I’ve met a lot of interesting people during my travels

I’ve even been to England, I saw some tourists there, whereas I was there for business

Once in Germany I even drank beer from a giant glass shoe, maybe one litre, just like Cinderella.

I’ve been to America too, but I don’t recommend.

I didn’t know what ”smog” was before. Still not sure.

Actually, I don’t like travelling unless it’s to Norway.

But on all of these places, shines the same moon

And in Canada once, I ate poutine

That was remarkable.

And there was a giant waterslide, which I saw in a mall.

It was winter there. In Canada (although in the mall it’s all the same)

It doesn’t matter

I have been a few times to Paris

The french are role models

There were poor beggars eating cucumbers from glass jars in the park outside the Eiffel Tower

In Italy there were bad memories of a broken family, my father got blisters on his feet.

Long ago.

I like Greece more than italy

I felt like Theseus once when we were at Rhodos, but the minotaur was long gone.

It’s the same sky there

There are corpses in the Mediterranean Sea

In Finland they frequently drink beer for lunch, or I did anyway

The modern church is loud.

Not always in volume, but in activity, opinion, production, and certainty. Everyone is speaking. Everyone is teaching. Everyone has a microphone. Everyone is convinced they are bringing something necessary to the table. Social media has amplified this even further, turning faith into performance, conviction into content, and worship into something that can be measured by engagement metrics rather than transformed lives. And yet, in the middle of all this noise, something essential has gone missing: understanding.

First Corinthians 14 does not arrive gently. It does not flatter our enthusiasm or affirm our desire to be seen as spiritually impressive. It interrupts. It questions motives. It slows everything down. Paul steps into a church intoxicated by spiritual expression and asks a question that still feels uncomfortable today: who is actually being built up here?

This chapter is often reduced to debates about tongues, prophecy, order, and church decorum. Those discussions matter, but they miss the deeper issue Paul is addressing. He is not trying to silence the Spirit. He is trying to rescue the community from confusing spiritual intensity with spiritual maturity. He is drawing a line between expression that draws attention and communication that brings transformation.

At its core, 1 Corinthians 14 is not about regulating gifts. It is about protecting people.

The Corinthian church was alive with spiritual energy. Gifts were flowing. Experiences were intense. Encounters were real. But chaos had crept in disguised as freedom. Individual expression was overshadowing communal edification. Worship was becoming fragmented, competitive, and inaccessible to those who did not already understand the language, the symbols, or the rhythms of what was happening. Paul does not deny the legitimacy of spiritual gifts. Instead, he reframes their purpose. Gifts are not badges of holiness. They are tools for love.

This is where modern readers often feel resistance. We live in a culture that rewards visibility. The louder the voice, the more authoritative it appears. The more dramatic the experience, the more spiritually advanced it is assumed to be. Paul dismantles that assumption entirely. He insists that intelligibility matters more than intensity, and that love always seeks the good of the other before the thrill of the self.

When Paul says he would rather speak five understandable words than ten thousand in a tongue no one understands, he is not minimizing spiritual depth. He is redefining it. Depth is not measured by how mysterious something sounds. It is measured by how effectively it draws others into truth, healing, and growth. Spirituality that isolates is not maturity; it is immaturity dressed up in spiritual language.

There is something profoundly countercultural about this chapter. Paul refuses to let the church become a private club of insiders fluent in spiritual dialects that leave outsiders confused and alienated. He insists that worship should make sense. That faith should be accessible. That gatherings should invite understanding rather than intimidation. He even goes so far as to say that if an unbeliever walks into a gathering and hears unintelligible speech, they will conclude that the believers are out of their minds. That line stings because it forces an honest question: what does our faith look like from the outside?

This is not about diluting truth. It is about translating it. Paul is not calling for less Spirit; he is calling for more wisdom. He is not rejecting spiritual experience; he is insisting that experience be grounded in love and purpose. The Spirit, in Paul’s vision, does not create confusion for its own sake. The Spirit brings clarity, conviction, and transformation.

The chapter presses even deeper when Paul addresses prophecy. Prophecy, in his framing, is not about predicting the future or demonstrating supernatural insight. It is about speaking words that strengthen, encourage, and comfort. Those three outcomes become a measuring stick. If what is spoken does not build, does not encourage, does not comfort, then no matter how spiritual it sounds, it has missed the mark.

This is where 1 Corinthians 14 becomes deeply personal. It challenges not just what is said in church, but how faith is communicated everywhere. In sermons. In conversations. In online posts. In debates. Are our words actually building anyone up? Are they creating space for growth, or just proving that we are right? Are they comforting the weary, or shaming the struggling?

Paul’s insistence on order is often misunderstood as a call for rigidity. In reality, it is a call for care. Disorder, in Paul’s view, is not simply loud or energetic worship. Disorder is anything that prioritizes personal expression over communal well-being. It is anything that leaves people more confused than before. God, Paul says, is not a God of confusion, but of peace. Peace here does not mean quiet or passive. It means coherence. It means alignment. It means that what is happening makes sense in light of who God is and what God desires for His people.

There is a pastoral tenderness underneath Paul’s firmness. He is not scolding the Corinthians for having gifts. He is guiding them toward using those gifts responsibly. He is reminding them that spiritual power without love becomes destructive. That freedom without wisdom becomes chaos. That expression without interpretation becomes exclusion.

One of the most overlooked aspects of this chapter is Paul’s emphasis on learning. Again and again, he frames church gatherings as spaces where people should be able to learn something meaningful. Learning requires clarity. Learning requires structure. Learning requires communication that connects. If people leave confused, overwhelmed, or alienated, something has gone wrong, regardless of how intense the experience felt in the moment.

This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for modern faith communities: do our gatherings prioritize being impressive or being understandable? Do they create environments where people can actually grow, or do they reward those who already know the language? Paul’s answer is unambiguous. Love seeks the good of the other. Love chooses clarity over spectacle. Love slows down if that is what helps someone else catch up.

Paul even applies this principle to himself. He acknowledges that he speaks in tongues more than anyone, yet he willingly restrains that expression in public settings for the sake of others. This is not repression. It is discipline. It is the willingness to limit one’s own freedom so that others can flourish. That kind of self-restraint feels foreign in a culture that equates authenticity with unfiltered expression. But Paul presents it as a mark of maturity, not compromise.

