godhound

[godhound]

12th Century Fresco of the Annunciation in the Qaddisha Valley, Lebanon.

Painted on the apse of an ancient church is the fragmentary remains of an icon depicting the Annunciation. Gabriel is visible only from the waist up, wearing a white chiton with gold clavis underneath a light purple himation. Only the upper chest region of the Virgin Mary is still visible. She is dressed in a blue-purple maphorion.

[godhound]

Honestly I'd just like to hear how you create a novena? I usually use novena made my others or improvise

i start by choosing an intent. moving forward without a gameplan leads to aimlessly doggy-paddling in research, so to speak. Usually, for me that means either) choosing a saint that i can make a novena for, celebrating them and thanking them for giving us an example for holiness, and asking them to pray for me to better emulate them. or) choose a devotion like the sacred heart or an apparition like lourdes to venerate and petition for help. i tend to write saint novenas as asking for help to emulate a trait, while marian & trinitarian novenas are specifically asking for things. for example, right now i am writing one to our lady of lourdes asking for mental clarity.

after choosing a path of where i want to go, i look up a TON of prayers. Official novenas, unofficial ones, prayers, consecrations or devotions similar to my intent, different things used in reference to that person/thing, like a litany to our lady, as well as looking at liturgy for that saint/feast day/apparition. collects from the daily office make for a great starting place, as do blogs and old websites. i list out all the prayers i like, then write what i like specifically about them. after that, i think about how the prayers compare to my own interpretations of the subject of the novena.

for example, going back to lourdes, i think of the spring as clear, cool, calm, pure, still water, which is what i want my mind to look like. i compare that to a handful of prayers and see what resonates/sticks out as working together. i research lourdes, st bernadette, and our lady. i imagine what they might say to me face to face. i pray for guidance, and take all that jumbled information and begin ironing it into structured prayers. it is a lot of trial and error, and i often have like 7 word documents open at a time comparing and contrasting until it finally feels right.

after that comes the editing and ironing out until it sounds the degree of formality or casualness i want it to, and then im done!

[godhound]

The beauty of Islam is that nothing is wasted, nothing is meaningless. Giving some water to a thirsty homeless animal can wipe out all your past sins. Birds and animals eating from plants you grow in your garden is a charity. A compassionate touch on an orphan’s head is appreciated by God. A smile and a good word are praised. Putting a morsel in your wife’s mouth is a righteous deed. Cherishing your own family is a charity. Honouring you parents is highly estimated and rewarded.

Even your pains, physical and emotional, great and small, nothing of them is wasted or meaningless, all are counted and compensated. This is the nature of having a trade with God, The Most Generous.

[godhound]

So, apparently Luce represents missionaries and we do not support missionary work on this blog. That sucks I thought she was really cute :(

[godhound]

It's so easy to be turned away from christianity when you're constantly seeing so many awful people inside the religion, and it feels like no one is willing to welcome you, but what I've been telling myself is what matters most is my faith, and as shaky as it is, it's persistent and I work my ass off for it. I don't care how many people pray for my death when God will always welcome me with open arms

[godhound]

ID: Photo of a man sitting cross legged on the ground in front of plates and trays of food, as he lights a fire on one of the plates. He has light medium tone skin and wears a long sleeved, white dress, a white face veil and a white hat. /End ID

Farzin Yezishne, a Zoroastrian mobed (priest), performs a blessing ceremony at a home in Karachi, Pakistan. He wears a veil to protect the purity of the fire.

MATTHIEU PALEY

[godhound]

Important update on Siraj's campaign!

Siraj Abudayeh has been raising funds to rebuild his home in Gaza for months now, until recently, when GoFundMe deleted his campaign for no apparent reason! Siraj's campaign is vetted and he has been documenting his suffering on his blog for a long time now. Now he has made a new campaign to continue raising funds to help him and his family.

GoFundMe is going to return the money of the old campaign to all donors, so if you donated to Siraj, please donate to his new campaign!

If you didn't donate to him before however, please donate now if you can! If you can't, please share with as many as you can!

[godhound]

“aren’t you scared your friends will go to hell?” I do not fear what God will do to my friends if I do not “convert” them. I fear both historical and continuous colonization and murder. I fear what the world would look like without the thousands of different religions and cultures different than mine upon it. I fear cultural genocide and christonationalism. I fear what I will become if I endeavor to force everyone into the arrogance of my own image.

