#actually Julian of norwich says

[sisterjulienne]

Sr MC: What was it Julian of Norwich wrote..? Not the thing about ‘all shall be well’. Not that. Because I can't believe that any more.

Sr J: She wrote, "God did not say thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed…thou shalt not be diseased…”

Sr MJ: "But he said, thou shall not be overcome."

~ Series 6 Ep 1

[girls--complex]

So. Yeah. I can do this in the interest of vaguely trying to be helpful. I feel bad about brain vomiting at anon and then not editing myself when this is probably all they really wanted from me.

As you know I'm very much an intellectual who very much has a well researched and developed system of thought that I use and am not, like, just some woo ass freakazoid stoner, with holes in her brain and kind of a shitty education, who doesn't really inherently enjoy reading books. Yes reading books is extremely boring but I love to do it because I am oh so smart.

Soooo I'm limiting myself to FIVE books because five is a nice number. They are not books that require a great deal of literacy or education to read, or else I would not have read them. They are books that give what I feel is a helpful perspective on the Christian tradition. They will be listed in descending order of how much they mean to me personally to underscore the fact that I'm just some guy who is moreover just saying shit.

The Cost of Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) Read this book if you want the text of the gospels to glow and pulsate when you read it and it doesn't already do that. Or you want it to do that more. Or you don't want to endlessly strive to be happy or healthy or a decent person anymore you just want to live. You won't like it but you can't argue with the testimony of Bonhoeffer's life. And then if you keep reading it you will like it. Sorry that it's Lutheran but no I'm not.

The Universal Christ (Richard Rohr) Read this book if you don't care about being cool or smart and you just want to be fucking happy for once.

Revelations of Divine Love (Julian of Norwich) Read this book if you want to encounter more than you want to interpret, if you enjoy freaky medieval shit that's actually awesome, if you are in the mood to scream and cry and throw up, or if you are considering a career in nursing.

The Sermons of Meister Eckhart (U know...) Read this book if you don't understand anything or if you feel like you understand anything or if you're a big fan of dharmic religions and want to read the Mandukya Upaishad as recieved by a catholic. Whats cool is they're all pretty short.

The Physics of Angels (Fox & Sheldrake) Read this book if you have some type of a heart for scary woo shit or want to develop a more balanced relationship to woo-ology, or if you want an overview of angels in the Christian tradition that steers clear of thoroughness or academic reliability in favor of wild psychedelic speculation and unchecked boomer optimism.

Thank U for asking me because I love to share. I know it's my blog so I can technically post whatever I want but I also don't want to post things no one cares about because that defeats the purpose of posting. OK bye.

[ainsi-soit-il]

mormons are christians

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you, anon. There are some key theological points historically shared by the rest of orthodox Christianity that the LDS Church does not share with the rest of Christianity.

(What I am about to say here presumes that by "Mormons", you mean "LDS", since that's commonly how the term is used. I am less familiar with trinitarian Mormon groups such as the CoC, so I don't feel comfortable getting into all that here, and I feel like that's another post anyway.)

((I am also aware that my explanation may be misconstrued as me biting your head off. That's not my intention at all, and I apologize profusely if it reads that way. I've just done a lot of digging into LDS theology and history over the years, and I wanted to give a rundown of why I understand this issue in the way that I do.))

(((This is also about to get really long and unwieldy so. Apologies for that too.)))

The LDS Church teaches a fundamentally different view of the nature of God. Little-o orthodox Christianity is trinitarian. Not going to get into any biblical defenses of the Trinity here, because I feel like other people have explored it in much more depth, but suffice it to say this is a very old and long-accepted doctrine. Protestants, Catholics, etc. are all in agreement here.

By contrast, LDS theology uses the language of three separate beings united in one purpose. This is particularly apparent in the Book of Abraham, which refers to "the Gods organiz[ing] and form[ing] the heavens and the earth" (Abraham 4:1, emphasis mine). In addition, LDS theology depicts God the Father as an exalted man (see the King Follett Discourse for more on that) and ascribes a physical body to Him (D&C 130:22), which is unheard of in orthodox Christianity.

Furthermore, LDS theology teaches a fundamentally different relationship between God and His People. In orthodox Christianity, when we speak of God as our Father, there is an understanding that we are not His literal children in a biological sense (John 1:12-13). Instead, God being described as our Father is one of various images that He uses in order to communicate His love for His people. As another example of this kind of language in action He is also described as our Husband (e. g. Isaiah 54:5, Ezekiel 16:32, Hosea). This is because God's love for us is so vast and so deep and so complete that it is impossible to use just one analogy and encapsulate all of it perfectly. (I'd argue it's also because the magnitude of God's love is what makes all these other forms of love possible. We love because He first loved us, after all.)

In LDS theology, however, this Father-Child relationship language is not an analogy. It's literal. We are the biological spirit children of a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.

The Heavenly Mother is another aspect of this that is very different from Christianity. In LDS Theology, God is held to be actually male, with a male body and a wife. In Christianity, God is neither male nor female. We may use masculine language to refer to God ("Father", "Son", "He", etc.), and Jesus chose to take the form of a human male, but Scripture also uses feminine language to describe God through the language of motherhood, childbirth and breastfeeding (e. g. Deuteronomy 32:18, Isaiah 49:15, Isaiah 66:13, Isaiah 42:14), and various orthodox Christian theologians have leaned into that language (Julian of Norwich, for example).

I say all that not out of sensationalism or because I want to showcase how "weird" I think LDS beliefs are. All religions are weird (and heck, all of human existence is weird, if we're really honest about it). All of that to say, I'm saying this because it's necessary background to the LDS conception of who Jesus is.

In LDS theology, Jesus is the eldest of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother's spirit children (and therefore, our elder spirit brother), who volunteered for the role of Savior in our preexistence. Satan is Jesus' younger spirit brother, who was cast out of Heaven for trying to take away humanity's free will. Jesus was later exalted to the status of godhood after His resurrection.

In the event that someone tries to claim I am making all this stuff up or misrepresenting LDS beliefs, the LDS Church is completely transparent about this aspect of their theology:

"Every person who was ever born on earth is our spirit brother or sister." (Spirit Children of Heavenly Parents)

"In harmony with the plan of happiness, the premortal Jesus Christ, the Firstborn Son of the Father in the spirit, covenanted to be the Savior. Those who followed Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were permitted to come to the earth to experience mortality and progress toward eternal life. Lucifer, another spirit son of God, rebelled against the plan and 'sought to destroy the agency of man.' He became Satan, and he and his followers were cast out of heaven and denied the privileges of receiving a physical body and experiencing mortality." (Premortality)

"The Savior did not have a fulness at first, but after he received his body and the resurrection all power was given unto him both in heaven and in earth. Although he was a God, even the Son of God, with power and authority to create this earth and other earths, yet there were some things lacking which he did not receive until after his resurrection. In other words he had not received the fulness until he got a resurrected body" (Joseph Fielding Smith)

"And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness; And thus he was called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first. And I, John, bear record, and lo, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove, and sat upon him, and there came a voice out of heaven saying: This is my beloved Son. And I, John, bear record that he received a fulness of the glory of the Father; And he received all power, both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him." (D&C 93:12-17).

