in songs of love. I believe I briefly mentioned this concept in my post about the left being unable to write poetry, but I suppose I’m reiterating it because it’s true. What appeals to humans is folk music, and folks love love.

Because I started writing this post at my son’s basketball game earlier, I have no idea where I was going with it. Competitive games and bleachers filled with cheering families make me profoundly uncomfortable; I was thus using this as a distraction. I suppose it ultimately had to do with the snowstorm that blew through this morning, nipping the spring birds and bees and fluttering white butterflies. Love was frozen in a moment, life snuffed out under a layer of frost. I’m being dramatic! Yes!

Thankfully, I discovered this song nearly twenty years ago, and it has always renewed life, energy, and love to my heart with its ardency.

In addition to throwing down gauntlets, as a family we have taken all manner of plunges that we might not have done even a few months ago. We cast things down and we jump into the depth of waterfalls. Or…we chase down waterfalls? Or…we slide down cellar doors? Perhaps down razor blades, too? How did that childhood song, Say, Say, Oh Playmate, go? As with any absurdly innocent song, most of my childhood friends sang it as slide down my razorblades, and into my dungeon door. This is because children have wicked senses of humor. They are also quite savage and primal until they are trained to be otherwise.

This plunge was jumping into attending a Baptist church to see if a family member we’re caring for would be comfortable there. Baptist doctrine and I don’t get along. And talk about plunges! They like to re-plunge you in the cleansing flood, even if you’ve already been plunged in the waters of baptism. I guess that’s why they call themselves Baptists. To be fair, the particular church we attended is one of the friendliest I’ve ever been to, and the members there prefer old-timey hymns that I adore. But if we continue going, they will find out the truth at some point: that I’m a Catholic and I go to Mass every weekend, if possible. Also, I don’t plan on changing my mind about being Catholic. Honestly, it’s not the mind that would have to change. I would have to have a heart change, and my heart loves the Catholic Mass and the Eucharist. I love being Catholic, despite the arduous journey to get there.

It is unfortunate that Baptist churches in general are anti-Catholic. I got a little taste of it our first Sunday there. There were no direct accusations, no mention of the Catholic church, nothing as direct as that. No, the pastor instead made a claim that the King James version of the Bible was the first English Bible to have been written in 300 years. I leaned over and whispered in my husband’s ear: What about the Latin Vulgate? What I meant, of course, was not the Latin Vulgate, but the Douay Rheims, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate. The New Testament portion of the Douay Rheims was completed before the King James was even commissioned to be written, but it was within fifty years of the other. Therefore, it fit into those 300 years when, supposedly, no English translation was written.

The problem is that the Douay Rheims was a Catholic version of the Bible. And Catholic authorities, you know, wanted to keep the word of God from the unwashed masses. It’s convenient to forget that when they were better equipped to bring the Bible to the world, they did. Does anyone remember these days that the title Latin Vulgate means Common Latin? Latin used to be the language of Italy, and it had a common, nonscholarly form. That form was eventually translated into English (and other languages) after the invention of the Guttenberg printing press. But even if the printing press made it easier to produce approved versions of the Bible, it didn’t make it easier to ensure that scholars were able to do this. It was a complicated process that took time.

Unfortunately, history isn’t as neat and tidy as people would like it to be; there simply wasn’t a far-reaching conspiracy in the Catholic church to prevent people from reading the word of God. Prior to the printing press, most of the population of the world was illiterate. They were illiterate because books were very expensive to produce. They had to be handwritten. The world of lending libraries did not exist; how could they? Books could not be mass produced. RIF was not an organization. It took a long time and a lot of sporadic effort for the world to become educated. It’s actually incredible that after a couple hundred years, a lowly nun in the far reaches of the New World could read and write in her native tongue as well as the scholarly languages that were traditionally taught in universities. I’m speaking of Sor Juana, but she wasn’t an isolated case by any means. Three-hundred years after the printing press, 85% of western countries such as the UK were literate — a similar rate to today.

I’m not going to lie. The Catholic church did try to prevent unapproved versions of the Bible from being promulgated and passed around. Primarily, they were concerned with preserving a trinitarian perspective. There were other dogmas they would “throw down the gauntlet” over — ha, sorry, I had to bring it in again somewhere. You can agree or disagree with the morality, but the world used to be a cutthroat place to live. Even Sor Juana was threatened by the tail-end of the Spanish Inquisition. People fought to the death over many issues, and that included people outside the Catholic political hierarchy. After the Reformation, the new religious authorities were just as cutthroat, forcing their detractors to slide down razorblades into dungeon doors [sigh, not really — that was a joke]. Clearly, they were more like children, savage and primal.

