#maybe not quite identical to how catholics pray | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hillbillyoracle · 4 years ago

Text

Rebooting My Practice

This is going to be pretty rambly, but I always get a lot out of these posts when other people make them so I wanted to make one too.

I hit a point earlier this year, as I started to really see what all astrology could be, when I knew I was going to need to overhaul pretty much my entire practice. For the last decade, I've focused on divination; on doing activities that sharpen my intuition, following up and checking predictions, tracking cards and results to better understand the connection, etc. I did this primarily in the service of my main deity, the Morrigan.

I still work with her, but I'm in a lurch as to how to continue my work with her. I have yet to quite figure out how to balance her general distaste for shrines (with me at least) and deepening my relationship with her in the absence of local folks to read for as I've relied on for years (thanks COVID). I've been praying the Catholic Rosary lately as a way to deepen my relationship with the Virgin Mary and the Saint I'm petitioning lately and I feel her kind of peering in when I do that so I might have to design one for her. I have a feeling whatever I come up with will likely be in a free zine rather than a blog post at some point.

But where that left me was in this weird abyss, where the only really solid things in my practice were like 3 deities (The Morrigan, Hermes, Yinepu/Anubis) I worked with regularly and tarot cards. I think for plenty of people that's fine but I wanted something deeper and more effective. It was around the time that I was rethinking everything that I stumbled on to this post about a magical routine that absolutely enthralled me. It took me another month and ultimately moving house altogether to even begin to piece something together that would set me on the road to something like this. I knew I was not ready but I finally had a picture in my mind something to work towards. Like rehabilitating after an injury, sometimes you've got to do half as much as you think you can before you really take off.

So I wanted to take some time and talk about the way my practice is changing and what the new pillars are slowly emerging to be.

Planetary Petitions

While I don't have the Orphic Hymns for each of the 7 classical planets memorized yet as per the post, I started by doing planetary prayers more days than I do not do them. Thanks to my truly godawful downstairs neighbor at the new place, who's floor shaking door slams throughout the whole night have netted me an average of 3 hours a night, I'm usually up for the first planetary hour of a given day. Hey maybe it's a sign, a big universal push to show the fuck up.

I'm also incredibly lucky I loaded up on some planetary incenses right before COVID when a local store had a huge sale. It's proved well worth it as above all I try to get the planetary incense right, though I did have to default to a Frankincense one when we were first moving in. I slowly feel like I'm beginning to understand the planetary spirits better but only slightly. I completely see why memorizing the prayer is recommended and I do feel that's standing in the way of me being closer with them.

I have not noticed a huge difference when I petition them truthfully. I get the vibe that it takes time to build up that relationship. Though I'm open to input here - for those who do planetary petitions, what made them click for you?

Saint Veneration + Christian Magic

One thing I put off for many years, though I knew it was coming, was working with more Saints. I knew it'd likely involve having to dip back into Christianity to make it work and I was completely right.

As my partner began revisiting her Catholic roots earlier this year, it got me curious about things like the Rosary, the Chaplet, and Novenas. I was raised charismatic fundamentalist Christian as a child and such things were explicitly forbidden. I remember getting a long talking to when I'd taken to reading about Sainte Jeanne d'Arc. So they aren't loaded for me the way they are for others, but they’re situated in this fundamentally familiar context that makes them feel like meeting a cool branch of the family you didn't realize existed.

I'm finishing a Novena to a Saint I've been praying to in the next few weeks. I am admittedly not as close with her as I'd like to be. I'm trying to figure out how to move forward with her as I'd really like to have her in my life. I will probably reach back out to Sainte Jeanne d'Arc as she's always felt familiar and been good to me. I also keep her prayer card and medallion in my wallet and have for many years so maybe there's more to build from there. It is my goal to have about 3 saints/Christian figures I can call on when I need help. I'm thinking of approaching Mary Undoer of Knots next but I'm worried it'll follow the same path as this current saint.

My partner and I bought Rosaries back in May and I absolutely love it. I've been saying at least a 5 decade rosary for most days but I'm regularly getting in a 15 decade rosary. I really love it and am totally convinced of the beauty and effectiveness of the system. I've come to understand Christianity in a totally different light through praying it regularly.