The chapter also addresses participation. Paul does not envision a church where one person performs while everyone else watches passively. He imagines a community where many contribute, but in a way that is coordinated, respectful, and constructive. Everyone matters, but not everyone speaks at the same time. Everyone has something to offer, but not everything needs to be offered in every moment.

This balance between participation and order is delicate. Too much control stifles life. Too little structure dissolves coherence. Paul is not advocating for sterile gatherings devoid of passion. He is advocating for gatherings shaped by love, guided by wisdom, and anchored in purpose. The Spirit, in this vision, does not overwhelm the mind; the Spirit works through it.

One of the most controversial sections of this chapter involves instructions about silence and speaking, which have been debated for generations. Whatever interpretive conclusions one reaches, the underlying concern remains consistent: worship should not devolve into competition or confusion. It should reflect the character of God, who brings order out of chaos and meaning out of noise.

This chapter ultimately exposes a tension that every faith community must navigate. The desire to encounter God powerfully can sometimes overshadow the responsibility to care for one another thoughtfully. Paul refuses to let that tension resolve in favor of spectacle. He insists that love governs power, that understanding guides expression, and that peace is the fruit of authentic worship.

First Corinthians 14 does not diminish the mystery of faith. It situates mystery within relationship. It reminds us that spiritual gifts are not given to elevate individuals but to serve communities. That the goal of worship is not emotional intensity for its own sake, but transformation that reaches beyond the moment and into daily life.

As this chapter unfolds, it invites us to reconsider what we value most in spiritual spaces. Do we value being moved, or being changed? Do we value being heard, or being helpful? Do we measure faithfulness by volume and visibility, or by love and clarity? Paul’s answers are consistent, challenging, and deeply relevant.

The church in Corinth was not failing because it lacked spiritual power. It was struggling because it had not yet learned how to steward that power wisely. That lesson has not expired. If anything, it has become more urgent in a world where communication is constant, attention is scarce, and misunderstanding is easy.

In the next part, we will move even deeper into how Paul’s vision in 1 Corinthians 14 speaks directly to modern faith, online spirituality, public worship, and the responsibility that comes with having a voice. We will explore how listening becomes an act of love, how restraint becomes a form of worship, and how clarity becomes a spiritual discipline that transforms not just gatherings, but lives.

If the first half of 1 Corinthians 14 exposes the problem, the second half presses toward responsibility. Paul does not merely diagnose chaos; he insists that those who claim spiritual depth must also embrace spiritual accountability. What makes this chapter so uncomfortable is that it refuses to let sincerity excuse harm. Good intentions are not enough. Passion alone is not proof of faithfulness. Spiritual experience, no matter how real, must be weighed against its effect on others.

Paul introduces a radical idea that cuts against both ancient and modern instincts: the Spirit does not override self-control. Spiritual people are not swept away helplessly by divine force. They are responsible stewards of what they carry. “The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets,” Paul writes, making it unmistakably clear that being moved by God does not absolve someone of discernment, restraint, or responsibility. This single line dismantles the idea that chaos is evidence of authenticity. In Paul’s theology, self-control is not the enemy of the Spirit; it is one of its fruits.

This matters because chaos often masquerades as freedom. When no one questions excess, the loudest voices dominate. When no one pauses to interpret or explain, confusion spreads. Paul refuses to baptize disorder simply because it happens in a religious setting. God’s character, he reminds them, is consistent. A God who brings order out of creation’s chaos does not suddenly delight in confusion among His people. Peace is not optional. It is a theological statement about who God is.

One of the most striking aspects of this chapter is how much Paul trusts the gathered community. He does not want one voice to monopolize the space. He encourages evaluation, discernment, and shared responsibility. Prophecy is not above questioning. Teaching is not above testing. Authority is not unchallengeable. This is not rebellion; it is maturity. When everyone is accountable to love, the community becomes safer, stronger, and more honest.

This communal discernment stands in sharp contrast to modern celebrity-driven faith, where visibility is often mistaken for anointing and popularity for truth. Paul’s vision dismantles that hierarchy. Spiritual authority is not validated by how dramatic a moment feels, but by whether it draws people closer to God and one another. The measure is always fruit, never flair.

Paul’s emphasis on intelligibility becomes even more powerful when we consider the context of outsiders. He repeatedly returns to the presence of those who are not yet believers. This alone challenges a deeply ingrained assumption in many churches: that gatherings exist primarily for insiders. Paul disagrees. He insists that worship should be comprehensible to those standing on the edges, curious but cautious. If faith only makes sense to those already fluent in its language, something essential has been lost.

This is not about watering down conviction. It is about hospitality. Translation is an act of love. Explanation is an act of humility. Slowing down so someone else can understand is not weakness; it is strength directed outward. Paul refuses to let spiritual gatherings become echo chambers that reinforce belonging for some while excluding others.

The implications extend far beyond first-century worship. In a digital age where faith is shared instantly and publicly, 1 Corinthians 14 becomes startlingly relevant. Every post, sermon clip, livestream, and debate carries the same question Paul posed centuries ago: does this build anyone up? Or does it merely display knowledge, intensity, or certainty? Are we communicating to be understood, or performing to be admired?

Paul’s insistence on order is also an insistence on listening. Order creates space for voices to be heard rather than drowned out. It allows reflection instead of reaction. It invites participation without competition. In a world addicted to immediacy, Paul calls for intentionality. Not everything needs to be said the moment it is felt. Not every impulse deserves a microphone. Wisdom knows when to speak and when to remain silent.

The theme of silence in this chapter has been misused and misunderstood across generations, often weaponized rather than interpreted. But at its heart, Paul is not enforcing domination; he is preventing disorder. Silence, in this context, is not erasure. It is restraint exercised for the sake of peace. It is choosing not to speak when speaking would fracture rather than heal.

This reframes silence as an act of love. To withhold a word is sometimes more faithful than to release it. To wait is sometimes more spiritual than to rush. Paul’s vision does not privilege those who speak most; it honors those who care enough to consider the impact of their words.

As the chapter draws toward its conclusion, Paul offers a summary that is deceptively simple: “Let all things be done decently and in order.” This is not a call to sterile religion or rigid control. It is a call to alignment. Decency reflects respect for others. Order reflects trust in God’s character. Together, they form a framework where spiritual life can flourish without harming those it is meant to serve.

