When I was a kid I used to dislike driving up to Deltona to visit my aunt and uncle. I generally _liked_ my aunt and uncle, so it wasn’t them. It was the Deltona area at the time that garnered my disdain. This was the early-to-mid-90s. Deltona is an early exurb of the Orlando, Florida area, really close to Sanford. Both communities were “developed” in the 1980s as a place for “starter homes” for new families. Centex Homes billboards were a regular sight on I-4 in those days, one of the leading companies building cheap houses all over Central Florida. Eddy, who was my youth pastor growing up and a mentor figure for me for many years, was a carpenter by trade and he helped build all the houses in the Deltona area. He said that he’d hop in the back of a truck to ride to the job site, dodging rattlesnakes to then get on a roof and just hop down the line of houses, moving from roof-to-roof. He told me that guys would sometimes attempt to kill rattlesnakes from the back of the truck by using rebar like a spear and throwing it at them. “You had one shot,” he’d tell me from the driver’s seat of his van as we drove past the Deltona exit on our way to New Smyrna to surf, “a rattlesnake has like an 8-foot striking range, so if you missed there was a real risk that the snake could bite you in the truck bed.” This story was often accompanied by a phrase I’m sure lots of us have heard before; that, before the houses, there was “nothing out here.” _Nothing._ This was what I didn’t like about Deltona. The surrounding area felt like there was nothing. Just miles and miles of what I would later come to know as “scrub pine”—forests of tall pine trees and small palms, the ground beneath being sand littered with pine needles, cones, and dry sticks. A landscape that seemed boring and banal. Tearing it up for houses and strip-malls seemed like an absolute improvement. The epitome of land that is “undeveloped.” My first memories of my mom as a working person were when she worked as the bookkeeper for a real estate developer. The concept of “undeveloped land” is something I unconsciously sublimated from my earliest years. I remember when my childhood church, the First Baptist Church of Pine Hills, was eyeing its future growth and owned a 50-acre plot of land in the Ocoee area of Central Florida. Eventually this plot of land would become my high school and the main place of worship for the church. But when I was like 8 and we went out for the ground-breaking ceremony for the building that would house classrooms and a gymnasium, the area was a seemingly endless stretch of orange trees. There was one hill, heading West on Highway 50, that when it crested you could see almost all the way to Claremont. In 1990 it was a horizon of green, a single road bifurcating fields of citrus. Everyone who grew up in Florida prior to the 2000s likely has a story about some area that “used to be nothing but orange groves.” But, to my mind, orange trees were _something_. Scrub pine was, truly, _nothing._ *** When I was in seminary I was first exposed to the theologians of Radical Orthodoxy that would become deeply influential to me. In particular is Catherine Pickstock. A friend of mine had given me a burned CD of an interview she and John Milbank gave (I think to the BBC) and Pickstock said something that has stuck with me ever since: all things were created to worship and so when we look at a tree and see it as a being in worship this changes our relationship with the tree—it is no longer a commodity to be used but a creature that glorifies its creator. Like I said, I this stuck with me and I think of it often, especially now that I live in Hawaiʻi which is a place that pretty openly celebrates the fellowship and sacred participation of all creatures. In Hawaiian thinking, trees and animals are a “people” who share our spaces with us and it is our _kuleana_ (responsibility) to care for them and treat them as part of our _ʻohana_ (which, as Lilo all taught us, means family). The continued use of valleys and islands for live-fire drills and bombing practice, the sullying of our _wai_ (water), the loss of indigenous agriculture to pineapple and sugar farming to export wealth out of our communities is all seen as actions that hurt our family. The _ʻaina_ (land) is part of us, is something that participates in a sacred life. Hawaiians rightly understand that all of creation worships its creator and so we are not free to casually exploit creation and treat it as a kind of impersonal “resource” for consumption. Calling land “undeveloped” carries with it an assumption: that turning that land into something that can be monetized is the realized _telos_ (its end or purpose, to use an academic theological term) of that land. The assumed thinking here is that a piece of land is effectively “wasting its potential” by simply existing. Members of the Church are not innocent here. Centuries of interpreting passages about tilling the land or our God-given “dominion” over creation as though it is our obligation to transform land into something for financial gain have their genesis in various corners of the Church. The truth is that our “dominion” is supposed to look like the Kingdom of God, which is defined by Jesusʻ own humility. A gift that indigenous Christians give back to the Church is the reminder that our relationship with the land is defined by what Hawaiians call _pono_ , which is most closely translated as “righteousness” (but is also deeply related to the concept of sovereignty). We are stewards of a creation that is not ours, set in the midst of a worshipful mosaic of fellow creatures, expected by God to do right by them. I’m of the mind that Christianity itself has been the victim of a kind of intellectual