I do not believe in a hateful Father who punishes Their children for not knowing Them the way you think they should. I do not believe in a loving God who sends Their children to hell. And I do not believe in using my God’s name to make a hell on earth.

[godhound]

to be Christian is to be called to love, but to be Christian is also to be called to love the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, and the imprisoned specifically and explicitly. To be Christian is to abolish police and prisons, because with these institutions the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, and the imprisoned will never be free. We are called to make Heaven on Earth, and that includes doing away with institutions that enforce worldly shackles.

[godhound]

dangerously close to unfollowing someone for saying the evangelism doll is cute and sweet specifically bc it makes evangelizing to the children of other religions easier. reminder that 99.98% of evangelizing is colonialist and tied to cultural and literal genocides, so it doesn't matter how cute the vatican's doll is-- it's still a way of making historical and present atrocities committed by the church palatable to kids. which is, ya know, nasty

[godhound]

yes, we exist as stewards to the world and we have a responsibility to care for god's creation but it is extremely egotistical to put ourselves-- modern apes who share 98% of our dna with chimps, who scientists cannot define when we stopped being 'not yet human' and became 'human' over the history of earth, who emerged and evolved under god's guidance and supervision-- as the center of biology. we are god's creation, made in his image, but we are still modern apes. we are one of many, a part of an ecosystem, no 'more evolved' than a sea cucumber, because of god's will. and that is beautiful

[godhound]

ID: Photo of a man inside a large water tank with a white and golden temple behind him, on a cloudy day. He has medium tone skin and a gray beard. He wears a red turban. /End ID

April 2024: A Sikh devotee bathes in the holy sarovar (water tank) on Baisakhi, a spring harvest festival that also marks the Sikh new year, at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, on Saturday [Narinder Nanu/AFP]

[godhound]

My issue is I don't think churches nowadays are as welcoming as they should be, and that's why I'm struggling with the idea of even going to church. Maybe I could find one that's welcoming to me, personally, but when most will turn the other way when a homeless person asks for shelter, then it's not welcoming. And that's the biggest problem. Until I find a good alternative, I guess I'll have to keep practicing alone.

[godhound]

I know I said many times I hate church because of the way it is currently but if I could at least find a place to go where I could feel safe and find others like me. Maybe some place that allowed me to have communion. Just something man

Kind of losing hope right now because I can't find any openly inclusive churches in my city, closest one is 3 hours away, and I also can't find any alternatives. The closest ones I can find where I live are missionaries. My one hope is I can find at least a statement from someone in a local church about being inclusive but I doubt it

[godhound]

Kind of losing hope right now because I can't find any openly inclusive churches in my city, closest one is 3 hours away, and I also can't find any alternatives. The closest ones I can find where I live are missionaries. My one hope is I can find at least a statement from someone in a local church about being inclusive but I doubt it

[godhound]

answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:

tl;dr:

israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.

with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.

the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.

as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.

the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.

ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.

and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.

all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!

long answers under the cut!

if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks

not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices

i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.

unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.

this was posted on abc a few days ago

it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.

even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.

with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.

[godhound]

God of all creation, your wisdom, your love and your mystery are boundless. You have many names, which are beyond all gender expression. We give you thanks for the gift of diverse gender identity, expression, and sexuality. We acknowledge the times we deny that gift by holding too tightly to expectations of conformity and norms. We have created these divisions and use them against one another. We know this is not your will or your way. Help us to act mercifully and show grace to all of your people, as you have done for us. O Mysterious Maker of women, men, all that is in between, outside, and none at all. We come before you today with sorrow in our hearts. We remember those who have lost their lives because they did not conform to the gender roles society expects. We lament at the continued suffering, oppression, rejection and struggle of our siblings of all gender identities. Grant them strength, support, and love to accept and be accepted who they are.  We acknowledge the harm prejudice and ignorance has knowingly and unknowingly caused. Help soften hearts and give wisdom and understanding that in the sight of God, all are equally Beloved simply because of our existence. Open hearts and minds to embrace and support one another so that all may let their light shine before others by living out their Truth.  In the name of the One who is beyond all norm, amen.

a prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance by Jenn Luong, Ausburg University Ministries