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wisdomrays · 3 years ago

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS: How Should People Avoid Sins, Distractions, and Temptations?: Part 1

The question refers to one of the greatest difficulties of modern life. Even the not-so-young, but of course especially the young live in a social environment that exaggerates the natural pressures of youth to an extreme; ever-present temptations and passing desires scatter one's nobler sentiments and higher aspirations. It is difficult indeed in this environment to represent the sublime qualities of person and character that the Messenger of God exemplified and willed his followers to emulate; but, to live at such a time and to struggle against the desires and temptations has its own particular advantages. This is because the reward of all effort is proportionate to the hardship of the conditions endured.

Is it not the hardship of the struggle he endured which earned Hamza the titles"the master of the martyrs"and"the lion of God"? His battle-cry to his men—"The enemies are many, but we have faith," and charging the enemy front-line with self-sacrificing disregard for death—these are the qualities that raised him to such a high rank.

When Islam was first preached, the women among the idolaters used to circumambulate the Ka'ba naked; adultery, fornication, usury, profiteering, exploitation, bribery, drinking and gambling were deeply embedded in the manners of the society. And yet, the Companions turned their backs on such practices and embraced Islam. They were all normal human beings with feelings and appetites like all others. But their giving up and leaving aside carnal desires and immoral practices in that environment, their preferring a pure and honest way of life, and their support of the revived, true religion and the Messenger who preached it—and their doing so, despite all dangers, threats and persecutions, made them nobler than the rest and greater than all the greats. By doing so, they gained such merits and virtues that they have become the light and, like the stars in the heavens, guide those who come after them.

The kinds of obstacles, disasters and destructions they faced exist also today. In a spiritual assembly, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi was named as the man of the age of disasters and destruction.[1] If the Prophet called the people who try to live and serve Islam sincerely in this age, he would definitely name them as the generation of the age of disasters and destruction. For, if the streets and market-places, city centers, social and commercial business, individual and family life, schools (which nurture the rest) and all other societal entities and institutions which together make up collective life and its norms—if these were assessed one by one, the verdict on each of them would be "bad, spoiled or ruined."

Wherever you go, you cannot avoid some or other sort of foulness or sin staining your senses; the atmosphere is invasive, aggressive. To do or finish a job in the community, you cannot pass from one side to the other without your soul and heart being assaulted and your spiritual life shaken. To live Islam is as hard as walking on a road of fire or going across a river of foul blood. We are creatures of such a time of disasters and destruction. The sensuality, carnality, corporeality hidden in the self is like the tail of a scorpion lifted and ready to strike. Those appetites and lusts always feed upon and grow in the conditions prevalent (and systematically encouraged) in this modern society. It is possible to be poisoned at any instant by the scorpions within and around us. We must be aware of the conditions and evaluate them in the light of "the reward is proportionate to the hardship endured," and so feel somewhat lightened and encouraged by the hope of a recompense whose magnitude will reflect the hardship and affliction we have overcome. The more successful we are in defeating the enemies, the more we will be rewarded. If the Companions acquired their high rank by overcoming the hardships and afflictions they faced, then people today could do and achieve almost as much in a similar way—which is what we expect from the Divine Mercy. Today, when the conditions for committing sins are so easy, of course there must have been some errors and sins of ours that we committed unintentionally; but it behooves us, and we need, not to leave the gate of Divine Mercy; rather, we must be persistent there. Let me tell you one of my childhood memories, which reflects how I think and feel. When I was a child we had a very faithful dog which guarded our flocks of sheep. I so admired its loyalty that I fed it frequently and even sometimes played with it. When I raised my little hands in prayer, I remembered the significance of its loyalty to us and put it next to my hopes and prayed to God: "O my Lord, just as I treated that dog as a friend on account of its loyalty to us, so forgive me, such a slave of Yours, who has never left You and the gates of Your Divine Mercy and who has never prayed and bowed before anyone else but You."

The same is true for Muslims (who have never left Him and the gates of His Divine Mercy and who have never prayed and bowed before anyone else but He). In spite of some slips, mistakes and sins, there are such Muslims who serve in the way of God so sincerely and faithfully that God, the Most Merciful, will not drive them from the gates of His Mercy. We accept and admit our faults. Such admissions, confessions, are a part of journeying through regrets, remorse and repentance. We ask Him again and again to forgive our wrong-doings out of His Mercy, in accordance with His Grace. And God accepts and answers such prayers done wholeheartedly, with faith and sincerity.

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religioused · 4 years ago

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Stolen Identity: The Bush is Still Burning

by Gary Simpson

Exodus 3:1-15 (KJV)

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

And the angel of theLord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

6 Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.

10 Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt. And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

14 And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

Reflection:

We get a lot of news from the United States. My feed on Twitter is full of news about protests. On TikTok, I am able to see short video clips of protests for racial justice. I feel exhausted by all of the protests, hatred, violence, shootings. Part of what makes the news so discouraging and exhausting is that I know we struggle with so much racism Canada.

There is a theme of dual identities in today’s Hebrew Scriptures. For some of us, the term dual identity is new. A dual identity is when a person has an identity in a minority group and has an identity in the larger community. I will give a few examples, so you have a sense of dual identities. An Indigenous person may identify as First Nation and Canadian at the same time. A person whose family immigrated to Canada from Pakistan may identify as Pakistani and Canadian. Being LGBT+ and Christian is a dual identity. Variety might be the spice of life, but people living with dual identities might find that diversity is challenging. Young people find it difficult when the values and customs at home are not shared by many other people living in Canada. In some cases, the two identities may be considered to be mutually exclusive. After 9/11, some people mistakenly thought that Muslims could not be good Americans. Islamophobia increased after 9/11. LGBT+ people of faith are often rejected by many people in both their houses of worship and the LGBT+ community.

I am going to summarize events leading up to today's Hebrew Scripture reading. The children of Israel moved to Egypt because of the famine in their homeland. Initially, they were welcome in Egypt because Jacob, an Israelite, was a powerful official in the Egyptian government. Then a new Pharoah, who did not understand how much Jacob did for Egypt, came to power. The new Pharoah was frightened by the number of Israelite immigrants in the country. This new Pharoah instituted a policy of slavery over the children of Israel. Egyptians were put in charge of groups of the Israelite men to make sure that they worked hard. The New International Version says the Egyptians worked the Israelites "ruthlessly." To the Egyptians, it felt like the more the children of Israel were oppressed, the more Israelites there were.

The midwives were told to kill the Israelite baby boys when they were born, but the midwives had a good sense of medical ethics and refused to kill them. Pharoah eventually ordered that all baby boys be thrown into the Nile River. Moses' mother hid him for a few months and then she placed Moses in a basket and left him in the reeds along the Nile River. The Pharoah's daughter went to that part of the river to bathe. When she saw the basket and the baby in the basket, she knew that Moses was an Israelite baby. Moses sister was watching and she went to the king's daughter and volunteered to find a Hebrew woman who could nurse the baby. After Moses was old enough that he did not need to be breast fed, Moses went to live with the king's daughter, as if he was her son. Pharoah's daughter chose the name Moses because she drew the baby out of the water.(1) Moses name was a foreshadowing of what took place. In Hebrew, there is a sense that the name Moses meant "the one drawing out"(2) and Moses ends up playing a vital role in drawing the children of Israel out of Egypt.

Moses was raised with the Egyptians, as an Egyptian. As a child, he had his identity stolen from him. Having dual and conflicting identities can be the source of a lot of personal stress and pain. When people have dual identities, there are times when they feel forced to choose one identity or the other. In other cases, they embrace both identities and face rejection from many other people who share one of their identities. There is something about having experienced oppression that makes some people into powerful activists.

We are uncertain why Moses went to check on how things were with his people, the children of Israel. He might have been trying to connect more with his identity as an Israelite. He might have curious about what it was like to be an Israelite. He notices an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man. Thinking nobody is watching, he kills the Egyptian and buries him. When Moses realizes that the murder was witnessed, he fled to Midian, which kept the Pharoah from killing him.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells a story about Moses, which might not be factually correct. In Josephus' story, young Moses threw the Pharoah's crown on the floor. According to the book of Hebrews, Moses chose to give up the advantages of royalty to "throw in his lot with his own people."(3)

While in Midian, Moses notices the daughters of a Midianite priest, Jethro, are drawing water from a well. Some shepherds drive Jethro’s daughters away from the well. Moses came to the rescue of the ladies and he helped draw water for their flocks. This action shows Moses' "passion for justice."(4) Jethro hears about what happened from his daughters. He tells them to invite Moses to their home, so Moses can have something to eat. Jethro ends up giving one of his daughters to Moses to have as a wife.

For Moses, Midian was a safe place to live. He did not have to worry about death threats from the Pharaoh. He could live in relative pace, but the Midianites were not his people. Even though he married a Midianite lady, it was not his home and he was not with his people. The name of Moses’ son gives us a sense that he was not at home in Midian. Moses names his son Gershom, which can mean "a stranger there.”(5) I am left wondering if he chose the name "a stranger" for his son to emphasize the fact that Moses was a stranger in Midian. One of my Bible commentaries notes that Moses might have named his son "a stranger there," as a way of reminding himself that his "destiny" is with the children of Israel, not the Midianites where he is living.(6)

Moses notices the burning bush. What catches Moses’ attention is that the bush is on fire, but it is not burning. The fact that the bush burns, but is not burned up, illustrates the permanent nature of the children of Israel. The bush is a symbol of the Israelites and the fire is a symbol of their persecution.(7) The fire also represents God’s presence.(8)

God heard the crying of the Israelites who were slaves in Egypt. God will use Moses to liberate the children of Israel from slavery and to take them to the promised land. Moses is to tell the children of Israel that God is going to rescue them. Then Moses asks a key question. Moses wants to know God's name, so he can tell the children of Israel who the God is who is going to rescue them from oppression in Egypt.

And we hear God's famous answer. "I am who I am." Other people translate the name God told Moses in a different way. A few Bible commentators support the translation “I am that I am.” Commentaries by Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, Joseph Benson and Charles Ellicott seem to give credibility to the translation “I am that I am.”(9) There are a number of meanings that can come from “I am that I am.” Commentators such as Matthew Henry emphasize the sense that this means God is “eternal and unchangeable.”(10) I wonder if the answer God gave Moses means this:

I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am that, I am. I am the I am that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped. I am that, I am. In other words, “I am that, I am,” might mean, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am that God.

