#Celestial gifts from above

[monarchialmoon]

test test test test test

tag dump!

[phoenixtakaramono]

THE UNTOLD TALE - CH3 PREVIEW

There was an important takeaway to be had from tonight’s interaction: Shen Yuan had asserted his place as the lord of this residence and as Luo Binghe’s future ally.

Several thoughts had, however, been plaguing him ever since Shen Yuan gifted Luo Binghe the handscrolls, leaving like the composed gentleman he was while the half-demon pondered over the newfound revelations for the night. Those thoughts filled Shen Yuan’s brain with a renewed vigor that his exhausted body did not feel, roiling through his brain as he changed into his night clothes. Even now, lying down with his hands folded over his stomach, they consumed his mind as he stared up at the azure, gauzy canopy that looked eerily similar to the one in the guest bedchamber that Luo Binghe now slept in.

Wisps of hazy white rose from the lotus-shaped censer he’d brought to his bed. The coals within were still fresh in the copper, keeping him warm in the night, with the fragrance of sandalwood circulating within the room.

His unyielding companion, the blue text box, hovered above. Shen Yuan kept his gaze averted from it; he had read and reread the Chinese characters countless times that if he closed his eyes, he could still see the most recent notification engraved in his mind’s eye.

【Prediction! Future Event <<A NIGHT OF PASSION>> has been changed into <<LOADING CHEKHOV'S GUN>>. You have reached the conditions to clear the scenario. Countdown commencing. Reward: B-Points +50.】

The planes of his face were bathed in a soft blue glow as he ruminated. Shen Yuan couldn’t find it within him to feel any guilt or to throw blame at anyone other than himself. He’d unlocked the <<TRUE END>> main scenario and, judging by how the <<SYSTEM>> was not giving him a choice, he had to build that rapport between themselves and see that friendship through.

These are the seeds you’ve sown, Shen Yuan, he reminded himself. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. He could only dig his hands into the soil and watch the seeds slowly bear fruit.

Bing gē—or, rather, Luo Binghe—was not a 2D character on paper; he was now a real person who breathed and talked and had a will of his own. Even so, Shen Yuan didn’t know the extent of the ramifications if an extraordinary “prodigy” gained self-awareness that he was the male protagonist of a fictional erotica series.

It’d be interesting. If someone found out one day that they were a precious existence in a world which catered to them, they’d naturally become arrogant. All the attractive people belonged to them, hearts were won over for no real reason, and enemies would be seen as less of a threat and more as an annoyance. Shen Yuan could envision it; Luo Binghe would probably behave more recklessly, confident in the fact that he was protected by plot armor. He’d be a spoilt menace in a male power fantasy world—until the novelty wore off, and then the boredom set in.

The corners of Shen Yuan’s mouth curved. He didn’t know how likeminded Luo Binghe was, but if he thought like he did, he’d exploit his advantages.

A protagonist’s existence was akin to a cockroach, dragged from door’s death each time without fail.

This was not merely a case of schadenfreude—another difficult foreign term he’d learned during his pursuit as a novelist—where he reveled in another person’s misfortunes. It was a well-established trope in all forms of literature that when a person was casually dropped into a life-or-death situation, they would resurface as calamities. Since Luo Binghe was an important main character, he would naturally benefit.

...Sorry, youngster. Shen Yuan raised a white flag in commiseration for him in his heart. I didn’t mean to conscript you, but you must continue to work hard. Nationalistic pride exists among many Chinese writers.

Even pre-enlightened Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky had not been exempt from that.

In most narratives, the protagonist’s role was to rise above the rest and “smash the system.” Shen Yuan squinted up at the UI, his eyes beginning to water from its bright glow. He blinked rapidly, but the strain in his eyes refused to ease.

He swore in his head. This better not be the sort of tale where he and Luo Binghe had to compete to establish who was the one true protagonist, having to assert narrative dominance. Shen Yuan had no intention of pulling aggro to himself.

Raising a forearm up to shadow his vision, he groaned. He declared to no one, “Airplane brother, you’ve done your first son a great disservice.”

(He’d done a disservice to the original Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan as well as among many others.)

The events that had played out tonight strengthened Shen Yuan’s conviction. He could now see how people easily fell for his act; the charisma of a stallion protagonist was potent. Even so, he had capitalized on goodwill—and Luo Binghe’s strange fixation—hoping continuous acts of kindness being demonstrated toward him would soften him toward Shen Yuan and prove his intentions were sincere.

Should he prove himself to be of use, surely even somebody like Bing gē would not discard him during his rise to power or see him as a threat?

The only method he could foresee showing his fellow protagonist that his services were indispensable was by lending him his wisdom—and his predictions on the account of Shen Yuan being a <<FORTUNETELLER>>. His goal to leave a favorable impression with the other protagonist was already well underway, with the aim of establishing how it would be in Luo Binghe’s best interests to remember Shen Yuan’s acts of compassion and to return them tenfold in the future unless he wished to owe the celestial favors.

He recalled the last question he’d asked of him before Shen Yuan left, regarding the compatibility of his fated one.

Would it be strange if I wrote a predestined romance, for once? As much as Shen Yuan favored subverting expectations, he was aware of what sold commercially. There was a structure that made their literature different from those in the Western market whose shocking narratives could not only arouse pity in their audience, but also a sense of awe, excitement, fear, and suffering.

Their protagonists were not always someone of high society; they often hailed from humble origins as a device for the writer to underscore the merits of working hard and to criticize the system—a fictional one though, to avoid absolute censorship by the Chinese government. Their heroes began as nothing more than a windblown leaf in the social structure and years of ethical traditions set in place. They started on the bottom rungs of society to draw people’s attention to their lives, to the injustice and unfairness, which made their struggles all the more impactful to the reader.

The fates of the leading characters were tied to the juxtaposition of the harmonious ideal of society and the reality of a flawed system. Chinese tales were inherently romantic oftentimes, with tragic conflicts written to emphasize the beauty of a bond and rousing sympathy and pity for their plight. The archetype of a tragic hero was meant to be presented so profoundly that great reverence would well up spontaneously in one’s heart.

In his opinion, Luo Binghe had suffered plenty.

Under normal circumstances, as Peerless Cucumber, Shen Yuan was the sort of novelist where it would not be considered strange for him to challenge the romantic notion of soulmates by making his leading characters comrades or adversaries instead of lovers.

It was like the overseas Inception movie; he’d satirized enough old and tired clichés, it almost became expected of him to subvert expectations for all of his publications.

Guilt weighed on his mind. While he understood the implicit reality of his situation, he still felt like he was, in some way, disappointing his audience. The shame he felt was bizarre.

He swallowed. “My cherished readers...,” Shen Yuan murmured to the void as though they could hear him, “forgive this writer if I don’t subvert your expectations in this aspect just this once.”

The harem was the closest Luo Binghe had to a family. After the parental kindness of the washerwoman was torn away from him early in his life, after having endured the unhealthy environment that followed, the only love and tenderness he received in his life came in the arms of beautiful women. Tokens of affection were given in the form of intimate acts. It was no wonder Bing gē’s character had ended up twisted. He collected lovers with a greed not unlike a hedonistic minister who accepted bribes.

What a complicated man. Shen Yuan’s heart ached for the “blackened hero.”

There were so many women in the harem. In the presence of Luo Binghe, each one was gentle, kind, respectful, and submissive. But it was unrealistic for one husband, who had undergone the traumas that he had, to share his heart equally amongst them and not expect any misgivings.

What this Luo Binghe needed was a foil to his temperament, somebody patient, charismatic, and well-educated. Since Luo Binghe would be uniting the Three Realms, they needed to be proactive keeping him in check from becoming a self-indulgent, fatuous ruler. They cannot be sensitive to criticisms and speculation. A sensible head was needed on their shoulders to guide their merciless husband in understanding right from wrong and from any sycophants looking to lead him astray. It was integral to help the protagonist maintain a harmonious empire so that, together, they could lead a golden age of reform.

Shen Yuan wondered if there even existed such an extraordinary person.

Luo Binghe’s reputation was already in tatters in the Mortal Realm on the account of having a demonic heritage and having razed down the great righteous sects. Whatever goodwill he’d originally cultivated with his deceptive “nice guy” act had to be regained. Winning the war against the son of heaven and finding a good match would be integral in swaying public opinion to his favor. In public, they must present a united front, ruthless against their adversaries but dependable towards their subjects. It was only over time that the Sacred Rulers would prove themselves worthy of being idolized and beloved by the masses.

The <<SYSTEM>> had said that he and Luo Binghe should work together and in the end, they would unlock the epilogue that blessed them with their star-crossed lovers.

Until such a person was found, he supposed he could step into the role as his counsel whenever Luo Binghe needed advice. It was like tossing a peach and getting a plum back. Celestial or not, Shen Yuan used to be the son of a family of manufacturing executives. His profession might have been as an author, but he was educated in the principles of economics. Aside from sharing the <<PROTAGONIST’S HALO>>, his modern knowledge and his knowledge of both novel series were his cheats.

Like the spring breeze that thawed the frozen soil, he would be someone who reached into the abyss and grabbed that bloodstained hand. He could set a standard for Luo Binghe to emulate as the type of wise leader he should be, and his handsome junior could learn from his modern examples and put some of them into practice for his kingdom.

He’ll enable him into becoming the best person that he could be. And maybe, just maybe, the new era might be salvageable and worthy of pride for generations to come for not only the immortals and demons, but for the mortals as well.

“I’d redeemed you once,” Shen Yuan declared, his lashes fanning against his cheeks. He closed his eyes in reminiscence of his own fanfiction, inhaling the light, woody scent of the censer nearby. “I can do it again.”

In the meantime, he reflected, I must collect more merits. I cannot be lazy and lag behind in accomplishments.

While Luo Binghe fought his battles, Shen Yuan would be fighting his own—whatever they might be. He would not be outshone by his junior in his own meteoric rise.

“...System?” he inquired drowsily, his voice barely above a whisper. Turning on his side, he stared at a faraway wall. The glazed white surface of the porcelain pillow felt cold against his cheek, its smoothness reminiscent of jade. “Can you hear me?”

Ping.

【This <<SYSTEM>> provides the Esteemed Host a 24-hour service.】

“I don’t remember Airplane brother going into detail about what the education system is like in this setting. Is it supposed to be historically accurate to the ancient feudal model or…?”

Ping.

As he listened to the long encyclopedic explanation, what he’d heard confirmed his worst fears. Education was the privilege of the elites. Immortal cultivators prioritized studying matters of the “spiritual heart” and Qi refinement, in the martial and mystical arts, breaking through the bottleneck of each cultivation stage until their dedication allowed them to reach the pinnacle that was the Ninth Stage.

With that narrow-minded focus on self-enlightenment, the basic education curriculum of the twenty-first century would be seen as innovative in the pre-established setting of this strange world.

In the early webnovels, Bing gē had stagnated as a late-stage Core Formation expert. Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, in his laziness to research the many intricate nuances of the Cultivation World, had waved it all away by attributing his protagonist’s OPness to his ancient, heaven-fallen demonic heritage and to the deus ex machina that was his legendary sword. Even then, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky still occasionally confused the Foundation Establishment with the Nascent Soul stages.

