#i feel like i should remind that roman is my 2nd favorite side

[ethospathoslogan]

tired: roman spit yogurt at virgil bc he wanted to try out yogurting or whatever tf it was

wired: roman spit yogurt at virgil out of pettiness and he basically had an “oh, you haven’t heard?” experience

[welcome-to-lovecraft-country]

Misery Loves Company-Part 3

Pairing(s): Seth Rollins x Platonic!Female OC, Female OC x Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley x Platonic!Female OC (minor), Becky Lynch x Platonic!Female OC (minor)

Part 1/ Part 2/

After the weirdest weekend of doing the house show circuit with Roman as a mixed tag team against Erick Rowan and Natayla, it was time to go to Monday Night RAW. It is less than two weeks will be the Hell in a Cell PPV. Last year, Seth, Jon, and I were in a six-man mixed tag match with Dolph, Drew, and Ruby Riott. I am hopeful this year that creative lets me have a match. Even put me for the contender ship for Bayley’s title. Apparently, someone in creative had the great idea to have an in-ring segment with me and Seth about the Fiend situation and to have a Firefly Funhouse to interrupt us.

Fucking great. My fucking PTSD and anxiety will be rapid throughout this if the segment goes fine.

I wanted to wait until Becky’s promo against Sasha that is supposed to promote their match at Hell in a Cell to find Seth and confront him on the strange behaviors that he has been showing the past week. Dressed in my normal street clothes (a merch shirt cut into a crop top that shows off my toned stomach, black jeans, and black colored combat booties (so I can be as tall as Seth), and the infamous leather jacket that I had since coming to the main roster) walking around backstage trying to find Seth to talk to him.

The clicks of the heels hitting the pavement floors to create a loud sound that echos throughout the long hallway that has road cases on both sides of the hallway. I hear a scared welp from the corner between a road case and a wall. I walk over to see if who it was. 

It was Seth-looking he just saw the ghost of Charles Manson and threated him that he would cut off Seth’s dick and make him eat it for fun. Wearing his “Ignite the Fire shirt” and his normal black skinny jeans and his gym shoes, it looked like he was so spooked by even seeing Bray that he tried to hide until it was time to come out to the ring.

“Seth, are you okay,” I asked with a concerned tone.

“Stef, we know each other for a long fucking time. This might be the first time in a long time that I have been truly afraid.” He looks terrified via his facial expressions. I get down the floor and sit next to Seth. I also starting rubbing his shoulder for comfort.

“I am too,” Seth’s eyes look in shock towards me, “Both of us are living in a nightmare even though we should be happy. I am ready to get this over and done with. Becky, Roman and I are concerned. Becky told me about you rambling Latin at 2 am last Tuesday.”

“I want to defeat the Fiend. I really do, but I do not think Hell in a Cell will be the end of this. How do you know that that I don’t speak Latin,” he asked in confusion.

“I am your go-to travel buddy when we go on tour abroad. You can barely utter a word in Japanese without looking like a dumbass. I AM the one that is dating someone who lives in Japan for the majority of a year.” We both laugh. It creates a sense of comfort that it seemed like it was lost.

Seth gets up and he held out his hand to me to help me up. “Come on, we need to address the fans about the Fiend. ALL OF US need to stick together no matter what. I know that Becky and I’s relationship is serious and new and you and Kenny’s is still something that I need to deal with. You will forever be my little sister in my life, Canary.”

“Like I said when you told me, if you hurt her or me, I will cut off your dick and feed it to you.” Seth laughs as I make my statement clear.

 As we walk to Gorilla, I got him caught up on Jon’s condition during his injury and how Kenny (in character) is not taking it very well. In return, he tells me about his wrestling school and coffee shop back in his home in Iowa. Also, he keeps reminding me to come out and visit our days off. His music hits first. The fans’ reaction to Seth is always an energetic feeling to hear. 

They truly love him (or maybe the version they see of him). A PA tells me to get ready for my entrance and hands me a mic in hand. My music hits right when Seth starts to talk. God bless the west coast, they always love when of their own comes home. Seeing fans wearing my shirt and holding up signs with my logo, my names, and my picture.

“Well, well, well. The hometown girl wants a little bit of the spotlight with the Universal Champ,” Seth says in character. Great, I am getting cocky prick Seth in this segment. This is going to be all over social media for the next 24 hours.