When I think of God's answer, my mind goes back to 1970 when the Government of Canada enacted the War Measures Act. The Act gave the government power to temporarily suspend some human rights. When asked how far he was prepared to take the War Measures Act, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said, "Just watch me.”(11) I wonder if the message that God was sending to the children of Israel, who may have doubted that God would do what was needed to deliver them, was, “Just watch me.” To those who feel things all is hopeless, that there is no hope for a just society, a message from this text can be that God is prepared to go as far as it takes to support you. “Just watch God.”

I want to speak directly to those who have had their identity stolen, to those who straight, European Canadian society expected to talk, act, think, look, and worship God like straight European Christians.

• Indigenous peoples living in Canada and the United States. The European colonizers and settlers stole your identity.

• Descendants of Black slaves. We stole you and your identity.

• Asians. We stole your identity.

• LGBT+. We stole your identity.

• To all groups who we called an abomination or treated like an abomination.

Genesis 46:34 "every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.”(12) There are a few reasons why shepherds might have been considered to be an abomination. There is a possibility that some shepherds waged an aggressive war against the Egyptians.(13) Because the word abomination is used, shepherds might not have shared the same religion as most Egyptians.(14) The shepherds may have killed some of the animals that Egyptians considered sacred.(15) How shepherds were viewed is seen in some ancient art. In ancient art, shepherds were depicted as unshaven and poorly dressed. Shepherds were considered to be a little “rude and rough.”(16)

With God’s help, Moses brought the children of Israel out of slavery and to the very edge of the promised land. I think he is the greatest spiritual leader of the Hebrew Scriptures. And Moses, a shepherd, was an abomination. God chose Moses, an abomination to the Egyptians, to stand up to the Pharaoh and to lead the children of Israel out of slavery. You may have been marginalized, considered to be vile, an abomination. Do not internalize messages of hate. You are chosen by God to lead, to make a difference. In some cases, you will make a difference by changing many hearts, one heart at a time. In other cases, you may change many hearts at once.

Desmond Tutu gave a tremendous challenge to Black South Africans, when he said, “Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”(17) My hope is that in some way you will help people discover their humanity.

Now I want to speak to those who do not have dual identities. Desmond Tutu has a challenge for us too. Our call is to do ordinary acts of love. Tutu says, “Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”(18) So practice random and intentional acts of kindness.

And Desmond Tutu’s challenge for everybody. Our challenge is to talk to the people we fear or hate the most. Tutu says, “Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that's where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.(19)

End Notes

(1) Exodus 2:10 (NIV).

(2) Merrill F. Unger. Unger's Bible Handbook: An Essential Guide to Understanding the Bible. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1967), 89.

(3) William Neil, translator. William Neil's One Volume Bible Commentary. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), 71 and Unger (1967), 89.

(4) Neil (1973), 71.

(5) "Gershom: Smith's Bible Dictionary." Bible Study Tools. <https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/smiths-bible-dictionary/gershom.html>.

(6) Neil (1973), 71.

(7) Unger (1967), 89.

(8) Neil (1973), 72.

(9) “Exodus 3:14.” Bible Hub. n.d., 03 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/exodus/3-14.htm>.

(10) “Exodus 3:14.” Bible Hub. n.d., 03 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/exodus/3-14.htm>.

(11) “CBC Archives: Just Watch Me, 1970.” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, YouTube. n.d., 03 August 2020. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUq9b1XTa0>.

(12) English Standard Version.

(13) Matthew Poole. Matthew Poole's Commentary. n.d., 01 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/46-34.htm>.

(14) Charles John Ellicott, ed. Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers. (London: Cassell and Company, 1905) n.d., 01 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/46-34.htm>.

(15) Ellicott (1905) n.d., 01 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/46-34.htm>, Joseph Benson. Benson Commentary of the Old and New Testaments. (New York: T. Carlton & J. Porter, 1857) n.d., 01 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/46-34.htm>, and Poole. 01 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/46-34.htm>.

(16) Ellicott (1905) n.d., 01 August 2020. <https://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/46-34.htm>.

(17) Desmond Tutu Quotes. Brainy Quote. n.d., 26 August 2020. <https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/desmond-tutu-quotes>.

(18) Desmond Tutu Quotes. Brainy Quote. n.d., 26 August 2020. <https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/desmond-tutu-quotes_3>.

(19) Desmond Tutu Quotes. Briany Quote. n.d., 26 August 2020. <https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/desmond-tutu-quotes>.

#christian #sermon #church #bible #love #lgbt #black lives matter #Indigenous #Aboriginal #First Nation #discrimination #prejudice #protests

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bbq-hawks-wings · 5 years ago

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Series Review Pt. 1/3

So, this isn’t even a YouTube video where you have the advantage of hearing a voice over a recording with snappy editing to lighten the mood or convey feeling; but believe me that there was a lot of earnest sincerity put into the review this time around.

But before I put the rest of it under the cut, there are some corrections/clarifications I want to put down about my last review that I believe we're significant shortcomings on my part.

My first, and probably most MAJOR goof was my choice of words in trying to describe the scene with Hawks and Twice at the end of 263 - “ he clearly hasn’t killed Twice yet, and we don’t know why, but if he has to he’s prepared to do so without hesitation or remorse.”

BIG OOF. I hadn’t even been looking much at others’ opinions and the common-enough impression that Hawks doesn’t care about Twice at all/is incapable of empathy/ONLY concerned with his mission from the Commission. When I looked back at my own review, though I didn’t have any indication anyone believed I was one of those people (“without remorse” being the problematic phrase in question), I could easily see how others could get the impression and decided to wait until the next review to do a better job instead of just saying I would. My views on that particular scene will be clear later on, but at least that’s out of the way in case that was keeping people from reading this in the first place.

Second, I failed to arrange my observation points in a more ideal order. If anything, the fact that we were seeing that last page from Twice’s perspective should have been the first point. This mistake made it sound like a neutral assessment of the situation instead of an observation through the context of Jin's feelings. This ended up confusing even myself, as someone who usually writes these reviews solo, into forgetting to factor in that Twice's perspective may be warping the perception of Hawks guarding him into one of intent to kill while forgetting that the Hero Code forbids killing others unless it's truly a necessary last resort. For some reason, Sad Man's Parade and Twice's two-double limit also slipped my mind which brings me to the last point.

Third, I rushed things. When I rush, I make mistakes, sometimes pretty sloppy ones. It has been a ROUGH couple of weeks to be a Hawks or villain stan, even more so if you’re both, so for some reason I felt like I needed to get my thoughts out there quickly. I don’t have any kind of real incentive to do so other than a faster response - I don’t make any money off this, don’t have any relevance algorithm to feed as if I was on YouTube or Twitter, and I’m not the only half-decently known blog to hold these opinions so I don’t know what I was thinking. That’s my problem, but that doesn’t mean I have to make it anyone else’s.

For complete transparency, I’ve been reading and re-reading through the entire series canon again, starting with Hawks’ manga debut, and reviewing the entire series’ events and in-universe history, and have been taking literal whole pages of notes and drafts since Thursday the 12th. I’m glad I did because it brought to mind things that often get left out of pockets of fandom discussion who hyper-focus on their circles of interest while forgetting that each individual section is meant to work with the whole.

That’s what we’ll be working with today, and additional thanks goes to @baezetsu and @dorito9708 for volunteering as proofreaders and editors to make this more focused and concise. If you’re interested please keep reading. A fair warning, this is what we in the professional field call a “long-ass post, no seriously guys grab a drink and a snack we’re gonna be here a while.” It's actually so long I have to split it up into parts because Tumblr Mobile is stupid and doesn't like making the "read more" function available to the mobile version.

So here we go, people, let’s try this again one last time…

Where we’re at in Chapter 264 (or at least, you know, ignoring literally everyone in the series that isn’t these two) is Twice and Hawks’ confrontation in the study room; but let’s put a pin in that for now and come back.

The biggest piece of information to keep in mind is that even though both these characters are currently front-and-center and have major plot and symbolic value in the series, they are still not the main characters. Their conflict is also not the central conflict. Let’s zoom out to the big picture and see what happens when we put everything together at the end.

The whole inciting incident of the series is when humanity began to display superhuman abilities in a few random individuals. These abilities are neither inherently good or bad - they are constantly intended as neutral with the potential being dependent on the user. Eventually these abilities began to be collectively termed as “quirks” - literally just a single facet of each person’s unique identity. From a social commentary standpoint, quirks have been used as a narrative stand-in for the unique situational circumstances or combinations of circumstances individuals may find themselves with that are either mostly or completely outside of their control like aptitude, physical ability, race/appearance, mental state, and inherited societal station. While more of these examples have been explicitly stated and inserted into the story later on, quirks still serve as the main catalyst and lens by which these topics are discussed.

Because of the initially new and unfamiliar nature of these abilities, people who possessed them faced descrimination and persecution despite having no say in whether or not they had them; and some who did possess these abilities began abusing their power. Taking advantage of this, a man calling himself One-for-All took unwanted quirks from people and redistributed them claiming to want to help others and bring about peace but merely wished to amass power and a following for his own gain. Morally upright individuals eventually rose to the occasion and placed themselves between innocent bystanders and evildoers, earning no official reward or compensation for their work, though eventually they became so effective that they became recognized and endorsed if they went through proper governmental training and channels. These endorsed specialty crime fighters came to be dubbed “heroes.”

All-For-One had risen to prominence by this point and his loyal following actively supported him in his now blatant criminal empire despite the morally reprehensible actions he committed which incessantly terrorized innocent bystanders - earning him the title Symbol of Evil or Symbol of Fear. Eventually a hero named All Might rose up to specifically deal with All-For-One’s reign of terror, having worked his way up from obscurity taking down criminals and saving civilians in unprecedented numbers, determined to create a world where everyone could feel safe in the face of danger. Though only succeeding in beating AFO into hiding All Might ushered in a new era of safety and prosperity earning him the title Symbol of Peace.

Therein lies the central message - “It’s not the situation you’re given that determines your worth or potential but what you choose to do with it” - and the main conflict is - “I want to use what I’ve been given for my own benefit" vs "I want to use what I’ve been given for others.” Deku and Shiguraki are merely the next generation iteration of this conflict distilled down to their simplest essence. Deku's desire is to save anyone who needs help the moment he realizes they need it. Shiguraki wants to remove people's sense of security regardless of their character or situation.

