Joel D @joeld@social.theliturgists.com

I have no clue what my enneagram bin is but I’m a multi-class chaotic good straight white cis male human Pisces first-born prophet INFJ if that helps

#introductions Hello everyone! I’m five years out of church, unable to take it seriously anymore, but missing the fact of community and not exactly stoked about the disenchanted life either. Have been on/off listener to L-ist podcast for a long time.

Married a Canadian, have 2 small kids, enjoy handcrafting websites, programming, & publishing little books. https://joeldueck.com

I also built my own house here in Minnesota, took me three years. I can maybe help with home maintenance-y Qs?

If you stopped going to church, what, if anything, have you found to replace it with? Where do you find community?

The eternal question on here…because if there was an easy answer there would probably be no need for liturgists anything

I think when you get out of a cult, you tend to have a distorted view of how unique the harms and lies were that you experienced there. The world inside it was small and has much bad; when you realize the world outside is large and has much good, you want to say Hey! I got out! You'd never believe how bad it is in there! What you don't yet realize is that the world is full of people who are hurting in the same ways for completely mundane, secular reasons.

Being in a cult is like being in a dream: it’s just not that interesting to anyone but the person who was in it. You know you’ve almost recovered to normalcy when you finally find it boring to think or talk about your past.

Update

“The Human Condition”, by my son, age 4

Also jives with a theory that American “Christians“ are unconsciously something other than Christians in the same way the earliest Christians were Jews who didn’t realize they were something other than Jews

I think I love this phrase “Abrahamic fascists” for religious fundamentalist political tribalists in America. It lumps them in nicely with fundamentalist Muslims where they belong.

Source (reddit comment): https://reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/d79d73/_/f0ydc8y/?context=1

😂😂😂

Jess is reading “The Poisonwood Gospel”, tonight we both looked in each other’s eyes and promised each other that if one of us decided to become missionaries to the Congo the other would take the kids and leave. It was so romantic.

Yesterday, Ren Fest without kids. This morning, State Fair with kids. If I had this to do over again I’d probably have done it the other way around, especially because Ren Fest is likely to become my daughter’s spiritual home. But, still gonna be fun.

spotify playlist “Slapping Songs To Fight God To” LOL

This is pretty cool: a hand-illustrated and -lettered tarot deck based on the periodic table of elements: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1244376122/materia-prima

This is an indie pagan art studio in northern Michigan. I have their “normal” tarot deck and it is gorgeous. Very tempted by this one.

The wedding is in Glencoe, Minnesota which apparently was the subject of a 1985 documentary called “God’s Country” by French filmmaker Louis Malle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Country_(1985_film) (This fact did *not* come to me courtesy of anyone connected to the wedding)

Going to a wedding today for a guy from the indie fundie baptist church we used to go to five years ago. Gonna see a lot of folks we haven’t seen in a looong time lol. Should be wild

“Chase Bank forgives all credit card debt for Canadian customers”

Now do it again for everybody.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/flabbergasted-chase-bank-forgives-credit-130519230.html

I guarantee you that in the irradiated hellscape of the Blade Runner future where the atomized 99% subsist on bugs and porn, the Dow Jones is at roughly 500,000

Here’s my extremely dumb thought for the day. Josh Harris, freshly out as a deconstructing person, also started a marketing company last year that does brand strategy for nonprofits. He should put Science Mike on retainer.

Great 2-part old (pre-Trump!) essay on the old "Procter and Gamble is Satanist" rumor and why you can't fight a bad-faith myth with reasoned debate. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2008/09/08/false-witnesses/

(Wow nothing on this instance about Josh Harris yet)

Sure sex is great but have you ever finally taken a screwdriver and an alan wrench and tightened every single doorknob, towel rod and toilet paper holder in your entire domicile?