She was dead by the time she reached 1,000 subscribers.
What we know: She was in her late twenties. She read a lot of books. Paid close attention to current events. Which is to say that she was very sad.
“Don’t you feel that an ineffable something is missing from the world?”, she asks in one of her early videos.
“Like your teeth don’t quite fit together after a new filling? Like one leg is a centimetre shorter than the other? Like your eyes won’t focus the whole way?”
The world has changed so much from under us. And we are lost.
Every morning, children go to school in a system that’s tuned to make industrial workers from 1910. They graduate with degrees that guarantee a career in unemployment. And while they’re young, these kids can’t even play unsupervised in the street.
Women are more educated than ever before. They work harder and earn more. But their work is undervalued and their salaries are kept artificially low. How much respect does a society have for its women when they elect a president like Mr. Grab ‘Em By The Pussy?
Young men are no longer chewed up by war. But there are no expectations for them, either. No challenge that lets them prove their mettle. Unattractive and unwelcome, they withdraw from society. Becoming the exact kind of parasites their fathers would have chased out from the community in their own days.
Romance is reduced to a series of swipes in a winner-take-all app.
Conversation gets manipulated by billionaires through an algorithmic feed.
Food tastes like a cardboard copy of the real thing.
Ignorance is wisdom.
Work is Bullshit.
And religion… religion has nothing to say about this at all.
NEW LORD was sure that a new religion will rise to tackle all these problems. Which are all really a single problem: an omni-crisis of the spirit.
At first she waited for a saviour. A man to light the path in a dark world.
Then she cried and prayed for that voice. The voice yelling in this wilderness prepare the way for our LORD.
Then she got impatient.
She got agitated.
The man never came.
So she decided to become that man.
Her name was Linda and she was half-Filipino. She was a light-skinned Black woman. She was a white girl with a California tan.
She said our religions were unfit for purpose:
Judaism is still busy pretending that God didn’t break his covenant in 1939 when he allowed his people to be rounded up like cows, gassed like swine and barbecued like ducks.
Jesus’ preaching was radically kind for his time. He delivered a message so explosive that the authorities had to eliminate him. Modern Christianity has abandoned his message. You can be an Evangelical racing to accelerate a middle-eastern apocalypse. Or Orthodox, where statistically your church is in total agreement with your state: the Russian state. You can be Catholic – but it’s hard to claim authority over the spirit world when you’re so rooted in the dirt that you ensure that every roof tile on your temple bears your name.
Islam is a very clear-eyed religion. After the Battle of Badr, the Prophet (peace be upon him) gave a simple guide for discovering Truth: look at who’s winning and you will see who’s favoured by God. After eight hundred years of being broken by European Crusaders, the Mongols, the Russians, pale racists from a bucolic island… it’s clear who is winning.
Confucianism: a daddy-knows-best system where commands flow down from the Emperor, to the governor, to the clan leader to the grandfather, the father, the son. All of this worked a lot better when nobody could read and realize how dumb the daddies are.
Buddhism: pacify the masses by telling them to lower their expectations.
Hinduism: pacify the masses by telling them their born-rich lord actually earned his privilege. Be patient and you will become a lord in time, too.
Capitalism: pacify the masses by telling them their born-rich lord actually earned his privilege. Be patient and you will become a lord in time, too.
The old religions have nothing to say about the new world.
In those first grainy videos, filmed when she still had the bad camera, Linda talked and talked and started explaining her vision for NEW FAITH.
“Curiosity is the seed of Love”
– NEW LORD
There can be no Love without Curiosity.
You don’t really Love a child if you mentally check out when he tells you about his day at school. You may think your girlfriend is hot. But if you don’t care what she’s thinking then you don’t Love her. You can have a difficult, mercurial relationship with your job – but if you are always able to make new discoveries and find new meaning in it, then you Love it.
NEW LORD would go through periods of overwhelm. Spending weeks without posting a new video. She often felt that being a prophet without a flock was a waste of time.