I don’t know how long we will last at this Baptist church. I sorely wish the above-average people of the world, which include pastors who spend a great deal of time reading and studying, would try to have a little more common sense when they delve into history. If they did, perhaps the rest of us would have a more balanced perspective. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

There are many side issues and arguments I haven’t even touched. That’s fine. I’ll leave that up to anyone who wants to make a comment below. I’ve had a long day, and I’ll have another long day tomorrow. The thing about that gauntlet I threw down — it involved applying for and getting hired for a full-time job. But I haven’t actually finished my extant freelance projects…so, freelance plus. Do you remember The Eye of the Tiger? Yeah, that.

Back when men were men and were offended by each other, they could challenge each other to a duel. If a man happened to be a medieval knight, he could tear off his heavy armored glove and throw it down and, in one fell swoop, alter his or another man’s fate. This glove was called a gauntlet, hence the expression throwing down the gauntlet. In the image above, you can see that several gloves have been cast down. To be honest, I have no idea what the context of the image is. Why are so many gloves cast down in front of Richard II? All I know is it must be serious; a knight doesn’t just casually throw his gauntlet at the king’s feet.

In modern days, the expression has much less dire implications. It’s merely a challenge and doesn’t involve swords. Of course, dueling is no longer a legal activity for a pleasant Saturday in the village green. Perhaps challenges should have more dire consequences, though. I speak as someone who is obstinately independent to a fault. So much so that I tend to throw my metaphorical gauntlets before God.

Okay, I take it back. I don’t want the dire consequences that might come from issuing challenges to God because I can’t seem to stop doing it. A duel with God is a losing battle, unless you are Jacob. To be fair, that wasn’t a duel, but struggling with God is by its nature a battle that could prove deadly. Jacob understood this, as he called the place he had his battle Peniel, which means Face of God. Jacob said, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:22-32).

Recently, I threw down a gauntlet before God and got what I deserved thrown right back at me. I’ll talk more about that later, as it’s still in process. Because of this recent experience, it got me thinking about the other times I’d thrown down gauntlets and God had responded, “Okay, Jill, have it your way.” Although I don’t want to talk about the recent gauntlet-throwing yet, I’ll give you a happy example of God answering one of my challenges positively — one of my favorite answered challenges, in fact.

Back when I was caring for a toddler and homeschooling two children and working toward my degree at UNM, my husband proposed that since we had three daughters, we ought to try for a son. Before we were married, we’d decided that we were going to have three children, and here he was changing things up on me. How dare he! I know it’s silly that we selected as if from a checklist how many children we were going to have, and now we were ready to choose the sex of our next child that we would…yes, choose to have. Oh, my. This “choice” ideal might seem powerful, but the thought of caring for another baby made me panic instead. I was tired. So, I put an absurd challenge before God: I told him I would only agree to this male child my husband wanted if he was born before my 35th birthday and after I had graduated from college.

I repeated this challenge to other people, as though that would set it in stone. If I told it to three people, God would have to honor it, right? Most people did the math and scratched their heads. They insisted it wouldn’t be possible due to how long it was taking me to finish my degree. Inside, I was sardonically saying, “Exactly!” I don’t like to think of myself as a smug person, but perhaps….

The thing about motherhood is it’s hard. A woman’s body gets tired. In a traditional society, the man takes on the monetary responsibility, but the actual physical act of bearing and rearing the young falls on women. Both can be backbreaking, to be honest. The fact that a man wants to take on the responsibility of working even harder to provide for another child demonstrates he is a good man. Ultimately, I knew that having a fourth child would be a positive. Despite my challenging him with absurd terms, I would never tell God no when it comes down to it. That still didn’t mean I wasn’t afraid to have another baby.

I’m sure you’ve already guessed the end of my story: God brought me a son within the absurdly unrealistic parameters I had made. At the beginning of my final year in college, I got pregnant. No joke, I gave birth a week after graduating and a month before I turned 35. I did not intend to get pregnant at that time. I still didn’t want to get pregnant. I had to cope with the many taunts from people at the university, such as, “Don’t you know how babies are made?” Seriously, do people think they’re funny when they say that? They don’t sound funny; they sound like snarky haters of life who care more for their own selfish desires than being part of gifting the world with beautiful children. It assumes that couples must hate babies so much that if they knew how they were created, they would do everything in their power to prevent babies from being born.

