day no. 16,303: stand up, stay the plague

Psalm 106:30

Then Phinehas stood up and intervened,

and the plague was stayed

Stand up, stay the plague.

Phinehas had eyes in his head. He saw what was going on and he knew what needed to be done. He may not have been the only one who saw it, but he was the only one who acted upon it.

Numbers 25:7-13

When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand. And the Lord said to Moses, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.’”

Because of Phinehas, the plague was stayed, but not before twenty-four thousand had perished.

We are in the midst of our own plague. It is not the one being advertised, but the one the marketing campaign is revealing. It is hidden in plain sight and for those, like Phinehas, with eyes in their heads, the next step is obvious: stand up. There is a contagion of misinformation masquerading as fact checking. There is a plague of ill logic parading as polemics. There is an outbreak of break downs being applauded as building up.There is an end game calling itself a reset. 

Pathology is being promoted as progressive and sickness is being sold as strength. 

The plague we see is a playgue. It is all for show. It is theater. The true plague is the desire to write that script. The true plague is buying tickets to that show.

The real plague is the desire to stay down.

So…

Stand up. 

Stay the plague.

We cannot stay the plague by staying down.

Standing up is the only antidote for staying down.

*originally drafted during the upheavals of 2021