#its what bought me to a knowledge of the church

[jewish-vents]

I went to the Jewish quarter in Toledo today and I really don’t know how to feel. I’m part Sephardi, my ancestors most likely lived here at some point. I went to the Beit Knesset they would have went to, the oldest one in Europe, I think— it’s a museum now. Part of the floor was clearly new, and part of the floor was clearly ancient. I took a picture of the ancient part, the part that my ancestors would have also stepped on. There was a cross right under the two orange windows representing the Ten Commandments that Moshe brought down, and right next to that there were Christian murals of baby angels. It was beautiful, but there was such a tangible sadness to it, deadness, almost, that I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. The non Jewish tourists didn’t notice it, and that made me even more uncomfortable

There was a gift shop right next to the Beit Knesset. They were selling menorahs, not chanukias, seven-pronged menorahs— and all I could think of was ‘who is this for? Not for the Jewish tourists who come here, obviously, menorahs are for Beitei Knesset, not for home. Who is this for?’ It felt wrong. Later on, I saw the exact same menorahs in a different shop, a street away. This isn’t Judaica— Judaica isn’t mass produced like that, normally it’s handmade. It’s made with love, with care, it’s made with a Jewish touch. None of the items in this gift shop have a Jewish touch to them. Feeling like I was selling out my people, I bought a couple magen David magnets from there anyway

The Jewish part of Toledo feels… I’m not sure how to say it, but it’s like a remnant. You can tell that there was something before this, but that something is gone, it’s been wiped out. And that something was Jewish. And now it just drifts through this town, like dust, never properly gone but never enough than a vague feeling. And on top of all of that is a thick layer of Catholicism, and the knowledge of the brutality that brought this Jewish cultural centre to decimation

Toledo doesn’t really acknowledge what it did to its Jews. There’s a small square on the wall of a very old house, one that most certainly used to belong to a Jew before, that talks about Shmuel Levi, saying how he would rather have died by torture than become a confessor— they call him Samuel there, though, and I feel kind of stupid for how much I resent that. But that’s it. Instead they’re giving museum tours of the two Beite Knesset that used to exist before they were converted to being churches, and then war rooms, and now attractions. They’re selling Judaica that isn’t Judaica, right next to figures of Yeshu bleeding out on the cross. They’ve got small חי tiles on the corners of the street, but all I can think of is the Jews that were slaughtered in this town by the ancestors of the people who are now living in what were their houses

All I can think of is the pork being sold everywhere, and all the chametz people are eating before the sun sets on the last day of pesach

(sorry for the pretentious poetic language, I’m a writer I can’t help it)

Thank you for sharing this. There is something almost haunting about visiting places that were once Jewish but aren't anymore. I once saw a quote somewhere about how Memory is a sixth sense for Jewish people (I don't remember where I saw it but will try to find it again). Reading this reminded me of that.

I don't have many words of comfort. I actually don't live that far from Toledo. Our shul is tiny, but we have a kosher Torah from the time of the Inquisition. We outlived them.

-🐺

[marabarl-and-marlbara]

hi Mara, i reread your old A:N fanfic the other day (the hatecorp one), its really interesting and i liked it!! i just wanted to tell you that + im looking forward to the next A:N fic you write ^^

hey anonymous, i appreciate that--really: i don:t think my readership is particularly high and for most of my writing i wholly expect its reception to be little more different than tossing it into a bin, so i:m always pretty happy to hear someone read/liked something i wrote (like someone snuck it out of the bin and read it);

the hatecorp fanfic is a weird one because it was my first 'clash' with going against autofiction and feeling of friction from writing simulacrum of experiences that are not my own--although i:ve been to Clearwater and talked to Scientologists and bought the books and read the books and visited teeny tiny little orgs and been yelled at by protestors and watched the Sea Org march about stony faced before entering shuttles that scuttle around the roads--i had not paid for any courses and my attempts to join the Sea Org were waved off; the hatecorp as it exists for me would stop at the org and with telling the receptionist that i want to join the org, and going home after.

i think it was part ~2 of that fanfic where i felt like i had no idea what i was writing except that i did not like the feeling i had while writing it, "i:m just regurgitating knowledge i know"--it was a fanfiction i couldn:t write with any real heart, so it only had the simulacrum of anothers heart; parts 1, 3, 4 were mostly from me (i still write about the founding sister; there are several unfinished stories about her), but it also wasn:t coincidence that immediately after writing that fanfic i decided to value my own experiences more highly and became fixated upon the Adventists and Ellen White and started re-attending my local church where i had gone for schooling and rehabilitation, and that basically all my writing after became a murk of Adventism and chirality, because, after-all: i am haunted by a ghost of adventism and christianity.

the latest fanfic i:d been working on ('which you can read as a draft on my substack on the monthly paywall posts >:-))' feels like dirt advertising a clunky draft, but i do put all my drafts in those posts) is focused on viva because, lately, i:d been wanting to reconnect with 'old mystiques,' spoon-bending, silvery flying saucers, cattle mutilation, almond-eyed aliens, crop circles, ESP, telekinesis, gangstalking, and of course: 5G, though mostly grafted onto john keel's superspectrum stuff from eighth tower--a move away from Love Corp, and a move away from a childhood in scientology that was not my childhood; i wanted to write about those blue cars i keep seeing, because i keep seeing them; just yesterday they pulled up on the shoulder and far into the grass and nudged up against the sidewalk as soon as i approached and waited for me and idled. there was that anonymous question about "what i would like to tell someone," which i still think is a silly question because as i view myself i have become stuck on a single paranoia and religion that has threaded itself through every single thing i have written and every single thing i have drawn, and every-thing is a desperate attempt to seed that singular rotten datum into everything else in different weathers and soils--and this fanfic is no different, because i can only write from the hauntings of my own experience.

fifth linebreak,

sixth,

seventh,

take care anonymous, thank you very kindly for your readership; unrelated note: i was thinking about "daydream season 3 castle rock" and what i would want to see is "protagonist is a Christine possessed teen who is starting to see the 'shitters' that are befouled by his car, and his attempt to survive the very real infection of the outer-space saucer filled with dead Tommyknockers that are haunting the town from a mile down inside the earth--sideplot is the advertising firm from Cujo is trying to establish itself within the infected town but is facing John Carpenter They Live style opposition"

[agentsquirrelsgotrobots]

Cody sobbed, curled on the couch as that, that- deer man, called for him. He was alone with Heatwave and Boulder at the firehouse, his lungs aching from running all the way from the Greenes lab through the tunnels. Boulder had grabbed him and fought off the demon, sealing them and Heatwave inside. Chase and Blades and the rest of Cody's family were stuck in town, unable to break through the shield Alastor threw over the firehouse.

"Cody. You know you belong to me."

"I- I swear, I didn't, believe me! I knew something was wrong, so I kept him away and signed nothing, ok, he shouldn't be here after I said no, why isn't he gone?" His voice shook, clutching the hand that was so close to sealing the deal, to taking thar monster's hand.

"Cody... we have business to settle. You did a very bad thing, almost gained a place with me. It's a shame you couldn't follow through. Your mother could."

His voice shook the walls, the sigils Boulder had painted out of habit over the garage doors glowed. They were just a superstition, something Charlie let him paint on a little after they had arrived. You could barely see them. The script was painted in almost the same color as the walls, but they held, the intention held, so until Pastor Mike arrived, and Chase broke through the barrier, Cody would be safe as long as he stayed away from the creature knocking on the doors, pleading to be let inside.

The man brought with him red rumbling skies, dark clouds, and an oppressive humidity to every breath taken. Alastor had taken Frankie as collateral, her mother's cross fastened around her neck, warning her of danger beyond the grave, that the old summoning board found in Charlie Burns' closet wasn't some old board game bought at the store.

No, it was the real deal, and poor Frankie paid the price. She was alive, but comatose, floating in a blood-red bubble above Alastor's head. He couldn't harm her, but could take Cody, for the reason of his conception.

Cody was the product of a deal.

The board was blessed by Catherine, Cody's mother, a pastor's daughter who knew her prayers forwards and backward, but knowledge of the Bible didn't protect her from Alastor in the end.

After all, Alastor was a faithful Southern Baptist in life, and hell didn't scare him, despite his dear mother's efforts.

The point was, he knew his prayers too.

Backwards and forward.

Alastor pounded on the garage doors, hearing the singular broadcast leaving the firehouse.

"Prime? Prime! If you are hearing this, get down here NOW. There's a pit beast at our doors, and he's here for Cody. We will be okay for a few days, but if the human priest can't banish it, you will have to step in, for Cody's sake. We can't fight it. Our faith is the only thing keeping it out of the firehouse. This is Heatwave of Sigma 17, signing off."

Alastor frowned. He's had many types of priests called him over the decades, but never a "Prime." He smiled wider. This could be fun.

Heatwave ran back downstairs, sitting next to his charge. Like it or not, if Cody gets dragged down, so will he.

"Cody, Catherine, oh, I love a matching set of sinners in my arsenal."

Alastor screeched, clawing at the doors again. No matter what he did, he couldn't shred the thin metal under his claws.

He leered through the big front windows, tapping on the glass with his microphone.

"What are you doing there, my lambs? Preparing for hell? Silly Silly tin cans, so willing to fall with him. I'll have you holding up the pillars of my hotel till the end of time for this little inconvenience"

Alastor threw his head back and howled with laughter, his curled antlers shaking.

BONG

The firehouse bell, a decommissioned church bell, rang loudly, the sound pushing Alastor back. It burned his antler down to its normal size, Alastor cursing in Latin as he backed away to recover.

"REALLY, CODY? You think a bell could stop ME?"

Inside, Cody shivered despite the heat. "I want my dad." He cried out, curling up against Heatwave's hand as he scooped him into his cab.

"I promise Cody, I will protect you."

The pounding continued, Alastor pulling back his antlers to avoid disturbing the bell again.

Chase broke through the shields, letting the pastor through while the others stayed behind.

"Ah! I was wondering when they would throw in a faithful lamb."

Alastor smiled wider, his grip on his microphone tightening. This was always the hard part. His own faith worked against him on this front, but he has succeeded in spite of it in the past, and this would be no different.

"Reverend Michael Rivers, correct?"

Mike said nothing, confirmed nothing. He couldn't risk anything. "Release the girl, then we will talk." He commanded, ignoring the whispers in his ears to stand down, let Alastor win- Alastor? "Your name is Alastor. Let the girl go."

The demon laughed.

"That's not how that works. But, I am feeling generous, and she's not the one I am looking for, so it's right to at least give you this. After I drag down both tin cans and my prize, it won't matter anyway."

Alastor threw Frankie through the shield, Blades catching her in the knick of time. She groaned, and coughed up black foam from her lungs.

Pastor Mike tried his best, using every trick he could think of to force Alastor to leave Cody be.

It wasn't his efforts that got Alastor to leave, but his own boredom.

"Well, this is going nowhere. No fight, no leverage. You won this round, but know that the Radio Demon always wins."

Alastor sunk into his portal, the shield disapating as he disappeared back into hell.