Continuing along that tangent, bringing life into the world is what God expects of us. Because we’ve decided as a culture not to do this, we are experiencing demographic decline. Like coddled queens, we have thought we could live only for ourselves (like my useless college degree*) and then bring in immigrants to do our heavy lifting when we no longer have a big enough work force to keep us in the fat delights we enjoy. I suspect the liberal-minded people who push for one or even zero child per household would never admit their system requires either soft slavery or genocide of elders who can no longer work. When you don’t have enough people growing food and manufacturing products and bringing everything to the market and selling those goods, certain segments will have to die off, either naturally, or by eugenicist means. Or — you import slaves from other countries to do your work for you. There really is no other way for the system to work unless we get going on our robot slave class, instead.

In conclusion, now that my son is a teenager, I wouldn’t go back for a single minute and change my challenge to God, or my acceptance of the gift he gave me in exchange for my belligerence. It might be better not to throw those kinds of gauntlets at his feet in the first place, but, hey, at the very least, if you do, you will find out who is really in control. And I can tell you right now I’m not the one.

In secondary conclusion, the whole point of this post was Bring Dueling Back! Men need to be knights again and wear heavy armor that makes a loud clash as it hits the floor. But wait, Jill, that’s an antilife sentiment. Oh, all right, so it is. Don’t bring dueling back. We should solve our disputes through rap battles instead.

…the more they stay the same. This is true because there is a pattern to creation. There is a pattern to human behavior and human endeavors, and to God’s symbology and design. Unexpected consequences are only unexpected to those who can’t or refuse to acknowledge the patterns.

But, yes, this particular post was inspired by a more specific concept: the more Protestants try not to be Catholic, the more they resemble Catholics. I’ve been mentally collecting a list for a while, ever since a Protestant worship service in which one of the church members felt inspired by the holy spirit to pray over bottles of water before sprinkling the congregation with it. So…uh, holy water? This happens at various Masses, too — except, unsurprisingly, the Catholic church doesn’t allow the average layperson to bless the water and sprinkle it over the people. But it’s still a natural religious practice because it’s reminiscent of baptism and the transformation of water into something more, something that can cleanse our souls.

Years ago, we briefly attended an SBC church that had a door-sized plaque with “Christian” commandments, such as, “I solemnly swear never to touch alcohol.” The entirety of it read like a creed of extra-biblical beliefs mixed with biblical ones, despite that Baptist churches don’t have creeds. If most Protestant churches don’t have giant plaques on their walls, they do indeed have creeds on their websites, called “statements of faith.” They generally aren’t that different from the Apostle’s or Nicene creeds. This makes sense, as creeds are like lines in the sand. They define what it means to be a Christian; they protect the faith from heresies that lead to destruction. We humans need parameters. In fact, God has given parameters to us from the get-go, knowing we would stray from them and giving them to us anyway.

Every year, fervent believers renew their relationships with God through penance such as fasting from certain foods and activities. Surely, that one is only for Catholics…? No, it’s really not. Despite that Protestants do not believe in works-based salvation, they understand that certain works are good for our souls. Consequently, every year I hear of more Protestant denominations who engage in a yearly Daniel fast in the month of January, as though they have now taken up their own church calendar. Sometimes it’s instead a fast from sugar or social media; other times, it’s a strict water fast. We instinctively know that a life of ease separates us from God. This is why I’m 100% unsurprised that Protestants have taken up this practice.

Speaking of church calendars, Protestants also conceded to Christmas ages ago. Go back and read William Bradford on how condescending the Protestant attitude used to be towards Catholics and Christmas. I would recommend reading Bradford’s own words if you don’t believe me that Christmas was looked down upon in the world outside liturgical Christianity. Yet, still, they caved because, in addition to deprivation, humans also need a right celebration in season, and what is better than celebrating the birth of the savior?

Back to solemnity, though, let’s talk about confession. It hasn’t escaped my notice that the latest catchphrase in Protestantism is “accountability partner.” An accountability partner is the person that one confesses sins to, especially those sins that are addictive, such as alcoholism and pornography and cynicism*. Humans are prideful creatures, as I’m sure you know from personal experience. It’s far too easy to hold our sins close and pretend we are repenting when we’re not. And then we repeat the same pattern of giving in to temptation, feeling guilty, crying out to God for relief, and then giving into temptation again. Vocalizing our sins to another human can disrupt this pattern. Also, another human can pray for us. [Confession to a priest is quite different, though, isn’t it? I’m not going to explain why right now. This post is already too long….]

