#I don't even consider myself as a Christian but the main reason I'd go in a church is for the bread

[thefallenangel2008]

Can we all agree that church bread rocks?💯💯💯

[orphee-aux-enfers]

I. Don’t understand how being against homophobia and misogyny and informational suppression is cultural relativism? Yeah I have a #USAmerican raised Christian bias but I think not being bioessentialist and anti-intellectual is. Normal???? Genuinely don’t understand

Okay so. My guess from how this was written is that you are either a child or just into your 20s. I'd expect much different wording and approach if you were older. So. I'm going to try and be as gentle and clear cut as possible.

1) Orthodox Judaism is actually quite diverse and also different from Christianity, even fundamentalist Christianity .

2) What you're witnessing is not necessarily indicative of the actual community values; you are interpreting without insider perspective, or seemingly any actual knowledge. You're also ascribing motive to actions that may or may not be there.

3) many orthodox Jews, myself included, are queer and trans and embraced by our community. Every person of authority I've spoken to on the matter says that my incredibly queer, t4t marriage that gets read as gay no matter what, still gets the mitzvah of sex on erev Shabbos, and that includes my main community of Chabad.

4) many books are screened before being given to children by all people everywhere for a variety of reasons. Just because you don't fully understand the reasons as you are not yourself Orthodox Jewish doesn't mean that they are automatically something to be hated due to your preconceived notions.

5) Assuming a group is inherently homophobic, misogynistic, etc. Simply because you don't understand them as you are not part of their community is in fact a bad behaviour, yes. Don't do that. Most of the time, in most communities people are at worst confused.

6) As for misogyny... It's important to know the ways in which Judaism actually structures it's sex roles. No one has different sex roles because they're lesser, which misogyny implies. And every SINGLE person I have ever met observes mitzvos based on sex due to actually desire, not coercion. But for example, married women cover their hair as a way of making their marriage even more holy. Men meanwhile are told to cover their head at all times so they are mindful of G-d at all times. What does this imply at first glance? Why, that women are capable of remembering G-d at all times and the men are silly and must forget G-d if not reminded! Do we think this is all to the interpretation?

So. Before you judge our community so harshly... Perhaps also consider the last century of human history alone. We are being killed and hurt at alarming rates again, especially in the USA. Is it any wonder we don't stop in the streets to justify our existence to you?

Lastly, an oversharing of my personal details because as I am currently safe and well at home, I feel I ought to give you opportunity to understand that you aren't seeing/understanding the complexity of sex roles in Judaism

7) so, yes, orthodox Judaism has gender/sex based roles. It also is, in my experience, pretty flexible to meet individuals. I was coercively assigned female at birth. I was however by Jewish law, tumtum. In English terms, I had ambiguous genitals which could be surgically changed. My sister wanted a baby sister. And so, I was surgically "corrected" and raised female, until puberty and onset of hormonal problems that indicated that it wasn't just a genital mutation. I felt disconnected from binary gender, and at time, in part of my community having a label for me while the hospital I was born at had simply labeled me "incorrect", I came to embrace a masculine social standing. Because I was unable to be sexed as an infant, have masculine levels of testosterone and a lack of menses for years at a time, I have to adhere to both male and female sex based mitzvos. Religiously, I am operating with the strictest possible adherence, but this is all written and debated, as are all of the other sexes in Judaism. I am, however, allowed to exist as intersex in a Jewish community in a way that I am NEVER allowed to exist as intersex without a fight in the secular world, to the point that if it's not relevant I identify only as trans, because otherwise it becomes too complicated in the secular world. And this is genuinely because there is actually a space for me to exist in, as there are six Talmudic sexes.

Being trans and intersex is "allowed". Being queer is "allowed". Some communities differ, but I've lived in seven, and all of them have been more accepting of me being queer, trans, and intersex, than any secular space, including liberal and leftist spaces. At WORST, I am met with curiosity because I am new to the community. I think, perhaps, too many people in this world mistake curiosity with hatred.