Again--and I cannot stress this enough--my problem with this is not that I think it is "weird". I don't think it is exceptionally weird, and again, all religions are weird, including my own. Something being "weird" isn't enough to make it not Christian.

My issue is that this is significantly different than orthodox Christian theology. Orthodox Christian theology holds that Jesus is fully God, and has always been fully God, even as an embryo in Mary's womb. Again, fully willing to say that the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, God's neither-male-nor-femaleness, and Jesus being eternally fully God, even as an unborn baby, is all pretty bizarre.

Now, there are absolutely places where orthodox Christian denominations and theologians have disagreements about Jesus. Some of those questions are really significant ones too, like the whole miaphysitism vs. hypostatic union debate. But whatever disagreements we have, I am of the firm belief that the question of Jesus' divinity--that He was, is, and ever shall be God--is a pretty fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. For all of our squabbling, Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Wesleyans, Russian Orthodox, etc. have all taken that question very, very seriously. Once a religion leaves that behind, I have a hard time accepting that a member of said religion is a Christian.

I'll concede that in anthropological contexts, it's not incorrect to categorize the LDS Church as "Christian" for historical reasons. After all, various aspects of LDS practice and teaching can only be explained through the fact that Mormonism came about as a blending of various 19th century American beliefs with Second Great Awakening-era low-church American Protestantism.

And I also recognize that there are other Christians around here that would take a much broader theological stance over who is or isn't Christian than I do. But personally, looking at LDS theology and comparing it to the rest of orthodox Christianity, I would consider the LDS Church one of several American offshoots of Christianity dating to the 19th century rather than orthodox Christianity-proper.

[notebooks-and-laptops]

in no way i mean to offend you but. my friend. your version of sebastian is just. i mean down to the last bit it's just leliana.

Hello! I'm actually glad you sent this because I've been thinking about their differences and similarities and would love the chance to talk about it.

So, heres the thing. I feel like its easy to model a Better Sebastian off Leliana. They are both people with awful pasts, who enjoy violence and try to rationalize it, and who find comfort in their faith. Also, I think it's easy to type cast a character as "religious" rather than exploring the personal links that person has to their faith and how it may differ from others.

But ultimately, my better version of Seb that lives in my head? He's still pretty chantry conservative compared to Leliana. And the violence thing is s l I g h t l y different. Leliana is a lot of things but I wouldn't say her main motivation is often revenge, whereas Sebs defo is.

1. Theology

Leliana, you'll recall has some WILD opinions about the maker. Her opinions remind me a little of Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth century anchoress who hints at universalisation, believes god spoke to her directly, and had intense views about the love of God (Leliana and Julian is a seperate post but god I'd love to chat about it someday). Leliana believes:

Members of the chantry should have sexual and romantic relationships including the Divine. These relationships are not only morally correct, they are gifts from the Maker and divine in themselves

God did not abandon creation but instead is in creation, everywhere

God can actively talk to individuals as God did to Leliana, usually in visions. He uses this to shape the world

Meanwhile, Sebastian is waaaaay more conservative. Like. St Anselm sorta vibes of the poor man running into the ditch and getting punished by God for it vibes. I mean. Think of all the changes Leliana makes if she becomes divine, even to scripture itself. Do you think Sebastian would uphold any of that?

And that's not necessarily a bad thing! I want Sebastian to think about what it means to be holy, but I don't think he should abandon basic chantry principles because he IS a conservative character. He's a member of the royal family! He has a lot to gain by sticking to tradition and will have been raised to do so.

So yeah, Seb should realise Anders and many others do more for the poor than the chantry. But also he should maintain basic principles of faith such as the maker has abandoned his children, people need to do penance before the maker to atone for their sins.

I mean, the REASON Seb is the way he is is that he thinks that a lot of what he wants/desires is sinful and that he should be punished for that. He's got the Catholic guilt that Leliana couldn't even dream of having.

Also I want Seb to be celebate for the right reasons (he thinks it's what the maker wants him to do rather than something he has to do to stay in the chantry) but that doesn't mean I don't want him to think that the maker wants him to do that. THE MAKER WANTS HIM TO DO THAT. It's how he remains close to the maker.

Basically, Sebs Theology aligns more with Cassandra than it EVER could with Leliana

Why did they turn to religion?

Leliana may have been a bad person before, but she hid in Lothering Chantry because she was already devout and religious. She had suffered tremendously, been tortured and her faith had steadied her through that.

Sebastian Vael? He's a prince and he was basically forced into this. He was an unruly third son so they bonked him in the chantry to try and make him well behaved.

And that's SUCH a difference between the two? Sebastian will ALWAYS feel that struggle between who he was and who is he now, and the fact that he was cohersed into the chantry even if he approves of it now. Leliana wasn't cohersed into anything and found a way to reconcile both her love of violence and her job with the chantry. Speaking of...

What is their violence used for?

Also. Another thing is. Seb doesn't use violence FOR the chantry. The closest he comes is invading Kirkwall for harbouring Anders, but again, that's more personal revenge than violence for the chantry itself to further the chantrys aims. Sebastian instead draws this VERY neat line between violence which is "more fun than the chantry" and the chantry itself which is a life of prayer and devotion.

For Leliana, by Inquisition, she is using violence FOR the chantry. Leliana believes that she is skilled at violence and enjoys using it, but it's not about revenge narratives for her, it's about furthering the cause that she deems right (which is why imo hardened divine Leliana is the most dangerous, because like. Hmm. That is a woman who could VERY easily start a crusade and feel it was justified). While her killing Marjolenne if you go down that route is revenge, it's also...practical? Lelianas violence is strategic, it's thought out, it's done for specific aims and reasons. Marjolenne could VERY easily become a threat again and stop Leliana entering Orlesian society once more. Her death frees Leliana in a very practical way. And most of Lelianas other violence we see in inquisition, the books or DA2 just. Isn't for revenge at all.

What motivates their violence?

For Leliana I think it comes down to the fact that she's good at it, that it's fun, and that it gets her where she needs to be. It's both entertainment and practical. She uses it FOR other people and herself, to further the aims of her in-group be it the chantry or her lover or the inquisition. Violence is mediated before it's enacted and it's enacted to get the correct outcome.

Violence for Leliana is also not really...personal? She can kill and hurt with such coldness and detachment as she shows throughout inquisition. She can even do so with old friends.

For Sebastian, violence is intrinsically linked to revenge and so is ALWAYS personal. Revenge is at the core of Sebastian's character. Every act reminds us of that. Leliana is, in her way, merciful particularly softened and I think that's her natural inclination. Seb? He's revenge driven. He can't see Mercy without a strong religious hand to make him. Kill those who hurt you and the ones you care for is basically his motto. He doesn't know how to exist outside of this paradigm of revenge and shows he hasn't learnt by the end based on his decision to invade Kirkwall because Hawke didn't kill Anders. And he doesn't ever really think about the outcome of these things? Like. Annexing Kirkwall?? Seriously?? That's gonna have huge political implications but Sebastian can't care because Elthina is dead and that's PERSONAL.

So yeah. Big picture Leliana vs. personal small picture Seb in terms of how they operate with violence.

How well do they know themselves?