I have to admit that I got to thinking about writing this post last Sunday after going to Protestant worship with my husband. They quite casually handed out little shrink-wrapped grape juice and wafer cups to all who entered the church, and then later, had the gall to lecture the congregation on taking it unworthily without examining conscience first. There was a distinct feeling of discomfort in the room after the pastor said his piece. And I have to admit it really bothered me, too. Why eschew the sacraments, and then attempt to hold them dear as a last ditch effort to hold back anarchy? It’s like never discipling children and then shouting at them when they’re out of control and ready to burn down the house and everyone in it.

Ultimately, what this all comes down to is structure. I’ve been known to laugh a lot…to take things lightly that other people take seriously. But the truth is, we all need to have appropriate seriousness for the things that matter. Our souls need it. Our churches need it. And we also need to have appropriate humility that we don’t know everything. The things of the past that we think would be good to dismantle end up leaving us without necessary structure, and so we recreate what we tore down and imagine our efforts are uniquely inspired.

*cynicism in the modern sense

I find that the English “nay” sounds much better in the above construction. But alas, I wrote the title last night while falling asleep to Conjunto Primavera songs, and my brain reverted to Spanish. You see, I didn’t even get past the title. That was how tired I was. Speaking of King James’ era English, which many post-literates find difficult to read, the corollary time period in Spanish makes for very easy reading. Cervantes is easier to read than Borges, and they are both easier to read than this modern Spanish romantic comedy I’m still hacking away at. Just to give you an idea of why, the main characters are still sitting on an airplane 65 pages into the plot, which is supposed to be set on a singles cruise. And so. They banter a lot and don’t like each other, and the female se puso como un tomate every few paragraphs. I fear that, pronto, estará cubierta con aderezo para ensaladas. Why oh why did I purchase a romantic comedy? I thought it would be light and simple. I stand corrected.

But I digress because I am the second type of person of the two, nay three. The first type is focused on a single skill. In an article at Vox Popoli some time ago now, Vox quoted an anecdote Garrison Keillor had of Chet Atkins, in which Keillor asked Atkins if he should take up the guitar. Atkins advised him not to do it because the world didn’t need another mediocre guitarist. Keillor did one thing really well, create monologues, and there was no reason for him to shift his focus to another skill. Keillor took the advice and was glad he did. Vox makes a good point when he passes this advice along to Scott Adams: The world doesn’t need another mediocre political commentator, Scott … You’re a great cartoonist, one of the greatest ever. Stick with the cartoons. Unfortunately, I don’t think Adams will take this advice, as he’s not a single-focus person. These are people who become masters at an art or other trade due to their singular drive. Adams is, instead, the type of person who can take a stack of mediocre skills and put them together to create one successful skill. As he himself has said, he wasn’t a great comedian or artist or businessman, but he was skilled just enough at enough disciplines to bring it all together into one package. And now we have Dilbert, which is honestly funny, even though it’s not great art.

I hate to admit it, but it’s true: I’m not a single-focus person, either, and I never will be. I have ADD. On a good day, I follow multiple hobbies and interests and work multiple freelance jobs, one in which I teach a combination of phonics and algebra (if not history and science). I complain a lot about having to teach without the help of teacher keys (I’m a tutor for any subject at any grade level), but I can’t imagine having a better job. Scott Adams stacked skills and found success, and I might not ever get there. And I realized at some point that I don’t care. The thought of a life without pursuing multiple disciplines bores me to no end. The difference between me and Scott Adams is I don’t need to bring all my mediocre skills to the world and, hence, open myself up to the subsequent censure. I will never, for example, post videos of myself playing the accordion or singing Spanish songs at full volume. No indeed, only my family and neighbors have to experience that onslaught. I do publish my books, though. Even as a jack-of-all-trades, I’ve poured most of my efforts into writing. So, censure, critique! Bring it on!

There are two types of people, the scattered jack-of-all-trades and the singularly focused master. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a master. I’ve wondered, but I’m bored just imagining it. Therefore, it’s not bound to happen, though there is a remote possibility I discover that one interest above all and apply myself to it fully…. Meanwhile, I will assuredly never be the third type of person. The third does not even bear thinking about. The third is the person who comes home from an eight-hour shift and zones out on Netflix or Facebook. There is nothing wrong with an eight-hour workday. I’ve worked those jobs in my lifetime. Rather, the horror is to be found in disengaging from the world, becoming uninterested and compliant in order to keep the peace. At least Scott Adams isn’t that, despite being wrongheaded at times.

But what about the woman who is bound to become a salad? What of her? I have no idea! Her plane won’t land! ¡Híjole! as New Mexicans say. Or, as I often hear shouted in Mexican tunes, ¡Que bárbaros!