What makes 1 Corinthians 14 enduring is that it refuses extremes. It does not suppress spiritual gifts, nor does it allow them to run unchecked. It does not dismiss emotion, nor does it elevate emotion above understanding. It does not silence participation, nor does it tolerate chaos. It calls the church into a mature tension where love governs power and wisdom guides expression.

At a deeper level, this chapter is about humility. It asks believers to decenter themselves. To ask not “Was I faithful to express myself?” but “Was I faithful to serve others?” That shift is subtle but transformative. It changes how worship is planned, how sermons are preached, how conversations unfold, and how disagreements are handled. It changes the posture of faith from self-assertion to mutual care.

Paul’s vision challenges the assumption that spiritual life must always be dramatic to be real. Sometimes the most powerful moments are quiet. Sometimes growth happens slowly, through clear teaching and patient explanation rather than sudden emotional surges. Sometimes God works most deeply not in moments that overwhelm, but in moments that make sense.

First Corinthians 14 ultimately invites the church to grow up. To move beyond fascination with spectacle and into commitment to substance. To trade competition for cooperation. To value clarity as a spiritual discipline. To recognize that love is not proven by how intensely one feels, but by how responsibly one acts.

In a culture saturated with noise, this chapter feels almost prophetic in its restraint. It reminds us that God still speaks, but often through voices willing to be understood rather than admired. Through gatherings shaped by care rather than chaos. Through communities that listen as much as they speak.

When the church learns to listen again, not just to God but to one another, something changes. Worship becomes more than expression; it becomes formation. Faith becomes less about display and more about devotion. And the Spirit, far from being quenched, finds room to move in ways that heal, restore, and unite.

That is the quiet power of 1 Corinthians 14. Not a chapter about silencing the Spirit but about creating space where the Spirit’s work can actually be received.

—

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I found myself welling up with tears before my Buddha statue.

“How are you here? How is the Buddha-nature here? I’m not doubting that it is. I’m asking how? Because this is awful.”

As I’ve talked about before, I’ve been spending the last several months in very dark moods. I’m definitely better than I used to be, but it’s still been about four months since I left the upper-end of depression for longer than a single day. This has given me ample time to see what the dark moods have to teach me, because they certainly aren’t going anywhere with any haste. Why fight it when it can deepen my understanding of what it means to be human?

This has landed me in a kind of pessimistic liberal theism. Of sorts. Like many Westerners with multiple religious identities including Buddhism, it gets a little murky in places. Nevertheless, a picture has begun to form, drawing from four sources: Søren Kierkegaard, Alfred Whitehead, Walter Benjamin, and Mahayana Buddhism (inflected by Zen and Arthur Schopenhauer).

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Anxiety and Despair in Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard felt that existing as a human was a pretty rough deal. He was a very sad boy and felt overwhelming depression and anxiety his whole life. He even broke off his marriage because he felt that she didn’t deserve to deal with his moods (although, maybe that was ultimately the correct call, as his fiancé was 14; a right answer with the wrong equation). But he spent his time engaging with these moods in a deep way, and came away with a pretty remarkable account of the role of anxiety and despair.

For Kierkegaard, anxiety is a response to the freedom that humans have. We can make choices, meaningful choices, that shape our lives. And we don’t have assurance that it’ll work out in the end. That’s scary. I sometimes present anxiety as “the general knowledge that even if you do everything right, things can still turn out wrong,” which I think Kierkegaard would empathize with. However you slice it, a critical part of Kierkegaard’s position is that anxiety isn’t pathological per se, but rather comes from a confrontation with our base reality as humans. It can be a sign of health, or of moving in a healthy direction.

Something similar happens with despair. Per Kierkegaard, most people are in a state of despair, even if they don’t realize it. That’s because being a human is impossible. We are stuck between who we are—our history, our social circumstances, our habits—and who we are becoming, and we are always becoming and often yearning to become something else. That’s not a stable arrangement. It’s so easy, natural even, to hold to our current state and despair that we are forced to change, or to embrace change and despair that we cannot change certain things about ourselves. All humans, according to Kierkegaard, at some point are one or the other, perhaps even shifting between the two. But without an existential anchor to stabilize this process between being and becoming, we are stuck in despair. Kierkegaard, as a Christian, thought this existential anchor was the Christian God. As someone who is not a Christian, at least not in any way that would be widely recognizable as such to Christians, I’m inclined to look elsewhere.

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Being and Becoming in Whitehead

Whitehead had an interesting take on reality and God. He, like Kierkegaard, thought that we are both being and becoming. He thought all things were being and becoming, actually. That includes God.

Whitehead influenced a lot of liberal theologians with his process theology. He articulated a God that was compassionate—literally, suffering with others, experiencing all that happens directly—and drawing reality to a higher good. He saw a God that held a memory of the universe, grounding the past, and experienced the present with all of creation, and non-coercively drew reality towards a more intense future, a “harmony of opposites” where conflicts are not resolved per se but do come to exist in a way that drives things towards aesthetic greatness.

This is an optimistic theology. Whitehead was inclined to think that things get better the structure of the universe was tilted towards improvement, with God pulling it non-coercively towards an aesthetic greater good.

But if Kierkegaard is right, it’s unclear to me why God would not feel despair either. God cannot fix the past. Maybe God hopes to integrate a disastrous past into a greater harmony of opposites and in that way redeem it. But God can’t do that reliably. Not without the cooperation of the rest of the universe, which is shot through with freedom. There is no promise that the past will ever be redeemed, and it certainly seems, in the arc of human history, there is much left to be redeemed, and more happening all the time. From the human angle, there are many things that are irredeemable, generating despair, and if God experiences our despair about this as well, it would seem that God too is unable to resolve the tension between the poles of being and becoming.

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Benjamin’s Angel of History

Walter Benjamin wrote about this human perspective in a divine register. His story about the Angel of History has been one of my touchstones for the last decade, and I can only see Whitehead’s God in it.

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

(Courtesy of [marxists.org](http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/ThesesonHistory.html))

God is the repository of history, the eternal memory, and presently experiencing the suffering of all of creation. And per Benjamin, we are experiencing suffering in a particularly salient way: We have perpetually experienced eternal defeat in the form of being forgotten. Whitehead might feel that God’s eternal memory alleviates this, but we do not experience it. God experiences our despair, and the despair itself taints God’s memory, and God wishes it would not, that it be redeemed into a harmony of opposites, but is forever limited by experiencing the facts of reality, which are that we are trapped.