I think Leliana is VERY honest with herself and very self reflective. Even in inquisition when she "nearly lost herself" she still thinks hard about how to get what she wants. She KNOWS she's an instrument of violence and she knows she's good at it and is going to use it self conciously to further the inquisitions aims. Otherwise she wouldn't be as good as she is at it! She clocks exactly why she might have made a mistake and if her emotions got involved. ("I was being sentimental" about pulling back her scouts)

Sebastian is deceptive. He's deceptive from himself. He wants to be the good guy and he pretends he is, but he's actually a shadow of revenge sneaking about. When he wants something he tries to justify it over and over even if it isn't logical to the rest of his belief system because hes the good chantry boy and he needs people to believe that because HE needs to believe it because otherwise he's a bad person and he wants to be good SO bad.

Leliana is okay being religiously a bit of a weird one and so doesn't need to conform to some ideal standard. Hell she LIKES being seen as a bit odd as the gauntlet for the sacred ashes reveals. She likes being unique. Seb doesn't want to be unique he wants to be the perfect religious choir boy....he just also wants all this other stuff that's counter to that so he has to be self deceptive about it.

To conclude

In my head, Seb and Leliana are distinctly different characters. They may have some surface level similarity and they are arguably two of the most overtly religious companions in the games, but Seb is personal, vengeance driven and conservative and Leliana sees the bigger picture, is self conscious and very liberal in her theological thinking.

[gayleviticus]

i usually think there's absolutely no need for you to be woke and trans-affirming to acknowledge that God is not a person ergo sometimes we can call God she/her.

conservative christians have other reasons for never calling God feminine but I don't think any of them are actually good theologically. can you make decent arguments that male language should be the default because tradition + Jesus + the Father + the Bible? sure. but i dont think there's a legit argument that she/her for God is never acceptable unless you just think it's a shibboleth for being woke.

with that said. I guess one way in which it is awkward for conservative christians to work with female language for God is Jesus. if you're gender diversity-pilled then this doesn't need to be a huge issue; God can be female sometimes and Jesus can be a man and we can wrap our heads around that. Jesus can even be a woman sometimes (and there is basis in Christian tradition for this long before LGBTQ+ movements - Jesus as Lady Wisdom, Julian of Norwich calling him our Mother, his vaginal side wounds in medieval art)

but i think it would be quite awkward to maintain that gender diversity is bad and then accept God can be feminine while Jesus is a man. i don't think it's theologically incoherent at all; you could say that bypassing boundaries of gender is God's prerogative alone and trans people are bad for usurping God's power. But the vibes would still be really weird to celebrate a nonbinary genderfluid God and then hate those things in human beings.

maybe it would make sense to draw a hard distinction between genderless/genderfluid 'God' and definitively male 'Jesus', but then not only do you have the awkwardness of a non-male 'Father', but you kind of drive a wedge between God and Jesus. which is not very helpful.

and when it comes to stuff like Christian interpretation of the Psalms, where there's a deliberate ambiguity as to whether 'the Lord' is Jesus specifically or the Father or both, it creates awkwardness and feels like it splits that shared identity.

i suppose this is one way in which I think queerness offers a valuable perspective on theology - because it's just objective Christian doctrine that God is not a man or a woman. and yet I feel like conservative Christians have blocked themselves into a corner where they can't meaningfully explore that because they also hinge their Christian identity on very rigid policing of gender boundaries.

[inkybinkyboink]

also ok i need to rant abt this for a second bc its driving me crazy. im taking a class this semester abt women writers pre-1800 so we're looking at this lady called julian of norwich who was alive in like the 1400s and basically she got really sick and had a bunch of prophetic godly visions and she wrote them down. this is probably the best time to mention that my professor is very religious. now. i am not. and i chronically try to rationalize everything like it's a disease. so im reading this girls revelations like "oh. she has a fever and she's delirious." because that being the reason for her visions makes more sense to me as a non-religious person rather than purely accepting that this woman met jesus. im not saying it didn't happen it's just that i personally dont believe it. that being said, the writing is absolutely beautiful. she does some really moving things with her prose. my only issue is that i dont know what angle to approach it from. is it an "i have to put myself in the mindset of this deeply religious medieval woman and assume that this is the work of the lord" or is a "this is the experience this woman went through- i'm going to look through it from an objective point of view as a modern student who does not believe in the christian god". what's tricky- and this is why i mentioned that my prof is really religious- is that my professor is explaining this writer's experiences as if this lady actually met god. and that bugs me because it feels like it limits the ways you can look at something, which in turn inhibits the ability to think critically about it.

[mariacallous]

The Guardian's This Week in Patriarchy from Arwa Mahdawi

What are God’s preferred pronouns?

The woke agenda spares no one, not even God. The revelation that the Church of England is considering gender-neutral ways to refer to God has caused quite a ruckus this week; very predictably all the usual suspects have been foaming at the mouth about wokeness gone mad. Nigel Farage (AKA Mr Brexit), for example, even suggested that you might as well shut down the Church of England if they’re going to go all trendy and politically correct.

Steady on, Nigel! God isn’t coming out as non-binary anytime soon. The Church of England is considering moving away from referring to God as “He”. What does that mean? It means they’re going to launch a commission investigating the matter and, if they did decide to make changes, those changes would have to be approved by synod, the Church’s decision-making body. Maybe, once all that’s done, they might develop “more inclusive language” but, as of yet, there are no specifics as to what that language might be. Not all that sensational when you dive into the details, is it? But people like Farage don’t tend to be too fond of details.

While the idea that God might stop being described as “He” has generated a lot of headlines there’s plenty of precedent for gender-neutral religious language. “As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is He our Mother,” Julian of Norwich said in the 14th century. As a spokesperson for the Church of England said: “This is nothing new. Christians have recognized since ancient times that God is neither male nor female, yet the variety of ways of addressing and describing God found in scripture has not always been reflected in our worship.”

As an atheist I don’t have particularly strong opinions about God’s preferred pronouns. However, I do have strong opinions about how language shapes the way we see our world. And the conversation that the Church of England has sparked reveals a lot about how gendered language reinforces stereotypes. “Given that people of faith think of God as another way of talking about ultimate reality, the gendered nature of God language could easily be a way of projecting male superiority in the very nature of things,” Giles Fraser muses in UnHerd. Yah think?

You can see that superiority complex in comments by the Rev Dr Ian Paul, who thinks God should remain a He. “The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralized to ‘Parent’ without loss of meaning,” Paul told the Telegraph. “Fathers and mothers are not interchangeable but relate to their offspring in different ways.”

There’s a lot to be unpicked in that last sentence. Do mums and dads really relate to their kids in different ways? It’s hard to say definitively because there isn’t actually a lot of research on non-maternal caregivers. Until the 1970s hardly anyone even bothered to study the role of fathers in children’s development – it was just assumed that dads made the money, and mums did the nurturing. Emerging evidence, however, suggests that parenting roles are flexible. When dads are the primary caregivers, their brains adjust and show similar patterns to those seen in mothers, one study shows. Fathers and mothers are a lot more interchangeable than some people might think. And yet Paul seems to be suggesting that God could simply never be a “mother”. Why is that, I wonder?

Anyway, I think there’s an easy way to settle this thing. God can tell us about Their pronouns themselves. I hear They are quite powerful after all.