So that is on going and evolving and I'd love to hear from people who've cultivated close relationships with a Saint or Angel.

Ancestors

One thing that working with Christianity again has made easier is praying to ancestors. I've often felt a bit at odds with my own ancestors as they were not the most supportive of trans and queer people (and I am both of those) but in coming back to Christianity has given me and my ancestors a common language almost. As long as my disagreement with them over my attraction and gender identity is rooted in the Bible, it's been easier to work with them.

It's very early days with ancestor work. I'm slowly working my way through Ancestral Healing by Daniel Foor. But I'm feeling very heartened by it. I saw a post on twitter somewhere, if I can find it again I'll link it, where someone said that the way they started working with their ancestors was just thanking them everyday. And thanking my ancestors is complicated for me, my family like most have their own issues that also go passed on, but thanking them for what I am glad they gave me has been really beneficial.

My partner requested some divination from me when some of her medical issues were starting to get worse and part of the reading involved a strong push for her to investigate her father's side of the family. She got really into genealogy in the process and she's been teaching me a lot. Through that I actually learned my great grandfather's name for the first time - yes that's how out of touch I am with my own family history. But I was thankful to find out.

Through her own research, my partner found out that that branch of her family likely isn't German but actually German speaking Hungarians which was a revelation. She's in the process of confirming but it got us talking about foods and identity and language and how to honor our ancestors more regularly. We're going to try making a nice dinner on Full Moons with dishes that are tied to branches of our family as a way to trying to cultivate a closer relationship with them. I'll definitely update on that as it evolves.

Conclusion + Some Thoughts on Disability

I'm definitely still in the early days of all of this. It's not become quite the foundation I hope it will be yet. I still need to figure out how to continue and deepen my deity relationships. I still need to attempt some different types of spellwork I've been meaning to. And while I didn't talk about it much here, astrology has been playing a huge role in my practice but mostly in a passive way. More of that divination process I talked about in the beginning where I make predictions based on the charts I'm seeing and then double check my work.

I’ve been doing all this while in the thick of a bad flare. Moving plus lack of sleep as meant my disability has been weighing so much harder on me lately. Normally when I’m feeling well enough, I kind of roll my eyes at a lot of the “spoonie witchcraft” posts I see, but for some reason with this flare they just started making me angry and I’m still trying to parse why. I think I just feel like so many are rooted in this performative idea of “feeling” witchy rather than actually helping me with my disability. They aren’t usually focused on practices that either actually treat the pain I’m in or bring my spirit real comfort.

I’m really hoping to put together a post or possibly a zine that does provide what I always wanted those posts to be. Honestly these pillars here have proven accessible even as I’ve been in some of the worst pain I’ve been in in years. So for any fellow disabled folks who just aren’t getting much out of those posts, I really recommend starting with these. Recite the Orphic Hymn for the day in the corresponding hour. Pray the Rosary or an adapted set of prayers for Pagan prayer beads. Don’t have much money for those? Look up how to make knotted rosaries and adapt the method. Pray to your ancestors and give them some water and a bit to eat. These are doable for a lot of folks even when they’re in bad shape, especially if you take your time with it. Might not make you “feel witchy” but they do some fucking work, that’s for sure. But idk, those are just my thoughts on it.

So it hasn't all fallen into place yet but I wanted to share what developing a practice looks like in medias res. It's messy, somethings work better than others, but all and all I'm just glad to finally be making meaningful progress again.

#personal practice #witchblr #Ancestor Veneration #planetary magic #rosary

31 notes · View notes

yourdeepestfathoms · 5 years ago

Text

A Little Piece Of Heaven (part one)

[Tour!verse]

TW: Surprisingly not many...I guess mockery of religion, specifically Christianity and anything in that branch. Very minor mentions of self harm (like one time- if you blink you’ll miss it). But mainly this fic is just psychological.

