Hypersensitivity: wearing a studded shirt, the same one everyone wears.

https://notesandsilence.com/2025/12/21/studded-shirt/
#relationships #silence #prayer #zen #consciousness #pain #suffering

The Rehearsal State: When Governance Becomes Performance

There is a scene in every disaster movie where the official steps to the podium, adjusts the microphone, and assures the public that resources are being mobilized, plans are being activated, and the full weight of the institution is being brought to bear. The audience in the theater knows the official is lying or incompetent or both. The audience at home, watching the real version of the same press conference after the real hurricane or the real chemical spill, has no such certainty. They take the performance at face value. They go to bed believing the plan exists.

This is the rehearsal state: a condition of governance in which the appearance of institutional action has entirely replaced institutional action itself. Briefings substitute for deployments. Executive orders substitute for enforcement mechanisms. A task force substitutes for the task. What remains is an empty dramatic structure, all exposition and no second act, staged with professional lighting and delivered with the practiced cadence of competence.

The theatrical vocabulary is precise here and worth using. In dramatic structure, the second act is where conflict meets consequence. Characters act. Decisions produce outcomes. The machinery of the plot engages with material reality. A play that consists of nothing but first-act exposition, characters explaining what they intend to do, followed by a curtain call would be recognized instantly as a failure of craft. No audience would accept it. Yet this is the structural blueprint of contemporary American governance at nearly every level, and audiences accept it every day.

Consider FEMA’s operations following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017. The press briefings were immaculate. Officials appeared before cameras with updated death tolls, logistical summaries, and assurances of coordination with local authorities. A Government Accountability Office report published in 2018 found that FEMA had entered the disaster with a shortage of trained staff, inadequate supply contracts, and no workable distribution plan for an island territory. Some of those failures were structural and predated any individual decision to perform competence at a podium. That distinction matters, and it sharpens the argument: the briefing apparatus and the logistics apparatus operated on separate circuits, and only the briefing circuit ever worked. Briefings ran on schedule. Water did not arrive on schedule. Generators sat in mainland warehouses. An estimated 2,975 people died, many of them in the weeks and months after the storm, from causes that functioning logistics would have prevented. The performance of response was flawless. The response killed people.

Corporate governance replicates the same structure with its own scenography. Beginning around 2020, virtually every Fortune 500 company published a diversity, equity, and inclusion report. The reports featured full-color graphics, letters from the CEO, and quantified commitments. A 2023 analysis by the Washington Post examining SEC filings and internal workforce data found that, at most of the companies studied, the demographic composition of senior leadership had changed by less than two percentage points in three years. The reports were playbills. They described the production without performing it.

Municipal government may be the purest laboratory for studying the rehearsal state because the stage is small enough to see clearly. Any resident of a mid-size American city has attended, or heard accounts of, the community input session. A standardized format governs the proceedings: a gymnasium or auditorium, a panel table at the front, a sign-in sheet, a microphone on a stand for public comments, and a two-minute time limit per speaker. In most cases, the decision this session purports to inform, the zoning variance, the school closure, the budget reallocation, has already been made. Council members or planning commissioners will vote along predetermined lines regardless of what is said at the microphone. What the session provides is the documentation of input, a procedural receipt with no bearing on the outcome. It is a prop in a legal performance designed to satisfy procedural requirements for public participation. The residents who attend and speak and even weep at the microphone are extras in a production whose cast list was finalized before the doors opened.

The dramaturgical term for what these institutions are doing is blocking. In theater, blocking is the choreographed physical movement of actors on stage: where they stand, when they cross, how they position themselves relative to the furniture and to each other. Blocking creates the visual impression of action. A character who crosses downstage with urgency appears to be doing something even if the script gives them nothing to do. American institutional governance has become expert at blocking. Officials move to podiums. They sign documents in front of cameras and tour damaged neighborhoods in windbreakers. Between appearances, they sit at long tables with nameplates. Every movement is choreographed to produce the visual grammar of response, oversight, and authority. The blocking is superb, and it has to be, because there is no script beneath it.