Idaho wants to criminalize ‘trafficking of minors’ to receive abortions

Consider this scenario: your 17-year-old niece desperately wants you to drive her out of Idaho (where abortion is banned) to get a legal abortion. She doesn’t want her extremely anti-abortion parents to know. If you help your niece then some lawmakers want to throw you in jail and call you a human trafficker. A new bill, introduced by Republican Barbara Ehardt, would add the act of transporting, recruiting or harboring minors to seek an abortion to Idaho’s criminal human trafficking law. Just another day in the increasingly dystopian US!

Rightwing media are freaking out about new AP Stylebook guidance on abortion

The Associated Press suggests not using the incendiary and pseudoscience-drenched terms the right has invented (eg “partial-birth abortion”) and the right are very annoyed indeed.

The unacceptable look on Madonna’s face

If you’re going to read one thing about the furore around Madonna’s new look (and about 10m things have been published) then make it this Washington Post piece by Monica Hesse. “Madonna’s face forced her uneasy audience to think about the factors and decisions behind it: ageism, sexism, self-doubt, beauty myths, cultural relevance, hopeful reinvention, work, work, work, work … One of the most famous women on the planet and still the anti-aging industrial complex got under her skin.”

Is computer-generated intimacy the future of film?

In Netflix romcom You People the two leads smooch at the end but it turns out that smooch is computer-generated. “Is the future of intimacy in Hollywood going to be deepfaked sex scenes?” Stuart Heritage asks in the Guardian. “Will actors need to seek out specific contractual clauses promising them that they won’t be turned into a horny avatar in post production?”

Toxic masculinity fuels dangerous driving like drink, French advert says

In France, 78% of those killed in road accidents in 2022 were men – a number that goes up to 88% when you look at drivers aged 18–24. Eighty-four per cent of people suspected of causing road accidents were men; 93% of drunk drivers involved in an accident were men. A new ad campaign warns that macho stereotypes may be to blame and asks men to examine how they drive.

The week in Pete-riarchy

Turns out Pete Davidson isn’t just a stellar rebound boyfriend, he’s also a talented taco salesman. The comedian recently starred in an ad for Taco Bell and, in a recent call with investors and analysts, the fast-food chain credited Davidson for helping their breakfast sales jump by 9%. Pete: if you’d like to help me sell my book, you know where to find me!

[fortressofserenity]

She's leaving you

When it comes to how and why more and more women are leaving the Church, I feel it boils down to how and why Christianity (and especially Evangelicalism) cultivates a particular brand of sexism/misogyny that alienates them a lot. From the unattainable perfect homemaking woman ideal (which is no different from the hot, skinny girl ideal) to not being able to preach in church and finally, the lack of any female role model they could've looked up to.

Now when it comes to the homemaking woman ideal, it's something not a lot of women and girls either aspire to be or live up to perfectly. It's like you work in healthcare and it's not always going to be easy finding a middle ground between a perfect stay at home mother and having to attend to sick patients every now and then, that such an ideal is going to be unattainable to begin with. Same with working in a factory, as if the ideal only applies to certain women really.

As what somebody else said about the tradwife trend, stay at home mothers may not always the time to dress fashionably, especially if they're made to raise children on their own that there's no way they can easily attend to the latest fashion trends. I think even if two parents are still around, the wife can't always shoulder everything on her own so she needs her husband's help. That's what the Bible's been saying that husbands need to be kind to their wives, actually helping around a lot more than they do.

But it's the part of the passage that a number of Christians ignore altogether, especially in the fight against feminism that it's easier to subvert feminism's goals than to provide real gender equity at home. Then comes the lack of any strong female role models for women to look up to, whether if they're preachers and writers (I know two and I frequent their websites a lot) or any other famous Christian woman they could aspire to be.

This is something both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy has provided, despite their faults. In those churches, women can be church mothers and church sisters. They needn't to be married, when they could lead a life of celibacy but this is optional. Not only that, but there's a plethora of female saints they can always look up to. It could be Saint Julian of Norwich, St Hildegard and St Therese of Lisieux, they needn't to be stay at home mothers when they could also be Margery Kempe or someone else.

There's something about the Christian subculture that usually precludes the inclusion of alternative female role models, especially if they're not the quiet churchgoing stay at home mother types. I suspect the whole women being quiet in church would apply more if they were gossiping, instead of having to preach something to people. There are female preachers, I follow one and one of them is named Brenda Walsh. There are women who write devotionals, there are women who transcribe their husbands' sermons.

There are women who write Christian texts, such as St Hildegard and St Julian of Norwich, but the go-for female role model that many Evangelicals prefer is the stay at home mother/wife. Since not everybody can be this character, it's not something they aspire to, relate to (especially if they either work in healthcare or at factories) and so on. The lack of any other female role model is crippling the church's ability to retain female followers, which would be the real reason why women leave the church.

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for January 22

Tozer in the Morning Three Faithful Wounds

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend," says the Holy Spirit in Proverbs 27:6. And lest we imagine that the preacher is the one who does the wounding, I want to read Job 5:17,18: "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole."

You see, the one who does the wounding here is not the servant, but the Master Himself. So with that in our minds, I want to talk to you about three faithful wounds of a friend.

In order to get launched into my message let me introduce a little lady who has been dead for about six hundred years. She once lived and loved and prayed and hadn't much light and she hadn't any way to get much light, but the beautiful thing about her was that with what little Biblical light she had, she walked with God so wonderfully close that she became as fragrant as a flower. And long before Reformation times she was in spirit, an evangelical. She lived and died and has now been with her Lord nearly six hundred years but she has left behind her fragrance of Christ.

England was a better place because this little lady lived. She wrote only one book, a very tiny book that you could slip into your side pocket or your purse, but it's so flavorful, so divine, so heavenly, that is has made a distinct contribution to the great spiritual literature of the world. The lady to whom I refer is the one called the Lady Julian of Norwich.

Before she blossomed out into this radiant, glorious life which made her famous as a great Christian all over her part of the world, she prayed a prayer and God answered. It is prayer with which I am concerned tonight. The essence of her prayer was this: "Oh God, please give me three wounds; the wound of contrition and the wound of compassion and the wound of longing after God." Then she added this little postscript which I think is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read: "This I ask without condition." She wasn't dickering with God. She wanted three things and they were all for God's glory: "I ask this without condition, Father; do what I ask and then send me the bill. Anything it costs me will be all right with me."

All great Christians have been wounded souls. It is strange what a wound will do to a man. Here's a soldier who goes out to the battlefield. He is full of jokes and strength and self- assurance; then one day a piece of shrapnel tears through him and he falls, and whimpering, beaten, defeated man. Suddenly his whole world collapses around him and this man, instead of being the great, strong, broad-chested fellow that he thought he was, suddenly becomes a whimpering boy, again. And such have even been known, I am told, to cry for their mothers when they lie bleeding and suffering on the field of battle. There is nothing like a wound to take the self-assurance out of us, reduce us to childhood again and make us small and helpless in our own sight.

