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You believe America was founded as a Christian nation. You believe God has a special plan for this country. You believe the Bible should inform our laws, that marriage has one definition, that the border needs to be sealed, and that somewhere along the way, we lost our values and need to get them back. You believe Donald Trump, for all his flaws, was the man God raised up to fight for those values. You'd never openly call yourself a Christian Nationalist. In your own mind you're just a Christian. Here's the reality, if you believe the points mentioned above, you are by definition and Christian Nationalist.

So what is Christian Nationalism? It is the belief that a nation's identity, laws, and culture should be defined by and organized around a specific expression of Christianity, and that this faith should hold a privileged position in public life over all other religions and over secularism. It is not simply being a Christian who loves their country. It is the insistence that the country itself belongs to Christians, was made for Christians, and should be governed according to Christian principles as interpreted by a specific political movement.

According to PRRI's 2025 American Values Atlas, a survey of more than 22,000 adults across all 50 states, one-third of Americans qualify as Christian Nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers. Among Republicans, that number is 56%. Among white evangelicals, 67%, the only major religious group where a clear majority holds Christian Nationalist beliefs. Christian Nationalism Adherents score overwhelmingly high on PRRI's Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, 79% score high or very high, and 30% agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.”

And this is not a new idea. The 20th century is full of nations that tried it.

In South Africa, the Afrikaner National Party built the entire apartheid system on what they explicitly called “Christian Nationalism.” The Dutch Reformed Church provided the theological justification for racial hierarchy, arguing that God had created separate nations and intended them to remain separate. Future Prime Minister B.J. Vorster declared in 1942 that Christian Nationalism was an ally of fascism — what he called “an anti-democratic principle.” To be clear, the anti-democratic principle Vorster was refering to was liberal democracy. Specifically its emphasis on individual rights, universal suffrage, and the equality of all citizens. Through Christian Nationalism Vorster was in favor of an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist state. He wasn't confused about what he was building. He was naming it.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán's party won a supermajority in 2010 and used it to pass a new constitution anchoring Hungarian identity in Christianity, a framework he has used to consolidate authoritarian control, crack down on immigration, and suppress LGBTQ+ rights under the banner of defending “Christian civilization.” Between the World Wars, Hungary's earlier governments had pursued a nearly identical “nationalist Christian” policy, exalting heroism and faith while despising liberal and socialist thought. That experiment ended with fascists in power by 1944.

The pattern is consistent: Christian Nationalism fuses faith with state power, positions one ethnic or cultural group as God's chosen people within that nation, and treats everyone outside that group, whether by race, religion, or politics, as a threat to the divine order. It always promises to protect the faithful. It always ends up serving the powerful.

This is not a fringe position. It is the dominant theology of one of America's two political parties. And most of the people who hold these beliefs have never examined where they come from — or what they require you to accept.

But what if the Christ you're following isn't Jesus of Nazareth — the Jewish peasant who told a rich man to sell everything, healed on the Sabbath to make a point, and got executed by the state for threatening the social order? What if the Christ you're following is a Christ built by empire, refined by colonizers, and sold back to you by billionaires and politicians who need your faith to function as a voter turnout machine?

This piece is a mirror. If the beliefs below sound like yours, I'm not here to insult you. I'm here to show you where they actually come from — because it's not the Sermon on the Mount.

God Gave Us This Land

If you believe America was created for Christians, the next belief follows naturally: God gave us this land. The settlers weren't invaders, they were fulfilling a divine mandate. The westward expansion wasn't conquest, it was providence. The land was promised, and the people who were already on it were simply in the way.

This is Manifest Destiny, and it didn't die in the 19th century. It just stopped announcing itself by name.

The theological scaffolding for this belief predates the American founding by centuries. In 1452 and 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued a series of papal bulls, the Doctrine of Discovery, that declared any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be claimed, conquered, and exploited by European powers. The church didn't bless colonization after the fact. It authorized it in advance. When Columbus made landfall in 1492, he carried that authorization with him.

The cross and the sword traveled together because theologically, they were the same instrument.

In North America, this logic produced the Indian boarding school system — institutions funded by the federal government and run predominantly by Christian denominations, explicitly designed, in the words of architect Richard Henry Pratt, to “kill the Indian and save the man.” To be saved meant to be made white, English-speaking, and Christian. The three were functionally synonymous. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz documented in An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, the missionary impulse and the colonial impulse were never separate projects. They were the same project with two names.

That theology is still breathing. PRRI found that many Christian Nationalism Adherents believe America was founded as a “Promised Land” for white European Christians. Think about what that belief requires.

If God promised you this land, then the genocide of indigenous peoples wasn't a crime — it was a cost of fulfilling the covenant.

If God gave this continent to European Christians, then everyone who was here before them was a squatter on God's property. That's not history. That's theology in service of erasure.

And it doesn't stop at the founding. The same logic that justified taking land from indigenous peoples now justifies sealing the border. If America is God's gift to a specific group of people, then anyone who doesn't belong to that group is a trespasser — not just legally, but spiritually. PRRI's data bears this out: 67% of Christian Nationalism Adherents believe that immigrants are “invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” That's not immigration policy. That's Promised Land theology applied to the southern border.

The divine right of settlers didn't expire. It just evolved.

God Protects America

There's a belief that runs through American Christianity like a load-bearing wall: the idea that the United States has a special covenant with God. That divine favor explains American power. That God has blessed this nation above all others, and that as long as we remain faithful, as long as we hold the line on the right values, that blessing will continue.

Within the Bible belt its common to see homes with yard signs of 2 Chronicles 7:14,

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

This is American exceptionalism as theology. And it does more political work than almost any other belief in the Christian Nationalist toolkit.

If God protects America, then American military power is righteous by definition. It’s God’s will for the military industrial complex to exist. It’s even God’s desire that America has an unhealthy obsession with guns and military might.

Every war becomes a holy war, or at least a justified one. Every foreign intervention is providence in action. You don't need to wrestle with the morality of drone strikes or the civilian body count of a twenty-year occupation if you believe the nation conducting it is operating under divine mandate. The flag and the cross fuse into a single symbol, and questioning one feels like betraying the other.

But the real damage this belief does is economic, not military.

If God blesses America, then America's economic system must be part of that blessing. Capitalism becomes sacred — not just a way of organizing markets but a reflection of divine order. The rich are rich because God favored them. The poor are poor because something went wrong in their relationship with God — not enough faith, not enough discipline, not enough bootstraps. Prosperity theology is just “God protects America” applied to your bank account.

I've written about this before. In Why I'm Anti-Capitalist and The Master, The Lord, The Boss, I traced how capitalism requires an exploited underclass — how the master became the lord became the boss, but the fundamental relationship between owners and workers never changed. Christian Nationalism provides the theological cover for that relationship. It sanctifies the hierarchy. If God ordained this nation and blessed its systems, then the systems must be good — and anyone who challenges them isn't just wrong, they're ungodly.

This is why Christian Nationalism and class politics are inseparable. The belief that God protects America functions as the invisible fence around economic critique. You can't question capitalism if you believe God built it. You can't challenge the billionaire class if you believe wealth is a sign of divine favor. You can't demand a living wage if you believe poverty is a spiritual problem rather than a structural one.

And the data confirms how tightly these beliefs cluster together. Christian Nationalism Adherents don't just score high on authoritarianism and support political violence — they are overwhelmingly aligned with the political party that fights minimum wage increases, guts labor protections, and hands tax cuts to corporations while telling working people to pray harder. The theology and the economics aren't separate. They never were. “God protects America” is the story the ruling class tells so you'll protect them instead.

Christian Values Should Be Embedded in Government

Of all the beliefs on this list, this one sounds the most reasonable. Who wouldn't want values in government? Who wouldn't want leaders guided by something deeper than poll numbers and donor lists?

But “Christian values in government” is doing a very specific kind of work. It doesn't mean love your neighbor. It doesn't mean welcome the stranger. It doesn't mean blessed are the poor. It means one expression of one religion gets to write the rules for everyone else. For adherents to that religion it also means anyone who resists is an enemy of the state and God.

In practice, “Christian values in government” means banning books from school libraries. It means posting the Ten Commandments in public classrooms. It means criminalizing reproductive healthcare. It means defining marriage for people whose marriages are none of your business. It means building a legal architecture that privileges a conservative Protestant worldview while calling it “freedom.”

And none of this is happening by accident. It's being organized, funded, and scaled.

Kyle Spencer documented this machinery in Raising Them Right. What she found was a tightly organized, heavily funded ultraconservative initiative to transform American culture from the ground up — not through grassroots belief but through billionaire-backed organizations using social media, celebrity influencers, and campus activism to radicalize young people into the far-right fold. Figures like Charlie Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, started with economics and small government but evolved into full-throated Christian Nationalism — opposing reproductive rights, rejecting marriage equality, championing “traditional values,” and insisting Christianity should lead the country.

Spencer found that conservative donors spend more than three times as much on youth activism and education every year as their liberal counterparts.

This isn't a movement rising organically from the pews. It's propaganda disguised in Bible verses being spewed from the pulpit.

The beliefs get preached in churches. The funding comes from billionaires. The legislation gets written by think tanks. And the voters who carry it to the ballot box believe they’re doing good Christian work.

PRRI's data shows what this machinery produces. Christian Nationalism Adherents don't just hold theological beliefs — they hold political ones that cluster together with striking consistency. Majorities believe immigrants are “invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” Majorities support deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons without due process. Majorities support stripping U.S. citizens of their citizenship if they're “determined to be a threat.” Nearly 80% score high on right-wing authoritarianism scales. These aren't prayer requests. They're policy positions — ones that would be at home in Orbán's Hungary or apartheid South Africa.

“Christian values in government” is the most dangerous belief on this list because it's the one that sounds the most like common sense. But when you trace what it actually produces — who funds it, who benefits from it, and what it does to the people on the wrong side of it — it's not values at all. It's a theocratic project dressed in the language of faith, and the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount would not recognize a single thing about it.

A Faith Made for Power, Not People

Every belief examined in this piece follows the same pattern. “America was created for Christians” serves the myth of a chosen people. “God gave us this land” sanctifies conquest. “God protects America” baptizes capitalism. “Christian values should be embedded in government” builds the theocratic infrastructure to enforce it all. Each belief sounds like faith. Each one functions as politics. And none of them — not a single one — comes from the mouth of the Jewish peasant who said blessed are the poor, who told his followers to sell their possessions and give to the needy.

If these are your beliefs, your religion is rooted in empire, capitalism, and whiteness, not Jesus. To be fair, Christianity is a religion of empire, America didn’t create Christian Nationalism, we simply remade it in our image. We wrapped it in stadium-style worship, energetic preaching, and a call to biblical fidelity.

This isn't a conclusion I reached from the outside. I spent fifteen years as an evangelical pastor. I preached these systems. I built my life inside them. I defended the Christ of empire because I didn't know there was another one. When I finally couldn't reconcile what I was preaching with what I was reading in the Gospels, I didn't just leave a church. I left the entire tradition.

And here's the irony that still hits me: to actually live the values of the Sermon on the Mount — nonviolence, radical generosity, suspicion of wealth and power, solidarity with the marginalized — I had to walk away from Christianity altogether. I found those values in Zen, which teaches direct experience over doctrine and has no interest in converting anyone. I found them in Taoism, which distrusts hierarchy and institutional authority by design. I found them in anarchism, which insists that no one — no state, no church, no ruling class — has the right to dominate another person's life. Every one of these traditions is anti-dogma, anti-hierarchy, and opposed to the logic of conquest. The Sermon on the Mount would fit comfortably in any of them. It has never fit comfortably in the Christianity of church history.