In those periods when she had no energy, no passion, not even grim duty, she could always find a spark of curiosity. She would fan that spark and start exploring some obscure topic. Eventually, by giving over to that inquisitiveness that we all share, she would pull herself all the way out of the doldrums.
The first thing that every child does – that every initiate to NEW FAITH does – is to get curious about NEW LORD. You can’t claim that you Love NEW LORD or even understand her if you never got curious about her.
You start by watching her videos.
Linda recorded a lot of videos. A LOT. She made so many in her short life because of her episodes of hypomania. She’d record four, five videos in a day sometimes. Theologians can tell it’s the same day by analyzing her clothes, the angle at which the sun hits the kitchen wall behind her, the length of her fingernails.
After her messages begin to sink in, it’s time to figure out which ones are fake.
The earlier fakes are simple to spot.
The classic example is a video that was uncovered years ago, in early December. The one where her eyes blank out (An MPEG compression artefact, except no other part of the image is undergoing compression at that time). And she also starts the video with a different number of teeth than she ends it with.
That one was created by the Governmental Department for Economic Stimulation. In it, she talks about the importance of showing others that you care; whether it is through a hand-made item, spending time together at a café, or a thoughtful gift from a local store. The GDES created this video to stimulate shopping during the Christmas season.
Another classic forgery – a video called “Mercy” – is much sleeker. When the young disciple gets to that one they are better at spotting technical manipulation. The only giveaway is the digital watermark embedded in the signal. It claims that the video was first posted to a particular social network. That network started 2 years after Linda was already dead.
In the video, NEW LORD talks about how important it is to appreciate other cultures’ point of view. How to let others be without interference. It was a last-ditch defense effort by the White Rus (Белая Русь) Organization, made right before we murdered their grim-gray oligarchs and replaced them with our own corn-fed boys.
The newest fakes are indistinguishable from the real thing.
“Is it real?
– NEW LORD
Your memory is a liar.”
“But I would spot new fakes. I would remember the videos that I had already watched!”, you might be thinking.
And you would be wrong.
After viewing one thousand, two thousand, of her videos you stop remembering the little details. Would you notice if someone changed just one word on a re-play? If you did, would trust your own memory?
Certain Billionaire Patriarchs buy entire video-hosting platforms just to tweak the views and history indicators on NEW LORD’s videos. Sometimes they do this in the open. Sometimes you won’t know that a site’s been taken over.
Altering digital history is simple. All it takes is money.
Previous attempts to re-record her videos on tamper-proof media have run into a familiar problem: the few remaining printing presses and VHS player factories are chokepoints in the process. It is simple to buy and taint them. All it takes is money.
By the time a NEW FAITH adherent grasps all of this they are in their teens. If they’re smart, then they realize that no single video can be trusted but that in aggregate they contain Linda’s message.
Eventually they start to wonder if NEW LORD was even real.
Eventually they understand: it doesn’t matter.
“The human mind is riddled with glitches. Have you noticed yours today?”
– NEW LORD
You can’t take a shortcut through this learning process. Even if you know what the final conclusion will be. It’s one of those glitches in the human mind.
Do you remember being a teen and being frustrated by how stupid your parents were?
You’d look at their life choices and see all the flaws. Mom and Dad would explain why they made certain decisions, but it all seemed like excuses at the time.
Then, thirty years later, you realize that they were geniuses. That they made the same decisions you’d make now under the same circumstances…
These are situations where you can hear the Truth, but it won’t make sense to you until you live the Truth.
When you reach your early twenties, you are ready to move beyond NEW LORD’s videos.
There is a rich body of stories about Linda and her deeds. These stories are passed orally from one follower of NEW FAITH to another. Collecting new stories is a handy excuse to strike up a conversation with strangers, to spend time together and let a friendship sprout. Retelling stories is an activity that can fill an awkward silence at a party. It is something old friends do together. A pretense to spend time with each other.