Many of the Old Testament character were wounded men, stricken of God and afflicted indeed as their Lord was after them. Take Jacob, for instance. Twice God afflicted him; twice he met God and one time it came as a wound, and another time it came actually as a physical wound and he limped on his thigh for the rest of his life. And the man Elijah, was he not more than a theologian? He was a man who had been stricken; he had been struck with the sword of God and was no longer simply one of Adam's race standing up in his own self-assurance; he was a man who had an encounter with God, who had been confronted by God and had been defeated and broken down before. And when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, you know what it did to him. Or take Ezekiel, how he went down before his God and became a little child again. And there were many others.Let's talk about these three wounds in their order.

THE FIRST IS THE WOUND OF CONTRITION. Now I've heard for the last thirty years that repentance is a change of mind, and I believe it, of course, as far as it goes. But that is just what's the matter with us. We have reduced repentance to a change of mind. It is a mental act, indeed, but I point out that repentance is not likely to do us much good until it ceases to be a change of mind only and becomes a wound within our spirit. No man has truly repented until his sin has wounded him near to death, until the wound has broken him and defeated him and taken all the fight and self- assurance out of him and he sees himself as the one who nailed his Savior on the tree.

I don't know about you, but the only way I can keep right with God is to keep contrite, to keep a sense of contrition upon my spirit. Now there's a lot of cheap and easy getting rid of sin and getting your repentance disposed of. But the great Christians in and out of the Bible, have been those who were wounded with a sense of contrition so that they never quite got over the thought and the feeling that they had personally crucified Jesus.

Let us beware of vain and over hasty repentance, and particularly let us beware of no repentance at all. We are sinful race, ladies and gentlemen, a sinful people, and until the knowledge has hit hard, until it has wounded us, until it has got through and past the little department of our theology, it has done us no good. Repentance is a wound I pray we may all feel.

THEN THERE IS THE WOUND OF COMPASSION. Now compassion is an emotion identification, and Christ had that in full perfection. The man who has this wound of compassion is a man who suffers along with other people. Jesus Christ our Lord can never suffer to save us any more. This He did once for all, when He gave Himself without spot through the Holy Ghost to the Father on Calvary's cross. He cannot suffer to save us, but He still must suffer to win us. He does not call His people to redemptive suffering. that's impossible; it could not be. Redemption is a finished work. But He does call His people to feel along with Him and to feel along with those that rejoice and those that suffer. He calls His people to be to Him the kind of an earthly body in which He can weep again and suffer and love again. For our Lord has tow bodies. One is the body He took to the tree on Calvary; that was the body in which He suffered to redeem us. But He has a body on earth now, composed of those wh o have been baptized into it by the Holy Ghost a conversion. In that body He would now suffer to win men. Paul said that he was glad that he could suffer for the Colossians and fill up the measure of the afflictions of Christ in his body for the church's sake.

Tozer in the Evening THE CROWD TURNS BACK

Our Lord Jesus Christ called men to follow Him, but He plainly taught that "no man can come unto me, except it were given him of my Father" (John 6:65). It is not surprising that many of His early followers, upon hearing these words, went back and walked no more with Him. Such teaching cannot but be deeply disturbing to the natural mind. It takes from sinful men much of the power of self-determination. It cuts the ground out from under their self-help and throws them back upon the sovereign good pleasure of God-and that is precisely where they do not want to be! These statements by our Lord run contrary to the current assumptions of popular Christianity. Men are willing to be saved by grace, but to preserve their self-esteem, they must hold that the desire to be saved originated with them. Most Christians today seem afraid to talk about the se plain words of Jesus concerning the sovereign operation of God-so they use the simple trick of ignoring them!

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[eurydices-ghost]

feel like im really reaching a new level of love and appreciation for reading ... i checked out 6 books from the school library yesterday, which i think is the most books ive checked out from any library at once as an adult, and im actually reading them ... getting into some real good stuff, bataille and julian of norwich and spinioza and a book on chinese dialectics ... at some point you realize that the internet is only worthwhile for talking to other people and finding new things to learn ... and the more you read the deeper it pulls you in, you find yourself disagreeing with authors but devouring them anyway, you start getting the obscure references (bataille read sahagun while writing inner experience? this actually means something to me!), you realize that you can read a handful of books on a niche topic and feel like an expert because for niche enough topics that's enough to make you an expert.

there's a section of tao lin's book leave society where he discusses his experience taking DMT. he concludes by saying that probably hundreds of thousands or millions of people have taken DMT, but probably no one has read the same collection of books as him. i think maybe there's also something to be said for the ecstasy of reading ... when you're really into it ... i mean, just browsing the shelves of the school library gets me hopping up and down with excitement ... what is reading if not psychedelic? certainly reading can occasion mystical experiences ... the feeling of a good poem ... the magical power of language ... i love you, don't forget

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

hi!!! on your question about non-Catholic specific rosaries: the rosary is primarily asking Mary for her prayers and specific intercession but technically you could pray whatever prayers you want on the beads! one of my non catholic friends put together a prayer using the rosary beads but doing prayers from Julian of Norwich I think instead of Hail Marys and Our Fathers. there are also catholic variants that are different like the divine mercy chapelet that uses the same beads but different prayers on them. anyway long answer to a short question, the rosary itself and most variants are going to have catholic prayers but you could use the rosary to pray anything! I’m catholic and like it quite a lot but it is just a nice way to keep track of prayers in general so go for it if you are so inclined :)

ahh thank you so much for this helpful and kind (and extremely quick!) answer to my question in the tags of that post!! :D

that all makes so much sense, thank you for explaining!! I kind of expected that was how it worked, but it's very helpful to have a definite answer from someone who's qualified to Know Such Things as an actual Catholic, lol!!

so perhaps I should do a little searching around and see if anyone has shared their non-Catholic prayers to say with a rosary? and if I can't find anything helpful, maybe I'll just start trying to think of some options myself... 🤔

(also, can I just say, I really appreciate you answering my question in such a friendly way? I have a lot of appreciation and respect for Catholicism and I love my Catholic friends, but I'm always afraid of bringing up the Catholic/Prot divide too much because I don't want to stir up reminders of conflict or like I'm disrespecting or disregarding other people's views and practices. I really love y'all!! in a lot of ways, I wish I could be fully persuaded to Catholicism! but that just hasn't happened yet, and to be fully honest, I don't think it will. so I'm trying to figure out ways to draw inspiration from you guys without ever seeming like I'm just ripping any practices or beliefs that are super important to you guys and it basically turning into something like appropriation. so yeah, I really appreciate the kindness in your ask, is all I was trying to say. :) <3)

[tealin]

Cape Crozier: The Spiritual Journey

As usual, please check out http://twirlynoodle.com/blog to see this post and others in their original (functioning) formatting.

Since getting seriously into polar history, I kept hearing the same two things from polar veterans.  One was that I could not possibly understand the story properly, or be able to depict it truthfully, unless I visited Antarctica myself.  The other was that Antarctica changes people.  This was unanimous amongst scientists, historians, and even tourists: one cannot help but be profoundly affected by contact with Antarctica; that is just a fact of the place.

I have certainly been changed by Antarctica indirectly.  The inner kernel of “me” is the same in my earliest memories as now, but the Terra Nova men and their experiences have fundamentally shifted how that kernel views and relates to the world and the people around me.  I am a vastly better person for their influence, and that is a large part of why I have been so dogged in getting their story to a new audience: the hope that, through my work, even one other person might be changed in the same way.