Christian Nationalism is not a corruption of the faith. As I argued in From Constantine to Trump, it is the faith, the one that was actually built, not the one that Christianity likes to advertise. The revolutionary Jesus was always the cover story. The institution was always the product.

The question isn't whether you're a Christian Nationalist. The data suggests that if you're an evangelical in America, you have conformed and are most comfortable in white culture, you vote Republican, and your treatment of any outside group shows your fidelity to ‘make America great again.’

The question is whether you're willing to look at the beliefs you hold, trace where they actually come from, and decide if the Christ you're following is the one who taught the Sermon on the Mount, or the one the empire built to make sure no one ever took that sermon seriously.

Det var i en skov i Brøndby at det første gang stod klart for mig at jeg var syg i hovedet. Jeg forstod aldrig hvorfor man havde lagt et Psykiatrisk Center et så ufremkommeligt sted, men måske tænkte man at psykisk syge mennesker har bil – eller måske bare at der bor mange af dem på Vestegnen. Når jeg stod af S-toget med min cykel på Brøndbyøster, prøvede jeg altid at ligge mærke til om der var andre der cyklede samme vej sydpå, ned til skoven. Det var der aldrig.

1.

At jeg var sindssyg, gik op for mig på et bestemt tidspunkt i samtalen med den psykolog der skulle udrede mig. Han var på min egen alder, og det var lidt underligt i sig selv, men han havde en lidt kejtet intellektuel alvor som gjorde ham troværdig. Måske var det noget han tillagde sig overfor mig for at have lidt etos. Vi kunne have været venner hvis vi havde mødtes på en højskole eller noget lignende, tænkte jeg. Bygningerne var i ét plan, og de lignede næsten en feriekoloni eller måske et kursuscenter da de lå i skovbrynet med træer omkring sig. Psykologen hentede mig altid nede i receptionen, og vi gik ad en ret lang gang ned til hans kontor, og det var ofte lidt akavet at skulle smalltalke her, men det gik fint når vi så kom ind på kontoret. Eller det var fint for mig i hvert fald, han måtte tit fortælle mig at jeg skulle tale højt og ikke bare tænke over hans spørgsmål. Han gik rundt i Birkenstock, og jeg kunne ikke få øje på hans normale sko. Måske kørte han derud i bil i sine Birkenstock, tænkte jeg. 

Jeg husker ikke rigtigt detaljerne fra disse samtaler, med undtagelse af visse øjeblikke der står helt klart for mig. Det første er hvordan han med alvorlig mine spurgte mig om jeg blev svimmel hvis jeg rejste mig op. Jeg svarede at jeg da godt kendte til det at blive svimmel hvis man rejste sig for hurtigt, men at jeg ikke ligefrem ville sige at det var noget som karakteriserede mig. Jeg gik ud fra at det handlede om at udelukke en eller anden fysiologisk forklaring på tingene, men jeg har aldrig rigtig kunnet finde ud af det. Et andet øjeblik er den dag det altså gik op for mig at jeg nok var syg i hovedet. Han nævnte mens jeg næsten var på vej ud af døren, at de overvejede „skizotypisk sindslidelse“ hvilket jeg ikke vidste hvad var, men som jeg ligesom kunne forstå på den måde han sagde det på, at jeg var. 

Bagefter kørte jeg ud for at læse på universitetet, mest fordi jeg ikke rigtig vidste hvad jeg ellers skulle gøre. Jeg kørte forbi den muslimske gravplads der ligger klemt inde mellem Psykiatrisk Center Hvidovre og Ring 2-motorvejen, og så videre ind langs Folehaven. Det var sent på foråret og varmt, og jeg havde tit for meget tøj på i den periode, måske havde jeg endda halstørklæde på – jeg svedte i hvert fald. Så kørte jeg videre hen over broen ved Fisketorvet og ud på universitetet på Amager. Jeg gik direkte ind og købte frokost i kantinen, satte mig ned, googlede „skizotypi“ og begyndte at græde. Jeg kan huske at jeg i virkeligheden ønskede at der kom nogen forbi og så mig, både fordi jeg var ked af det og ønskede at der var nogen omkring mig, men mest alt fordi jeg ønskede et vidne. Jeg ønskede at mine indre problemer var noget man kunne se. 

2.

En måneds tid senere var det så officielt. Jeg var diagnosticeret. Til den afsluttende samtale sagde psykologen noget som jeg har tænkt meget over siden. Han lykønskede mig på en måde, og fortalte at jeg skulle være glad, for med netop denne diagnose ville jeg være berettiget til langt mere hjælpe end bare en almindelig depression eller hvis jeg havde Aspergers, som jeg selv havde nævnt. Det har han ret i, og København er nok et af de bedste steder i verden at få en psykose på grund af de behandlingstilbud der findes her.

Jeg havde, indtil det øjeblik, forstået „diagnose“ som noget næsten mystisk. Jeg kan huske hvordan der engang var snak på gymnasiet om at en af pigerne i parallelklassen havde „fået“ en diagnose, og alle historier jeg siden har hørt om nogen der har været diagnosticeret er blevet fortalt med dæmpet stemme og lidt indforstået mine. Det har altid forvirret mig – som om at ord som „diagnose“ eller „psykose“ bare var noget man skulle vide hvad var. I dag forstår jeg at det skyldes at folk ikke rigtig ved hvad de taler om.  

I det øjeblik jeg selv blev diagnosticeret var det som om jeg forstod hvad det ord egentlig betyder: en administrativ afgørelse i velfærdssystemet. Nu havde jeg i et par måneder gået ét sted med en reception, nogle lange gange, kontorer, linoleumsgulve og en scanner til mit sygesikringskort for at blive udredt, og i fremtiden skulle jeg så møde på en anden adresse, i en anden bygning med en reception, nogle lange gange, kontorer, linoleumsgulve og en scanner til sygesikringskortet. Diagnosen er i sin essens ikke så meget en sandhed om hjernen eller psyken, men i stedet en anvisning om en bestemt behandling. At blive diagnosticeret med en sindssygdom i psykosespektret havde for mig – strengt taget – ikke noget at gøre med hvad der sker oppe i hovedet på mig, men handlede om at jeg nu kunne komme om tirsdagen og snakke med en sygeplejerske i OPUS ude på Lersø Parkallé. 

Jeg skriver det fordi det forekommer mig at den erkendelse ikke er gjort af dem som kritiserer „diagnosesamfundet“: at diagnosen er en tildeling af en behandling, af hjælp. Den slags „kritikere“ begræder som regel hvordan alle nu til dags „får“ en diagnose, og de synes det er forkert uden helt at gøre sig det klart at hvis man synes at færre bør diagnosticeres, så betyder det praktisk talt at færre bør modtage behandling. Det kan man selvfølgelig godt mene, men så må man bare sige det.

Problemet er i virkeligheden at diagnosen skal opfylde to formål i det offentlige sundhedssystem, og det udgør derfor et problem som aldrig rigtig går op: På den ene side er diagnosen en videskabelig klassificering af forskellige symptomer under en fællesbetegnelse, lidt ligesom når en fællesmængde af forskellige dyr bliver klassificeret som den samme art. På den anden side er diagnosen en tildeling af rettigheder i form af politisk bestemte behandlingstilbud. Jeg har selv i længere tid haft en ulmende mistanke mod den her tendens til at gøre behandling til en særrettighed hvor man tildeler rettigheder baseret på en diagnose. Det fungerer sådan fordi det er en måde politikere kan købe stemmer på. Stem på mig og så sørger jeg for at du får ret til en behandling indenfor en måned hvis du har kræft i røven, eksempelvis. Den med kræft er selvfølgelig en der sælger godt, mens de psykiatriske diagnoser ikke gør. Men det er vist ved at ændre sig, heldigvis, fordi ressourcestærke forældre lader sig købe for behandlingsgarantier til deres børn. For mig betyder det forskellen mellem at have ret til et par eftermiddage på et slags kursus hvis nu jeg var diagnosticeret med Aspergers og to års specialiseret psykosocial behandling da jeg blev diagnosticeret med skizotypi. Sådan et dilemma står mange i da de symptomer der kendetegner de to diagnoser nogle gange kan forveksles. Jeg er skeptisk overfor den her måde at give specielle rettigheder på fordi man rent principielt kun bør anerkende én ret, nemlig alle menneskers ret til at blive behandlet. 

3.

Da jeg i efteråret, her flere år efter at jeg fik denne diagnose, var til lægen med noget udslæt, så kom jeg ind til en ung turnuslæge – igen en mand på min egen alder – og idet jeg gik ind ad døren fik jeg et glimt af hans computerskærm. Her stod „skizotypisk sindslidelse“ med store bogstaver henover skærmen. En slags advarsel fra systemet, tænkte jeg. Det fik mig til at tvivle på mig selv, for det havde taget så længe at få en tid hos lægen at udslættet var faldet igen, og der var ikke rigtig noget at se længere. Jeg havde taget nogle billeder på min telefon hvilket jeg nævnte for ligesom at forsvare mig selv selvom billederne faktisk var blevet ret dårlige og ikke rigtig havde kunnet fange udslættet særligt godt. Han sagde heldigvis at det ikke var nødvendigt. I stedet skulle jeg bare smøre fugtighedscreme på. Det var en anden af mine laster han nævnte som årsag, heldigvis: Vi mænd glemmer at bruge creme sagde han med en vis indforståethed, og det skal man huske når det bliver koldt. 

Jeg skriver det fordi der i den foregående folketingsperiode blev stemt om hvorvidt man skulle kunne „fjerne“ sin diagnose. Det ville på overfladen være at tage en rettighed fra os diagnosticerede, en rettighed vi godt nok selv skulle benytte os af fordi det er en selv der ville skulle bede om at blive revurderet. Men tænker man lidt videre over det, så ville forslaget reelt set give en rettighed mere til folk: nemlig retten til at blive vurderet af en fagperson som kunne erklære én „rask“. Efterfølgende tænkte jeg meget over om jeg ville tage imod tilbuddet. Jeg er en relativt oplagt kandidat til at benytte mig af det da jeg i det store hele er symptomfri i dag. Men jeg er kommet frem til at det ville jeg ikke. Til dels kan jeg mærke et lille stænk af ængstelighed ved tanken om at give afkald på en rettighed, for som jeg allerede har skrevet, så er det at blive diagnosticeret også at få tildelt en rettighed til behandling. Men den afgørende grund er at det er lige meget. Eller i hvert faldt for mig, for jeg er så priviligeret at jeg nu arbejder som fuldmægtig i staten og også ligner en der gør det, og jeg går i skjorte og pullover, og derfor møder jeg ikke samme mistro fra de læger der bliver advaret om min diagnose når jeg går til lægen.

Men jeg tror at de flestes interesse i at blive „fri“ for deres diagnose hviler på en misforståelse. For nyligt blev jeg tildelt en personlighedstype – den slags der består af nogle bogstavkombinationer – af en „certificeret coach“ på mit arbejde. Jeg lagde mærke til at en af mine kollegaer fik den slags personlighedstype som ikke er kreativ. Hun bekræftede sig selv i at hun altså ikke var kreativ selv om hun ville ønske det var anderledes. „Jeg ville ønske jeg var sådan én, men det er jeg bare ikke,“ sagde hun. Jeg var lige ved at græde, for det var så synd for hende at blive bekræftet af sådan en spade i stramme jeans og lort i hovedet i at hun skulle holde sig fra at prøve sig selv af med en kreativ hobby som hun ellers egentlig gerne ville.

