Heads up: you will need to let me cook for a bit before the title makes sense. Let me cook…

Anyway. I want to get a tattoo.

Okay, let me back up. I have always loved tattoos on others, I love the artform and the creativity of making one’s body a canvas for your identity and the artistry of an…artist…but I have always struggled with the idea of having something on my body permanently. I have never loved anything long enough or deeply enough to have it become a permanent part of me.

Culture has a habit of making you not want it on your body anymore. For instance, Harry Potter meant a lot to many people my age (especially outcasts and weirdos), but J. K. Rowling is someone a lot of nerdy millennials do not want to be associated with anymore. (Plenty of bands I used to listen to fall into the same category for me, but I figure my reading audience does not share my musical tastes.)

Too, there are things that I find deeply important, but I might not always or always want to associate with. I am ordained into the Presbyterian Church (USA), so I debated getting the PC(USA) seal tattooed on me, but I also just barely got ordained and have felt unwelcome in the denomination of my ordination on multiple occasions, so I have a hesitation making it a permanent part of my skin.

I have contemplated this for years — and I am also a big, ol’ coward — and could never find anything until very recently.

What do I find most important? Love.

What do I need to remind myself of? That I am loved.

What do I need to remind you of? That you are loved.

Conceptually the idea of a tattoo, or two tattoos, that accomplish those reminders has gone through a few iterations in my mind. But I also found myself thinking about a design from Illustrated Ministry that I put up everywhere I can: https://store.illustratedministry.com/collections/stickers/products/you-are-loved-stickers?variant=40414683791458

I got the flag on my wall, the stickers on my guitar case and amps, a pin with the phrase on my guitar strap; I just put it everywhere.

I got to thinking: could I rip off the concept, but make it pretty? I love the design choices — it falls within my typical design sensibilities — but if I wanted to make it a tattoo, could I make it soft, pretty, and flowing?

I cannot. But I tried!

Not pretty. Maybe punk? Definitely the derivative art of an untrained hack with poor fine dexterity that used a mouse in Photoshop.

But I made something, and I put it out there.

I regularly deride performative posting and platitudes, I regularly roll my eyes at memes and images reposted that promise safety, security, and acts of love the poster cannot reasonably promise, and I just find the whole social media ecosystem to lack any helpful or hopeful substance.

But creating something counter-cultural, even poorly executed derivative art, and sharing it can take away the performative nature of posting and make it something that required more effort than a click. Maybe it risks embarrassment because it truly is poorly executed, maybe it comes with social risk because your community does not share your views, maybe it will come with real risk if the powers get their way and make inclusion criminal, or maybe you just spend time and create something beautiful that can change a heart and mind.

My point is this: we need to create. Videos, writings, art, music; the way we broadcast a message of counter-cultural message of love and inclusion — love instead of contempt, embrace instead of exclusion, giving instead of receiving — that goes beyond performative is to make it cost you something. And we need to share what we create without shame or embarrassment, and we need to share it far and wide.

And, if you do not feel like you can create (which you can, but I will give you a pass today), when you share and repost, find who created the thing you share and point people to their other work; most of the people who created a viral anything have created so many more things that are as good or better than what went viral.

Counter-cultural art is active resistance — especially when just loving your neighbor is deeply counter-cultural even in the church — so be actively resistant by creating. Do not just rely on others; flood the field with as much love as the powers flood is with cruelty and hate.

Someone, please tell me if that all made sense…

Peace,
– Robby

P.S.: If you look at what I created and how I describe my vision and think you can create what I could not, shoot me a message!