#Growing Christians

[emperorsfoot]

I just recalled a random memory this morning from when I was in scouts. I had a friend who’s mom was a devout catholic, but we were good friends through scouts. One year my friend wanted to give me a gift for Chanukah so their mom took us to Toys R Us together so I could pick out what I wanted. The mom handed my friend cash at the register so my friend could say they bought it and they paid a little extra for wrapping.

As we were leaving the mom said that I couldn’t open it until Christmas.

But my friend specifically said they were giving it to me for Chanukah. Chanukah that year was a week or two before Christmas (I don’t remember exactly) and the mom said that if I opened it before Christmas “Jesus would know”. I cannot stress enough that my friend wanted it to be a CHANUKAH present.

I’m dropped off at home and my friends mom tells my parents that I can’t open my present until Christmas, meanwhile my friend is in the back seat frustrated and almost shouting “Mom [Renkon] is Jewish!”

My dad just nods and says he understands. He’ll make sure I don’t open it until “the appropriate time”.

First night of Chanukah rolls around and my dad hands me the present and tells me to open it but don’t say anything to my friend until he has a chance to talk to their mother.

So I get to enjoy my toy FOR CHANUKAH like my friend intended.

Anyway, Christmas come and goes. Then new years, then on January 3rd my dad calls the mom and asks “what day does your holiday fall on this year? [Renkon] would like to open their present.”

[chanafehs]

Maybe I’m just too sensitive to people using Palestinian culture for their own means (or just straight up stealing it) but I do get kinda annoyed when I see artists doing “biblically accurate” depictions of figures from Christianity and clearly using modern Palestinian clothing for it and not mentioning it anywhere. For example a thobe malak isn’t “bible clothing” and not mentioning your references anywhere contributes to the erasure of Palestinian culture. One of the aims of Zionist propaganda is the complete removal of Palestinians from both Palestine and our own cultural and historical narrative. Like sure man, you can use Palestinian clothing for your artwork, but at least say what you are referencing. Stop cutting Palestinians out of the picture because you don’t want to add another sentence to the description

[maculategiraffe]

Imagine you are a duckling, but you're not very good at it.

You're not pretty and yellow and graceful like your siblings, like the other ducklings you see swimming and walking around. Also, when you try to talk to them, they don't seem to understand. You can understand them, because they are speaking in the only language you have ever heard spoken, but when you try to speak it it doesn't come out right. It's like there's something wrong with your throat.

Your parents, your siblings, tell you to make more of an effort to fit in, so you do. You watch the other ducklings and do your utmost to copy them exactly: the way they move, the noises they make. There's not much you can do about your weird gray down or your bizarre, ungainly shape, but everything you can do to fit in, to get along, you do.

You're still not very good at it, but you're trying. Maybe you'll get better at it as you grow up. Maybe if you work really, really hard, someday, you'll be a good duck.

But in actual fact, it just gets worse as you grow. Your neck starts elongating grotesquely, unnaturally. When your grown-up feathers start to come in, they're not even the ugly dirty gray your down was; they're ghastly white, like sun-bleached bone. You get bigger and bigger, much bigger than any grownup duck you've ever seen; you turn into a hideous, deformed giant, towering over your horrified parents. They don't understand what they did wrong to make you turn out like this.

And then, one day, for the first time, swimming miserably across the lake, with your big ugly clumsy white body, you see a pair of adult swans.

And you say very quietly to yourself, in your strange ugly rasping voice (you're suddenly wondering how those birds sound when they talk)...

... oh.

[broadwaylewzur]

old farts

a request from @justashortinsomniac

[averagecygnet-blog]

you guys wouldn't fucking believe this but growing up mormon has negative consequences

[everythingcatradora]

so much of adora’s inner conflict in s5 being that she wants so deeply to live and just be with catra (& how that’s when she’s at her happiest and most at peace even when everything is at it’s peak with horde prime) but she thinks she’s not allowed to want that; if she cares about catra and the planet she needs to die for them not be happy and let herself be loved. she can’t even voice it aloud, not even when they’re at the heart she just comforts catra but shows it through action, letting catra stay with her, an ounce of ‘selfishness’ because she yearns for catra’s comfort and presence. adora’s arc is so intertwined with lesbianism in our world; repression and ‘duty’ being impounded into us to the point where it feels like you shouldn’t even be thinking about another option.

[tatesalive]

Grow in Christ 🌻🌱🕊️✞

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. 2 Peter 3:18 🌱🌟✞

[lambnotincluded]

no promise of heaven will make me march with my final breath I deny the church

[kingslionheart]

Do you trust him wholly? I do not. I cannot.

2×06 | ALFRED TALKING ABOUT UHTRED

[windcarvedlyre]

The more I try to analyse Komaeda the more apparent it becomes that he's a hypocrite about everything. Ever. All the time. Cognitive dissonance all the way down.

[audreyrose7]

There's always some random stranger on the internet that understands exactly how to explain something better than you ever could yourself

[magical-musings-of-morgan]

my most autistic trait is probably that, as someone raised by christian nationalists, I cannot STAND the cheap flimsy potshots antitheists fire at christianity. you guys are Doing It Wrong. you dont even know about the council of nicaea OR christianity's long history of antisemitism. get off the stage you're embarrassing yourself.

[rebellum]

The whole transandrophobia discussion thing is weird bc it feels like it's a bunch of poc and jewish trans people being like "here are my experiences of how specifically being MASCULINE had affected me, and the discrimination and violence I experienced based on that. And here is how that relates to me being a racial/ethnic minority"

And then a few loud white trans people going "ohhh you wanna be oppressed so bad you *slur*. This is why there aren't any poc in your movement it's because REAL poc understand intersectionality"

[st5lker]

chappell roan goes on a podcast with some other lesbians and talks about how she wishes she could enjoy casual sex but it makes her anxious and acknowledges that a lot of it feels like it stems from internalized christian guilt/homophobia and she literally discusses with the host abt how casual sex and flings are romanticized and unrealistic anyways and also about how its hard to say “is this coming from stuff i can unlearn/grow past or is this just who i am?” but she offhandedly says “i hate being, like…. demisexual” in a way thats very clearly the closest word to be shorthand for her experience more than an actual part of her identity and so now all the comments look like this

[aimlesspoet]

Growing up, I heard modern phrases like "love the sin, hate the sinner" and "modest is hottest" quoted in Christian circles way more than I ever heard them quote the words of Jesus. It made me realize that maybe it was never really about Jesus' love to them. Maybe it was about control

[heresylog]

I ask you to pray for the worst person you know.

On it, boss.