The sky cleared, birds chirping as life returned to normalcy.

Inside the firehouse, the air cooled. Cody sniffed and wiped away his tears as Chase opened the garage doors.

"Cody?" He called out.

"He's right here." Heatwave said, getting up off the floor. Boulder smiled and waved at him.

He had gone nonverbal during the fighting, and it would be a few days before he would speak more than necessary.

Charlie left the bots to babysit while the adults talked. Chase left to bring Frankie to the urgent care in town, since the cross she wore left a burn where it and the chain it was on touched her due to being surrounded by Alastor's magic. Dani drove, Graham staying with them.

"Why that - he got what he asked." Charlie sat at the kitchen table, wiping at his eyes. "He wanted our stillborn daughter's corpse for- for- I can't even understand why. He drank her blood and then made Cathy prepare her like a suckling pig - his words, not mine. He ate the entrails and guts, Cathy the meat. He made her eat it while I watched. He then sealed the rest in a coffin and took it with him. Two months later, Cody was concieved without issue. That was it. Nothing about Cody being his son."

Pastor Mike set his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. "You didn't know. Nobody knew. I didn't, and Cathy and I were thick as thieves. I will bless the site, leave you with some holy water, and crosses to put in your and Cody's bedroom. I know Boulder is going to retouch all the sigils and paint more where he thinks they would be beneficial. I want you to do the same with the crosses, paint them if you can't put them up."

Charlie looked up at him. "You think that would work?"

"I pray it does." He answered gravely.

"How about the bots? Are you worried that maybe something the prime does can disrupt what you did?" Kade asked. He chose to ignore the part about his mother eating his younger sister. That was a whole other conversation for another day.

"The difference between a piece of wood and a cross is the belief in it." Pastor Mike answered. "No amount on preaching I can do to the bots can help or harm them if they don't believe in it. If our neighbors downstairs believe that the prime can help, then in my mind, the prime will help my efforts, not stiffle it."

"Alrighty then." Kade said, not sounding convinced.

[stevie-petey]

so my latest theories based on all these leaks recently

the radio shack- steve deffo has a job/career there based on ross recent photo dump of joe-i think they are using the radio shack to keep in contact with El/Hooper/Joyce/Murray who all been spotted at the radio shack a ton

the hospital- i think is gonna be used a LOT this season also for various reasons i think that's why ross wants us to rewatch season two/three...

the church- i think it is a gate to the upside down because i also think that is where steve/nancy/jonathon/dustin any maybe the others been trying to get into the upside down i think a death happened there in the past with vecnas/one victims i think its somehow connected to that and the victor creel house

the farm- i think its the new byers resident/party hang out hide out after the quake that happened last finale season- i think joyce moved out there to get away from hawkins but also to be near hawkins i think its close to hoopers cabin area also so they can keep tabs on el.

also its been reported that steve/nancy been together a LOT this weekend/week and im kinda hoping not because that means they are either together together/jonathon and nancy broke up -charlie hasn't been on set lately so im kinda worried about that-and this week its heavy security aka means possible other battle scene.

im really curious on how all of these are connected and i can't wait for when we have an actual trailer soon so well all get an idea on what the plot is for the finale i also think thats why casts has been photo dumping lately...

i still cant really see steve having a job at the radio station purely because he doesnt strike me as a knowledgeable guy for any of it but perhaps ???

the hospital i def agree with we know nancy volunteers there this season so <333 excited for that and see what shitshow happens there

and the CHURCH !!! they did a huge night shoot a few days ago and locked it completely down. very scared for what that can mean and why a church is the biggest set ,,, creepy as hell and i love it

i do also think the farm is the new hub for everyone (that or the radio station). unsure if joyce bought it but we know the tunnels are coming back and the farm from season 2 was affected by the tunnels so ! makes sense

stancy if u become canon i will raise hell

[mysticparadigms]

Book Review: The Coward by Stephen Aryan

Disclaimer: This is my first time giving a book review rather than analysis, so please bear with me.

Let me start off by saying that it has been a long time since a novel has last captivated me like this one does. This book is under the fantasy genre, and I originally learned about it when I went on a trip to a bookstore with my best friend and was half-heartedly perusing the fantasy section. I’m fairly picky when it comes to the fantasy content I enjoy. While Tolkien has basically influenced all of modern fantasy, media that follows his format of elves, dwarves, orcs, and hobbits have little to no appeal to me, especially considering the racist underpinnings of the orcs. I’ve become tired of novels that focus on having a Chosen One, some kid being the primary defense against evil, romances between humans and elves or fairies (although this one is a personal preference as I don’t like romances in general), and worlds where the nonhuman characters are made up of species that have become oversaturated in our current zeitgeist. Although I'm not immune to popular modern fantasy; I adore Adventure Time and Attack On Titan as well as every Studio Ghibli movie I've seen to date. With all of this context, I had low hopes while looking through the fantasy section that day, but the title caught my attention. I picked it up, read the back cover, and bought it, and it sat untouched on my book shelf for roughly six months. But this last week, I told myself that if I want to read The Priory of the Orange Tree, I have to read the other fantasy book I bought this year first. It took me three days to get through it all.

Politics and Religion: One of the things that I think makes Attack On Titan, for instance, so compelling is that while there is the aspect of "ah there are monsters trying to kill us and we gotta fight 'em" is how much politics there are controlling the plot and actions of the heroes. The Coward does this wonderfully. While we follow Kell Kressia on his journey, we are also given chapters following Reverend Mother Britak, who leads the church that exists within the Five Kingdoms (side note: while the religion is not Christianity, there are definitely some connections to be made and what I think is a striking commentary on the state of Christianity as an institution today) and is trying to enforce this religion following The Shepherd across the Five Kingdoms, using political tactics to try and achieve this goal. Every royal court we are introduced to within this universe has some sort of political tension of its own, often coming into conflict with the other courts. Following the politics and scheming was very enjoyable.

Semi-Original Species: I appreciated that the author didn't include species such as elves, fairies, vampires, werewolves, gnomes, orcs, etc. in the book, although one might argue that the Alfár are a type of elf. Regardless, I appreciated that and the creatures such as the Qalamieren and the voran. It was enjoyable learning about new sorts of species and reading about them from the perspectives of people who these creatures are normal to know about, even if they don't believe in them.

Subverting the teenaged Chosen One trope as well as the model of the Hero: This might be my favorite aspect of this novel. Instead of having these larger-than-life heroes, we're shown how heroes are flawed, and oftentimes more flawed as individuals than the average person. Even Kell Kressia, the savior of the Five Kingdoms who beheaded the Ice Lich ten years ago, struggles with the expectations this victory put on him versus his knowledge that he basically just got lucky. It wasn't his skill that helped him win, or some prophecy foretelling his victory, it was nothing more than a matter of chance. I liked how human this made all of the characters feel. I truly felt like I could relate to Kell because he struggles with the troubles of others' expectations of him versus what he knows truly happened, but additionally he comes home with what would likely be diagnosed as PTSD. Even a victory comes at a severe psychological cost.

Addressing the realities of how traumatizing these romanticized quests can be as well as the fragility of the body: There was no over-the-top gore, which I appreciated as someone who has recently become much more sensitive to it than I used to be. But at the same time, excessive gore wasn't necessary to drive home what physical strain the characters experienced when making their Hero's Journey. I am particularly intrigued by how the human body as an entity is portrayed in literature, and this book was perfect for such an interest. We were shown how humans overestimate the danger they can handle, and they don't understand that every hero we idolize is simply Just Some Guy who also can have wounds get infected, or bleed out from one (albeit deep) stab wound. While this made the fight scenes feel somewhat less intense physically than scenes where there is a lot of wounding of the main characters and killing is seen as casual, the psychology behind what the characters were feeling as well as the stress of knowing that it doesn't actually take much to get killed by a wild animal or adversary made the fight scenes intense in their own right.

Romance: As someone generally averse to the romance genre and dreads romance in fantasy books due to the advent of romances between humans and elves/fairies/werewolves/vampies/etc., I'm happy to say that this route was not taken in The Coward. There is mention of sex (for instance we have scenes where we're told two characters just had or are about to have sex, one character getting offered money for a sexual encounter but is denied, and one seventeen year old's sexual fantasy going horribly awry in a nightmare of his) but nothing that goes into detail. The main character hopes to one day have a wife and start a family, but this goal is portrayed more as representing the idea of having a "normal" and simple life, thus escaping the trauma of Kell's time as a "hero." It's hardly even mentioned that Kell would like to start a family and is not one of his actual goals he pursues but rather, as I mentioned before, symbolic of the sort of peace he wishes to achieve. There is, however, a side romance in the novel. But it's beautiful and doesn't dominate the narrative or even the goals of the characters within the romance itself. They are both fully formed individuals with dreams and fears and quirks and triumphs of their own, their romance just portrays the beauty of two lost souls finding refuge in a chaotic and lonely world. I enjoyed every scene that featured them.

My critiques: I wish that we had been given a clearer picture of how, in his first quest, Kell had defeated the Ice Lich. Or just their journey into the castle altogether. We know how a lot of the eleven heroes died, and I appreciate the author trusting that his readers are intelligent enough to piece together the story of what happened through the sporadic vignettes given, but I would've liked to hear about what happened with Kell after the last hero died, even if we saw it through a flashback he has within a dream where the maze is foggy in his memory and weren't given the exact play-by-play. On another note, while the book's climax originally felt like it could've been—for lack of a better term—more climatic than what we saw, I realized on reflection that the climax being as it was fits the story, its overarching themes, and Kell's disillusionment with The Hero's Quest perfectly. 

Overall, this book was amazing. After I finished it, I ran right back to the local bookstore to grab the final novel in this series: The Warrior. If you're looking for a fantasy novel where the "hero" is Just Some Guy and where the realities of the stereotypical Hero's Journey are presented as being traumatizing events rather than proud conquests, then this is the book for you.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

25th June >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Homilies / Reflections on Matthew 10:26-33 for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time: ‘You are worth more than hundreds of sparrows’.

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 10:26-33 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body.

Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘Do not be afraid. For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.

‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.

‘So if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.’

Gospel (USA) Matthew 10:26–33 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body.

Jesus said to the Twelve: “Fear no one. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”

Reflections (5)

(i) Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I am fortunate to have a back garden that backs onto the grounds of a church. There are several large trees in the church grounds which attract lots of birds. As a result, when I step out into the garden, I very often hear the sound of bird song. I have some bird feeders in the garden which attracts lots of birds. Probably the most common bird I see coming to the feeders is the sparrow. Jesus makes reference to sparrows in today’s gospel reading. He asks, ‘Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny?’ In the time and place of Jesus, as in our own, the sparrow was a very plentiful bird. As a result, they were very cheap to buy. The sparrow was a very small and humble bird and, yet, Jesus says, God the Father who created them is very aware of each sparrow, knowing when one of them falls to the ground and dies.