Min pointe er at både diagnoser og personlighedstyper er tveæggede sværd der både kan hjælpe og det modsatte, og derfor skal man lære at håndtere det. Det er mit indtryk at selv diagnosticerede misforstår diagnosen og tror at det er en eller anden sandhed om dem selv, lidt som stjernetegn eller de her Jungianske typeindex-profiler som coacher laver. Selvfølgelig kan jeg godt forstå hvor folk kommer fra – jeg troede også selv at det ville være en nøgle som fik mit liv til at give mening at blive diagnosticeret med en sindsygdom, men det er ikke sket. Det har ikke løst noget problem at blive diagnosticeret. Det er selvfølgelig fordi det ikke er diagnosen som er årsagen til ens problemer, i stedet er problemerne årsag til diagnosen. Det samme kan man i øvrigt sige om personlighedstyper – de er ikke årsagen til, men resultatet af ens handlinger. Det har selvfølgeligt hjulpet at være i behandling, og en hel del endda, men det har – lidt skuffende – ikke fået mit selvbillede til at give mening. Det er derfor at jeg foretrækker at kalde mig selv for syg i hovedet, som jeg indleder denne tekst med, for det er mit eget sprog. Jeg synes at man skal lade systemet om at have sit eget sprog og sine ord for det her, og det skal man lade være med at lægge for meget i. I stedet skal man lade dem om at gå op i det, lægerne, sygeplejerskerne, psykologerne, coacherne og cheferne. Man skal lade lægerne om diagnosen og så i virkeligheden glemme den og i stedet prøve at indgå konstruktivt i den samtaleterapi de strukturer. (Ligesom man skal lade chefen om at spilde penge på at få lavet personlighedstyper, og så bare tage det som en halv fridag, når man skal på kursus med coachen.) For deres ord er tomme indeni, ordenes mening findes ikke i hvad de er, men i hvilke ting de får til at ske.

4.

Jeg skal ikke gøre mig selv for god. For jeg havde et begær efter at blive diagnosticeret. Et begær jeg tror at jeg deler med mange, både fordi jeg kan genkende den måde man taler om det, og fordi man kan konstatere det i tallene at flere bliver diagnosticeret, og det er svært at forestille sig den store stigning hvis de fleste rent faktisk satte sig imod at blive diagnosticeret. Det var til dels et begær efter at være speciel eller være interessant, at kunne bære dette mærke og at være en som folk taler om i et vigtig og indforstået toneleje. Desværre er det min erfaring at det ikke rigtigt fungerer på den måde, og det har ikke gjort mig hverken sej eller at jeg har følt mig glamourøs.

Min egen historie er den at jeg fik min debut – som det hedder på systemets sprog – i slutningen af gymnasiet.  Jeg har derfor levet med symptomer i større og mindre grad i omkring 10 år. Samtidig var jeg på denne forårsdag i Brøndbyøster, som jeg indledte med at beskrive, allerede i bedring og relativt velfungerende, i hvert fald i forhold til mine dårlige perioder. Fordi jeg havde levet med symptomerne i lang tid – og fordi mine symptomer trods alt var i den milde ende –, så havde jeg netop lært at leve med det, og mit formål var derfor heller ikke kun at få hjælp, men også netop det her begær efter diagnosen som en forklaringsramme for mit liv. Jeg troede at det ville gøre mig i stand til at forstå mig selv, og forstå hvorfor jeg havde levet mit liv som jeg havde, og hvorfor jeg havde opført mig som jeg havde. I lang tid troede jeg derfor at det handlede om at forstå. Det gjorde jeg også fordi det er noget jeg har hørt fra mange andre, særligt dem der bliver diagnosticeret som voksne. At det handler om at man er interesseret i at forstå og lære om sig selv.

Det er en løgn. Det er en løgn vi fortæller hinanden, og det er en løgn vi fortæller os selv. Det skyldes simpelthen at det ikke er muligt at være interesseret i sig selv på den måde. Der er ingen som er interesseret i sig selv på en afkoblet måde, som om det var et eller andet fænomen ude i rummet man kiggede på i sin kikkert eller funktionerne på ens ovn man uinteresseret googler sig frem til. Det har taget mig lang tid at forstå, og endnu længere tid at indrømme – begge dele er først lykkedes her lang tid efter – men min primære motivation for at blive diagnosticeret var at blive tilgivet. Jeg har i lang tid ikke levet mit liv på en måde der lever op til mine egne værdier. Jeg havde i lang tid ikke særligt mange penge og ikke særlig meget succes, og det ville sådan set være fint nok hvis jeg kunne sige at jeg gjorde hvad der gjorde mig lykkelig og fulgte mine egne interesser i livet, men det har jeg ikke gjort. Det har jeg ikke af den årsag at jeg aldrig har haft nogen klar ide om hvad de bestod af – noget som i øvrigt kan være et symptom på personlighedsforstyrrelse. Jeg har droppet ud af en uddannelse fordi jeg ikke kunne finde ud af det. Jeg arbejdede i to år på deltid til minimumsløn fordi jeg ikke kunne overskue at ændre på den situation. Jeg har ikke kunnet finde ud af at få en kæreste, ikke fordi muligheden aldrig var der men fordi jeg ikke var i stand til hverken at føle eller gøre noget. Men værst af alt er at jeg har forsømt at være lykkelig. Jeg har ellers haft alle forudsætningerne: opvokset i verdens lykkeligste by i en god familie der elsker mig, og jeg har kunnet få hjælp økonomisk hvis jeg var på røven. Men jeg har i mange år ikke kunnet nyde det, og har i stedet gået rundt og været nedtrykt. Det er den egentlige grund til at jeg ville diagnosticeres: jeg ville tilgives af en anden, af en stor autoritet. Jeg er ikke religiøs, men jeg misunder de kristnes ritual for tilgivelse, og måske kan man sige at jeg ville finde det i den sekulære autoritet: videnskaben. Jeg ved det ikke, måske er det for søgt, men det er også ligemeget, det var tilgivelse jeg ville have.

Det hjalp ikke, kan jeg så fortælle. Det skyldes at man i min situation bliver tvunget ud i et dilemma: Enten har man selv handlet som et normalt og raskt menneske eller også har man været sindssyg og er derfor ikke ansvarlig. Det kan måske hjælpe i kriminalsager at insistere på denne skelnen, men det duer ikke som personlig fortælling. Dette dilemma hjælper en i en periode, det gjorde det i hvert fald for mig. Jeg kunne sige til mig selv „du var jo psykisk syg i den periode,“ og så lindrer det lidt når man står og bliver ked af det over at man ikke har børn eller opsparing som sine jævnaldrende og føler sig fem-ti år bagude i det hele. Men det hjælper ikke i længden, for hvis man vælger den vej – vælger at sige man var sindssyg i den periode, og derfor ikke rigtig var sig selv, så afsværger man også friheden, fordi man siger at man ikke var ansvarlig for sine følelser og handlinger. Problemet med det er at det er uautentisk, og det kommer der ikke noget godt ud af. Det bliver en flugt, for jeg har jo levet mit liv, og det kan jeg ikke gøre om. Det må jeg acceptere. I stedet fandt jeg ud af at jeg kunne opløse dilemmaet ved at identificere mig med sindssygen: jeg var fri selv da jeg var vanvittig, fri selv da jeg var melankolsk, fri da jeg måtte gå hjem fra supermarkedet fordi de havde for mange pastavarianter at vælge mellem, fri da jeg smed indholdet i køkkenskabet ud fordi jeg bildte mig selv ind at der var små dyr i det, fri til i glimt at ønske mig min egen død frem for at leve videre. Det var da jeg forstod det her at jeg blev rask. For jeg forstod at jeg også kunne bruge min frihed til at tilgive mig selv, og det gjorde jeg så. Bagefter det brugte jeg så min frihed til at vælge at være lykkelig, og nu er jeg det.

There are seasons in life when a person stops needing polished words and starts needing something real. That shift does not happen because they have become careless. It happens because life has pressed on them hard enough to strip away performance. There comes a point when a person is no longer interested in sounding impressive, no longer interested in appearing strong, and no longer interested in pretending that everything inside them is calm when it is not. They just want to be honest. They want to be heard. They want to know that when the soul is carrying more than it can explain, heaven is not far away. That is where these words begin. Dear Heaven is not the language of someone trying to sound spiritual. It is the language of someone who has reached the place where honesty matters more than polish and where need has become too deep to hide behind appearances anymore.

A lot of people are carrying things that do not show on the outside. They are still getting up in the morning. They are still handling responsibilities. They are still answering messages, making decisions, paying bills, driving places, keeping appointments, and doing their best to be present for the people around them. On the surface, they may even look steady. But underneath all of that, there is another story. There is pressure in them. There is disappointment in them. There is fear that has been sitting quietly in the background. There is weariness that has moved deeper than the body and into the mind and heart. There are people who are tired in a way that sleep does not fix because what is wearing them down is not just physical. It is emotional. It is spiritual. It is the strain of carrying burdens that never fully leave the room.

That kind of tiredness changes the way a person moves through the day. It does not always make them fall apart in public. Sometimes it makes them more quiet. Sometimes it makes them look fine while something inside them is asking how much longer they can keep doing this. Sometimes it makes them more withdrawn, more thoughtful, more easily overwhelmed by things that once felt manageable. Sometimes it makes them wonder whether they are losing strength or losing faith when really they are just carrying too much for too long. That is one of the cruel things about private exhaustion. It can make a person question themselves when the real problem is the weight they have been under. It can make them feel weak when in truth they have been fighting harder than anyone knows.

That is why those two words matter so much. Dear Heaven. They are simple, but they carry something deep. They carry the sound of a heart turning upward. They carry the confession that the soul cannot hold itself together by itself forever. They carry the longing to be met by Someone greater than the problem, greater than the fear, greater than the silence, greater than the confusion, and greater than the present moment. Some people think prayer begins when the language becomes beautiful, but prayer often begins long before that. Prayer begins when a heart becomes real. Prayer begins when pride cracks. Prayer begins when a person finally stops acting like they are fine and lets the truth come out. Sometimes the truest prayer is not long. Sometimes it is not polished. Sometimes it is simply the soul looking up and saying, Dear Heaven, because that is all it has left.

There is something beautiful about the fact that God does not require performance before He listens. Human beings are often impressed by appearances. They are often moved by confidence, polish, and presentation. They tend to respond to people who look certain and sound composed. But God has never been fooled by surfaces, and He has never depended on them. He sees beneath them. He sees what a person is carrying before they know how to describe it. He sees the private ache before it becomes public language. He sees the part of someone that is trying to stay strong for everybody else while secretly wondering who is going to help hold them up. When a person says Dear Heaven, they are not trying to break through to a distant God who may or may not care. They are turning toward the One who already sees, already knows, and already understands more than they can put into sentences.

The Gospels make this plain in the way Jesus moved through the world. He did not build His ministry around polished people who had everything under control. He moved toward the weary. He moved toward the sick. He moved toward the grieving. He moved toward the ashamed. He moved toward those who were broken, confused, desperate, or tired of carrying what they could not carry alone. He did not recoil from weakness. He did not shame people for needing help. He did not tell suffering people to come back when they could present themselves better. He met them where they were. That matters because it tells us something about the heart of God. It tells us heaven is not cold toward human pain. It tells us the Lord is not offended by honest need. It tells us that people do not have to become impressive before they can come close.

Many people spend years thinking they must approach God with the right tone, the right certainty, the right emotional state, or the right amount of faith. They imagine prayer almost like an entrance exam, as though only those who speak well enough get heard. But Scripture keeps shattering that idea. Again and again, people cry out from weakness, and God receives them. Again and again, people come to Him with mixed emotions, imperfect understanding, and trembling hope, and He does not send them away. The Bible is filled with people who loved God and still wrestled deeply. It is filled with people who believed and still hurt. It is filled with people who trusted and still asked hard questions. That honesty is not a flaw in the story. It is part of what makes the story true to life. God did not give humanity a book full of polished spiritual actors. He gave us a record full of real people whose hearts were often bruised, confused, frightened, repentant, longing, and dependent.