[automatismoateo]

My parents told me to never contact them again because I told them to stop sending me bibles christian literature etc via /r/atheism

My parents told me to never contact them again because I told them to stop sending me bibles, christian literature, etc It's been 7 months since I became an atheist. This was definitely not a decision that was taken well by my parents considering my dad is still a pastor of a small church. They have fought me on this for the entire 7 months and I even told my mom there will be a point when I tell them to stop. They have been harrassing me for the entire seven months now sending me articles why atheists are idiots, reasons to believe in the bible, different bs books on the end times (note: I understand why I have the anxiety I do now after briefly skimming the end times book...) The other day was finally my breaking point when they sent me three bibles, several answers in genesis catalogs, etc. They sent these items with some of my old beanie babies and some silverware. I told them to stop. I was finally tired of them sending me their christian propaganda and I was done receiving it all in a way that is one way communication: mail. I mentioned that I've been silent for 7 months and I only ever ONCE sent my mom a youtube video because she agreed to me sending it. I never once sent them something without their consent. It has been the most aggravating, hurtful, and stupid few months and I was finally done. I got a text the next day from my dad saying, "Wow!!! You ungrateful little brat! All of your other stuff is going to the goodwill. I'm blocking you on everything and never try to reach out to me again!" My mom responded with, "You said you were open to being wrong, so we are just trying to show you that you are." It is overwhelming to even try to type about the countless times I called her on her crap about her beliefs and have challenged her faith. I have constantly told her the reasons I don't believe but here's the thing... They don't care about truth, they care about their religion being right. Both of them ended up fully blocking me on everything and I was getting such anxiety expecting them to reach out the last few days so I ended up blocking their numbers as well. I really think this is a farce on their end and they will end up trying to make amends, but I've been thinking a lot about if I'd want them back in my life anyway. The main reason I haven't is because I work in the funeral industry and I am far too aware of the reality of death, and I just couldn't bring myself to actually cutting them fully off in the event something happened. What if they needed to reach me? What if one of them died and I didn't know for weeks? etc. And then I realized I'm the only one in this relationship asking those questions. They cut me off and blocked me without a second thought. Anyway, I'm just rambling and really don't expect anyone to care enough about this, but in the event you do, have you ever had to deal with religious parents and the harmful effects it's had on your relationship? How did you cope? What were some things you said to yourself to comfort yourself? Or a friend? Thanks for reading this ramble if you did. Just a new lil atheist trying to find out how I fit in to this overtly religious world we live in. Submitted August 23, 2024 at 01:41AM by Ariesfiddler (From Reddit https://ift.tt/JGo1IVz)

[dzpenumbra]

7/21/23

Oh man, doing yoga before this at 3AM after not getting a ton of sleep is like drinking half a bottle of Nyquil, holy shit. XD A slight bit of tension left over in my lower back - like where it's hinting that it could cramp up, that feeling... - is the only feeling of unease I have right now, which is very welcome. I might reconsider starting my day with yoga... or better yet... put a bit less importance on doing a vigorous routine at the start of my day and focus on taking some time to get out of my head before bed instead. Or do yoga twice a day, that could work. Focus less on like... "doing it for x amount of time"... and more on just getting to that desired place of quiet and ease.

I hope to graduate to that at some point, which is really just a matter of trying. That being... doing yoga without instruction. Just listening to what my body is asking for and doing it that way.

I've also been planning for a couple days now... I guess I'll set this up with some context. In Way of the Peaceful Warrior, there was a part where the main character and his guru take a few hours together to give themselves a deep tissue massage, to find points of unconscious muscle tension and release it. Which I'm sure the puritanical closeted perverts of American corpo-Christian society would consider laughably homoerotic... for some reason... Two grown men massaging themselves in a gas station. "Yeah... right..." And you know what? Maybe my sex drive is diminished compared to the average citizen to the point where I don't immediately jump to that awkward conclusion... maybe not? Maybe it's just kept within reasonable control and restricted to emotionally and consciously responsible areas. Maybe my sexuality is just an aspect of me, rather than a wild animal that points me around telling me where to go and what to do. I don't know. That's a complex nut to crack. But at the end of the day, good lord, nothing sounds more relieving and relaxing than to take a day and massage the fuck out of my muscles. And maybe someday have someone I trust to be able to help me with areas that I would struggle to reach myself, as much as possible with my PTSD trust issues and shit.

That's a long-winded way of explaining that I have had a life-long problem of storing extreme tension in my body. This is to the point where I had to get physical therapy for soccer in my early teens, like... 14... And the physical therapist was fucking shocked, he said my ITBs were like steel cables. Guess what? They still are.

