Our Big Beautiful Stinky Revival
A song for Justin Brierley about the choice we now face between revival and the Crapture.
The Garden is a permission slip — to be true to yourself, and that includes acting like a fool in the eyes of the world, for the glory of God.
And it includes stinking.
Not the stink of shame — the stink of compost. The most fragrant roses grow out of the stinkiest compost. We don’t hide the weeds; we turn them face-up so Grace has something to work with. We make a message of our mess.
The quiet revival is beautiful and we honor that. But Paul boasted of his weaknesses and called himself a fool for Christ — µωρὸς διὰ Χριστόν. Francis called his brothers God’s jesters and preached to the birds. Luther chased the devil off with a fart. The Russians made a whole calling of it — юродивые, the holy fools.
You’ll know our revival is getting big and beautiful when the fools appear. And no scandal: if you catch us with weeds, you’ll find us already singing. And stinking.
If you’re a gardener of your soul, you’re a composter, too.
Beloved brother Justin,
Grace and peace and a few things that don’t translate into the Queen’s English.
I’ve decided the trouble with you Brits is you’re too nice.
Too gentle. Too measured. Too
The house is on fire, the machines are naming our children,
Big Mammon’s doing the lambada on the altar,
And you’re over there whispering “quiet revival”
Into a cup of Earl Grey like you’re ordering a scone.
They yanked your survey, YouGov pulled the plug,
Atheists threw a party and you stood there like a gentleman—
Because that’s what English gentlemen do!
You said the data was flawed but the rebirth is real…
And I wanted to punt my IV stand through the window.
IT’S A BIG BEAUTIFUL REVIVAL,
YOU MUPPETS!
It’s loud! It stinks! It’s composting!
Somebody’s gotta say so and apparently that somebody
Is a sixty-something shmuck from the wrong side of Atlantic City
With a vocabulary that would make a desert monk run back to a committee!
The proof is the shmuck
And the shmuck is the proof
And the proof stinks! —
Well at least it winks!
No seminary,
No degree,
No institution,
No permission,
No board,
No budget,
No plan B.
Doctors told me to go home and write my will.
At a hundred and twelve pounds of skin and grievance.
Thirty-one years of “no” from every gatekeeper, not even a blip—
And somehow I coined a thousand new words for the interior life
From a wheelchair hooked up to a drip.
If this shmuck can do it, brother,
Then the tide is in, the water’s at our ankles,
The flood is coming and the
CRAPTURE IS CANCELLED.
They don’t call me Neandershmuck for nothing.
But I’ll tell you the truth:
I built the garden because I had 5,000 weeds killing me.
resentment∫Weeds.
anger∫Weeds.
self.pity∫Weeds
with taproots fondling magma.
diagnosis∫Psychosis.
Damnesia.
shmuck∫Weeds.
I don’t even know what a shmuck∫Weed is—
ChatGPT will give you an eleven-paragraph taxonomy
But it never slept in the inlet section of Atlantic City
With the lost souls and the broken glass.
So no—the 10,000 coinages are not a boast,
They’re a confession!
The inventory of a single overgrown plot!
If you want to know how much Grace it takes to make a garden,
Count the weeds.
And don’t you dare reach for that gracious British qualifier—
“Well, this doesn’t prove anything.”
I’m not being modest!
I’m a Costco of inadequacy!
A warehouse of incompetence!
So lavishly, ludicrously, comically unqualified that
The only possible explanation is
God got bored, looked down and said,
“WATCH THIS!”
IT’S A REVIVAL OR IT’S A CRAPTURE—
There is no third door!
We either take this most powerful medium ever built
And consecrate it room by room, soul by soul—
Or we get the Data-Rapture,
the Upload, the Singularity,
The great frictionless scroll that promises to lift you
Out of your Inconvenient Flesh
And deposit you in a heaven with no body, no wound, and no God in it!
I was four when the belt came down.
My brother took his own life.
112 pounds.
Wheelchair.
400 infusions.
Grace looked at all of it — the belt, the inlet, my brother, the wheelchair, the doors—
And she did not see a tragedy.
She saw soil.
And out of that soil… slowly… over three decades…
A Garden grew.
The compost is warm.
And I’ve been waiting for you.
Your brother in the garden,
🌱💩