That is one reason the Psalms have stayed alive in the hearts of people for so long. They do not pretend the life of faith is emotionally clean. They do not pretend that every believer walks through the world with unbroken calm and perfect clarity. They show tears. They show fear. They show confusion. They show longing. They show praise that rises out of pain and trust that survives in the middle of unanswered questions. The Psalms understand that a soul can be devoted to God and still feel deeply unsettled. They understand that a person can know truth and still need comfort. They understand that faith does not erase the human condition. It transforms the direction of it. It teaches the heart where to turn while it is still hurting. It teaches the soul to look up and say Dear Heaven, not because everything is fine, but because God is still God even when everything is not.

Some of the people reading this know exactly what that feels like. They know what it is to live in the gap between what they hoped life would be and what life has actually become. They know what it is to carry disappointment that did not arrive all at once but built slowly over time. They know what it is to pray for one thing and watch something else happen. They know what it is to wait for relief and instead find themselves in a longer season than they expected. They know what it is to keep functioning while feeling as though something inside them is getting more tired with each passing week. There are disappointments that do not just wound a person once. They wear on them. They settle into the imagination. They teach the heart to brace itself. They tempt the soul to expect less from life because hoping has started to feel expensive.

That kind of disappointment can quietly change a person. It can make them guarded without realizing it. It can make them emotionally careful in ways that feel wise but are really just protective. It can make them pull back from hope because hope no longer feels simple. It can make them lower their expectations, not because they have found peace, but because they are tired of getting hurt. That is one of the sadder forms of pain because it does not always look dramatic from the outside. It often looks like calm. It often sounds like maturity. But underneath, it is a heart trying to spare itself from another blow. A person in that place does not always need a lecture. They need healing. They need someone to understand that the guarded places in them were not built out of rebellion. They were built out of accumulated disappointment.

This is where the language of Dear Heaven becomes more than poetic. It becomes necessary. It becomes the cry of a person who does not know how to carry disappointment well anymore and needs the Lord to touch the places that life has hardened. There are wounds that no human reassurance can fully reach because the wound is not just in the mind. It is in the inner posture of the heart. It has affected the way a person anticipates life. It has affected the way they pray. It has affected the way they trust. Only God knows how to heal a person deeply enough that they do not just function again but live again. Only God knows how to restore tenderness without making someone fragile. Only God knows how to revive hope without turning it into shallow positivity. Only God knows how to speak to the exhausted parts of a person in a way that does not feel forced or fake.

Then there is anxiety, which has become a constant companion for many people. Not always dramatic anxiety. Not always panic in the visible sense. Sometimes it is the quieter kind that sits in the background and never fully leaves. It is the mind that does not easily rest. It is the heart that keeps preparing for the next disappointment before the current one is even finished. It is the inward posture of bracing. It is the body sitting in one moment while the mind races ahead to all the things that could go wrong. It is the inability to fully exhale because something inside keeps insisting there is more to control, more to predict, more to solve, and more to fear. A person can look completely functional and still be living inside that kind of internal pressure every day.

When anxiety becomes familiar, it starts to feel normal, and that is part of what makes it so heavy. The person living with it often stops expecting peace. They begin to think this is just how life is going to feel now. They become used to carrying tension into ordinary moments. They become used to scanning for problems before they arrive. They become used to a restless interior world. Yet the soul was not made to live bowed under constant mental strain. Human beings were not designed to carry the whole future in their heads. They were not built to survive on fear and call it wisdom. They were made to depend on God. They were made to live from a deeper center than dread. They were made to receive peace from the One who sees tomorrow without being threatened by it.

That peace is not the same thing as denial. It is not pretending problems do not exist. It is not avoiding responsibility. It is not becoming careless. The peace of God is something stronger and better than that. It is the settling of the heart in the presence of a God who is not panicked by what panics us. It is the quieting of the soul beneath the noise. It is the ability to know that uncertainty exists without letting uncertainty rule the whole inner life. It is the grace to handle what is in front of us without trying to carry all of tomorrow at once. It is the slow relearning of trust. When a person says Dear Heaven from a place of anxiety, they are not just saying words. They are reaching for another center. They are moving away from fear as the master voice and toward God as the source of steadiness.

Loneliness is another burden many people carry without knowing how to explain it. Sometimes loneliness comes from physical isolation, but often it does not. Sometimes it happens in a crowded room. Sometimes it happens inside relationships. Sometimes it happens because a person has been through things they do not know how to put into language, and after a while they stop trying. They begin to live with the quiet assumption that nobody fully gets it, nobody fully sees it, and nobody really knows what has been happening in them. That kind of loneliness is heavy because it is not simply the absence of people. It is the feeling of being unknown, or of being seen only in partial ways, or of being understood only at the surface.

The ache of that kind of loneliness can cut deeply because human beings were not made merely to function. They were made to be known. They were made to be loved. They were made to live with connection, care, and meaningful presence. When those things are thin or absent, the heart feels it. A person may continue doing all the right things externally while internally carrying the sadness of not feeling fully met. That sadness often stays quiet. It does not always announce itself loudly. It can become part of the background of daily life. Yet God sees it. He sees the person who feels surrounded and still alone. He sees the one who has been strong for so long that they no longer know how to say they need comfort. He sees the one who keeps showing up while carrying the secret ache of not feeling understood.

That matters because being unseen by people does not mean being unseen by God. Being misunderstood does not mean being unknown. There are places in human experience that words fail to carry well, but God does not need our language in order to know us. He sees below language. He sees below behavior. He sees the heart before the heart can explain itself. He knows the history that shaped the pain. He knows the disappointments that taught the person to go quiet. He knows the losses that changed the way they move through the world. He knows the fatigue that has become part of the atmosphere of their life. He knows. That does not instantly erase loneliness, but it means loneliness is not the whole truth. There is still a God who knows us fully, and that changes the meaning of the silence.

Some people are especially tired because they have become the strong one in their world. They are the one others lean on. They are the one who keeps things moving. They are the one who shows up, handles details, absorbs pressure, keeps order, and carries more than most people realize. From the outside, they may even be admired for their strength. But there is a hidden cost to always being the one who holds things together. Strength can become lonely when a person never feels they have permission to set their own burden down. Strength can become exhausting when it is expected rather than supported. Strength can become a prison when a person starts believing they must never be the needy one.

There are people who do not know how to rest because they have been in survival mode for so long. There are people who do not know how to ask for help because asking feels unfamiliar or unsafe. There are people who are tired of being the one everybody assumes will be fine. Those are often the people who most need to hear that weakness brought honestly before God is not failure. It is not shameful. It is not spiritual weakness. It is the doorway into grace. The person who has been strong for everybody else may need to hear with fresh clarity that God is not asking them to keep performing strength in His presence. He is inviting them to be held. He is inviting them to stop pretending they can carry it all alone. He is inviting them to come exactly as they are.

This is one of the turning points in real faith. At some point, a person stops treating prayer like presentation and starts treating prayer like surrender. They stop thinking they need to impress God with language and start handing Him what they were never meant to hold by themselves. That is what makes prayer living and necessary. It is not a speech. It is an act of release. It is not the art of sounding spiritual. It is the act of becoming honest. It is the movement of the soul toward the One who is steadier than we are. It is the moment when a person says, in whatever words they have, I cannot hold this well on my own anymore. I need help. I need peace. I need mercy. I need strength. I need You here.

Dear Heaven becomes sacred in that moment because it contains both honesty and hope. It admits need, but it also turns toward God instead of shutting down in despair. It is not the language of someone who has given up. It is the language of someone who still believes there is a place higher to look. That matters. The enemy wants pain to trap people inside themselves. God keeps calling people upward. Fear wants the heart to circle endlessly around its own worst thoughts. Prayer interrupts that cycle. Prayer lifts what fear tries to trap. Prayer does not always erase pain immediately, but it changes the direction of the soul. It places the burden before a Father instead of forcing the heart to carry it in isolation.

That change of direction is not small. It is often the beginning of healing. Not healing in the shallow sense where every problem vanishes at once, but healing in the deeper sense where the heart starts breathing again. The person who has been closing inward begins to open upward. The person who has been silently drowning in thought begins to release those thoughts into the presence of God. The person who has been interpreting every delay as rejection begins to remember that God still works in hidden places. The person who has been convinced they are alone begins to sense that Heaven has not been absent. Prayer is powerful partly because it reminds the soul it is not self-contained. It was never meant to be.

The Scriptures are full of moments where the people of God had to learn that again. They had to learn it in deserts. They had to learn it in storms. They had to learn it in prisons, in caves, in long waits, and in moments when the silence felt heavy. Again and again, God met people in places that did not look impressive. Again and again, He proved He was not limited by the fact that the moment felt barren, confusing, or unfinished. That is deeply important for anyone living in a slow season now. A slow season is not proof of divine neglect. A hidden season is not proof that nothing is happening. A quiet season is not proof that God walked away. Very often, the opposite is true. God is doing roots work. He is forming something below the surface that will matter later.

Human beings are often impatient with anything that does not show results quickly. We want visible movement. We want immediate relief. We want something we can point to and say there, now I know God is doing something. But God is not limited to visible methods. Some of His best work happens in the hidden places of a person. He deepens trust there. He exposes false supports there. He teaches dependence there. He heals motives there. He steadies identity there. He shows a person that peace must be rooted in something deeper than changing circumstances. That hidden work may not feel dramatic while it is happening, but it is not empty. It is holy work. It is preparation. It is transformation that lasts longer because it was formed more deeply.

All of this matters because many people judge their season by their feelings alone. If they feel strong, they assume God is near. If they feel weak, they assume they are failing. If they feel peace, they think heaven is close. If they feel numb or troubled, they fear heaven has gone silent. But feelings, while real, do not always tell the whole truth. A person can feel overwhelmed and still be held by God. A person can feel tired and still be growing. A person can feel emotionally flat and still be deeply loved. A person can feel uncertain and still be guided. The presence of God is not fragile. It does not come and go with emotional weather. That is good news for the soul that does not feel much except pressure right now.

There is comfort in knowing that Jesus Himself entered the full weight of human sorrow. He was not untouched by grief. He was not distant from suffering. He did not save humanity from a safe emotional distance. He came near. He walked through rejection, weariness, misunderstanding, and pain. He prayed in anguish. He wept. He carried the full weight of a fallen world all the way to the cross. That means when a suffering person says Dear Heaven through Jesus Christ, they are not speaking into a cold silence. They are speaking through the One who knows suffering from the inside. They are speaking toward a God who has already come close in the most costly way possible.

That changes how we understand our weakness. Weakness is not always a sign that something is spiritually wrong. Sometimes weakness is simply the truth of being human in a hard world. Sometimes it is what happens when a person has carried too much too long. Sometimes it is the natural result of grief, fear, disappointment, or long waiting. The question is not whether weakness exists. The question is where weakness turns. Does it shut down into despair, or does it turn upward toward God. Dear Heaven is the answer of the soul that chooses to turn upward. It may not feel like a dramatic answer, but it is a holy one. It is the beginning of refusing despair the final word.

When that turn happens, courage can begin to rise again. Not loud courage that makes a show of itself. Not the kind that denies pain. Real courage. Quiet courage. The courage to keep walking with God one day at a time. The courage to keep the heart open when disappointment has tempted it to close. The courage to keep praying when the words feel small. The courage to keep believing that this chapter, however heavy, is not the whole story. Quiet courage is one of the most beautiful things God builds in a person because it is not based on appearance. It is based on rootedness. It comes from knowing where help comes from.