The book was stating some stuff about like... how with involuntary muscle contraction like that... especially with deep muscles and everything... you really just need to get in there and work out the kinks. You need to actively stimulate the muscles to get them to let go and re-learn how to properly function. And this form of self-care would do wonders for my wellbeing. I bet I would sleep much better. I bet my back would do much better. I bet my hips and my posture would do much better. So yeah, I'm planning on taking an evening coming up and just putting on an audiobook or something and just going from the feet up, working every single muscle I can reach for hours. I'd say that's worth dedicating an evening to.

Getting to the core of the day... I had therapy today. It was... relieving. It was odd at first because... my voice was shot again. This time, noticeably for me. I found myself instinctually half-whispering, and having to force myself to raise my voice. And my voicebox still feels a bit sore now after an hour of talking. It's absolutely insane how quickly that happened.

I was finally able to get perspective from another human on the whole... run-in with the guy on the way back from the skatepark. He... did something unexpected. He complimented me on how I handled the situation. He said it sounded like it was actually a nice situation, and I commented that like... yeah... that guy probably doesn't get to talk to a lot of people outside of the drug world, because people likely keep a wide berth. And... my therapist also mentioned that it's important to keep in mind that you don't know exactly what someone else's struggle may be, so there might be mental health issues there too, you know? And he said it sounded like I was very kind and generous and I reacted appropriately. And that affirmation meant a lot to me. It helped me a lot in finding closure on that. As much as I can comfortably find right now. I still feel that shadow of "unsafety" surrounding it.

I also brought up this trouble that I have in letting go of things, and he got super excited when I asked this question. "What's the difference between denial... and letting go of thoughts/feelings?" And I'm gonna be honest, I'm still struggling to process it even after he answered me. And I know it's not the first time I've asked. But despite the fact that I don't really... fully know the difference... I mean, okay... I can speculate a bit here and explore. I think the difference is... acknowledgement. I remember having an "ah-ha" moment there when he was saying that. Like... people who are in denial won't even remotely acknowledge a thought or feeling as even being real. They will completely dismiss it out-of-hand. Which... would clearly explain my problem with smoking weed, and anxiety, and all that. I am too open-minded and imaginative. I will entertain any thought and find meaning in it, I guess that's probably in big part due to my whole obsession with stream-of-consciousness.

Let's use an analogy here. Here's a fun one. Tarot. Or astrology. Right? So... you know the type... Who hear the word "tarot" or "astrology" and immediately go "I don't believe in that" and scoff excessively loud. And, weirdly enough, won't even be in the same room as it? ... Which is odd, honestly... Like... I mean, you can treat tarot like a kid's game and you can still get some equivalent benefit from it, you can have fucking fun with it and not have to snub your nose in the air like a fucking party-pooper. The same as astrology. You don't have to literally believe that giant conflagrated gas balls in the heavens are resonating frequencies that are affecting your impulses or something (I have no idea if anyone actually believes that, but who knows?)... You can just go... "this pattern of behavior that is applicable for most if not all people has been randomly chosen for me to consider in how I go about my day/life." So you can know that no one is trying to influence your decisions or your fate. It's RNG. Divination is RNG. So you leave it up to a dice-roll to pick something for you to pay attention to, and you do the leg-work of considering how that applies to your life and what to do with it. That's how I apply tarot and astrology (and many other things), but again... the example here was... someone coming up and going "I don't believe in astrology/tarot." And laughing smugly. And shoving their fingers in their ears or walking away. Never acknowledging, never entertaining the idea. THAT is denial.

Now... comparing denial to... letting go. Letting go is... me laying in bed and having a swarming flood of invasive thoughts and memories wash into my psyche... and I look at the memory of me almost dying in a kayak in a river 10 years ago... and I acknowledge it. I say, "I see you, memory. I know." And where I differ from so many that I've met? I am compelled to engage with it. I feel the feelings. I instinctively see reuniting with the memory as an opportunity to learn something. To glean more information in order to... grow. To keep myself safer in future situations. And because a lot of these memories surround life-threatening situations... their lessons are kinda mission-critical as far as my brainstem is concerned. So they get bumped to the top of the thought-queue. And that's a long damn queue, I think a lot.

