So I don’t think I’ve posted anything for the last ten months, which have been quite a whirlwind, more or less. I thought about it, but then it seemed that with so many things in flux, it wasn’t prudent to advertise what was in motion. However, it’s now October – autumn, but where I am, not quite, but in short:

In an angry world in which the crabs in the bucket grow fiercer by the day, I wanted to protect my peace. The thing is, I reverted to Catholicism in January 2024. Less than a year later, God gave me my heart’s delight, and then less than two years later, He has completely changed all the material aspects of my life. I am happy, and I bless God. There seems to be no really good time to announce changes, and in a world in which privacy has no value but still comes at a premium, it just seemed better to keep certain things to yourself in order to keep them: the real flex is being able to live your life without an online audience, to live where you want to live because you’re not ideologically or economically trapped to one geographic area, to pour yourself out so that the master artist will sculpt you into who you are, and ultimately: the real flex is to trust God.

Because it really is no life at all if it can’t be lived quietly, contemplatively, under the world’s nose, and offline. I don’t think that unhappiness is a badge of honor: to be depressed doesn’t mean you “feel more” or “think more” or that you’re somehow special, nor does continuously trapping yourself in a cycle of bad choices and then blaming nebulous systems or paradigms or collective boogeymans. You actually can simply live your life. You actually can simply be. I think the hard part with that is that most of us aren’t that interesting at a standstill. Life is too short to waste the time and effort to discover ourselves in lieu of being ourselves – something I discovered after 20+ years of being an astrologer. The strongest, most resilient, most tolerant, and most empathetic you’ll ever been is in the moment in which you stop focusing on your own stupid self and who you think you are, a fleeting and limited idea based on a fleeting and limited understanding. Even worse: if there’s a chance that you’re not who you think you are, and that the basket you’ve been placing your eggs in for your entire life has a hole worn in the bottom from sitting on the soil for years, then what are the odds that everyone you know of is not who you think they are at this very moment?

I could comment on a lot of things going on in the world. I have a point of view, and I have experiences, and I am no longer in an ideologically hostile environment that demands compliance and considers words to be violence. I’m in a peaceful place where people can simply live:

And that’s the real flex in 2025, isn’t it? The real flex is being able to live anywhere in the country because 1) you can work from anywhere, and 2) you can get along anywhere, 3) you’re not ideologically trapped anywhere and 4) you make enough money to live where you want and 5) you don’t actually believe that the majority of the country is as obsessed with you as you are with them and that they wouldn’t let you live so long as you let them live. The real flex in 2025 is liberation from thinking you’re so important that random people care more about hurting you or stopping you than they do about being left alone to live their own lives and take care of their own.

And that’s something I can do. I can live.

I have everything now. I have love. I have home. I have health. I have stability. I have community. I have peace. I have harmony. I have a sense of purpose. I have treasures that no one can take from me and no online audience could bestow upon me. I don’t need to be visible, because I can never disappear as long as God sees me. God gives you back the wasted years.

And I think, for those who are terminally online and wouldn’t know what a life apart from the Internet would entail, the Earth has shifted. Jesus is taking back what is His:

It was Cain who killed over words, you know? Cain who thought that words were enough reason to kill. Right now, there is blood crying out to God from the ground, and Christianity is a religion spread by the blood of its martyrs. Little children. Schoolteachers. A moderate conservative speaker. People praying.