“You know what, Sethie, I know that in a few days you will be facing the Fiend inside Hell in a Cell. I am surprised you are not nervous at all things considering. I know this past summer you were more concerned being around “The Man” than understand that the threat of The Fiend looms large.” Seth looks at with a smug smirk on his face. The crowd cheers for my comments, some of them are started chanting for Becky.

“Stefanie. Seattle’s own Stefanie Rox. My personal favorite member of the SHIELD. We have known each other for a long time. I am the inaugural NXT Champion. You were 2nd woman to hold the NXT Women’s Championship and you are a former RAW women’s champion. Why are you so concerned about me? Or maybe you are holding a grudge for the past couple of years?” The crowd around it was reacting to Seth’s comment with a reaction that I haven’t heard in a long time. Seth trying to get the heel heat tonight.

“Maybe, yes. You did hit in the back with a steel chair. After all these years that I have known you, you never had a challenger to one of your titles like the Fiend. He destroyed Balor which if I remember correctly in the man that you “accidentally injured” during that match all of those years ago. Knowing Wyatt, he will break you mentally and physically to get that title off of you. This is unlike you being so reckless and ignorant.” 

“Ignorant? How cute of you saying that. Do you know what is ignorant between both of us? I am open and I acknowledge that I am in a relationship. If you truly do love him, Stef, why don’t you tell us his name?” Great, now we are bringing Kenny into this. Fucking great. I wish I can bring the dick pics into this. I gave Seth the look of “I fucking told you if you ever brought up my relationship onscreen without telling me first I will cut off your dick.” The crowd reacted loudly to this because of course, they would.

“You are really changing the subject. Aren’t you?”

“He really must be a very “elite” guy that you really do care about him.” Okay, great. Twitter and the dirt sheets is going to be all over this for the next couple of hours. So, I did what any person would do in this situation. I slapped him. Seth dropped to his knee and held his jaw for additional effect.

“After your injury, you kept saying that you have changed really. You always are that cocky prick that you put your hands on me out of spite. You are truly a bitch of justice.” The crowd loudly reacted to that. My automatic reaction to his comments is that if he is turning heel or not. Or this is something inside of him that is making him telling him to say these things. This is making me more and more worried. The lights and sound start cutting off in the arena. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I try to leave the ring, but the arena goes dark before I get a chance. To whoever in creative who told me that there will be an episode of Firefly Funhouse and no appearance of the Fiend during the segment, kindly go fuck off.

The creepy and eerie music filled the darkness of the arena and flashes of light illuminate the ring barely. I see that me and Seth are not alone. Panic starts to settle in. Yowie Wowie chants start within the crowd. 

He is here.

The Fiend who is making direct eye contact with me. Fucking hell.

Seth jumps the Fiend to protect me. 

The Fiend throws him off like he was nothing. Seth is panic with fear. Wyatt steps closer and closer to me. I start grabbing the turnbuckle to try to escape the ring that way. Wyatt drags me out by the hair to the center of the ring. I scream for Seth or anyone to help me. Seth being Seth. He is wearing a curious, yet scared look on his face.

 Sitting down in the corner of the ring. Wyatt picks me up by the hair. The mask’s lips touch my forehead. I tried to pull away from him, but there was no use. One of his gloved hand touches his face. I could not tell if which one it was. He looked back down me with his reddish-yellow eyes. He locks in the mandible claw on me. My muffled screams still let out. Wyatt drops me down to the mat of the ring, still having the mandible claw locked in my mouth.

Wyatt moves my head towards Seth. Making Seth look at me and my attacker. I start to reach out to him. He starts smirking and laughing alongside The Fiend. 

"What the fuck is going on," I ask myself. Tears start coming to my eyes-ruining my eye makeup.

Seth's stoned facial expressions make me more scared. Seth rolls out the ring underneath the bottom rope. I start to lose consciousness. My body and heart are filled with regret and betrayal for the second time in my life. I hope to God that Becky, Roman, and Jon are not watching this. The lights and the sounds stop. The Fiend releases his hold on me and leaves as I pass out.

[astridstorm]

Doubt, A Passionate Exercise

Good morning everybody, once again. If you’re just joining us you can access the bulletin below this video but you’re also welcome to just listen. And once more: I hope everyone is healthy and well. Deacon Susie and I have all of you in our prayers, and please, please reach out to us if you have anyone in your life who is struggling or unwell right now. 