It wouldn’t be until the end of the series—after the outcry of the netizens—that the unsatisfied Luo Binghe made the breakthrough into the proper Nascent Soul stage with the help of his wives and their many gratuitous papapa scenes.

Then in the epilogue, the author had infuriatingly time-skipped all the way to the penultimate Ninth Stage, describing how Luo Binghe became a legend among legends who had finally attained eternal youth and aged back into his late twenties in his new immortal body after having miraculously passed the Heavenly Tribulations—disasters from heaven which were akin to nuclear radiation for those of demon blood. After an unspecified many years of rule, he’d left his legacy behind—with the uncountable size of his harem and a boundless number of his descendants “mourning the loss of a great and oftentimes misunderstood man.”

Just remembering it made Shen Yuan’s blood pressure spike dangerously. Taking deep, calming breaths, he rolled back onto his back as he forced himself to attain catharsis from listening to the mind-numbing exposition the <<SYSTEM>> was extolling to him like a history program. His fingers clenched the bed sheet.

Eventually he found himself feeling adrift, the words beginning to lose their coherency to him as he phased in and out of consciousness, his mind becoming wrapped in a haze of smoke. Soon his tense muscles relaxed.

The countdown had reached 00:00:00 when sleep finally claimed him.

Note: Small details of this scene might be subject to revision when the final draft comes out. Ch1-2 can be found on AO3. Link is in my bio!

[sxvethelastdance]

Gentle touches, the whisper of fabric, the rumble of thunder not so far off—the boudoir is open to the night air, gossamer curtains floating in the breeze of a many-faceted ocean. The moons of several realms hang in the sky, casting a beautiful, chilly glow down through the glass camera above the bed’s artfully-carved canopy. Nothing but the glittering, bejeweled eyes of the dragons entwined about the posts are their witnesses this night.

Already pleasured, such that his great, shapely legs will not hold him, the former god of thunder and celestial emissary is on his back, cushioned by luxury, pillows and sheets of only the finest material, silver-white hair spread out around his head like a halo. His partner must wonder minutely how he could ever, for a second, have though this glowing-eyed being beneath him could be anything but a god.

Fingers trace the intricate markings of divinity—there are so many—finding purchase where those skilled hands will be most appreciated. Words off affirming praise flow from the mouth of a man who, in other timelines, is the greatest enemy Earthrealm has ever known.

Raiden’s heart—his core; it is no heart as he is not of Earthrealm—is pounding still, racing and thudding viciously in his broad chest as Shang Tsung looms over him, leaning down to press a kiss to that most sensitive flesh between ear and jaw. Turning his head to receive another, the thunder god is given what he desires and still the rumbling thunder approaches; it must surely be almost atop them.

The air is still and the curtains have ceased their movements. It is heavy in the sorcerer’s chambers and they are both now acutely aware of their own exertions, and delighted thereby. Shang Tsung awaits only permission, pressed close as he is, ready to take what he is freely given, and to give back just as much.

A minute nod from the chaste entity below him and a whispered plea are the signal which he has so long awaited—perhaps thirty years or more. But he is gentle still, despite his deep desires, he remains gentle, pressing forth slowly, entering with great care, taking each moment as it is offered, acutely aware of the stillness in the room and what that signifies. He presses a kiss to that same spot, then to the lips which hang open in a quiet gasp. This, the sorcerer swallows greedily and without remorse.

They are one, with slow and deliberate motions, they have become that which never could otherwise have been and it is then the rain begins gently to fall, like the strange, mythril tears on the face of the god of thunder as he reaches up and wraps powerful arms about the sorcerer’s neck and whispers the three words of the oldest magic in existence.

“Look at you, how magnificent you are.” Utters Shang Tsung, running his palms with deliverance alone the hard planes of his lover’s body, grunts stifling the flow of his smooth speech. Velvet is the feel of one to another, and a gem more precious than all the treasures in the realms the texture of what belongs to him, and him alone.

Lost in the thunderous parting of the skies and the quiets exaltation of a spell that so thoroughly had the sorcerer in its thrall, Shang Tsung finds the words to illuminate the sky of their shared domain with proclamations that open the realm’s firmament with a single cry. Tsung drinks the sight, smell, and sweetness of the Thunder God’s gift, His submission is freely given, and so much more enticing is the taste of him when offered. Mortal Kombat’s victor anew and ancient descends to please and to take pleasure from the act of it.

This is more than a mere island’s conquest, but it requires the careful planning in spades, for Raiden is a being that requires the utmost tender of handling. To handle him as such would certainly be his end, and as the power that thrums within him is shared in the booming voice that floods their chambers and makes Shang Tsung more than he has ever been. No gold or gossamer compares to the exquisite vision that holds steadfastly to him, as if to part from the sorcerer is to be adrift in the sea of the veil. As lightning wrests peace from the skies, Shang Tsung wrests this from his lover and gives him direction through the storm.

[belillinafireseeker]

Belillina Fireseeker

The Basics ––– –

Name: Belillina Myleah Fireseeker

Nickname(s): Bella, Bells, Ducky 

Age: Equivalent to upper 20′s(since elven ages are beyond me)

Birthday: April 16th

Race: Sin’dorei

Gender:  Female

Marital Status: Single

Physical Appearance ––– –

Hair: Anywhere between Bright red and auburn during the colder months

Eyes:  Emerald Green

Height: 5′6″

Build: Slightly on the thin side, but rather toned from performing.

Distinguishing Marks:  Light orange freckles on her upper cheeks and across the bridge of her nose. Also number of scars on the smaller size scattered about her body, and one rather large one that spans across her mid section from just below her right breast down across her stomach to her left hip but is covered up by the tattoo listed below.

Tattoos: Phoenix tattoo as shown below situated above her right breast, with the tail curling around the breast and continuing on top of the scar she has with intermittent fireblossoms along the tail.

Piercings: Ears are pierced and will wear earrings to match any of her outfits on a regular basis.  Most often than not though she has a pair of ruby and diamond studs in.

Common Accessories:  Flask under a garter belt that is enchanted to be bottomless.  

Likeness: Emma Stone

Personal Information––– –

Profession: Owner of Celestial Threads, a celestial style embroidery and tailoring service, performer for the Succulent Tart troupe and bartender for the Howling Owl.

Hobbies:  Dancing, singing, playing piano and guitar, travelling, looking at the stars, running, reading, and sewing.

Languages: Fluent in most of the modern languages, including that of the alliance races, Azerothian sign language, and she knows a few different phrases ins some more obscure, ancient races.

Residence: Living at the owl compound most of the time but spends time at a number of different friends houses from time to time.

Birthplace: Quel’thalas

Religion:  None, but has been leaning more towards the Light at times lately.

Patron Deity:  None

Fears: Assassins,  slight aversion to blood knights, losing more people that she loves, becoming like her father.

Relationships ––– -

Spouse:  None

Children:  None

Parents:  Caenil Fireseeker(Father, deceased) Teliara Fireseeker(Mother, alive)

Siblings:  None

Other Relatives: None

Pets: Quite a few different animals, but most notably two cats named Blaze and Smoke, a turtle named George Jr.  and a new Beagle puppy named Morgan.

Sex & Romance ––– -

Sexual Orientation: Straight, but will sleep with women if she feels comfortable enough with them, and only with a male present.

Preferred Emotional Role: submissive | dominant | switch

Preferred Sexual Role: submissive | dominant | switch

Libido: High

Turn ons: Intelligence, confidence, patience, kindness, adventurous, willing to try anything once, artistic

Turn offs: Poor hygiene, jealousy, any mention of “daddy” and controlling people.

Love Language:  Physical touch and quality time

Relationship Tendencies: She’s not one for big romantic gestures, just small little things that show that you care.  She will occasionally go and make a small little item for friends and other people she cares about, or will pick up an item whenever it reminds her of a person, and will  do that more often when she is involved with people.  

Traits ––– -

* Bold your character’s answer.

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between /  Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Additional information ––– –

Smoking Habit: Occasionally to moderately, depending on the situation.

Drugs: Rarely

Alcohol: Frequently

RP Hooks ––– –

Celestial Threads. - She owns her own business named Celestial Threads where she sells items with enchanted thread embroidered into it to make them look like the night sky.  She will often make different items as gifts for after people are wed, or for other special occasions.  She is also an accomplished tailor and will sew different garments for people to wear, and even some of the costumes for people in the tarts for performances and such.

Succulent Tart - She has been a performer for the tarts for about 2 1/2 years now and has done several performances for him throughout the years.  She has also been hired out to do different parties for them, along with working at different festivals and performing there as well.  

Howling Owl Bartender. - From time to time she will also work as a bartender for the nightclub whenever she’s able. 

Sunreaver-  She was a former Sunreaver mage in Dalaran for several years before getting purged from it.  She had risen to the rank of teacher in that time and was a master in the arts of pyromancy.  She will still assist in things from time to time still as long as it doesn’t interfere with her other duties.

Music instructor - She also gives lessons to anyone wishing to learn a number of the musical instruments she teachings, including singing.  Most often this is for children, but she will assist adults who would like to learn as well.

HOW TO CONTACT:

OoC I am fairly often on here and I check in to most of my characters on at least a daily basis.  I am also frequently on discord and my discord name is  Dexie#4507

IC Again, I am often on here most days and will check in quite often.  You can toss me a starter or whatever you want and while it might take me a while to respond to it, I will let you know that I have recieved it.  I am also on Bella somewhat frequently in game.  Her armory page can be found here. I might not get on too often for just random rp, but if you request it I will happily do so if able.  She can also be found at a number of different social events along with being at most of the menagerie nights since she is a regular seller there( Menagerie boutique page can be found here.)

[millennial-star-gazer]

A Very Fairytail Christmas (Deck The Halls With Nalu 2019)

A Very Fairytail Christmas

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Deck The Halls With Nalu 2019 Prompts: "Baby it's Cold Outside," "Let it Snow," "O Christmas Tree, All I Want For Christmas is You," It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year," and "A Holy Jolly Christmas"(All Implied)".

Genres: Romance, Humor, Fantasy. Friendship/Family and Poetry

Characters: Natsu, Lucy, Wendy, Happy, Gray, Carla, Juvia, Erza, Gajeel, Levy, Pantherlily and Jellal

Pairings: Multi-ship with hints of Nalu (Natsu x Lucy) , Gruvia (Gray x Juvia, Gajevy (Gajeel x Levy), Jerza (Jellal x Erza), plus Cappy/ ( Happy x Carla) with a bit of Carla and Pantherlily thrown in.

Rating: K+ to T for some adult themes with mild references to alcohol, nudity, drunken shenanigans and other mature content. Recommend reading level is for teens, young adults and higher.

Summary: Natsu, Lucy , Happy, and the rest of Team Natsu along with Gajeel, Levy and Pantherlily all learn the true meaning of the winter holidays- that a day filled with warm tidings spent with friends makes for a very "Fairytail Christmas" indeed. A retelling of the main event of the Fairies Christmas OVA in the form of a poem for the @fortheloveoffandomevents's Deck The Halls With Nalu Event. This was originally an entry for the @fairies-and-christmas Secret Santa exchange 2017 as a gift for the lovely @cosmicloveoftheages Enjoy!

