T.M. Shannon

I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land I’m on, the Cabrogal people of the Darug nation, and all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.

Australia is a land with over 50 thousand years of history, and I support all efforts for reconciliation and correcting the past wrongs of colonisation.

Hi everyone,

Look, I know February’s a short month, the poor child whose stats are out of whack only considered every four years when those quarter-days a year are added to the calendar, but why did it go so fast? And how much of that time didn’t I spend on Three Ways?

First off, the 16 days I worked. Gotta live, gotta be productive. Then, the something like 20 hours a day on 12 days–give or take, mostly take–I slept, gamed, or toyed with a side quest. ‘Tis the Bipolar/ADHD life for me, yo-ho-ho, I need another coffee.

But writing it, and it’s been a struggle since the midpoint, there’s been this gnawing pacing issue, but it was met by established things I’d forgotten, and so I’m going through from the beginning.

Bad news? No, I’m reminding myself of the pace, patching in some holes, tweaking some things, all the while seeing a mistake Cole’s constantly making when the back half is about cutting that mistake out. In the end, it’ll be a cleaner story going to betas, then an editor.

And how’s the gaming? The laptop’s GPU fan is dead, so I’ve dusted off the old gaming PC, but can only play Diablo 3 on it as it’s too old to run other games that’ve had quality updates over time that the GPU and puny 8GB of RAM just can’t handle without stuttering.

Windows has the munchies and has a mad hankering for RAM, what else can I say?

The fix won’t come soon, finances being, well, dragged behind a horse whipped by those most sadistic of human trait, a lie. Almost over, there’s no point dwelling on it, but it has hurt, and things up to the darling partner and I have suffered.

Should I have gone into the doldrums about it? Maybe. Life’s not easy when breaks you’ve caught are snatched away from you, and we’ve had plenty snatched away across our lives.

But hope has pretty much got us through, not that it’s straightest path, and not that I haven’t jumped off it too many times, responsibility for the addict all mine. And now it’s Lent, a renewal and commitment period, I’m in turn over a new leaf territory, and thinking Gospelly.

And needing three topics for this post, and last week being the first Sunday of Lent, I thought that day’s Gospel might be one of them. As it turns out, it’ll be all three. Just bear with me, it’s correlation time.

A Dose of Selfishness

Back on the 22nd of Feb, we picked up from Jesus getting baptised and announced by His cousin John—I’ll let you figure out that guy’s honorific—and being led into the wilderness for 40 days with no food or water.

Stunning? Plenty of holy men and prophets put themselves through strange and bizarre tests of endurance, par for the course really. But we all know what happened next in this story: the guy downstairs popped along to this hungry, dehydrated figure to tempt Him.

Before I start, these aren’t just challenges for Jesus, but all of us as part of being human, and that’s where the correlation comes in.

Temptation one is about meeting needs, in this case food, with the Devil telling Jesus to use His powers to turn stones into bread, just shoot out a blast of heavenly magic and fill your tum-tum.

A master of 3D Chess as well as being World Champion of People Dodging, Jesus picks the exact verse of Scripture needed to shoot this mocking offer down—the perks of inspiring said Scripture.

But here’s us, and we have no magic to do this. Where do we fit in with this temptation?

You’ve heard it said, “Take care of number one,” and it’s true. We have to take care of ourselves. Decent food, enough rest, an income to meet our needs, family and friends, a passion or several, and in my case, six meds to be a functional human being.

There’s nothing wrong with taking care of yourself, as through it, we can then take care of others, supporting friends and family, giving back to Caesar what’s Caesar’s to fund states and nations, or donating to a favourite charity. This is us being good, loving, humane human beings.

The temptation here is to put ourselves and our needs before all others—or in Jesus’ case, His needs before His mission—and we are very good at this.

I need to get home of an evening, so all these slow people slowing me down need to get out of my way. We need to feel stronger than others, so we’ll argue, shout people down, dismiss people, even hate them for some real or perceived difference or thing because I’m better than you.

Coming to my addiction, I need to make up for a dopamine deficiency as well as provide needs that were neglected, most of which were from other people’s actions, so I give in to feed the beast, as much as I don’t want or even need to, therapy and 12 Step being better options.

But this personal selfishness leads to group selfishness, and there’s plenty of that. Our group and ways are better, and the rest of you better adopt our ways or else, as we’re seeing played out over in the U.S. Tribal superiority through destroying other tribes is our greatest sin.

How do we resolve this like Jesus, as not all of us read or use Scripture? It’s simply letting go of needing to be better, comparing ourselves to others, refusing to see other humans’ dignity, and it’s one of the hardest things to do. But we can try, and if we fail, try again.

A Dose of I Dare You to Jump

That’s right, we’re only getting started, because the Devil whisks Jesus up to the top of the Temple and tempts Him to jump off, spitting out some Scripture about the Angels not letting Him even stub His toe, as they’ll save Him from a Welcome to Jackass moment.

