#like if people can tell you're catholic outside of church you will be judged by other catholics

[bloggrgirl]

i've been really liking the song agnosia by valleyheart and i thought i was picking up on some christian buzzwords that show up in like modern christian music and i listened to more of their songs. major themes of death and eternity. i'm like i KNOW this is christian music.

and then i got to a song that literally said something about "the prophets" and "great savior" so i googled it and they're like "we don't consider ourselves a christian band." so either they're lying in order to be cool or they're delusional and think this is also how non-christians talk and think

[libraford]

I'm not bothered by the conversation so much as I am a growing approach to activism which makes it impossible to interact with other people. Which echoes a lot of that conversation I had with Ginger this week.

He refuses to have friends that are not faithful to Jesus. Like, he can have a productive conversation with a non-believer and nearly connect with them socially, but if he learns that they don't go to church or don't believe in christ, he finds it difficult to take them seriously because their words were not god-inspired.

Ginger was in a cult. I do not mean this colloquially- Xenos/Dwell is a prominent pseudo-christian cult in central Ohio that preys on college students in need of community. There are rules about who you can date, who you can hang with, they practice gay coversion therapy, and will tell you not to visit your family if they're not Christian.

There is a lot of focus on purity. Actions, thoughts, social groups- it's very controlling about what you can and cannot do.

So. When he goes out into the world with us sinners, it becomes difficult to interact with general society.

We were talking about Merve, one of our foremen, and I said: "the first time I was in a car with Merve, he introduced himself as a Democratic Catholic Pervert. And honestly- yeah that's a good summation."

Ginger didn't like that at all. "Well he's not a very good catholic with all that talk of pornography, he should be ashamed of himself- honestly shouldn't even call himself Christian."

Merve is very much a womanizer, but it's all talk. He's gross about it sometimes and it rubs me the wrong way, but in all fairness- he warned me. Outside of that, he's what I expected from a 60-something landscaper.

"Well, I think whether he's a good Christian or not is up to God, not us."

And he got a little pissy over that comment because I caught him judging.

He only hangs out with 'the faithful' at work, which consists of three guys who are religious in a similar way and it's caused a bit of a rift in the culture. It's gotten a little... preachy. It wasn't preachy before.

So I am making... parallels to this behavior and a particular strain of activism that's been affected by purity culture.

Nothing is ever good enough. If it touches racism, it's banned forever and you have to spread the word about how it's racist. Where doing things that are well-intended puts you in the spotlight for the underlying and actually bigoted reason you're doing a nice thing. And prevents you from doing the nice thing in the future.

Because yes you did a nice thing, but it wasn't enough- you could be doing more.

Yes you did a nice thing, but you did this nice thing instead of tackling this bigger issue.

Yes you did a nice thing, but it was through this program that you didn't know was funded somewhat unethically.

Yes you did a nice thing, but your motivation for doing it wasn't the goodness of your heart, it was motivated by guilt.

Yes you did a nice thing, but it took a horrible event to do it when you should have had the morals of goodness ingrained in you and you should have done this from the start.

Yes you did a nice thing, but you only did it when it started impacting your life and you should be thinking of others first.

Yes you did a nice thing but the nice thing doesn't align perfectly with my worldview.

The goalpost is forever moving backwards.

No one likes to be called 'racist.' It's a really easy weapon to use when something does something you don't like. If you look at anything closely enough, you will see it's racist roots. You could say the same for misogyny, homophobia. Our society is built on hatred and inequality. Untangling it and living a morally pure life free of ridicule is impossible.

Recognizing the roots of an action to be bigoted is the first step. The second step is knowing it when you see it. Step three is pointing it out.

But there are more steps.

Pointing it out, or calling it out, and chastising someone for ignoring or not knowing something actually isn't all that helpful. Because it leaves you to wonder- okay, now what? What can I do to remedy this situation?

Which is the next step- actionable items. Yes, I have done something wrong- I am sorry.

I am sorry. Now I will try to make it right.

I will try to make it right by donating, by volunteering time, by listening to the people who have been hurt and lifting their voices.

Part of healing from an oppressive Christian community is realizing that people are going to sin whether you like it or not. And barring harm to themselves and others, you're gonna have to let them.

If my tarot practice is derived from a 15th century racist, then it was derived for a 15th century racist. Refusing to participate in a past-time that helps me connect with my family doesn't make it not racist. It will still be racist. But I'm not sure who it's hurting in 2024 and I don't have a time machine and I'm not being given clear instructions for how to unracist it.

[captaingondolin]

Get to know me tag game!

tagged by @corelliaxdreaming

I am constitutionally incapable of being brief ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1. Do you make your bed?