When I finally got the chance to visit Antarctica in person, I had half an eye out for signs something had happened.  Two weeks into my visit, I had learned a lot and had some meaningful experiences, but I couldn't say I had changed at all.  Maybe that initial action-at-a-distance was the change I had been promised after all.

Then I went to Cape Crozier.

As we have spread around the planet, humans have noted certain places as being special in some way, places of some sort of power, or where the spirit world is a little more tangible.  The Celts called these 'thin places', where the fabric of reality is threadbare, and Something Else comes a little closer.  One can have a 'thin' experience anywhere, but certain places seem to encourage them.  They may remain completely unmarked, or may become loci for centuries of pilgrimage, or anything in between, but they exist in some form in every culture except, perhaps, the post-Enlightenment intellectual West.

Antarctica, generally, feels like where the edge of a painting dissolves into brushstrokes. There is a certain unreality baked-in: the sun wheels around the sky without setting, one can count on one hand the species of life regularly seen, and everything – the landscape, the weather, the distances – is so vastly out of proportion to puny humanity.  One could argue that this 'unfinished' feeling is because so much of it is white, but I have travelled through many snow-covered landscapes, and they feel like landscapes covered in snow, not fundamentally blank places with a few suggestive details dropped in by an artist whose main attention was elsewhere.

Cape Crozier was something else entirely, though.  It is, of course, hanging off the edge of Ross Island, but it felt more like it was hanging off the edge of reality itself.  It is a thin place par excellence.  And I had an experience there which I have been trying to process since landing back at McMurdo.  When I tried to discuss it with friends, my ability to speak quite simply stopped.  Then the pandemic, and the new house, and pushing through Vol.1, all rose up and drove it to the back of my mind.  In February I wasn't ready to talk about it; here in October, I worry it's too late.  But I feel compelled to share what happened there, and if I don't do it now, I don't know if I ever will.

If this were a novel, at Cape Crozier I would have felt the thinness of time, and a closer connection to the dead men I had followed there – perhaps almost to believe they weren't dead at all!  In such a place, that didn't seem impossible.  But that is not what happened.  Nor did I have some sort of enlightenment beamed into my head from the heavens.  Even the word 'happened' is too suggestive of some sort of discrete external event.  If you had asked me, there, at the time, I'd have said I was just sitting there thinking. But I sit thinking a lot in life, and this was not the sort of thinking I am used to.  It was more like a revelation.  Not in the trumpets and angels sense, but in a literal one: layers of clutter and gloss were pulled back to reveal a simple underlying truth.  It was, in essence, a dose of perspective, a view from high and far enough away to see the big picture, and not the surface detail.  As I sat at the base of a boulder, gazing at the stone igloo and gawking at how completely insane were the men who dragged their sledges to this desolate nowhere to build it, I suddenly saw my life as it appeared in the Author's notes.

Ever since first getting the inkling that this story would make a good graphic novel, it has felt like a calling.  I said 'no' to the calling for years – some sort of cosmic wrong number – but when I finally said 'yes' everything started falling into place.  That is supposed to be a good sign, for a calling.  And I was happy following it, though it wasn't easy or comfortable.  As far as I could deduce, under my own power, it seemed like what I ought to be doing.  That is not to say there weren't doubts, especially in the grey light of a winter morning when I would lie in my rented bed, looking at my desk and wondering what on earth I was doing with my life.  And I was not untroubled by other concerns: Shouldn't I be more helpful to my family? Why have I been persistently unable to find a tribe, or a relationship?  Will I be allowed to stay in the UK?  Can I do this work and keep myself fed and housed?

Here, on a wind-scoured ridge on the edge of nowhere, reflecting on its history of unbelievable and, it could be argued, pointless hardship, one might expect to realise the folly of one's ways, and to swear off quixotic enterprises in favour of the hitherto unappreciated quotidian stuff that really matters.  But that is not what happened.  Instead, I got this dose of clarity:

I am here to tell this story.  Not here, at Cape Crozier, in this instant (although that too), but here, on this planet, as a human being.  This is what I am for.

Whatever I need to make it happen will be provided.  No less, and no more.

Everything else?  Tangential.  Not worth worrying about.  What needs to happen, will happen, and if it doesn't happen, it didn't need to.  And that's OK.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

When I was young, we had a puzzle of the United States of America.  It was made of Masonite, and the pieces were cut out in the shapes of the states, which would be assembled to fill the recessed outline of the country.  Because they were geographical shapes and not interlocking jigsaw pieces, they would slide and rattle around until the last one got wedged in and locked everything else in place.

Most of my life, I have felt like that rattly puzzle.  I didn't realise it because I had never known there was another way to be.  But there under the boulder it felt like that last piece had been dropped in, that secured all the loose ones.  It was not that Cape Crozier was my missing piece and now that I had it I was complete – that is far too literal.  The missing piece was a something that wasn't even a thing; rather, in that moment of clarity, I felt all the jangling bits come to rest, and a wholly unfamiliar solidity.  At last the clay wobbling around the potter's wheel had been centred, and I felt a metaphysical ground beneath my metaphysical feet that I had not known it was possible to feel.

Ironically, the rest of the day I felt like I wasn't touching the actual ground at all, perhaps because what I was anchored to was on another plane entirely.  The stumbling shamble through the wind back to the helicopter might as well have been happening to someone else.  We took off into the gale, and though the pilot acted as though it was perfectly ordinary, when we were rounding the ridge he said 'wow, that's the rotor all the way to the left' which I didn't understand but didn't sound great.  Nevertheless the sense of peace persisted, and I understood how, in his last letter to his wife, which he knew would be his last, Wilson could have kept insisting 'all is well.'  (I knew why he wrote that: he had read Julian of Norwich.  But now I understood why.)

The journey back was a transcendence all of its own, the beauty of which seemed to be a perfectly natural outward manifestation of that altered state.  We touched down in time for me to make it to the Galley just as it opened for dinner, so we couldn't have been gone two whole hours, and that seemed absurd to me – surely I had sat under that boulder for two hours at least?  Or had we only been at the igloo ten minutes?  It was impossible to tell.

What I wanted more than anything was to go up a mountain and ponder the whole thing, alone, until it sorted itself out and I was ready to come back down again.  I could have gone up Observation Hill, but the weather looked liable to turn into a proper blizzard at any moment.  So, lacking a better option, I went to go eat, and, after having a chuckle at the Cherry Turnovers, slunk to the back where I could usually count on having a small wallflower table to myself, especially this early.  But one of the larger tables was full of young dudes talking about bar fights they'd been involved in, and I just … couldn't.  So I wandered into the main area and discovered the One Strange Rock crew having an early dinner as well, begged a spot at their table, and ate swaddled in friendly natter instead of at one with the universe in a blizzard.  It amounted to much the same thing.

Eventually one of them said, 'You went to Cape Crozier today, didn't you? How was that?'

I made an exploding gesture around my head and said 'Pkhhhh.'