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, but it has several other names by which it’s informally known. One comes from the Eastern Church, where today is sometimes called Holy Humor Sunday. That’s based on an old text by one of the early Church Fathers (or theologians) who said that Easter was God’s way of playing a trick on the devil. And so on Holy Humor Sunday the custom is for the priest to tell jokes in place of the sermon. 

You’ll be relieved to know I will not be doing that. 

Another name by which today is informally known comes from the Roman Catholic tradition: Divine Mercy Sunday. This to me is very strange. But evidently a mystic named St. Faustina had a series of visions in the early 20th century showing her that if people showed up to church the Sunday after Easter they would receive enough mercy (and I’m not making this up) to skip right over limbo and go straight to paradise when they died. Which sounds like a shameless ploy to get people to come to church on this day.

Bringing us to the next name for the second Sunday of Easter: Low Sunday, for the low attendance we typically see today.

And then finally, there’s a name for today that gets used a lot in the Episcopal Church: Doubting Thomas Sunday. Our Gospel reading from John is always the same, every year, and it features Thomas, the disciple who needed to see Jesus for himself in order to believe.

Thomas was a disciple of some renown in the years after the resurrection. Deacon Susie has preached to us in the past about his legendary journey to India, where you can still find today “Thomas Christians” as they’re sometimes called. In our Bible study Wednesday we got to talking about a Gospel attributed to the followers of Thomas. It’s called the Gospel of Thomas. It was found in 1945, in a cave in Egypt where it had been preserved for almost two thousand years. It was translated and published and gave us an incredible amount of insight into early Christianity. 

Our four Gospels (Matthew Mark Luke and John) tell stories, parables, teachings, and miracles, and they’re set in Galilee and Judea. The Gospel of Thomas is more like a book of aphorisms, told by Jesus, aphorisms like:

“If you do not come to know yourselves, then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty.”

“Love your brother like your life! Protect him like the apple of your eye!”

“If two make peace with one another in one and the same house, (then) they will say to the mountain: ‘Move away,’ and it will move away.”

And finally one of my favorites, very Zen-like: “Become passers by.”

There is a theory in Christian scholarship that the writer of John’s Gospel was at odds with the writer (or writers) of Thomas’ Gospel. These two had different and competing ideas of who Jesus was, and we know who won: John’s Gospel has been published in every Bible for 1,700 years. Thomas’ Gospel was buried in a cave.

This theory, that the two were in competition with each other, might explain why Thomas doesn’t come off so great in John’s Gospel. He sounds almost like a child in our reading for today: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

And then the real dig at Thomas, John’s conclusion to the story: “blessed are those who [unlike Thomas!] have not seen, and yet believe.” 

“Yesterday’s heresy is today’s dogma.” I don’t remember who said that, but if Thomas, through much of Christian history, was frowned upon, he is, today, one of the most relatable and even admired of the disciples. Doubt deepens our faith. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to let ourselves call comfortable assumptions into question.  

For many years at my parish upstate, I would give myself a needed break after Easter and read the preface to the play Doubt by John Patrick Shanley. The play is great, but the preface is worth the whole book. It’s been years since I’ve looked back at this, but it still sends chills down my spine, it is so good. 

Here’s some of what he wrote:

“Let me ask you. Have you ever held a position in an argument past the point of comfort? Have you ever defended a way of life you were on the verge of exhausting? Have you ever given service to a creed you no longer utterly believed? Have you ever told a girl you loved her and felt the faint nausea of eroding conviction? I have. That’s an interesting moment. For a playwright, it’s the beginning of an idea.[...]

“What is doubt? Each of us is like a planet. There’s a crust, which seems eternal. We are confident about who we are. If you ask, we can readily describe our current state. I know the answers to so many questions, as do you. What was your father like? Do you believe in God? Who’s your best friend? What do you want? Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so. Because under that face of easy response, there is another you. And this wordless being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid and wordless, until the resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.

It is doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth… There is an uneasy time when belief has begun to slip, but hypocrisy has yet to take hold. It is the most dangerous, important, and ongoing experience of life.The beginning of Change is the moment of Doubt. Doubt requires more courage than conviction does... [Doubt] is a passionate exercise.”

All you Thomas Christians out there, and I suspect many of us are, today is your day. If Easter Day seems too full of certainty and conviction, the Second Sunday of Easter reminds us that behind every meaningful thing we believe, lies a welter of confusion and doubt. And that’s as it should be. Doubt is the “passionate exercise” that makes our faith stronger, more solid... more worth the effort. 

Happy Doubting Thomas Sunday, and may God’s peace be with you all. Amen.