This post was inspired by InsanityByte’s* blog yet again. She inspires sometimes. She at least never leaves me feeling neutral on topics of interest. I wasn’t exactly sure how poetry was related to the Religious Right (see title) after having read it, but there seems to be a sense that western Christianity is like a shiny bauble, all outward show, with no art and no depth enough to keep its members, let alone to write poetry.

As I mentioned in her comments, there really is no collective western Christianity. A Southern Baptist does not speak for a Quaker, nor does a Quaker really know what’s up with those Seventh Day Adventists. Some of these churches barely eek out enough to pay rent on a strip mall hole in the wall: there is really no show to be had. If we want to talk Catholicism, poor diocese end up sharing priests, forcing one overworked man to give Mass at multiple churches, multiple times a week. Meanwhile, megachurches boast thousands of members and worship leaders who wear $1000 sneakers (someone did an exposé on this; it’s a real phenomenon for worship leaders).

But if there’s one thing all human institutions share around the world, it’s the inclination towards corruption and exploitation of people and funds. It’s found in churches, schools, government offices — wherever people with authority are found. Sometimes, the more petty the authority, the more corrupt. That’s why we’re admonished by Jesus not to follow hirelings but to follow Him instead, as he is the Good Shepherd who will never abandon his sheep, not even those in western Christianity who chase after baubles.

While I sympathize with people who abandon churches because they find them corrupt and shallow, I already know that for every one person who has left over unaddressed trauma, there are several more who left because living by God’s standards is too difficult. They want to shack up with their gay or straight partners. They want to murder their babies. They want to eat steak while collecting welfare (envy is rife in our society). They want to live how they want, and far from just accepting illicit lifestyles, many church congregations still say, no, absolutely not; you can’t be a member in good standing and live that way. And so they leave the “hatefulness” of Christianity behind.

This is related to poetry, and I’m about to show you how. You see, there were evil forces at work in this country all throughout the 20th century. Forces that worked to destroy the family unit through feminism, homosexuality, no-fault divorce, and abortion rights. This is real and documented: these were the avenues communist chapters sought to destroy our society. And yes, they really did get together in chapters to plan how they would accomplish this. These people infiltrated schools from elementary through post grad, tearing down beautiful traditions and replacing them with garbage. This applies to the arts and languages, though it is much harder to do in the sciences and math. No, it was much easier to bring in mass secularism so that God could no longer be the bedrock, the cornerstone, or the inspiration of scientific exploration, with annoying and disingenuous appeals to we study science, not religion.

Now, there are people who snidely claim the religious right doesn’t do poetry. No, of course, they don’t because it was coopted by the left, who queered every historic work of literature after dismantling it through a Marxist and Freudian lens. Then they determined that rules pertaining to language and grammar were snooty, not for true Bohemian artist types, who ought to have no restrictions placed on them. Stream of consciousness puked on the page and then workshopped in poetry classes in universities everywhere became the true meaning of poetry, along with subjective advice akin to “I’m just not feeling that third word from the right. Maybe give it a unique spelling?” As an aside, when I brought home a stack of poems from my first Freshman poetry class, my dad snarkily remarked, “I guess there are no virgins in that class,” as — if you could discern their meaning at all — sex was a popular subject.

It’s no wonder the religious right doesn’t write poetry! This is, of course, not correct. The religious right writes praise songs, which are sadly infected with the same destruction of the arts: stream of consciousness, tiny vocabulary, no punctuation, no meter, no rhyming. These songs are impossible to sing. They can hardly be called poetry, but neither can anything the left writes. There’s a reason society has all but abandoned poetry, except the kind in popular songs, where cheap rhymes and universal feelings about love still occur with regularity. Mediocre as pop songs may be, they provide a framework that the rest of the arts and literature dropped like hot coal.

Given all of this cultural destruction, the fact that western Christianity is still standing at all is a miracle that only God could be responsible for. The walls are still there. Biblical morality is still preached in pockets. In very traditional churches, they might even sing vestiges of Amazing Grace, a hymn written long before the destruction of poetry, a hymn inspired by an extremely religious-right movement to end chattel slavery. In fact, you’ll find much of the best historical English poetry was written by the religious “right”, despite the corruption of the Catholic or Anglican churches in England or, later, of the Puritan or Separatist churches in the US. Sure, the right can write poetry. Some still do. I do. Phil Wickham does (he’s a good modern songwriter). You’ll find them if your goal is to search through the post-postmodern ashes for signs that God, his church, and beauty still exist.

*Just to be clear, this is a response inspired by Insanity’s post, not an attack on hers because I get everything she’s saying and have had similar thoughts myself.