Okay, so. This one very specific thing I wrote, that has a background & context in my life & art, has now repeatedly gone viral *for other people* via screencaps & vaguequotes across at least three major social media platforms. At this point, yes I do feel sorta weird about it.
I'm deeply, deeply moved and honored that it's resonated the way it has for so many. I genuinely think there's spiritual longing among the vague overlap of the vague categories of "queer" and "left", as evidenced. I did not arrive at theological thinking easily or comfortably.
The people who comment on it somewhat skeptically or incredulously, usually a variation of "kinda sweet but I'm an atheist cause fuck the Church" or "what so God wants us to suffer???" are, actually, going in the right direction and not far from the feelings that produced it!
I was raised Catholic but at some point was mostly known at church for 1. growling at a priest (sorry Father Jim) and 2. arguing with my Sunday School teacher about the nature of infinity and omniscience (hahaha not sorry). I stopped going as a teenager and it was not a big deal.
Then I got engaged to someone from a devoutly observant Jewish family. If you are not from such a family, I simply need you to understand that me being a gay transsexual seducing their oldest son to a life of decadent sodomy *did not matter* nearly as much as me not being Jewish.
Wedding planning itself was not stressful. I'm an event producer, he's a project manager, all our friends are caterers, photographers, DJs, etc. None of that was hard for us. But it did have to be a Jewish wedding! And suddenly everyone was like "👀 so u converting, or..."
Meanwhile I was working on a bunch of body horror short stories & cyborg poetry that would become EVERYONE ON THE MOON IS ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL, having a grand old furious time "processing" & "inquiring" about disability, gender, race, fatness, colonialism and the whole to-do.
Here's the opening stanza of "The Android That Designed Itself", a horny robot poem that some take for ~merely~ a "trans metaphor." Kinda! This stanza at least comes from my husband & I discussing rhetorical questions in rabbinical argument + rules & lore about golems. 🤖
The terminology of "Good Works" is Catholic, the argument is Jewish, the interfaith adaptability is on purpose, the sentiment is sincere, and *also* the context is me writing sad fucky gay sci fi and trying to use the residual specialness of Sundays to remember to take my T shot.
And now you know! There is a ton of weird God moods in the book as a whole, from "huh, Marian devotion dovetails nicely with mommy issues, maybe I'll launch myself into space?" to "anything that powerful should be destroyed (& eaten as a delicious snack)." https://www.goodreads.com/book...
Further thought for the sake of documentation: https://x.com/JulianKJarboe/st...
(Someone tried to "inform" me last night that "This is from a tiktok, yall should find the original." And you know what, now I understand why some writers only post their good reviews and pictures of their pets!)
if you're not Jewish btw and you're like "wait what Jewish theology is this in dialogue with, like a bible passage or something?" first of all no and also that's not how that works, but it's in the mishnah via rabbi akiva, literally second paragraph here: #Selected_legends class="text-blue-500 hover:underline" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Got another wave of questions recently, so I added this FAQ section to my website for this thread, hope it clears some things up: https://juliankjarboe.com/abou...
@JulianKJarboe lols so to add to the weirdness, i found out about this precisely via one of those viral vaguequotes, sending it to my Jewish ex (my summary: tikkun olam but make it trans), and learning that you were the original author
@JulianKJarboe I didn't know there was a book connected to these words that have brought me such comfort. Thank you for this. Instant purchase! Can't wait to read the rest of Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel!
@JulianKJarboe Wow, that tweet is beautiful. I had _almost_ gotten there on my own, having said on multiple occasions, "God made me trans; God doesn't make mistakes; therefore I am trans for a reason, denying that is resisting God, & I am meant to figure out how best to live as a trans person."
@JulianKJarboe I deleted my reblog from elsewhere and reblogged this instead
@JulianKJarboe Reading this thread caused me to purchase your book on Kindle just now! I love theology & scifi but rarely see them combined. My fav authors are Lois Bujold & Becky Chambers. See, the tweet isn't ONLY getting stolen! It is also causing me to give you (and Amazon, sry) some💲💸
@JulianKJarboe Hey! First of all, thank you so much for sharing the context; I love the tweet even more now. Second, if I wanted to share it on Facebook, what would be the best way for me to do so?
@JulianKJarboe @threadreaderapp unroll