This conflict is initially framed as simple - a clear black and white/good and bad dynamic that’s easy to see from a distance; but as characters and groups developed over time it’s become more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart. It was not a coincidence that immediately after introducing the clear-as-day bad guys to the series we were presented with the idea that who we perceived to be “good guys” could be bad people doing good things or that people could do good things for the wrong reasons when we were presented with the personal conflicts that Bakugo, Shinsou, and Todoroki all faced at the Sports Festival that were either their internal struggles with the way the were perceived by others or were their personal struggles with the way they perceived themselves. Immediately after that, we were introduced to Stain's criticism of modern heroes and shown who would come to be the core members of the League of Villains.

At the current events in the series we’ve waded through so many shades of grey we’re expected to determine who’s a “hero” and “villain” not by what they say but what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The individual members of the League of Villains touch on various ways a person might be driven to a life dedicated either to the pursuit of personal satisfaction with no concern to others or to the active pursuit of destroying others, and generally the villains are some of the most morally gray characters we have in the series, though not all of them - the two most notable morally gray “good guys” are Hawks and Endeavor.

There’s one last thing to note about how the series chooses to distinguish morally gray characters as ��good” and “bad,” and that ultimately boils down to the choices they make with the hand they are dealt - that being to help or to harm others. This is not quite the same thing as a “hero” and a “villian” (I know, as if it wasn’t confusing enough), but the series has now gone to great lengths to make a clear distinction between the ideals of heroism and the institution of heroism.

Looking at the difference in institutions and ideals as the series presents them we get a better picture of the actual core issues the series seeks to address. The institution of heroism is a utilitarian approach to maintaining a sense of order and safety, and it does so by incentivising people to resolve as many public altercations as possible in exchange for wealth and fame. Criminals are those who break the law regardless of the motivation for the crime or its degree of impact. The institution does not take into account factors that may drive someone to commit a crime nor is it concerned with the core motivations of those enforcing the sense of order.

On the opposite hand, the ideal of heroism offers no reward, no recognition, may require some amount of suffering on the part of the hero, and never guarantees that the victim in question will be saved. Conversely, villainy/evil is any action taken for one's own gain with zero regard to the impact on others and/or is any action committed with malicious intent. These definitions are about moral obligation and human to human connection.

While having a strong correlation (helping others because it's right usually helps the majority in the long run, and doing harm is often ultimately bad for the majority) these two schools of thought are able to function independently of each other. In other words, a criminal can be a good person fallen on hard times (like stealing food to feed their family, but only as much as they need from someone who won’t notice it missing) while a “professional hero” can be an evil person doing good things for the wrong reasons (like obsessing over gaining wealth and popularity with no mind to collateral damage they may cause). Most characters are categorized and even described in-universe as morally aligning with the institution they associate with; but several have been explicitly noted as exceptions to the rule such as Gentle Criminal and La Brava, Endeavor, and Twice.

Are we properly confused yet? Great, because there’s one more layer to consider! What do we make of someone who is trying to do a good thing (like saving as many people as possible from a known threat) but to do so has to make a choice that might leave a few people in the fire? Which outcome do we use to decide if this is a good person or a bad one? Do we judge based on intent or on the outcome?

Now we zoom back in to Hawks and Twice, but we’ll pick that up in Part Two.

Part Three

#bnha meta #mha meta #BNHA Chapter 264 #MHA Chapter 264 #BNHA spoilers #MHA spoilers #long post

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a-deadly-serenade · 5 years ago

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The Shield and the Sword: Chapter 5: Whispers in the Garden [Alucard/Reader]

You’re a witch that is skilled in herbology, one that has been persecuted by the church for practically your entire life. In spite of this, moving throughout different towns has allowed you to pick up some chatter about a woman in a village called Lupu. She is supposed to be a wonder when it comes to medicine, and this immediately perks up your interest. So after plucking up some courage, you’ve made it to her door… hoping that she takes you as her apprentice.

ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16724856?view_full_work=true

~ Click here for the masterlist.

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The following weeks were filled with diligent study in the medical library, which was beginning to feel more and more as an extension of your bedroom. You had filled up so many rolls of parchment that you had trouble keeping a tab on all of the notes that you wrote down. It was becoming particularly difficult for you to find specific information as well, since your desk drawers were packed to the absolute brim with parchment.

Lisa, never one to leave such problems unnoticed, went ahead and purchased you a basket full of thick, soft brown leather journals, and a pile of fresh, new quills. It had honestly been a blessing, and being able to take notes within the safe, organized confines of a journal gave you time to organized the mess of scrolls that you had sort of neglected for a few days.

Not only were you hard at work studying with Lisa, but you spent a few hours every night with Adrian, assisting him in his studies on magic. It quickly became apparent that he had a very basic understanding of what magic entailed, knowing that, at the very least, it required the caster to have intent.

“What is so important about this “intent”?” he had a hint of annoyance in his tone. “I heard several Speakers that my father has invited over discuss this whole concept of intent. It does not sound very scientific.”

“That’s because it isn’t,” you counter. “The idea of intent… it’s less of an idea, as it is a sensation. You feel it in the very marrow of your bones, in the very center of your being. You carry belief, and the strength necessary to make this vision come to fruition. Therefore, with the proper amount of intent, any kind of magic is possible. However, you need to be able to have belief in this intent in order for it to do its job.”

Adrian was silent during your whole explanation, and a few moments passed before he nodded in understanding. “I see… so, I need to approach this less logically?”

“Yes!” you cried out triumphantly. “It is good and well to have this… strong, scientific curiosity that can only be satiated by reading and learning and experimenting. But, you need to take your head out of the lab and understand that there are forces that even science cannot explain,” you close your eyes and press your hand to his chest.

Nothing seemed to be happening, but then a warm, yellow light started to emanate from your palm. You hear Adrian gasp quietly in shock, a small smile on your lips as you remove your hand, a cheeky expression on your face.

“What was that?” he sputtered out.

“That was a glimpse of your aura,” you said. “I could sense it very faintly between the very tips of my fingers,” you look down at your hand and wiggle said digits. “It was warm, but a little reluctant to come out. I could feel that it was yellow… but just a hint darker…” you mutter to yourself.

“Does that mean something?” he questioned.

“Yellow usually has a connection to the source of all your bodies energy, and it appears that all of your energy is being honed in on studies.”

Adrian blinks, slight disbelief written across his visage before he folds his arms across his chest in a slight huff. “Well that is just plainly obvious, anyone that saw me as much as you do could guess that I have been spending a lot of time reading.”

You flushed, angry that he had reacted so defensively to your reading. “I… I mean, yes, you could say that but the dark I had picked up,” you began, before he cut you off abruptly.

“What of it?”

You bristled, getting more and more annoyed with this sudden attitude of his by the minute. “There are feelings of…” your eyebrows furrowed, confused as to why you sensed negative emotions. “Being under pressure, as though you have been pushing yourself to some extremes in order to improve…” you glance over at Adrian, concern flashing in your eyes for a brief moment as he stared at you.

He cleared his throat, looking away from you as he started to pack up his things. “I think that should be enough for today,” he said, and stood up out of his chair.

You nodded, still in a daze after what you had just said. You bid him goodnight, and once your door had been shut, you let out a long exhale.

“What was that about?” you whispered, slipping off your clothes to put on a much softer nightgown.

You snapped your fingers to light a honey and peppermint scented candle, as you crawled into bed and snuggled into the blankets.

He’s hiding something, you thought. It’s as though he’s feeling… inadequate. Why could that be?

You took a deep breath in an attempt to clear your head, as you closed your eyes and tried to fall asleep.

The next morning began like every other, with you being woken up by Lisa coming into your room and announcing that it was time to get up. Quickly getting ready and dressed for the day, you ate breakfast with the rest of the Tepes family, although, you had to admit, that you were a little nervous to sit next to Adrian after what had happened last night.

As you sat there, sipping on your tea, and munching on a piece of buttered bread coated in raspberry jelly, you either suspected that he had forgotten the incident, or decided to ignore it, as he carried on an amicable conversation with his mother and father. You were frankly relieved, not wanting to have been the cause of drama between the family that had so graciously welcomed you into their home.

Once everyone had finished their breakfast, you helped Lisa wash and put away the dish ware as you always did. Drying your hands on a dish towel, you leaned against the counter as Lisa put away the final forks and knives into their appropriate drawers.

“So, do you just want to meet me at the library?” you asked her. “I finally know how to get there on my own without getting horribly lost.” you joked.

She chuckled and gave you a smile. “Now you can come and go whenever you please!” she exclaimed, as she continued to laugh. “However, we will not be going to the library today.”

“Oh?”

Lisa gave you a wink and bopped the tip of your nose. “I’m going to take you somewhere special today.”

A burst of excitement surged through your veins as she said this, with just a hint of intrigue creeping in as your mind attempted to try and solve the exact nature of this mystery location.

When Lisa wrapped up everything in the kitchen, she told you to follow her and she made quick haste to lead you around hallways in the castle you never even knew existed. The journey, however, was not very long, and you soon found yourself exiting the echoing halls of Castlevania and entering a magnificent outdoor garden.

There were so many different flowers and other species of plants that it was honestly a little overwhelming. A multitude of roses dotted the landscape, either in big, bristly bushes, or entangling themselves up large, white trellises. There were pink roses, red roses, white roses, and even black roses. There were lilac trees and wildflowers and even a couple fruit trees. Apple blossoms fell from a nearby tree, their smell drifting in the wind as the two of you made your way deeper into the garden.

A large hedge maze stood several feet away, green ivy sprouting from its crevices with birds chirping from their nests amongst all of the leaves. A cobblestone pathway led from the patio all the way to the entrance, which was surrounded by several small gurgling fountains as water shout out from the creative spouts of fish and tiny cupid angels.

Large pots filled with tulips, daisies, and dog roses lined the walkway, and you let out an elated gasp as a flock of white doves cooed and chirped as the two of you passed by. The birds seemed intrigued by your presence, but appeared more inclined to flock around Lisa.

“I don’t have have food!” she cried out and waved her hands at the doves. “Go on, shoo!” she clapped loudly several times and the perturbed birds flew back in surprise, hooting and cooing as they bobbed their heads in search of lunch elsewhere.

“Don’t get in the habit of giving them any sort of seeds,” Lisa grumbled. “They came last spring when I was being more generous with feeding the wildlife, and they haven’t left the garden since.”