To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. For historical materialism it is a question of holding fast to a picture of the past, just as if it had unexpectedly thrust itself, in a moment of danger, on the historical subject. The danger threatens the stock of tradition as much as its recipients. For both it is one and the same: handing itself over as the tool of the ruling classes. In every epoch, the attempt must be made to deliver tradition anew from the conformism which is on the point of overwhelming it. For the Messiah arrives not merely as the Redeemer; he also arrives as the vanquisher of the Anti-Christ. The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

…

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule.

Indeed, Benjamin entirely rejects our ability to access an eternal and complete memory, and for good reason. That is simply not how we experience time. We experience time with salience, with some things more citable than others. We experience time emotionally and dripping with value. We can only imagine that God is the same way.

It is well-known that the Jews were forbidden to look into the future. The Torah and the prayers instructed them, by contrast, in remembrance. This disenchanted those who fell prey to the future, who sought advice from the soothsayers. For that reason the future did not, however, turn into a homogenous and empty time for the Jews. For in it every second was the narrow gate, through which the Messiah could enter.

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The Okay Suffering of the Buddha

Buddhism has a weird public image. “The end of suffering,” it proclaims. Perhaps more clear and honest is the saying “pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional.” Even more honest: “You still suffer, but it’s okay now.” “No end to suffering,” as the Heart Sutra teaches. (I understand the context provides nuance; just stay with me here.)

That’s the perspective of Zen Buddhism, particularly of the tradition I’ve had the most engagement with, Ordinary Mind. It’s also aligned somewhat with the interpretation of reality that Arthur Schopenhauer walked away with. According to Schopenhauer, reality is fundamentally unsatisfying. The Buddha would probably agree, with all the caveats and nuances and paradoxes the Buddha always offers. But let’s stay with what we can learn here. Reality is fundamentally unsatisfying, but we can’t escape reality. It’s a pretty bleak situation.

What can we do? Schopenhauer said that we should simply withdraw and engage with reality as little as possible. I’m not sure that’s right. I’d break from Schopenhauer here and follow Ordinary Mind in saying that by coming to reality and letting it teach us, as I have with my dark moods, as Kierkegaard did, it becomes a little more okay. In therapy I’ve heard this referred to as clean pain and dirty pain. There’s the clean pain of reality, and the dirty pain we heap on it. We can at least reduce our suffering by wiping away the dirty pain and leave ourselves with the clean pain by seeing reality as it is, without the delusions we tend to experience.

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Hope, Regardless

This is an awful tragic view of reality. It’s a tragic view of God, because it means that God is always suffering, and perhaps in perpetually intensifying ways, depending on if you try to save the progression of harmony of opposites and how you understand “aesthetic” here. It means that we can try to stabilize ourselves and end our despair by anchoring to God, but if we truly do that then we’d be introduced to the despair of others. Mahayana teaches that we’re here to be compassionate to the despair of others and to alleviate it. Perhaps a pessimistic variant would say that we can never fully escape suffering, but we can reduce it by caring about others.

Hope is usually understood as forward-looking. It says that in the future, things will be better, or that there’s something in the future to hold on to. I’m not a fan of the latter because it seems like denying parts of reality, and I’m not an optimist about the future, so I don’t like the latter either.

But if reality isn’t doing any work for us—if the universe is fundamentally orthogonal to our happiness, if not hostile to it—that means that if we give a damn, we better roll up our sleeves and build it ourselves. It means that there is an imperative to reduce suffering. It means that we find hope not in the future, but right now, in the actions we do to make suffering a little less. It saves us from the idolatry of the future, as pessimist philosopher Emil Cioran says, and frees us to find hope in the reality in front of us, in compassion and care.

---

Dark Moods, Dark Theology

I had to pass through pretty hopeless times to find a seed of hope again. I might never have if I hadn’t let myself sit and engage with my dark moods. I tried to return to the optimism so popular in contemporary culture, and so prevalent in liberal theology, but I couldn’t experience it as anything other than a lie.

I found hope again. Not in the creative advance of Whitehead, or the existential anchor of Kierkegaard, or the belief in the fundamental goodness of people so common in Unitarian Universalism (one of my faith traditions). I found hope in pessimism. I found compassion in universal suffering. I found a way forward with my faith by understanding my faith as flexible enough to accommodate the suffering that humans experience. Instead of seeing my depression as purely pathological, I let myself understand it as a thing that happens to humans, and as I believe that all things that happen to humans are able to be analyzed under a religious lens, I found religion in depression.

I doubt I’m alone. Like I said, depression happens to people, including religious people. I hope that I can share my pessimistic faith with others and save them from the oppression of mandatory optimism. For now, I return to the compassion of the Buddha, and find it makes my suffering a little more okay.

I'm falling a bit behind. Started another freelance project, so things are a bit slower now.

Most of the MVP is done, and I'm starting to polish some things. For Day 15, there was a small refactor of the Add/Edit forms to make them more robust and improve the UX.

One of the notable things here is the introduction of react-hook-form and zod. Which makes the most sense in combination with Supabase. In addition, I moved all form fields into shared components.

All the changes will give me a good feeling that this app can grow after the MVP. :)

👋

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73 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #AdventOfProgress
Thoughts?

Early December must be one of the least propitious times of the year for reading. There always seems to be far too much else to do. Only this evening have I reached the end of a short novel started a few weeks ago: Audition by Katie Kitamura. A correspondent's recommendation had made me curious to read it.

It's a story that struck me as very satisfyingly ambiguous. The narration had a clean, polished surface, which nevertheless gave the impression of considerable depth yawning beneath. Just about every small expectation that came to mind about where it might go next was soon afterwards neatly confounded: seldom did I feel sure of where I stood. It's a book that says a good deal and suggests a great deal more within its relatively narrow span of 197 pages.