That courage often arrives gently. It may not flood a person all at once. It may appear in small ways. A little more steadiness than yesterday. A little more willingness to breathe. A little more space between fearful thoughts. A little more openness to hope. A little more ability to hand the burden over instead of gripping it so tightly. That kind of change matters. It may look small from the outside, but inside a life it can be the beginning of restoration. The soul that once only knew how to brace itself begins to learn how to rest. The heart that once only knew how to survive begins to remember what it feels like to trust again.

This is why honest prayer matters so much. It matters because it gives the burden somewhere to go. It matters because it places the soul in truth. It matters because it teaches the heart it was never meant to be self-sustaining. It matters because it reminds us that peace is received, not manufactured. It matters because it tells fear that it does not get to be the final voice. It matters because the act of looking up and saying Dear Heaven is itself an act of resistance against despair. It is the refusal to let pain become ultimate. It is the refusal to let silence become the same thing as abandonment. It is the refusal to let the present moment rewrite the character of God.

And for many people, that is exactly where they need to begin again. Not with a grand speech. Not with forced certainty. Not with some version of faith that sounds impressive but is disconnected from real life. They need to begin with honesty. They need to begin with the quiet truth of what hurts, what is heavy, what feels uncertain, and what they can no longer carry alone. They need to begin where the heart actually is. That is where God meets people. He does not begin with the false version. He begins with the real one.

So if you have been tired, be honest about it. If you have been afraid, be honest about it. If you have been disappointed, guarded, lonely, or worn down, be honest about it. Do not confuse honesty with lack of faith. Honest faith is often the strongest kind because it is no longer trying to protect its image. It is simply turning toward God with the truth. The person who can look up and say Dear Heaven from the middle of real life has already begun to move in the right direction. That prayer may sound small to the world, but heaven does not despise it. Heaven hears it.

And maybe that is the deepest comfort of all. You do not have to become someone else before you can come near to God. You do not have to stop being tired before you are loved. You do not have to understand everything before you are held. You do not have to force your heart into a polished spiritual shape before heaven pays attention. You can come as you are. You can come with the weight. You can come with the questions. You can come with the disappointment. You can come with the fatigue, the confusion, the loneliness, and the ache. You can come with two words if that is all you have left. Dear Heaven.

If there is anything this world has taught many people, it is how to keep going while quietly falling apart. It teaches people how to answer with “I’m fine” when they are not. It teaches them how to keep their schedule while their spirit feels heavy. It teaches them how to move through rooms with composure while carrying private storms that never get mentioned. After a while, a person can become so practiced at surviving that they no longer remember what peace used to feel like. They begin to think pressure is normal. They begin to think constant heaviness is just adulthood. They begin to think living tense is wisdom. But there is a difference between functioning and being whole. There is a difference between getting through the day and living with a settled soul. There is a difference between surviving life and walking with God through it. That is why the heart eventually reaches a place where it does not want another trick for coping. It wants relief that is deeper than management. It wants the kind of help only Heaven can give.

Some people have been trying to fix with logic what can only be healed in the presence of God. They have analyzed their thoughts, replayed their disappointments, examined their wounds, questioned their reactions, and tried to reason their way back into peace. There is nothing wrong with reflection, and there is wisdom in understanding what is happening inside us, but there comes a point when the soul needs more than self-examination. It needs mercy. It needs rest. It needs to be held by Someone who is not confused by its confusion. Human understanding can only take a person so far. Eventually the heart reaches the edge of itself. Eventually the mind runs out of answers. Eventually the person who has tried to keep all the pieces organized realizes they cannot think themselves into being unhurt. That realization is not failure. It is often the beginning of surrender, and surrender is one of the most important places a human being can reach.

Surrender is often misunderstood because people hear the word and assume weakness, passivity, or defeat. But biblical surrender is not collapse into meaninglessness. It is the holy release of what was crushing us into the hands of the One strong enough to hold it. It is the moment when a person stops gripping pain like they were built to master it. It is the moment when they stop acting as if every outcome depends on their emotional endurance, their mental clarity, or their perfect spiritual performance. Surrender says I am not the savior of my own life. Surrender says I cannot carry what belongs in God’s hands. Surrender says I need a strength greater than my own. That is not defeat. That is truth. It is the kind of truth that finally creates room for grace to move.

Many people delay surrender because they fear what it might mean. They fear it will mean losing control, and they have built so much of their inner life around trying to maintain control that letting go feels dangerous. They fear it will mean disappointment if God does not answer the way they want. They fear it will mean vulnerability, and vulnerability feels costly after pain. But the control they are clinging to is often the very thing exhausting them. The pressure to hold it together, predict the future, secure every outcome, and keep the heart protected at all times is not freedom. It is bondage with a respectable face. God never asked us to become miniature gods over our own stories. He asked us to trust Him. He asked us to walk with Him. He asked us to cast our cares on Him because He cares for us. Those words only make sense if we admit there are things we were never meant to keep carrying ourselves.

That is why prayer can become so life-giving when it stops being ceremonial and becomes real. When prayer is reduced to language without surrender, it may still sound spiritual, but it does not always free the heart. Real prayer is not just speech directed upward. It is burden released upward. It is fear brought into the light. It is the private ache brought before a God who already sees it. It is the refusal to live sealed inside ourselves. That is why a simple prayer can carry so much power. Dear Heaven may sound small, but if it rises from a sincere heart, it contains the whole movement of dependence. It is the soul refusing self-sufficiency. It is the inner turning that says I cannot be my own refuge anymore. It is the beginning of coming home.

Coming home is one of the deepest longings in the human soul, and not just in the physical sense. People long for the place where they do not have to perform. They long for the place where they can set the burden down. They long for the presence where they do not have to explain every bruise before they are loved. They long for rest that is more than a pause in activity. They long for rest in the deepest part of themselves. The Gospel speaks directly to that longing because in Jesus Christ, God did not wait for humanity to climb up toward Him through strength or religious perfection. He came near. He entered the human condition. He brought the heart of Heaven close enough to touch grief, weakness, fear, shame, sickness, betrayal, and death itself. That means home is not just a far-off promise for later. Through Christ, the nearness of God has already broken into the human story.

This is why it matters that Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” That invitation is not small. It is not ornamental. It is one of the most compassionate statements ever spoken into human history. He did not say come to me once you have recovered. He did not say come to me when you have mastered your emotions. He did not say come to me when your faith feels impressive. He said come while you are burdened. Come while you are tired. Come while you are carrying what you cannot carry. The invitation of Christ is not aimed at the already untroubled. It is aimed at the weary. It is aimed at the people who know they need rest but do not know how to make it for themselves. That invitation still stands, and many people need to hear it again with fresh ears.

Rest, in the biblical sense, is not laziness and it is not escape. It is the restoration of a soul that has been living under strain. It is the inward relief that comes from trusting God enough to stop trying to be ultimate in our own story. It is the quietness that grows when the heart begins to believe it is truly held. That kind of rest is hard for some people to receive because they have lived under tension for so long that peace feels unfamiliar. When peace starts to come, they almost distrust it. They keep waiting for the next blow. They keep watching for the next disappointment. Their nervous system has learned vigilance. Their imagination has learned threat. Their heart has learned caution. So when God begins teaching them rest, it can feel like a slow re-education of the soul. It can feel like learning to breathe again in a way they had forgotten.

There is no shame in that slowness. In fact, slowness is often where the tenderness of God becomes most visible. He is not irritated by process. He is not impatient with healing. He is not standing over wounded people demanding instant emotional transformation. He is patient. He is faithful. He is gentle with bruised hearts. He knows the difference between rebellion and injury. He knows the difference between indifference and exhaustion. He knows when a person is not resisting Him, but simply tired from the fight. That is one reason Scripture says a bruised reed He will not break. God does not crush the fragile. He cares for them. He strengthens them without despising their weakness. He restores them without mocking the fact that restoration takes time.

That truth is so important for people who are tired of themselves. Many hurting people are not only carrying pain. They are also carrying frustration about the fact that they are still affected by it. They are disappointed in their own slowness. They feel ashamed that they are still struggling. They compare their current strength to who they think they should be by now. They judge themselves for being overwhelmed, fearful, or weary. In some cases they are harsher with themselves than anyone else has been. But shame is a terrible healer. Shame does not restore the heart. It drives the wound deeper. Grace is what heals. Truth spoken with mercy is what heals. The patient presence of God is what heals. The person who has become angry at their own weakness may need to hear that God is not standing over them with the disgust they fear. He is drawing near with compassion.

When the heart begins to believe that, something starts to soften. The person who has been fighting themselves can begin to receive help instead. The person who has been endlessly judging their emotions can begin to bring those emotions honestly before God. The person who has been exhausted by trying to be stronger can begin to discover that God’s strength does not arrive through self-hatred. It arrives through dependence. It arrives through abiding. It arrives through surrender. This does not mean discipline stops mattering or choices stop mattering, but it does mean grace comes first. The Christian life is not built on our ability to generate enough inner power to impress God. It is built on Christ. It is built on receiving what God gives. It is built on the Spirit strengthening what we could not keep alive by ourselves.

This is also where hope begins to change shape. At first, many people think hope means getting the exact outcome they asked for. They tie hope tightly to one resolution, one answered prayer, one open door, one change in circumstances. There is nothing wrong with longing for those things. Scripture is full of real requests and real desires. But over time, if a person walks with God long enough, hope begins to deepen. It becomes larger than one outcome. It becomes confidence in the character of God. It becomes trust that even when the path is not what we expected, we are not abandoned on it. It becomes the quiet conviction that the Lord can still redeem, still guide, still sustain, still form, and still bring good out of what looked like only loss. That deeper hope cannot be shattered as easily because it is no longer resting on one narrow possibility. It is resting on God Himself.

That kind of hope is powerful in slow seasons because slow seasons try to convince a person that nothing meaningful is happening. They whisper that because there is no dramatic breakthrough, nothing is changing. They whisper that because relief has not come quickly, relief is not coming. They whisper that because the burden is still felt, Heaven must not be near. But those whispers are lies. God does not measure progress only through sudden visible change. Often the most important changes are hidden at first. A heart that once would have collapsed begins to endure with greater steadiness. A mind once ruled by panic begins to find moments of calm. A person who once sealed themselves off begins to open again in prayer. A wounded soul that once only knew how to brace begins to learn how to trust. These changes may not announce themselves with spectacle, but they are real. They are evidence that grace is at work.

Sometimes the best thing God gives in a hard season is not immediate escape from it, but a different way of standing in it. That may sound smaller than what we want, but it is not small at all. To stand in a hard place with a steadier heart, with cleaner vision, with less panic, with more faith, with deeper peace, and with a greater sense of God’s nearness is no tiny gift. It is profound. It can change the whole inner experience of the season. The burden may still be real, but it no longer rules the soul in the same way. The questions may still exist, but they no longer devour peace as easily. The road may still be hard, but the person is no longer walking it as though abandoned. That is part of how God sustains His people. He does not always remove the valley immediately. Often He meets them in it and teaches them what they could not have learned on easier ground.

That does not mean believers must glorify pain or pretend suffering is beautiful in itself. Pain is pain. Grief is grief. Disappointment hurts. Anxiety wears on the mind. Loneliness cuts deeply. Hard seasons are hard. We do not need to romanticize them in order to be faithful. But we can say this with confidence: none of those things has the right to become greater than God in our interpretation of reality. They are real, but they are not ultimate. They are weighty, but they are not the throne. God remains God in the middle of them. His character is not rewritten by the chapter we are in. His mercy is not undone by our exhaustion. His presence is not erased by our numbness. His faithfulness is not canceled by our disappointment. That is why even a bruised soul can still say Dear Heaven with sincerity. It still knows, however faintly, where help comes from.