You giggled. “I’m sure they’re just grateful that they’ve found such a lovely home.”

The both of you rounded a corner and were now walking down a grassy path, wild berry bushes and wild plants blooming all around you. This appeared to be an area that was less used by humans, and you soon found out the reason why.

A large, ornate greenhouse stood a little ways away. It was made of wood, humble in its size, it look no bigger than a common shed. Nevertheless, it was a thing of beauty. All of the windows were covered in beautiful stained glass designs, a motif that followed it from its towering gothic cousin.

The doors especially took your breath away. A glittering, glass monarch butterfly design, with its wings spread out wide, decorated the very top of the pointed entrance. Meanwhile, opulent windows surrounded the actual doorway, covered in clear flowers and vibrant crystals, colored in bright blues and purples.

“This place is beautiful,” your voice is filled with wonder and awe, feeling like a kid in a candy store as you walk in and are completely enveloped by nature.

Large stone tiles served as the walkway within the greenhouse, otherwise, you’d threaten to step on the herbs and flowers that grew in every available nook and cranny. You noticed that there was quite a sophisticated irrigation system, with a long trough surrounding the perimeter of the room, making it easy for water to flow freely to all of the plants.

A small pond was in one corner, lily pads blooming with lotuses had large, green bullfrogs hopping from leaf to leaf. Dragonflies skied across the clear surface of the water, occasionally flying by a cattail and clinging to the reed instead as turtles made their way from the bottom to bask on rocks surrounded by pickerel and arrowhead flowers.

Lisa directed your attention to the large wooden tables that held most of the other plants, and you realized that these pots were filled with almost every medically relevant flora you had ever seen.

“Is this where you get your medicine stock from?” you wondered, as you gingerly stroked the thick leaves of an aloe vera plant.

Lisa nodded her head. “Yes. My husband quickly picked up on how much I enjoyed gardening, so he built me this greenhouse so that I could have the freshest of ingredients for my tonics.”

“I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that this would be what my personal Heaven would look like,” you confessed.

A genuine blush rose to Lisa’s cheeks when you said this, and her flustered hands almost dropped a pair of clippers that she had brought to cut off leaf stems. “Oh you are too kind,” she whispered.

“It’s wonderful that you were able to accomplish so much, Lisa. The amount of progress that you have been able to make is astonishing,” your eyes glittered with excitement as you ran over and to grab a hold of her hands. “I never believed that the teachings of my ancestors would ever become reality. The fact that you were able to help keep all of this rich history alive… it… it invigorates me!” you laugh, a radiant sound that bounces off the glass walls. “And that you’re human no less. I always knew that there would always be some particularly gifted non-magical folk out there in the world, but…” you leaned in, and brushed away a stray hair of hers. “I never believed I would ever meet one.”

Lisa’s big, bright blue eyes blink at you in surprise. “What….what’s that supposed to mean?”

You back away, realizing you may have startled her a bit. “Oh… I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to get so overzealous… it’s just… it’s as if my clan were still alive,” you said, in a steady voice, not trying to guilt her in any sort of fashion. “I know Vlad helped out a lot too it’s just… I dunno… it makes me really happy that you’re here--”

Your voice cuts off as Lisa brings you into a very tight hug, her chin resting on the top of your head. Her arms are wrapped around you, some fingers going through your hair and others scratching soothing lines down your back. “It’s alright, little one,” she cooed, echoing the nickname that Vlad had given to you. “I’m so thankful that you were able to find me. You’re your families survivor, the one that can keep their traditions alive. You will never forget all those that fell, so you pursuing your dream means that they did not die in vain.”

Your bottom lip trembled as she said this to you, her wave of blue emotions washing over you as the two of you stood in the tight embrace. You rubbed the big, globs of tears that slid down your cheeks with the back of your hand, confused as to why you were so upset.

Were you more sensitive to emotions after that reading you had given Adrian last night?

If that’s the case, you thought to yourself, this is going to be a rough day.

Lisa pulls away when she notices you struggling to fight back tears, and hands you one of the clean towels she keeps in a large wicker basket. “Are you alright?” she asked, as she helped you wipe them away.

“Yeah… yeah I think so, I think I’m just a little bit more sensitive to emotions today,” you explain, blowing your nose into the towel.

“Well, that took a turn for the sappy, I suppose,” Lisa muttered, before the both of you burst into a fit of giggles.

“At least I know that I’ve finally found my true purpose in life,” you replied. “It was destiny that you and I should meet.”

Lisa nodded her head in agreement. “Indeed it was.”

The rest of the day was spent in the greenhouse, with Lisa showing you how to properly take care of and document the plants inside. You needed to know all the plants in there like the back of your hand, and know the proper ingredients necessary to make the most popular and simple remedies.

You got familiar with the layout, and the plants as well. Humming and singing soft tunes as you hopped across the stones, occasionally reaching out to a couple hands that stretched out for attention; the hoya carnosas being especially needy. It was important to let them know you meant no harm, and were someone they could trust. If plants did not respect you, they could refuse to grow or even shrivel away due to the lack of incentive to stay.

Most of the herbs instantly craved your attention, having easily picked up on your years of experience raising and pampering their specific genus. The aloe were a bit fussy at first, some of the more exotic species especially having an attitude, alongside the ferns. Honestly, you get big and bushy and are used in so many remedies, and suddenly they think they’re better than most other plants.

It was rather amusing, seeing these strange little dichotomies that had developed within the greenhouse. You picked up that all of the plants loved Lisa, she was their mother, some of them going so far as to hold her in a similar reverence to Gaia. Vlad was also held in high regard, the lavender cooing about how in love he and Lisa were, they thought it was adorable. A couple stems of peppermint echoed the sentiments, saying that Lisa glows whenever he is around her, and she adds just a dash… of, well, they don’t exactly know what it is, but they call it “the light”, to their care.

All of this brought a smile to your lips, and you almost cackled when they shifted their focus to Adrian. Several basil plants complained that when he was little, he would always run amuck through the little plants, like the mosses and tiny spurs that grew alongside the pond.

Oh! But a bundle of hawthorn added. Even as he grew older, and expressed interest in working alongside his mother, he was a clumsy mess, spilling fresh dirt everywhere, or spilling water onto those who didn’t need it! It was a good day when Lisa finally decided it would be best if he remained in the castle to complete his studies.

You laughed quietly, but a high pitched chorus of giggles caught your attention, and you turned your head to find a patch of hibiscus flowers. They were a rainbow of colors, some were orange, others a bright yellow, some a startling white with fushia patches at the edge of their petals, and others were the classic deep red.

You furrowed your brow, and gave them a small glare. What are they laughing about?

Hibiscus were tricky flowers, gossipy little things that would prattle on about love and matchmaking.

Oh, she hears us, the white one giggled.

Really? an orange exclaimed.

Little girl, one said in a much older voice. It was a gorgeous hibiscus, a light pink that had hues of magenta and a rich blue pallet around the stigma. I know the true feelings that lay in your heart.

What? you think.

Playing dumb does not suit you my dear, she groaned. The one with the beautiful golden hair, the prince of darkness--

You look away, a dark red blush on your face as you stomp off to leave the greenhouse, the flowers giggling behind your back as you refrained from slamming the door shut.

Your breaths came out in puffs in front of you, embarrassed and on edge after that rather confrontational conversation. Wiping a bead of sweat off of your brow, you felt a calm settle over you as you gazed up at the moon in the sky.

It was practically time for you and Adrian to meet up again, and albeit, you were a tad bit nervous.

You sincerely hoped that he did not feel uncomfortable around you after that stunt you pulled earlier. It had been hard garnering even a bit of trust with him when it came to Adrian finally listening to you. He had been insanely stubborn the first few days of tutoring, and you had almost threw in the towel before Lisa intervened and spoke to each of you individually.

You had no idea what she said to Adrian, but she told you to see if you could find a different approach to getting him to understand magic. Use what you knew about his learning style to see if you could use other techniques to get it to stick.

After some brainstorming, you noticed that Adrian was a much more traditional student, as he enjoyed reading thick tomes and taking diligent notes, not too far off from what you had been doing the first couple weeks. But now that you were fairly confident about your knowledge on the human body and known ailments, you had begun the more hands-on aspects of working in the greenhouse with Lisa. That is the way that you preferred learning, being able to literally sink your hands into what it is you’re researching.

So you decided that making some form of lecture would benefit Adrian the most, similar to the classes that you had taken when you were much younger. You would come up with test questions, or make him practice a particular magical technique in front of you. Things started to go more smoothly after that, and he would even start talking about himself once in awhile.

You let out a shaky breath as you sat in your desk chair, voice getting trapped in your throat when you hear a knock on the door. “Come,” your voice sounds rough and strained, and you cough to clear it up. “Come in.”

Adrian walks in, a perplexed expression on his face. “Are you alright?” he asked.

You pour yourself a glass of water and take a sip. After swallowing the big gulp, you nod your head. “Yeah, sorry,”

He gets situated in the chair next to you, pulling out his own journal, quill, and book from a large messenger bag his father had loaned him. “From where we left off last night, then?”

You froze, but quickly shrugged off the feeling. “Yes, intent…” you quickly reached for the notes you had prepared days earlier, thanking the goddesses that you had some sort of map to rely on in terms of discussion topics.

To your surprise (and honest relief) the night went off just fine. Your approach was really paying off, and the questions that the both of you exchanged had led to very rich discussions. Adrian appeared very pleased, a smile on his face as he waved his quill over the page to help the ink dry faster.

“Tonight was very enjoyable,” he said, and put it down once the words were set.

“I’m glad. I’m actually surprised by how much we were able to cover,” you replied. Your eyes widened at the sudden surprise of a bright blue bundle of sparkling stars, and Adrian turned his head to see what you were looking at.

“Oh, that’s just Aria,” he said, and raised his hand up, as one would for a small bird, before the stars shedded from her like snake’s skin and disappeared from sight. She fluttered onto his outstretched index finger and gave a rather dramatic yawn.

“Seems as though she’s just awoken from her nap,” he said. He gave her a delicate scratch with his long nails, and she gave a delighted hum in response.

A question you had asked yourself long ago suddenly popped back in your head and you let out a quiet, “Oh!”

“Adrian?” you began. “Why does Aria stay in the castle? I know she claims you’re her “Master”, but, how did she end up here?”