This condition did not arrive overnight. Its roots are tangled with the professionalization of political communication that accelerated after Watergate, when officials learned that the appearance of transparency could substitute for transparency itself. The post-Watergate press conference, with its tabletop microphones and tabulated talking points, was designed as an antidote to secrecy. Within a decade it had become its own species of secrecy, a controlled performance environment in which information was released in calibrated doses, questions were managed through selection and repetition, and the physical staging of openness, the open room, the visible faces, the recorded transcript, masked the operational closure beneath it.

Bad governance is only the surface consequence of the rehearsal state. The deeper damage is a population rendered unable to distinguish governance from its simulation. When citizens have spent decades watching the same dramaturgical structure, the podium, the talking points, the earnest facial expression, the promise of follow-through, they lose the ability to ask whether anything happened after the cameras left. Performance becomes self-ratifying. An official held a press conference, so the public concludes the problem was addressed. A company published a report, so change must have occurred. A meeting was held, so the community was consulted.

This erosion of critical spectatorship is the precondition for something worse. Populations trained to accept the performance of governance as governance itself are structurally prepared to accept authoritarian spectacle as competence. A rally replaces the legislature. Signing ceremonies, staged with flags and witnesses and the slow exhibition of the signature itself, replace the statute. An appearance at the disaster site, the rolled sleeves, the handshake with the first responder, the squint into the middle distance, replaces the relief operation. Authoritarianism does not need to abolish democratic institutions if it can hollow them into stages. The rehearsal state is the advance work.

What would it mean to demand a second act? It would mean treating every institutional announcement as a first-act curtain, an interesting premise that requires development before it can be evaluated. After every press conference, citizens would need to ask what measurable outcome was promised within a defined timeframe. Corporate reports would be treated as promissory notes and audited with the same scrutiny applied to financial statements. And anyone walking into a community input session would carry a single question: has this body ever reversed a decision based on public comment, and if so, when?

The rehearsal state persists because it is comfortable for everyone involved. Officials prefer it because performance is easier than policy. Citizens go along because watching a performance requires less effort than monitoring an outcome. And the press cooperates because a press conference is a story, while the absence of follow-through is a silence that nobody assigns a reporter to cover. Breaking the rehearsal state requires an audience willing to sit through the first act and then refuse to applaud until the second act is performed. That is harder than clapping. It is also the minimum price of self-governance.

With deep sorrow and immense pain, I must say that the war has returned. Just a short while ago, there was heavy bombing in the Sheikh Radwan area in Gaza. How much longer must we endure this relentless suffering? 💔🥺

#gaza #news #palstain #war #extermination #death #suffering #silence #Israel

an autistic perspective of death…(remastered with audio reading)

https://thedignityofman.net/2026/04/05/an-autistic-perspective-of-deathremastered-with-audio-reading/

Exposed and Naked: Clothed in Righteousness

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

It failed. The grand divine experiment made tangible in Jesus of Nazareth failed. They took him. They tried him. And, they killed him. The promised coming of the kingdom stalled out and stopped. Everything they had witnessed and seen, everything they had experienced and touched, everything they had declared and heard was all now for naught. A big waste of time. A cosmic joke of grand proportions. Their tears give way to fear which then develops into anger. The oppression of their suffering I this moment was sealed by doubt, consuming them like innocent bystanders standing too close to a shore line when a tsunami hits. Where there had been light, there was now darkness. Where there had been liberation, there was now captivity. Where there had been love, there was now numbness. Where there had been life, there was now only death.

The Sabbath demanded a great deal of silence in body and mind. The people who followed Jesus—believed him to be the Messiah—were eager to enter the kingdom of God with Jesus as their great leader; these were now the ones who had to sit with their fear, anger, grief, and, for some who ditched Jesus in his final moments hanging and dying on the cross, they had to sit with their guilt. Not only did this divine experiment fail but they failed, too. And the time marking the sundown of Friday to the sundawn on Sunday morning was excruciating, burdened with great existential dread; this silence wasn’t like normal silences. It fell upon them like judgment from God; were they exiled…again? A silence so oppressive and a darkness so heavy, they might as well have been sealed in the tomb with Jesus to wait for decay and stench to arrive signaling death’s victory.

It all failed. They failed. Jesus failed. God failed.

On this night, all those years ago, the disciples died with Christ. What they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t as over …

1 Peter 4:1-8

Peter opens the fourth chapter of his epistle emphasizing Christ’s suffering and the correlation the believer has to that suffering. Peter writes,

Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, you, you also equip [yourselves] with the same thinking—because the one who suffers in the flesh has hindered sin—for the purpose of living no longer to human desires but by the will of God for the time remaining in the flesh (vv.1-2).

