Tell Me You Love To

“The true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention.”

― Tim Keller, "Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters"

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Dear Alex,

Most of our conversations are left unsaid in the run of a day. We feel, see and do without the urge or capacity to ascribe words to our flow, reflection and stillness. There is no time or logic to earmark our babbles for worth.

The reality is we need not say much about ourselves to be known in truth and detail. Every week Facebook flags me with friend requests from single steamy men with scam screenshots in Chinese or English contextualized just for me. Here is one I got yesterday:

「你會不會忽然的出現，在街角的咖啡店。對你說一句，只是說一句，好久不見。」

“Do you suddenly show up at the coffee shop on the corner? A word to you, just a word, it's been a while.”

Another male sender tells me on the same day along with scores of floral and travel photos:

「如果全世界都背叛了你，我會站在你背後背叛全世界。你說這樣好嗎？」

“If the whole world turned against you, I'll stand behind you and betray the whole world. What do you say?”

For a while on Facebook, I have falsified my gender option, following the comedy of perhaps garnering more invites from hot chicks in need of my companionship. My protest didn’t seem to work, not even after my reporting of fake accounts. Maybe I should paste for my new profile photo a sweltering sneer of a swine.

With porky baits our world is over-populated and polluted. If this latex or lick makes you feel good and none gets hurt, then go for it. The hardworking hired crew, spewing out for us in nanoseconds slews of offers and vows on screen, will not misunderstand our natural impulses to drool over Beauty, Truth, Freedom, Spirituality, Relationships, Justice and Power coded in our DNA.

If sellers seem more honest than sermons about our desires, can I get real too about the flashes and flesh I fantasize about and idolize most? From pillow to pew, midnight through morning milk, out here in the market, school and office, we toggle between our world of idols and whispers in worship with outlandish creativity. Your choice to love who and what will keep you feeling, seeing and doing stuff that could in turn overturn pledges to scum, love to apathy, an end to birth.

Your wife led a small gathering of ladies last night on Zoom to engage us in a 46-minute recorded sermon about the secrecy of our open idol worship. A few days earlier, she sent us an email with its YouTube link to help us prepare for our group discussion with plans for us to listen again to the audio if one of us had not previewed it. In a private email, I had asked her if it would be necessary for all of us to repeat all 46 minutes of hearing the message during our virtual fellowship. Could we not make better use of our time and energy than resume redundancy?

Our meeting spilled overtime in words and prayers, the audio re-booted twice for me from start through end this week. I’ve been told many things by many folks and ads but nothing comes closer than truth tumbling to trauma, the touch of love so jealous that it makes you whole and sick to your sweetness, words which could only have been the voice of change.

Yours,

Kate

PS. In response to my reporting of fake profiles, Facebook told me it would evaluate my claims on the basis of “community standards”. A day later, I received a standard text telling me its verdict: no fraud or damage found.