---

The week has largely been taken up with work and with Christmas shopping. I left my annual campaign of on-line festive consumerism inadvisably late this year, and catching up has felt onerous. There have been lengthy sessions switching between browser tabs in search of appropriate items. There has been a barrage of notifications about orders and deliveries. There have been parcels to collect; parcels brought to my door; parcels left outside my door; parcels left outside neighbours' doors. Items damaged in transit or bought in error or subject to buyer's remorse have had to be returned. There have been second thoughts and changes of mind, and items at first intended for one recipient now earmarked for another. Even then, there is at least one item I know I will regret giving. There has been a rapid depletion of funds; a faint nausea about the excess of it all. I have to draw a line under it all now even if some dissatisfaction remains. Only gift-wrapping, distribution and presentation are left to manage.

---

The last time I'd tried blue cheese before my belated acquisition this year of a taste for the stuff, it had been in the shape of some Stilton four or five Christmasses ago. That experience had not been a happy one, and the recollection of it had pushed Stilton some way back in the queue of the cheeses I've wanted to try since my 'conversion'. Fortunately, having now seen the blue light, I have come back to it, and I'm finding the wedge I bought at Tesco on Saturday very much to my liking.

---

Wine of the week: a somewhat costly but very delicious Manzanilla Pasada, which is “delightfully aromatic with reminiscences of green apples and the characteristic hint of sea breeze.”

There are towns all across America that look peaceful from the outside. They have flags on the porches, churches on every other corner, and traditions that feel older than time itself. People wave when they pass each other on the road. They know one another’s last names, grandparents, and high school football records. On the surface, these towns feel safe, moral, and grounded. But underneath that familiarity, there is often something unspoken and unresolved: the quiet belief that belonging must be earned, and that being different is a liability.

This story takes place in one of those towns.

It was small enough that one stoplight controlled the entire flow of traffic, and big enough that gossip could move faster than truth. The church on Main Street had been painted white so many times that the wood underneath had softened. The steeple leaned just enough to remind everyone it had survived storms. Every Sunday morning, the parking lot filled early, hymnals opened in unison, and people sang about grace with voices trained by repetition.

Faith was respected here. Jesus was spoken of often. But following Him was something else entirely.

When Eli arrived, no one made an announcement. He did not show up with noise or trouble or rebellion. He came quietly, with his mother, into a house most people had driven past without noticing. It sat near the edge of town where pavement turned to gravel and sidewalks faded away. The house had a tired porch and windows that didn’t quite close right. It was not dangerous. It was just different. And in a town like this, different was enough.

Eli was sixteen, but grief had aged him. His father’s death had taken more than a parent. It had taken stability, confidence, and the easy laughter that once came without effort. Eli learned quickly how to stay small, how to avoid attention, how to move through spaces without leaving a mark. He wore hoodies not because he wanted to intimidate anyone, but because they made him feel hidden.

In small towns, hidden never lasts.

It began the way it often does, with a sentence that sounded harmless. “I don’t know about that boy.” It passed from one mouth to another without resistance. Someone mentioned seeing him behind the hardware store. Someone else added that a few things had gone missing recently. No one verified anything. The idea felt neat, convenient, and satisfying. Suspicion settled into place like it belonged there.

Soon, Eli felt it everywhere. The way parents pulled their kids closer when he passed. The way conversations paused when he entered a room. The way eyes lingered just long enough to communicate judgment without words. He did not know what he was being accused of, only that he was being watched.

He tried the church because he did not know where else to go.

The building was familiar in a way that made him nervous. He sat in the back pew one Sunday morning, hands folded tightly, eyes scanning exits. The pastor preached about love, about grace, about Jesus welcoming sinners. The congregation nodded in agreement. People sang about mercy as if it were a settled issue.

When the service ended, people filed out politely. A few smiled at Eli without stopping. No one sat beside him. No one asked his name. No one wondered why he was there alone.

Except Margaret.

Margaret had lived in that town longer than most of the buildings. She had seen neighbors come and go, watched kindness flourish and die depending on the circumstances. She knew how easily fear could dress itself up as wisdom. She had lost her husband years earlier and learned how loneliness feels when it is misunderstood by others.

She noticed Eli because she recognized the look in his eyes.

That afternoon, she found him sitting on the steps of the old library, backpack at his feet, shoulders tense as though he were bracing for something. She did not approach him with urgency or concern. She sat beside him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

She did not ask questions right away. She did not demand explanations. She allowed silence to exist.

After a while, she spoke. She told him about Jesus. Not the polished version people like to quote, but the one who kept choosing the wrong tables, the wrong people, the wrong side of every social line. She told him how Jesus was talked about, misunderstood, accused, and watched. She told him how He never waited for approval before offering dignity.

Eli listened without interrupting.

Margaret invited Eli and his mother to dinner that week. It was a simple meal, ordinary and unremarkable in every way except one: the invitation itself challenged the unspoken rules of the town. People noticed. They talked. Some warned Margaret she was being reckless. Others said she was being manipulated. A few suggested she should be careful about who she associated with.

Margaret responded with calm certainty. She reminded them that Jesus was criticized for the same thing.

What unsettled the town was not Eli’s behavior, but Margaret’s refusal to participate in suspicion. She kept showing up. She sat with them at the diner. She spoke Eli’s name without hesitation. She treated him like a human being instead of a question mark.

Nothing bad happened.

Days passed. Weeks passed. Eli did not become what people feared. He did not steal. He did not cause trouble. He did not fulfill the story they had written for him. He simply existed, grieving quietly, learning what it felt like to be seen by at least one person.

Then the truth surfaced.

The hardware store owner discovered months of inventory errors. No theft. No crime. Just assumptions stacked on top of silence. The rumors collapsed, but the damage remained. Some people apologized. Many did not. A few insisted they had only been “looking out for the town.”

The following Sunday felt different.

Eli sat beside Margaret in the third pew. The same hymns were sung. The same pastor preached. But the words landed differently. The sermon spoke of Jesus standing between the accused and the stones, of mercy confronting fear, of love refusing to stay comfortable.

This time, no one could pretend it was abstract.

Because Jesus had already walked through their town.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. But through a woman who refused to confuse faith with comfort, and through a boy who reminded them how quickly they judged.

Eli asked Margaret afterward why she had believed in him when no one else did. She answered simply, without drama or pride. She told him that Jesus never begins with suspicion. He begins with compassion.

The town learned something that day, though not everyone was willing to admit it yet.

They learned that believing in Jesus is easy. Looking like Him is harder.

They learned that faith without justice becomes performance, and justice without love becomes cruelty.

