Dispatches from the Dust
Running High
For the original post on substack, click here.
By Carl Teichrib
I remember it as a bizarre yet sobering display of what’s at stake, a sort of tragic comedy that blurred the lines between the surreal and heartbreaking. When it was all done and the dust settled – literally – all we could do was shake our heads… and quietly pray.
Every morning at this year’s Burning Man, our small team would hold a Bible study, tackling the “I Am” statements of Jesus Christ from the Book of John. Sitting under a car-port shade structure, open for all to see, our studies would sometimes attract others who would join us, listening, asking questions, and continuing in conversations afterwards. On Sunday morning, the last day of the event, our circle was an eclectic mix of believers, seekers, and doubters. One younger man named Alex, wearing shorts and a bath robe, showed up high.
It turned out Alex had taken some acid, lysergic acid diethylamide, and was peaking during our study time. For approximately thirty minutes – maybe longer – the rising tension of his inner monologue was externalized, resulting in a barrage of discombobulated questions, accusations, comments and pleadings. It was fast paced, sometimes furiously so. Occasionally he followed the gracious coxing of others, sitting down to quiet himself, only to jump up and rant about how evil the world is. Then, eyes wide, he would abruptly tell us how we Christians didn’t understand how bad things really are.
“Don’t you know that people are doom scrolling right now?!”
He begged to be told one truth from the Bible, something he could cling to. But before anyone could give an answer, he was throwing his arms up while almost yelling about how this Bible study was so boring… and then how this was the most spiritually profound moment in his life. At one point he stood, took off his housecoat, bunched it up and slammed it into the dust.
“You’re my elders, and I need to listen to your wisdom!” Then just as quickly: “But you’re old and you’re dying, and you don’t even have an Instagram account!”
Brian, one of our long-time camp mates and a hobbyist blacksmith, gave Alex a hand-forged metal cross. Someone else gave him a Bible. Alex was breaking into a panic, edging outside our shade structure then returning – pacing, sitting and rising, gesturing wildly, caught in the chemicalized rubber-band that was stretching-and-snapping between his soul, mind, and flesh.
For a second or three he stood at the threshold, outwardly verbalizing his inner battle: “I know you’re right about Jesus… but there are girls…”
Then he ran. And all we could do in that moment was watch as the dust kicked up from his pounding feet, robe flowing in the wind, one hand outstretched with a Bible and one with a cross, while he shouted to everyone in earshot that he couldn’t follow Jesus… there were girls.
As the whirlwind settled and we all looked at each other, nothing much needed to be said. Everyone under our shade structure, believer and skeptic, knew what we had just witnessed – and that we all, like Alex, stand at a crossroad.