The Pandemic of 2020 had unwoven our social fabric. The Great Pandemic’s consequences made it seem like an affliction of the mind. But nowadays we see it as an illness of the spirit. It gave people an excuse to care only for themselves and to stop saying “hello” on the street. It radicalized grandparents. It begat a generation of dysregulated children. And it gave permission for quieter members of society to curdle into sickly hermits.
The storytelling, the questioning, the curiosity of NEW FAITH was the cure for our spiritual disease.
The stories about Linda form a modern-day Hadith.
It is harder to put a fake story into circulation than it is to alter a video. But it still happens often. That is why each story carries along its isnad and it matters how “close” a story is to the original teller. For example: a story that was passed from Linda’s sister, to Alexis Zachar, to Eastern acolyte Xavier Arbus, to your mother – that’s more reliable than a story that passed through twenty people. Or a story with suspicious gaps in the chain. In a word filled with adversarial lies, the fact that a story came down to you through multiple chains is the best indication that it is True.
With all these stories about NEW LORD, we have people like @al-Bukhari who write the stories into book compilations. These are useful for future students of NEW FAITH.
But writing things down comes with its own problems. Every time you write a story down, you are really writing about yourself.
There is no way to separate @al-Bukhari’s identity from his compilation of stories. He chose the words to write down. He chose which stories to include in his Sahih Bukhari. He chose the order of the stories to highlight certain themes.
“Somebody had to invent Christmas. Somebody had to invent GOD.”
– NEW LORD
The most common oral stories highlight either Linda’s philosophy or her temperament.
There is the one with her nieces. The one where her sister leaves NEW LORD alone with the girls for too long.
In it, Linda tells her nieces that humans need ceremony to mark key life events: puberty, marriage, birth, death, loss and diaspora, return and reconciliation. In the modern world we lost these ceremonies. So you must invent your own. It’s just that your inventions have to be convincing enough.
She went on to describe how every common Christmas tradition was made up by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. How somebody just decided to invent Kwanzaa – and that’s fine, YOU CAN JUST DO THAT. How biblical Aaron invented a priesthood to provide income for his sons, responsible for praising the same God he tried to usurp a few days before. How a nomadic desert merchant came out of a cave with the secret to forge a super-nation through belief. Oh! but what a lucky coincidence that the Infinite Being spoke the same language these nomads did. One guy invented Buddhism. One guy invented Confucianism. Somebody invented fishgod Dagon, firegod Ba’al and treegoddess Asherah. Somebody invented a moody and jealous god that would very much like to crush all the rest.
After that, Linda went on to say something to the effect of “you have to Love Truth, but some Fictions are very useful”. She proceeded to light up a hundred-dollar bill in front of the girls – to show that money is just plastic that’s imbued with the Fiction of a “country” and the belief that the country is “solvent”.
By the time the girls’ mother returned to the room, Linda – eyes wide talkingamileaminute – was explaining the Money Multiplier, company scrip and private banknotes. The girls were ushered away in a hurry.
They were six and eight at the time.
They didn’t understand what Linda was telling them then. But eventually they did.
It’s funny how the girls would follow such different paths, given they were raised in the same family. Hearing the same message.
The older one would become an archivist. She went looking for Truth in dusty documents and ancient books. If you make a careful study of our nation’s history, you’ll see her materialize at just the right time with just the right book to break an impasse or guide a leader. In photos of old “crisis rooms” where they make momentous decisions, she is always there discreetly at the edge of the action. She would die as an old woman slipping on ice on the way to buy potatoes.
The younger one would become known as Witch Priestess of the North. She went searching for Truth inside her Body. Her doctrine would propel her followers to sever an ear when sealing a social bond; to cut off a finger as proof they’re serious about a political statement. She would die screaming as an old woman at the Battle of the Pass; strapped into her battle harness, rocketfire all around her, hopped up on amphetamines, invincible on painkillers, eyes goggling, mouth foaming.
Nobody fakes that video.