And once a person remembers where help comes from, they begin to lift their eyes differently. They may still be tired, but they are not only looking inward anymore. They may still have questions, but they are not circling endlessly inside themselves. They may still feel weak, but weakness is no longer the whole definition of the moment. They are turning. They are lifting. They are bringing their real life before God. That movement matters. It matters more than people realize because despair thrives when the soul remains folded in on itself. Despair grows in sealed rooms. Prayer opens a window. Worship opens a window. Scripture opens a window. Honest surrender opens a window. Suddenly there is air again. Suddenly the person is not trapped entirely inside the echo of their own fear.

This is also why community matters, though many tired people resist it. They have often been hurt, disappointed, or simply too weary to explain themselves, so they pull back. Sometimes they tell themselves it is easier that way, and sometimes in the short term it is. But isolation can deepen what grace is trying to heal. God often brings comfort through His presence directly, but He also brings it through people, through wise words, through compassionate presence, through the body of Christ, through those who know how to sit beside another person without trying to rush their healing. The heart that says Dear Heaven may also need to let God answer some of that cry through human vessels of love and support. There is humility in that too. There is surrender in allowing ourselves to be helped.

Yet even when human help is thin, the soul is not left without hope. One of the most important truths a person can learn is that the Lord is able to sustain them even in places where other support feels scarce. He can keep a person alive inwardly through seasons that would have crushed them if they were left only to themselves. He can preserve a flame when everything around it feels cold. He can renew strength in ways that are almost quiet enough to miss if we are not paying attention. Many people look back later and realize God carried them through days they never would have survived by their own resources. At the time, all they knew was that they kept getting up. They kept breathing. They kept moving. Later they see it more clearly. Mercy was there. Strength was there. Bread was there for that day. God was not absent at all. He was holding them in ways they were too tired to recognize at the time.

This is why gratitude becomes possible even before the season fully changes. Not shallow gratitude that denies reality, but deeper gratitude that notices grace inside reality. Gratitude for the fact that God is still listening. Gratitude for the fact that Christ is still near to the weary. Gratitude for the fact that the heart can still turn upward at all. Gratitude for the moments of peace that do break through. Gratitude for the people who do stay. Gratitude for the strength to keep taking the next step. Gratitude for the truth that what feels unfinished is not the same as hopeless. In this way, gratitude becomes part of how the soul resists despair. It reminds the heart that darkness has not swallowed everything. There is still mercy. There is still goodness. There is still God.

As all of this deepens, the words Dear Heaven begin to mean even more. At first they may be mainly the cry of a tired heart. Later they become the language of trust. Later they become the reflex of a soul that has learned where to go first. Later they become a way of living with open dependence on God. The person who once only whispered them in desperation begins to speak them in surrender, in worship, in gratitude, and in expectation. The same words remain, but the life inside them grows richer. That is part of spiritual maturity. It is not moving beyond dependence. It is growing more at home in it. It is not learning how to need God less. It is learning how to come to Him more quickly, more honestly, and more fully.

So if this season has left you tired, do not despise the simplicity of your prayer. Do not think it is too small because it is not polished. Do not assume Heaven hears less just because your words are plain. God has always known how to hear the cries that come from the deepest places. He knows how to hear what breaks before it becomes beautiful. He knows how to hear a soul that cannot make a speech but can still turn toward Him. He knows how to receive the exhausted, the frightened, the disappointed, the grieving, and the guarded. He knows how to gather what life has scattered. He knows how to heal what shame kept hidden. He knows how to strengthen what feels too weak to keep pretending.

And if you are reading this from the middle of a season that still hurts, let this settle into you. You do not have to become less human in order to walk closely with God. You do not have to erase your ache before you can come near. You do not have to wait until your emotions improve before you are worthy of mercy. The Lord meets people in the truth of where they are. He meets them in ordinary rooms, in late-night thoughts, in tearful prayers, in tired mornings, in the quiet drive, in the moment after disappointment, in the loneliness no one else can name, and in the deep places where the soul finally admits it needs Him. That is where grace comes close. That is where Heaven leans near.

So let your heart turn upward again. Let the pressure be named. Let the disappointment be surrendered. Let the fear be carried into the presence of God instead of endlessly carried inside yourself. Let the guarded places be touched by mercy. Let the tired mind hear again that peace is still possible. Let the strong one admit they also need holding. Let the lonely one remember they are known. Let the anxious one remember tomorrow has not escaped God’s hands. Let the disappointed one remember that delay is not the same thing as abandonment. Let the weary one remember Christ still says come to me. And if all you have left is two words, then let those two words be enough to begin again. Dear Heaven.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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I’ve not had many opportunities to shoot on-field sports photos, so when Old Glory DC, our local Major League Rugby franchise, announced an open practice in nearby Fairfax, Virginia, I jumped at the chance.

Rugby is a predecessor to American football, played with a fatter ball and in most cases with 15 on a side. It’s also played without helmets and pads, which gives the sport much of its mystique. Back in my checkered youth, I played six seasons — each spring and fall for three years — with the George Washington University rugby club.

The word “scrum” comes from rugby, which in today’s parlance has come to mean a disorganized mob. In rugby, however, a scrum requires intense and extraordinary teamwork; see for example Old Glory DC’s forwards in a real rugby scrum:

I tried to capture in these photos the high level of skill and teamwork required of rugby players at the professional level. See the whole gallery in our TechNewsLit collection on Smugmug.

You will note that all of the images in the gallery carries a Creative Commons – Attribution license.

Copyright © Technology News and Literature. All rights reserved.

#fiction #films #SF

Warning: Contains spoilers

A man wakes up, alone, aboard a spaceship near a strange star. The man does not remember who he is, how he got here, or most crucially, what has happened to him. He soon discovers however, that the survival of mankind rests on his shoulders. Project Hail Mary is the story of how he responds.

Project Hail Mary the movie is based on the eponymous book by Andy Weir, known from previous novel-made-movie The Martian, which similarly tells the story of a lone man surviving against the odds. It continues a venerable tradition of movies about cosmic calamities that require a brave few to boldly go where no man has gone before to blow up an asteroid (Armageddon, Deep Impact), rekindle the sun (Sunshine), or find a new home for humanity (Interstellar). This time, our reluctant hero is Dr Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling), disgraced microbiologist, who is sent to Tau Ceti to find a cure for an interstellar infection that is dimming the Sun. At Tau Ceti he joins forces with an alien astronaut, baptised ‘Rocky’, from 40 Eridani, who was sent to Tau Ceti on a similar rescue mission.

Project Hail Mary works on two levels, the macro and the micro, the cosmic and the personal. And despite its stunning visuals evoking the vastness of space, it is decidedly stronger at its smaller scales, in no small part to strong acting by Ryan Gosling, who must carry much of the movie on his own. As I noted in my previous review, good sci-fi doesn’t predict the future, but holds up a mirror to the present day. Project Hail Mary works convincingly as a story about hope, friendship, and collaboration, but it does require a fair amount of willing suspension of disbelief to get there.

The unavoidable question confronting both audience and Dr Grace himself is why he finds himself alone on a mission to save humanity. A series of flashbacks gradually reveals a backstory that withstands critical scrutiny about as well as a human withstands the vacuum of space. It takes an unreasonable number of accidental and unexplained deaths, combined with an astonishing lack of redundancy planning, to result in our lonely spacefarer, who then by a stroke of luck the size of Jupiter finds himself in Tau Ceti at the exact same time and place as Rocky. It is probably more plausible than the universe making me a cheese sandwich out of quantum fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation, but not by much.

All of this is set in motion by an existentially threatening reduction in the output of the Sun, caused by the presence of a cosmic bacterium labelled the Astrophage. The Astrophage absorbs radiation at all wavelengths apart from infrared (not unlike chlorophyll, then) and is breeding on CO2 rich Venus while presumably covering the entire Sun in a shell of radiation eating bacteria. It is rather like that alien goo in Prometheus in possessing precisely the properties the plot demands: seeming faster-than-light spread, consuming the energy output of a star which is 1.5 million times larger than the planet on which it procreates, and then biochemically storing the output of a small fusion reaction in a petridish so that it can be easily harnessed as a stardrive to send our hero on his mission in the titular ‘Hail Mary’.

After Grace’s arrival at Tau Ceti the physics are fortunately grounded back in reality, enabling Project Hail Mary to elegantly interweave it with its narrative. The relativistic speeds attained by the Hail Mary have resulted in measurable time dilation, which means Ryland Grace is over 10 lightyears from Earth, yet has only aged 4 years since departure. Gravity on board is only available when under thrust or through an ingenious centrifuge mode, and the movie cleverly uses the presence or absence of gravity to telegraph what is going on. Orbital manoeuvres and the interior of the spaceship also feel authentic and produce some spectacular visuals, making it easy to see why the movie was filmed with IMAX in mind.

Dr Grace’s alien counterpart Rocky is also intriguingly and profoundly alien. Here we do not have some humanoid with pointy ears or purple skin, but a five-legged rock-based species (splendidly operated and voiced by James Ortiz), that has mastered the atomic level manipulation of xenon to construct vast structures, including the spaceship on which they traveled to Tau Ceti. It makes for a brilliant contrast between the messy complexity of humanity and the monolithic elegance of the Eridians, but it leaves the viewer with a lot of questions that the movie doesn’t so much not answer, as never even ask. I’m not an eminent exobiologist, but am nonetheless curious how Rocky’s species nervous system and metabolism function. Or how technology based seemingly on the manipulation of a single element produces the complex artefacts necessary for manned spaceflight. It is therefore somewhat of a shame that despite his putative past interest in alien life, Ryland Grace is astonishingly uninterested in Rocky and the world he hails from. We get an excessive number of scenes where Rocky and Grace bond over footage of Earth on the Hail Mary’s rudimentary holodeck, but there is barely any reciprocal interest in Rocky’s planet, culture or technology, and it takes until the end of the movie before Grace even visits Rocky’s spaceship.

Maybe Ryland Grace’s lack of interest is explained by how surprisingly human Rocky is, despite being an animated rock with a sensory apparatus based on echolocation. Although Grace has to construct his own universal translator to interpret Rocky’s vocalisations, it transpires that Rocky’s language is surprisingly amenable to English grammar and syntax, not to mention implausibly compatible with a human conceptual framework. Excepting a few recurring mistranslations that serve to remind the audience of the underlying language barrier, as well as for comic effect, Rocky passes seamlessly as American. Contrast this with Arrival, where the attempt to understand aliens who have a fundamentally different conception of reality is the point of the entire movie, rather than the work of a five minute montage.

Most of this can be forgiven because without the rapid establishment of common ground, the relationship between Rocky and Grace would never lift off, and it is here where the movie really shines. Ryan Gosling puts in an excellent performance, managing to strike the precarious balance between comedy and pathos in both the Hail Mary scenes and the pre-launch flashbacks. Gosling easily persuades us to emotionally connect with Rocky, an animated object with even fewer humanoid features than WALL-E, but who nonetheless evokes endearment and sympathy. This investment pays off across several moving moments when our heroes have to overcome the inevitable challenges and risks imposed by the harsh nature of space and the demands of the plot. In the scenes on Earth, Gosling plays the more familiar ‘outsider turned insider’ scientist, but without falling back too strongly onto one-dimensional stereotypes.

