Witt's End

This is my feeble (if long-winded) attempt at bridge building and understanding. I started this piece weeks ago. I shelved it after the Charlie Kirk assassination. I picked it back up after President Nelson passed and then had a night where I could stop writing here and elsewhere following the shooting and arson of the chapel in Grand Blanc. I'd be lying if this was easy to commit to paper. But I have to. Rarely have I felt this level of compulsion to write. To share what I have to say.  Let me try. Here's a start. My faith is not what it once was. Surety has been replaced by hope. Which probably isn't a bad thing. The focus is more on fundamentals of belief and the actions they bring.  I have absolutely struggled with the theology, doctrines, practices, policies, and culture surrounding the faith of my youth. I'm open and honest about that. But I worry that's not always returned. The honest assessment that we all struggle with the teachings and guidance of such a l...

Too often us humans tell ourselves that religious participation will solve all of our problems. That all of the resources we need are in one place. But are they? Is church truly the place that fix all of our temporal and physical needs as well as the spiritual? Does it have the resources required to do so. I'm not sure.  This may be the ultimate expression of "I need prayer and my medication" I've ever written. Because I am seeing more and more how different aspects of my life need different helps and attention.  There was a time where I tied my mental health to my spirituality. But that has changed. Mostly through experience. Now I view them separately but impacted by each other. Both because I've needed to address my mental health. And because I channeled it into a career.  I love my current role in my career. I'm passionate about it. Being able to help people on recovery is a massive aid to my own recovery. I love being able to have access to literature and...

I own an AR-15. I built it from parts. More assembled it than built it. But that's how you put them together. Especially when you've spent a long time determining how you want to configure your rifle, what the use case(s) would be, and what makes sense to you as the user.  It's a facsimile of a dissipator. 16 inch barrel with full length rifle sights. But instead of a full rifle length gas system it has a mid length gas system hanging out under the handguard. Which instead of an A1 or A2 guard is a Magpul MOE. I run it with iron sights, just cause that's fun to do. Now to many people the writing of those paragraphs would paint me as holding very specific policy plans and goals. But there in lies the rub. The complexity and experience of being someone who owns firearms, really likes them, but thinks we can do more as a society to address the issues they cause.  I started writing this last year and kept stopping and starting. I couldn't ignore various events and the p...

Process matters. How we do something is as important as the what and the why in government. I'm an institutionalist. And I'm worried about the long term ramifications of what we're seeing happening.  I'm all for putting in the work to streamline our national budget. We need to examine for waste, fraud, and abuse. I would argue the largest factor is waste with a lot of redundancies. We can do what we can to increase efficiency. But the executive needs to be restrained in how they do it. For two major reasons.  One, congress is delegated the purse. Period. Article one of the Constitution. Congress handles the budget and taxation. The most democratic portion of the the entire federal system (the house) is supposed to originate all related legislation. It's their job to fix this. To work on it. Now the executive can veto and can provide guidance. They're in the perfect place to address these issues. They could impound and work with congress through the proper proced...

 I’ve struggled many times to describe what I do for work. And I’ve struggled just as hard to explain how you get there.  This was especially apparent this week. People love the population I work with but have no idea what I do. What it means. I feel it’s important to illuminate it.  I am a Peer Support Specialist at the VA. I’m currently credentialed as a Peer Counselor in the state of Washington (the state will be transitioning to a Peer Specialist license with more training and education). What does that mean?  Peers are people with lived experience with mental health and/or substance abuse challenges. They are successful and involved in their recovery. Those peers working at the VA also have to be veterans. That’s who we are.  Now to what we do. All peers support people in their recovery. They may run support groups, they do accountability checks. Peers help people access their resources. Peers may work on therapy and recovery skills with people both in grou...

Make America great again. Make men great again. Catchy phrases. Easy to remember. They work well as slogans and rallying cries.  I understand the desire for nostalgia and aspiration. I do. But I don’t know if this is it: I remember when the make America great again started to get some steam. I asked what time period was America great. I was told repeatedly the 1950s. A time where there was no civil rights amendment. A time of economic prosperity, but women couldn’t open a bank account on their own.  That’s the problem with looking backward. We can get tunnel vision. We can focus on what benefitted us and who we are (or would be) and we miss how others would be affected.  I personally feel that America has always been great due to its potential, people, and perpetual progression. So I struggle with looking backward when we have so much ahead of us.  The same portions of society that truly believe that America needs redemption to a state of greatness also thing that we...