He was quiet for a moment, a somber expression on his face before it quickly washed away. “When I had been fairly young, my father and I had been walking around the woods you see before you,” his golden eyes gazed out of the window, upon the pine trees that stretched on for miles into the dark night. “It had been a day where we had gone looking for some local insects, mostly butterflies and beetles. But, that’s when we heard tiny cries for help.”

Aria finally opened her eyes, her bright blue orbs widening in sadness as she heard what he was talking about.

“A group of fairies,” Adrian said, eyes narrowing. “Had been captured, by a group of greedy humans. They used traps to secure their capture, and would then sell off their wings and eventually even their bones for use in dark spells.”

You looked over at Aria, whose wings had lowered, and she had brought her legs up to her chest, tiny tears sticking to her long eyelashes like dewdrops. “Why would they do that?” you cried out. “Fairies are such peaceful, beautiful, giving creatures. What good would that bring them?”

“Profit.” Adrian spat. “Father knew what was going on, and was thankfully able to scare them away. Even as a child I thought they deserved more than just a good fright, but the fairies were saved.”

Aria nodded her head. “Yup!” she cried out, rubbing the last few tears away on her arm. “The rest of my sisters and cousins and friends live inside the garden now,” she fluttered over to you. “You… well, I visit there sometimes, and they often tell me how kind you are to all the plants. And even… well, the new fairy gardens that you added have been a really nice addition too…” her face was flushed a cute pink, eyes downcast and her hands behind her back in bashfulness.

You gave her a kind smile. “You’re welcome, small lady.”

She blushed, and she covered her face before zipping back to where Adrian sat to hide behind his shoulder.

You giggled, but feeling eyes on you, you turned your attention to Adrian, who immediately turned his head away from your gaze. Confused, you peered at him, and thought you had seen things when you noticed a pink flush to his face--

“Add to the fact,” he suddenly blurted out. “She’s also my familiar.”

“What?!” you exclaimed. “She’s your familiar?” you were dumbfounded. How did he have a familiar, and not you? You were a witch for crying out loud!

“Yes? Why is that so surprising?”

“It… it just is!”

“I have five, what is so surprising about one--”

“Five?!”

“That’s what I said--”

“Five familiars?!” you shouted, letting out a melodramatic moan as you collapsed back into your chair. “That’s not fair, I don’t even have one--”

“Would you like to see them?”

You silenced your groaning at that, and you were immediately back up on your feet. “Really?” you said excitedly. “You would do that?”

Adrian nodded, and gave you a smile. “Of course. I’m sure they would be delighted to meet you.”

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seattlitespeaking · 4 years ago

Text

Political, response to the meme

*squinting* ok I'll dive in

There are definitely more more 2 genders. When we consider the two binary genders, we see a lot of what defines the others as well and the reasons for previous binary gender norms make sense from a historical perspective, but have fallen apart under modern scientific scrutiny. When we talk about gender, many people will simplify it based on genitalia alone, but it is possible to be born with both sexual organs or neither or to be born with one which is not capable of reproduction. Add in the fact that hormones typically correlated with masculine and feminine genders (testosterone and estrogen) can have any appear at varying levels to someone regardless of their gender expression. Also, the X and Y chromosomes only differ slightly. It is extremely common for a male presenting individual to have 2 X chromosomes, or for a female presenting individual to have an XY chromosomal makeup. Studies have also been done showing consistently that transsexuals individuals have brain scans more similar to their identifying gender than that of their birth assigned gender. In short, there are more than 2 binary genders, and what we think we know about those genders is quickly changing.

Abortion is absolutely justified, but since individual human suffering doesn't appear to have effected your opinion of the matter, consider what was written in a favorite book of mine Freakonomics. Abortion makes sense from a societal perspective. As many of you will be more aware than I, there was a massive and violet crime wave in the 80's. Then it kind of stopped, after abortion was made legal. Extreme poverty, addiction, mental illness, and other conditions strongly linked with criminality are also the kinds of things that may lead a woman to decide to have an abortion. In short, if those kids had continued being born when criminal conduct was predictable, we would've just seen a continuation of that psychopathic violence. You may say to me, that child deserves the right to live regardless of the possibility of a criminal future. You might say that those predictions make no moral guidance to the life that has been made. To that I tell you that without a neurological system, it isn't a life. The first Heartbeat identified is an electrical impulse with no self awareness whatsoever. If you believe life begins at conception, please consider the possibility of twins. The twins begin as one clump of cells, then divide into two when only one was conceived at first. Do we now have one soul divided in two? What about cases where one twin consumes the other in the womb? Soul math is hard, and not at all rooted in fact. The fact is that medical issues and huge financial commitments and other major factors make planning a family a difficult decision, and those decisions are not made easier by you, the government, or anybody else telling those involved what to do.

Guns don't kill people by themselves, that's true. And yet the US is one of the only countries in the world where the ownership of a gun is considered an unalienable right, beyond that of the sense of security of those around you. Other countries require complex permits, huge annual taxes and fees, ongoing education, and proof of responsible ownership practices. If you calm down for just a second, you may notice that with each violent outburst, ie, school shootings, these same points get brought up again and again and yet somehow no gun rights activists are willing to look at how that specific shooter got that specific gun. Background checks aren't going to hurt you, but they might save some 3rd graders. Being a registered gun owner isn't going to endanger your family anymore than a vehicle registration has resulted in your car being stolen, but it will help to trace and identify how violent offenders are getting their weapons. It may surprise you to know that countries with stricter gun laws don't have as much gun violence as we do, but they really really don't. They're not free of it, but its less enough that we deserve to have a conversation about what gun rights limitations people are open to. We owe it to our kids. The fact schools have been closed and we haven't had a bunch of school shootings this year has been amazing. Now let's see what else we can do to keep it going. Illegal immigrants aren't illegal.

Most illegal immigrants were here legally originally, for example, overstaying a legal passport visit. The road to legal immigration is very difficult and can span decades. The legal process is arduous, and unless you have a lawyer and a strong grasp of the English language, it is designed to leave a lot of people behind. Its expensive, technical, inherently racist, and confusing. If we all want safe borders AND a melting pot then we need to reform that antiquated and unnecessary process. If you witness, or are the victim of a crime, you should be able to go to the police without fear of deportation. You should be able to go to the hospital without worrying the doctor will tell the cops you're here illegally. You should be able to live here within the law without worrying ICE is going to tear your family apart. Any perceived injustice over skipping the legal immigrants process is far outshadowed by the global crime of separating families. It is considered an act of genocide, and it is abhorrent.

Obamacare isn't perfect, but it has improved on what was there. When we talk about access to medical care, you need to look at it through the lense of social justice. If there is anything about you that an employer might judge you for (race, color, gender, orientation, religion, etc) then you've currently got a harder time getting medical insurance because our insurance system is so strongly linked with employment. Healthcare should be considered a right. I might be great at taking my meds and going to the doctor regularly, but if others in my community don't have the ability to see the doctor, they will he less able to fight off infection which will require me to see those professionals more often. Similarly, WEAR YOUR MASKS. Obamacare isn't that, but it is a step toward that obvious and necessary conclusion.

Higher taxes for the wealthy are absolutely a good thing. While we're here squabbling over how to pay for childcare or major surgery, billionaires are off buying yachts and multiple homes and stocks which don't feed back into our communities. Mass hoarding of wealth is a part of why we can't afford the social welfare services we need to maintain dignifies for the whole of the US. Seriously, if you made $5,000 a day since the day Christopher Columbus landed in the America's, you STILL wouldn't have one billion dollars. There is NO REASON one person would need that much money. And yet people are willing to shoot each other over dollar amounts less than $100 to feed themselves. Those taxes could go toward food banks or infrastructural improvements that sustain our communities and create jobs to create alternatives to the harshest existences we see today. The wealthy need to pay their share. Amazon, Walmart, and fast food companies pay their employees the minimum, causing those employees to draw on social welfare programs. Those companies should be paying living wages and the taxes our country need to thrive. We're being highway robbed, and instead of blaming others competing for your jobs or the social changes libs are asking for, why not look at the people who make it impossible for us ALL to thrive? I'm not saying eat the rich, I would never SAY that. But for real, what good does it do all of us to have one multimillionaire in our country? What good does it do the planet to have a lot of them? Their jets ruin our ecosystems. Their wealth is obtained by exploiting vulnerable populations and low paid workers. The laws we all abide by don't apply to those extremely wealthy because the law doesn't have the capacity to prosecute them effectively.

If you make less than $400k a year, you won't be effected at all by Biden's tax plan. The funds you make in excess of $400k will be the only funds effected. That means that if you make $450k, only that $50k will be taxed at the higher bracket rate than the bulk of your income.

Tax the wealthy, and let's get some bridges and stuff please?

Disrespecting the anthem isn't nearly as offensive as telling people how to protest. Ours is the only country with a national anthem at every sporting event. We sound crazy to people from other countries. The fact is that Colin Kaepernick was trying to highlight some real grievances with real, known, and simple solutions. The 8 Can't Wait project highlights those steps much better than I ever could. The fact is that a moment of silent kneeling brought about a movement, and that our country has been persecuting people of color for centuries. Google Critical Race Theory for more here. Other forms of protest have been similarly denied their due, and so here we are. We saw the protests in our cities. We've seen the video of George Floyd getting murdered over a $20 bill. We've heard all about Breonna Taylor. We've been completely ignoring the concerns Colin Kaepernick and others were trying to tell you about and it matters. Black Lives Matter more than your anthem, your flag, or any sport ever will. You aren't supposed to be pledging allegiances to a flag, the land, the law, or any one president, you're pledging allegiances to a people indivisible and regardless of race or religion or anything else. Until you can honor that pledge, your words are as meaningless as the contents of my toilet.

Not understanding the science of climate change is not an argument against it. It's complex, but not insurmountable. It's more than just where trash goes, it's also things like the large change in the gas types in our atmosphere since the industrial age began. It's also the way chemicals keep ruining our water supplies. It's also the way that the global sea level is rising, the temperature of our earth is increasing. It's the way that weather is becoming more extreme. It's the way that the evidence of these facts, and their causes, are all extremely well documented. These are all proven fact which are no longer denied by any reputable scientist today. The steps needed vary from simple to difficult, but they're necessary, and they'll stimulate our economy beyond what we can imagine today. The projects required to redo what our grandparents built will be enormous, and they'll require upkeep. Upkeep that will improve the lives of those working those positions.

