Loving The Enemy.

I grew up in a cult. The people who raised me would refute that definition. But it was a cult of doctrine based on the teachings of one man fixated on the return of christ that was to happen in the 1980s and included all the math to support it. At 10 years old I was being told that the 80s would be a time of tribulation, war, death, and the glorious return of a mighty loving god, after the destruction of civilization, with his city of pearl hanging in the clouds. I watched everything preached there seep into mainstream Christianity from Reagan’s 1980s through today’s Christian Nationalism, continuing to calcify the apocalyptic thought and outlook into a mainly white evangelical church of 2026 committed to its attempt to “help” Christ bring about his kingdom on Earth. And some of that, despite my best efforts at embracing life, stayed with me; hidden, chaotic and twisted.

This book, a gift from the adults in my life, has now been re-claimed as a gift back to my 10 year old self. An attempt to unravel the conditioning and the wound within. To find a way to an awakening not an apocalypse. Slowly rewriting the message of my childhood with a new one. A truer one. A more humane and loving one. To embrace the truths in our human myths, spiritual ideas and need for each other. Holding onto it all with Defiant Joy as I looked first at my greatest enemy. Myself. And Learned to Love The Enemy.

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As I wake up on Oct 9, 2026, the morning of the ‘Of Paper And Plate’ opening, Site Seen’s contribution to the O+ Festival on what would have been John Lennon’s 86th birthday, I am swirling with thoughts and questions about the book I’ve put together and what it might have done to me in the process.

I’m not quite sure how to write about it yet. It’s a book of love. It’s a book of anger. It’s a book of abandonment. It’s a book of bondage and control. It’s the acknowledgement that to many who choose doctrine, convenience and exclusivity I am an enemy. But it is also a book of community. A book of music. A book of peace. A book of wonder. A book of mystery. A book of action. And a book of defiant joy and creativity, full of questions and humor. In a lifetime inner battle between darkness and light burned into me by the interpretations of others from this book of words, the young child inside has finally been given permission to live, to open up, to speak up, and to dance with everything he kept bottled up, shut down all these long years. A joy that he could only express in loud bursts of anger and creativity that were defiant and successful. Musical and visual. But often so very chaotic and painful. Now, he can finally regain his heart as his own.

Mikkel Dahl, The Jesus Movement, ‘The Bird Rock Fellowship’, ‘The Brotherhood of Jesus’, factions and communes. They were just groups of young people looking for community. But the teachings were intense. Only the pure would be taken up by god. Most of the rest would perish. Gorbachev as the Anti-Christ. God’s love would be preceded by death and destruction. ‘Fear the Love of God’ was the guiding principle. The love and community within the church only made the message stick harder and become more confusing to a child’s understanding of love. I asked questions, was brushed off, then rebelled becoming a problem and left the church as soon as I could. By that time so had my parents, but not for the same reasons.

Hence the book. The Bible that I have used as the inspiration is my own copy, given to me as a child to read and engage like the adults. To study like my father did every Sunday after church. And I did. I devoured it. Along with Azimov, CS Lewis, Elie Weisel, Tolkien, Roald Dahl, adventure stories, comic books, myths and anything else I could lay my hands on. The poetry of Psalms and Song Of Solomon fascinated me already. Oral Roberts and Billy Graham were holding religious rallies in stadiums full of zealous new christians and I was there, a child who wanted to grow up fast. The church was community, family, support and protection. Our parents, young kids looking for purpose, lead by deep thinkers and mathematicians were stumbling down their own path with unspoken wounds salved by the group. Then it began to crack, splintering off into factions, more severe doctrines, apocalyptic teachings, the need to prepare for the coming battle and finally isolated “communities” as kids I’d grown up with disappeared from my life forever. Thankfully my farmer father refused to go that far, refuting their interpretation of the Bible and keeping us in Southern California, near the beach, a comic book store and a record store that would give me a lifeline back to my own soul.

…

It’s Sep 25, 2026.

I’ve been home in New York for little more than a week after months in the Pacific Northwest helping care for my mother who is facing a cancer diagnosis. On the plane home I realized that my childhood bible is somehow involved, and the idea is expanding farther than I’d originally intended. It’s taken on a force of its own. And the necessary items have arrived so the rebuilding of the Bible has begun.

As I boarded the plane that day I was heavy with emotion. Feelings of relief and freedom, loneliness and grief, conviction and resolve were filling my head. I’d ended my latest three week “shift” of wrangling and helping my wonderfully complicated loving controlling mother to traverse mobility and cancer treatments at the same time, while moving into assisted living. I’d also been struck by a deep disappointment in my goodbye with her. Weeks of finally being vulnerably open sharing what I believe about faith, god, life and what absolutely nobody truly knows, had in one weeping prayer for my salvation been made completely irrelevant. Those were subjects that I had learned to avoid unless I wanted to spark a little pain back, he Scorpion in me always under the surface. But now it was evident that none of what I’d shared in love had been respected. It reminded me why I left the church at 16, left the country and sought out any strange rock n roll, folk freak, arty community I could find. It also reinforced in me that none of us truly know anything at all. No-one knows what comes next, who’s in charge, or how this ends, except for what is in our own heart. And I resolved to accept what I could never change, my mother and those other loving flawed humans who raised me, and embrace every bit of strange i’d felt guilty about all my life.