For Peter the suffering of Christ—a major theme in the letter[ii]—is emblematic and representative for the believer[iii] who lives in the world. It is this one who is consistently subjected to the blustering mythologies and bombastic actions of the kingdom of humanity. Thus, it is this one who must put on the mind of Christ as they suffer, taking courage that they suffer because they are hindering sin,[iv] putting an end to old associations with indifference, captivity, and death.[v] Christ’s divine glory was made tangible in and through his suffering on the cross; it is through this obscured expression of divine glory that divine glory encounters the believers in and through their own suffering in the world[vi] as they dare to live differently[vii] (hindering sin) from their coworkers, neighbors, friends, and, even, family.

Thusly, Peter continues,

For sufficient time has passed having participated in the determination of the Gentiles, having followed in licentiousness, lusts, drunkenness, rioting, carousal, and lawless idolatry, by which they have been surprised by your not joining in the same wasteful excess, so they slander[viii] (vv.3-4).

Peter exhorts the believers that their suffering in the world is the fruit of their hindering sin. For Peter, sin is temporal and not merely spiritual—act rather than power—thus, to hinder sin is not to become sinless but to withdraw from participating in the actions of the kingdom of humanity that are antagonistic to the reign of God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The Christian is to imitate Christ[ix] in the world; the Christian is to be a representative of Christ thereby pitting themselves against the kingdom of humanity and its actions thus leading to hindering sin in their own lives,[x] concurrently condemning those who slander them.[xi] For Peter, the believer once lived like everyone else in their society, but that way is now forever blocked.[xii] It will be up to the believer to serve either that which is easiest (going along with the kingdom of humanity thus sidestepping suffering thus negating Christ) or which is hardest: forsaking the kingdom of humanity, preferring to follow Christ, enduring temporal suffering, and seeking the way and will of the reign of God.[xiii] With either choice, they will be noticed and judged[xiv] accordingly either by their neighbor or by God and thus they will suffer now or later.[xv]

This is why Peter speaks of judgment.

They, they will have to give up word to the one who readily holds to judge the living and the dead. For this reason, the good-news is proclaimed even to the dead so that they might be judged according to human flesh but they might live by the Spirit as God does (vv.5-6).

Peter offers a word of encouragement and hope in these verses. The judgment that the believers will have to endure due to the slander of their neighbors still held captive by the allure of the kingdom of humanity pales in comparison to the judgment they will have when they find themselves face to face with God;[xvi],[xvii] for everyone–even the dead—is on a collision course with Abba God.[xviii] The believers can endure temporal suffering because the divine glory is theirs by their faith in Christ—partially now and in full when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead.[xix] Divine glory is also theirs by way of their zealousness to imitate and represent Christ in the world to the glory of God; for as God is glorified does God give glory.

Therefore, Peter exhorts the believers to live well and to pray and to love one another,

Now the end of all things has come near. Therefore, be of sound mind and be soberminded toward prayers. Above all things, have earnest love toward each other, because love covers a great number of sins (vv.7-8).

The believers are to live in a way emphasizing their faith in Christ and their loving orientation toward each other while resisting relapsing into old habits and forsaking doing good in the world. Prayer becomes crucial here; prayer informs and is informed by love. As one bends one’s knee (literally or metaphorically) to God in prayer (a posture of humility and dependence) one is, therein, formed by God and God’s will[xx]—thus Peter’s argument comes full circle. To pray to God in the name of Christ is to identify with Christ and, therefore, to be molded in such a way as to identify with those with whom Christ identifies. This identification is none other than divine love for the beloved. Prayer gives us access to this divine love[xxi] so we can earnestly[xxii] share it with one another[xxiii] and, more importantly, share it with the world. In this way, believers participate in God’s mission[xxiv] of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation for the world.