And they learned that Jesus is not impressed by how often we speak His name if our lives contradict His example.

This was only the beginning of what the town would have to face.

The town did not change overnight. That is something people often get wrong about moments like these. Stories like to pretend that truth arrives, apologies are spoken, and hearts soften all at once. Real life is slower. Real repentance takes time. And real faith has a way of unsettling people long after the moment has passed.

In the weeks after the truth came out, Eli noticed something subtle but important. People were kinder, but cautious. Polite, but distant. Some offered smiles that felt rehearsed. Others avoided eye contact altogether. A few treated him warmly, as if trying to make up for lost time. But many preferred to move on without reflection, as though silence could erase what had been done.

Margaret noticed this too.

She understood something most people did not want to face: exposure of injustice is only the first step. Transformation requires humility, and humility is uncomfortable. It demands more than embarrassment. It demands ownership.

The town preferred relief.

They were relieved that nothing bad had actually happened. Relieved that no crime had been committed. Relieved that the story no longer threatened their image of themselves as good, decent people. But relief is not repentance. And Jesus never stopped at relief.

The following Sunday, the pastor preached again about Jesus. This time the text came from the Gospels, where Jesus dines with tax collectors and sinners. The words were familiar. The congregation had heard them many times before. But now the air felt heavier. There was a tension between what was being said and what had been lived.

Margaret listened closely.

She thought about how Jesus did not wait for society to correct itself before intervening. He stepped into brokenness while it was still raw. He did not require public apologies before offering grace. But He also never ignored truth.

Jesus was not gentle with systems that crushed people. He was not patient with hypocrisy. And He was never impressed by faith that refused to inconvenience itself.

Eli kept coming to church, though he was still unsure why. Something in him wanted to understand the Jesus Margaret talked about—the one who stood between the accused and the stones, the one who refused to reduce people to rumors. That Jesus felt different from the version he had seen preached but not practiced.

One evening, Eli asked Margaret a question that had been weighing on him.

“Why didn’t anyone say anything sooner?”

Margaret did not rush to answer. She stirred her tea, watching the steam rise, then said quietly, “Because it’s easier to be comfortable than it is to be Christlike.”

She explained how small towns often confuse harmony with righteousness. As long as things look peaceful, people assume things are peaceful. But Jesus never mistook silence for goodness. He paid attention to who was missing from the table, who was being pushed aside, who was being quietly crushed.

She told Eli that social injustice does not always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it hides behind politeness. Sometimes it looks like people telling themselves, “It’s probably nothing,” while someone else carries the cost.

The town had done what many communities do. They protected themselves before protecting truth.

And that is where the lesson of Jesus becomes unavoidable.

Jesus did not live to preserve systems. He lived to redeem people.

He did not side with the majority by default. He sided with the truth, even when it isolated Him.

He did not fear accusations. He feared indifference.

As weeks turned into months, small changes began to appear. Not grand gestures. Not public confessions. But quieter things. A teacher corrected a student who repeated an old rumor. A shop owner greeted Eli by name. A church member invited him to sit with them instead of alone. These were not dramatic acts, but they mattered.

Justice often begins quietly.

Not with speeches, but with decisions. Not with outrage, but with responsibility. Not with perfection, but with repentance.

Margaret knew the town would never be the same, even if some people pretended it was. Once Jesus exposes something, it cannot be unseen. Once compassion interrupts suspicion, there is no returning to ignorance without consequence.

Eli grew too. Not because the town changed, but because someone had seen him when he was invisible. Someone had treated him like a person before he proved himself worthy. That changed how he saw God.

One afternoon, Eli said something that stayed with Margaret.

“I think Jesus is the first one who didn’t make me feel like I had to explain myself.”

Margaret smiled, because she knew that feeling well.

That is the Jesus of the Gospels.

The one who meets people where they are. The one who restores dignity before demanding change. The one who exposes injustice not to shame, but to heal.

Social justice, when rooted in Christ, is not about anger for its own sake. It is about refusing to let fear decide who deserves compassion. It is about choosing presence over assumption. It is about standing close enough to the wounded that your own comfort is disturbed.

The town eventually returned to its routines. Football games were played. Hymns were sung. Life went on. But something had shifted beneath the surface.

They had learned that Jesus does not stay confined to sermons. He walks through neighborhoods. He sits on library steps. He eats at ordinary tables.

And He watches how His people treat the ones everyone else has already judged.

This is the uncomfortable truth small-town America—and every place like it—must face: believing in Jesus is not the same as resembling Him. Knowing His name is not the same as living His way.

Jesus still stands between the accused and the stones. Jesus still moves toward the outcast. Jesus still exposes injustice wrapped in respectability.

And He still asks His followers the same question He asked then:

Will you protect your comfort, or will you reflect My heart?

Because sometimes the most powerful testimony of Christ is not spoken from a pulpit.

Sometimes it is lived quietly, faithfully, and courageously by someone willing to love like Jesus when it costs them something.

---

**Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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#doooongDaily

This one's a good one! With good headphones, it really sounds like there's a downpour outside. Good for focusing at work too, which is what I'm using it for right now.

Link: Stormy Weather

#Status #FocusMusic

I used to like Medium articles. Anything related to writing, marketing, or business, Medium was my go-to. However, too many paywalled articles and forcing you to register just to read the free articles turned me away from the site.

I do love Substack and there are many informative and thoughtful creators I follow. However, I don’t think I’m intelligent enough nor have the time to write such articles. Who knows, maybe in the future when I’m not so busy.

The main reason I choose Write.as for my primary blog is focusing solely on writing without worrying about click stats, email marketing, or selling a product or service. All my posts are free and they are not monetized. So enjoy, take what you can learn, and spread the word. And I will try to do the same with yours.

#writing #medium #substack

Something that has been keeping me busy in 2025 is an emerging audacious plan to buy a community building for our neighbourhood.

I live on the Tower Gardens Estate in Tottenham, north London – in the heart of one of the most deprived wards in one of the most deprived local authority areas in England. There is no easily accessible community space on our (large!) estate – and the one potential building – the old estate office, which was a Sure Start centre for a while – is now on Haringey’s disposals list.