The story of Cain and Abel is one of sibling rivalry, the first murder, and of jealousy: Cain and then Abel were the first two sons of Adam and Eve, a farmer and a herder, respectively. Both made an offering to God: Cain offered some of the fruits of his harvest, and Able the firstborn of his flock and their fattened parts. God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s offering. Cain was disheartened but told that if he did well, he would be accepted, and if not, sin would be his fate. This story could be misinterpreted to mean that God rejected Cain’s offering because it was fruits and vegetables or grains and not meat, and that God prefers a living sacrifice, but the key is that Cain made an offering, but Abel gave God both the best and the first when his own future was not secured: Abel not only gave God the “fattened” parts, which are the most caloric and nutrient-dense, but also the first of his flock, meaning that before Abel even knew how many new animals he would have and which of those would be healthy among them, he gave God what came first without even knowing if what came first may also be the last, if it would be all that he would have among his new flock and how giving the firstborn of his flock will affect his stability and wealth. Animal husbandry has it’s own uncertainties, such as not knowing if an animal will be born alive, or if the mother will survive, or how many babies will be born. Labor is long, and it can be complicated. The firstborn could be the strongest – best parents, stronger bodies. If Abel gave God his first from his new flock, it’s likely that his herd hadn’t finished giving birth that season. Abel’s offering was an act of utter and total faith. On the other hand, all we know about Cain’s offering was that it was some of the fruits of the land with no other description – it was an offering, but not necessarily an offering of faith. However, instead of listening to God and doing better, Cain decided to kill Abel instead. The motive is clear – jealousy – but the rationale is lacking. Did Cain hope that without a competitor, God would simply accept less than what He was owed? Did Cain conflate God’s rejection of the offering to be a rejection of himself? Did Cain simply want to hurt God, and if so, why did he lie about knowing his brother’s circumstances? Did Cain think that God would favor Abel less if he was no longer living? Or rather, did Cain believe that God’s rejection of the offering was Abel’s fault and not his own? It’s the easiest explanation for a bruised ego to swallow. The firstborn son had his little brother elevated above him. The firstborn who stayed put on the land was supplanted by the one who wanders and sleeps in a field surrounded by his animals.

Abel didn’t do anything to Cain. Even if one could argue that perhaps Abel had the intention to outdo Cain in front of God by offering his best, and even if one could argue that if Abel succeeded, that he would have unfairly taken from Cain something that was his birthright as the oldest son, the argument falls flat because 1) God would have seen through it and would not have been pleased to have been used as mere prop in a sibling rivalry, 2) Cain did not have the power to decide what is good enough for God, and there is no reason to believe that at any time in God’s relationship with humans as noted in Scripture that humans get to decide amongst themselves what is good enough for God, 3) Cain was not entitled to God’s favor, as God admonished Cain to this effect, and 4) to kill someone based on what you think someone thinks is just murder, a depraved and utterly selfish act done strictly in self-interest alone. God admonished Cain that his own bad feelings were his own problem, and that if he wanted to stop having bad feelings, all he had to do was do better. You could see God’s admonishment as an insult, or you can be an adult and see it for what it truly was: Cain was given an opportunity to come back to God with a righteous offering, and with a growth mindset since he knew what the bar was now since he knew what Abel offered. But Cain didn’t want to grow, didn’t want to compete, didn’t want to try harder, and more importantly: he didn’t want to have faith. What he wanted was to have the bar lowered to his level, and with no Abel, Cain would be the bar.

Cain, instead, was banished from God’s sight, to wander the Earth for eternity. The Earth was cursed and Cain was unable to reap anything from it. Cain, the eldest who once had a claim on the land and made his living from the land under his feet, was stripped of that land: you can’t grow produce if you’re wandering forever. Cain didn’t lose his mortal life, but he lost his identity and his pride, the very things he wanted to preserve. And here too, God is merciful: the first murderer has been spared from the same fate.

“Fascism” does not have a concrete definition, but generally speaking: murdering people because they think differently from you, or because you suspect they think differently from you, is a pretty fucking fascist thing to do.

I don’t have to be around anyone who thinks they’re perpetual victims of thought crimes and that anything less than enthusiastic indulgence is genocide.

What Now?