Nearly 50 years since the first tentacles of church entered our house and I am disappointed again. Unheard. Invalidated. Lonely. Realizing that my heart’s passion wasn’t good enough to be accepted in that last conversation. And yet, there is no more chaos. No self flagellation. No self destruction left. I am in my body and my spirit perhaps for the first time since before the church, the intensity, my escape, the rock n roll, the art, children, marriage, addiction, infidelity, divorce, emotional collapse, sobriety and a slow long-overdue painful look in the mirror. A rebuilding from within, finally. With a realization that conditioning may be deep, manipulative and hidden, but it can be broken. Even so, it can still result in listening but not hearing.

How was I the same? My heart not seen as pure enough, my faith as non existent, my joy of life demeaned as lost, lost until I plead for salvation. How had I been the same, especially with my own children? I have no doubt that I was and am loved, as best as they could, but I was unseen. Now, as I look in the mirror, I am sure that I have not escaped doing the same thing to others. Friends, lovers, and to my own children.

Of Paper And Plate. That’s the guiding theme. The ingredients, a Denby china platter, a new-used monogrammed supposedly-old bible that looks like it has never even been cracked, sound modules triggered by light exposure, an idea for a new song and art pieces that I’ve begun reproducing on vellum and cotton papers, beautiful hand made papers that I’ve held onto waiting for the right project.

I give my attention to the book knowing that it holds something I need. Some insight. Maybe it will spark something in me or someone else.

By Sept 29th, the sound modules have been tested and they work. I’m still debating how to use them. Plugged into a vinyl single or as art on a card? And what about the music itself? I have an idea, and several ways to chase it down, but I’m letting the book guide me as I go. I’m leaning on my intuition and long buried emotions.

I have titles, one liners, commentary, art and a wound to explore, but I must attempt not to editorialize, only to observe. I am beginning to hear the music and to see the book fully formed in my mind. Even what it might become beyond this group show. This one is for me, and those like me recovering from a world of addiction to an external force that ignores your own kingdom within.

Bob IS Love

I wonder, if we loved any average Bob like some of us claim to love Christ, how would that change our outlook on other Bob’s? On other Ellen’s? On other Mustaffa’s? Other Pedros? If god is in you, then he’s in every Bob alive. Bob is everywhere. Bob is everything and Bob loves you too.

The process is what is becoming the most interesting part. As I comb through this old bible from 1977 I am increasingly feeling like there is a deeper answer here. That all I am has come from here but in spite of these words, even because of them. Is this s walk through my creative life as an example of how I carried the wounding of this cult and pushed back defiantly making things, even when my mind was in chaos from it all. Is it working its way towards being a bible of my own, all the complications of humanity, the rules, the dogma, the doctrines, the separate writes, removed, the myths from where much of it came uncovered and outlined. Is that a bigger thing? How much of the art is part of it? Is there a Holy Bob-le coming? A collection of art, imagery and simple statements that gather the best of jesus and Solomon together? Do I have it in me to accept and reject sections?

I do have the strange odious feeling that a Christian has approaching a book they deem demonic. Will diving into this book grab hold of me and warp my mind into some form of simplistic doctrineal garbage? It’s a weird fear to have. But years as a punk rock zealot, an atheism and back to some form of gnostic belief; I know that I know nothing at all. No-one does. Only the wisdom and pain of experience.

Now, as the day of the public showing has arrived I’m still adding ideas and pages. I’m not sure that I “created” the Book of Loving The Enemy, since I both commandeered an old used bible and a Denby china platter as ingredients, as much as I was directed by it. The creative impulse is a fascinating thing. Intuition. Desire. Vision. The work, this book, was driven by anger, pain, joy, a song, a piece of art and a mother’s sudden tearful prayer for my salvation as I hugged her goodbye.

It has taken a lifetime of creativity, bondage, community, anger, joy and frustration to face what is showing up in this book. And what I may never know about the effect of growing up in a christian cult obsessed with the End Times.

But the act of putting together this book, crafting this piece by hand and opening a bible that I hadn’t cracked in 30 years has reminded me that it is possible to understand, declare and let go. Even if the very doctrine that I grew up with has seeped into mainstream christianity and become a stumbling block to that possibility.

Ultimately it is an expression of learning to love the only enemy I have. Myself. And from there everyone else. Even the ones I don’t always like.

I want to express my gratitude that at just at the right moment, the curators of Site Seen asked me to take part in the show and set this book and all its discoveries into motion.

If love is strange then may we all be strange. Stay open to what comes next.

Patrick Dennis.

Bearsville NY, October 9, 2026

Learning To Love (The Enemy).
2026 by Patrick Michael Dennis
Mixed-Media. Acrylic. Ink. Cotton fiber papers. Vellum papers. Fabric. Juke box vinyl. Sound modules. Found Objects. 1977 American Standard Bible. Denby china platter. Song writing, all instruments* and engineering.
*Drums performed and recorded by Justin Guip at Milan Hill Studios, Milan, NY. All other recording engineered and performed by Patrick Dennis at Sawkill Heights, Bearsville NY.
Another Wharfechild Conspiracy
All work visual and sound ©Patrick Michael Dennis. Music published by Wharfechild ASCAP.

Presented by Site Seen for ‘Of Paper & Plate’ at O+ Festival 2026, Kingston, NY.