Jesus is declaring that God is aware of and concerned about the details of his creation. If God cares about the details of creation, so should we. In more recent times, we have become more aware of our responsibility to care for God’s good creation in all its wonderful detail. Saint Francis of Assisi had a reputation for speaking to the birds, treating them with profound respect. Our present Pope took the name Francis after this saint, the first Pope in the history of the church to do so. Pope Francis is very concerned about how we have been treating God’s good creation. He wrote a powerful encyclical on the care of creation, called, ‘Laudato Sii’. Those two Latin words are the opening words of Saint Francis’ wonderful canticle of praise for creation. Jesus makes reference to God’s awareness of and care for the humble sparrow to highlight how much more God cares for each one of us. Jesus goes on to say, ‘So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows’. Jesus is saying that if God values the sparrow, two of whom can be bought in the market place for a penny, God values each one of us to a much greater extent. Our worth in God’s eyes far exceeds that of the sparrow.

Every so often a list of the richest people on earth is published. It tells us what these people are worth in monetary terms. It is often the way today that people’s worth is determined by their wealth. This is certainly not the case when it comes to God. Because each one of us has been created in God’s image and likeness, our worth in God’s eyes is immense. Not only have we been created in God’s imagine and likeness, but as followers of his Son, the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts making us sons and daughters of God. Just as God said of Jesus at the moment of his baptism, ‘This is my beloved Son’, God says to each one of us, ‘This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter’. We are as precious and valued in God’s eyes as any son or daughter is in the eyes of his or her parents. We are precious to God simply because of who we are, not because of what we have done. Jesus is saying in the gospel reading that the relationship between God and each one of us is as intimate as the relationship between a parent and their child. Jesus tries to convey the intimacy of this relationship using a striking image, declaring that every hair on our head has been counted by God. Some of you may be thinking, ‘I don’t have too many hairs for God to count!’ Jesus is saying that God is aware of and concerned about the details of our lives.

This is why Jesus calls on us to entrust ourselves to God as one who cares for us with an unconditional and infinite love. Yes, Jesus also says in that gospel reading that there is a sense in which we must fear God, but this fear of God is very different to being afraid of God. By fear of God Jesus means a reverence and respect for God, a sense of awe in God’s presence. However, this reverence and respect is for someone who cares deeply about the details of our lives and in whose eyes our worth and value is beyond measure. Jesus invites us to trust in God, his Father, and ours, to rely on him, as Jesus does. If we do so, we will find the strength and the courage to witness to our faith in Jesus and in God the Father. This is what Jesus calls upon us to do in the gospel reading. We are to proclaim our faith from the housetops. We are to declare ourselves for Jesus in the presence of others. We can do so knowing, in the words of the first reading, that the Lord is at our side, as one who values and treasures us.

And/Or

(ii) Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In all our lives there are areas that are quite public and other areas that are very private. We are happy to talk about some things in the public forum, but careful to talk about other matters only in the privacy of our home, or perhaps not at all. The line between the private and the public can vary between one person and another. Issues that some people might consider to be of legitimate public interest, others might regard as belonging exclusively in the private domain. We know more about some people than about others, and some are more open about themselves and their lives than others. Whereas we might consider some people too closed, keeping private what could easily be shared with others, we might think of others as too open, sharing too easily what would better be kept private.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says: ‘What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the house-tops’. It is clear from the context that what Jesus wants people to tell in the daylight, to proclaim from the housetops, is the gospel, the good news that Jesus himself preached and lived. Jesus wants his disciples to declare themselves for him publicly, to acknowledge him openly. The gospel reading strongly suggests that our faith is to be lived publicly.

When we look at the private areas and the public areas of our lives, where does our faith belong? Do we see it as belonging more to the private area or to the public area? There was a time in our history when living the faith, in its Roman Catholic form, was against the law of the land, and, in order to stay alive, people were forced to live their faith in a private, undemonstrative way. That phenomenon of the ‘underground Church’, as it is often called, was not unique to Ireland. The ‘underground Church’ was a significant reality in certain parts of Europe until quite recently, and remains a reality in parts of the world today. In our own land, with Catholic emancipation in the early part of the nineteenth century and with the founding of the Irish Free State in the early part of the twentieth century, the church became very much an ‘over ground Church’, a very public phenomenon. Two events this century could be seen as the highpoint of the public expression of our faith, the Eucharistic congress in 1933 and the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1981.

In more recent decades, there has been a tendency for believers to retreat somewhat from the public domain. Many of us have become more circumspect about witnessing to our faith. We are less likely to publicly declare our allegiance to Christ. We sense that the environment has become more hostile to the gospel, and in that we are probably right. The recent exposure of scandals in the Church has been one factor in all of this. There is a danger that we will have a collective loss of nerve when it comes to the gospel and to the Church, through and in which, for all its faults, we receive and hear the gospel. This Sunday’s readings have something important to say to us in that context. Three times in the course of the gospel reading, Jesus calls on his disciples not to be afraid. The fear he is talking about is the fear of witnessing publicly to himself. We all have a whole variety of legitimate fears. Parents will be fearful of their children getting into trouble; we are all fearful of a nuclear arms race, of the consequences of growing inequality both at home and on a more global scale. There are many things about which we need a healthy fear. However, Jesus strongly indicates in today’s gospel reading that one thing we should not be fearful of is bearing public witness to himself and his gospel.

In saying to his disciple, ‘Do not be afraid’, Jesus was not trying to minimize the opposition they would encounter when they began to proclaim the gospel by their lives. He is not saying to them or to us, ‘do not be afraid because there is nothing to fear’. There are a set of values embodied in the gospel, in our faith, that are very challenging and will be experienced as threatening by some, perhaps even by ourselves from time to time. There can often be a risk in taking a public stand for gospel values, such as the respect for life at all its stages, justice for all, the fundamental equality of all men and women under God, the priority of forgiveness over revenge, of serving over acquiring. Jesus was saying, ‘do not be afraid because when you courageously bear witness to me and my gospel, God will be watching over you’, or, in the words of Jeremiah in today’s first reading, the Lord will be at your side. The gospel reading is assuring us that the Father cares deeply for those disciples who have the courage to live publicly their faith in Jesus and his gospel.

St. Paul in one of his letters speaks about carrying a treasure in earthen jars. He was referring to the treasure of the gospel, and he understood himself to be the earthen jar. We are all carrying a treasure in earthen jars. The fact that we show ourselves to be all too earthen from time to time does not make what we carry any the less of a treasure. In today’s gospel reading Jesus assures his disciples of their worth: ‘you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows’. Who we are as Christians and the values we stand for are of inestimable worth. If we really appreciated that worth, it would go a long way towards making us less fearful in the living of our faith.

And/Or

(iii) Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Archbishop announced a new initiatives for the church in Dublin in recent weeks, concerning what is termed parish pastoral workers. Men and women who have a primary degree in theology or religious education, or its equivalent, are invited to apply to enter a process of formation to become parish pastoral workers. The formation programme lasts one year and will be based in Mater Dei Institute. During that year the candidates will spend two days a week in Mater Dei for academic study and three days a week in a supervised placement in a parish of the Diocese. After successful completion of that one year programme the candidate will be offered an interview for a three year contract as a parish pastoral worker in the Dublin Diocese, based in some parish. It is envisaged that these parish pastoral workers will work in partnership with the priests and the pastoral councils of parishes. Their tasks will include helping to build community in the parish, promoting lifelong learning in the Christian tradition and in Christian living, enhancing the prayer and worship of the parish community, and encouraging involvement in existing and new initiatives to promote the mission of the church today. It is hoped that twenty candidates will begin the one year programme in Mater Dei Institute this September. This is a new and exciting initiative in the Diocese that has the potential to enrich and enhance the various ways that the church ministers to people today.

I was reminded of that recent initiative by this morning’s gospel reading. There the Lord asks us not to be afraid when it comes to proclaiming the gospel and sharing with others the good news that we have been given. He says to his disciples, ‘what I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the house-tops’. In a sense, the Lord is calling there for spiritual courage. The church in Ireland over the centuries has shown great spiritual courage. You only have to think of those times when people witnessed to their faith, when it was very risky to do so, such as the many Irish martyrs whose feast we celebrate last week. Or, we think of our male and female missionaries who brought the gospel to places where conditions were harsh and inhospitable. It is probably true to say that we have lost something of that spiritual courage in more recent times. There are many reasons for that, the various scandals that have traumatized the church in recent years being one of them. Also, the culture in which we live is less supportive of the values of the gospel than it was in the past. Living the gospel, practising the faith, especially for young people, can mean swimming against the tide much more than was the case in the more recent past.

We can all become very guarded about where we stand, spiritually. The recent initiative in this Diocese could be seen as one expression of institutional spiritual courage. It is an effort to launch out into the deep in a way that has not been done before. Institutional spiritual courage can support and enhance personal spiritual courage. We can all be helped by it to launch out personally into the deep, into the spiritual deep, in ways we have not done before. Spiritual courage is not spiritual arrogance, or much less, spiritual triumphalism. We have known something of that too as a church and it has not served us well, and never will. The root of spiritual courage is trust - trusting not in ourselves but in the Lord. It is a profound trust in the providence of God who, as today’s gospel reminds us, values all of creation, including the humble sparrow, and who sees and appreciates the worth of each individual person much more clearly than we see it ourselves. Indeed, we are worth so much in God’s eyes that, as Paul reminds us in today’s second reading, ‘divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift’. The more we each appreciate our worth in God’s eyes, the more we will entrust ourselves to God, and the greater our trust in God the greater will be our spiritual courage, the freer we will be to declare ourselves for Christ, in the words of this morning’s gospel reading.

Spiritual courage can be infectious. One person of spiritual courage can give spiritual courage to others. That is the deeper meaning of what we call encouragement. We each have a role in giving spiritual courage to each other. The earliest Christian document we possess is Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. There, Paul repeatedly calls on those early Christians to encourage one another. He recognized that they had a very important ministry to each other, the ministry of giving each other spiritual courage. What was true of the church then is just as true of the church today. We can build each other up spiritually or tear each other down. Paul in this morning’s second reading reminds us that the legacy of Adam to the world was sin, whereas the legacy of Christ was God’s grace, the power of God’s love. We can align ourselves with Adam or with Christ in terms of the legacy we leave to others. Our calling is to allow Christ to grace others - to encourage others - through us.

And/Or

(iv) Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

It is striking how many times in the gospels Jesus calls on his disciples not to be afraid. On one occasion, he said to his disciples in the boat in the midst of a storm on the Sea of Galilee, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Jesus identifies fear as a sign of little faith or a lack of faith. We tend to think of doubt as the opposite of faith, but so often in the gospels the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear. Genuine faith is always a courageous faith.

In today’s gospel reading the Lord asks us not to be afraid when it comes to proclaiming the gospel and sharing with others the good news that we have been given. He says to his disciples, ‘what I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the house-tops’. In a sense, the Lord is calling there for spiritual courage. The church in Ireland over the centuries has shown great spiritual courage. You only have to think of those times when people witnessed to their faith, when it was very risky to do so. Or, we think of our male and female missionaries who brought the gospel to places where conditions were harsh and inhospitable. It is probably true to say that we have lost something of that spiritual courage in more recent times. There are many reasons for that, the various scandals that have traumatized the church in recent years being one of them. Also, the culture in which we live is less supportive of the values of the gospel than it was in the past. Living the gospel, practising the faith, especially for young people, can mean swimming against the tide much more than was the case in the more recent past.