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A/N: Hey guys, it's your girl back again with an entry for  @fortheloveoffandomevents Deck The Halls With Nalu Event . As some of you may know, this is a retelling of the main events of the Christmas OVA in the form of a holiday-themed poem. This was originally a submission for the @fairies-and-christmas Secret Santa exchange as a gift for the @cosmicloveoftheages. Now without further ado, here's the poem. Enjoy!

(Scroll down past the cut/”read more button” for corresponding  links and the actual poem).

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Disclaimer: As you all know by now Fairytail does not belong to me, but the most honourable Hiro-sensei instead, for whom without this labour of love wouldn't be possible. 

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Read A Fairytail Christmas on FF  other platforms, and the rest of my writing here:

(Copy And  Paste  hyperlinks into a new window/tab if reading this on the desktop browser)

1. A Very Fairytail Christmas

A. Tumblr

B. Fanfiction

I.  Primary (Main) Fanfiction (Click Here:) (or here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13442535/1/A-Very-Fairytail-Christmas-Deck-The-Halls-With-Nalu-2019)

II. Secondary Fanfiction ( Click Here) (or here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143482/1/Millennial-Drabbles) 

III.  Other (Click Here:) (or here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13246734/1/Millennial-OTP-Drabbles)

B. A03

I. Primary/Main (Click Here:) (or here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21494713)

II. Secondary (Click Here:) (or here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18244343/chapters/43167767)

2. Master  Post of All My Writing (Click Here:)  (or here: 

https://millennial-star-gazer.tumblr.com/post/179665258923/master-fic-rec-post)

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"Enjoy the magic this holiday season by listening to music and enjoying the occasion with the people that you care for most."

(Source Unknown)

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It was the day before Christmas

Bells as as the divine as heavenly choir of an angels rang out

All the fairies were fluttering about preparing to deck the walls with care this way and that

For when the clock struck twelve, off to Lucy's Team Natsu's and company would go for some holiday cheer

Jubilant laughter ,clinking of glasses, jolly salutations of "Merry Christmas" filling the air

all fun and games until low and behold the girls succumbed to the mercy of far too much sake running through their veins

much to the dread of the red-blooded males , hearts stricken with terror

An firecesome Titania, demanding queen of the Fairies, an unholy she- beast of intoxicated fury An insensate sky maiden , might as well be dead to the world for throwing three sheets to the wind from all the spirits she's consumed

An overly-sentimental Juvia of the sea

tears flowing like a gushing torrent of rain ️

breathing new life into that cliched rhyme: "The rain ️ in Spain."

Arms latching on tightly to a terrified ice demon slayer.

An unusually giddy Levy,

lady of solid script magic runes, future mother of her and Gajeel's child , seemingly leaning in for a kiss .

Only to burst into tinkly peals of laughter in his face

A disgraced Happy and Pantherlily who might as well been

a pair of wild stallions for all the demanding daughter of Queen Shaggot could care

A mortified Salamander underneath a just as zany celestial mage,

And yet deep down he can't help but subconsciously find her antics to be oh-so endearing to But oh, what little could the shenanigans, the antics, the hi-jinks could compare

For how could they know what the fates would have in store

when the all too gleeful Erza, the ruthless beast,

would suggest her high-stakes round of "Master Draw"

A game so notorious, that only fools with the buzz of firewater singing through their veins would dare play

One stick, one draw, winner take all

Whoever didn't have the best would be at the mercy of the chosen's one thrall

And who would have guessed who might be the one to win it all?

Why Erza of course, low and behold!

A wily gleam in fathomless depths of violet , madness ensues Pleas for mercy, canine-like yips and barks filling the air

Random awkward embraces

An infuriated storm woman's jealous rage

Absurd ensembles,

stripping down to nothing more than underwear in the cold

A sexy dance by the Son of Igneel himself in the nude or two,

the most discomfiting lock of lips from two of the exceeds who may just keel over and die in of their own shame.

A sensation of blazing ️ wax on the poor astral mage's flesh

Three grown young men doing everything in their power to cram themselves into spaces no average human being should ever dare to fit

All this, debauchery galore and more, all at Titania's fellow wizards expense

But oh, little did she know,the time for revenge would come

The dread hour nigh, when the ice demon slayer finally drew his own stick,

For out in in the snow a scantily-clad, fiery redhead would boldly dare to go,

in spite of Gray's protests

A decision she would soon some to regret

But fear not, all is not lost, for salvation is at hand in the form of Jellal

a king finally come to take his long- lost queen home

and swathed in the warmth of his cloak,

Erza along with the rest learns right then and there

that a day of warm tidings and day spent with those she loves makes for a very Fairytail Christmas indeed.

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Fic Tag Squad: 

@fuck-yeah-nalu @fortheloveoffandomevents @nalubookclub  @fuck-yeah-nalu @nalubookclub @fortheloveoffandomevents l @fuck-yeah-nalu @nalubookclub @fortheloveoffandomevents

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[hero-israel]

Historian Thomas Cahill, author of The Gifts of the Jews (Knopf, 1999) claimed that the Jews invented the very concept of history. They were the first, he said, to perceive time not as an endless circle of life, death and rebirth, but as the flight of an arrow, on a linear path to somewhere from somewhere.

However, what if time is not one arrow, but a volley of arrows? What if there are other timelines, other histories, other Jews? Would they still have a covenant with the one God? What would have become of their triumphs? Their defeats? Their suffering and their successes?

Award-winning author/editors Andrea D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum propose to answer this question in Other Covenants, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history, to be published by ChiZine Publications in Fall 2019!

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Submission window: August 28, 2017 at 12:01 AM Eastern Time to Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

Open to submissions by authors of all backgrounds, from anywhere in the world.

Please do not submit by email. We will accept digital submissions only via the Moksha submissions system at https://chizinepub.moksha.io/publication/other-covenants.

Stories must be in the alternate history genre and must be clearly relevant to the theme of the anthology.

Length: 500–15,000 words. There are relatively few spots for stories at the high end, so please query first if you think your story will go long.

Preference will be given to stories previously unpublished in English, however, we will consider previously published stories on a case-by-case basis.

NEW: Also open to poetry submissions. Original poems on theme. No more than 2 pages (8.5 x 11) in length. (Maximum word count set arbitrarily to 2,000 words as system won’t allow max lines or pages.) No need to double-space.

Submissions may be made in English or French. Author is responsible for translations into English after acceptance.

English-language translations of stories from other languages (published or unpublished) are welcome, but we can only accept submissions in English or French.

Multiple submissions welcome; up to two stories maximum per author, sent under separate cover.

We prefer no simultaneous submissions, please (we promise to respond promptly).

Initial responses (rejections, holds, and rewrite requests) within 30 days of submission; final responses no later than 30 days after the deadline.

Payment is 8 cents per word in Canadian funds. (SFWA qualifying after exchange to US funds).

File formats accepted: .docx, .doc, or .rtf.

Formatting: indented paragraphs; italics in italics (not underlined); Canadian spelling; use # (or other unambiguous symbol) to indicate scene breaks; no headers, footers, or pagination; no outlandish formatting, please; full contact info (name, street address, email, phone number) and word count on the first page. That said, don’t fret too much about formatting; good fiction is what’s most important. (Correct spelling also counts.)

Please include a cover letter with a brief author bio, title of story, and full contact info, including street address.

Please do not summarize or describe the story in the cover letter.

To be published by ChiZine Publications in Fall 2019.

Rights: First World Rights, including audio and translation rights. (NOTE: CZP has a foreign rights agent who will be presenting the anthology in foreign markets.)

NOTE ON PSEUDONYMS: we will only publish one story per author, even if you write under several names; please use your real name on all correspondence and indicate your pseudonym in the cover letter and on the byline of the story itself.

NOTE ON SUBJECT MATTER: Any book dealing with the Jewish people, Jewish history and Israel will, by definition, be controversial. We welcome controversy and politics, but don’t forget that this is a fiction anthology. Telling good stories takes first, second and third place. Submissions that grind axes loud enough to drown out the story are unlikely to be accepted.

Questions or queries: othercovenants@gmail.com. Please don’t submit stories via email, as noted above.

A WORD ABOUT THE ALTERNATE HISTORY GENRE

Other Covenants is open to authors of every background, and for those of you who may not be familiar with alternate history, here’s a quick thumbnail sketch of the genre.

A popular sub-genre of speculative fiction, alternative history weaves fictional narratives into the “what-if”s of the past, and explores the infinite number of historical roads not taken in the past, present or future.

The Collins English Dictionary defines alternative history as “a genre of fiction in which the author speculates on how the course of history might have been altered if a particular historical event had had a different outcome.” According to Steven H. Silver, an American science fiction editor, alternate history requires three things:

1. A point of divergence from the history of our world prior to the time at which the author is writing 2. A change that would alter history as it is known 3. An examination of the ramifications of that change

Although alternate history is related to counterfactual history, it is distinct from it. The latter term is used by historians to refer to the academic, non-literary, question “what could have happened if . . .”.

Now please don’t take the above as prescriptive or proscriptive. We understand that boundaries are vague, definitions are fuzzy, and the distinction between an alternate history and a counterfactual may be entirely in the eye of the beholder. But whatever voice you write in, please keep in mind that first and foremost we are looking for stories about characters.

Also, though alternate history originated as a sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy and may incorporate tropes like the many-worlds theory, parallel universes, time travel, mysticism and magic, these are not requirements. Use them if you want to, don’t use them if you don’t. The only speculative element required is the break from history as we know it, and the effect of that break on the Jewish people.

THE KIND OF THEMES WE MIGHT EXPLORE:

Please don’t take these as prescriptive or proscriptive either, the whole canvas of Jewish history is open to you—Biblical, historical and mythological:

What if • the Holocaust had never happened? What if • Joseph’s brothers had not sold him into slavery in Egypt? What if • The State of Israel had been established in Uganda? Or Germany? What if • Jesus’ followers had not broken with Judaism? What if • The Jews had proselytized their faith door-to-door for a thousand years? What if • The Romans had not destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple? What if • Judaism became the dominant Western religion, but was riven by conflicts between the Temple priesthood and reformist rabbis who put the Torah and prayer before Temple ritual and sacrifice? What if • The Spanish Inquisition had never occurred? What if • Napoleon had not smashed down Europe’s ghetto walls? What if • The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were reality . . . in some other universe?

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Andrea D. Lobel has been a writer and editor for over a decade, winning two awards for her work.

An ordained rabbi and university lecturer, she holds an M.A. in Religious Studies (McGill University), and a Ph.D. in Religion (Concordia University), specializing in the history of religion and science, astronomy and religion, celestial mythologies, calendars, magic, and religious authority in Judaism, as well as in the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Near Eastern context.

Her book, Under a Censored Sky: Astronomy and Rabbinic Authority in the Talmud Bavli and Related Literature, is forthcoming from Brill Publishers in 2018–19.

Mark Shainblum was born and raised in Montreal, where he and illustrator Gabriel Morrissette co-created the acclaimed comics series Northguard and Angloman with Gabriel Morrissette. Northguard has recently been revived by Chapterhouse Comics in Toronto.

In addition to writing comics, Mark has published science fiction in various magazine and anthology markets including On Spec and Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic. As an editor, he co-edited Arrowdreams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas with John Dupuis in 1998 and Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen in 2016 with Claude Lalumière.