colonization that has caused it to lose focus on things that Jesus called to our attention. Wealth-hoarders/addicts throughout generations have the habit of forcibly wrenching religious beliefs into something that supports their exploitative vision. Jesus, ever the agrarian, repeatedly directs our attention to the created world in order to teach us about the Kingdom of God—which is to say that the exploitative impulse we see coming from Christian Nationalists and others of their ilk is not something intrinsic to the Christian faith itself, but is the result of the colonizing impulse to rework anything and everything into justifying these actions. The “undeveloped land” mindset is subtle. What starts as “there was nothing but orange trees” can quickly turn into “there was nothing.” And of course there was _never_ nothing. *** When I was in Thailand in 2007 I met guys who had grown up in the US while their dads were being educated for ministry. Once they returned to Thailand they took to their Thai culture to a degree that even astounded other Thai people. I went through a similar thing when I returned to Florida after my time in Northern Virginia/DC during seminary. I became _extra_ Floridian. An author who was important to me at this time was Jeff Klinkenberg. His _Seasons of Real Florida_ should be required reading for anyone moving to the state. It was him who got me to understand that scrub pine land was far from “nothing.” Turns out that this type of land, ubiquitous and seen as the kind of bland “cookie matrix” between the chocolate chips of “civilization” (to borrow an image from Chuck Palahniuk), is a completely unique ecosystem. It’s a rare example of a “wet desert,” meaning that even though the area gets rain like 200 days out of the year (calling Florida the “Sunshine State” is just the first of many falsehoods about the state that charlatans came up with to sell land starting in the 1800s) because the ground is mostly sand, the water doesn’t stay and runs through down to the aquifer beneath the surface. There are crazy lizards that swim in the sand. And the whole thing has evolved to rely on lightning. See, scrub pine is sandy because it used to be ocean. Florida was basically an underwater sandbar until relatively recently (in a geological sense). The plants that grow there are opportunistic plants that have adapted to eke out enough moisture from the sand to thrive. That and they can make use of the consistent rain that falls (nearly every day in Central Florida is a thunderstorm starting around 3 pm). These tall and thin pine trees are also perfect lightning rods. The lightning strikes the palms, they catch fire. The fire opens their cones and the rising heat helps carry the seeds. The fire also burns off parasitic plants and over-zealous undergrowth. With Florida being the lightning strike capitol of North America, this is ideal. Basically, this is an ecosystem that has adapted perfectly to its environment—one could argue that it does so in worshipful response to what God has ordained it to do, moving as it does through the long evolutionary process of God’s creative act. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when one really considers it. But, it also so happens to be flat and easily transformable land that also just so happens to exist around some of the most active tourist hotspots in the world. Which means that it is not in the best interest for the investors that we see this land for what it is and celebrate it as a means to glorify God and draw us all closer into His love. No, it has to be seen as “undeveloped.” As “nothing.” This scenario is playing out all over the world. You’ll hear this language as the wealth-addicts eye the construction of yet another data center. Or high-rise that will never be filled. Or shopping center that will put other places out of business. Or agriculture land that will grow corn or beef to be exported elsewhere at the expense of feeding the hungry who live in the detritus of what we might call “post-developed land.” For us Christians there can be no such thing as “undeveloped land.” No vista contains “nothing.” Rather it is all rife with the creatures of our God and King, living in uninterrupted worship of Him. “You love all things that exist and loathe none of the things that you have made, for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.” (Wisdom 11:24, ESV) If God loves it, then we’re meant to love it. It’s not “undeveloped.” It’s something entirely more valuable. _A pen and ink drawing of a scrub pine forest that I drew after learning to appreciate them_ * * * _The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector ofSaint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed_. #theology #nature #ecology #Jesus #Episcopal #Anglican #Christian #Bible

I recently read this quote from Peter Thiel, cited from the _New York Times_ in a recent article in the _Guardian_ : > I like Star Wars way better. I’m a capitalist. Star Wars is a capitalist show (sic). Star Trek is the communist one. There is no money in Star Trek because you just have the transporter (sic) machine that can make anything you need. The whole plot Star Wars starts with Han Solo having this debt that he owes and so the plot in Star Wars is driven by money. _The whole plot of Star Wars starts with Han Solo_? Did we forget the entire first act of the film, the nearly half-hour of screen time that takes place _before_ Han Solo shows up? Then, the plot _starting_ with “this debt that he owes.” What? I have to admit that I am somewhat deeply entrenched in the lore of both _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ and so cannot be considered an “average person” when it comes to either franchise. But I also feel