A few of us have been working to cook up a plan to get this building and turn it into a community asset. The council are supportive of our plan but need us to raise the money to buy it from them. We think there’s huge potential, but we’re in the classic bind at the start of a project like this – we need money for commissioning our own valuation and condition surveys, and while we’ve done some super fun events (see pics!) to get ideas and opinions, there’s loads more co-design and broadening of our thinking we need to do.

We have such dreams for the building – a community garden, a library of things, a public living room, hireable community space, a music practice room, a community-led retrofit centre for the estate – but if we can’t raise money quickly (the end of the financial year?!) it will be put on the market and then who knows what will happen. Our current thinking is set out here.

We’ve launched a fundraiser to help cover initial costs – here – and we’re applying for as many pots of feasibility funding as we can. We’ve been knocked back from the AHF feasibility pot as the building isn’t listed (although it is an important building in an important conservation area!). I know this is a tight time of year and there are zillions of important places to put money. But I would love advice from the wise folk in my network about how we might get over this initial project start up funding hump.

We’ve got a great group and a decent plan, and I know that we can make something real happen here next year. Really happy to chat to anyone who might have leads on useful Haringey-based funding pots!!

What I meant to say to you all those years ago.

I met them in the margin of a used book,  next to difficult paragraphs  and subtle thoughts.

A penciled question mark  told me all I wanted to know ?  about their mind.

If I gave this book to a friend, I would have to tell them, “The marks are not mine.

“They are the marks of a mind, grappling, stretching, struggling.   In a word: reading.

“Though I will say I admire them for persevering with a book, with which they seem to disagree.

“When was the last time you read a book, whose message grated on you, ! and made you want to shut it?

“In this day in age, we put such stock in the cover in our hands and what it says about us.

“Maybe that is why, they put in those marks instead of giving up.

“In that case, I can't fault them. We do what we must to keep reading, when we know it is good for us.”

I suppose those marks in the margin, on the whole, though distracting, made me read deeper into a book

Which I was wont to accept without protest or criticism. Thank you, friend, ☺

For making my mind sharper. If we ever meet,  I hope I can return the favor.

#poetry

---

I hope you enjoyed this “sequel” to my original short poem In the Margin. I have been reading a book of Robert Frost poems, and have come to really enjoy his deceptively simple dialogue. This was my attempt to adapt the technique, and I hope you liked it.

---

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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Reflecting on 2025 and what I’ve learned this year!

Some key highlights

Making a podcast, obviously! Getting Corporate Bodies out into the world has been a real joy. Getting to work with Mark again and to have some profoundly deep and interesting conversations with very wise and wonderful people has stretched my brain and ambitions in all sorts of ways. Check it out if you haven’t already, I am very proud of it.

The patient, mature and expansive work I’ve had the honour to be part of at Catalyst, as we move to close the CIC. There’s a mix of fierce clarity, recognising that the right path is one of careful closure, and excitement of seeing that we can have a bigger impact by closing proactively and redistributing our remaining funds. There’s obviously also some grief and sadness as Catalyst is one of the most values-led and expansive organisations I’ve been part of – but I know its ripples will continue to expand.

My freelance practice is really starting to take shape! I’ve loved helping organisations and teams conjure the future, building emergent strategies and healthy cultures together. The mix of 1:1 and team coaching, strategy consultancy and facilitation is really energising, and I’ve loved being able to bring together and use frameworks like Three Horizons, Deep Democracy, permaculture and sociocracy, with a nice dose of sci-fi thrown in. I will have some capacity in the new year so if you’d like to chat about how I can work with you, get in touch!

Things are going from strength to strength at Digital Commons, and the addition of the wonderful Sara and Carmen to the team has been really impactful. Building the tech infrastructure that social movements need is hard and slow work, but it’s beginning to emerge – check out the latest updates to LandExplorer.coop, and keep your eyes open for some of the outputs for our Data for Housing Justice collab with Shared Assets early next year…

And – last but not least – I’ve absolutely relished the power of being away from my kitchen table and sharing a lovely space with the wonderful Beth and Deepa – check out the view from my desk! Being in a place where things are being made every day really helps me stay grounded, and integrating a mini-commute into my days has helped hugely with my mental health. Strong recommend!!

![Deepa's work](https://i.snap.as/K75Hy3vv.jpg)

Report by Milan Đorđević, Tijana Cvetković & Noa Treister

Building the cooperative did not begin with a strict program but with a series of conversations about how artists might reorganise their work and the relationships around it. So, this text turns to one specific attempt to rethink artistic exchange and the conditions under which art is produced and circulated in Serbia.

Our research study within the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS, 2023) has shown that the visual arts field is marked by a high level of centralisation, dependence on a few major institutions, and the gradual erosion of public cultural infrastructure. As market logic expanded into areas once shaped by collective investment, cultural participation narrowed, particularly for the working class. In such a landscape, artistic value tends to be defined by visibility and demand rather than by social relevance. This is the background against which we began to explore whether practices of exchange outside the monetary frame might open different relationships between art and its surroundings.

In defining the scope and modes of operation of the co-op, we began to experiment with barter as a tool for rethinking exchange. The question we placed at the centre of this process was simple but fundamental: how can barter, as a form of non-monetary exchange, function both as a critique of existing art economies and of the way they define the role of art and artists in society, while also prefiguring alternatives?

Our first public experiment was conducted in Požega in the autumn of 2025, under the title Ponudi, razmeni, ponesi – Offer, Exchange, Take Away. Visitors were invited to offer something of their own in return for an artwork. It could be a haircut, a home-cooked meal, help with repairs, a professional service in a non-art-related field, or money if they wished. The format resembled an auction, but its rhythm and meaning were different. Each artwork was accompanied by space for offers; after the exhibition closed, the artists reviewed the proposals and decided which to accept.

The exhibition took place in a space that had previously been a hair salon in the centre of Požega. It had been empty for months, and the owner was considering turning it into an art space. That circumstance gave us a kind of freedom that is rare when working within established institutions. There were no curatorial or administrative expectations, only the practical question of how to make the exchange visible and accessible. We organised the exhibition to be open a few afternoons and evenings during a period of three weeks. A person from the local community was engaged for a modest fee to keep the space open, welcome visitors, and explain how to make an offer and how the exchange would unfold. At the same time, we promoted the event through social media, direct letters sent to local entrepreneurs, and through personal networks. In small towns like Požega​​ (≈12,300 inhabitants), we realised that word of mouth still functions as the most effective form of public communication – slower but more durable than any campaign. By the end of the three weeks, around fifty people had visited the space, and several of them made their offers.