Mark shared an Aurora Award with John Dupuis in 1999 for Arrowdreams, and in 2016 he was inducted into the Joe Shuster Awards Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame.

Mark and Andrea live in Ottawa with their daughter.

[leflayaway]

PROFILE ; Gil

GENERAL.

full name.  Gil Leflay

pronunciation.  Gil leh-fuh-lay

nicknames.  Sky

height. 5′6″, or 165 cm

age.  Unclear. About 170′s

zodiac.  Scorpio

languages. Common, Sylvan, Celestial, Primordial, Infernal

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

hair colour.  Black

eye colour. Yellow, gold, or amber, depending on light

skin tone.  Pale. Sometimes off-color by chill.

body type.  Slender. Almost no muscle tone. Legs for days

accent.  No accent

dominant hand.  Right hand / practiced ambidexterity

posture.  Mutable. Slumps when bored, tends to cock his hips to the side. Otherwise healthy posture

scars. Practically nothing to speak of. Alot of cosmetic reconstruction by healing magics.

tattoos. None

most noticeable features.  Capricious trickster archetype. People who haven’t known him long would question his level of intelligence by his behavior. Constantly filled with surprises.

CHILDHOOD.

place of birth.  Idyllteia

hometown.   Aball

birth weight / height.  Unclear

manner of birth.  Assisted by midwives. 

first words.  Dye-job

siblings.  None (Unless you count a changeling made to impersonate you...)

parents.  Morrigan Leflay

parental involvement.  Very loose parenting, next-to-nonexistent. Later picked up by his mentor who provided much more structured, if not militant boundaries. 

ADULT LIFE

occupation.  Covenant of Charm Witch, Freelance Adventurer.

current residence.  A bag that holds a magnificent mansion inside of it. Also, a room inside a large house, owned by a partying acquaintance...

“close friends”.  A variety of spirits, his familiar Enzo, Titus Rex, Zara Astoria, Amaranth Astoria, Maram,  Skyler @distantxlight​, Varan @darkchemy​

partners: See above

relationship status.  Single, presumably by choice?

financial status. He’s very frugal. Which is to say, he’s constantly shoplifting and conning people for essentials, (even tho he could easily afford shit)

driver’s license.  You don’t need a license to fly a broom.

criminal record.  Been imprisoned for three years in his canon so far.

SEX & ROMANCE.

sexual orientation.  Demisexual

romantic orientation.  Demiromantic

preferred emotional role.  Submissive | Dominant | Switch |  Unsure

preferred sexual role.  Submissive  |  Dominant |  Switch |  Sex repulsed |  Unsure

libido. Pretty low

turn on’s.  None that he could say...

turn off’s.  Perhaps too many to mention.

love language.  Gifts, asking for opinions, inclusion to activities

relationship tendencies.  Foreseeably conservative, cold and stand-offish. Although his last major relationship was far from romantic, it was consuming. He’d be careful about how much of himself he offers to another person. He’s learned the painful way that the people closest to you can hurt you the worst...

MISCELLANEOUS.

character’s theme song(s).  Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing - Set it Off,  Barren Gates & Medii - Ice Cold (feat. Casey Cook)

hobbies to pass the time. Reading, Research, causing unnecessary drama

mental illnesses. Possible depersonalization/derealization disorder. Slight Post Traumatic tendencies.

physical illnesses.  Slightly below-average body temp. Closely tied with his emotional state.

left or right brained. Right brained, in spite of how he acts sometimes.

fears.  Abandonment

self confidence level.  The Most.

vulnerabilities. His emotions in general

Tagged by: @distantxlight​

Tagging: Whomever

[fevie168]

 Sunday (January 13): "Baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire"

Scripture: Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Meditation: Do you want to be on fire for God? John the Baptist said that the Messiah would "baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Fire in biblical times was associated with God and with his action in the world and in the lives of his people. God sometimes manifested his presence by use of fire, such as the burning bush which was not consumed when God spoke to Moses (Exodus 3:2). The image of fire was also used to symbolize God's glory (Ezekiel 1:4, 13), his protective presence (2 Kings 6:17), his holiness (Deuteronomy 4:24), righteous judgment (Zechariah 13:9), and his wrath against sin (Isaiah 66:15-16). It is also used of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11 and Acts 2:3). God's fire both purifies and cleanses, and it inspires a reverent fear of God and of his word in us.

Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire Jesus came to give us the fire of his Spirit that we may radiate the joy and truth of the Gospel to a world in desperate need of God's light and truth. His word has power to change and transform our lives that we may be lights pointing others to Christ. Like John the Baptist, we too are called to give testimony to the light and truth of Jesus Christ. Do you want the Lord's power, grace, and love to burn brightly in your life? Ask him to fill you with his Holy Spirit.

John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:3). Why did Jesus, the Sinless One, submit himself to John's baptism? In this humble submission we see a foreshadowing of the "baptism" of his bloody death upon the cross. Jesus' baptism is the acceptance and the beginning of his mission as God’s suffering Servant. He allowed himself to be numbered among sinners. Jesus submitted himself entirely to his Father's will. Out of love he consented to this baptism of death for the remission of our sins. Do you know the joy of trust and submission to God?

Jesus' baptism - beginning of a new creation The Father proclaimed his entire delight in his Son and spoke audibly for all to hear. The Holy Spirit, too, was present as he anointed Jesus for his ministry which began that day as he rose from the waters of the Jordan river. Jesus will be the source of the Spirit for all who come to believe in him. At his baptism the heavens were opened and the waters were sanctified by the descent of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, signifying the beginning of a new creation.

Heaven will open for those who bow before the Lord How can we enter into the mystery of Jesus' humble self-abasement and baptism? Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389 AD), an early church father tells us: "Let us be buried with Christ by Baptism to rise with him; let us go down with him to be raised with him; and let us rise with him to be glorified with him." Do you want to see your life transformed in the likeness of Christ? And do you want to become a more effective instrument of the Gospel? Examine Jesus' humility and ask the Holy Spirit to forge this same attitude in your heart. As you do, heaven will open for you as well.

The Lord Jesus is ever ready to renew and refashion us in his likeness through the gift and working of the Holy Spirit - and he anoints us for mission as ambassadors of his kingdom of righteousness (moral goodness), peace, and joy (Romans 14:17). We are called to be the "light" and salt" of his kingdom that radiate the beauty and aroma of his mercy and goodness to those around us (Matthew 5:13,15-16). The Lord Jesus wants his love and truth to shine through us that many others may may find new life, freedom, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Ask the Lord Jesus to fill you with his Holy Spirit that you may radiate the joy of the Gospel to those around you.

"Lord Jesus, fill me with your Holy Spirit and with the fire of your love and goodness. May I always find joy and delight in seeking to please you in doing your will just as you have delighted in the joy of pleasing your Father and doing his will."

Psalm 29:1-4,9-10

1 Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name; worship the LORD in holy array. 3 The voice of the LORD is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, upon many waters. 4 The voice of the LORD is powerful, the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. 9 The voice of the LORD makes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forests bare; and in his temple all cry, "Glory!" 10 The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king for ever.

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: The divine - human reconciliation, attributed to Hippolytus, 170-236 A.D.

"Do you see, beloved, how many and how great blessings we would have lost if the Lord had yielded to the exhortation of John and declined baptism? For the heavens had been shut before this. The region above was inaccessible. We might descend to the lower parts, but not ascend to the upper. So it happened not only that the Lord was being baptized - he also was making new the old creation. He was bringing the alienated under the scepter of adoption (Romans 8:15). For straightway 'the heavens were opened to him.' A reconciliation took place between the visible and the invisible. The celestial orders were filled with joy, the diseases of earth were healed, secret things made known, those at enmity restored to amity. For you have heard the word of the Evangelist, saying, 'The heavens were opened to him,' on account of three wonders [appearance of the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together at the baptism]. At the baptism of Christ the Bridegroom, it was fitting that the heavenly chamber should open its glorious gates. So when the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, and the Father's voice spread everywhere, it was fitting that 'the gates of heaven should be lifted up.'"

(excerpt from THE DISCOURSE ON THE HOLY THEOPHANY 6)

[13signs]

Ophiuchus and Female Anger

Ophiuchus Defiant

Born (again) Nov 30–Dec 17

A defining issue for women is emerging, and Ophiuchus is leading the way. The anger that women have stored up inside over thousands of years is bubbling to the surface. Women have bottled up their resentment to a point that it can explode at any moment. No longer content to swallow their second-class status, women are openly showing their defiance of male supremacy, and coming to the realization that they themselves are the only agents of real change. In their relations with men, and the societies that men have built, and are in the process of destroying, women are fomenting a not-so-silent revolution. The yielding, supportive and suffering female is disappearing, and being replaced by a much more militant version of herself. Their pliant codependency with men has not served them well enough to let it continue, and women have had enough. Women are sifting through the rubble of their hopes and dreams and demanding more of themselves, and more from the men who have sabotaged them for centuries. They won't be willing victims of the system any longer.

Thousands of years ago women controlled human society. They were the clan leaders, hunters, astrologers, warriors, healers. Before there was a shaman, there was a sha-woman. The ancient archetypes of all these job descriptions are decidedly female. It was a different type of female, however. She was bold, brave and bossy, and not compliant with and subjugated by the male ego. Ophiuchus, Aries, Leo and Taurus were all originally envisioned as powerful, even dangerous female symbols, only to be later transmogrified into phallic totems by the Greeks and other misogynist civilizations. Men advanced on the backs of women, not as their allies. Human communities used a lunar calendar, and women were the center of the mystery and the miracles of nature. Humans responded in sync with the Moon, as well as the Sun. Men destroyed this powerbase, and replaced it with a pallid simulacrum of the subservient female, limiting their role to only two choices; that of a wife or a prostitute.

Cave paintings like the one above, date back to 40,000 years ago, when women were fleshed out as the vital elements of early human communities, as its leaders, hunters and healers. Men were less defined, mostly as sperm donors, more noteworthy for their penis than any other attribute.

Pre-Nubian cave paintings like the one above illustrate a different dispensation of power in early societies; the opposite of what we accept today as ubiquitous and infallible. Women were the leaders and dominant figures in early societies and clans, as creators of life, dominant as result of their higher technical knowledge of astronomical cycles, and ability to understand and respond to nature's law. Men were subservient and docile. Ancient societies may have been polyandrous, where women accessed men as a tool of their fertility, even before the men themselves understood their role in the process.

In myth and fact, women had status and power independent of men; no man possessed them as they routinely did in the more recent past, and still do today. A millennium ago, men may have been subjugated in the same way that women domesticated dogs.

Towards the birth of the "modern era", men eventually turned the tables on women's power by conquering them, destroying women's wealth, while eliminating Ophiuchus and many other celestial symbols and religious concepts of the emancipated and dominant female. As Kate Millet wrote in her seminal book, Sexual Politics:

"In history; vast numbers of peoples have worshiped the phallus openly. It may also be true that ever larger numbers of peoples once worshiped the womb or the fertility powers of the Earth. It may also be true that one of the many causes for the commencement of that now-universal oppression and contempt for women lay in the male's very fear of the female powers of giving life and perhaps inspired that enormous change in world affairs we call the patriarchal take-over. Living so close to the Earth, without having yet developed toys of his own in warfare and the rise of princely city-states full of toiling slaves building him empty monuments, and unaware of his own vital role in conception, the male may well have past glances of envy on the woman and what was – in those conditions – her miraculous capacity to bring another human life out of her very belly – and seen in it a connection with the phases of the moon, and the seasons of the earth's vegetation – and stood both in awe and terror – and finally in hatred – and decided to cast this function down from what he rather naturally I assumed was its collusion with the supernatural, the terrible, the uncontrollable forces of nature – and denigrate it to the level of the the bestial, the pernicious and the obscene. And thus the filthy totem was appropriated by the male and taboo assigned in a thousand ways to operate against the female."