———————

Lord of The Flies

Let’s get something clear really quickly: Joan Meutas was not religious. Did she used to be? Unfortunately, yes, but after seeing the world for what it really was, after getting an axe to her vagina from her beloved husband, she has realized that there was no merciful God who would save lost souls. It was all a hoax by crazy old folk from wherever Jerusalem was to herd people into one belief, thinking that it may make them more humane and friendly. But religion has done more harm than good- Christianity damns all non CIS heterosexuals to hell, Jews got murdered by the thousands, that one branch literally won’t eat anything besides fucking grain or some shit, Catholics are just rude as all hell, those fasting things literally cause people to STARVE TO DEATH, and for what? To appease some higher being? Do they truly think they will be saved? If God was so merciful and wonderful and kindhearted, why would he make things like murder and cancer and rape and torture?

Joan even once heard that the Bible stated that when a woman was on her period she had to leave her village and wasn’t allowed to come back UNLESS she had a turtle dove. She’s never read the Good Book before, so she doesn’t know if that was true or not, but it doesn’t sound unlikely given all the stupid rules she’s heard about.

So, no, Joan was not religious.

It’s strange, she thinks, how offended people get when she says it or simply hints at it. Their eyes will practically bug out of their skull and they probably pray for her “lost soul”, maybe even do that weird cross gesture on their chest when they think she isn’t looking. They look at her as if she was actually a demon spy loosed from hell and not just someone who has enough common sense to realize that an “all powerful father” was complete and utter bullshit.

That’s the thing- it’s like the word “atheist” was purposely made to seem like the most evil string of letters to ever be created. You know the words- those synonyms that just sound much worse than the actual root phrase (molest, slaughter, moist). Atheist just has this dark shade to it. Or so religious people say.

But enough of that! There’s a reason why such a taboo subject is being brought up.

Joan was going to contact Death.

As they say, desperate times calls for desperate measures. And desperate Joan was.

You see, her queen- Jane Seymour- used to be quite the woman. Sharp, beautiful, powerful, but also warm behind the closed court doors. Joan was very lucky to see this side of her as her youngest lady in waiting, often getting called gentle pet names and sometimes pats on her head if she was particularly lucky that day. As a touch-starved orphan servant, this was like a pot of gold to Joan- love and affection is something she’s craved long before reincarnation in the modern world. And, speaking of the resurrection, Joan thought she would get even more of Jane’s “Mum Treatment” since they had more time on their hands, but she was very, very wrong.

Jane...Jane was different. She changed. No longer was she the motherly, caring, strong woman from the past, but instead coming back as some reduced version of herself- slightly younger (24, 25, maybe even 23), more awkward and timid, and much less maternal. The way she now looked at Joan wasn’t with compassion, rather...plain curiosity, sometimes even aversion. Her memory of her young lady in waiting has waned- it was as if she didn’t remember that Joan had been at her side the whole time when she was bedridden after giving birth to Edward! Like she couldn’t conjure up the remembrance of a teenager literally watching her rot away and slowly die for days!

To say the least, Joan was not happy. Add in trauma, insomnia, hate on social media, constant stress and pressure from her profession, and a severe lack of friends and you can probably see why Joan was going to such extreme measures.

Now, she knew about the stories. She’s read The Monkey’s Paw. She knows about the consequences of one’s actions. Joan wasn’t going into this completely stupid- have some faith, will you?

Gambling with Death was a risk. A huge risk that could very well end with her soul being ripped out of her mouth or her flesh being worn by a supernatural being that then goes on to commit atrocities under her identity. And not only was it a massive risk to take, it was also very, very stupid.

If I have to spell it out for you, listen closely: Death knows things. A lot of things. They don’t call him the “Lord of The Flies” for nothing. Which is why he loves to play games for those desperate enough to contact him because he knows he is much smarter than whatever pathetic, miserable piece of useless garbage comes clawing at a mirror, begging him to reveal himself. And unless you have every secret of the universe, you’re probably going to get ass-blasted back to Tuesday.

Oh, what am I saying? You won’t get a second chance.

You’ll be long gone by then.

And whatever state the cops find your body in the next morning depends on whatever mood the beast was in.