After the exhibition, we gathered for a workshop that opened one of the most persistent questions among artists: how to define the value of one’s own work. Most participants admitted they find it difficult to put a price on something that does not fit into standard market categories. One artist said she rarely sells her work as an object, and that her decisions depend on “who approaches her and whether they understand each other”. Others spoke about the challenge of balancing artistic integrity with livelihood. As one participant noted, “you can’t measure everything in hours, but you can’t ignore the time and materials either”.

For us, this conversation was central. A cooperative is not built around the idea of profit but around the need for sustainability. As we discussed, we don’t have to be profit-oriented, but we do have to cover our basic living costs. This simple statement cuts through much of the ambiguity that surrounds the notion of artistic value. It recognises that art, like any form of labour, depends on material conditions, but also that value is not fixed – it is negotiated in relation to others, to context, and to shared purpose. And barter became a way to make these relations visible: a two-day truck trip to Durrës in Albania; twenty professional hair colorings and haircuts with no time limit; a curatorial text for the next exhibition; documentation for building legalisation up to 200 square metres; a personal herbarium; a weekend stay with breakfast for up to eight people, and many more proposals that carry different understanding of value and relation. None of them could be translated neatly into monetary terms, and that was precisely the point. The exchanges showed what people were ready to give and how they imagined their connection to art, as care, as time, as skill, as hospitality. Whether professional artistic work becomes a matter of survival arithmetic (as was mentioned during the workshop) or remains unrecognised as labour, the question is the same: how to live from what one creates. As one artist put it, few people see art as work at all, and that is precisely where the cooperative finds its role – to shift perception and rebuild the link between artistic value and the conditions of life that sustain it.

Even though some visitors offered money for the artworks, the non-monetary exchanges shaped the atmosphere of the event in a different way. Instead of fixed prices, artists provided approximate starting points for negotiation, which opened space to focus less on monetary value and more on the people who approached them. Buyers were no longer anonymous figures but individuals whose interests, skills or forms of care said something about why they wanted a particular work. Several artists accepted offers that were modest or unconventional, simply because they felt a sense of recognition in them. From a conventional entrepreneurial standpoint, accepting less than the assumed market value might be seen as diminishing one’s worth, but this concern did not play a central role here. The exchange was not framed as a market transaction to be optimised, but as a space in which value could be shaped through relation rather than price. That shift loosened the usual distance between artist and audience and made the encounter feel grounded in mutual attention instead of market logic.

The co-op should bring artistic labour back into the everyday economy of life and exchange, without romanticising precarity or denying the need for income. Its way of selling art should test how art might live when its value comes from relations rather than from market recognition. This intention became clearer when we proposed to repeat the experiment in one of the central art spaces in Serbia. The response from its curators exposed precisely the tension we wanted to address. They worried that the idea of exchanging artworks for homemade goods or services could “devalue” art and “encourage amateurism”. Their concern was not unique; it reflected a broader institutional anxiety about how artistic value is defined and protected in a system that already struggles to sustain its own workers.

What the experiment left us with was not a ready-made model but a clearer sense of the questions that need to be worked through: how to organise exchanges that recognise artistic labour without falling back on market metrics; how to involve communities without reproducing hierarchies; and how to build structures that make such practices sustainable rather than exceptional. For the next iteration of the exhibition, we turned to a public library in Bor, a mining town with a growing community of Chinese workers, as a place to continue the experiment. The interest shown by artists during the open call, their questions, suggestions, and willingness to engage even when they could not participate, confirmed that the need for such spaces is real. Rather than closing a cycle, the workshop and exhibition in Požega marked the beginning of a longer process; in the coming period, we plan to develop a series of these kinds of events that deepen this exploration of alternative economies of art.

JOURNAL 16 décembre 2025 Introspection

C’est revenu le temps du kotatsu : ma princesse et son laptop, moi les coudes autour d’un bouquin (je tiens ma tête les coudes sur la table). On a baissé la lampe pour être bien éclairées, A porte des lunettes pour travailler, elle ne veut pas que je me fatigue les yeux. On a mis les hanten doublés Ça c’est le décor.

Dans ma tête c’est moins clair J'ai plus eu de cauchemar depuis je sais pas et plus d’hallucinations non plus. Je me sens beaucoup plus stable, plus tranquille. Je m'endors sans crainte.

Mes psys me disent que je n'ai pas fini. Je veux bien le croire, puisque je n’arrive pas à en parler avec mon frère, pourtant je crois que mon interprétation est juste, alors qu'est-ce qui ne va encore pas? C'est vrai j’ai reçu ces coups et ces brimades comme une preuve d'intérêt alors que je me croyais inexistante. J'en ai même été fière. C’est dingue hein ? C’est vrai. J’ai fait plus que supporter, j'ai aimé ça. Je trimbalais mes marques comme des médailles, j'étais fière de savoir endurer.

Dans le hokkaido ils ne m’ont jamais sorti un cri, peut-être des gémissements que j'arrivais à étouffer. C'était comme un défi. Quand on m'a violée je n’ai pas pu retenir des larmes, mais pas un son, je le sais, on m'a forcée à voir les vidéos ignobles, ils me traitaient de petite salope, petite arrogante, petite aristo de merde. Ils me tiraient les cheveux. Ça les mettait en rage, et moi pas un son et je baissais pas les yeux. Ils devenaient fous, je recevais des gifles, des raclées, ils me jetaient par terre… Bref Alors quoi maintenant, qu'est-ce qui manque ? Qu'est-ce qui est enfoui si profondément que je ne vois rien ressortir, pas un indice. Mes psys semblent avoir une idée mais peut-être bien qu'ils bluffent, je suis seule en face de cette question. Pourquoi je n’ose pas en parler à mon frère ? Pourquoi je n’ose pas de lui dire que j'ai aimé sa tyrannie violente ? Pour pas perdre mon statut de victime héroïque ? — Tu parles comme je m'en fous Je ne comprends pas Je ne vois pas où est le point. Ma chérie ne peut plus rien pour m'aider, bien qu'elle voudrait tellement. Personne ne peut plus rien. C'est entre moi et moi, merde alors.

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