We can all become very guarded about where we stand, spiritually. At an official, institutional, level, the church needs to be more courageous. It needs to launch out into the deep in ways that have not been done before. Institutional spiritual courage can support and enhance personal spiritual courage. We can all be helped by it to launch out personally into the deep, into the spiritual deep, in ways we have not done before. Spiritual courage is not spiritual arrogance, or much less, spiritual triumphalism. We have known something of that too as a church and it has not served us well, and never will. The root of spiritual courage is trust, trusting not in ourselves but in the Lord. It is a profound trust in the providence of God who, as today’s gospel reminds us, values all of creation, including the humble sparrow, and who sees and appreciates the worth of each individual person much more clearly than we see it ourselves.

Jesus speaks of God as a heavenly Father who is so lovingly involved in our lives that he knows the number of hairs on our head. As believers in Jesus, we enjoy a familial relationship with God, which is a sharing in Jesus’ own relationship with God as Son. We are valued and watched over by God, just as Jesus was. This sense of God’s loving care for us gives us an assurance and a confidence to proclaim our relationship with Jesus our brother, and with God, the Father of Jesus and our Father. We are to proclaim this graced relationship from the housetops, not as a self-congratulatory boast, but as good news for all to hear, because all are called into this same relationship. We are to declare ourselves for the Lord in the presence of others, knowing that the Lord will declare himself for us in God’s presence. The grace and privilege of being taken up into Jesus’ own relationship with God is an empowering call to witness publicly to who we are and what we have received. As Paul reminds us in today’s second reading, ‘divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift’. The more we each appreciate our worth in God’s eyes, just how graced we are, the more we will entrust ourselves to God, and the greater our trust in God the greater will be our spiritual courage, the freer we will be to declare ourselves for Christ, in the words of today’s gospel reading.

Spiritual courage can be infectious. One person of spiritual courage can give spiritual courage to others. That is the deeper meaning of what we call encouragement. We each have a role in giving spiritual courage to each other. The earliest Christian document we possess is Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. There, Paul repeatedly calls on those early Christians to encourage one another. He recognized that they had a very important ministry to each other, the ministry of giving each other spiritual courage. What was true of the church then is just as true of the church today. We can build each other up spiritually or tear each other down. Paul in today’s second reading reminds us that the legacy of Adam to the world was sin, whereas the legacy of Christ was God’s grace, the power of God’s love. We can align ourselves with Adam or with Christ in terms of the legacy we leave to others. Our calling is to allow Christ to grace others, to encourage others, through us.

And/Or

(v) Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In all our lives there are areas that are quite public and other areas that are very private. We are happy to talk about some things in the public forum, but careful to talk about other matters only in the privacy of our home, or perhaps not at all. The line between the private and the public can vary between one person and another. Issues that some people might consider to be of legitimate public interest, others might regard as belonging exclusively in the private domain. We know more about some people than about others, and some are more open about themselves and their lives than others. Whereas we might consider some people too closed, keeping private what could easily be shared with others, we might think of others as too open, sharing too easily what would better be kept private.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says: ‘What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the house-tops’. It is clear from the context that what Jesus wants people to tell in the daylight, to proclaim from the housetops, is the gospel, the good news that Jesus himself preached and lived. Jesus wants his disciples to declare themselves for him publicly, to acknowledge him openly. The gospel reading strongly suggests that our faith is to be lived publicly. When we look at the private areas and the public areas of our lives, where does our faith belong? Do we see it as belonging more to the private area or to the public area? There was a time in our history when living the faith, in its Roman Catholic form, was against the law of the land, and, in order to stay alive, people were forced to live their faith in a private, undemonstrative way. That phenomenon of the ‘underground Church’, as it is often called, was not unique to Ireland. The ‘underground Church’ was a significant reality in certain parts of Europe until quite recently, and remains a reality in parts of the world today. In more recent decades, there has been a tendency for believers to retreat somewhat from the public domain. Many of us have become more circumspect about witnessing to our faith. We are less likely to publicly declare our allegiance to Christ. We sense that the environment has become more hostile to the gospel, and in that we are probably right.

There is a danger that we will have a collective loss of nerve when it comes to the gospel and to the Church, through and in which, for all its faults, we receive and hear the gospel. This Sunday’s readings have something important to say to us in that context. Three times in the course of the gospel reading, Jesus calls on his disciples not to be afraid. The fear he is talking about is the fear of witnessing publicly to himself. We all have a whole variety of legitimate fears. Parents will be fearful of their children getting into trouble; we are all fearful of a nuclear arms race, of the consequences of growing inequality both at home and on a more global scale. There are many things about which we need a healthy fear. However, Jesus strongly indicates in today’s gospel reading that one thing we should not be fearful of is bearing public witness to himself and his gospel.

In saying to his disciple, ‘Do not be afraid’, Jesus was not trying to minimize the opposition they would encounter when they began to proclaim the gospel by their lives. He is not saying to them or to us, ‘do not be afraid because there is nothing to fear’. There are a set of values embodied in the gospel, in our faith, that are very challenging and will be experienced as threatening by some, perhaps even by ourselves from time to time. There can often be a risk in taking a public stand for gospel values, such as the respect for life at all its stages, justice for all, the fundamental equality of all men and women under God, the priority of forgiveness over revenge, of serving over acquiring. Jesus was saying, ‘do not be afraid because when you courageously bear witness to me and my gospel, God will be watching over you’, or, in the words of Jeremiah in today’s first reading, the Lord will be at your side. The gospel reading is assuring us that the Father cares deeply for those disciples who have the courage to live publicly their faith in Jesus and his gospel.

St. Paul in one of his letters speaks about carrying a treasure in earthen jars. He was referring to the treasure of the gospel. The fact that we show ourselves to be all too earthen from time to time does not make what we carry any the less of a treasure. In today’s gospel reading Jesus assures his disciples of their worth: ‘you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows’. Who we are as Christians and the values we stand for are of inestimable worth. If we really appreciated that worth, it would go a long way towards making us less fearful in the living of our faith.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[aequoranimae]

18-19 june

We touched down in Brussels and I had seen nothing from my window since the mountains of Turkey and the great Black Sea had softened into the unending fields of Eastern Europe—there was a thick layer of cloud lying low over Belgium, and it was raining. The quietness of the airport only added to the sense that our plane had left summer somewhere in Austria, for it only took a minute's wait and a cursory glance from the border officer to send me through into the waiting city. My memories of Europe are heavy with Heathrow and Fiumicino where the queues stretched the length of terminals and the security staff were always barking orders and snatching up bags for inspection. The place was so understaffed that a middle-aged Francophone woman decided I was the appropriate person to show something stuck to the back of a boarding pass and ask where her baggage could be found. I haltingly replied to her query that yes, I could speak a little French, though my high-school knowledge of the language probably wasn't the main barrier to my finding the information she sought. Peut-etre l'homme la-bas, I mumbled, pointing in the direction of the manned oversized luggage counter, the only member of airport staff in view. Hopefully she found her bag drop.

I followed the signs to the bus and stepped beyond the airport walls where I was met at once with a faceful of cigarette smoke. In Australia the air on the city pavements is sickly sweet and smells like fruit lollies, here it smells like tobacco. When I finally alighted the airport service bus in the centre of town I found those same scents outside every office building, where workers stood smoking, sheltering in doorways from the downpour. It was raining a lot and unlike the more accustomed locals passing me by I had no umbrella or raincoat, so I got wet. I stood with my little suitcase in a metro car, damp and sweaty, until the speaker announced first in Dutch, then in French, the station Comte de Flandre (already I show my Francophone bias). I'm staying in a large hostel just on the north side of the canal, a fifteen or twenty minute walk from the very heart of Brussels. It's an enormous brick building with probably hundreds of rooms, and the staff are very kind.

I still had the late afternoon and evening at my disposal, so I walked out to find what was going on. In hindsight, I really ought to have done something about the rain issue, but I just refused the concept of buying an umbrella for one day of a month-long trip and thus was soaked (nor would I even entertain the idea of a cheap plastic poncho like so many obvious tourists fumbling about, I have too much vanity). First I came across a small bakery specialising in pasteis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts), so I bought one and continued on, ending up in the square of the Eglise Sainte-Catherine. This old gothic church is like those I remember from the Netherlands—I took shelter inside its walls with the prayer-makers for a little while, but the rain was going nowhere. So I kept walking, following the glimpses of ornate stonework and gothic spires that I caught at the ends of alleyways. Eventually I came upon Brussels' Grand Place.

Standing in the centre of this tiled square looking around, one can almost believe nothing in the city has changed since the 19th century. Almost everywhere else huge housing developments and postwar office buildings are merged into the same streets as the beautiful and ancient. In the Grand Place all four sides are lined with those towering gothic things with a thousand statues and tiny spires, sometimes gilded with gold borders. At this time of the afternoon the square was heaving with tourists, even in the miserable weather, I felt even more defiant as I walked on through the puddles in my canvas shoes. Every second shop here was a cheap Belgian chocolate shop or a chain selling bastardised waffles to the unsuspecting—well, I knew better, and even if I was very wet and very hungry, I was pleased with myself. I saw the Galeries Royales Saint Hubert and a few more churches, but by this time I was feeling very chilly. I found a trendy food hall where I could pick up a bowl of pasta and overhear my first couple of obnoxious Australian tourists before dragging my feet onto the metro back across town.

As I lay in my bunk bed that night I was hit all at once by a torrent of horrors—in local time I had been awake since around three in the morning, and had only slept for a few hours before that. My brain was exhausted yet haywire, and the panic only subsided when I could no longer stay awake on a physical level, and I passed out where I lay. It was five-thirty in the morning when I woke from this coma, though I stayed in bed for a few hours more until the light had fully crept in. It was still grey outside but no longer raining, which was fortunate given my hooded jumper was still hanging sodden in my room. I walked down the street to a local boulangerie, very traditional with racks of freshly baked croissants up the ceiling. My favourite is the escargot, which I ate on my way into town, wandering with only vague direction through the streets. At this hour there were almost no tourists, only that very European thing of rubbish bags piled loose on the pavement and vans delivering produce to restaurants down too-narrow alleys. I walked through the Grand Place again and it was almost empty.

One thing I like about Europe is that they sit down for their coffees. By nature, of course, the takeaway coffee appeals to me, since I can retreat to my own corner and don't have that sense of inconveniencing the entire world by taking up a table. But I felt quite comfortable when I sat down at a popular little spot I found in the district of Stalingrad (I cannot possibly account for the name, and in fact I find the mystery makes it all the more amusing). My cafe mocha came as a rich milky coffee over real chocolate with the customary ginger biscuit on the side. I was entertained while I drank by the coffee shop's resident dog—it was this enormous, hulking bulldog with the widest-set shoulders I have ever seen. When I first approached the cafe I watched it struggle one stocky leg at a time up the steps. The young man behind the counter told me his name was Marcel; his picture was even included at the back of the menu.