Cherry wrote that the Winter Journey 'had beggared our language'.  I am sure that my inarticulate gesture is not what he meant.  But at the same time, in fact at that very dinner, I realised something about his writing.  The Winter Journey chapter is unanimously regarded as the finest part of The Worst Journey in the World.  Some people question that this otherwise unremarkable country gent, who never produced another book, could have written with such profound and expressive talent, and they posit that his friend and neighbour George Bernard Shaw, who definitely did consult on the book, must have ghostwritten it.  I have read enough of Cherry's writing – in his own hand – to know this is bosh; the voice and the style are distinctly his.  What's more, I was surprised to discover, when going through his journals, that a large portion of the Winter Journey chapter was not written last, despite it being the last to join the manuscript of Worst Journey, but was in fact written in his bunk at Cape Evans while he was recuperating from the experience.  In the published book, he singles out some passages as being from 'my own diary' but great tracts of unattributed narration are more or less verbatim quotations as well.  The experience related therein feels so immediate because it was.

The rest of Worst Journey, while perfectly readable, is largely a narrative rewrite of Cherry's and others' diaries.  Sometimes he lets others carry the story for pages at a time.  His writing is undeniably good, but is often simply mortar, filling gaps and binding sources together to tell a history that no human invention could better.  The Winter Journey chapter, on the other hand, reads like a torrent of pure inspiration pouring through him onto the page.  That such vivid, timeless prose should have come from an exhausted 25-year-old in his bunk in a wooden hut is no less remarkable than from a jaded 35-year-old in the library of his country house.

Artists of all stripes will often say that their best work is not their own creation, but feels like it already existed and came through them from somewhere else. It's as if there's a great Beyond where things that need to come into the world – stories, images, performances – queue up for passage through artists' minds and bodies.  Sometimes one taps into it by luck; usually it's a combination of training and discipline that makes the link traversable, from time to time.  Perhaps artists' minds are their own thin places, in a way.  Sitting there at dinner with my friends, I felt as though I'd brushed against the fabric between this reality and that Beyond, and, like touching the wall of a tent in a rainstorm, broken the surface tension and allowed something through.  I felt like, if I just put pencil to paper, something could flow through me, if only I could narrow down a subject.  With the intensity of his experience, Cherry did not so much brush against the wet tent fabric as punch a hole through it; feeling just a small inkling of that myself, it was no wonder that the creative energy poured into his diary with such intuitive eloquence.

Had I sat down to write this that night, perhaps I could have tapped into that flow, but I didn't feel I was ready.  I can guarantee you that right now I am not tapped into anything but a vague and dwindling recollection.  As vast as the experience was, by putting a box of words around it, I cannot help but reduce it to the confines of the box.  But that is the best I can do under my own power.

Compared to the seismic transformation of character brought about by my first vicarious encounter with Antarctica, the insight at Cape Crozier was very small and personal, but once in place, the ramifications have been substantial.  When I arrived back home, just before Christmas, the world was still as it ever was, but I was different, and I noticed how differently I related to everything.  Things I loved about Cambridge, which previously made me desperate to stay, I appreciated no less, but valued instead as something I had the honour to enjoy for a while, and didn't need to hold on to.  A young-adults group which I'd hung around, formerly a precious simulacrum of a social life, now felt hollow, and I abandoned it in favour of time spent one-on-one with the handful of people who I really appreciated.  They all said I seemed different; one person said I seemed 'sad', but I think I had just taken the mask off the seriousness which tends to frighten people. I have never been afraid to be myself, but in recent years have tried to mitigate that self in relation to others; there seemed no point to that, now.  It was as if my inner gyroscope had finally started spinning, and I had a sense of balance and orientation that I hadn't before.

Holding on to the clarity of that moment, and the centredness it brought me, has not been easy.  It didn't keep me from panicking when my housemate excoriated me back in March.  It didn't focus my mind on my work as soon as I'd moved into the new place, or save me from getting angry and frustrated when battling my tax returns.  Sometimes it's very hard to remember at all.  But I know what happened, and I can remember remembering, even if I can't recapture the feeling itself.  Sometimes, when it's very windy, I seek out a high open place in the hope of feeling it again, but it hasn't worked.  Maybe it doesn't need to.  Having it once was all I really needed, and even if I succeeded in flicking those switches again, what good would it do that hasn't already been done?

I could not foresee, on that windswept ridge on the edge of reality, where the world would be in 2020.  In wry moments I think I was only a few months ahead of a large portion of humanity, who have been forced to sort things out when the pandemic stripped away their preoccupations and illusions.  Maybe you are one of them, and you recognise some of what I've described.  Maybe you feel like you've been running away from it.  Maybe you have been running towards it but have been unable to find it.  All I can tell you is: it's worth the seeking.

I wish everyone in the world could visit Antarctica, even just once, and see how it changes them.  The world would be such a better place.  I am so profoundly grateful that I had the chance, and am determined to pay it forward by bringing some shred of that experience to as many people as possible.  If my communication fails to bridge that gap for you, then take it upon yourself to find your own thin place.  They are all around.  It only requires that you be receptive, and undertake to look.

[momentsbeforemass]

Precious

I made a mistake yesterday.

I watched the news for too long.

There’s nothing wrong with staying informed. But there’s a difference between taking 15 minutes, half an hour to find out what’s happening.

And getting sucked into all of the commentary and opinion. Even if it’s from someone we like. Whatever the actual news is, it’s just going to get presented in a way that leaves us agitated. Or confused. Or it just doesn’t click.

One of the classics? Big numbers. I mean really big numbers.

Whether it’s corporate earnings or government budgets or something else, if the numbers are so big that they don’t register. So big that they don’t really mean anything to us.

No matter how important it actually is, if the numbers are big enough, especially if it’s something we’ve heard time and again. It just won’t click.

Kind of like today’s Gospel. It’s yet another Jesus-healing-people story. This time, there are so many people healed, so many places involved, that St. Mark doesn’t even bother with the details.

If we’re not careful, this is going be just like any other really big number story for us. Especially one that we’ve heard time and again. It just won’t click.

The fact that this story is so very familiar? So much that’s kind of a template. One that we see over and over. With varying levels of detail. In all four Gospels.

Whenever anyone does the same thing over and over, it’s revealing. It says something about who they are. About what matters, about what’s precious to them.

The same is true for God (where do you think we got it from?).

The fact that there are so many of these Jesus-healing-people stories. That the sheer number of them, and the sheer number of people in them, makes them not really click for us?

It gives away a truth about God.

This is something that God is doing over and over. So much so that it’s revealing. It says something about who God is. About what matters to God. About what’s precious to God.

And that would be?

You. And me. And each and every one of us.

“For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it.” – Julian of Norwich

Today’s Readings

[caitlynlynch]

Okay, so I’m going to start off by addressing the elephant in the room - or rather, the elephant that ISN’T in the room, and clearly hasn’t been invited to the room, because it’s not from Western Europe.

This book should rightfully be titled “Medieval Heroines of Western Europe”. The furthest east we venture is Poland, and that’s literally because there weren’t really any women who ruled kingdoms in their own right in Western Europe in the period in question. Jadwiga of Poland is as close as you get.

With that noted, this isn’t a bad introduction to many of the most interesting women in Western Europe in this time period. Even those with little knowledge of history will have heard of some, like Joan of Arc and perhaps Eleanor of Aquitaine, but there are also some more obscure names (Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pisan, St. Julian of Norwich) who will interest those looking for a place to start further research. Even the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine only gets nine pages devoted to her, which will perhaps demonstrate more clearly than anything else I could say that no woman described in this book gets more than a surface glance.

