Field Guide to Americans: Old Maps

The docu-mental digest

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 13:00:15 GMT

vol. 4 issue

Greetings,

Welcome to the over 100 subscribers that have found their way here in the past several weeks, while I have been on hiatus, no less. I am so glad you’re here!

docu-mental will soo…

Bannish the wizards of empire:

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 20:35:22 GMT

vol. 4 issues 25

Empires fall. Their wizards are bannished. Art: Patricia Tillis.

Greetings,

Things have changed.

docu-mental: mapping the american states of mind began in 2018 as a trusted weekly sourc…

Why Blacks are the soul of this nation

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 17:51:03 GMT

vol. 4 issue 24

Civil Rights protestors cool their feet during a protest in 1968. More on this below. Photo: Unseen Histories.

Greetings,

Three things.

Number one: Jesus and me

Initially, I was at a loss …

Individuals, not gods, topple kings and bullies

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 16:04:03 GMT

vol. 4 issue 22

Photo by GR Stocks .

“We live in Capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and c…

Indigenous peoples embody the soul of the land, blacks embody the soul of the nation

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 18:10:15 GMT

vol. 4 issue 21

Photo: Ruth Gledhill.

"St. Hildegard saw the whole world as wedded to divine Wisdom and this marriage symbolizes the mutual encounter of God and human together, working in harmony to br…

Reality check: The infallibility of YOUR powers of observation

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 04 Sep 2022 18:57:47 GMT

vol. 4 issue 20

Greetings,

Blissfully, I took the summer off from television. I didn’t miss it. Now back in my routine, more or less, I watched a recent Real Time with Bill Maher, expecting I would lea…

'Here's why the Book of Numbers should matter to Americans'

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 20:25:56 GMT

vol. 4 issue 19

Photo by Nicholas Safran.

Greetings,

About a month ago, I appealed to evangelical Christian Americans to think a bit on why they trust the sources the trust. I was inspired to do so afte…

Rewind: 'Religion that Heals, Religion that Harms'

Whitney McKnight — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 21:54:35 GMT

vol. 4 SPECIAL EDITION

Photo by Samuel Martins

Greetings,

When I was a psychiatry journal editor and media producer, I had the great fortune to work with James L. Griffith, MD, chair of the psychiatry department at George Washington University, on a number of projects.

During the height of the pandemic and the last presidential election, “Griff” as his colleagues and others affectionately call him, was kind enough to record an interview with me about the way politicians and others can manipulate us by way of tapping into our different neuronal structures.

I am revisiting this podcast (also available in a video below) because one of the key points of Griff’s work that we discussed was the role religion can play to either help or harm a community that is at war with itself. Griff, who grew up in the Deep South, where his father often entertained members of the KKK, as he tells is also the author of an award-winning book on the subject, Religion that Heals, Religion that Harms: A Guide for Clinical Practice.

From the show notes of the podcast/video:
Griff [and his colleagues] viewed their patients with a compassion born of a global perspective on the nature and reality of spiritual pain, the kind that is born of believing one has no reason to hope and to dream.

There are a lot of thoughts crammed into those show notes, some of which, such as my notes on diversity, equality, and inclusion training, have evolved, but overall, they remain my position, and so I won’t yammer on here.

My reason for revisiting this thoughtful conversation with Griff (in my experience, every conversation with Griff is thoughtful and respectfully provocative) is because it slots in nicely with my recent call made to Christian Americans while I was visiting family members who live where the Bible Belt buckles, to consider how those of us who place a premium on spirituality can work together to leverage our common faith in service to something greater than ourselves so that we might live in peace as a nation. Doing so, I believe, requires not evangelizing, but listening. And that is something we get at in this interview, too.

All of my docu-mental podcasts, including this one with Dr. Griffith, can be found in the archives, which is for paid subscribers only. But! if you’d like to listen and to also take a tour through the archives, below is a coupon that will give you a week’s free pass to do so.

If you are a paid subscriber, you will also have access to the upcoming response from jazz musician and theologian, Julian Davis Reid, to my interrogation of the Book of Numbers and Moses’s ill-fated trip to the Promise Land. Julian has already written his reply, and it’s great — he brings up a few points I never would have thought of, as I would have expected a theologian would! As a patron subscriber, expect that op-ed either next week or the week after, depending on other essays and guest op-eds I have pending.