So... what I've been trying to do is go... "yes, I see you. That situation was not very well thought out, but I have learned and grown a lot since then. The emotions I am feeling in response to that memory? They are echoes from how I felt in the Past. It's not happening to me right now, it's a memory. (That might seem like a given, but with PTSD... saying that step to myself is crucial.) It's Present Me trying to save Past Me. I can let this go, and maybe revisit it at a time when addressing this is more relevant... like going on a whitewater kayaking trip or something."

I'll be honest, it's been somewhat effective... but not a sure-fire solution. What happens with me is... that alert... that memory notification... I can let it go and recover from it. But then it sneaks back into the thought queue... and it starts pulling life-threatening-priority importance-rank to cut the line... and suddenly I'm right back in the same memory again. And it gets infuriatingly tedious, it can happen dozens of times. Little whirlpools and eddies in my stream of thoughts, where even though I can let the thoughts go... they just loop back around.

I still don't have a surefire solution for that, but I'm sure in time I will figure it out. I'm content in the progress I have made for now, I don't feel any need to solve everything right now. XD Though it does feel like... an endurance and willpower situation a lot of the time. Just enduring waves of difficult emotions and thoughts just... to get to sleep. Oh, and yeah... this is the same problem I have while I meditate. Like I have 4 or 5 radios playing in my head at the same time and I'm trying to focus on my breath through it. When I'm actively focusing on an art project and allowing my brain to also engage with one of the thought streams (like now), it gets manageably quiet. When I try to focus on just my breath? It can turn into chaos. So... I guess I need practice there. I don't really know why I have an aversion to it... maybe because it's so simple in theory, and I am so bad at it.

There's the self-judgement, I was waiting for it. Remember that depression from the past two days? This is one of only a few times he's chimed in today, and I've called him out every time. I'm really proud of that. :)

Welp. I "suck" at doing shove-its on a skateboard, too. I've never been consistent with them. I can do them into stalls, but not like... moving. Maybe that's how I should phrase this stuff, the way I phrase skate tricks. "I have never been consistently comfortable with _____" instead of "I can't _____". It feels a lot more positive and generous, while still being truthful. I can shove-it consistently on a snowskate. But skateboard, no-sir. Does that mean... give up on that and avoid it and just go about my skate career never trying shove-it tricks? Hell no. That means it goes on the trick list. The list of tricks I want to learn. On snowskate... that trick list is more impressive, but simply because I feel more confident to take risks on a snowskate.

I mean this sincerely, I really think skateboarding can help people a lot with self-improvement, as long as it's done in a way that's focused on personal growth. It's similar to dance, really - just higher stakes. So yeah, I want to treat my meditation goal the same way I treat learning skate tricks. Take some time and really dedicate that time to learning that skill. Get used to the feeling of it, get the hang of it, learn what to expect. Then... add it to the usual routine. I'm doing that with nose manuals right now. It may seem a bit lame to some that I just go to the skatepark to nose manual around... but I was always a manual guy, I just really enjoy it, I can be really consistent with them. Nose manual? Less so. They always spooked me a bit, there's a big mind-game with them where you're much more concerned with your nose hitting the ground and just immediately stopping and eating shit... manual you can just let your tail drag and its not the end of the world. But... you can drag your nose in nose manual without just immediately stopping - on a flat surface, at least. So it's definitely a bit of a mind-game. And I have started to just add nose manual into my (albeit very limited at the moment) bag of filler tricks. So if I'm just cruising around, I'll see where my ollie is at... and maybe a FS 180... but lately, I go to nose manual and add that trick to the bag. So I get more time with it and get more comfortable with how it feels. I have gotten to this point with yoga... where I can just break it out whenever I need it... and I hope to get to this point with meditation soon.

Okay, that's enough for tonight. Started painting the gold paint onto the grip tape, it looks pretty nice. We'll see what it looks like once I figure out the rest of the color scheme. I'm really leaning towards a deep red. Then it's details and shading, then on to the birds. It's been a good day. I'm gonna close it out with either a shower or a bath.

[30daysoffire]

Day 2

January 16, 2022

Dear friend,

As I was thinking about what to write for today, I recalled, perhaps with some regret now (regret that I went back to it), the dark valley I walked through over the course of the last two years.

It is dark in large part because I walked it alone.

A couple months before the pandemic started (around March 2020 where I lived) and the entire world would experience a kind of universal panic attack and the oxymoronic collective isolation we are now all too familiar with, I was already going through this all on my own.