I was on the steps of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts when the doors opened at ten, too excited for words. You must understand this was why I came to Brussels to begin with, all for one room in the gallery of the old masters. I seemed to be the only person who had already bought their ticket online so I sailed right through and raced frantic through all the pictures of Christ and the Dutch merchants—just as I was losing confidence and began attempts to load a map on my phone (in my haste, I had not picked up a paper copy in the forum), I saw a glimpse of it through a doorway at the end of the hall.

Marat assassine is my favourite of all paintings, I have loved it since I first studied the French Revolution in high school. Its composition is beautiful, it is painted like a classical martyrdom. Jaques-Louis David completed this work the same year his dear friend Marat died; rather than paint Marat as he was when he lived, he makes him a saint in death. Marat is not viewed so fondly in history today, which is part of why I like this work. It is not quite the same as idealised portraits of particular kings and tyrants. David's Marat may have made the sacrifice of a saint but his powers were not ordained by God. His labours are the ink stains on his fingers, his other hand still clutching the pen as he reclines, his revolutionary spirit still living.

The other highlight of the old masters works was the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. These remarkable pictures covered all sorts of scenes—religious ones, but in a monstrous reality where all things are gorey and strange. That he painted in the 16th century is truly astounding, his works seemed more fitting for the surrealist Margritte gallery next door. In his The Fall of the Rebel Angels there is a depravity and horror that no typical scenes of hell and its fire and brimstone can muster. What was once holy has been twisted beyond recognition.

After a wander through the museum showing the works of Rene Margritte (which are very interesting, but I find surrealism difficult to swallow), I stepped back into the street to find the sun had come out for the first time since I arrived. I stopped by an Italian deli to collect a baguette and a cannoli which I ate in the Square du Petit Sablon, a small garden with a fountain and many fine statues representing the old guilds of Brussels. There were not too many people about and the sun was shining truly then at midday, warming that old stone part of the city. Unlike the streets below at the base of the hill, this part of town seemed mostly untouched. Across the street was the grand Church of Our Lady of the Sablon, another gothic church, this time with beautiful stained glass windows whose colours caught the light of that unexpected sunshine. The path back down the hill was lined on either side with shops of antiques and fine art

I was tired by now, but determined, and so I made it back to the Grand Place by half past one to enter the Hotel de Ville, the owner of that particularly good spire which extends above the Brussels city skyline. I was quite shocked (and a little unsteadied) to find that it was almost completely empty, which seemed unusual since the square below was packed. Perhaps they just didn't know you could actually go inside. The interior rooms were very grand, a bit like a palace, and indeed they were filled with portraits of royals and lords, and the windows had stained glass emblems that depicted the shields of noble families. There were also symbols of justice and trade and Brussels as a city, administrated from within these gilded halls. I walked entirely alone through these rooms feeling a bit awkward. Every wall in the building that wasn't weighed down with paintings was covered instead with a tapestry depicting some Biblical scene. The last room was my favourite—its frescos were only painted in 1893, and they were an insight into what the Hotel de Ville represented historically. The inscription read PAX CIVITATIS, peace of the city or the people, and this peace was the rich burghers go about trading dressed up in their fine clothes, while the poor toil away with nothing but sad brown rags. An interesting concept of peace.

It was only mid-afternoon but I was exhausted, so I returned to the hostel and took to my bed for several hours. Our dorm room has gathered a few more occupants: I know one is Dutch, one is American, and one is French-Canadian, but there are two more who remain a mystery. They all seem like very nice people. Eventually I emerged to go find some dinner, but I didn't last long after eating and went back to rest again. That sun was still shining until ten o'clock at night, and then it did feel like summer, even though the air was still cool.

[bookwormtck]

Uber conversations

In jr. year undergrad, I had to use Uber for my education practicum as the school I was placed in was far from campus and I didn't have a license. (Needless to say I am still recovering financially, but the drivers were cool.) Here are some of the conversations I remember...

A 40-something Korean American man who had bought land in Costa Rica from his college roommate's family to make a coffee business, but was now back in the suburbs to take care of his parents. He was the self-proclaimed black sheep middle child with no kids, so the responsibility fell on him.

A brusque, corporate-sounding, well-dressed Tesla driver who told me that he bought two or three other Teslas at the same time he had bought this one. I asked why he was doing Uber if he had money for 3 Teslas and he said "In life, you find that the only money you really have is the cash inside your hand. I've gained millions and lost millions overnight." He was a car dealership owner and we talked about how the invention of the lightbulb changed our society to be pervaded by capitalism. Obviously, he assumed I didn't know how to open the door.

A borderline drunk man in a wifebeater who kept trying to find out my age. I was going to a gyno appointment and he overheard me telling my birthday to the check-in worker over the phone. He made a "pheeeeewwww" sound and seemed genuinely concerned for me (I think he thought I was getting an abortion.)

A former racehorse trainer who was not so much angry at the world as he was confused about why things are so messed up. Because of how Covid changed the entertainment industry, he had lost his job. I offhandedly mentioned my beliefs as a Christian. He said he believes in God and grew up in church but still doesn't get why people are so selfish.

A Ghanian man who after hearing that my grandparents immigrated from Korea, went on a passionate tirade on how lazy Americans are. "You've got to TOIL," he kept saying. He seemed okay hearing that I'm studying to be a teacher.

The car pulls up and there is a giant poster saying I STAND WITH IMRAM KAHN with Kahn's face on the door. I ask the driver about the poster and it turns out he ran away from Pakistan because he's in trouble with govt for speaking out against their actions. I think his family is still there. Naturally, I related his political situation to the only one I have extensive knowledge on: North Korea. We emphatically bashed world dictators together while agreeing on the necessity of free speech.

Similar to the Pakistani gentleman, an older Turkish man who taught me how to say thank you in Turkish, and also was in trouble with their govt. He kept saying "If I go Turkey, I go jail. They are very bad." But I think he has family here, which is good. He was quite cautious and even asked me if he could take a call from his wife. I wonder if previous customers gave him a hard time.

An extremely relaxed-sounding Romanian man who asked every Korean American's most dreaded question ("North or South?"), then said it was just a joke when I told him, laughingly: "Every driver asks me that." He talked about his upcoming travels to Europe, and I asked him what it's like living in the US. He sped through a railroad crossing as the bar was coming down and we kind of just laughed it off.

The worst by far: a guy who asked "You Chinese? Oh, Korean? You doctor?" and then "You so beautiful." It was scary because it was still dark outside and no one else was on the road. I stayed as quiet as I could. He was the only Egyptian I've met that I didn't like.

A man who gave me the inside info on how Uber exploits its workers. He asked how much I paid for the ride and said he gets about $3 less than that. Also, the Uber app is skewed in favor of the customers and the company, not the drivers: they have a harsh penalty for cancelling rides, even if they are in danger because of the customer. I had never thought of that. This driver also talked about how he dodged bullets because he once drove a distraught young girl to her mother's house out of state while her crazed abuser chased her out of the airport. Apparently she was holding a pillowcase as a backpack and was crying. Upon arrival, her mother gave him a massive tip, so he said that in hindsight he probably saved her life.

A cheery Puerto Rican lady who practiced Spanish with me and was impressed with my accent, laughing the whole time. When she turned around to say goodbye, she happy-freaked-out at my eyes (monolids) and pulled her own eyes in a slant. Weirdly, this has happened before from another Latina lady. I took it as a compliment both times.

I don't remember his name, but he was a younger guy from an African country, maybe Kenya, and he asked for help to he could take an English competency class at my college. I gave him the info, but now I feel like I should have directed him to a college nearby my own, which would be more practical. I wonder if it worked out for him; he's probably very busy.

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

Light From Uncommon Stars, April

I do love this brief history about Caputo's Pizza. One history and tradition slipping into another. I can imagine Evan and his group from way back in February turning their nose up at "an Italian restaurant trying to make inauthentic Chinese food." But we can see, by way of this change being allowed to happen at all, that the community around Caputo's has accepted the changes, and even loved them. It has become its own thing, with its own special history and quirks.

I do wonder if this is a bit of an echo to Katrina's own transition, changing more into her own self now that she has her studio and stability.

Tremon Philippe is once again the picture of an editor that is leaning on the deadline. He knows the end product will be good but is similarly frustrated it can't be rushed. He wants this grand, astounding finale to Shizuka's works and is stymied that his usual routes for getting it aren't working. At the least he's a very polite demon, he's picked up the tab.

I really do wonder what his opinions on intergalactic society and the Endplague are. Does Hell care about other planets? Or do they just operate locally? Would he like a galaxy full of madness and torment or is he of the opinion that mindless strife is boring and useless outside of Inferno? I can hope we get some answers for these, I'm really curious.

Speaking of the Endplague, I now know it a bit better. The emotional bit here, comparing it to the arcade game Stargate, was brilliant. Me, knowing how arcade games feel to play, at least. An endless progression that you can only get a "game over" on. Yet people play them all the same. And all the time. It's something Lan marks as a curious human behavior. Seeing humanity from her eyes is always a treat. I like how we're the communication aliens. We literally just can't stop talking about bullshit with one another. We care so much about wooden sound boxes and clumps of pixels drawn in a vacuum tube or accountings of a history that has never happened.

This is really Lan's first time dealing with triviality. The fact that we can wake up to unimaginable, ever-present horror just so that we might see a flower or a smile in the infinite cosmic soup. It's appreciable. It's what I appreciate in humanity, is being able to love such a small piece of the world so deeply.

Deeply enough to sell your soul for it. Shizuka's secret is out, to Lan's family and Katrina. I do want to say, I think it's incredible that Shirley already cares for Katrina to the point that she would intervene on her behalf. The problem is that Katrina already knows.

The details never mattered. Katrina knew that by going with Shizuka, she would pay in some way. There is always a price to be paid. The book frames this as knowledge that living as queer bequeaths, and for my part I can't help but agree. Living as myself had a price within my family. The tolerance of others is paid with palatable silence from me. So it goes.

To see Katrina's resolve to pay for her own voice with her soul, is such a sorrowful beauty. I would like to take the chance to speak more of how some friends of mine who left the church so they could be themselves have gone through this feeling. Imagine believing in Hell all your life and now, no matter how much you may disagree or know otherwise, being unable to shake the what-if of internal torment. Literally deciding that a chance of falling to Inferno is worth it if it means being able to be yourself.

For my part, I'm a pagan, essentially. the metaphysical concept of punishment everlasting isn't in my beliefs, and I still feel so sharply for Katrina's answering song. M voice was bought with the hell of marginalization and public scrutiny over my lifestyle, after all. Something I definitely don't feel I'm alone in feeling, either.

Gosh this scene... this scene. I want to keep talking about it but at a certain point I'll just flood out the rest of the chapters.

Ahem.