As recorded in astrology, this is mirrored by what the Greek and Roman patriarchy did to Ophiuchus, perhaps the strongest of the female-oriented constellations. Her ancient superiority has often meant death for those of her sign and disposition, or any other woman or man who recognized the anthropological fact of women's early wisdom and power. Anybody who remembered the power women once held was per force the enemy of the new world order of man's violent rule.

Ophiuchus wasn't always a footnote of astrology. She was a force to be reckoned with, an equal to men and an antidote to their savagery. Women did not rely on coercion, but on setting an example. As men's power increased, so did their contempt for women, and their cruelty to them.

Today, as a result of this endless suppression, Ophiuchus has become an introvert, a reject, and outsider who has survived only as a result of her secret connections, hidden in the shadow of man's brutality and domination. Ophiuchus was once a leader, but has been stripped of her rightful contribution; now she's a slave, a non-entity. She has been forced into submission and forced to disguise her gifts, to spend time alone, lest she register too offensive to man's frail ego. Ophiuchus has resorted to forming smaller, female oriented groups--covens--that man can neither discover, dominate nor trust. That's why Ophiuchus conceals her insights, her desires, even her sexual orientation, these being visible only to her followers and sisters. The single most important thing for Ophiuchus in modern times has been survival, because with her, so goes the survival of all female societies. The wisdom of Ophiuchus can be found in a knowledge and appreciation of natural forces, while man's societies are focused on his fear of nature and the profits from its exploitation. Ophiuchus rules life, while men are exclusively invested in death.

In this environment of torture and assassination, Ophiuchus has shunned those who might hurt her. Ophiuchus uses mind control to manipulate and temper the murderous impulses of mankind; she has had to ingratiate herself with her enemies, the easier for her to work behind the scenes and to win only minor victories.

Now, in this era of a rapid degradation of human society, drenched in the blood of its victims and the terror of its refugees, Ophiuchus has risen again to shake man's rule to its roots. To stay anonymous is impossible, it would mean continuous slavery to man's death wish and existential crisis. The governments that man has created are rushing us towards a world war and catastrophic destruction. Man's illegitimate rule must again be overthrown and suppressed as a prerequisite for human survival.

Revolutionaries appear when revolution is inevitable. Ophiuchus rises when she is called upon to wrest power away from the haters and the madmen, to restore women's true role in the world--as the leaders and warriors that they once were, that still resonates with us from the far reaches of our human memories and collective unconscious. Ophiuchus can no longer be silent.

What an Ophiuchus revolution would look like may be beyond our comprehension at the moment. It will ensure sexual freedom and equality. It will mean a return to a more humbling and cooperative attachment to nature. It will elevate the importance of children and a society that protects and serves their interests. The Ophiuchus revolution is happening within women, and can only emerge in man's marketplace when men are helpless to oppose it, and when women's political power has matured through struggle and conflict. This may be a affirmation of Gil Scott Heron's famous quote that the revolution will not be televised--at least not in the male-dominated media. The revolution will be felt like an earth tremor invigorating all women, awakening a sleeping giant, and including the men who have seen the danger of our continued march toward self-destruction, and who want to join with them.

Seize the power; save the future!

13sign.com

[versatilepoetry]

Divinely Mother

You were my first and last SMILE in life; incessantly triggering me to exist in celestial contentment; even though the clouds of abominably treacherous manipulation enshrouded me from all sides, You were my first and last HOPE in life; profoundly enlightening vibrantly optimistic rays of desire in my impoverished existence; propelling me to kiss the aisles of astronomically benevolent success, You were my fist and last STRENGTH in life; imparting me with the overwhelmingly Herculean resilience; to unflinchingly confront even the most mightiest of insidious devil, You were my first and last FANTASY in life; handsomely flooding each arena of my incredulously bizarre mind; with the tonic of astounding rhapsody and majestic happiness, You were my first and last AMBITION in life; indefatigably transpiring me to blossom into the best; uninhibitedly dedicate each of my senses to the service of despicably shivering mankind, You were my first and last ADVENTURE in life; as I poignantly soared above the charismatic clouds; exuberantly blending each ingredient of my crimson blood with unparalleled and enigmatic excitement, You were my first and last PHILOSOPHY in life; illuminating my every night of insidiously lecherous blackness; with the irrefutably pious ideologies of immortal mankind, You were my first and last FRIENDSHIP in life; compassionately encapsulating me like an invincible fortress from all sides; in my times of ecstasy; as well as unsurpassably hideous sadness, You were my first and last EUPHORIA in life; landing me in waves of incomprehensible exhilaration; as I unraveled a path of supreme exultation and fragrant newness; on every step that I nimbly alighted, You were my first and last ROYALTY in life; opulently besieging my drearily wandering eyes with your unbelievable embellishment; metamorphosing my disdainfully shriveled visage into an avalanche of princely paradise, You were my first and last AUTHORITY in life; as I bent my head in due obeisance of your Omnipotent aura; marching on even the most infinitesimal of your heavenly commands; to save wonderfully vivacious humankind, You were my first and last REFLECTION in life; candidly expelling out even the most subdued dormitories of my conscience; so that I blossomed into a queenly flower disseminating the everlasting redolence of humanity, You were my first and last TRIUMPH in life; as I felt irrefutably victorious at every stage in my diminutive survival; felt as if prosperity timelessly lingered on my inevitably orphaned doorsteps, You were my first and last AWARD in life; blessing me beyond the realms of bountiful eternity; gifting me with the impregnable virtue to exist in synergistic harmony and equality with all mankind, You were my first and last ENCHANTMENT in life; enthralling me to the ultimate realms of magnificent captivation and nostalgia; as I bounced in your lap like a freshly born infant; once again, You were my first and last ENERGY in life; the boundless reservoir of emphatic ebullience in my incoherent bones; to catapult to the epitome of glittering success, You were my first and last SONG in life; maneuvering each element of my disastrously stumbling countenance; with the ingratiating melody in your ardent voice, You were my first and last BREATH in life; instilling in me the unprecedented ardor to exist beyond my destined times; my insurmountable tenacity to believe in truth; non-violence; humanity; even as wailing hell coalesced with immaculate night, You were my first and last LOVE in life; passionately embracing me forever and ever and ever; everytime I took birth once again; even as the uncouth society had kicked me to insipid submission outside, And you assumed countless proportions of; Mischievous Sister; Princely Beloved; Unconquerable Father; Sacrosanct Mother; in the tenure of my transiently shivering life; But each iota of my visage; each ingredient of my heart; soul; body and blood; would perennially remain grateful to you not only for this life; but for fathomless more lifetimes of mine; only as mother; mother and divinely mother

[omgbandadevassaari-blog]

Banda Devassa - "Marina Julia" - Praça Marechal Mauricio Cardoso. Vídeo ...

Banda Devassa-Rio de Janeiro. (Culture, sport and leisure).

Good morning - please - share...

Good morning women of Brazil and the world...

Today is not day  "08/03 "... (International Women's Day, but I am a mere mortal, man, and a woman's admirer, I want to outline in a few words what I feel about these magnificent beings that our heavenly Father has created.

The biblical story tells us that God in seeing  "Adam " sad that he did not have a companion like the other animals decided to present his son with a partner and then he withdrew one of the "ribs " (to give rise to woman).

And because the  "rib ", in a marriage that I had the pleasure of attending the priest explained that God did not make it from a part of the  "lower limb "... So that she would not be submissive to the man, did not make her "hair strands" so that she did not feel superior to her partner, but made her the "rib " so that he would walk alongside him at all times that he was always at his side at all times.

This is an account I have found interesting, because in analyzing these words we see how important women are, because they are not below or above us are yes by our side.

During the story we heard of great empires where there were kings, knights and great queens, as important as the other characters of the stories... After all my friends have heard of some history of "fado", "Beautiful Asleep", "Cinderelo", I think not. As much as they had the duty and the honor of saving these princesses the focus was always they...  "Women ".

Yes... Because my dear women  "Devassians ", are true heroines, conquerors and Pathfinder. Yes. I said there is not in the world a being as perfect as they, who has the gift of motherhood, works, studies, cares for the House and children, has time for marage/boyfriend/attachment and the like... For friends and only God knows what, a perfect machine with all the necessary attributes.

Once I read an e-mail if I am not mistaken of Arnaldo Jabor, where he spoke that the woman has only one defect, they do not give the necessary value, a defect so small and so great at the same time and it is up to the real men to value these women who are the Symbol of struggle, overcoming and claw, because as they say, (they do everything we do in high heels) and with the advancement of technology nor to generate a life need us, that is, who needs them is us.

So my dear  "Dsevassians ", I think best  "We ", the dominant men and males so self-sufficient we start to give the value that  "they " so  "fragile " deserve.

Porque elas na sua "fragilidade" estão conquistando tudo o que desejam. Vejamos o exemplo de varias mulheres importantes como o grande Fausto Silva citou em um dos seus programas, Ruth Cardoso, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Zilda Arns, entre outras mulheres tão importantes, ah e é claro não podemos esquecer de nossas avós, mães, irmã, namoradas/anexos e afins.

Brincadeiras a parte quero agradecer por vocês existirem pois acho que... "apenas um dia", não faz jus a importância de vocês em nossas vidas.. Saudações "devassianas" !!!!

Palavras sinceras de um admirador do universo Feminino !!!!

(Banda Devassa-Rio - Sábado, 09 de março de 2019).

. . .

Banda Devassa - Rio de Janeiro. (Cultura, Esporte e Lazer).

Bom dia Mulheres do Brasil e do mundo...

Hoje não é dia "08/03"... (dia Internacional da Mulher, mas eu um mero mortal, homem e admirador das mulheres, quero esboçar em poucas palavras o que sinto em relação a estes seres magníficos que nosso Pai celestial criou.

A historia bíblica nos conta que Deus ao ver "Adão" triste por não ter uma companhia como os demais animais resolveu presentear seu filho com uma parceira e então lhe retirou uma das "costelas" (para dar origem a Mulher).

E porque a "costela", em um casamento que tive o prazer de assistir o padre explicou que Deus não a fez de uma parte do "membro inferior"... para que ela não fosse submissa ao homem, não à fez de "fios de cabelo" para que não senti-se superior ao parceiro, mas à fez da "costela" para que andasse ao lado dele em todos os momentos que que estivesse sempre ao seu lado em todos os momentos.

Este é um relato que achei deveras interessante, pois ao analisarmos estas palavras vemos o quão importante são as mulheres, pois não estão abaixo nem acima de nos é sim ao nosso lado.