I had just opened up to a close friend about my struggles. The opening up was a culmination, I believe, of a large amount of drama and misunderstanding, and I wanted all of that to end... so told my friend about the same-sex attraction, the struggle with sin, the pain, the trials, the loneliness. The reveal, as these things often are, was such a catharsis. It feels good to be seen and known by the ones you love.

But afterwards, I felt that I had made a mistake. In the weeks following that conversation, I realized that the clarity I thought it would provide did not materialize. My friend spoke with some other friends and mentors whom I love and who, I know, love me deeply. And they chose to take what I had spoken in that conversation and, I guess, plan out my life for me, without my input. They met behind my back to talk about me. They gave me counsel about what I should be doing with my life. They rebuked me about matters which I disagreed with them about... and our subsequent discussions about all of these things were not productive or helpful.

I'm being purposefully vague here, as I care deeply for them all and would not want to publicly air these personal matters... but that experience of baring myself to people I trusted, and then seeing them make assumptions and presumptions about me, how I should act or think, even after I had poured out my heart to some of them for over a decade—and then years later, it's as if they didn't care to consider my heart or perspective—it all deeply, deeply upset me.

I became disillusioned with the whole system I had lived and breathed for the last 15 or so years... dealing with my struggles through a process of continual accountability, discipleship, introspection, confession... I felt like it was all useless, all meaningless. I was disillusioned with the people who I had long considered the most helpful in the fight—God-given supports, counselors, and shoulders to lean on; suddenly, I'm recognizing them as imperfect. Of course they are imperfect; no one is perfect.

But something inside me snapped... The thought kept ringing in my ears: I can't trust them anymore. I can't give them my burdens because they all just make it worse. I had the proof of it. I was jaded, frustrated, angry. And all of that made me very bitter. Bitter towards them, bitter about my circumstances, bitter about everything.

The main conclusion I came to was that I needed to do this alone. And so I did. I shut up. I stopped talking to all the people I used to talk to about my temptations and struggles and sin. And it was really easy to because, well, 2020.

And now that I'm deep into this story, I am realizing the painfulness of it. It hurts. I don't like it, and I don't like thinking about it, much less telling it.

I know it's not the right place to be. Logically, according to reasoning and wisdom... this is pretty bad. Maybe, really, really bad, and I'd like to think that I am a logical, cerebral person. I want to do what makes sense. So I know that isolating yourself is bad—mentally, emotionally, physiologically, spiritually.

And also, biblically, this is really, really bad. This goes against the firm convictions I've long held on this matter. That God means for Christians to live together, to do all the "one another"s in community with each other, a lifetime of building up and being built up by brothers and sisters in Christ's church.

But I can't open up anymore. (That's a lie I tell myself... I know it's a lie.) I can't. It's too painful, too raw and too vulnerable of a place to be in.

My friend... the one I opened up to at the beginning of this story... decided, rather abruptly in the middle of 2021, to leave—leave our church, leave my life, leave everything. To move away entirely. And to do it with, what I see as, less than a goodbye. And I resent that more than a little bit. Maybe I resent it a lot.

One of my closest mentors, a dear Christian brother who really cried with me through the hard times and who understood me like no one else has, is moving across the country in a couple weeks. And I secretly resent that also. I know God is calling him there, and it is good and right for him and his family to experience this change... but I also feel abandoned.

I hate it, feeling so alone. I've drowned that feeling in mindless scrolling, in endless hobbies and media consumption, in hours of nothingnesses. But it doesn't go away. The pain is numbed, as with an anaesthetic, but the problem is still there.

What IS the problem though? Bitterness? Anger? Resentment? Pride? Shame? Idolatry? I'm sure it's a combination of everything. I'm a mess on the inside.

Man, I feel like I said too much. Dug a little too deep. But maybe it's what needed to be said.

Friend, I'm actually pretty worn out. I think it took a blog post to get me thinking about it, instead of pretending it isn't there. But now that I acknowledge its existence, what next?

I know the answer... Confess my sin. Run to the cross. Remember the Gospel. Submit to Christ. Repent and believe. Pray. Worship. Meditate on His Word. Love Him with all my heart. I know the answer.

And then... I guess... bare my soul to other people who will eventually let me down. And then wallow in the shame and regret of the aftermath, and repeat the cycle.

I'm kidding about that last part... But really, what next?

Please pray for me if you think of me.

Sincerely,

Your struggling brother