Of course, Shirley found out about the Queen of Hell and the frightening potency she's been erased from everything with. And she told her mother, of course. Lan's not wrong to be concerned, I should think. Of course she's not! She just learned her love interest is going to condemn her wonderful student to endless torment. And it's only when Katrina tells Shirley, through her music, that she knowingly entered this deal, that Lan finally realizes. She's never asked. Never sat down to listen. To Shizuka or to Katrina, to the intricacies of relationships and meanings. I do wonder how she'll grow, because even after listening, I do not think Lan would want either of these women consigned to Hell. Not when she's already been there. Not when she returns every night.

This month ends with a lesson now that Katrina is frustrated with the safety, the "meekness", of her newfound voice. "...In your hollows. In your nothingness. There is where your music gains its life."

Aye. It really does. The plucking sounds can't convey without the opposing nothing. In writing, at least, I find that the pieces that echo the most are the ones that are surrounded by quiet.

[pursuit-of-faith-blog]

I love the book of mormon musical as much as anyone, but the fans make me sick

[beboped1]

Small Gods

I think this is the fastest time between finishing and writing the review yet. Small Gods is an important book to me, one of those life changing pieces of literature, and I really wanted it to hold up. Spoilers: it did.

Small Gods

First Read: High School

Verdict then: This book resonates so deeply with my Jesuit Catholic raised self that I don't yet have the words to fully describe it. It feels like it has changed me: I want to be like Brutha.

Verdict now: It still resonates so deeply, but now maybe I have the words to explain. This book deserves its place on my "works of art that changed me forever" list.

Small Gods returns to the laser sharp focus and tight plotting of Guards, Guards, but in impact surpasses it wholly (at least for me). The topic of this book is organized religion, and the ways good and bad in which it affects humanity. The true message of this book is that kindness and compassion are always worth the cost, especially in the face of their opposites. It is a message I am so glad I received when I did.

I was too early along the path in High School to know that this would become true, but Brutha's journey is in many ways my own journey. I was raised by fairly liberal Jesuitical Catholics, and bought into it without much question for most of my childhood. It was simply the way the world worked - it all made so much sense. But as I got older, I started to be exposed to more of the faith, the less humane parts, one could call them the Vorbisian sides of Catholicism. I first read this book at a critical point in my journey, as I was starting to question how both these things could exist together, to figure out how my moral compass differed from that preached by the highest levels of the church, and to decide what impact this knowledge should have on the path of my life.

We get here the first truly great Pratchett villain. Vorbis is a perfect vessel to carry the weight of hidebound and rules focused religion. I think everyone religious has met Vorbis's type before - those more interested in the religion as a set of rules that they can use to control others than anything else. Pratchett has such a deft way of painting an extreme and making it feel purely human at the same time. For me, Vorbis in his purity lets you see clearer the ways that attitude appears - I heard him in a sermon from Father Matt, my local pastor, in 2004, where he talked about how all good Catholics must be one issue voters for abortion. It was that sermon that first made me stop wanting to go to that church, not because I disagreed about abortion (though I did and do), but because it was so blatantly a Vorbis move - wielding the doctrine of the faith as a club, an act of coercion, not of teaching. I would never trust that priest, and in many ways the whole Church, again.

It's telling about Pratchett's core moral philosophy and message that so many of his villains are defined by a lack of empathy. It's not the desire to lead that Pratchett opposes; it's the "knowing" what is best for others, the seeing people only as tools, that truly earns his ire. It's a persistent leitmotif of Pratchett's work so far and I'm sure it will continue. I can't think of any of books to here in the series that are missing it - sometimes more obvious, sometimes less, but always there.

Small Gods changed my life. It is clear in hindsight that the path laid out through Brutha was one of the key guides I followed in my own journey. It was and is a map that helped lead me to the person I am today, and for that, I will always be grateful.

[justforbooks]

Although he was acclaimed as a travel writer, Jonathan Raban, who has died aged 80, disliked the term. He agreed with his fellow writer Bruce Chatwin, who famously turned down the Thomas Cook award, that the term was too limiting. He said he found it an “open form”, which was perfect for him because “I write between genres anyway”. When asked why, unlike Chatwin, he accepted the Cook award twice, he said: “I was hungry for prizes.”

He was also hungry to travel, to get away from his roots. The leaving of Britain formed a crucial part of much of his writing, even as he sailed around the island in Coasting (1986). The heart of his work was set on water; his writing mirrors the movement of the sea, its calm with turmoil always lurking beneath, taking you along with it, hiding and revealing. He mixes literary sources and knowledge with the people and places encountered on his journey; he’s less exotic than Chatwin, less caustic than Paul Theroux, but all of it comes in service to his real journey, within himself, escaping into travel. “Wherever I was, I felt like an outsider,” he said, and it is a feeling that permeates his writing, though he was drawn to America, a land of immigrants: the freedom of adjusting to this new world, and its contrasts with his old, became a major theme.

What he was escaping was the English world into which he was born, in Hempton, Norfolk. He was three when he first met his father, the Rev Canon J Peter CP Raban, an army captain returning from the second world war. He grew up in various parish postings, and his father came to represent “the Conservative party, the army, the church, the public school system in person”. It was his mother, Monica (nee Sandison), who “taught me to read, which was my one proficiency”.

He despised boarding school, to which he was sent at five, and eventually studied English at Hull University, where he organised a library committee in order to meet Philip Larkin, notoriously adept at avoiding students. They discussed novels and jazz, but never poetry. He married a fellow student, Bridget Johnson, in 1964. After graduating he taught English and American literature at Aberystwyth, then at East Anglia; he was captivated by American writers, particularly Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, and published a study of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

In 1969, he moved to London as a freelance writer, on the recommendation of Malcolm Bradbury, falling into the last hurrah of the Grub Street era, reviewing while living in the basement of the house shared by the poet Robert Lowell and the writer Lady Caroline Blackwood, after his marriage ended. His experience of Larkin and Lowell led to another book of literary criticism, The Society of the Poem. He joined the circle that emerged around the New Review magazine, in Soho’s Pillars of Hercules pub, and in 1974 published Soft City, a mix of personal memoir and London observation that became an early example of “psychogeography”.

His first travel book, Arabia Through the Looking Glass (1979), took a modern orientalist view of the area reminiscent of Charles Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta and other classic travel writing on the Middle East. Old Glory (1981) was his first book set in the US, taking a skiff down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans. It recalls his study of Huckleberry Finn, blending the approaching age of Ronald Reagan into his inward experiences with America’s own eccentricities, and was a success on both sides of the Atlantic. Jan Morris called it “the best book of travel ever written by an Englishman about the United States”.

His first novel, Foreign Land (1985), follows an eccentric expat Englishman, George Grey, who leaves the Caribbean to return home, much to the consternation of his daughter, and sail a just-bought boat around Britain. Raban recapitulated the story himself in Coasting, in which he sails around the country, which, as the Falklands war erupts, seems an increasingly insular island nation. The book marks the perfecting of his classic English voice, that of the friendly faux-bumbler whose self-deprecation is itself a form of humble-brag, which has served British humour from Arthur Marshall to Bill Bryson; it made him a neutral sort of observer to Americans he met.

After publishing a memoir, For Love & Money: A Writing Life, he moved to the US, his journey across the Atlantic in a container ship told in Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (1990), and, crucially, a poignant leaving scene that reflects the end of his second marriage, to the London art dealer Caroline Cuthbert.

He settled in Seattle, where in 1992 he married his third wife, Jean Lenihan; their daughter, Julia, was born in 1993. He continued travelling – Bad Land: An American Romance was set in Montana, dealing with the difficult dreams of immigrants to the beautiful but harsh Big Sky country. But his next book was perhaps his finest. Passage to Juneau (1996) is nominally another boat trip, on Alaska’s Inside Passage, a man leaving his wife and daughter for his travel. But midway through the trip, he returns to England, where his father is dying and his family has gathered. It is a travelogue of the writer’s mid-life implosion; he returns to finish his journey only to be greeted by his wife announcing she and his daughter are leaving him.

He remained in Seattle to concentrate on the joint care of his daughter. His 2003 novel, Waxwings, takes its butterfly title from Nabokov’s Pale Fire: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the window pane.” Drawing on Bad Land, it is the story of an expat Hungarian-British man, in the dot.com boomtown that is Seattle, with an American wife, and an illegal Chinese immigrant worker who begins reconstructing his house. Raban was a distant relative of Evelyn Waugh, and the book recalls Waugh’s Men at Arms, where the social whirl does not stop for the newly launched war. My Holy War (2006), about the 9/11 attack and the US invasion of Iraq, was almost a companion piece.

In 2006 he published his third novel, Surveillance, in which a journalist tracks down a reclusive writer who has been kept hidden by his publisher lest he destroy the credibility of his Holocaust memoir. Its prime concern is the many-faceted ambiguity of liberty in the war on terror. “The world changed,” he said. “It didn’t change with 9/11. It changed with the Patriot Act, with the homeland security measures and the war on terror.”

His 2010 collection, Driving Home, is an eccentric mix of literary criticism, tales of great sea voyages, the state of the US in the 21st century and the mix of people he meets along the way, even as he remained in Seattle. A 2011 essay in the New York Times, The Getaway Car, detailed a drive down the Pacific coast to take Julia, now 18, to university at Stanford, outside San Francisco. Later that year, Raban suffered a massive stroke, which left one side of his body paralysed and confined him to a wheelchair. He continued writing, primarily for the New York Review of Books. It seemed an ironic fate for a writer who saw his journeys as “a means of escape, freedom and solitude, I could be happy … in a way I couldn’t be at home”. Yet he had always travelled through literature, and through his writing. And now he had a different sort of freedom in his daughter, which perhaps allowed him to address his own escape in his last book, to be published this autumn, a memoir titled Father and Son.

Julia survives him.

🔔 Jonathan Raban, writer, born 14 June 1942; died 17 January 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[eruden-writes]

Found (angel x human drabble)

A human woman meets an angel in an abandoned church.

Mostly just playing around with creating my own lore for angels.

Just fluffy-ish!

Word count: Not even full 2k.

--

People told Paislee, all her life, that looking at an angel could do a number of things. Melt a human’s face. Drive them insane. Make a human claw out their own eyes. It was something about the divinity being insurmountable for a human being to understand. The fact no one had a specific description of an angel didn’t help in the slightest, either.

Yes, there were always the old - perhaps entirely flawed - descriptions in religious books. Of angels being an amalgamation of creatures; or humanoids with four wings; or just floating wheels with eyeballs and wings. But it was pretty much unheard of for a human to see an angel in their true form. Ever.

Yet, here she stood.

In an abandoned church.

In the middle of a ghost town.

No one for miles.

Staring up at an angel.

And Paislee was certainly staring. Drinking in all the details of the being that stood before her, bathed in the artificial light of her cellphone. Though there were plenty shafts of light dropping into the darkened church through holes in the ceiling.

At first, her brain could only register the general shape of it. Tall. Taller than any orc or minotaur she’d ever met. Though she couldn’t see all of their body, they gave off the impression of spindliness. And stark white, almost glowing in the grim darkness of the church. But the longer the silence settled, the more Paislee focused on the finer details.

Their head was bare and smooth. The face like a featureless mask, sectioned into two pieces. Each side of their face possessed an eye and there was a third, resting on the seam in its face. All three possessed dark blue sclera and cyan blue circles for irises. And all three were turned toward her, staring just as intently as she stared at them.