Durante a historia ouvimos falar de grandes impérios onde haviam Reis, Cavaleiros e grandes Rainhas, tão importante quanto os demais personagens das historias... afinal meus amigos vocês já ouviram falar de algumas historia de “fado”, “belo adormecido”, “cinderelo”, eu acho que não. Por mais que eles tivessem o dever e a honra de salvar estas princesas o foco sempre foram elas... "as mulheres".

Sim... porque as Mulheres meus caros "devassianos", são verdadeiras heroínas, conquistadoras e desbravadoras. Pois não... eu disse não há no mundo um ser tão perfeito quanto elas, que tem o Dom da maternidade, trabalha, estuda, cuida da casa e dos filhos, tem tempo para maridão/namorado/anexo e afins... para as amigas e só Deus sabe mais o que, uma maquina perfeita com todos os atributos necessários.

Uma vez li um e-mail se não me engano do Arnaldo Jabor, onde ele falava que a mulher tem apenas um defeito, elas não se dá o valor necessário, um defeito tão pequeno e tão grande ao mesmo tempo e cabe a nos homens de verdade darmos o valor a estas mulheres que são o simbolo da luta, superação e garra, pois como elas mesmo dizem, (fazem tudo o que fazemos de salto alto) e com o avanço da tecnologia nem para gerar uma vida precisam de nós, ou seja, quem precisa delas somos nós.

Então meus caros "dsevassianos", acho melhor "NÓS", os Homens e machos dominantes tão auto-suficientes começarmos a dar o valor que "ELAS" tão "frágeis" merecem.

Porque elas na sua "fragilidade" estão conquistando tudo o que desejam. Vejamos o exemplo de varias mulheres importantes como o grande Fausto Silva citou em um dos seus programas, Ruth Cardoso, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Zilda Arns, entre outras mulheres tão importantes, ah e é claro não podemos esquecer de nossas avós, mães, irmã, namoradas/anexos e afins.

Brincadeiras a parte quero agradecer por vocês existirem pois acho que... "apenas um dia", não faz jus a importância de vocês em nossas vidas.. Saudações "devassianas" !!!!

Palavras sinceras de um admirador do universo Feminino !!!!

(Banda Devassa-Rio - Sábado, 09 de março de 2019).

[killingthebuddha]

On a night in my first semester at divinity school, I was lying in bed in my low-hung, overheated dorm room when a panic overcame me so complete that from that moment on my life would be divided into all that had come before and everything that followed: twenty-four years, six months, and three days of coming to feel at home in my body, changed in an instant.

This night of which I speak, I had set my oscillating fan to high and slipped into a shallow sleep. Sometime before sunrise I was seized by a panic so complete that I felt suddenly possessed with the power to hear all things in their deepest repercussions. Is this what it feels like to be omniscient? I remember wondering. I could hear my heart and its soft aortic murmur, my breath’s every exhalation and inhalation, the downward silences, the sudden laborious intake—would this be the last?—each its own reckoning, each all-consuming. How much noise the body makes when amped on fear I had never realized. I could hear the hiss of colliding molecules—and beyond the room, the compressors’ roar atop the nearby physics building, the sound of car engines and closing doors. All these things I heard as my own creation.

I wrapped my arms around my chest. Something truly terrible was happening, for no one is omniscient but God. My tongue coiled in my mouth like a serpent. A glint of steel speckled my vision. A hack intellect skulked in the spleen. I could not breathe. I arose to a gray dawn metaling against the modular window and no relief.

“Were you hospitalized?” a friend later asked me. I wish. Sadly, however, I knew hardly a thing about mental illness. I would never have thought that I had one. Anyway, I was pretty sure I knew what had happened: God had called me to a vocation of suffering. So no, I was not hospitalized.

Instead, I prayed. I prayed for the mercy to endure. For the strength of days. I also prayed to forget; and for the restoration of the years when I journeyed more or less unfazed through the particularities of me. For whatever it was I possessed the day before yesterday; for ordinary life. I prayed like an evangelical Christian is supposed to pray in troubled times. Without ceasing. The Holy Spirit indwelled my heart, I reassured myself repeatedly; whom then could I fear?

I feared everything.

Before the attack, I could lose myself in a book or warble merrily upon a theme. My attention might drift and stray. My comprehension skills, according to the answers I penciled in one summer morning, were just above average. I might realize half way into a book that the margin notes were my own—that I’d read it before, maybe more than once. I might ascend from a fifty-page submersion with little recall of what I had read. Of who had done what. But I loved reading, and I read a lot. I loved the feeling of disappearing, but also the thrill of increase and movement. With books I felt no shame.

The weekend before the attack, in fact, I had read Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking and Günther Bornkamm’s Paul with only a break to jog in the afternoons. A third, just for fun, was Graham Greene’s A Sort of Life, a memoir of the writer’s pastoral childhood in the town of Berkhamsted, through his student years at Oxford, flirtations with Russian Roulette, conversion to Catholicism and early difficult novels. Little did I know then that this melancholy triumph—three books devoured in blissful succession—would mark the final chapter in the era of immersive reading (even as I would muscle my way through two masters’ degrees and a doctorate).

Within a week, an ambient sadness had set the stage for my mind’s strange productions; and all early signs promised a long and successful run. This may have been the worst part of all: the sense of no end in sight. That the symptoms might even be permanent. I had become gruesomely present to myself, of this I was certain; a pinpoint of negativity and noise. I would never again lose myself in a book—or in a film, a song, a pleasurable diversion, a moment’s reverie. What lay ahead was a life sentence of compulsive self-monitoring, with only the spectral beings in my private spiritual asylum to keep me company. My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose tender voice, along with the celestial choir, I wished desperately to hear, remained as silent as the distant stars. That’s the thing about untreated anxiety: it’s an ever-giving energy. You think things, and sometimes say things, that make no sense to anyone else.

I looked for help in the only place I knew: my inner spiritual life, my personal relationship with Jesus. I kept a copy of Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest in my room, and I began turning to it most mornings, hoping for a remedy, or a healing word, in its severe admonitions.

Evangelical survivors will appreciate my predicament. For the uninitiated, let me try to explain. Next to the Holy Bible, evangelical Christians revered no book more than Chambers’s devotional classic. My mother gave me the Dodd and Mead cloth edition the summer before I started high school. It was a handsome volume, small enough to fit into the pocket of my backpack, and I carried it with me everywhere. My fellow believers cited the book with near-canonical respect—as many still do.

But turning to it under these circumstances, something felt seriously off. The more I read Utmost under the constraints of the attack, the worse I felt—about my relationship with God, my body, my spirit; about life and how to live it. Chambers demanded that I barrel through every compulsion inhibiting Christ-like-ness. I guess I’d never fully considered what that involved, if you took him seriously. Becoming Christ-like. All the petty rebellions that God hated, and all the desires you thought were God-given, Chambers repudiated in painstaking detail in the 365 entries of his devotional. Every day was a life-or-death struggle for holiness, your own private Last Crusade; a full-on battering of your wretched self. He sounded like every creepy youth pastor I’d ever encountered, the kind who derives pleasure in ferreting out your most intimate longings, who calls you on the phone if you miss Tuesday discipleship group, who (you eventually realize) despises you as much as you despise yourself.

“If ever we are going to be made into wine,” Chambers said, “we will have to be crushed.” “Be careful”, “be more careful”, “be careful to see”, “be careful to remember”, “be careful about the treasure”, “be careful to remain strenuous”, “be careful to keep the body undefiled”, “be careful to keep pace with God”, and on and on and on. Depletion, ruin, your ash heap life, the filth exposed—I am shit, God be praised. And yet, Chambers further cautioned, you should not even think of your own admission of depravity as a positive; for that would require a power, a sad withered leaf of a power, which you don’t have. If you wish to be Christ-like, you must prostrate yourself before him and take whatever he gives. And with a prayer of thanksgiving. You must become his “devoted love-slave”. Anxiety, madness, the howling terrors—submit to it all with a glad heart. Whatever powers are wrecking your mind, you take them as signs of his pleasure. “There is no getting away from the penetration of Jesus,” Chambers said.

***

I grew up in houses filled with books. My father was a Southern preacher with cosmopolitan aspirations that often confounded his parishioners; he loved opera and classical art, read koine Greek, and could recite long passages from Longfellow and Browning. (Back in the day, he could preach a hell sermon with the rest of the natives, but his heart was never in it, and the fire and brimstone would pass.) I counted five summers in a Christian commune in the Swiss Alps; two tours of a Bible school in the Cotswolds; and Jesus Movement splashes in California. These were not typical destinations for red-letter Southerners, and my own curiosities surely prospered from them. Which is to say, as long as my priorities were properly ordered—I kept a quiet time, shared the faith and guarded my purity—I could explore, carefully, new ideas and unfamiliar worlds. Fortunately there were places in those days, and maybe some are still around, where the hermits and stargazers of the coastal South could find company. At a bookshop in Jackson not much bigger than a summer pantry, I was introduced to the novels of Robert Stone, Don DeLillo, and Jim Harrison. I placed their books alongside Graham Greene, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Harry Crews, and Etheridge Knight in my library. I wanted what these writers had; I wanted the strength to rage and howl and break on through. But I feared it even more.

Count it all joy when you fall into trials and tribulations.

Bear the scars of the Messiah, and rejoice.

Consider how great a gift is bodily affliction, in that it both cleanses and restrains.

Each time a believer is chastised by God and become sick, he should be glad.

Do not scurry around in search of healing.

Place yourself in submission to God.

Count it a privilege to suffer shame.

The father of spirits crushes us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

Cursed is the crown; chastening the winds; the lack becomes the Lord.

Such was the mark of my high calling—surrounded by clashing armies, whispering sweet nothings for the gift of my nightmare world; open to God for the taking, as autumn blurred into winter. It gave me no reason to hope if an armistice might have been reached the night before; any ceasefire would have been brokered only by alcohol and exhaustion.

December 23. Remedy: 1) less coffee after am; 1 cup + decaffeinated; 2) no tv at night (1 movie per week); 3) exercise: b-ball schedule; 4) more precise in daily goals; 5) meditation on the Word.

December 26. What is the metaphor of people who break down?

I think it was the rancid beast flanked nearby, knuckle-pacing, heavy and hoarse, smelling blood. Merry Christmas.

***

Had you known me in those years, you might not have seen the fear. In the tradition of the preacher’s kid, I had learned to strike the cynical pose. Orneriness became me as well, and impatience with small talk, and impulsive declamations on the televangelists and Christian kitsch and white supremacy, and stories, not entirely made up, of my father staring down the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, all of which left the impression, I truly hoped, that I had seen some shit. With a few adjustments for the scene in Cambridge—the no-nukes and the f-bombs, the obligatory Reagan-hatred and the occasional hash pipe—you wouldn’t take me for a holy roller. Welshing along in a rumble of ardor, I assumed most people knew, was the only child’s prerogative. But the only thing I knew was the difference that night had made.

The parallel lines of purity and discipline inevitably clash and collide into a flaming heap of shame. I filled my notebooks with anguished dispatches on “self-exaltation=pride=death”, “self-denial,” “subduing the flesh”, “restraining the appetites,” “the renunciation of all things for Christ”. “What does the Lord require but abasement,” I wrote shortly after my thirteenth birthday. I wanted to burn, burn, burn for Jesus, like one of the fabulous bottle rockets I launched from the church parking lot after our mid-week Wednesday prayer meetings. Each day I stood before the ultimate questions as if for the first time: was my soul right with God; had I surrendered all to my precious Jesus Lord and Savior, my friends and family, my pastimes and thought-life, my every burning desire? If you could test adolescents for zealotry, I would have certified genius. And then burst into flames.

