Pizza & COVID: Vaccinate your pizza.
Renewal Regurgitation Nation
I wish I could say that renewal was this incredible and exhilarating joy ride. While I think it can be fun and certainly renewing to learn more about things through a different and fresh perspective, it isn’t always an easy digest. I need a lifetime supply in Rolaids. Frankly, sometimes the whole renewal thing is eclipsed by the sound of a flushing toilet. And here I was visualizing fluffy blankets, cozy tea, and my pooch warming my lap. That’s impossible face first in the toilet of memory. What does this shit come up first?
In fact, to me, choosing to do this has taken a long, thoughtful decision making process that is about as wobbly as a rhino standing on one leg on a two legged stool. It’s definitely an interesting spectacle. I like disembodiment for a reason! It’s painful because apart from being curious, asking questions, and just exploring, there is the real data that comes in along with real time life and it happens all at once.
I have this memory and that’s what surfaced on my renewal. I’m sure I need to exfoliate because it’s tWisTeD SeRpeNt. I had a part to play. I’m not some innocent lamb hanging out with merciless wolves. I’m both at the same time, entangled with gross irritation about pizza and COVID. And frankly, often I don’t like what I see coming out of my own mouth let alone what’s coming out of other people’s mouths. Silence has that impact on me when I re-member.
Back in 2021 or somewhere near there during the whole COVID nightmare of communal devouring, I ended up having this encounter with someone who is now in my history file. Let’s call her Niagara because it’s a sob story about a barrel over the falls of supernatural-dom. She was/is charismatic - a NAR-ling [1]. All this occurred on Facebook. Actually some things were happening on Facebook - the sort of cesspool of all matter of information and opinion. It should be called Faceshit. Niagara was posting quite a number of interesting posts that for whatever gawd awful reason Facebook thought I’d enjoy reading. In my case, with a somewhat new account, I had stopped liking a mountain of posts in order to see more people on my friends list hoping somehow it would shoot that algorithm in the foot where I would get a wider range of stuff on my timeline. That includes stuff I don’t like and can challenge me. Given this person is sort of a holistic, anti-vax, Donald Trump loving charismatic, I may have been somewhat temporarily successful in regards to the algorithm fairy godmother giving me unicorn farts and sprinkles. I’m decidedly more opposite to much of her thinking based on the narrow field of view Facebook can provide from her corner of the platform. It’s not a small corner either.
At any rate, she decided to post her thoughts on her experience in a pizza place. She’s in this pizza place during COVID fall out and observes a family of some size or another, possibly tourists, who 15 months later are in a public space wearing masks. Her beef - or should I say pizza?; The kids were sitting with their hands folded, wearing masks, obediently being in good order. She’s upset about these mask wearing kids so she goes on to decry how these kids are being taught to obey such pandemic matters and in the end, are being primed to be obedient to receiving the “shot”….uh hum, anti-Christ shot and mark of the beast. She cries out that this generation is the end times generation and how those kids should be avoiding the aforementioned anti-Christ/mark of the beast “shot” line, and raising the dead and casting out demons instead. You know, maybe they were taking a break from all that spooky woo woo for pizza. I mean, all that expends energy. At any rate, she prays the fire of God to come down on the kids. She’s obviously operating under a bunch of assumptions all of which border line on the sound of a flushing toilet.
As a side bar, a whole lot of scholarship land realizes that Paul and all manner of early Christianity though Jesus was coming back in their lifetimes. Oh, just stop. The text at just a plain reading literally says that so I’m not open to the rationalizations and excuses needed to maintain apocalyptic fury. If you can’t handle the cognitive dissonance when you read it - here - have a Rolaid. This is not the end-time generation. People have been saying this kind of blubbery boo for hundreds of years! At what point do we get to talk about this being irrational and more like a poor paying slot machine on the floor of a seedy Vegas casino? Enough already. It doesn’t mean there is no after life if you’re scared. It just might be - gasp - early people got it wrong. Gawd forbid.
There is nothing like a crazy person who doesn’t know you praying for God to reign down fire on your kids because she has some notions about all of you that are solely bent on quietly sitting at a table waiting for pizza wearing masks. Magic paint. The real issue here - is the masking of course. Niagara didn’t know anything about them other than the masks. I wonder, would she have had a supernatural cow if they were happily scribbling on some paper waiting for pizza unmasked? Ah, the world of constructs. Why not just let them alone to follow their own path - trust them to God - instead of your all knowing supernatural political bullshit - which largely amounts to not really knowing much of anything? And how dare you tell them how to raise their kids while you screech at the moon when Big Daddy Government tells you how to raise yours? But that’s different……of course. Niagara sure as hell wouldn’t like that flying at her face - unmasked. But that’s the nature of the - well - er - beast.
Now, let me just talk briefly about obedience. You see, peeps like Niagara want obedience. It’s obedience to their ways of the world of course. Hence, she’s praying for fire to fall on them kids so they disobey their parents [isn’t rebellion against parently authority like the sin of witchcraft of something? I mean, let’s talk no feathers on their heads right here. Do they ride motorcycles - just inquiring for a friend. Maybe I should ask Mr. Milligan?] and obey her desires for an end-time army generation that rises up and elects Donald Trump to save America while casting out demons and raising the dead - more than likely the unvaccinated.