A tattered grey fabric, nothing more than a blanket with a jagged hole cut out for the head, hung over their form, to about their knees. Though Paislee could still spot four hands, with long and sharp looking fingers, peeking out beneath the article of clothing.

The angel stood deathly still. She wasn’t even sure if they were breathing. It was hard to tell, since the thing hadn’t moved since Paislee spotted it.

The longer she stared, the longer she wondered if it was an angel. Regardless if a human had ever actually seen an angel, the stories about insanity-inducing, eye-melting, unfathomable divinity were consistent, to a degree, when it came to the harm that could befall a mortal. Her initial presumption was based off nothing, except some innate knowledge that it was an angel. Maybe it was just the result of the setting, in an old - relatively well-kept, though abandoned - church.

But if this wasn’t an angel, what were they?

Before Paislee could formulate her own question, the being finally moved.

Toward her.

She gave a startled squeak, stumbling back until she hit a wall. The angel was undeterred as it slowly closed the distance between them, stooping close to Paislee when within her personal bubble.

“What are you doing here?” Their voice was soft, soothing, but there was a displeased hiss beneath the words. The mask-like face didn’t move, Paislee noticed, but there had to be some mouth somewhere. It wasn’t a voice in her head. She could still hear the echoes of their voice in her bones.

“I… I…” Her brain scrambled to remember why she was there. The angel let out a low huff, as if it would begin growling if she took much longer. Paislee swallowed, closing her eyes to wrangle her thoughts into something coherent. The scents of the dilapidated church filtered into her nose: old damp wood and grime and the faint scent of trespassing animals. “M-my grandfather died and willed this town to me. He bought the land d-decades ago, long after the town had been abandoned. I did-didn’t know anyone lived here.”

Paislee thought the angel made another huffing sound, like a quiet and bitter laugh. “Not inaccurate.”

“W-what?”

Like an owl staring at a mouse, the angel cocked their own head to the side. Their gaze intent on Paislee’s face. “I am nobody. Nothing.”

It was such a strange thing for them to say. They were physically there, they existed! Briefly, terror grasped at Paislee, wondering if the angel desired the anonymity for other, nefarious, means. However, a sound - a bird shifting, a rat scuttling, wood settling, Paislee wasn’t sure - in the rafters caught her ear.

Suddenly remembering the church, a thought struck suddenly. Little was known about angels, but perhaps the place of once-worship had something to do with the angel’s presence. And perhaps why they said they were nothing.

With a swallow, her gaze turned back to the being’s face. It still hadn’t looked away, but Paislee couldn’t decide if their attention was curiosity or hunger. She chose to ignore that uncertainty, for the moment as she softly asked, “Does this have to do with this church being abandoned?”

The angel made a thoughtful sound, attention finally flickering away from her, to the cobwebbed beams of the church, swinging to the dark corners were birds roosted and bats hung. “Yes.”

Even quieter, not quite wanting to know the answer, Paislee prodded further, “Have you been here since it was abandoned?”

“Yes.”

“Why not go to another church?” Paislee struggled against the lump in her throat, trying to recall when the town had been deserted. She could have sworn it was during the 1800s, but perhaps there had been squatters that came in more recent years? Though her grandfather never mentioned it. One thing she knew, she wanted the angel out of there. “I-I could help you find one of your denomination.”

The angel’s gaze fell back to Paislee. “This church wasn’t only abandoned by mortals.”

Paislee’s eyebrows furrowed at the words. She opened her mouth, to ask for clarification or to suggest something else; she wasn’t entirely sure.

“This place was abandoned by its god.” The angel continued speaking, voice calm and smooth. As soothing as their voice was, the lump in Paislee’s throat fell heavily to her stomach, anticipating the next words with dread. “As was I.”

---

“I do not have faith in a god.” The words were said matter-of-fact and with such certainty, Paislee had to take a moment to force herself not to simply accept the angel’s - Omniel - assertion.

“Are you certain, Omniel?” Paislee’s lips pursed, not finding their explanation entirely acceptable. The angel didn’t glance up from the book they were reading while sitting ramrod straight in a plush antique chair.  

Three months had passed since Paislee met Omniel. To say there had been quite a transformation would have been an understatement. The raggedy blanket had been exchanged - after much fashion research - for button-up shirts, modified to fit Omniel’s arms, and pressed slacks. When the mood hit Omniel, they would even wear suspenders.

Beyond the superficial layer of clothing, much more had changed as well. On occasion, Omniel would grow headwings or even back wings. Paislee still didn’t understand the mechanics of it, since Omniel never seemed to tear their shirts with wings suddenly sprouting. From what she understood, thanks to extensive research, was angels didn’t have a singular physical form. They existed on the borders of reality, which meant physical parts of them could shift in and out. Much of the time, angels could control it, could keep a form, but strong emotions could break that discipline.

Paislee shuddered, recalling how Omniel had liquefied a week into their cohabitation. They had turned into sobbing dark blue goop after watching The Dog Episode of Futurama. It had taken Paislee introducing Omniel to three flavors of ice cream via separate pints and watching Legally Blonde to equalize their moods. Not that Omniel would admit it now.

The angel had a much more composed aura, nowadays. Paislee couldn’t count how many times they’d been a blessing when it came to renovating the abandoned town. She still wasn’t entirely certain how to transform the land into a sanctuary, but Omniel had certainly helped in the face of zoning restrictions and lawyers and construction workers and more. For whatever reason, the angel seemed capable of picking up on subjects that Paislee lacked. Despite having been alone for such a long time.

Omniel simply seemed much more robust than in the beginning.

Unable to relent, she adjusted the books in her arms until she found her notebook. Flipping it open, her finger slid over the numerous, sloppy notes scrawled on the lined papers.  “From all the research I’ve been able to do, angels seem to thrive when they find a god to follow.”

Omniel finally placed their book aside, tilting their face toward the human woman. They shook their head, their eyes closing solemnly as they repeated, “I do not have faith in a god.”

Paislee stared at Omniel for a solid moment, her lips scrunched a little off-center with skepticism. When her look didn’t seem to get through to the angel, she sighed and shrugged. It was Omniel’s business who or what they had faith in and they didn’t have to share it with her. “If you say so.”

As Paislee turned to leave, mumbling something about getting lunch, Omniel shifted in their chair. The movement caught Paislee’s eye and she waited, as the angel crossed their legs and settled their elbow on the chair’s arm, chin in one hand as the second hand on the same arm tapped their fingers on the upholstery.

All three of Omniel’s eyes stared at her for a breath as two sets of headwings fluttered by their temples. A sensation crawled down Paislee’s spine, warm and tingly. A common reaction she had to the angel watching her with such intensity. One she just couldn’t grow used to or ignore. She felt as if Omniel was analyzing her, seeing something play out behind their own eyes that she couldn’t comprehend. Perhaps they saw her death or her life or everything about her.

Not for the first time, Paislee hoped Omniel didn’t have omniscience. Living together as they had for three months, she couldn’t say all of her thoughts of the angel were strictly friendly. Involuntarily, her attention flickered to the angel’s arms, bisected into two forearms at the elbow. They were strong-looking arms, though just as lithe as the first day she saw the angel. She had too many thoughts about those arms to indulge, forcing her attention back to Omniel’s face.

“If solving this mystery matters to you,” the angel began and Paislee thought she could hear a shred of amusement in their voice, “My faith belongs to you.”

Paislee blinked dumbly a few times, the words floating in her synapses but not sinking in. When the words did finally settle into comprehension, she couldn’t help the laugh that fell from her lips. “Omniel, I’m no god!”

Before she could even finish, the angel was getting to their feet and approaching her. Paislee’s heart stumbled in her chest. For a split-second, she could see the old Omniel, the one whose movement’s reminded her of a wild animal, untethered to social mores. The same one who didn’t understand personal space as the current one strode closer than they had in weeks. Craning her neck, Paislee realized she had forgotten how tall the angel was.

“As I said, I do not have faith in a god,” Omniel took Paislee’s hand in one of theirs, raising her knuckles to their smooth, mask-like face. The angel pressed where their lips should have been - or perhaps were, in a different dimension - and Paislee flushed, feeling soft give and warm breath against her skin.

The angel paused, observing the woman’s face with heightened interest. Though they quickly finished their point, again their tone taking on a warm, fond inflection, “But I do have faith in a goddess.”

[josefavomjaaga]

The fate of Sainte Apolline

A friend sent me a link to this video about Napoleon’s marshals Suchet, Ney and Soult that, as far as Soult is concerned, of course inevitably had to refer to Soult’s avarice and his looting of Spanish art.

In order to visualize the looting, there is this picture (screenshot at 32:16):

And we even get an example of stolen artwork: »Sainte Apolline« by Zurbaran (a couple of seconds later):

Which I consider a nice opportunity to look into the matter a little more closely.

Before the French occupation of Spain, the painting in question belonged to the catholic order »San José de la Merced Descalza« and presumably was part of its church. That order, like all male monastic orders in the whole of Spain, was dissolved by decret of newly installed king Joseph Bonaparte in 1810, all its properties falling to the government. So »Sainte Apolline« was, together with an abundance of other paintings from other convents, brought to the Royal Alcazàr, the official residence of king Joseph in Sevilla.

Just to make sure: No, Soult (or rather his men) did not loot those paintings out of his own volition and for his own good. He seized them in the name and for the person whom his emperor had told him was the new king of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte.

To my knowledge, there also never was any actual fighting or looting taking place in Sevilla, at least not in the way that is pictured in the caricature above. I understand king Joseph entered the city quite peacefully, stayed a couple of weeks and then immediately hurried back to his mistresses in Madrid, leaving the work that was to be done to Soult (and complaining behind Soult’s back to Napoleon about him). By the way, as far as actual »looting« is concerned, not even Soult’s enemies in France (which seem to have been much more ferocious than outside of France) denied that all the paperwork was in order. He had certificates and receipts for each and every of his paintings.

But of course, these papers had to cover up a forced trade that Soult had imposed on the former owner through threats of reprisals, torture, and death. Right?

At least in the case of Sainte Apolline we can rule that out. Or at least, if Soult indeed stole the painting, he stole it from King Joseph. But that was probably not even necessary, as Soult’s penchant for art was obviously well-known and offered Joseph a rather cheap way of rewarding Soult for his services: just hand him over half a dozend of those hundreds of paintings catching dust in the Alcazàr whenever the guy gets testy.

But back to »Sainte Apolline«: The text next to the painting in the screenshot makes it look as if this painting alone had been worth 1.5 million Franc in 1811. That is not what the speaker in the video says, however, who claims that Soult »amassed an art collection worth an estimated 1.5 million Francs«.