I hope you can understand why it was so easy for me to impute the barrage of symptoms to the costs of growing in my faith. Salvation was a zero-sum reckoning with eternity. I knew this like I knew nothing else.

I took for granted that evangelicals lived close to the edge, fretful and trembling. I’d seen books around the house and in my father’s study with titles like Heaven Help the Home, How to Handle Feelings of Depression and Why Christians Crack Up. I gathered that there were Christians who sought the help of wise and godly men. But I was the son of a godly man and an even godlier woman (my father always said). Why would I need counseling? And what intensity could possibly compare to the radiance of the King but the sorrow of a million spirit-fires extinguished? I attributed a crack-up to straying outside the lines, which happened when you let down your guard and became too much in the world. When you forgot the Tenets.

But we did not do therapy. “Psychoheresy!” some would call it. Os Guinness, the popular writer and speaker and “thinking man’s evangelical,” dismissed Freud and his proselytes as “the modern equivalent of the first century Jewish and pagan exorcists.” Therapy loosens the fears and inhibitions that keep us unspotted from the world; the Christian should be grateful for repressed desires and a guilty conscience. Remember old Chambers and his masochistic pieties. The theory of spiritual warfare would finally be the only explanatory hypothesis you could mount against inner torment.

By the end of the semester, the hope for any cure seemed as long-gone as the days when I would read Camus’s “The Sea Close By” over and over on an empty trace of the Redneck Riviera, with a quart of Barq’s Root Beer to salve the heat. “We sail across spaces so vast they seem unending.” It would only break your heart.

“There is no grace in this night’s fall/Morning crouches slightly out of sight/Dreams dart like herons in the rustling light,” I wrote in a poem abandoned in disgust.

Survival depended on the perseverance that rouses the will to suffer and then breaks it. I had not asked for a blessing like this, but now that it was mine, I would give God the glory.

Walking across campus on a blustery night, my legs forked and angled with such confusion I didn’t know whether I’d make it back to my dorm without the strenuous effort to move them in that direction. My tongue slithered around my mouth like an alien seeking light. My brain was an incubator of moribund thoughts, marshalling fears hither and yon. My brain—where do I begin? Thinks of wizards and maskers, mufflers and puppets, whiffled like butterflies, if you’re able. (A list inspired by Burton’s Anatomy.) Nerves tarried on the edge of dark forests, tiki torches of the infinite.

I had to consider that I had hardened my heart, puffed myself up with knowledge, gone too far in my quest for novelty—even though I’d hardly gone anywhere. What I needed was the counsel of godly men. I should join a fellowship group, dial up a contact with the Family, and embrace the stupefaction of born-again congressmen and professional golfers.

I am speaking here of a time when I began to doubt the trustworthiness of everything that had held my life intact. Ten years is a long time to live in servitude to invisible forces. Yet I tried to appear a productive and amiable member of my generation. Genial and expansive. I went to parties and concerts. I volunteered as an English tutor at a community center in the inner city. I kept track of my study hours—6+ a day, 7 days a week, recorded in my journal—and turned in papers on time. I took copious notes in class and typed them up in the evenings for my color-coded binders. I paid attention to fashion as much a student budget allowed, but no poplin and plaid for me. I steered toward seafaring collegiate with a twist of Neil Young, not quite bonhomie academe, but not quite anything really. My chronic skin allergies did not blend well at all with the nautical woolens of the era. The Nordic pullover welted my neck; my wool-lined wallabies caused constant and embarrassing foot sweat. In my brown corduroy jacket I was always either too cold or too hot. I studied in places I hoped would keep my symptoms at bay and minimize exposure to other students: beside a bank of windows in a church refectory or an empty classroom. For our man of constant squirmings and weak bladder could feel heads turning his way issuing ultimatums. Clinging to whatever strategies of adaptation got me through the day, I tried to keep a steady face.

***

“You ascend the scale of erotic desire until you find God,” a Roman Catholic friend told me. Worldly phenomena are the glitter of the holy, he said; all truth is God’s truth. The two of us were sitting on a bench in the quad of the college where we taught. It was an afternoon in early May, a few days after classes ended, and the green trace outside the humanities building was spangled in sunlight. My colleague spoke with a gentle Irish lilt; he’d written ponderous but artful studies on selfhood and otherness (the word felt new and thrilling at the time), and I was delighted by his interest in my work, which I didn’t think amounted to much at the time. I told him I wished I’d heard the Gospel of the erotic scale in the churches of my childhood. “It’s never too late”, he said with a smile. Oh, but it was.

On Baptist Sunday mornings, in cream-brick classrooms, lust flailed beneath my polyester slacks. Best not to stand up in these languid hours. Keep the blazer buttoned. Wear a jock strap over tighty whities, if you must—and I must. “The Great Tribulation,” I wrote in my diary. “Earthquakes, hailstorms, 110 pound chunks of ice, sun will go dark, moon will not shine.” How hard it was to bring erections under the control of Christ. The only good news on the horizon was that Jesus was set to return any day now, according to most forecasts. But would I be ready? Or would I be left behind? It could go either way. I’d found a porn magazine in the woods one afternoon and not disposed of it properly. I might be stretched over a dead log, gaping at breasts, when the trumpets blasted, and the sun would go dark.

“You need Jesus Christ to give you strength in (1) purity (2) dedication (3) courage,” my parents wrote to me in a birthday letter. As further incentive for the journey ahead, my mother explained that premarital sex leads to psychic ruin. “All the girls I know who’ve lost their purity have emotional scars. Their thinking is somehow damaged. They’ve lost a precious something they can never get back. Their personalities are distorted, become one with that other personality.” They’d committed the Unpardonable Sin, the only sin that could not be forgiven. She didn’t say this directly. No Christian had ever been able to say for sure what that sin was. Until now. It seemed the logical conclusion to draw. So I equipped myself for battle like Saint Anthony in the desert—and lost my mind anyway.

I needed professional help. I was afflicted with an acute anxiety disorder. What could be more obvious? The mental upheavals of the midnight raid and so many convocations of dread, every lineament of my case, might have come straight from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edition, published one year earlier), of which I knew nothing. In its description of a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the DSM noted such grim enumerations as: smothering phobias, hypersensitivity to noise, compulsive self-checking, and the belief that you were going, or had already gone, insane; to which I could have added: eyelid twitches, random bestartlements, nocturnal anomie, muscle aches, and all the elaborate rituals to avoid the feared object.

The onset of generalized anxiety disorder typically begins in late adolescence or early adult life. I was twenty-four the year of my first major attack. The DSM classifies an anxiety disorder as persistent symptoms lasting for at least one month. But it would not be until the spring of my thirty-first birthday that I finally stumbled into an emergency room, in another town, at a different university, and said to the attending nurse: “I need help. No ma’am, I’m not taking cocaine. I don’t know what’s happening. But it’s worse now than it’s ever been, and it’s been bad for a long time.”

That I survived the long ordeal—well, you have evidence before you. A man rounding sixty, the father of three grown children, a scholar of moderate renown. Last month, my wife and I rented an apartment on the Johannes Verhulstraat in Amsterdam and celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. I did better than survive; I found solid footing. But the dark nights of the soul taught me nothing about God. Mental illness, benumbed and untreated, revealed only the ghost of a self. Please don’t believe it when the grace pimps tell you otherwise.

Call it the comedy of redemption, my dogged persistence, or the infusion of both; but my prayers for healing—which had long been unspoken, which had long been conjured mostly as an irrepressible quest for wholeness—were eventually answered by a psychoanalyst named Cohen, a soft-spoken and observant Jew, who, upon the referral of the emergency room physician, invited me for a consultation. To be sure, the physician’s first order of business had been to calm my wrecked nervous system, which required the intervention of anti-anxiety medications. The drugs did their good work; and by the time I met with Cohen, I was eager to hear him out on the prospects of psychoanalytic treatment.

He explained the basics: a complete analysis would take about three years. We should try to meet four days a week. The hospital’s usual rate was $150 for a therapeutic hour, but since this would be a training case, which he needed to fulfill a clinical requirement, he’d be willing to accept less. I should think about what I’d be willing to pay, a rate that seemed feasible. He would not be making any additional income on the analysis.

I told him a week later, “I was thinking I could pay five dollars per session.” Cohen said that sounded fine. He didn’t ask how I’d reached the decision or seem taken aback by my proposal. Though he thought we might agree to revisit the rates should my financial outlook improve. And that sounded good to me.

During the last of our three initial consultations, I told Cohen I really appreciated his kind offer and all he was doing to accommodate my limited means; yet I felt like I needed a little more time to think it all through. Three years of nearly daily therapy seemed daunting, even at bargain-basement prices. Cohen said he understood. I should take as much time as I needed.

At the time, I was carrying a 3-3 teaching load into my second year of a tenure-track job, which meant developing four new courses, in addition to research, student advising, and college service. My wife had taken leave of her ELS position to care for our two small children; and we had recently bought a two-bedroom house, for which we’d borrowed heavily. A thousand dollars a year seemed like a stretch.

I thought about it. Logistical complications woke me up some nights in a cold sweat. To get to appointments on time, I would have to rush out of my second class period, drive from Roland Park into the urban desolation of east Baltimore (at which point my fretful mind would replay the most horrific death scenes in the last week’s episode of Homicide, filmed on these same streets) and the oasis that remains Johns Hopkins Hospital, hope to God there was a free parking place in the Rutland Garage, speed walk through a labyrinth of hallways to Cohen’s office on the 10th floor, and wait in an outer office abuzz with the comings and goings of psychiatrists and med students; and then fifty minutes later, I’d have to do the whole thing again in reverse. And this would be my life; four days a week, with breaks for August, Christmas, and Hanukkah, for the foreseeable future.

I felt completely overwhelmed but exhilarated too; it felt exactly like every prospect for creative growth had ever felt. What did I have to lose? What other better options did I have for my addled mental health? During a visit that happened to coincide with my considerations of Cohen’s offer, the psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles said the arrangement sounded too good to pass up. I’d long been an admirer of Coles’s remarkable career—read his books on Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor and on children in situations of crisis—so I took his advice as the voice of providence. And so, with my wife’s gentle nudge, and the reassurance that Cohen would be there if I lost my way, I phoned in to say I was ready to get started. Then, on a summer afternoon a decade after my first major panic episode, a thirty-four year-old anxious riddle of a man finally got on the couch.

“What do I talk about?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” Cohen said.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s pretty much it,” he said.

It sounded like nothing so much as a testimony. Having learned early to share my faith with anyone interested (or not), to offer an spoken account, on demand, of my spiritual life, analysis was a fairly easy transition to make. So you might say an evangelical childhood brings certain advantages to the work.

I wanted to talk about my first image of heaven. It had come to me at a Jesus camp. I couldn’t remember which one. I’d gone to so many. It might have been the retreat on the Gulf, or the ranch in the east Mississippi lake country, or the weekend bivouacs on the banks of the Tombigbee River. Jesus camps angled over every sad body of water between Picayune and Dothan. But I recalled vividly how on an afternoon swim I had positioned myself by the ladder, and with goggles and snorkel, watched the older girls lapping in the deep end overhead. I recalled how their bodies flashed like pearls in the aqueous light. How I was hard enough to hold a tray of oysters. How later that evening at the worship service, I had sat in a folding chair and listened to my father preach one of his powerful soul-winning sermons, luxuriating in blissful wonderment.