Yeah. Sounds bonkers. I know. But that’s the world of INC theology made up by elite NAR-lings. I spent nearly a decade minus two or so of my life in this as an insider. Yep, you read right, insider. I told you I like woo woo - mystical knotty woo woo. Yet, there are plenty of other tribal Christians willing to use the anti-Christ rhetoric for just about anything they don’t like. Childish? Yep. Fear-mongering, totally. Dysregulated standing in human adult arrest? Yeah -emphatically. Yet, to say what she is saying is bonkers may not be very helpful. Up against a few other health related posts I saw magically appear on my timeline thanks to Facebook fairy godmother, I noticed how she was rather intent on conveying notions that she knew what true health was [up against those who were getting vaccinated] and how she was overjoyed that her health clinic did no harm [vs. health clinics doing harm by vaccinating], and then this last post; vaccines becoming Book of Revelation like hysteria. I pretty much realized my own personal marbles were now out of their not so tidy box and were rolling on the floor in a sea of annoyance and outright irritation. Judgemental on her part- sure as fire. Getting ready to execute judgement on my part - as big as that pink elephant on that table over there doing a hoochy dance - yes.
Vaccination = Mark of the Beast and the Anti-Christ? ROLAIDS PLEASE!
This is a recipe for indigestion in my neck of the woods. Of course, pizza can do that to me. In fact, all her snobby health posts were a recipe for at least a roll of my eyes and a heart palpitation or two. You know, gawd not this stuff again? Thank you Facebook fairy godmother! Sometimes I don’t think any of us really grasp how stupid we look at times or how simply annoying our self-righteous shit is to other people. I mean, I’m right here doing it. And by the way, I look stupid more often than any of you so I can say it little fishy. I have a Masters in stupid and annoying. Still, between the end times thing and the anti-Christ rhetoric, I had to make some decisions. And here is where my memory burbles up in bubbles of acid, regret, and just WTF.
I tried to be supportive. Her health stunk and for all her alternative mystical medicine woo woo-ing her health still sucked. I can be pretty critical of Western medicine myself, but in good will, I tried to celebrate with her while avoiding the snobbery. But - and it’s a cheeky butt - there was the anti-Christ post. There was this other relational snag I couldn’t let go of that was part of all of this. She knew I was going to be vaccinated to prevent my elderly and very fragile father from hopefully not getting the shit.[2] She privately told me that she didn’t care what people did as along as it wasn’t forced on her….and by forced on her I mean literally like end times shit - being denied shelter, food, etc. This post largely indicated she was being deceitful in our private conversation because clearly, she does care and she posted religious rhetoric while privately blessing me for what was now my anti-Christ choice. She was more or less telling me I was getting the mark of the beast. That isn’t okay with me. Debate is okay, but that line was well crossed when the mark of the beast showed up. As a Christian, if she really felt that way, that should have changed our conversation in private. it’s like Ira over there - a two faced deity that anyone can talk out of both sides of its mouth.
The thing is, I knew if I said anything I would be attacked. In case you don’t know, Christians bite even if they flap their lips about love. They don’t know what the concept is really. How can openly depraved people walk around talking about love? Because a mystical man poured out his spirit on them? And I’m wicked weird? I’d already been attacked by other people who called themselves my “friends” and supposed “sisters in Christ.” These were people whose faces changed in the political cultural wars that I didn’t catch up close and personal in gatherings and conversations. I suddenly didn’t know some of these people.
I wrote a lengthy rebuttal indicating that some salient points of her post were very problematic with her theological stance on:
[Debunk] vaccines [e.g. it’s not explicit in the bible, and is more akin to a matter of conscience theologically. It’s unethical to make an appeal that vaccination is somehow the mark of the beast because you’re anti-vac and need to stump on your political idealogue-ishness];
[Debate] her theological stance with end time signs and wonders in relation to what those children should be up too [e.g. NEWSFLASH: it isn’t raising the dead or casting out demons, it’s loving others. Stop with the gifts idolatry!];
[Call out] general impact of these sorts of posts on her witness to people not like her on her friend’s list [like me] and in general [to people out there who don’t believe at all who are seeing these things all over the media sphere].
I braced myself.
A bit after I posted I terminated my Facebook account. I realized none of it really led to renewal and the people around me - well - they wanted the supernatural, their own drama, and to be right. They called all that horseshit “love” and renewal. It was all linked to their buzz word of booze - revival. They needed their boogeymen and demons to explain the world to them and to confirm their fears. They wanted to judge fellow humans and other Christians who chose to wear masks rather than understand why they were making that choice. They loved science when it backed their beliefs but refuted it when it challenged them. They wanted children on fire for resurrecting dead people during a time they didn’t want them to mask up or be vaccinated. The fruit friend - is found empirically in vaccination saving lives. For the record, plenty of deaths were reported. I haven’t found one report of a resurrection by an end-times child generation. The irony dear fishy - doesn’t escape me. And that’s where I heaved my pizza.
Notations
[1] New Apostolic Reformation = NAR-ling.
[2] I literally had people in this circle poo-poo me for getting the jab. They were scare-mongering me about how I might die. One chick on the Niagara ride told me her dad who had COPD caught COVID and was fine…because clearly her father was my father and they were the same person. For the record, my father did catch COVID. It took him one month to get through it. He then had backlash COVID pneumonia that almost killed him. I knew this was highly possible which is why I was going to get vaccinated. He was hospitalized for 12 days, his guts shut down because of all the antibiotics, and it took about a year for his gut to recover enough so he could eat and have some kind of life. Months after he would return to have breathing problems. He started losing weight and we struggled to get it back on him. It catapulted his health in other ways as well as involving endless doctors appointments trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and why he couldn’t breath. Please, spare me the goddamn judgement and comparisons. I wore a mask and got vaccinated based on my conscience, the available information, and the care and concern for my family members as well as the wider community. If that makes me the fucking Anti-Christ, well so be it!