An
Anthology
of
Madness
selected poems & essays by
Max Andrew Dubinsky
With the exception of These Are No Conditions For The Truth, all essays and poems were originally published by Max Andrew Dubinsky on MakeItMAD.com between 2010 and 2012.
This book is a work of nonfiction. Character names and locations have been changed to protect those involved.
An Anthology of Madness
Copyright © 2013 Max Andrew Dubinsky
Cover art and design by Lauren Nicole Dubinsky
All rights reserved. No part of this book or website may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever - except for brief quotations used in the purpose of review - without written permission from the author.
ISBN-10:0989302113
ISBN-13:978-0-9893021-1-1
Also by Max Andrew Dubinsky
We Can’t Go Home Again
Dislocated.
Make It MAD readers, thank you.
Inside
Introduction
These Are No Conditions For The Truth
Nobody Said This Was Going To Be Easy
And The Hero Hides In The Bathroom
I Am The Greatest Hypocrite That Ever Lived
The Only Thing Left To Fear
Grace Is...
Worthless
Invisible
Preach
The Greatest Liar You Are Ever Going To Know Is You
Defenseless In The Very Ocean Your God Created
If We Reach the Cities We Will Reach The Nations
Enjoy The Nuts
Bleed
And Then We Were Saved
We’re All Screwed Up Forever And Ever, Amen
Epilogue
“About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it cannot be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use before it gets around to paralyzing you.”
- J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
“...the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.”
- Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
Author’s Note: With the exception of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ for the atonement of our sins and his resurrection so that we may have eternal life, the ideas in this book are not to be considered absolute truths. This is not a self-help manual nor a guide to Christianity. The stories within are simply what was true for me at the time they were written during my personal struggles with sobriety, homelessness, finding my faith, the church, and grace. Some of the ideas may work for you, others you may choose to leave behind. These stories, essays, and poems exist in this format because I am not the first person to struggle with these ideas, and I will not be the last.
Introduction
If a Christian discovers an idea that doesn’t quite gel with their theology, their relationship with God, they peg it as sin. Scripture gets used like a silver bullet locked and loaded to put down a werewolf. I think we too often forget that you, me, and the rest of the carbon-based bodies calling this planet, “Home,” are equally responsible for the mutiny of the human race against God. It took me years to realize not a single soul on this rotating rock of magma and sin deserves to go to heaven. When I began blogging, I thought I deserved a place in the clouds with the angels and rivers of milkshakes and gold. I stepped into the rising river of faux-celebrity Christian bloggers and writers and pastors, washing myself downstream into the land of, “I have a blog and a lot of people read it so that makes me responsible to be an authority on the subject.” As if having a blog, a tiny pathetic corner of the Internet to publish my thoughts, suddenly made me a theologian. And with the usefulness of Internet Anonyminity it was easier (and endorphin-producing) to respond to one’s heart with a disgusting dosage of, “You’re wrong,” rather than having a face-to-face conversation. As it turned out, it didn’t matter how many followers I had, I still couldn’t get into any LA clubs. No one has ever asked for my autograph or invited me to speak at a conference. Talking about pornography did not make me a hero. Not going to church on Sunday did not make me a revolutionary. I was (and still am) simply alive and fucked up as the rest of you. The only difference between any of us is who is and who isn’t trying to prove they’re okay.
Me, I’m not okay. But if you are, congratulations. Go plant a tree or a church somewhere and stay out of the goddamn comment sections.
These Are No Conditions For The Truth
Where is your faith today?
Where is your truth?
Your love?
We only see jealousy.
See you drowning in a jealous sea.
You sit there in your comfortable chairs, in your three-piece suits. You attend churches with more money in the parking lot than you will ever give to the single mother next door. You are hanging from the branch of good in a tree that was planted only to die. You’re stuck answering phones and brewing coffee, pumping gas in a town you swore you’d leave and never return to.
You think you have the answer because you’re older and wiser and have lived more life than us, but we are beginning to suspect you don’t have the answer at all.
Is it our exploration of the world in ways you never did that makes you so uncomfortable? Seeing God in a way you never have? Are we freer than you’ve ever been or could hope to be?
We demand more than your Sunday mornings and safe communities. We are looking for the world to tell us things. We are relying on the testimonies of strangers.
We can no longer tell the world what is right, only that we understand how it could have seemed so right at the time.
Who are you to question us for seeking? For being so desperate to be sought? For not knowing? Our journey is no different from your job. You talk as though you’ve never wondered how you ended up somewhere, wondering what your purpose is in this place. Why God has you where he has you, or why God doesn’t seem to have you at all.
