Robby Brown

I hate it. I'd love a solution, but I don't even fully know what pulled me out, so I guess I'll just be sadder today.

I truly get why boys fall for it. The manosphere exploits the truth that everyone is worthy of love and lovable. They don't believe it about the boys they manipulate, but they use it, twisting it into a disgusting lie of, "You are entitled to female affection."

I wasn't that guy, and I knew I wasn't that guy, but I was lost and lonely while those guys all seemed so connected and beloved. Add being a "conservative" Christian into the mix, and I had no place and no space to find myself. (Deconstruction didn't come until seminary.)

I was so lost as a young man surrounded proto-manosphere messages treating women as toys and possessions. The disgusting conversations and violations of trust I heard and endured in college. I can't imagine what it was like for women.

Harming Trans folk harms Christ.
Harming migrants harms Christ.
Harming the sick harms Christ.
Harming poor people harms Christ.

We love God by loving each other, and we demonstrate our contempt for God when we increase suffering for anyone.

Can we collectively try love just once?

A picture of the cutest Labrador Retriever/Chesapeake Bay Retriever Mix ever named Skye laying on her back on a dog cot just looking content. She is wearing a rainbow collar that uses a seatbelt buckle to close it.

I don't know how to not be...hopeless and exhausted...right now.

But I will try if you will try.

Let's see if we can muster enough love and compassion to care for one person tomorrow (even if that person is yourself).

Picture of Skye, who loves everyone like I wish I did.

The Problem with Our Contempt When our hearts get sick with hatred, we start dehumanizing the other and no longer see suffering but just justice served. Once you celebrate the suffering of one, then there is no bar to cross of how evil or bad someone needs to be to celebrate their suffering, and eventually you cheer when ordinary people suffer the actions of the elites.

This is way too long and took too much of my energy, but I need to put it out there.

The image is an alternate title, I suppose: Can we try love?

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

Baldwin said it best.

please be kind. discuss the failings of the federal and state governments that led to this but the victims of this were children at a fucking summer camp. they didn't vote for anything. i am literally begging you to maintain some human empathy here

I know this doesn't matter, but I REALLY HATE that emdashes are a sign of AI.

Anyone who says "This is what they voted for" in response to the tragedy unfolding in Texas is having a vile thought and needs to sit shamefully in a corner until they learn what solidarity is.

LMA rules for avoiding burn out:

1. Is this accomplishing anything?
2. Is this fun?

We're not gonna tell you what you ought to do, but for us, if the answer is no to both, we don't do it

Your enemies are people in actual power not some random person on the internet.

I was once again reminded today of how much I enjoy being around people who give grace to others and who just want to make things better for themselves and their communities. No posturing, no pontificating, just wanting to figure out how to be with each other and what to DO.

FYI: That's Rev. Tony Larson, Co-Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

YouTube video by Rev. Robert Glen Brown "Have Compassion" — "I Love You!" Fridays No. 11

"Have Compassion"

"I Love You!" Fridays #11

youtu.be/zzgtFSN7RDc

The fascist win if you lose your compassion for other people. That's part of the war. You have to keep compassion.

YouTube video by Rev. Robert Glen Brown "Just...I love you." (I Love You Fridays 10)

"Just...I love you."

"I Love You!" Fridays #10

youtu.be/81ZuS8xDraY

Da Pope

How can I help if I cannot function? And, I assume, if the already wildly inadequate mental health system is further gutted and made more inadequate.

...or maybe it is just me.... 11/

This isn't an original thought, so maybe I just caught a glimpse of a skeet that put it in my mind and then didn't follow up and lost the original skeet and could have found an answer but didn't and should be derided, but it just seems like a part of the conversation we aren't having. 10/

...people starving, and [INSERT SO MANY MORE HORRORS]. I know where my mental health needs lie in the grand scheme, but it's not just me. How do we address mental health crises when they are the appropriate responses to the macro-stressors going on around us? 9/

We also have the problem of my mental health being just not that important compared to men being given life sentences in a torture prison without a scrap of due process, children with cancer being deported without their cancer medication, people dying due to medicines not being distributed... 8/

So what is the solution? Do we have any plans to prevent everyone not okay with torture prisons, codified transphobia, increasing child cancer, and taking food from starving people* to not be in constant mental health crisis? 7/

* List is somehow not exhaustive.

I know I could receive treatment for symptoms - and I'm a coward and not getting help right now because my last therapist was...not great for a progressive pastor to see - but the macro-stressors causing my symptoms won't go away and will continue to amplify. 6/

The solution isn't to dissociate (especially as someone who is supposed to make moral statements at least occasionally), but I cannot keep on top of things, respond appropriately, and maintain my mental health. 5/

(Also, I don't know if up-to-the-second updates about the horrors are useful. I have the correct response to what happened this hour, and then have that exact response the next hour, ad nauseam, until I have a mental break.) 4/

Emma Roberts saying "What fresh Hell is this?" on Scream Queens. Or my morning, noon, and bedtime ritual. (Also, thought it was from American Horror Story, and I guess Frasier did it first?)

But, like, every day I have the Emma Roberts "What fresh Hell is this?" GIF experience multiple times because of some new horror happening in Des Moines or DC. 3/

(I learned it's also a Frasier GIF trying to find the Emma Roberts GIF)

It would be delusional and unhealthy to just be okay with everything that is going on, (as a lay person, I would assume) diagnostic even, but clearly just always being angry, fearful, and anxious about everything is unhealthy and diagnostic, too. 2/

Honest question I do not know the answer to: how do we address the mental health symptoms of our current reality - constant anger, constant fear, constant anxiety over what will happen next, etc. - when those symptoms are the correct response to what is happening around us? 1/