Usually not. Sometimes I think it will magically make me feel better about life. Or help me not fall back into it (spoiler: it doesn't work)

2. Favorite number?

Even numbers. 5 and its multiples are on thin ice.

3. What’s your job?

Used to be librarian, currently an archeology student (shout out to my mother for the help, to my depression funk that meant I spent next to nothing during my last two years at work, and to the fact that I moved to a place where normal humans don't need faustian deals to afford higher education)

4. If you could go back to school would you?

See above. I am also an anxious mess who cannot do deadlines, so the dream would be just attending lectures forever without doing exams/essays (which I think in my home country you could technically legally do, since unis are public, you only pay if you enroll. but it might be outdated info)

5. Can you parallel park?

No license yet (and I'm An Old). Don't judge, I used to live in London, and currently I'm in a weird spot with figuring out where I'm living long term.

6. Do you think aliens are real?

Same as what Katie said, not sure about humanoid aliens, but the universe is vast and there must be life somewhere else.

7. Can you drive a manual car?

See above. But I live in Europe, most people use manual, so that's what I'll learn.

8. What’s your guilty pleasure?

Guilt was invented by the catholic church to sell more confessions.

9. Tattoos?

I have a whole list. I promised the very first to my child self (it will be Alexander the Great themed). But.

There's an ongoing thing with my mother - I know she has no say over my body and it's not my responsibility if she chooses to take my decisions as a personal attack. However, she's one of the best people I know about literally everything else (not just because we are related, mind you, I can and have told family to fuck right out of my life), so for a long time I hemmed and hawed about it, because I wasn't sure it was worth risking a fight. Recently I got a nose ring and she has kept her mouth blessedly shut about it, so yay for progress (again, I am An Old, but mediterranean mothers are just Like That. In her defence, she outright told me she is making an effort to treat me as an adult and a peer and I can see her really working on it).

10. Favorite color?

the colour of the sky

Orange. I'd pull off the pilot flightsuit. And pink, I adore all shades of pink!

11. Favorite type of music?

Currently in a months long standoff with my brain, who thinks music is evil and out to get him (because we're not having feelings right now) but I can occasionally spoon feed him Hazbin Hotel. ♫⋆ CAUSE I KNOW YOU'RE POISON, YOU'RE FEEDING ME POOOISOOOON, ADDICTED TO THIS FEEEEELIIIIIN' ♪ ₊˚♬

...sorry.

If things are good, literally everything, but I love musicals (Legally Blonde got me through uni last time), metal (D'Artagnan is the latest band I discovered) and everything in the folk, folk metal, country, sea shanties, pirate metal kind of rhythm, and classical music (Verdi can so get it. and Mozart, baby Gondolin's first crush). Oh, and tango and early 2000 pop. Hardstyle if I'm in a writing fugue. I used to only dislike slow ballads and acoustic remakes, but I was recently personally attacked by Avril Lavigne with the Bite Me acoustic. And tbh I listen to Hozier, I should have known.

Shoutout to Inti-Illimani, I am contractually obligated to tell people about chilean protest songs-andean folk legends, listen to them.

12. Do you like puzzles?

Nope.

13. Any phobia?

Mice. Most houses I lived in while in London had mice, and seeing glimpses of tail and little feet scuttling about in places like the fucking kitchen counter really did me in. I recently saw the tiniest, objectively cute, mouse outside (at an archaeological dig, we'd disturbed him and not the other way around) and my heartbeat still got fucked. Meanwhile, I was chill with the HUGE centipede, the snake that slithered right past me, the geko, the turtles, spiders and all other wildlife, or even huge city cockroaches.

Maybe my phobia is shitty British houses, actually. Your walls and celings are not supposed to have holes, you know?

14. Favorite childhood sport?

Quitting. I wasn't into sports enough for me to want to go on and I couldn't give a rat's ass about competing. But I loved ice skating and judo. Skiing too (I grew up in the mountains, I know for a lot of people skiing is the epitome of luxury xD but I could have probably walked to a slope. Okay, maybe not walked, but.)

15. Do you talk to your self?

All the time, and my grandma used to be the same.

I used to give myself interviews when I was a kid, imagining myself as a famous author or filmmaker. Now sometimes I pretend I'm talking to my therapist. Or just straight up talk through things out loud, so it's easier to follow a single train of thought without thinking a billion things at once. Or I give myself little pep talks or go "godddamit, self" and I talk to objects a lot.

16. What movies do you adore?

The Lord of the Rings. All the Star Warses. Even the ones I don't love are fun. Rogue One is top tier but I need to be hydrated for how much I'll cry.