You think we are running away from ourselves? You’re right. We are. And we’re wondering why you’re not. We are running away from ourselves because we are running to God. Isn’t that what the Christ was talking about?
“Whoever lays down his own life will surely find it.”
Consider what we do the journey of laying down our lives, running from ourselves because we are sick. Sick of comforts, materialism, and habits. Sick of what the world expects, our parents expect, our pastors expect. Sick of our lazy Sunday worship and our half-committed prayers. We are sick with your to-do lists and your knowledge.
Sick with joyless sermons and deceitful hearts.
There is a poison in our veins, and we are beginning to understand you might not have the antidote we’ve been lead to believe you’ve had all along.
And now we miss our emotions.
We are longing for creativity.
To be creatively set free.
This world was made to be felt and how can you expect us to feel when you demand that we kill the very thing which keeps the blood in our veins and the colors in our faces?
We were made for romance, created by the ultimate lover. To deny the very desire of our hearts would be to deny the very one who placed it there.
And now we can love no longer in this place.
We do not pretend to know what you are looking for, but we are not here to be your leaders, your saviors, or your teachers. But if it’s the truth you seek, we are here to send you in the right direction. And we are going to let it wreck you.<
br />
The
Truth
Will
Wreck
This
Place
Nobody Said This Was Going To Be Easy
I hit one of my lowest points while attending church. It didn’t happen while addicted to pornography or after being fired from a job for racial discrimination and drinking away my severance check at a bar called The Bitch where I denied my belief in God after a woman I wanted to sleep with pointed out the cross tattooed on my arm and asked if Jesus Christ was my Lord and Personal Savior. It almost happened when I was sixteen and ran a stop sign in my first car on my first date, totaling the vehicle along with any chance of a romantic relationship. This particular lowness happened while sitting in a multi-million dollar, cushioned-seat, air-conditioned sanctuary where the pastor informed his congregation if they were not tithing ten percent they were, in fact, robbing God. This was right after the rock band performance where the worship leader said in the middle of his power ballad cover of a David Crowder song, “Close your eyes and put your hands in the air. It’s just you and God here,” even though his face was plastered in true 1080 high definition on two fifteen foot screens hanging above the platform. “God?” I asked, looking up. “I can see your pores.”
He then quoted Malachi, promising God would open the windows of Heaven and rain down riches and money and a new car upon our heads. “All He asks for is ten percent and you can keep the rest. That sounds like a pretty fair deal if you ask me.” He called it having a “heart for the house.” They would throw this term around like serving in the church began and ended within their four walls of the sanctuary. And me, needing a new car and not wanting to steal from The King of Kings who halts the waves and knows the name of every star, the very God who could snuff me out of existence and rules all of Heaven, Earth and Hell; the God who created the Destroyer who wrecks havoc, the blacksmith who forges against me, that God, I didn’t want him losing any sleep over my ten percent. I was beginning to understand the most important part of being a Christian was falling in line with the church’s checklist. That day I made tithing a regularity in my life out of fear, guilt, and the desire to show the church I was on board with wherever their ship was sailing.
During the months I couldn’t afford to give, the leadership team looked down on me and the rest of us who didn’t have a penny left with which to show how fiercely our heart for the house was beating. “You wouldn’t be in this situation if you were tithing,” I’d be told by mouths I couldn’t see, but rather eyes staring up at me from iPads and twenty-seven inch iMac monitors – tools necessary for “Building the Kingdom” of course.
Years later I find it hard to blame God for bouncing me around from job to job, from couch to couch, and car to street all because of my inconsistent tithing. I gave two-and-a-half years of my life to a church in Los Angeles that seemed to believe God’s blessings were a direct result of your actions. Or lack thereof. So I tithed to the penny whenever I could, believing God would open the windows of heaven. Soon my car was towed to a junkyard and turned into a case of Coca-Cola cans, my bank account held an average of negative thirty-six cents, I was fired from working at a major Hollywood production studio after blogging about them, the locks were changed on my apartment, and the fifteen hundred dollar speed bike lent to me by my filmmaker friend, Rick, was stolen out of a Target parking lot by a couple of punk kids swinging bolt cutters and bad ideas. From what I could tell, God was the one robbing me.