like it’s not outside the realm of reason to say that the average person, when thinking about _Star Wars_ , is not under the assumption that those films are about Han Solo and money. Luke Skywalker is the hero of the franchise (sorry, George, you’re wrong in thinking that you could make _Star Wars_ to be about Anakin). His story is about putting others ahead of himself. Peter Thiel, it seems, conveniently forgets that the opening scenes of _Star Wars_ (what has since been retconned into _A New Hope_) involve a superior military killing and abducting dissidents in order to silence them. Han Solo’s debt is only a tangential part of the story (it’s the motivation that gets him wrapped up in the whole thing, sure). The plot of _Star Wars_ starts with Princess Leia discreetly sending the plans of a secret super weapon (the Death Star) to a backwater planet where she knows an old Jedi—a religion of essentially space wizards who’ve been eradicated by the Galactic Empire—is in hiding, in the hopes that he’ll get those plans to the leadership of the Rebel Alliance so they can put a stop to mass murder. This happens as Darth Vader, the right-hand enforcer of the Emperor, has boarded her ship and massacres her crew. It is, quite famously, one of the most historically thrilling opening scenes in the history of cinema. I once knew a couple, youth group leaders at an upstart church in the Orlando area, who did _Star Wars_ cosplay and said “we’re more into the military/tactical part of Star Wars, not so much the mystical/Jedi stuff.” This is only to say that, yes, I get that there are people who enjoy Star Wars who don’t really go for the “Jedi stuff.” But you’d think that the guy who’s recently made it part of his brand to be an expert on the Antichrist would focus on Luke, the messianic figure, and not Han, the greaser who makes no secret of the fact that he believes in nothing. *** I recently wrote a piece wondering about the phenomenon of me and Christian Nationalist types reading the same Bible but coming away with vastly different views on those texts. This kind of questioning applies to other stories and shared mythologies. In that same aforementioned _Guardian_ article is a note that Stephen Miller, the cruel and ghoulish advisor to the Trump White House, claims to be a fan of _Star Trek._ Years back we learned that, infamously, Paul Ryan (Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election) claimed to be a fan of the notoriously anarchist band Rage Against the Machine. This lead to memes involving people wondering what “machine” Paul Ryan thought Zach and Tom were raging against (was it a faulty Maytag?). Again, how does this happen? I was recently reminded of a story shared by Dr. Randy Richards and Brandon O’Brien in their truly great book _Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes._ They recall a story related by Mark Allen Powell in his essay “The Forgotten Famine” where he had different groups read Luke’s account of the Prodigal Son story. > Powell had twelve students in a seminary class read the story carefully from Luke’s Gospel (sic), close their Bibles and then retell the story as faithfully as possible to a partner […] Later, Powell had the opportunity to try [this] again, this time outside the United States. In St. Petersburg, Russia, he gathered fifty participants to read and retell the prodigal son story. The story goes that Powell noticed that none of the 12 American seminary students mentioned the famine that is referenced in Luke 15:14. He finds this interesting and decides to have a hundred people do this exercise, out of which only six mention the famine. > The group was ethnically, racially, socioeconomically and religiously diverse. The “famine-forgetters,” as Powell calls them, had only one thing in common: they were from the United States. As already mentioned, he has the opportunity to try this experiment with fifty Russians and out of that group “an overwhelming forty-two of the fifty participants mentioned the famine.” The authors postulate that for the Russian participants, the memory of the Nazi siege (when St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad), which resulted in three years of famine and around 670,000 deaths, was a key component to the story. The purpose of sharing this story, the authors state, is “to raise this question: if our cultural context and assumptions can cause us to overlook a famine, what else do we fail to notice?” The details missed seem to be informed by cultural and economic contexts. Those Russian students knew famine, so they were primed to see that detail. We in the US are prone to say “I’m starving” after only a few hours after a meal, so we’re less inclined to pay attention to the detail of the famine. But, regardless, the famine is an essential part of understanding the story. The famine is what prompts the “prodigal” of the story to return home. As Richards and O’Brien note, American Christians tend to see the story of the Prodigal Son as being about the wasteful kid getting his comeuppance, facing the reality of lying in the bed that he’s made, and being surprised at his father’s mercy. But the Russian readers (and plenty of others outside of the West) see the story differently: “The boy’s problem is not that he is wasteful but that he is lost.” Not noticing the famine changes the tenor of the story quite dramatically. *** I don’t know Peter Thiel, so I can only speculate about his thoughts. But it seems likely that a man of his wealth is primed to see both _Star Trek_ and _Star Wars_ in particular terms. Namely, he sees both as being about money. In order to do this, Thiel has to ignore basically the entire actual story of _Star Wars_. It’s interesting that he views _Star Wars_ as a story about Han Solo when comparing it to _Star Trek_. I say this because there is an oft-made comparison between Han Solo and James Kirk in popular culture. Both are considered to be “shoot-first” rogue like characters who live and act based on their gut feelings, causing women to swoon and men to fall-in-line behind them. But the reality is that neither image is accurate to either character. In the actual _Star Trek_ show Kirk is rarely depicted as a swashbuckling womanizer. Rather he’s described as “a walking stack of books” back in Academy days. He strictly adheres to rules and protocol, deviating only when it seems necessary and called for, and gets laid far less in the show than you’d be primed to think if you’ve never watched it. I think marketing execs created this image for Kirk in order to try and sell the show to a world that had never heard of _Star Trek_ and it wound up sticking in people’s minds—to the point that the Kirk of the movies (particularly from _Khan_ onward) is more like the imagined idea of Kirk rather than his actual depiction in the show (and I say this as an avowed lover of the _Star Trek_ films). Additionally, Han is a kind of comic-relief character. He’s what’s known as the “audience surrogate,” the character who sits on the outside of the main narrative action to help translate the in-universe events for those who aren’t part of it. His line about “hokey religion” being no substitute for a blaster is meant to be a wink for all the 1970s Boomer dads in the audience for whom laser swords and droid banter is a bit too much. Their kids see themselves in the princess and the would-be knight. The guy who owes people money, drinking at the bar, racing around in a junker that he fixes up himself? Pure 1970s dad fantasy. Han is also kind of an idiot. His entire “shoot-first” approach winds up both condemned and seen as a failure by the end of the film (which further makes George Lucas’ changes to Han’s shooting of Greedo all the more egregious). Han’s arc is literally that of a rambling man out on the road with no one but his dog, looking for quick bucks, coming to the realization that there’s things more important than money and that he is a better man with friends at his side. Lest we forget, Han Solo gets the winning shot against Darth Vader(!) and only after he decides to make a u-turn and deal with the bounty on his head for another day. He makes a selfless decision to save his friends from what he had already acknowledged was a suicide mission. The end of the movie is, in terms of Han Solo, quite overtly a rejection of money. So if money is at all part of what _Star Wars_ is “about” it’s in terms of money’s limits. It’s corny and cliché to say (but George Lucas is openly playing with corny cliches in this series of films) but Han’s story really ends on “the real wealth is the friends we’ve made.” *** Is _Star Trek_ communist? _Communist_ is a particular thing, so I won’t say that. _Star Trek_ is decidedly _socialist_ though. The “transporter machine” that Thiel refers to is likely the replicator, a piece of technology that only started to show up in _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ (set a century after the events of Kirk and his crew). What’s interesting to me about the lore of _Star Trek_ is that the utopian vision of the Federation of Planets is something that begins to come into being _before_ there’s been a post-scarcity society. Gene Roddenberry depicted a future where humanity matured beyond the pettiness of political boundaries and wealth-hoarding. Later iterations of the series would depict the catalyzing event of this as humanity’s first contact with alien life, which elevates our consciousness. But the actual original series of _Star Trek_ doesn’t go that deep into the history. Rather it takes for granted that we humans were just simply destined to reach such a place by virtue of our continued growth as a species. _Star Trek_ (the original series) indicates that there are other wars between the Federation years and ours (World War III, the Eugenics Wars), all with the implication that we eventually come to see the absurdity of war among ourselves and choose to work as one species for our betterment. Thiel cannot imagine a scenario where humanity becomes collaborative and communal without some kind of technological catalyst. He sees _Star Trek_ as presenting a world where people refuse to accept the monetization of technologies that people like him envision themselves inventing. He’s likely terrified of the idea that he and his friends’ inventions will be taken from them and used in ways that won’t make them both rich and powerful. And so he has to dismiss the relatively hard sci-fi _Star Trek_ as a kind of fantasy while reinventing the decidedly fantasy-set-in-space _Star Wars_ as a more “realistic” story—conveniently ignoring the vast majority of the story in order to do so. The funny thing is that, everything considered, both _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ depict the same thing: once we put aside the pursuit of wealth in exchange for collaboration, community, and working toward a more open future for everyone that’s when we really begin to shine. That’s when we really get to live among the stars. * * * _The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector ofSaint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed_. #StarWars #StarTrek #Bible #Theology #politics

A new AI-guided tool is now required before submitting permit applications for certain residential projects, including single-family homes and duplexes on Oahu.

The pope's connection comes during a surprisingly prosperous season for the White Sox, who are in first place in the AL Central.