“  You can’t call yourself a man of peace unless you’re capable of great violence. Otherwise you’re harmless.” I’ve seen countless variations of this theme. And I’ve come to realize in the modern era those words carry less weight. The physical threshold of who can commit great bodily harm to people has not been lower.  Extreme amounts of violence can caused by properly placed fertilizer and a detonator. A keystroke can shutdown massive infrastructure, All you need is a the ability to hold and aim a firearm with a working trigger finger to kill someone. It’s a far cry from the decades of training and conditioning it used to take to be a warrior. I mean it’s why armies transitioned to firearms. It made it easier to conscript more into service with shorter periods of training. Now I don’t say this to diminish what happens when someone truly trains to operate as a professional warfighter in today’s battlefield. The lowered threshold to entry makes those who properly train that muc...

 People are messy. People have always been messy. A lot of historical figures we look to benefit us in one aspect of their lives and are tragically failing at the next.  Artists that have inspired us often do not live up to their ideals or their work in their personal lives.  People in our lives who love us, treat us well, may be the same who are rude, mean, and uncaring to others in our lives.  And we as individuals are no different.  I've been harsh at times with how I now view some of the art and literature that most informed and changed me. I look at simple failings of the creator and then cast out the emotions I felt and growth I had with it. At least I did for awhile.  I can't do that anymore.  I am looking back at what saved me, what helped me, and I'm turning into the skid. The threshold to throw it out of my life has increased and is still in flux. All I know at this time, is there I certain things I love that I'm spending more time with again...

The lack of acceptance and often hostility I’ve felt in so many circles is currently growing.  This is a stream of consciousness filled with frustration and pain. Read accordingly. Please.—- Have you ever spent time in a place where people hate an inherent part of you? Repeatedly? I’m not talking a belief you hold. I’m talking about something inherent. Intrinsic to you. Now I’m a privileged white guy, so my experience doesn’t involve around race. And usually doesn’t involve my gender.  Mine involves something you can’t see. Something that  ——— I'm just going to say it. I'm flabbergasted at times by how much so many people fear and/or hate queer people. I'm using the catch all term for a reason. It's not a specific fear or anger. It's diffused. It's more inherent. It's frightening to me.  Different cultural groups are grappling with the history and the present as they work through this period of history.  I'm struggling to give the grace to others on this...

There's a term that doesn't get addressed much in my faith when it comes to identity and a sense of self and being. That term is erasure. Specifically the more tailored and informative term of bi-erasure. Many people who may read this may not be familiar with the term, others may think it's apologetics  I think the problem I've ran into, the struggle I've had is that identity in my faith is most commonly correlated to one's behavior. When it comes to the topic of sexuality this becomes especially prevalent and I'm afraid misses the boat.  I've written before about how I don't see my sexuality as a burden, no I see it as an inherent part of who I am. That idea is ambivalently addressed by my faith. At times that ambivalence or mystery is harmful.  Questions often arise. Questions that I struggle to address. Am I magically saved just because I’m married to my wife? As a married member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints it’s common knowl...

"Change your thoughts, change everything." I keep seeing variations of this quote or idea all over. And it's not horrible. But it's not universally beneficial either.  I don’t disagree with the idea that our thoughts can be the difference. That they can set moods. That they can make the difference in outcomes, mental, emotional, and physical. Thoughts matter. We have to learn how to control them. Develop them. Use them. It’s a more than worthwhile endeavor. It’s just not an equal one. All people have different struggles. Different trials with this.  Uncontrolled moods, intrusive thoughts, physical addictions, traumatic events, neurodivergent struggles, and even brain damage. They all wreak havoc on one’s cognition. Purposeful thought isn’t as easy for some as it is for others. The amount of effort required is different.  At one point in my life, I'd convinced myself I still had pain. There was racing anxiety that accompanied my every move. The line between physica...

  We are all children of God full of inherent goodness. All human rights need protection for that reason. But not all rights and humans have need of aid right now. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I prioritize my time and effort. Who do I spend my time on. First and foremost is my family and loved ones. They fill my cup, I fill there’s, it’s the inner circle. And it takes the majority of my time. So how do I spend the rest of my limited resources? I’ve actually had to prioritize lately so I got very analytical about this. And I came up with a list that I’ve been using. An algorithm if you will.  It’s four questions and I’m going to list them in the level of precedence I think. Who’s dying more often than they should? Who faces harm from both the governing bodies and society at large? Who faces official discrimination or disparity? Where are there inordinate disparities of outcomes in society? It take these four and run them through one more simple question. Given my limited ...