The sisters are buried side by side. Each one has a saucer-sized bronze plaque for a tombstone. Every person’s story is equally small in a big world.
To be honest, I am glad the Witch Priestess and her followers died at the Pass. They were getting extreme with the body sacrifices used to prove commitment to a cause. In time, things would escalate until one could only show seriousness by making the Final Sacrifice.
I’m sure they consider their deaths as a gift of Love to us. I consider it a kind of heresy.
“The easiest path is to die for The Cause.
– NEW LORD
The hardest path is to live for The Cause.”
Another classic story is the one about the sparrow.
In it, Linda is still living with her parents. She is digging in the garden with a shovel one day, when she hears a rasping sound in the corner of the garden. She goes to investigate. Under a bush, there is a sparrow that’s been gored by a cat and left to bleed out. The poor thing is alive but the torso is open and she can see intestines.
Now, you should know that NEW LORD Loved animals.
Linda believed that humans have a double-edged sword in their mind called “Us versus Them”. It afflicts all social animals. It makes us forget our differences when we fight a common enemy. But we also use it to label people as “others” in an excuse to hurt them. Before every war, listen closely and you will hear propagandists paving the way by dehumanising the target.
But NEW LORD also had great hope for humanity.
History shows that kindness is always growing. First, we introduced laws to protect cattle from violence. Then, protection for dogs. Later, a ban on drunken husbands beating their wife (but only between 10pm and 7am as a courtesy to sleeping neighbours). Eventually, women gained full status as people. Finally, even homosexuals got to enjoy the same kindness that dogs did. Progress.
“Who do you call a ‘Person’?
– NEW LORD
Now expand that definition.
Expand it again.
Again!
AGAIN!”
Sweet agonizingly slow progress. Like molasses.
Linda believed that the only thing that would save us from us is the steady expansion in what we define as a Person. An expansion of the “Human Family”. That’s why Loving animals was so important.
So Linda sees this gored sparrow and Linda lifts her shovel high in the air. She brings it down hard on the bird. Slams it down once. Slams it down twice. The bird is dead.
When I was a teen, I would go bicycling in the city. Once, I was riding on the sidewalk and saw something approaching from the road. It was small and black – a squirrel. It had been crushed by car and its torso was flattened. The hind legs didn’t work but it kept crawling on its forepaws. It was in agony and would die soon.
I didn’t want to kill it, but I knew that it would be the right thing to do. I didn’t have a shovel. I had my bike – a clunky weapon. There were people puttering in their gardens. Surely they would notice a stranger killing an animal in front of their home.
So I let it be.
Was I a coward? Was I practicing Ahimsa? Was I selfishly worried about what the adults would do if I did the right thing?
Linda’s story… It could teach such different lessons. Where was she when she killed the sparrow? Was she in the backyard, and some Peeping Tom spied on the whole incident? Was she in the front yard and so brazen that she didn’t care if her neighbours saw her kill?
That story about the sparrow always resonated with me. Because every time you speak a story, you are really speaking about yourself.
There are also stories about NEW LORD that get personal. Sometimes they are unflattering; they’re about times when she’s vain, selfish or drunk and horny.
My favourite story about Linda is the one called “Joe”. It’s set in he time when Linda was in Toronto temporarily for school, before she returned to New Brunswick. She’s out drinking with friends and she complains that her MP3 player with all the good songs is gone. She knows exactly where it is but she’ll never see it again.
The friends are puzzled. NEW LORD explains: earlier in the month she’d gone out to a small nightclub with another group of friends. There, she locks eyes with Joe and they start dancing. He’s dancing well. He smells right, looks right. They start talking and they get along really well. They go to Joe’s place and spend the night together.
In the morning, Linda wakes up before Joe and quietly sneaks out. She goes down the block and realizes, “Damn, I forgot my music player at his place!”. But she didn’t write down his phone number and she won’t be going back.
“Why?”, her friends ask.