I held myself in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, phone to my ear, bike gone, life over. The article I’d written naming my employer had been taken down, legal action threatened, and I was shamed, guilt-ridden, embarrassed, and believed my career as a writer, as well as in the industry, was over until the man who helped me get sober said to me, “When you’re ready, get up. Because I can’t image a better compliment to receive as a writer. Someone with millions of dollars and a lot of power in Hollywood considered your words influential enough that they felt the need to destroy you.”
I got up.
Rick, also beginning to question the world of, “If you’d been tithing more, this wouldn’t have happened to you,” was particularly fascinated with my behavior and life choices. He was unfazed by the loss of his bike and even told me, “I’d lend it to you again even if I knew it was going to be stolen.” One December evening still warm enough to sit outside he asked, “What are you going to do now?” I had to be careful. I was becoming increasingly suspicious of everyone’s intentions toward me. Even his. We were members of the same church. Rick was employed by them. But just as I was suspicious of everyone, I began to feel the congregation, particularly the staff, growing suspicious of me. As I continued to blog, my following and influence continued to grow. Surpassing the church’s Internet presence, I felt watched, guarded, and imprisoned by them. It was as though my being there left a “disturbance in the force.” I was the disturbance. They were the force.
I had no idea how to turn my life around. I only wanted to write. And anyone I told this to thought it was nice and all, but what was I doing to fund my dream of being a writer? Clearly I’d made enough bad decisions, hadn’t I? I would reply that the thought of working another retail or restaurant job made me sick. It seemed like everyone I knew settled for jobs they hated because it was their “ministry,” and serving was far more important than the desires of their hearts.
More than that, I desperately wanted out. My relationship with Christ was stunted. The God I read about in the Bible was not the God I heard about in church. I’d grown tired of watching well-dressed Christians with a heart for acting in Hollywood serve other well-dressed Christians every Sunday while men and women wrapped in blankets dug through our discarded coffee cups piled high inside the trashcans out front looking for plastic to recycle and cigarette butts to smoke.
“How can we help them?” I asked.
“We need to invite them in so they can accept the Lord.”
I shrugged. “Or we could just buy them a sandwich.”
This was the evidence I needed to realize my relationship with God no longer extended beyond Sundays. It was as if the only way I could get to God was through the church. (And while I fully support and believe in the church, for she is the Bride of Christ, I also believe she is more than a nine million dollar building with live high definition streaming capabilities.) I wanted to know if my God existed elsewhere. I wanted to see him outside of my tight-knit Christian community.
I wanted to see him in the streets.
“I’m just going to eBay my way across the USA,” I said to Rick. “People can bid on me to live with them, and in return I will tell their stories on my blog.”
I will end up using the kindness of strangers and neighbors to propel my journey rather than eBay, and before I leave, someone on staff will sit me down to say, “You need to wait and do this right. You need sponsors. You need a plan. You should talk to the pastors. I’ll set up a meeting.”
“No. You just need to go,” Rick said.
“Not knowing where I am going or what I am doing is the plan,” I replied.
A few weeks later I buy a map. Pleased with my purchase and ready to draw lines and circles all over the USA, I walk around to the back parking lot, catching sight of an aging black gentleman headed right for me. When someone is headed right for you in Los Angeles it means only one thing: they need something from you. Your wallet. Your keys. Your signature. Your spare change. Paying close attention to his age, I determine he’s either going to ask for money or a hip replacement, and I’m no doctor. I can’t quite tell if he’s homeless, or if he simply misplaced his iron and dressed in the dark this morning. I jam a hand in my pocket, prepared to hand him a dollar. He moves toward me as if his muscles have been carved out of wood, a pirate on two peg legs. A cool cigarette-soaked voice humming out of his throat the way jazz drums out of speakers in a dim lit bar, he says to
me, “Can you spare a brother a quarter?” Somebody hand the guy a trumpet and a snare.
“Sure,” I say. I look down at my hand. I’d just pulled seven extremely important dollar bills from my pocket. This is still an unpleasant time in my life. I still don’t have a real job. I make pennies per word editing articles for about.com websites written by an auto-correct generation of college dropouts. I’m sleeping in a newborn’s nursery, and don’t own a car. I’m not exactly marriage material at this critical crossroad of my twenty-first century existence. But I do the best with what I have. And all that happens to be is seven dollars until my next paycheck.
I smile, slapping the money into his palm. “Go buy yourself lunch.”
His hesitation tells me it might just be the most money anyone has ever given him.
“God bless you,” he stammers. “Thank you. You’re wonderful.”
I take a step in the opposite direction.
“What’s your name?” he asks. He takes my hand in his giving me the kind of two-handed shake you deliver at a wake.
“Max.”
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