However, in Joan’s case here, she is desperate and stupid enough to take the risk. In her eyes, she doesn’t have much to live for. She’s a slave to SIX- day and night she’s working endlessly over musical paperwork and the same songs over and over and OVER again. It doesn’t help that she isn’t the closest to the rest of the cast and is often left alone when everyone else goes out and has fun. The scars on her wrists are evident of how many nights she’s been alone.

Without Jane, she has nothing to live for. She needed her.

And that’s exactly why she was sitting on the floor in front of a mirror propped against the wall in the dark theater surrounded by candles and a semicircle of salt.

Joan has done a lot of studying up to this point. She knows she has everything correctly, now she just has to get Death to appear...and hope he doesn’t immediately pull her small intestines out from her throat for bothering him.

Joan stares into the mirror as hard as she can, closes her eyes, then counted to ten. Her eyelids lingered shut for longer than she would like to admit after she hit the number one, but she eventually pried them open.

It was not her reflection staring back at her.

To be honest, Joan wasn’t exactly sure of what she was expecting to see. Some parts of her believed nothing would happen, other parts convinced itself that a grim reaper-like figure or a horned, goat-legged demon would be kneeling on the other side of the glass wielding a scythe or pitchfork. However, a suit-wearing young man was not really something that crossed her mind in her theories.

If Joan wasn’t a lesbian, she might have found him attractive, but he definitely was at a straight woman’s perspective. Perfect smile, the most amazing cheekbone structure, unflawed olive skin, neatly combed brown-blonde hair, a broad chest, phenomenal shape- if it weren’t for his yellow eyes with slit pupils, he might have been the perfect lady’s man (although, knowing straight women, they probably wouldn’t care for his demon eyes- after all, you don’t need to see someone’s peepers to suck cock!).

Joan sat completely bewildered, all of her confidence draining and being replaced with dread that drenches her like a thick, dark oil spill. She can feel her hands, which are lying in her lap, starting to tremble and clenching her fingers doesn’t help at all. The ability to form a coherent sentence slips from her mind, so Death speaks first.

“Hello, Joan Meutas.”

This guy is the real deal. He pronounced her last name correctly!

Joan opens and closes her mouth like a fish out of water and Death is thoroughly amused by her sardine impression. He watches her through the glass, waiting patiently for her to learn how to enunciate again.

“H-h-hello-”

“Yes, yes, h-h-hello to you to,” Death laughed. He wasn’t directly trying to be cruel, but Joan’s self esteem was far enough into the ground to hear his jibe as a mockery of her understanding of the English language. “If I let you speak the whole time we are going to get nowhere! Pull yourself together, kid. You should see the look on your face! You look like you just got caught making out with the family goat!”

Joan’s expression remained one of fright.

“What? Didn’t you own a goat back in- god, what year were you born? 1517 or 1525? Historians paint it as both! But I thought a family farm animal was the big rave back then! I apologize- I need to catch up on the modern slang. Say, would you be considered a ‘boomer’? Because I have been DYING to use that phrase on someone who contacts me. Could you imagine it?” He warps his voice into one of a pruny old woman, “‘I wish for great fortune!’ ‘Okay Boomer.’” Death bursts into fits of maniacal laughter that sounded as if a thousand lost souls were chortling together at once.

Joan is still silent, but during Death’s monologue she was able to wire her brain back to functionality. She sits up a little bit straighter and Death notices, so he containers himself instantly, also fixing his posture.

“Ready to talk now?” He asked.

“Yes.” Joan answered.

“Wonderful,” There’s a glint in his piercing yellow eyes, “What is it that you desire of me?”

Joan gathers up all her courage, sits up a little taller, and says, “I desire to challenge you to a game of question-and-answer.”

The glint flares into a blaze of confidence. If Joan stares hard enough, she swore she could almost see the fires of Hell burning in his eyes.

“How fun,” The words ooze out from Death’s pale lips, soaked in liquid menace. “Shall I go over the rules?”

Joan nodded. She knew them, she knew she did, but it would be good to hear them one last time.