0 notes

chameleonspell · 7 years ago

Text

198: sunder

Iriel ran his hand along the bookshelf, fingers gathering dust as they jumped from spine to spine, specks of atrophied leather flaking away. Mzuleft had been far more well preserved than this ruin. But then, Mzuleft had been sealed. Not used as a workshop-slash-drinks-cabinet by an ash vampire for centuries. An ash vampire currently lying out in the hall, its bulbous yet withered ash yam of a head caved in.

Once, the discovery of so many Dwemer texts would have sent Ire into paroxysms of academic glee. Now, his first reaction was exhaustion at the mere thought of coercing his soap-bubble attention-span through so much information. Next came muted sorrow that he'd never succeed, quickly subverted by guilty relief he didn't have to try. At least it took the pressure off. At random, he pulled out an ancient volume, and opened it across the rusted iron desk. Dwemeris script, angular and precise. "Can you read it?" Julan asked. His voice echoed strangely among the brass pipes and valves, backed by the dim vibrato of restless machinery, deeper in the ruin. Suppressing a smile at Julan's optimism, Ire shook his head. "Not any more. But it's in the same handwriting as the others, and the blueprints on the wall. Diagrams and formulas... these are the notes of someone recording their experiments. Over a very long time, judging by the number of volumes." "Kagrenac?" "I think so." "What was he doing?" "I have no idea. I'd have to take them to Baladas." "You used to have lots of ideas." Julan scrutinised him, as if he thought furrowing his brows hard enough might let him see into Iriel's brain. "You've really forgotten everything you learned about the Dwemer? You're sure it's not just... locked up in your head, somewhere, waiting to be found again?" "What does it matter? I should still take the books to Baladas. I was being selfish, before, trying to hoard my discoveries, when I knew he was the expert. What's important is that this knowledge is used to make the world a better place." Julan's eyes flickered to the far end of the table, where a brass hammer lay, perfect in its symmetry. Deceptively small. "I'm not sure it's that kind of knowledge," he said. Iriel shrugged. "It's just a tool. To build or break. Both are sometimes necessary." "You sound so... Altmer." Julan, sitting on an iron keg, folded his arms on the table and narrowed his eyes at the hammer. Holding it, he claimed, made him feel huge and leaden, like a Steam Centurion. For all that it was impossibly heavy for its size, it was very difficult to put down. "Nothing I said was especially Altmeri," Iriel tutted, turning another page. "You only think that because you dislike what I said, and you want to assign the reason to something simple and unalterable, such as race, so you can dismiss my point without considering it." Julan huffed and rolled his eyes, as Ire continued: "If anything, my words were more akin to something Sotha Sil might say. It was his idea to use the tools to tap the divinity of the Heart, you know." "Yeah, well. That'll be why I don't like it, then." Julan slumped lower, suspicion churning uneasily in every movement: arms, shoulders, jaw. "And I still don't trust Vivec." "You don't have to. You heard the announcement in Ghostgate - we're free agents, now. The Nerevarine, whoever that may be, is no longer persecuted, but a champion of the Tribunal, authorised to act in their stead." "And I don't get why he needs a champion, when he has an entire Temple army. Besides, even a weakened god has to be stronger than the two of us. He's up to something, but what? If he really doesn't expect us to return the tools to him... and he gave us Wraithguard... then what?" Julan’s nails drummed a hollow rhythm against the table. "Those dreams at Ghostgate... you don't think he wants us to use the tools on the Heart ourselves, do you?" "And become gods?" Ire snorted, sending a wave of dust from the brittle parchment. "No. He was warning us, teaching us. Showing us how to fail, so that we might not." He smoothed the ancient pages with a careful hand. "Baladas was wrong about something," he said. "Knowledge is worth nothing, in itself. Whatever we learn must be shared, used to further our collective understanding. To stop others making the same mistakes as the Tribunal, Dagoth Ur, and the Dwemer." "You said you didn't remember what the Dwemer did." "What?" Ire looked up, blinking. "I don't." "Then how do you know they made a mistake?" "I..." Iriel paused, fingers jerking, sending long shadows snaking across the table from the candle at his elbow. "I really don't remember what I wrote in my report, but... I do remember other things. Dreams, echoes. Dream-echoes. Something went horribly wrong, for the Dwemer. For the Tribunal... it went horribly right." "And for Dagoth Ur?" A shudder. "Just... horribly." "What else do you remember?" "How not to fail." His voice was dry and papery as the book before him. "How to sever the dead divinity of Lorkhan from this world, and stop people feeding off his corpse, like scavengers. I wasn't sure, until we found the other tools, but now... I can feel it." "How?" "It's an enchantment. Several of them, layered like notes in a chord around the Heart by Kagrenac, so he could channel and direct its power. Tonal enchantments... half magic, half music. Now that I know what I'm listening for, I can sense it, even from here." "And you're going to... what? Figure out how to trigger it, like that teleport glyph you opened?" "No. I'm going to do something far blunter than that. The magical brute-force overload to end all overloads. Unsophisticated, Helende would say. Breaking a lock, not picking it. In musical terms... oh gods, I don't know. Hurling your lyre through the Orchidite Window of the Alinor High Temple in the middle of the Mourning Solitaire?" He grimaced. "I don't know what will happen after that, but it's going to be messy." "I'll bet. You're sure this is what Vivec wants?" "I think so. What the Tribunal are doing with the Heart of Lorkhan... it may look prettier than what Dagoth Ur is doing, from the outside, but on the inside, it's not so different, and it needs to end. It's not a healthy relationship." "Then why not end it themselves? They chose this, and they kept on choosing it. Why didn't they destroy the Heart long ago, if they think it's such a great idea?" Ire looked up, candle-flames flickering in his steady eyes. "Because they're addicts, love. Vivec... he's self-aware enough to realise it, but... he's in withdrawal. He knows if he was near the Heart himself, he wouldn't be able to resist. He's a god, but his divinity is the source of his sickness, it's exactly the wrong sort of strength. That's why he needs a champion, that's why he's asking for help. From a neutral party, because it can't be anyone too close to him, whose faith might be tarnished by the knowledge. Soon, that faith will be all he has left." "And the others, Almalexia and Sotha Sil? Did they agree to this? Has Vivec even told them?!" Iriel gave an awkward shrug, bent over the book again. "Severance is always painful. That doesn't stop it from being necessary, sometimes. Slaves not being equipped to handle freedom isn't an argument against them having it, only for care in the cutting, support on the landing. And I have no idea what support an ex-god would need. It'll hurt. Worse than hurt, perhaps." "You mean... if we destroy the heart, it could kill them? And you still think this is what Vivec wants?" Ire turned pages for a while, too fast for reading. "I don't have the brain to appreciate them the way I used to," he said, "but from what I recall, Vivec's later writings have this ongoing preoccupation with... annihilation. With destroying and replacing things that have served their purpose, or were mistakes from the beginning. He seems... frustrated. Worried that the needs of the people will change, and he won't be able to meet them. That the Dunmer must learn to break free of the things that are holding them back. You begin to suspect he means himself. That, read a certain way, the Sermons are almost... his will. Or the longest suicide note ever, a writ of self-execution. There's certainly something terribly Mephalan about it all." "Maybe he can't live with himself any more. Maybe the guilt of murdering Nerevar weighs too heavily on him." Iriel gave him a searching look. "Are you really so certain they killed him?" "What? You don't buy into that Temple propaganda, do you?!" "All the sources, even the most anti-Tribunal ones based on Alandro Sul's words to the Ashlanders, record that Nerevar was mortally wounded when he was carried from Red Mountain. Sul was injured too, blinded, some say, and likely not even present when Nerevar consulted his queen and advisers. Of course he was devastated to hear that his shield-brother was dead, afterwards. Of course he was riddled with survivor's guilt, and wanted someone to blame, other than himself, for failing to protect his lord. But the Tribunal didn't need to kill Nerevar, he was already dying." "Tilde says there's a coded bit in Vivec's poetry, where he admits he did it." "Mm. She also says it's barely even a code, and a child could crack it. More importantly... an explicit confession, from someone like Vivec? You'd take that at face value?" "Why confess, if he didn't do it?" "Why confess at all?" Ire's finger idled against a page, tapping and spiralling. "Have you never... felt unable to contradict terrible lies someone told about you? Even... wanted people to hear them, because then you'd finally know what they really thought of you, find out what they were willing to believe? See who, if anyone, would defend your innocence?" "No. People always made their opinions about me pretty clear. What're you--?" "And... it's irrational, but... if you feel guilty about something... if there was someone who loved you, but you failed to live up to that love, whether through betrayal of an oath, or just... constantly falling below their hopes and expectations until you'd ruined everything... if it's too late for you to fix that mistake, perhaps there's a certain appeal, in being blamed for something worse. A warped form of atonement." "I think you're taking this too personally." "Perhaps. I just know that guilt is strange. Self-hatred is strange. I doubt that divinity makes it less so." A shrug, as he closed the book. "And then, of course, Vehk is a poet. Perhaps he thought making himself Nerevar's killer would be the perfect metaphor. But surely the real place he murdered Nerevar is in his writings, where he condemns him to history as a blundering dullard, stumbling after his teacher, misunderstanding his wisdom." "Uh huh. And how about selling us out to the Empire, and torturing dissidents? Was all that for poetic effect, too?" "I'm not defending everything he did. But I do find it hard to blame Vivec for making himself divine. For finding a way to sever himself forever from the person he used to be." "Pity he became a worse one, doing it." "Mhm." Ire shifted position, expression, nothing holding still long enough to give a firm guide to his opinion. "He sought godhood as a way to endure himself, but it didn't work. He wasn't a perfect god like the Aedra, how could he be? He was still mortal when he designed himself. His divinity was always a mixture of contradictions and flaws, however gloriously gilded, but once formed, he was static. He lost the ability to change, to grow. And stasis, as he tells us again and again in the Lessons, is nothing. It's addiction to the thing that holds you above the spikes, out of the pit, but it's an illusion, because you're already in the trap. Stuck there, unless you're willing to chew off a limb... or a heart. Or ask someone to cut you free. Either way, you might not survive the journey to freedom. You still might choose to risk it." Moving to the bookcase, Iriel replaced the journal carefully on the shelf. "The thing about survivors, Caius once told me, is that it's often best not to ask what they did, in order to survive. Vivec cut his mortality away. Now he needs to cut his divinity, away, too." He turned back to Julan, fingers interwoven. "Perhaps you're right, and I'm taking it too personally, but... I want to view it positively. A painful rebirth from his own simulacrum." He gave a wan smile, shrugged. "Or just letting go of a coping mechanism he doesn't need any more." "Sorry." Julan rubbed at his forehead with both hands, eyes closed. "I don't mean to argue with you, I'm just tired. There's little enough chance to sleep here, and when I do..." "The dreams. I know." Iriel crossed the floor to where Julan was sitting, and began stroking his temples, gently massaging his brow. "I don't know why he even bothers. He's hardly likely to convert us now, is he?" "Maybe he's scared." Julan dragged a weary smile from somewhere, settling his arm around Ire's hips. Silence for a while, then: "Want to know a secret? I used to wonder if Dagoth Ur was right, if maybe the Nerevarine was supposed to join him, not defeat him. Return the tools that were entrusted to him by Nerevar, and then stolen from him by the Tribunal. I mean, that makes sense, right? In a Bal Molagmer sort of way." His tone was light, but an increased tension beneath Ire's fingers betrayed the shame of the admission. "That's not why I thought it, though," he added, his voice dulling. "I was angry, bitter. I thought any change for Morrowind would be better than living under the Empire's thumb, beneath the mockery of false gods. Don't get me wrong, I still hate the whole pack of them, but my hatred's not that blind. I can see that the change the Sharmat wants is pure destruction. It's burning without having anything to plant in its ashes, breaking things apart without knowing how to build. He can't help my people, only use them. I'm no poet, but if I was trying to make it a metaphor, then the return of Nerevar has to mean something else." "What is required by the ever-changing mortal agenda, the will of critical harvest?" Ire was biting the inside of his cheek. "You keep saying Morrowind needs this story of the Nerevarine facing down evil against impossible odds," he said, "but what happens if we fail? What kind of story is that? I thought you hated tragedies." Julan ground his jaw for a while. "Maybe," he said, "it's one where the heroes prove themselves through the things they attempt, not the things they succeed at. And... that's comforting, right? Because you can't always succeed, but you can always try. Aagh! Not so hard on my neck!" Ire snatched back his hands. "Sorry!" he gasped, "I forgot. How is it doing, by the way?" "Still hurts if I turn it too far dusk, but it's mostly just stiffness. It was good what you were doing before, if you want to carry on." He grinned up at Ire. "You're getting a preview of what I'll be like as a fussy old man with bad joints, I'm afraid." His grin faded. "What'd I say? Listen, I'm not dying up here, and neither are you. I told you, I'm not letting that happen, so you don't have to... worry... about..." He trailed off, eyes widening. And Iriel suddenly regretted the many hours Julan had spent studying his face like an astrologer divining the future in the heavens, learning to read his mayfly moods in each frozen glance and twitching frown. Because now, Ire had nowhere to hide the fact it wasn't just anxious fear in his eyes. It was concealment and guilt, and Julan knew it was, and Ire knew that he knew, and Julan knew that Ire knew that-- Julan's voice struck the silence like a hammer: "What?" Iriel swallowed. "Sweetheart, there's... something we need to discuss." next: 199: keening previous: 197: fire beginning: 1: numb