More recently the duology Les Trois Mousquetaires : D'Artagnan part I and II. I can't quite figure out if it's for the movies themselves (and the soundtrack, the soundtrack absolutely slaps), because I'm horrendously thirsty for the cast (I would let trauma-ridden, unwashed, long-haired Vincent Cassel straight up give me syphilis. He's so fucking good as the alcoholic trashfire that is Athos) or if it's because I adore the book and Dumas is part of my genetic makeup at this point.

17. Coffee or tea?

Coffee (currently drinking the cold brew of dreams). I don't like black tea, but herbal teas/infusions are fantastic. I have a hibiscus, apple, mint and berries one from Lidl that is the stuff of dreams (excellent cold too, I brew it for longer with a pinch of green tea and honey, then add some lemon and it's the shit). On the more bougie side, I have the biggest hard on for jasmine tea. Most places sell you green tea with a vague hint of jasmine, but the good stuff that comes in little balls is unparalleled, it smells like the flowers. Also good both hot or cold (again, brewed for longer with some honey or sugar and then I love it with milk or milk substitutes).

18. First thing you wanted to be growing up

Archaeologist 💖 librarian, writer, film director, and briefly F1 pilot.

Since I never know who to tag, I'm doing the last 5 mutuals who liked/reblogged something, because why not. Feel free to ignore this! @obiwong @reena-jenkins @silvergryphon @tothestarwarsandback @themonopolyhat

[magicboobiess]

Excommunicado

So if you're anything like me and you've seen the John wick movies. Which are so so goood btw. I don't care what anyone says I love me a good action pew, pew movie. Sometimes seeing some on screen violence play out in the most bad ass way possible can be so rewarding and fulfilling. Also spoiler alert coming up, but not really though since this word also has roots in the Catholic church. Then you probably know what being Excommunicado means or entails. To briefly explain however, basically the Main character John wick is an assassin that's part of this order of assassin's that have a code they all abide by. Which can be summarized by a quote from the movie. "Rules. Without them, we live with the animals."

So basically Mr. Wick breaks one of the rules of the order and as such he is Excommunicado. Which basically means, When an individual is Excommunicado, they lose all access to Continental services, including protection from other Continental members. Which to sum up basically means they are given the cold shoulder by all the group members and abandoned to their own devices never allowed to return and everyone has to stop associating with them at the risk of death, or being given excommunicado status as well. Where am I going with all of this? Well recently I met up with a homie that I hadn't seen in so long.

Side tangent, I tend to this thing where I lose contact with people I know for about 2-6 months at a time. Give or take depending on what I have going on in my own life. So whenever I come back to catch up or see how people are doing it's as if I've entered a time skip and missed 3 seasons worth of developments. Which never ceases to surprise me.

So when I met up again with this homie, I recently came to find out he had been Excommunicado from a friend group that I would associate with every now and then. Not going to lie however he was looking rough and I could definitely tell how much it was affecting the guy. Did I feel bad for him? Yeah, I did, he really did love his friends in that group and he had gone on so many adventures and done so many things with them. So to hear he was dropped by them made me feel for him.

I felt for him because getting to know people is already hard enough as it is, but losing people that are super close to you overnight is even worse. He'd showed me the messages the other friends had sent him and they were basically all in the manner of "never speak to me again why would you do this?" Does he deserve sympathy? I say yes, only however as an outsider peering in though. I honestly only have he said, she said, statements to go off of. But I'm a firm believer of taking people as they are and only judging them based on what they have done to ME personally. If I myself have not been slighted by the person then I have no reason to join in the mob mentality of shunning someone and turning my back on them.

For those curious of the "crime" he committed, here's the tea I suppose. Basically he and his best friend both liked this one girl. The girl was fooling around with his friend, and they were exclusive according to what I hear. So basically what he did is he went around and started messing around with the same girl his best friend was seeing. I suppose it started weighing on him or something since I heard that he came clean to his bestie about what he had done. At which point the bestie, after hearing this wanted nothing to do with him anymore and told him that they were better off going their separate ways. What happened afterwards is that all the other friends in the group heard of this and agreed that they wouldn't talk to him or hang out with him anymore. Hence he became excommunicado.

This is why I think I've never really been a fan of having large friend groups. Not because I'm scared of having multiple friends or anything all at once. More so, one day it's all rainbows and sunshine and the next all doors have been closed to you. I will say however as I myself am not a fan of drama, I think this is the moment where I'll disappear again for about 2-6 months and then pop back in after the time skip. It's not that I don't care about the guy, or that I want to look good in the eyes of said friend group. I simply abhor the Idea of having to take sides. It's not for me and It's always so mentally frustrating and exhausting.

I hope they all can come to terms with each other and settle their differences. We shall see. All I have to say though is much love to them all. One thing about me is, if you make me chose sides I'll just drop both.

Much love MagicB00biess XOXO