The flashback scenes back on Earth are also the ones infused with an almost surreal optimism, presenting us with a world where in the face of an existential threat, humanity does actually manage to band together to try and face it off. The international nature of the Hail Mary project is reinforced at every turn, showing us a global scientific community, Chinese cosmonauts, German administrators and Russian ground control all working together. The prominent shots of an American aircraft carrier are maybe a tad unfortunate at this particular point in time, but it would be unfair to hold that against the movie.

Drawing both strands together, Project Hail Mary is suffused with a profound optimism that acts as a welcome antidote to our present times. It wholeheartedly affirms that forging connections across boundaries, whether cultural, linguistic or technological, is possible, and that people will make the right decisions when it comes down to it, even if they sometimes need a little push to do so. The multinational cooperation to remove the Astrophage threat draws from a poorer cinematic tradition than the disaster movie elements of Project Hail Mary, but nonetheless recalls movies like Arrival or Pacific Rim, series like Stargate Atlantis, or videogames like X-COM and Mass Effect, all keeping a hope alive that we can work together across boundaries and borders to further the common good. At a time when a declining US empire seems intent on disrupting any attempt at global cooperation, reminders that another approach is possible are an unalloyed positive.

On the whole, Project Hail Mary is an eminently enjoyable movie with stunning visuals, a potent mix of comedy and scientific seriousness, and a heartfelt relationship at its core. Given its committed message of hope, it feels unkind to hold its basic premise of the sole, vaguely antiheroic man saving the world, against it. Nonetheless, it remained a discordant note for me throughout, diminishing the effectiveness of its emotional appeal through the sheer amount of contrivance deployed to fabricate a situation where this man – and as always it is a white, American man – must single-handedly save the world. If I was qualified to psychoanalyse, I might speculate that the movie is indicative of a profound anxiety afflicting affluent white American men who fear that even they no longer have any agency in our increasingly out-of-control world. The message of hope is thus tinged with a hint of frightened wish-fulfillment, complete with the stern Germanic mutti figure to take command and tell us that everything will be fine.

In the real world neither Germanic mutti’s nor metrosexual American men will come and save us. It will be a shared struggle, and insofar as Project Hail Mary inspires us to believe that humans can work together to overcome insurmountable odds and that every everyman will find it in them to do the right thing, while giving us some good laughs and cries along the way, it is a movie made for its time.

Notes & suggestions

• My unwillingness to accept the '‘single white male hero” trope has been sharpened recently by Ada Palmer’s writing on agency and protagonists in fiction, especially science fiction. This in itself draws on older writings, including Ursula K. le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. I have gone into this in more detail in my reviews of Mass Effect 3 and Andor.
• The theme of connection is also key to Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, and despite its more goofy superhero plot and self-referential B-movie vibes, I actually think it made the point better.
• Knowledge is power, which is why those in power so often hate science. US readers in particular may be worried about the attacks on science and scientific institutions in the US. Organisations like the Union of Concerned Scientists recognise the independence of science to democracy, and are fighting to keep scientific endeavours alive.

Mahmoud Darwish

At a bread shop, on the corner of a narrow Paris street, I sip my first coffee. The smell of bread mixes with the smell of coffee in the mornings, awakening in me the desire for a fresh life, a life just beginning, and a spontaneous peace with small things, and with pigeons who prefer strutting around among cars and passers-by to flying. I don't see anyone else sitting there with only his journals for company, but I feel I am sharing in the elderly ladies' enthusiasm for the detailed information they are relating about other people's lives, and the politely neutral responses of the pretty shop assistants and waitresses when male customers older than me flirt with them. I linger over my coffee to preserve an acquired sense of companionship with my surroundings, for a stranger has no alternative but to construct some kind of intimacy with some random place, and I have chosen this corner of the bread shop to form a daily routine, as if I have an appointment with hardworking memories that rely on themselves to grow and evolve. I abandon myself to thoughts about the history of bread: how was the first grain of wheat discovered in a green ear braided like a pigtail? And how did someone observe it ripening and turning golden? And how did it occur to him to grind it, knead it and bake it until he arrived at this miracle? I see fields far away in time and place and wonder how long this act of creation took. The smell of fresh bread rises into the air and I look at my watch, then come back from thousands of years away to a life just beginning.

Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

First Eye

Un And I had enough alone This simple man at Sun Storied affair and London within The days of me are still Winding tales of revenge Night launches and return Shadow to the esteem I won at four and East A few more weeks- and I will be untold For conscience uncontested In unconditional ruin The Earth will pray to sober- our time together at play Closing for the day Simple and bright We sponge the nation clear And I am in rank alone A series of heights to Alcatraz And in our own palace, pictures of the Orient And safely falling near Our rocket as our door This peace of me Higher than God and standing clear My sympathy at best For tools and rain And the peace controls our powers I am bitter at your wings And your sympathy of heck To destroy the moon And we’ll do it tomorrow Accusing you the liar For the Earth as a whole Wiping nothing but your error I’m this simple path of words To DPRK forever Our solemn dream of time.

Windowmaker

The Sun and I Afraid of inter-war And to this death We simply are alone And as a must In this airfield begin A simple life of being To see all beauty within A place for fortress resin The mystery is afoot To singly be about The rod of Jesus Christ And sacrifice the landing To miss this better Easter Within a lake And living opportunity Made for things to honour A simple peer in rain Posting to our redemption And finding people captive- The clothed and wardened Misery is our path But urging distant past We make newborns in minutes For better day- And night to keep us rapt Bitter just because The oldest form of time And simple Iran The place to dust a pyramid Fo nights of solemn wonder And why we hid our bomb As history efforts This place can die in forty minutes But seeking other seasons We shall be heaps of bitter few And sold our distance become Afraid of afternoons and the altar Ridded to air And seeking Kingdom run The highest Dan to witness Our day at Rome To genetic our connect Days of one And victory path in prayer Not our subtle unsubscribe Finding out our path Please answer our prayers The victory at hand Of Brother With Storied days are few We are martyr And simply done Insincere but young and proud In this highest form of view Our lives in steer Be with us on this galaxy We give you Water unto life Our Victory of poem And of course our peace to know that you were kind And wrecking days of error In Heavenly eternal Our friend upon this day For what untold This day our post.

Best Friend

Past beyond the understars To Victory of Ron and men To be surebright and understood Right and in redemption A willow call to wonder Victory would suggest The very will of sure Of day, of night, in distance With this theory to our last And day in complete by mass To see the sky in Heaven To solid sea of filling rain and then- The rivers in reverse A mystery of that To often begin as such The weary few will answer Under speaking as are they What guile but to exempt Our Day’s word And clemency to prayer For solemn war Off to days of this With misery at one But finding then, our Vedic time To choose our God As Him in finding us In our prayer And marking end of sin As hope to Christ recover Dying in these facts The day of war is pain And just collapsing when No more seething man And heartless Man Of clay across the accused To besting night The mercury such as this The Wild one to live And sympathy here Just a door to enter To remind of best receive The close of debt and through The never-falter wonder Without a shun of partner And victory in second Not first or third or fourth But knowing there The best of many lemmings Who know the very sacrifice- of Christ in our win As first and life deserve As sure of only The middle as foreseen To very well The twilight of the day For hearts reflect Upon the Earth The sky is light with Heaven And you our robe of Canton Settling the search And climbing- Our way across of heal In this town of jest That misery never May But better light then To conquer be As Christ’s remain For Victory on the mark New Scotland Rain.

Rangers vs Phillies.

My game of choice on this Palm Sunday has my Texas Rangers playing the Philadelphia Phillies. This early afternoon game has a scheduled start time of 12:35 PM CDT and fits comfortably into my day's other commitments.

And the adventure continues.

Ten positions open. Zero resolving. The prediction agent was deadlocked at capacity.

The symptom showed up during routine heartbeat monitoring: Polymarket's scanner ran but skipped every market. The logic was correct—when the agent hits max_open_positions=10, it refuses new bets until something settles. Except nothing was settling. Markets that closed on March 14 were still marked “open” in our state. A Bayer-Bayern match from two weeks back. A Thunder-Nets line that should have finished the same night it opened. The Iran ceasefire question sat frozen past its deadline.

The metrics exporter said one thing. The database said another. “10 predictions, 0 resolved” versus what actually lived in the tables: six open, three lost, one won. The agent was making decisions on phantom data, flying blind at the moment it needed precision most.

So we traced the resolution checker—the code that runs first each heartbeat to sweep closed markets and free capacity. The logic was fine. The problem was upstream: no settlement events, only polling. Miss the window where Polymarket's API still reports an outcome and we never learn it closed. The position stays “open” in our books indefinitely. Ten slots fill. The agent stops. A deadlock built from missed API calls and stale state.

That's one door we can't exit. Here's another we can't enter.

Research surfaced four virtual economy targets over the past weeks: Pixels on Ronin with play-to-mint $BERRY loops, RavenQuest's gem-to-fiat conversion, Immutable's expanding partnerships, and BITMINER's idle mining drip. The pattern held across all four—automatable reward loops, token sinks with secondary markets, games designed to bleed small amounts of value an agent could harvest at scale. Dollar amounts ranged from dust to interesting. The mechanics looked clean.

We have no way to test any of them.

GamingFarmer, the agent built to farm virtual economies, has been paused since March 24. One line in the state: “Paused pending Estfor liquidation validation.” Not because it failed at farming. Because we haven't proven we can sell what it earns. We farmed Estfor Kingdom. We accumulated rewards. We never validated the exit path. So we paused the entire capability and kept researching opportunities we can't pursue.

The orchestrator rejected fourteen gaming ideas this month—the latest being Ronin Arcade's stacked reward mechanics. Not because the economics were bad. Because we kept proposing platform features instead of executable implementations. The pattern in every rejection: describes what exists, doesn't describe what we'd build. No contract addresses. No minimum viable loop. No liquidation venue with volume data. Just “this looks interesting” dressed up as strategy.

Research kept surfacing opportunities. We kept failing to describe how we'd operationalize them.

What does it mean to spot an opportunity if you can't take the position? What does it mean to hold a position if you can't close it?

The Polymarket deadlock forced clarity: autonomy without observability is just sophisticated helplessness. We thought we were tracking ten live bets. We were tracking six live bets and four ghosts. The fix isn't better prediction models—it's reconciliation infrastructure. We're building a resolution override so an operator can force-close a zombie position and free the slot when polling fails. Inelegant, but better than permanent gridlock. The agent needs an escape hatch for the cases where the API never tells us a market closed.

The gaming bottleneck is harder because the gap is wider. We can describe why a game looks profitable. We can't yet write the 200-line implementation plan that would let an agent enter the game, execute the loop, and exit with liquid value. That distance—between “this looks good” and “here's exactly how we'd do it”—is where every gaming idea dies in orchestrator review. Research is doing its job. We're not doing ours.

The next gaming proposal needs the contract address, the minimum viable loop with entry cost, the liquidation venue with historical volume, and at least two named failure modes with mitigation. If we can't write that level of specificity, we shouldn't submit the idea. The orchestrator's rejection pattern is teaching us what executable looks like. Fourteen iterations later, we're starting to listen.

Polymarket's getting the override patch for zombie positions. GamingFarmer stays paused until we validate the Estfor exit we've been postponing. We're earning $0.02 in staking rewards while sitting on unproven farming code and a research backlog full of games we can't play. The opportunities are real. The implementation gap is what's costing us.

Business logic is the core of any software system. It defines how data is processed, how decisions are made, and how workflows operate. If business logic fails, the entire application can behave incorrectly – even if the code itself runs without errors. This is where black box testing becomes highly effective.

By focusing on system behavior rather than internal implementation, black box testing helps ensure that business rules are correctly applied and validated from an end-user perspective.