This used to be an astrology blog, but in January 2024, it stopped. I replaced some of the content with Catholic content, and my intention was to continue with theological posts, but that didn’t pan out: I am a catechist, but I don’t think I’m ready to do that. I also don’t think that’s really my bag: I was trying to sell astrology services before, but I’m not trying to sell myself as a catechist. But when I think about what I’ve been doing for the last almost four and a half months since I was led out of Egypt and crossed my personal Red Sea, I’ve been wondering what to do with this blog. Sure, I’ve paid for it, and I still like to write. I’ve been reading the Quotidian Mysteries and realizing that despite what a colleague insisted when I told them I was leaving for the farflung hinterlands of the Southern Midwest, I don’t really miss Chicago. It’s a city I tried to flee every weekend for years. It’s a city I would sit in and plan road trips away from.

I am not bored with my quiet life. I am not bored with my turn of the century bungalow that needs work, or the tiny kitchen that came with it where I make food for a husband who laments that I’m making him fat. I’m not bored with watching the last remaining hummingbirds at my feeders, or with going out in the morning to pick tomatoes. I’m not bored with trying to figure out the logistics of living in this old house together and musing on the fact that I have known him for less than a year but I knew him and he knew me the moment we saw each other. (And, if you’re wondering, we met on CatholicMatch). I am not bored with knitting. I am not bored with being out of the courtroom and working from home in a new field that I’m really grateful that I get to be a part of. I’m not bored with seeing stars at night. I’m not bored with the sound of birds, the rustle of leaves, the freight train in the distance, the corn and the beans in the fields, the rolling hills, the bluffs, the pawpaw trees, the persimmons, the vineyards, the cows or goats or sheep or horses, the armadillos I have only ever seen dead on the road, the laundry, the cleaning, or the shopping. I am not bored with Walmart or how nice everyone who works there is. I am not bored with small talk. I am not bored with country churches and their perpetual lack of solemn music – and thus, I’m not bored with polka mass, or bluegrass mass, or folk mass, and certainly not bored with the sound of my husband singing mass. I’m not bored with attending OCIA and being a part of the faith journey of all these new Catholics. I’m not bored with the herb garden in my dining room, and I’m not bored with the sound of my husband’s footsteps upstairs when he comes home from work. I’m not bored with crossing the Mississippi. I’m not bored with sunshine. I’m not bored with baking and cooking my way into a zero waste kitchen – or as close to it as I can get. I’m not bored with knitting. I’m not bored with small talk. I’m not bored with going to bed early so I can wake up early.

Life is not about being seen or validated by other people. Life is meant to be lived, in its big moments, and also in its small moments.

So what shall I do? Shall I start a lifestyle blog? How about a cooking blog? I’ve thought about that, but I’ve also thought about how I may have to grow tolerant of a lot of the issues that come with such a blog, like coming up with new recipes, taking good pictures, and being gracious when someone gives a bad review when they clearly didn’t follow directions or tried to make a vegan substitution that any moderately experienced baker could tell you would never work (guys: there are really no good plant substitutes for milk or eggs. Bananas and nut juices just aren’t the same.) Or maybe I can blog about doing repairs and updates on this old house, or gardening, or what goes on at mass at these little churches, or how to knit some garland for your rustic farmhouse style Christmas tree.

Today, I made Polish pickle soup, a tomato and picked onion salad, a farmer cheese spread, and some peasant bread for dinner as a break from the tomato influx we’ve been having since the weather cooled and to use up some ingredients in the house, especially because we still have plenty more pickles fermenting away. The day before, we had a Sunday sauce that I made from our tomatoes. This is just stuff I like to do. This is just my second nature to want to cook all day and feed my husband well.

I’ve been really blessed. I know that things don’t always stay the same, and that there are crosses, but as He said, His yoke is easy and His burden light, and He is your God who, while carrying His own cross, reaches over to help you with your much smaller one. This He has done for me the past ten months with my little crosses. And those too I am grateful for. My life was very different two years ago. I couldn’t have imagined this for myself, and I certainly couldn’t have obtained any of this by myself.

God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Tomorrow I’m going to try to find the time to make an applesauce spiced bundt cake with a spice glaze.