Which, unfortunately, still is incorrect. First of all, this is not an estimation – it is the actual worth of Soult’s collection of art that was on sale after his death, consisting of 163 works of art (see the catalogue here), and with one third of the sum going to a single painting, the »Inmaculada Concepcion de los venerables« by Murillo. But most of all, this happened in 1852, four decades later! Those four decades mean a lot here. Because at the time when Soult acquired the paintings (by whatever means) they were considered so unimportant that Vivant Denon refused most paintings Joseph offered to him for the Louvre and kept haggling for the very few he considered worthy of a Paris museum, but that Joseph wanted to keep in Spain. At the time when Soult bought his paintings, with all convents dissolved and an abundance of religious art on the market all of a sudden, the price for paintings must have dropped close to zero. The paintings also often were in very bad shape and desperate need of restauration. Soult writes to his wife that he actually bought a painting somewhere on the docks, where they were stored in the open.

»Sainte Apolline«, btw, stayed in Soult’s family even after his death. According to the description of provenience on the website of the Louvre, it was his daughter Hortense de Mornay who bought it, and only after her death was it acquired by the Louvre. Who probably could have had it a lot cheaper in 1810 or 1811.

[desperately0seeking]

2.08.22

ASHES

About half an hour out of the city centre on the peninsula of Bygdøy sits Norsk Folkemuseum, a vast miscellany of buildings housing Norse cultural and historical items and traditions. Tom had gotten carried away with some locals the night prior and ended up at Norwegian kickons till morning, so it was just me and Louis who got a bus out to the open air museum around midday. The precinct contains dozens of buildings that have been relocated from towns all across Norway: a log farmhouse from 1238, 17th century sod-roofed lofts from the farmlands of Eastern Norway, a townhouse from 18th century Oslo, and, what I was most excited about, the Gol Stave Church. Stave churches, wooden medieval churches found mostly in Norway, have long intrigued me since naturally coming across them by getting into black metal. Church arson was one of the defining themes of the early Norwegian black metal scene, the finest metal scene there ever was. In 1992 Varg Vikernes, the man behind Burzum, turned the Fantoft Stave Church in Bergen to ashes; a building that had stood since 1150. I recall looking at photos of the church as a teenager and never having seen anything like it: a shard-like structure, made entirely of dark-as-onyx pine logs, scale shingles like a skink’s skin, and serpentine dragon heads protruding off each roof like the figurehead of a viking ship. The burnt wreckage of Vikernes’ Christianophobic zeal can be seen on the cover of Burzum’s 1992 Aske EP. The Gol Stave Church was built in 1212 and moved to where I was walking around in it in 1885. Inside the church was hard and cold, and a mixture of Christian and Norse mythical ornamentations hung across the entrance and walls. I don't have close to the knowledge to understand how Christian and pagan ideas were in use contemporaneously and can coexist in the artworks and wood carvings of the interior, but it was very pretty nonetheless. 

Burzum - Aske 1993

Edvard Munch - Aske 1895

Black metal, Norway's greatest export, was again on the agenda the next day. The aforementioned Vikernes was part of what Euronymous, Mayhem’s guitarist, called the Black Metal Inner Circle, a group of black metal musicians who were integral to the flourishing BM scene of the early 1990s. At the centre of this scene was Helvete, a record store & basement where the Inner Circle converged and schemed, operated by Euronymous. Not long before being murdered by Vikernes in 93, Euronymous closed the shop due to police attention. The shop was later reopened under a different name and the basement preserved. That shop, Neseblod (Nosebleed) Records, is still run today as a metal record store and the basement is open to the public. The basement was much bigger than I'd imagined, with multiple rooms of records, CDs, mags and shirts, all looking as though they’ve sat there since the 2000s and adorned with the levels of dust and soot one would expect to find in a basement. To get to the main attraction, the concrete wall with the words Black Metal scrawled across it that forms the background of many famous photos from that era, you have to walk down a passage festooned with band posters and photos, artworks and an odd mix of religious objects and weights. The weights would be related to the bench press that sits to one side of the last room of the basement. The bench press and some framed photos around it, belonged to Euronymous. Behind this a large Mayhem banner stretches across one of the room's walls. Another has a throne with a Venom poster (Venom’s 1982 album Black Metal is widely credited for laying the foundations for the genre, as well as lending its namesake) hanging above it. To one side of the wall with the markings on it stood a large black candle stick which I hadn't seen in my research, but the writing on the wall stood prominently, albeit faded compared to the famous photos. In Sweden I had a terrible time trying to post a record I'd bought to London, and my backpack was over capacity already, so I refrained from buying any shirts or records. I did buy a Darkthrone pin however, and I think Tom bought a Tormentor shirt.

[hdawg1995]

Hey!

Kinda out of the blue, but I am super curious about your necromancer. Also - the OCs you've posted here are super cool, and I want to know if it's cool for me to draw them 'u'

*breaks down a door and grabs you*

OKAY SO BANE!

(i can't add a read more, i'm so sorry) Austin "Bane" Wyvernjack is one of my D&D characters that i probably will never play again (sadness). He's a death&magic domain cleric/bard (3.5 is awesome you get TWO domains!) and his whole neutral/evil shtick is that the living don't take care of the dead and the dead deserve better than what they get.

he was raised by two very kind retired adventurers after his mother left him on their door step (i always left the why up to my dungeon master but the campaigns never lasted long enough for Bane's past to get a spot light). the town he was raised it wasn't great- there was this priest who did the stereotypical fantasy priest thing and was controlling the whole town with religion and got everyone to turn on Bane.

"But why?" you may ask, and its because this little kid could see and hear ghosts! more importantly- he could see and hear the ghosts in the graveyard behind the church who couldn't move on because the priest fumbled their burial rights.

So Bane, being a good natured kiddo who didn't know why no one else could see the floating people did the burial rights. which pissed off the priest. so obviously the child who can see ghosts was a devil and they should get rid of him. and also tell him that the god he was raised to follow hated him for bonus points.

BUT UH OH! NOW THAT BANE HAD TURNED FROM THE GOD OF THE SUN, LIGHT, LIFE, GUESS HE'LL GO TO THE GODDESS OF DEATH, MAGIC, AND KNOWLEGE!

*insert "KNOWLEGE" meme*

BAne went from good boy to a pain in the Priest's ass as a form of teenage rebellion. this is how he got the nickname "Bane". he prefers that name (and "No one" because of spy antics in another campaign i tried to play him in) because when you follow a goddess of death, magic, and knowledge you KNOW you're gonna do necromancy and thats not liked in most parts of the world. since he adopted his adopted parent's last name he doesn't want anyone or anything going after them because they want to get at the necromancer, you know?

so off Bane goes to be a adventurer. he died *a lot*. in the first campaign i had with him at one point he died 3 times in combat due to the DM getting nothing but 20s against him. when she got the 4th 20 she didn't even say anything she just got up, went next door, bought some cookies and handed them to me. was not fun but it birthed the "Banes dead again" inside joke.

since i figured i would never play him again i started crafting a backstory for him where he gets a girlfriend and they're cute together but jokes on everyone Bane is one of those Bisexuals who thought they were gay and then realized "huh girls are nice too".

He plays the violin and has a ghost that haunts it named Daruk. Daruk was a man who wanted to be a adventurer but died before he could, so now he travels with Bane experiencing the adventure second hand- he also helps Bane some times. when he plays the violin Daruk is in Daruk can cast spells though the music. it has a fire motif and because Bane is a necromancer is GREEN FIRE!

Something Bane says that i always think about and chew on cause every time i do i pull more and more "ah HA!" moments from it is "the living are sheep who will follow any shepherd to the slaughter" because thats how he views the world- a town was easily convinced that a child was evil because they listened to a man who didn't like said child doing a better job than him.

BUT HE IS ALSO LIVING! HE IS VERY MUCH ALIVE! HE IS ALSO A SHEEP FOLLOWING A SHEPHERD TO THE SLAUGHTER!

everyone dies eventually, the sheep eventually are slaughtered. its the shepherd who decides the why and the how- is the shepherd in his phrasing life? death? the gods? YES! ALL THREE! your life choices, your timely or untimely demise, the things you believe in all shepherd you to your end and if that end is pretty or not really ain't up to you. at one point in time Bane felt he was the black sheep of the herd since he... well, was. normally the lone sheep that gets rejected or forgotten by the shepherd is left to the wolves so during that time Bane felt less like a sheep and more like a wolf in sheep's clothing. rather then trying to get in and harm the herd, it was just a huge sense of lack of belonging.

at one point i made Bane a NPC in a game i ran and gave him the ability to enter dreams and cause nightmares legit just ripping off from persona 5 (i even gave him a mask and drew it once.) and now he has this nightmare/pumpkin jack motif and i like to think he thinks its just neat.

None of my bards can sing to save their life. Bane is no different. he can play the violin, dance, and tell a story but sing? the number of times he has screamed in fear or pain (because he died a lot i can not stress that enough that is why i'm never gonna play him again the dice hate him) have ruined whatever vocal cords he has.

i joke that hes my "blue eyed pink haired emo boy" because he is but i never actually make his eyes blue. his eyes are this sickly pale green that glow when he is angry or doing magic (or if it would be spooky because he is dramatic like that and so am i). when he was a NPC i made it lore that the color eyes he has are known as "death's witness" and they're a magic genetic thing. if you see enough death in very specific ways your eyes change to that color and the gene for that color gets passed down to your immediate kin. your kids will have the gene but your grand kids won't (unless your kids happen to have kids with someone else with the gene). Bane has it because blue is a recessive gene and Death's Witness is also recessive, so it overrides the blue.

Bane doesn't have "minions" or "servants", he has friends/companions. i mentioned Daruk but he also has Cuddles the War Pony. CUDDLES' BACKSTORY IS REALLY SAD TW FOR ANIMAL DEATH BUT I LOVE CUDDLES SO GOD DAMN MUCH!

so war ponies are used by smaller races in war. Cuddles loved battle, she was a really good war pony. she got the name because she would cuddle and roll around with her rider(s) after battle to get all that energy out. one day her rider was killed in combat so she stood her ground to defend him. it was a losing fight, but she eventually won. unfortunately *she* was the only one who "one" that battle, so there wasn't anyone to arrive in time to treat her wounds and the enemy wasn't about to get anywhere near a war pony that just killed three men. she cuddled up to her rider and passed away to her injuries on the battle field. in the after life she was very restless- there wasn't a war to fight in the after life, there wasn't a battle or combat to participate in. all she did was run, she couldn't' settle down. Then one day a young necromancer found her bones, still on the battle field, alone. someone had come for her rider but not her. the necromancer felt sorry for the war pony and asked if she wanted to adventure with him. Cuddles was animated almost instantly and promptly tackled the young man, earning her name once more. TW OVER

and then during a campaign Bane got possessed by a demon who turned her into a skeletal nightmare pony. she can talk now! AND CAN FLY!

Right now i'm writing a story where Bane and my other table top characters who will never see the light of day again are living under one roof and there is a surprisingly lack of antics but one of the things about Bane in that story is that he is really happy he isn't constantly dying and has more time for his hobbies like playing the violin and wood carving.

WOW THAT WAS A LOT! Bane is my boi and i love him lots.

also YES! OMG DRAW MY OCS! I HAVE SO MUCH AFFECTION TOWARDS THAT IDEA! THANK YOU! IM GONNA STOP SCREAMING NOW!