Dear Rev,

I keep being shocked at Trump. Seems like I go through my day doing double takes.  I go to rallies and marches because it seems like then I’m inside one huge double-take and I’m spreading the work out a little…

Unravel this please,
Beverly

Dear Beverly,

Your daily Trump Shock — we are all repeating that double take, Beverly, as the comic evil just keeps coming. If it isn’t invading Greenland, it’s a ­secretary of Homeland Security who shoots puppies. 

I have a suggestion for handling the shock and the sore neck from the disbelief. First of all, the double take is a very interesting dance move. Our bodies are so expressive. A double take is something that we can do. Being astonished twice in quick succession, with the second shock exaggerated.

As I often say, start your resistance to toxic culture by going to a favorite ecosystem — a meadow, an ocean shore, a forest…. Now notice how nature is full of double takes, especially songbirds, who seem to be doing double takes all day long. Think of that sudden wide-eyed jerk of the head that makes the robin seem to hear the worm under the grass.

In fact, if you gaze up into a forest, you will see a myriad of leaves looking this way and that in the wind. See eyes in the bark and the clouds. Yes, give the surreal Earth your wildest imagination. Keep seeing double takes! There is astonishment everywhere in nature: zig-zags, jolts of surprise and wide eyes.

We are the hunted in the ecosystem of America, pulled from our homes, hand-cuffed anywhere. We do double takes galore. But if we are given the gift of our sensitivity to danger by the Earth that created us, then we quickly go beyond politics and don’t have to dwell on the clown gangster who sadistically watches his victims cry. Beverly, take your Trump shock on a good, long hike.

We need to start the culture over. How we respond to a criminal government will be increasingly effective as we accept inspiration from the Earth. Finding human qualities in the Earth, like my playful example of the double take, needs to be reversed. We have the old colonizing habit of seeing ourselves in nature, holding up its mystery like a mirror. We need to listen to the Earth.

The Earth has its own language, ­intelligence and sense of justice. You don’t have to give these qualities to the Earth, but the Earth might give them to you. We will have greater power over the murderers of the Earth if we know that the Earth is the original, full of genius and love. 

Around the globe, we have record-breaking heat every month. We haul out the old worn and inaccurate words like “apocalypse.” We try to find religious justice in the end of the world. That’s a stall. A most ineffective dodge. The Earth can be astonished enough to stage the sixth extinction.

Beverly, the Earth is coming. And it will turn us upside down and inside out. Nothing will be the same. You can let the emergency erase your double take. Go talk to the trees and ask for your instructions. They say that the language of trees is spoken through the roots and carried through fungi filaments to the fellow loved trees, relatives and friends among the surrounding grove. 

Try singing straight into the ground with your face pressed to the Earth. That’s what I do. Let the roots be surprised at your interspecies song. Sing and talk and laugh. The tree above waves her branches in the wind. Maybe she isn’t surprised. Maybe she knew this would happen.

Earthalujah!

Billy

REVEREND BILLY TALEN IS THE PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF STOP SHOPPING. HAVE A QUESTION FOR THE REVEREND? EMAIL REVBILLY@REVBILLY.COM AND UNBURDEN YOUR SOUL.