Conclusion

For the disciples, the deadly silence of Saturday was palpable. For (about) 36 hours, waiting for the Sabbath to pass, they died; each one of them died with Christ—in hopelessness, helplessness, lifelessness, groundlessness, because of human ruthlessness. They despaired of themselves; they released all that they thought was and came to the absolute ends of themselves. And here, in their ignorance to divine movements, amid their darkest doubt, their deepest despair, surrounded by a void of sound and word, God was gearing up to usher them into a brand-new conception of what it means to live in Christ, to live in love, to live liberated from all that was. As the host of heaven held its breath and as the disciples cried, God was on the move raising the greatest gift for the cosmos: the fulfilment of God’s glorious promise, Jesus the Christ raised holding death itself captive to death, transforming suffering into glory—now and in the future, for all those who believe and follow him.

Tonight, we move from death to life. This service dives in deep to the silence of Saturday, the despair of a missing messiah, the stripping away of hope. At the beginning, we are stuck in our sin, set on a path toward that frightful day of judgment with no Christ to mediate, stealing from us any sense of peace—for how can anyone really have peace if they are always scrambling away from and fighting against judgment and death and their fruits? But in the blink of an eye, God moved, the heavenly host exhaled, and we find ourselves shrouded in the mystery of Christ being raised from the dead to be for us the source, sustenance, and sustainment of divine life, love, and liberation for all people, the entire cosmos, forever and always. We find ourselves moved from slavishly following the ways of the kingdom of humanity and (once again) in love with the reign of God and God’s will.

Tonight, we need to be moved from such enslavement into liberation so we can live and be different in a world that is collapsing into itself, being consumed by the hurt pride and immature tantrums of people who are out of control[xxv] and the epitome of hopeless,[xxvi] helpless,[xxvii] lifeless,[xxviii] groundless,[xxix] and ruthless.[xxx] Tonight, we must find ourselves naked and exposed in our complicity and captivity to the very same and then compelled to let go. We must let go of those ways because God has come in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit to clothe us with divine grace, mercy, kindness, joy, and the righteousness of God. And these are the fruits we bring into a world devastated and destroyed by death and destruction. And even as scary as our world is right now, tonight, through the suffering of Christ, our terror is quelled, our anger is released, our grief is met with divine comfort, our anxiety gives way to peace that surpasses all understanding, and our detestable state is exchanged for cherished. Tonight, As Jesus is raised to life out of death, so, too, are we raised out of death into new life, new hope, new help, on to a new ground, with new confidence not in ourselves or debased global leadership but in God, in love, in life, and in liberation. Today we are new creatures with a new life and a new way to walk in the world for the wellbeing of our neighbors and to the glory of God.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, TNICTNT, ed. F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 147.

[iii] Davids, Peter, 147. “He encourages the Christians of Northwest Asia Minor to follow the example of Christ.”

[iv] I. Howard Marshall, “1 Peter,” The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, eds. Grant R. Osborne, D. Stuart Briscoe, and Haddon Robinson, (Downers Grove: IVP Press, 1991), 133. “His point is essentially that a person who suffers shows that he has given up those things against which his suffering is a protest. In other words, by suffering Christ showed his opposition to sinful living. Therefore, persecuted Christians must follow his example and say a firm no to their temptations.”

[v] Davids, Peter, 148. “What the Christian readers here put on is an ‘insight’ or a ‘point of view.’…That point of view is explained immediately: ‘the one suffering in the flesh has finished with sin….’”

[vi] Davids, Peter, 149. “While it is obvious that this is a difficult phrase, it seems most likely that (2) and (4) in the list above make the best sense of this clause, and that they are related in that (2) expresses the main point based on the underlying assumption of (4).” And the substance of (2) and (4): “…(2) when a person suffers, he breaks the power of sin (which is rooted in his flesh) over his life or atones for the sin in his life;…(4) when Christ suffered, he finished with sin (i.e., the phrase does not refer to the Christian at all)…”

[vii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 134. “…all Christians were controlled by sinful desires in the past, but must no longer be so controlled for the future.”

[viii] Davids, Peter, 152. “Their reaction to this nonconformity is to slander the Christians.”

[ix] Davids, Peter, 150.

[x] Davids, Peter, 149. “First, sin in 1 Peter always indicates concrete acts of sin, not the power of sin over people…the ceasing of concrete acts that is intended. Second, the desire is to draw out a principle from Christ: he suffered for sin once in the past…with the result that he will ever have to deal with sin again. Third…the battle has an ending point. Finally, the point is that once the Christian grasps this insight he will realize from the example of Christ in 3:18-22 that he must live for God now (which means a suffering in the flesh and thus a battling of sin), for that will lead to a parallel victory (a state of having ceased form sin).”