“Because that night was perfect. I want to remember him just the way he was. Frozen in amber. If I went back, it would ruin the story – he’ll say something wrong. Or I will”. We are all creating a story with our lives. You have to intentionally make the story magical.
My favourite story about Linda is the one called “Henry”. It’s the one where she’s a Montreal native and she’s out with her friend, her friend’s brother and his friends. They’re at a small bar and she gets interested in one of the brother’s friends, Henry. Henry is single and seems attracted to her.
Later in the evening, Henry excuses himself to go home. His apartment is within a five-minute walk from the bar. So Linda says she hates using bar bathrooms and asks if she can use his. “Of course”, he says, and they set out.
Back at Henry’s place, Linda goes to the bathroom. She comes out expecting Henry to put some moves on her, but Henry gives her a hug and sends her on her way.
Linda is fuming. How dense are men? She stomps to the elevator and makes her way down.
Henry’s friend text-messages him to see if they’re getting it on. “What do you mean?”, Henry asks. “Well, she doesn’t actually need to use the bathroom, you know? Why would she ever go alone with you if she wasn’t interested in getting in your pants”?
Henry immediately calls Linda. She takes his call as she’s about to push the lobby door to exit. “Oh, hey. Can I actually interest you in coming back…?” Henry asks, desperate.
“No!”, Linda says and walks out.
My favourite story about Linda is the one where she’s attending University in Toronto and her boyfriend has this friend. The friend’s name is Zara. She’s Pakistani like Linda herself.
Zara is short and beautiful. She knows how to do a perfect cat’s-eye effect with her makeup. She has these funny quips. Like, she is fuh-nee. And Linda isn’t just attracted. She wants to DEVOUR Zara.
Eventually, things fizzle out between NEW LORD and her boyfriend. Zara breaks up with her own at around the same time. So, taking a risk, Linda asks her ex if he’d connect her with Zara. And he does it.
The two women go on a date to an Italian restaurant that serves these coffee drinks with alcohol in them. Which Linda definitely orders. It’s 6pm and she’s buzzing with caffeine.
They walk around in the uptown neighbourhood and end up at a mall sitting down to talk. Things are going well.
Zara tells Linda about djinn. She says that these things are minor gods, and you better not run into them when you’re alone. One of her relatives has crossed paths with a djinn. Those things will fuck you up.
This is all a bit strange. A young hot girl who believes in ancient crones’ superstitions.
They say goodbye and Linda heads home.
There, she sends a message to ask Zara if she’s interested in a second date.
Zara replies: “No! You went half-and-half on paying for our dinner. And you didn’t compliment me on my looks even once. My boyfriend, he always paid for me and constantly told me I’m beautiful!”
Linda is surprised – why should she pay for someone who’s not even her partner yet? And, Zara is beautiful, but her body and her face are something she was born with. They are not her accomplishments that she should get praise for.
How dense are women?
This young Latina woman left us without scripture or commandments.
No official church of NEW FAITH.
Don’t get me wrong – many have tried to establish a church. But each attempt collapsed. Not because NEW FAITH has a directive against strict top-down orthodoxy. But because you can’t turn a blind eye to certain things when your whole faith is built on curiosity.
In a way, NEW LORD’s greatest gift to us was the stories. And the connection to each other that we form by sharing them.
Now, what kind of story will you go out and tell?
Will it be about you?
Notes
I realize that it’s ridiculous to describe a world religion in two sentences. I’ve done this intentionally as part of this creative writing post. Take a moment, though, to think about what your own religion has to say about the modern world. Many of them give great guidance to a farmer in an agricultural society. But what do they say to a factory worker in an industrialized one? What do they say about climate catastrophe, doomscrolling, incels, deepfakes and neofeudalist billionaires?
When you’re on top of the majestic St. Peter’s Basilica, the important thing is to remember: financing for the roof has been provided by Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII.
If you’re the kind of person who invents their own ceremonies, you’ll like the show Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage.
Some facts on the legality of violence against women. (UK-centric)