One last thing: a few long-time readers of docu-mental have asked me in so many words, “Have you lost your cotton-picking mind???” by way of my outreach to the Christian Nation within our nation. No, I don’t think so. Mostly, I am curious is all.

Love, faith, and kindness are such precious resources, and if they are to be found anywhere, I figure it’s by starting with people of faith. If I am wrong, well, I will soon find out. What I discover is entirely in your hands!

If you use your coupon, you will be asked for your credit card information. If you decide not to continue your subscription, here is the information for how to cancel:

How do I cancel my paid subscription?

Naturally, I hope you will continue to be a patron of this publication. Together, we can discuss our love of country, with me coming from the perspective that I love the actual land it has been wrought upon.

Below is the link to the interview. I hope you will join me on the other side!

Peace,

Whitney

Love, kindness, and leading from the inside out

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 22:08:24 GMT

vol. 4 issue 18

Dreams on fire in the southeastern US.

Greetings,

It reeks of unseasoned wood smoke in these parts lately. The land-owning locals, a sizeable chunk of them anyway, are burning up their a…

Letter to my Christian American friends and neighbors

Whitney McKnight — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 22:03:44 GMT

vol. 4 issue 17

Photo by John Price on Unsplash

Greetings,

Last year, I noted that America is both a “fact” and an “ideal”, which makes her dynamic.

“America, the Ideal is fluid,” I wrote, “just as all i…

Raping the land is a tactic

Whitney McKnight — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:02:42 GMT

Vol. 4 issue 16

Heading back from a paddle out to hear the woodthrush. You can listen along as you read by clicking on the audio below.

Willingly, consistently traumatized:

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 22:26:32 GMT

vol. 4 issue 15

Photo by Maryna Kazmirova on Unsplash

Greetings,

Here’s an observation:

Millions of people in this nation, and elsewhere on the globe, who routinely tune into a certain infotainment netwo…

Who profits off you hating me?

Whitney McKnight — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 22:28:48 GMT

vol. 4 issue 14

Photo: Andre Hunter.

Greetings,

Earlier this week, just as the Supreme Court handed down yet another divisive reversal of law, I was accused of being an East Coast elite. In the South wh…

You can't put a price on beauty

Whitney McKnight — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:27:48 GMT

Vol. 4 issue 13

A big, fat Summer Solstice-time Southern sunset. Photo taken from a little cemetery plot where a farming family used to bury their dead on a hill overlooking the water. Now there is a …

Child annihilators and forced-birth laws

Whitney McKnight — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 16:18:51 GMT

vol. 4 issue 12

“Do as I say you will do, think what I tell you to think,” Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash

Greetings,

Welcome to Oceania.

It’s the largest of the three nation superstates in Orwell’s …

SCOTUS: mercenaries of occupation

Whitney McKnight — Fri, 27 May 2022 22:32:45 GMT

vol. 4 issue 11

Photo of babyman phony hero by Max Böhme on Unsplash

Greetings,

Last issue, I led with the idea that we are a nation occupied. After this week, could there be any doubt? And now, the mer…

Mormons, atheists, & others

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 01 May 2022 20:17:57 GMT

vol. 4. issue 10

Greetings,

It might look like the end of the Yellow Brick Road, where behind the green curtain, the Wizard of Oz turns out to be a know-nothing phony. Instead, this photo I took is of …

ICYMI: Mindstead is the first online marketplace for mental health tools

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 20 Mar 2022 20:40:18 GMT

vol. 4 issue 6

Photo: Courtesy of Marie Leznicki.

Greetings,

Today is the Equinox, a day when light and dark are perfectly poised against one another. A time to reflect on what brings us balance.

That’s …

'I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a two-seamer fastball'

Whitney McKnight — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 21:54:29 GMT

vol. 4 issue 5

I am so smart.

Whitney McKnight — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 22:15:20 GMT

vol. 4 issue 2

“She simply must know.” Photo: Reading Woman. Credit: Saralina on Flickr.

Greetings,

My son once quipped that I approach conversations with a knife and fork.

What can feel to others like h…