[xi] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 136. “If Christians take a firm and consistent stand against this way of life, then by implication they condemn their former associates.”

[xii] Davids, Peter, 150. “On the other hand, since the flesh is weak and fallen, it is the mode of existence in which the evil impulse in human beings operates. Believers thus have a choice: (1) they can live their remining time ‘for human desires,’ or (2) they can live it ‘for the will of God.’”

[xiii] Davids, Peter, 150. “Thus there is a clear choice between taking the path of least resistance to their natural desires and their committing themselves to follow God’s will even if it entails suffering.”

[xiv] Davids, Peter, 152. “All of this rejection was certainly painful, especially when it came in the form of rumors they could not correct and ostracism from former friends and colleagues.”

[xv] Davids, Peter, 151. “These Christians, on the other hand, had been part of the culture, so their nonparticipation was a change in behavior and thus quite noticeable.”

[xvi] Davids, Peter, 152. “While the Christians may feel abandoned by God and unable to defend themselves, it is their accusers, not they, who have a problem, for the detractors will have to answer to God.”

[xvii] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 138. “Because there will be a final judgment, what the world thinks of Christians does not matter. What matters is the twofold fact that the pagans will have to answer to God for their refusal to obey him and that those who heard the believed the gospels will be vindicated by God and enjoy eternal life.”

[xviii] Davids, Peter, 153. “Yet we must not lose sight of the fact that the concern of the phrase is not who will judge, but that even the dead cannot escape the final judgment…”

[xix] Davids, Peter, 155. “The point of the passage, then, is that the judgment is also the time of the vindication of Christians. They, like Christ, may have been judged as guilty by human beings according to their standards, either in that they died like other human beings, or through their being put to death …”

[xx] Davids, Peter, 156-157. “Thus our author is calling for a mental alertness that sees life correctly in the light of the coming end. This will lead to prayer—not the prayer based on daydreams and unreality, nor the prayer based on surprised desperation, but the prayer that calls upon and submits to God in the light of reality seen from God’s perspective and thus obtains power and guidance in the situation, however evil the time may be…for proper prayer is not an ‘opiate’ or escape, but rather a function of clear vision and a seeking of even clearer vision from God.”

[xxi] Davids, Peter, 157.

[xxii] Davids, Peter, 157. “Thus when applied in situations such as this it means not to slack off on love, to keep it going at full force, to be earnest about it…these Christians are to maintain their devotion to one another.”

[xxiii] Davids, Peter, 157. “The love that is so important is that for fellow-Christians. As in the whole NT…unity with and practical care for other Christians is not seen as an optional extra, but as a central part of the faith.”

[xxiv] Marshall, “1 Peter,” 134.

[xxv] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/18/exposed-and-naked-we-are-not-in-control/

[xxvi] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/02/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-fragile/

[xxvii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/08/exposed-and-naked-we-are-unsafe/

[xxviii] https://laurenrelarkin.com/2026/03/22/exposed-and-naked-we-are-hurt/

[xxix] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7127

[xxx] https://laurenrelarkin.com/?p=7130

Society of the Spectacle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE9P3Y0D9V0

What if one of the most popular creators in the world is actually the perfect example of a theory written over 50 years ago?In 1967, Guy Debord warned that...

#SocietyOfTheSpectacle #AttentionEconomy #GuyDebord #MrBeast #StagedMoments #Spectacle #SocialOrder #Appearance #Reality #Visibility #Politics #Suffering

#suffering : the bearing of pain, inconvenience, or loss

- French: souffrance

- German: das Leiden

- Italian: sofferenza

- Portuguese: sofrimento

- Spanish: sufrimiento

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A daily challenge to chain words together @ https://wordwallgame.com

RE: https://mastodon.social/@LisaWarnerLisaLuv/116332761510879860

This feels very affirming ~ that a preference for depth in social exchange is a valid #personality trait that some have, and some don’t.

However, that such a preference may be a factor in greater #happiness depends on the depth-oriented individual meeting communities where others share that preference.

When they don’t (as in my childhood), the #suffering of being the weird kid who always wants to have “D&Ms” (disparaging slang for “deep and meaningful conversations” is exquisite. #psychology