“Very well,” Death said. He cleared his throat and began speaking as if he were reading off of a manual, “Death’s Gambit: A two-player game between the Lord of The Flies himself and a human. After being conjured- just gonna skip over that process, you’ve clearly got it down, kid- and initiating the game, both parties will have sixty-six minutes and six seconds to answer as many questions correctly as possible. Anything can be asked- trivia, personal inquiries, riddles, even dares, as long as the salt circle is not exited. The catch of the whole thing is this: The Prince of Darkness is obligated to tell the truth only if the human answers correctly to his question or does a requested dare or the human manages to stump him. However, if he answers correctly or the human answers incorrectly to HIS question, he may lie about whichever question he wants. The score will not be revealed until the very end once the time is over. If the human wins, the Keeper of Souls MUST grant any one wish they have. If He-Who-Lies wins, the human will be the victim to whatever losing punishment he comes up with. Remaining rules include: The salt circle cannot be left- you may find yourself no longer in your dimension-, the game cannot be quit until the time is over, items like watches or phones are not permitted to be used to look up answers or keep track of the time. Good luck and Beelzebub be with you.”

Despite knowing this all already, hearing it out loud, spoken by the beast himself, made it all hit home for Joan. She was really doing this; she was gambling with Death.

She had to be the stupidest fuck to ever grace God’s green earth.

“Are you ready to begin?” Death asked.

Joan took a deep death and answered, “Yes.”

A wicked smile curled on Death’s lips. The candles around Joan blaze.

“The game is on.”

A dark feeling weighed down on Joan after that was spoken. The air around her seemed to shift. Her gut was screaming at her to run away, to hide, to do something other than just sit there, but she couldn’t move. Not from fear, but from sheer will. She couldn’t be stupid. Who knows what lurked outside her thin salt circle....

As he usually did, Death initiates the game and asked his first question.

“What was the name of Catherine Parr’s true love?”

Like that, a cold stone drops deep into the pit of Joan’s stomach. Of all the questions she expected him to start off with, Tudor history was not one of them. It startles her, takes her by surprise, and she realizes very quickly that that’s exactly why Death asked it. He’s trying to disorientate her right off the bat and weaken her before she has the chance to get some points in.

She could not let that happen.

It’s just that- she didn’t know Tudor history outside of knowledge on her queen and whatever is said in the show. The others certainly did talk about their past lives, but Joan- she-

It stung, to say the least, when she realized that Death knew about her nonexistence friendships with the queens. And that he was targeting that.

“Thomas Seymour.” Joan finally said.

She was pretty sure that was the right answer...but not completely positive. And, because of that, her worried mind began to scream doubts inside of her brain.

Was that a trick question? He’s supposed to be the embodiment of pure evil- wouldn’t he think Henry is Parr’s true love? Was Henry the right answer?

“Your turn.” Death said, not reacting to Joan’s answer, which scares her even more.

“What’s- why did you choose to show up in that body?”

“Oooh, you’re starting with a personal inquiry!” Death said, laughing, “How fun! And I hope you’re not flattering yourself, Joan- I don’t look like this to make your pussy wet. Trust me, I could look way more attractive, but I know you.” Those three words slither into Joan’s ears and made her shudder. “Isn’t the whole point of being a lesbian to not be attracted to men?” Death laughed again, “But I look like this because I want to. I can take whatever shape I want! Remember that one time I was a snake? That was weird. Although, peeping at a naked chick was pretty damn fun. As a lesbian, you could probably appreciate the sight.”

For just a moment, the image of Death disappears, the mirror hazes to white, and Eve appears. Not the paintings you always see- THE Eve, bare breasts and vagina and all, and if Joan weren’t also asexual, her own genitals may have been burning with desperate pleasure.

“She was a sight.” Death said, returning to view. He chuckles, then immediately goes to his next question, “What was the exact height of Mount Everest in the year 1666?”

Joan’s heart just about stopped.

How in the holy hell was she supposed to know that? Then again, that was probably the point of asking such a thing.

“Three...hundred feet?” It came out as a question, but it’s taken as an answer and Death doesn’t react except for a slight twitch of his nose. “What...is the hardest piece to learn on the piano?”

“Liszt.” Death answered smoothly. “What animal can see the most amount of colors?”

“A...dolphin.” Joan physically cringed at her answer. “Who wrote Liszt?”