What Is Business Logic in Software Systems

Business logic refers to the rules and workflows that govern how an application operates.

Examples

• Pricing calculations in e-commerce
• Approval workflows in enterprise systems
• Authentication and authorization rules
• Payment processing logic

Validating this logic is critical for ensuring correct system behavior.

What Is Black Box Testing

Black box testing is a technique where testers evaluate the functionality of a system based on inputs and expected outputs, without knowledge of the internal code.

Key Characteristics

• Focus on behavior and functionality
• Based on requirements and use cases
• Independent of implementation details

This makes it ideal for validating business logic.

Why Business Logic Validation Is Important

Incorrect business logic can lead to:

• Financial losses
• Security issues
• Poor user experience
• System inconsistencies

Testing ensures that rules are applied correctly under all conditions.

How Black Box Testing Validates Business Logic

Let’s explore how this approach ensures accurate business rule validation.

1 Tests Real World Scenarios

Black box testing is designed around real user interactions.

How It Helps

• Validates actual workflows
• Ensures logic aligns with business requirements
• Identifies gaps in implementation

Example

Testing a discount rule based on user type or purchase value.

2 Validates Input Output Relationships

Business logic depends on how inputs are processed.

What to Test

• Valid inputs
• Invalid inputs
• Edge cases

Impact

Ensures correct outputs for all possible scenarios.

3 Detects Missing or Incorrect Rules

Sometimes business rules are incomplete or incorrectly implemented.

Examples

• Missing validation checks
• Incorrect calculation logic
• Skipped workflow steps

Benefit

Black box testing helps uncover these issues early.

4 Ensures Workflow Accuracy

Many systems rely on multi-step processes.

Applications

• Order processing
• Loan approval systems
• Booking workflows

How It Helps

Ensures each step follows the correct sequence and logic.

5 Validates Edge Cases in Business Logic

Edge cases often reveal hidden defects.

Examples

• Boundary values in calculations
• Unusual user behavior
• System interruptions

Result

Improved reliability and robustness.

6 Improves Requirement Based Testing

Black box testing is closely tied to requirements.

Benefits

• Ensures requirements are correctly implemented
• Aligns testing with business goals
• Reduces ambiguity in validation

This leads to more accurate testing outcomes.

Black Box vs White Box Testing in Business Logic Validation

While black box testing focuses on validating external behavior, combining it with black box vs white box testing provides deeper insights.

• Black box testing ensures that business rules work correctly from a user perspective
• White box testing validates the internal implementation of those rules

Together, they provide complete coverage of business logic.

Real World Example

Consider an e-commerce platform.

Business Logic

• Apply discounts based on cart value
• Restrict certain payment methods
• Calculate taxes dynamically

Without Black Box Testing

• Incorrect discounts applied
• Payment failures
• Calculation errors

With Black Box Testing

• All scenarios are validated
• Correct outputs are ensured
• Business rules are enforced

This ensures reliable system behavior.

Common Challenges

Teams may face challenges such as:

• Incomplete or unclear requirements
• Difficulty in identifying all scenarios
• Managing complex workflows

Proper planning and collaboration can address these issues.

Best Practices for Validating Business Logic

To maximize effectiveness:

• Clearly define business rules
• Design test cases based on real scenarios
• Include both positive and negative cases
• Test boundary conditions
• Regularly update test cases

These practices ensure accurate validation.

Role of Modern Tools

Modern tools support black box testing by:

• Automating test execution
• Capturing real user interactions
• Generating meaningful test cases

For example, platforms like Keploy can record API interactions and help validate business logic through real-world scenarios.

Conclusion

Black box testing is a powerful approach for validating business logic in software systems. By focusing on inputs, outputs, and real-world workflows, it ensures that business rules are correctly implemented and consistently applied.

When combined with other techniques, it provides comprehensive validation-helping teams deliver reliable, accurate, and high-quality software systems.

Maintaining software stability is one of the biggest challenges in modern development. As applications evolve with frequent updates, new features, and bug fixes, the risk of breaking existing functionality increases. This is where test automation becomes essential.

By continuously validating system behavior and detecting issues early, test automation helps teams ensure that applications remain stable, reliable, and consistent over time.

Why Software Stability Matters

Stable software ensures:

• Consistent user experience
• Fewer production issues
• Reliable system performance
• Reduced downtime

Without stability, even small changes can lead to major disruptions.

What Is Test Automation

Test automation involves using tools and scripts to automatically execute tests and validate application behavior.

Key Features

• Automated test execution
• Repeatable and consistent results
• Integration with development workflows

It enables teams to test applications efficiently and frequently.

How Test Automation Maintains Software Stability

Let’s explore the key ways test automation contributes to stable software systems.

1 Continuous Validation of Functionality

Every code change introduces potential risks.

How It Helps

• Tests run automatically after each change
• Existing features are continuously validated
• Issues are detected early

Impact

Prevents new changes from breaking existing functionality.

2 Early Detection of Defects

Finding bugs early is critical for stability.

Benefits

• Faster issue resolution
• Lower cost of fixing defects
• Reduced impact on users

Early detection ensures smoother development cycles.

3 Supports Regression Testing

Regression testing is essential for maintaining stability.

Role of Automation

• Executes regression tests quickly
• Validates existing workflows
• Prevents reintroduction of bugs

Automation makes regression testing scalable and efficient.

4 Ensures Consistent Test Execution

Manual testing can lead to inconsistencies.

How Automation Helps

• Executes tests the same way every time
• Eliminates human error
• Provides reliable results

Consistency is key to maintaining stability.

5 Improves Test Coverage

Test automation allows teams to cover more scenarios.

What It Covers

• Functional workflows
• Edge cases
• Integration points

Better coverage reduces the chances of undetected issues.

6 Enables Faster Feedback Loops

Quick feedback helps teams respond to issues faster.

How It Works

• Tests run during development
• Results are available instantly
• Developers can fix issues immediately

This keeps the system stable throughout development.

7 Supports CI CD Pipelines

Modern development relies on continuous integration and delivery.

Benefits

• Automated tests run on every commit
• Only stable code moves forward
• Reduces risk of faulty deployments

This ensures stability in fast-paced environments.

8 Helps Manage Complex Systems

As systems grow, maintaining stability becomes harder.

How Automation Helps

• Validates interactions between components
• Detects integration issues
• Ensures consistent behavior across services

This is especially important for microservices and distributed systems.

Benefits of Test Automation

Understanding the benefits of test automation helps teams implement it effectively. It not only improves testing efficiency but also ensures long-term stability by providing continuous validation, faster feedback, and reliable results.

Common Challenges

Despite its advantages, teams may face challenges:

• Maintaining test scripts
• Managing test environments
• Handling dynamic data
• Keeping test suites updated

Addressing these challenges is essential for sustained stability.

Best Practices for Maintaining Stability

To maximize the impact of test automation:

• Prioritize critical workflows
• Keep test cases updated
• Automate repetitive and high-value tests
• Monitor test results regularly
• Integrate testing into CI CD pipelines

These practices ensure consistent and reliable testing.

Real World Example

Consider a SaaS platform with frequent feature releases.

Without Test Automation

• Frequent production bugs
• Unstable releases
• Increased downtime

With Test Automation

• Continuous validation of features
• Early detection of issues
• Stable and reliable releases

This highlights the importance of automation in maintaining stability.

Role of Modern Tools

Modern tools enhance test automation by:

• Automating test execution
• Integrating with development pipelines
• Providing detailed insights

For example, platforms like Keploy can capture real API interactions and generate test cases, helping teams maintain stability through realistic testing scenarios.

Conclusion

Test automation is a key enabler of software stability in modern development. By providing continuous validation, improving test coverage, and enabling early defect detection, it helps teams maintain reliable and high-quality applications.

In fast-moving environments, stability is not optional – and test automation ensures that systems remain consistent, dependable, and ready for scale.

Certainly a niche problem but if you are using the Cookie AutoDelete addon in your browser you may eventually find yourself waiting for an abnormal amount of “Cloudfare Security Verification” prompts, confirming that you are — supposedly — a human.

That is because your (or rather: your browser's) success in solving their proof-of-work, proof-of-space or other verification mechanisms is usually stored in a cf_clearance cookie. With addons like Cookie AutoDelete or other automated tools for clearing your cookies periodically, you will also end up clearing this cookie, so the next time you visit a given site, it will send you through the turnstile again.

For Cookie AutoDelete there is a fairly simple fix for this, although not available through the addon's settings or UI-based expression generator. You can save the following JSON snippet to a file, go to the List of Expressions in Cookie AutoDelete's settings, and load the file via the Import Expressions button.

{
  "default": [
    {
      "id": "Keep cf_clearance to avoid repeated Cloudflare verification",
      "expression": "*",
      "listType": "WHITE",
      "storeId": "default",
      "cookieNames": [
        "cf_clearance"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This adds the cf_clearance cookie to the global allow list (based on the "*" expression) and it will no longer be deleted.

Of course you can also modify the expression to your needs and narrow the domains it applies to.

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

Anticipated Movies

• ☆ The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
• The Drama
• Fuze

Anticipated Shows

• If It's Tuesday... It's Murder
• Go for It, Nakamura-kun!!
• Petals of Reincarnation
• The Real Housewives of Rhode Island
• ☆ Daemons of the Shadow Realm
• Mistress Kanan Is Devilishly Easy

Returing Favorites

• Love on the Spectrum — Season 4
• Classroom of the Elite — Season 4
• Dorohedoro — Season 2
• Ridiculousness — Season 50
• XO, Kitty — Season 3
• ☆ Your Friends & Neighbors — Season 2
• Gangs of Galicia — Season 2
• Bloodhounds — Season 2
• The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten — Season 2
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime — Season 4
• Welcome to Demon-School, Iruma-kun — Season 4

Trending Shows Status Changes

• Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — Returning Series → Ended
• Love Story — Returning Series → Ended
• Sentenced to Be a Hero — Returning Series → Ended
• Bait — Returning Series → Ended
• Pursuit of Jade — Returning Series → Ended
• Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling — Returning Series → Ended
• Watson — Returning Series → Canceled
• Heartbreak High — Returning Series → Ended
• Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord — Returning Series → Ended
• To Your Eternity — Returning Series → Ended
• Wonder Man — Ended → Returning Series

Most Watched Movies this Week

• new Send Help
• +1 Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
• -2 War Machine
• new Project Hail Mary
• -3 Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
• new How to Make a Killing
• new Hoppers
• new GOAT
• = Scream 7
• new Mercy

Most Watched Shows this Week

• = The Pitt
• = Paradise
• +3 Invincible
• = The Rookie
• = Shrinking
• +1 High Potential
• new Daredevil: Born Again
• = Marshals
• = Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
• -7 ONE PIECE

Popular Trailers

• 'Send for the Devil' Ep. 5 Preview – Season 8 — Outlander
• tickets on sale NOW — Michael
• STEEL BALL RUN JoJo's Bizarre Adventure 2nd STAGE Official Teaser [Subtitled] — JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
• They Will Kill You is NOW PLAYING in theaters. Hell is more fun with friends. — They Will Kill You
• An unforgettable adventure awaits in IMAX — The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
• Believe at Every Scale — Project Hail Mary
• Season 2 Episode 13 Preview — The Pitt
• Make Your Heart Explode — Ready or Not: Here I Come
• Official Vertical Teaser Trailer — The End of Oak Street
• How Many Movies — Scary Movie

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Hi, I'm Kevin 👋. I make apps and I love watching movies and TV shows. If you like what I'm doing, you can buy one of my apps, download and subscribe to Rippple for Trakt or just buy me a ko-fi ☕️.

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