Jesus fends the Devil off with more Scripture, “You will not put the Lord your God to the test,” and certainly we might cast this temptation off on the sheer ludicrousness of jumping off high buildings and hoping for the best.

But we all want to do something spectacular that skyrockets us to fame or going viral on *Insert Social Media Platform Here*. I certainly want to leap and bound to the heights on my book. If only there was one thing that would grant us the success of famous people!

We have to counter this with the reality that all those movie stars paid squillions of dollars to pretend to be someone were stage actors with a dream and a portfolio that cost them a lot of money who had to work their backside off to get cast in small role.

I’m sure I could ask Stephen King how many rejections he got, and he might’ve lost count. The WIP has to be a stepping-stone on a long career, it’ll start small and hopefully build over time—after all, I’ve got my whole life to sell it and others.

If our eyes were on reality, hope in the attainable, and see off the imposters lauded as success stories. E. L. James? She’s a producer, hubby’s a director, they have media connections, and now you know why you saw ads for Fifty Shades of Grey masquerading as news articles.

In short, don’t jump, you don’t have the background. Wade in slowly, poling for holes, and know what’s ahead. And in a surprising thing for a Catholic to say, don’t put your hope in a miracle—those tend to come by unexpectedly in a way you never realised you needed.

A Dose of Serving Another Master

It’s been pretty cruisy so far, no turning stones to bread, and one of the most resolute ways to say, “Yeah, nah, I’m not jumping.” But Mister Downstairs has saved this kicker for last (courtesy of the USCCB):

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”

Now we’re talking—it’s no longer a spectacle or two but the world brought to you on a plate. Who wouldn’t give into this? Who wouldn’t throw everything away to serve a force that’ll give you the power a certain orange person who isn’t an Oompa Loompa has right now?

Yes, I can hear you thinking, “We live in a secular world, this religiosity has no bearing on the world whatsoever!” If you’re not, go forth, have fun with it, I certainly dabbled in it plenty of times as an atheist. No Devil is tempting you, right?

And this is where Idolatry comes in. It might not be Baphomet, Baal, Mammon, or another false god, but it might be the Algorithm.

As before, we want the spectacle that shoots us to fame, and social media is presented as this God. And having caught this Bald Book Geek video, there is a lot of preening, carving yourself out, crafting a persona, and hiding behind a shell of a thing to generate likes.

What are you showing on your social media? Is it the in-the-moment snapshot, or a specific photo you took specifically for Facebook?

Is it the family in good times, even the impossible toddler with the S.H.I.T.S? Are you doing this because you’re a parent and know the struggles, or is it pure look at moi?

And this is before we’ve even gotten to BookTok, BookTube, and trying to please the Algorithm enough for that much-desired reach, and many people are do a lot for this—like follow/unfollowing so they have more followers and thus become what the Algorithm is designed to boost.

That’s one Enemy we’d serve, but I’ll finish on a better-known one we all come to adore, Money.

What wouldn’t we do for an almighty Dollar? What ends would we go to for this god to shower its blessings upon us? In some cases, it’s taking out a heap of life insurance policies on someone you plan to murder.

Service of Money is what’s made the world what it is, and what it was back in Jesus’ time, just this time it’s on meth. I’d love to say it’s late-stage capitalism, but I can guarantee you this is just the beginning, and we’re plenty right to be ticked off by the winners who whore for it.

Yes, we can’t escape money—we need to buy food, clothes, petrol, pay the bills, pay the rent or the mortgage. No, it’s not an evil thing—just like the Force, it can be used for good (charity, healthcare), or evil (lobbying politicians for a beneficial contract or to buy more tax cuts for the rich).

But we enslave ourselves to it so easily, praise its abundance, mourn its loss, and do anything to put its worth between our humanity and doing something humane like funding healthcare, education, lunches, and funding charities to end poverty next week.

How many times have you heard someone say, “How much is that going to cost us?” about worthwhile endeavours, as if helping people out is the greatest sin of all time?

Why are we so short-sighted that we let this asset, about to be replaced by mere bits and bytes that’ll disappear if the power ever goes off, rule our lives and our humanity, the haves cutting off the have-nots because it might raise their taxes by $15 a week?

I don’t know the answer to this conundrum, and it’s one I’m going to have to look out for trying to put my book out there, which may become my own false god. But as with the first temptation, all we need to do is let go of its value and see the worth of what it can do.

A Dose of Au Revoir

So how was that reflection on the human struggle? Have you seen where you’ve fallen to a temptation, or possibly noticed there’s a way to tell an Enemy of whatever sort to talk to the hand?

I’ll be honest, not many people will read this, or read it all the way through, so if you got this far, thank you so much for sticking with it. And with this posted, I’m going to pick at my side quest for a bit.

Whoever, wherever, whatever, and however you are, I hope you’ll make the best of it, helping out where needed or getting the help you need.

Cheers,
T. M.