#howtodisappearcompletely

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live4thelord-blog1 · 6 years ago

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Blessing or Woe: You Decide. A Homily for the 6th Sunday of the Year

Msgr. Charles Pope • February 16, 2019 • 0 Comments

Fra Angelico, Convent of San Marco (1445)

The Gospel passage this Sunday is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. Being paradoxical, they are difficult to understand. We do not usually refer to the poor as blessed, but rather the well off; we do not typically call those who mourn blessed, but rather the joyful.

The word “beatitude” itself means “supreme blessedness.” In ancient Greek, makarios (blessed) referred to a deep, serene, and stable happiness largely unaffected by external matters. It also corresponds to the Hebrew word asher, which is more of an exclamation.

Each beatitude could easily be translated to begin in this way: “O, the blessedness of ….” Such a translation emphasizes that something is being described and experienced rather than prescribed.

So, it is critical to understand that beatitude is not something we achieve; rather, it is something we receive. The Beatitudes declare an objective reality as the result of a divine act. The use of the indicative mood in the passage should be taken seriously; we should not turn it into an imperative. In other words, as noted, the Beatitudes are more descriptions than prescriptions. Jesus is not simply saying that we should be poor or meek and then God will bless us. Rather, He is saying that this is what the transformed human person is like; this is what happens to us when He lives His life in us and transforms us; this is what our life is like when His grace and the power of His cross bring about in us a greater meekness and poverty of spirit—we will experience being blessed.

This helps to explain the paradox of some of the Beatitudes. We are still blessed even when we are poor, or mourning, or persecuted. Further, we are confirmed in blessedness by such realities because they serve as reminders that we are not at home in this world; God and His kingdom are our preoccupation and the source of our true beatitude.

In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes there are also woes described for those who reject the Lord’s offer. Let’s pair them up and consider them together, seeing the choice the Lord presents in each case: blessing or woe.

Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.

Who are the poor? They are those who, by God’s grace, have their true treasure in Heaven rather than on earth. They are poor to this world but rich to God. They have learned to depend on Him and are not obsessed with the passing riches of this world.

All of us are dependent on God, but we may not realize it. The poor in spirit are those who have come to peace in the knowledge that they depend on God for every beat of their heart, for every good thing they have. Humans strongly resist any such sense of dependence or lack of control. Many people strive to acquire wealth, power, and possessions in order to create the illusion that they are in control—they are not. Ultimately this whole system will fail; it is a recipe for frustration and unhappiness.

Further, control is like an addictive drug. The more we get, the more we need in order to feel less anxious. Our modern age illustrates this. Consider, for example, modern medicine, through which we can control things we never could before. Are all our fears gone as a result? No. Humans have never lived so long nor been so healthy, yet we have never been so anxious about our health. Our medicine cabinets are filled with prescriptions and over-the-counter medications, but we still worry! Control is an illusion, an addiction all its own. In the end, it seems we can never have enough of it to feel sufficiently “safe.”

How blessed are those who delight in depending on God, who realize that every beat of their heart is His gift and that everything they have is from Him and belongs to Him! They are blessed because they are free from the countless fears that flow from an endless quest for illusory control.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

It’s nice to be rich, but if that’s all you live for, that’s all you’ll get. When it’s over it’s over, and then comes the judgment. Paradoxically, the only way to retain riches is to give them away or use them in serving others. Jesus instructs,

Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also will be (Matt 6:20).

St. Paul says,

Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be conceited and not to put their hope in the uncertainty of wealth, but in God, who richly provides all things for us to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, and to be generous and ready to share, treasuring up for themselves a firm foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life (1 Tim 6:17-19).

If we hoard wealth when others are in need or use our wealth in unjust ways, we may enjoy comforts in this world, but a stern judgment awaits. Live with the final judgment in mind; share and be generous. Jesus warns of woe that will come to those who resist his grace to be generous.

Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.

All of us hunger physically, but the important thing is to hunger for God and the things waiting for us in Heaven. Many people hunger for anything but God—wealth, power, popularity, the latest fad.

It is in our hunger that we make room for God. It is then that we seek Him.

How blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness and justice of God and the values of His Kingdom! God will satisfy them with the joy of living under His law and they will rejoice to see the wisdom of His ways. They hunger for God’s Word and devour it when they find it. They rejoice to see God put sin to death in them and bring about virtue. They are excited and satisfied at what God is doing in their life. They are blessed indeed.

But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.

If we are filled with the things of this world, there is no room for God. Worldly things can only satisfy temporarily; being finite they cannot fill the infinite longing we have. We were made to know and love God; He alone can satisfy our longing. If we refuse this true food and true drink (see John 6:55), which is Christ Himself in the Eucharist, there awaits only a longing that will one day be permanent if we reject the Lord to the end. The Lord warns of woe to those who resist His gift to feed them with His Body and Blood and fill their minds with His Word.

Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.

Who are those who weep? First, they are those who are not obsessed with emotional happiness and who accept sorrow as a part of life. Their sorrow is not about merely worldly things. They weep because they delight in the Kingdom of Heaven yet see the awful state of most of God’s people. They see so many who do not know God nor why they were created. They see people willfully locked in sin and darkness. They see still others who are victims of the sins of injustice and oppression. Because of these things they weep, mourn, and pray. This beatitude is the basis of intercessory prayer and deepening love for sinners. Because we mourn, we pray for the world.

Again, the object of this beatitude is rooted in the Kingdom of God and its values, not the passing values of this world. If our car gets scratched or the stock market goes down and we may mourn, but that’s not the subject of this beatitude.

How blessed are those who mourn over what really matters and who pray! They will laugh in the sense that God will console, strengthen, and encourage them. He will cause their mourning to bear fruit in prayer and action for others. To mourn in this way is to be blessed. It is a grief that “hurts so good,” because we know that it brings abundant blessings for the world as it intensifies our prayer and our own commitment to God and His Kingdom.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.

Rejoicing with the world is like celebrating on the Titanic before it hits the iceberg. The ride is wonderful for a while but then comes the cold and unforgiving depths. Too many in our world live frivolous lives. They “major in the minors.” They call good or no big deal what God calls sin; they even celebrate it and praise it. Jesus says, woe to them. While there are things to enjoy in this world, there is also much to lament. Sin and injustice, moral darkness, and confusion are nothing to celebrate. The Lord warns of woe to those who do not let Him transform their hearts so that they grieve over sin and darkness.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

In life we are going to suffer, so it might as well be for something decent and noble. How blessed are those who, because they love God and His kingdom, are hated by this world! At least they share a common lot with Jesus. They know that only false prophets are loved by all. There is a paradoxical serenity that comes from this sort of persecution because it is a sign that we are no longer of this world, that the world has lost its hold on us and thus hates us (Jn 15:19). Forsaking this world and being hated by it, they are blessed, because the Kingdom of God is theirs in abundance.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.

If the world is cheering for you, you’re playing on the wrong team, the losing team. The “world” is the set of philosophies, power structures, and inclinations at odds with the teachings and truths of God. A friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (James 4:4). Jesus says,

If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. Remember the word that I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well (Jn 15:18-20).

Jesus warns of woe to those who pitch their tents in this world. It is passing away as are all those who seek its friendship. Jesus warns of the woe that comes from being too friendly with a lost and sinful world.

