God and the City

In a world full of Christian Nationalists and ungrounded woo-woo spiritual jargon, where are the people who love Jesus and humbly follow His teachings?

This is the question I was contemplating while I imagined myself as Carrie Bradshaw, if it were 2026 and she decided to de-center men and move to the desert to write a column. Maybe I would call it God and the City.

But let’s be real. I am probably more like Wednesday Addams as I walk into the social experiment called the local coffee shop and brave 50-plus people and 20 minutes to get a fancy oat milk latte.

Humaning is hard. I always feel like there is so much to remember, so many social cues, so much energy to filter. Don’t get me wrong, I will silently bless you and nod and smile. I just don’t know what to say to you beyond, “Nice weather we’re having,” and “I like your necklace.” I don’t mind being on the outside looking in, but it sure feels draining after a while.

I found this woman on a podcast yesterday and really liked some of the things she was sharing. I thought I’d found someone who got the Jesus thing. Then I went to her channel and felt so disappointed. She shared her “testimony” and recalled how she was delivered from alcohol and the trappings of the New Age, like yoga. I sighed.

Kudos to you for kicking the drinking. It’s terrible for your body. But can you please point me to the red letters of the gospel where Jesus said, “Thou shalt not do pigeon pose?” If it’s something Paul said, I’ll just ignore it. I low-key feel like he ruined it for the rest of us.

From my understanding, the basics of Jesus are: love God, love your neighbor, forgive yourself, and forgive your neighbor. When did all these other random commandments get etched into the scroll of social conditioning?

But who am I to judge? I find God in the intricacies of a palm tree while listening to the melodic musings of Julian Casablancas as I play my repertoire of emotional support songs from The Strokes on my daily hot girl walk.

“We all disagree, I think we should disagree.”

— Julian Casablancas

Then I find myself romanticizing the tragedy that I still want to preserve my human voice and my human words in an AI world where no one has the dopamine capacity or attention span to make it to the end of an article.

Guess I’ll write it anyway.

Lots of love,

Meagan Maris