Cohen responded with an “uhuh,” in what would be the first of a million uhuh’s and uhum’s gracing our sessions, signaling a thought well-spoken, a sorrow shared, an insight gleaned; who knew what he meant. But I always appreciated the reassuring effect. After a brief pause, he said he’d be interested to hear about my first thoughts of hell.

Duly noted. Psychoanalysis did not lead me into paradise. But in the languorous flow of thought and speech, in the recollection of known and forgotten, buried and visceral, terrors, traumas and hopes, under the skillful direction of an analyst, psychoanalysis did free me from the tyrannies of self-knowing. From cruel dogmas and debilitating fears. In analysis, I found the freedom to talk about anything, to follow the lines of the most outrageous desires—and the lightning didn’t strike. In a slow, steady turning, I learned to trust, for the first time, in the aptitudes of bodily life.

“Freud isn’t just desire’s advocate,” my friend Mark Edmundson wrote in one of his eloquent apologies for the talking cure. Freud teaches us to recognize that our “inner lives are in a constant state of civil war”; that we both wish and despise our own longings. He lets us know how we’re likely to behave when “desire slips loose from its reins”, but more importantly how much our lives are diminished from “too much prohibition”—“when the inner censor grows too strong.” The result is not only “listlessness, depression, despondency” but “in extreme cases the hatred of life that takes one to suicide…The death of desire is the death of the individual.”

Freud is a skilled diagnostician of sick theologies, I would add, and might be welcomed as the pastoral counselor every evangelical desperately needs. The un-analyzed God metes out punishments as harsh as the Christian body. Yet a mind chastened by the crash and burn of magical thinking may inspire a faith more alive to mystery. It did for me.

Evangelicals who rail against psychotherapy and pharmacology do so, in my observation, until they need them. When the protocols of biblical self-help fall short, as they will, evangelical anxiety becomes sin’s dark portal into which so many sick and needy people spiral out of control. We’ve all seen the reports: they leave the faith and/or their families, become addicted to drugs and/or porn, religiously and/or physically abuse their parishioners and the young, and commit suicide. (Children of ministers take their lives at a higher rate than their parents. Though the number of both has spiked, nearly a third of the subculture still believes that anyone who commits suicide goes to hell.)

Such however is plight of the Evangelical Self: unaccompanied by respect for the mind’s intricate dramas, the salvation instant shatters. Its identify requires its perpetual unmaking. I recently heard a preacher in one of the numerous evangelical start-ups in my university town say to the audience that he prayed each of us would have a complete nervous breakdown; only then would we be made ready for God. The Evangelical Self is a never-ending experiment to determine whether all people can be brought to despair, made empty vessels, and then—please don’t mistake the self-loathing for passivity—redeployed in service to whatever authority has been certified the real deal for Jesus. The signs are everywhere. In hypomanic fears of extinction. In the narcosis of purity. In a massive persecution complex. In the constant hankering for authority. The Evangelical Self storms into the social order as a perpetually-aggrieved crusader against difference. The pitch for the ego broken for God is finally a grasp for power and control, and it must be resisted.

The philosopher Paul Ricoeur, four decades after the publication of Freud’s Future of an Illusion, argued in a ponderous, largely forgotten monograph that Freudian psychoanalysis prepares the mind for a faith cleansed of idolatry—to the God beyond god. “The question remains open for everyone,” Ricoeur said, “whether the destruction of idols is without remainder.” The analytic dialogue exacts a meticulous, demanding, and expensive process (minus sliding scale) of disentangling the reality from the symbol; of freeing the transcendent mystery from the domesticated word. Freud may have exaggerated his conclusions, presuming he’d exposed faith’s essential naiveté: the natural history of an infantile obsession. You see aspects of caricature in his genealogy of religion, his simplistic reductions and quest for a theory of everything, his confidence in the morality of science—he was a child of the nineteenth century. (Paul Tillich is the rare modern Protestant theologian who grappled with anxiety and extolled the benefits of psychoanalysis. But his accounts linger amid ontological abstractions; you will not find any consideration of anxiety’s harsh somatic presences or clinical context—or his own tortured sexuality. ) Still, Freud’s critique of the idea of God strikes me as less of a “funerary sermon on religious culture”, as T.S. Eliot surmised, than a reckoning with the seductive power of illusion. Psychoanalysis offers a clinical procedure for disentangling symbolic conceptions of God from the reality symbolized. Such at least was my experience.

St. Paul’s prayer that Christians would be strengthened in their “inner being with power through his Spirit”, the Hebrew psalmist’s search for “truth in the inward being,” “wisdom in my secret heart”—affirm the habits of self-care and depth. St. Peter tells the resident aliens scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia to “adorn their inner selves with the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.” The ascent to God, despite the portrayals by its cultured despisers, expands the horizons of worldliness. Faith is a difficult artwork: continually giving, ever unfinished. Might it not then better serve our battered selves (and our threatened earth) to imagine religion as something other than an avatar of shame or opiate against death? We might recall Tillich’s concern for the courage to be, “the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself,” to “enter into the fullness of life.” Doctrinaire reductions of religion to neurotic symptoms are silly and unhelpful. It must never again be said that God wills you or me to suffer depression and anxiety.

Our lives are a marvelous mystery. Under the direction of a competent analyst, Freudian analysis builds upon that mystery, in its thorough, respectful listening to the subject—to the suffering self, the analysand. Self-disclosure is “liberating and innovating and therefore creating,” wrote Stanley A. Leavey in In the Image of God: A Psychoanalyst’s View, the book that would open my heart’s door to analysis. We are free when we are open to what is real and disposed toward what is true. Sometimes even you must sin boldly to feel redemption’s joy. You have to give up on the messianic impulse for the sake of your body and mind; for the sake of who you are; of what you wanted to be all along. To go all the way, to feel the body’s grace, to ascend the scale of erotic desire until there’s nothing left to say but: “Here I am.”

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Tuesday (December 5): "Blessed are the eyes which see what you see!"

Gospel Reading:  Luke 10:21-24

21 In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these  things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and  any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." 23 Then turning to the disciples he said privately, "Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10

1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;  and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist, and faithfulness the girdle of his loins. 6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together;  and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. 9 They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;  for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. 10 In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwellings shall be  glorious.

Meditation: How does God bring his kingdom to us? Jesus remarked that many prophets and kings before him longed to see and understand God's plan for establishing his kingdom. When King David's throne was overthrown and vacant for centuries, God promised, nonetheless, to raise up a new king from the stump of Jesse, the father of David. This messianic king would rule forever because the Spirit of God would rest upon him and remain with him (Isaiah 11:1).

The Messiah King is anointed with divine wisdom and gifts of the Spirit Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be equipped with the gifts of the Spirit - with wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2 - for an explanation of the gifts see this helpful article). This king would establish the kingdom of God, not by force of human will and military power, but by offering his life as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world. Through his death on the cross, Jesus, the true Messiah King, would defeat Satan, overcome death, and win pardon and reconciliation for sinners. God's plan of redemption included not only the Jewish people but all the nations of the earth as well. Through his death and resurrection Jesus makes us citizens of heaven and friends of God. The Lord Jesus wants us to live in joyful hope and confident expectation that he will come again to fully establish his kingdom of righteousness and peace.

What does Jesus' prayer (Luke 10:21-22) tell us about God and about ourselves? First, it tells us that God is both Father and Lord of earth as well as heaven. He is both Creator and Author of all that he has made, the first origin of everything and transcendent authority, and at the same time, goodness and loving care for all his children. All fatherhood and motherhood are derived from him (Ephesians 3:14-15). Jesus' prayer also contains a warning that pride can keep us from the love and knowledge of God.

The Lord opposes the proud but gives wisdom and understanding to the humble Pride closes the mind to God's truth and wisdom for our lives. Jesus contrasts pride with child-like simplicity and humility. The simple of heart are like "babes" in the sense that they see purely without pretense and acknowledge their dependence and trust in God who is the source of all wisdom and strength. They seek one thing - the "summum bonum" or "greatest good" which is God himself.

Simplicity of heart is wedded with humility, the queen of virtues, because humility inclines the heart towards grace and truth. Just as pride is the root of every sin and evil we can conceive, so humility is the only soil in which the grace of God can take root. It alone takes the right attitude before God and allows him as God to do all. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6). The grace of Christ-like humility inclines us towards God and disposes us to receive God's wisdom, grace, and help. Nothing can give us greater joy than the knowledge that we are God's beloved and that our names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). Do you seek God's wisdom and grace with humility and trust?

Through Christ we can personally know the Father and be united with him Jesus makes a claim which no one would have dared to make: He is the perfect revelation of God. Our knowledge of God is not simply limited to knowing something about God - who he is and what he is like. We can know God personally and be united with him in a relationship of love, trust, and friendship. Jesus makes it possible for each of us to personally know God as our Father. To see Jesus is to see what God is like. In Jesus we see the perfect love of God - a God who cares intensely and who yearns over men and women, loving them to the point of laying down his life for them upon the cross. Do you pray to your Father in heaven with joy and confidence in his love and care for you?

"Lord Jesus, give me the child-like simplicity and purity of faith to gaze upon your face with joy and confidence in your all-merciful love. Remove every doubt, fear, and proud thought which would hinder me from receiving your word with trust and humble submission."

Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17 1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! 2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! 3 Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! 4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor! 5 May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations! 6 May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth! 7 In his days may righteousness flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more! 12 For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. 13 He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. 17 May his name endure for ever, his fame continue as long as the sun!  May men bless themselves by him, all nations call him blessed!

Daily Quote from the early church fathers: The Seven Gifts of the Spirit, by Ambrose of Milan, 339-397 A.D.

   "So, then, the Holy Spirit is the river, and the abundant river, which according to the Hebrews flowed from Jesus in the lands, as we have received it prophesied by the mouth of Isaiah (Isaiah 66:12). This is the great river that flows always and never fails. And not only a river, but also one of copious stream and overflowing greatness, as also David said: 'The stream of the river makes glad the city of God' (Psalm 46:4). For neither is that city, the heavenly Jerusalem, watered by the channel of any earthly river, but that Holy Spirit, proceeding from the fount of life, by a short draught of whom we are satiated, seems to flow more abundantly among those celestial thrones, dominions and powers, angels and archangels, rushing in the full course of the seven virtues of the Spirit. For if a river rising above its banks overflows, how much more does the Spirit, rising above every creature, when he touches the low-lying fields of our minds, as it were, make glad that heavenly nature of the creatures with the larger fertility of his sanctification.    "And let it not trouble you that either here it is said 'rivers' (John 7:38) or elsewhere 'seven Spirits,' (Revelation 5:6) for by the sanctification of these seven gifts of the Spirit, as Isaiah said, is signified the fullness of all virtue; the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness, and the Spirit of the fear of God. One, then is the river, but many the channels of the gifts of the Spirit. This river, then, goes forth from the fount of life." (excerpt from ON THE HOLY SPIRIT 1.16)