In all these ways, the Lord paints a kind of picture for us of the transformed human person. He shows us what happens to us as He lives His life in us.

Decisions have consequences. Depending on our choice to let God work in our life or not, there is either blessing or woe. Choose the blessings, dear brethren, choose the blessings.

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recentanimenews · 5 years ago

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My Hero Academia's Invisible Girl Is The Saddest Character In Anime

Movies and TV series are not short on depressing characters. From The Green Mile's persecuted gentle giant John Coffey, to Breaking Bad's intelligent but often misguided Jesse Pinkman, there's no end to tragic characters whose very existence leaves you in dire need of a puppy GIF or two.

Anime is no different. Neglected, abused, forced to murder Crona of SoulEater and mentally/emotionally broken Ken Konecki of TokyoGhoul can attest to that. But maybe, just maybe, the saddest character in all of anime (and maybe anything ever?) doesn't have an intensely violent or depressing origin story. Maybe they don't brood in their overwhelming doom and gloom. Maybe the saddest character in anime is a perky girl in a school uniform.

Toru Hagakure -- or, the Invisible Girl -- seems upbeat, cheery, and peppy. But there's good reason to suspect an existential crisis is gnawing deep inside her teenage brain. Hagakure is at a time in her life when she is supposed to be forming her personality, learning who she is, who she wants to be, and how that should or should not inform her relationships. Part of Hagakure's ability to experiment with her own identity has been stripped from her.

To be fair, there's something quite liberating about Hagakure's friends being unable to know what she looks like -- being body-shamed or harassed over her body would likely be more difficult. But this also makes it more difficult for Hagakure to experiment with different looks -- something that is very common with people her age. (No goth phase? No, thank you.) This might seem shallow at first - who cares if someone can't see what they look like in a mini-skirt and combat boots or an over-sized pair of jeans? At least she can't see any teenage acne! Some people would give up one of their own hands if it meant never having to go through a pimple phase.

But don't forget, Hagakure now has to watch all of her friends go through these phases, embracing or rejecting them, and ultimately finding their perfect fit. We know this occurs in the My Hero Academia world, given how much attention is given to the young ladies' formal wear in the feature film My Hero Academia: Two Heroes and how justifiably excited Class 1-A gets over their new superhero costumes. It should not go unnoticed that Hagakure's superhero ensemble gets little fanfare from her classmates. Hagakure is vying for fame and notoriety like the rest of her friends, but she's going to have an uphill battle on her hands, which she is absolutely already aware of.

Now imagine that, not only do your friends not know what you look like, but neither do you. There are about 36 million people in the world who cannot see. We really aren't exposed to many people with disabilities in the series outside of those who are injured on the job. Does My Hero's world carry the same statistics? Either way, Hagakure would have to be quite unique in that, while she cannot see her own face, she can see literally everyone else's. The only person whose appearance is a mystery to her is her own. How does this not lead Hagakure into a deep identity crisis? How is she not constantly spiraling from deep-seated insecurities and issues with self-esteem? Because she desperately clings to any sense of normalcy she can.

Why would the Invisible Girl care if her teammate looks her way after she's removed her clothes to go all sneaky spy? Does she not know she's invisible? Yes, of course, she does. And you can bet she feels awkward and uncomfortable walking around as a nude teenager, too. This is something she has to grapple with every time she's in her super suit and there's no way this isn't affecting her mentally. Her response -- despite the fact that she clearly knows her situation is so different -- is incredibly normal and grounded.

So, then, why did the Invisible Girl get so excited when the boys tricked their female classmates into wearing cheerleader costumes at the tournament? It makes sense to assume that Hagakure revels in normalcy every time she can get it. She leads such a unique, singular existence that when she has the ability to behave as a normal teenage girl would, she holds onto it with all she's got.

There's even a somewhat in-universe precedent for this admittedly over-analyzation of Hagakure. It's not uncommon for a character in the My Hero world to struggle to co-exist with their quirks, prompting the creation of a resource -- quirk counseling -- to help kids come to grips with their newfound powers. Hagakure's gonna be OK.

What's a surprising anime character that you think has had a rough go at life? Let us know in the comments!

----

Carolyn also writes for Bunny Ears and Cracked. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. She would also like to credit her husband for the inspiration for this article.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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elizabethleslie7654 · 6 years ago

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Power and Competence are Very Different Things

all kinds of cool jewelry and no shipping or getting mobbed t the mall

What has brought the West into its current existential predicament is the unfortunate dynamic of our elite having great power coupled with breathtaking incompetence. There’s not a single important facet in which one can make a convincing case that they know what they’re doing. Let’s review a few.

Economics

America has spent the last couple decades shuttering over 50,000 factories, while simultaneously importing millions of the worst refuse the 3rd World has to offer. Unsurprisingly, White birthrates have plummeted, and the average life expectancy is dropping. Wealth inequality has soared, along with personal and government debts exacerbated by unfunded liabilities so vast they make the debt levels seem insignificant.

For many young people, the baby boomer lives of reproduction and prosperity that their parents were pursing at the same age seems like an unattainable fantasy. Entire cities like Detroit and Baltimore have been reduced to violent wastelands. This is not a difficult picture to catch sight of at all, and yet when the people in charge look at it, they simply cannot grasp what’s going on.

Every Mexican and Somali coming in represents cheap labor for them and more customers for corporations like Walmart. Plus, there’s even more tenants for Section 8 properties. What’s not to like? They’re so myopic that they cannot understand that each of these people represent a net financial loss for the country, which is a wildly unsustainable endeavor.

The meager value of the work being done by the emerging majority doesn’t pay for the services they receive. That’s why much of their jobs, like cutting lawns, used to be done by American teenagers. Yes, your maid is cheap, but not her SNAP benefits, housing, medical care, and schooling for her children. From an abundance of financial, economic, and statistical measures, it’s hard not to notice that we’ve been in a precipitous decline as the country’s demographics have changed. Again, this is quite a simple set of parallel trends to grasp. It’s really disconcerting that people with access to so much aggregate information seem unable to discern it.

Israel

It’s no secret that Jews, through the (((mainstream media))) and lobbying organizations such as AIPAC, exercise control over any aspect of our foreign policy that concerns their ethnostate. And yet, besides siphoning untold billions of our tax dollars, what good have they done?

Consider the brilliant plan to destroy Iraq. This was an endeavor undertaken mainly to create a better strategic situation for Israel by overthrowing an unfriendly secular Arab government which imposed stability over a fractious domestic situation. Replacing it with a puppet of the US was supposed to be so neat and simple. As it turns out, that’s only what happened in white papers written by murderous idiots like Richard Perle and Bill Kristol.

Netanyahu promised a slavishly obsequious congress that this would have “positive reverberations throughout the Middle East.” Of course, it hasn’t worked out that way. Millions of Iraqis were put through a horrific travesty. Iran’s influence is much greater now that the Shia majority has been unleashed. Israel is in a more dangerous position than ever.

Did anybody learn their lesson? Nope. It’s on to overthrowing the legitimate government of Syria. Did that succeed? No, and once again the regional security situation for Israel has deteriorated further. Moreover, nearly 20 years of this nonsense has provoked a massive Semitic-awareness movement, because their unwarranted power and it’s profoundly negative consequences are impossible to ignore. If you don’t want Americans to be angry at Jews, then simply not jamming them through a meat grinder would have been a far superior strategy. That sort of ordeal forces people to notice. They’ll never learn.

Russia

Once the Cold War was over, it was the assumption of the average person that tensions with Russia would naturally decrease. The nations would retain their nuclear arsenals, but lots of money could be saved because we don’t need to mutually assure each other of our ability to destroy the world several times over. It seemed reasonable back then that the capability to do it once would suffice. The domestic situation in the US is so fraught that confronting Russia is the last thing normal people care about.

The Russians didn’t overthrow the Mexican Government so that they could hold massive military drills in Tijuana or Juarez. The Russian Navy isn’t making a show of force in the Gulf of Mexico. Stuff like the Cuban Missile Crisis was supposed to be a cautionary tale from history class. Instead, we’re playing an incredibly dangerous game of making absurd lies about how Russia hacked our democracy while provoking them just under the level that would start armed confrontation. The end goal seems to be instigating some sort of general collapse in Russia itself. Hopefully, it doesn’t get out of hand.

Don’t reach across the planet to poke a giant bear with a stick. That’s basic common sense, but it just doesn’t apply in DC. Russians have priorities like sobering up, getting the birthrate to a sustainable level, and developing their economy so that they never again have to endure a period like the 1990s. These are all expensive initiatives that leave little enthusiasm for a new arms race. Developing doomsday weapons such as nuclear torpedoes or hyper-sonic warheads require resources that they’d rather allocate toward existential domestic concerns.

Where do they go from here?

We’ve been living through a master class on how to pack powder keg. It’s almost as if our elites have been reading from a textbook on how to facilitate civil unrest. Take a productive, prosperous country, then, undermine the economy while importing hostile aliens to displace the historical population upon which its functionality depends. Manufacture and subsidize their grievances. Call them the “Coalition of the Ascendant,” and viciously persecute anyone who seeks to preserve their own heritage or question why becoming a minority is a good thing.

The most important thing to do you’ve after unwittingly fomented an existential crisis is to make sure that anyone who expresses dissent or proposes practical solutions is deplatformed, not just from the internet, but the economy entirely, right down to their gym membership. See, this is because the key to conflict resolution is civil dialogue. The ability to air one’s grievances and engage in discussion with others in a peaceful manner acts as a pressure relief valve. The people in charge won’t let that happen.

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wisdomrays · 7 years ago

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BASICS OF ISLAM :Avoiding Sins .Part1

Q: How Should People Avoid Sins, Distractions, and Temptations?

The kinds of obstacles, disasters and destructions they faced exist also today. If the Prophet called the people who try to live and serve Islam sincerely in this age, he would definitely name them as the generation of the age of disasters and destruction. For, if the streets and market-places, city centers, social and commercial business, individual and family life, schools (which nurture the rest) and all other societal entities and institutions which together make up collective life and its norms—if these were assessed one by one, the verdict on each of them would be "bad, spoiled or ruined."

"O my Lord, just as I treated that dog as a friend on account of its loyalty to us, so forgive me, such a slave of Yours, who has never left You and the gates of Your Divine Mercy and who has never prayed and bowed before anyone else but You."

What we have said so far was by way of reporting the situation we are in. Let us now look briefly at some points about what to do and how to act.

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