As something of a primer, however, this book is hampered by the author’s writing style, which is a bit too dense. She has a tendency to exhaustively delineate lineages, for example; something which would actually be much better communicated by a family tree diagram when she commences talking about a new heroine. And reading the paperback edition of this book, I was extremely disappointed by the photographic insert, most of which are contemporary, tourist-quality images of castle ruins apparently taken by the author herself and absolutely not appropriate in a book of this type. The few which were reproductions of images in museums were acceptable, but absolutely not things like a photograph of the entry to Canterbury Cathedral with modern-day tourists milling about!

In summary; this might be of interest if you want to know more about some of the more interesting women of medieval Western Europe, but be prepared for a rather dry writing style and that you will need to do further reading if you want to really delve into the life of anyone in particular. The excellent bibliography will give you a good place to start. I was, however, disappointed that the author didn’t look further afield and take the opportunity to introduce English-speaking audiences to medieval-era heroines of Asia and the Middle East, at least. Three stars.

Heroines of the Medieval World is available now, but... not in ebook form in all countries (not the US, for example) and it's bloody expensive in any format. Ask your library if they'll order it in (mine did). It's the kind of reference book they might well like to have.

[troybeecham]

Today, the Church remembers St. Julian of Norwich.

Ora pro nobis.

Julian of Norwich (AD 1342-c.1416) is known to us almost only through her book, The Revelations of Divine Love, which is widely acknowledged as one of the great classics of the spiritual life. She is the first woman to write a book in English which has survived.

We do not know Julian's actual name but her name is taken from St. Julian's Church in Norwich where she lived as an anchoress for most of her life. We know from the medieval literary work, The Book of Margery Kempe, that Julian was known as a spiritual counsellor. People would come to her cell in Norwich to seek advice. Considering that, in her lifetime, the Black Death swept into England, killing nearly half of the population, the endless waging of the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses, all of which led to the great Peasant’s Revolt, and all the land suffered in poverty, as well as a famine, she was a source of counsel and comfort to a great many people in pain. Yet, her writings are suffused with hope and trust in God's goodness.

The Revelations of Divine Love

Julian's Revelations of Divine Love is based on a series of sixteen visions she received on the 8th of May AD 1373. Julian was lying on, what was thought at the time, to be her deathbed when suddenly she saw Christ bleeding in front of her. She received insight into his sufferings and his love for us. Julian’s message remains one of hope and trust in God, whose compassionate love is always given to us. In this all-gracious God there can be no element of wrath. The wrath — ‘all that is contrary to peace and love — is in us and not in God. God’s saving work in Jesus of Nazareth and in the gift of God's spirit, is to slake our wrath in the power of his merciful and compassionate love'. Julian did not perceive God as blaming or judging us, but as enfolding us in love. Famously, Julian used women's experience of motherhood to explore how God loves us, refering to Jesus as our Mother.

The Writing of the Revelation of Divine Love

Julian recounts that she was thirty and a half years old when she received her visions and this is how we know that she was born in AD 1342. (A scribe editor to one of the surviving manuscripts speaks of her as a 'devout woman, who is a recluse at Norwich, and still alive, A.D. 1413'). There is further evidence to be found in a contemporary will that she was alive in 1416, and that she had a maid who lived in a room next to the cell. Apart from that, we know nothing else about Julian's life.

However, reading Revelations of Divine Love, reveals an intelligent, sensitive and very down-to-earth woman who maintains her trust in God's goodness whilst addressing doubt, fear and deep theological questions. Her trust in God made her fearless, as women were not usually thought capable of reason, learning, and certainly not to question the theological order of the Middle Ages. Her courage and faith inspired many, and still shines today.

One of her most often used quotes puts us in mind to trust in God’s love being the source and fulfillment of all creation: “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Here’s a longer quote:

“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.

This little thing which is created seemed to me as if it could have fallen into nothing because of its littleness. We need to have knowledge of this, so that we may delight in despising as nothing everything created, so as to love and have uncreated God. For this is the reason why our hearts and souls are not in perfect ease, because here we seek rest in this thing which is so little, in which there is no rest, and we do not know our God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is true rest. God wishes to be known, and it pleases him that we should rest in him; for everything which is beneath him is not sufficient for us. And this is the reason why no soul is at rest until it has despised as nothing all things which are created. When it by its will has become nothing for love, to have him who is everything, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.”

That we might grow in trust of the love of God, the God whom Jesus revealed to us as Love, blessed Julian. Amen.

Lord God, in your compassion you granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

[emjee]

I saw @harry-leroy do this and decided I wanted to too! Behold, social distancing/stay home order questions:

1. Are you staying home from work/school?

Oh yes, my home state (where I currently am) is under a stay-at-home order, my job in the state where I go to school is remote (although I haven’t been guaranteed I’ll be paid for this week so I’m not working at the moment), and school is remote (I am the kind of person who always avoids online classes because I need the structure of classroom so right now it’s Struggle! At My Bedroom Desk!)

2. If you are staying home who is with you?

My parents, and thank God. We would have been worried sick about each other if we were separated; I think they would have come to get me.

3. Who would be your ideal quarantine mate?

I want to say my best friend but we both love being alone so we’re actually probably better served by just talking on the phone all the time. My parents are pretty good to stay with, so I really can’t complain.

4. Are you a homebody?

I feel like I’ve been preparing my entire life for a government official to tell me I can’t leave my house except for necessary errands.

5. An event you were looking forward to that got cancelled?

So Easter didn’t get canceled, like, it’s still happening and Christ will still be risen and all and that’s very important, but not being able to be in church for Holy Week fucking sucks and I hope it never happens again.

6. What movies have you watched recently?

Ooh, we haven’t watched a lot of movies together as a family yet, but we have watched the 2011 Much Ado with Tennant and Tate, I’ve watched An Ideal Husband and One Man, Two Guvnors and I’m about an hour into the 2018 Hamlet that the Globe just released. So, less movies than filmed theatre, but I think we’re going to rent the 2020 Emma soon.

7. What shows are you watching?

Just finished Schitt’s Creek (sob), which I think was the only thing I was really keeping up with. I should probably finish The Witcher given the amount of fanfiction I’m reading for it.

8. What music are you listening to?

Ooh, okay, so I just discovered The Amazing Devil (guess I have to thank The Witcher for that one because I was like “I need to investigate everything else Joey Batey has ever done) so I’ve had The Horror and the Wild on repeat (I’m listening to it as I type this). Also Johnny Flynn’s albums (so far A Larum and Country Mile, once I feel I really understand both of those I’ll bring Sillion into the mix). The Emma 2020 soundtrack, Six, Great Comet, and everything Hozier. I think that about covers it for the moment.

9. What are you doing for self-care?

I have two weeks left in my graduate degree and I’m not in a program that requires a thesis so at this point, the perfect is the enemy of the done. Chilling out about that has really helped. Besides that, I’m letting myself sleep until I wake up, which has honestly worked wonders.

10. What are you reading?

I’m currently re-reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society as a comfort read, and I’m finally going to finish Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love for Holy Week.

this was fun, loves! if you want to do it, please please do, and please tag me. (Not tagging anyone specifically because I get that not everyone might want to talk about this subject rn.)