Is this what she was going to be doing the whole time? Asking the King of Hell fucking piano trivia?

“La Campanella.” Death once again answered perfectly. “What is the full chemical name for the antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication, Zoloft?”

Wasn’t that the medicine Joan was supposed to take for her anxiety?

“I- I don’t know.”

Death just hummed and awaited his next question. He didn’t laugh at her like she expected him to, which slightly lightened the blow of her stupidity.

“What’s my favorite song in SIX?”

“None of them. Why did you stop taking your Zoloft pills?”

The answer followed by such a question felt like Joan was just punched in the stomach with a spiked gauntlet. She swore she was winded by some unseen force (probably shock). Her breath hitched in her throat and she seemed like a little kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“I-” She hunched her shoulders around her neck. Death is giving her a curious look, which was at least better than worry or concern. “They- they weren’t helping me...so I didn’t think there was a point taking them if they weren’t going to fix me.”

Death hummed once more, this time louder and more enthusiastic. He clearly liked her answer.

“Interesting,” He mused, then quiets himself for the next question.

“What’s standing behind me?”

Ever since the game began, Joan picked up on the presence of something staring at the back of her head. She could feel their eyes burning into her skull, sometimes even breathing on the back of her neck.

Death smiled. “See for yourself.”

Joan saw nothing in the reflection, just darkness beyond the candles and Death, and she was not about to go and look away. She was scared about what would happen if she turned her gaze away from the mirror for even a second.

When Death realized Joan wasn’t going to fall for his tricks that easily, he quirked an impressed eyebrow and moved on.

“Will you greet the worker who just came in?”

Joan glanced fearfully to the corner of the room. A figure is hunched there. The glow from the candles just barely licks at their claws.

“What was their name? Terrance?” Death said, “Doesn’t he work in lightning?”

“That’s not Terrance,” Joan murmured.

Death took it as an answer, it seems. He leans in close to the glass and when he whispers, his hushed tone is right at the back of Joan’s ear.

“You don’t want to know what he really is.”

Joan can feel a panic attack rising in her chest. Death is trying to scare her, stray her from answering coherently or correctly and get her to waste time by freaking out. She had to steer the game back into calmness.

Or, rather, however calm a Devil game could get.

“What do I have in my pocket right now?”

Death seems a little bothered that the cryptic theme was interrupted, but he gets over it.

“One black pen that’s almost out of ink, a granola bar you promised yourself you would eat, and a rosary you stole from Aragon.” He said, “Oh and, by the way, that isn’t going to protect you from me. So return it as soon as possible or Aragon is gonna be PISSED!” He laughed, imagining the storm the golden queen would cause if she caught Joan with such a precious belonging.

Joan swallowed thickly. She didn’t want to check her pockets. She didn’t want to know that he was right.

“What is the color of the sky?”

It seemed like an easy enough question, but Joan, believe it or not, knew better than to fall for such a simple trick. She wracked her brain for a moment, then answered, “Black.”

Death doesn’t react aside from licking over his dried lips. His tongue is too pointy. Joan moves on.

“Does Jane care about me?”

Honestly, the question kind of surprised her. It bubbled up from her throat from out of nowhere- yes, she had been wanting to ask it so badly, but she didn’t actually expect it to come out.

“Yes.” Says Death.

For a moment, joy bursts through Joan, but the metaphorical, celebratory confetti is sucked up by the vacuum of doubt.

Is he lying? Is he giving me false hope? Or is he telling the truth?

“What’s your blood type?” Death asked.

“A...AB.”

Like Joan fucking knew that.

“What’s my favorite color?”

“Blue.” Death smiled, “Because the blue sky would always remind you of opportunities for a better life.”

A shiver runs down Joan’s spine. She didn’t like how he knew that.

“What’s something that you can’t eat for lunch or dinner?”

He’s asking a riddle. Joan bit the inside of her cheek, thinking.

It couldn’t be a food. That was too easy.

Think, Joan, think!

“...Breakfast.”

Death chuckles. Joan doesn’t know what to think of that.

Twenty minutes pass by in a blur. Cold sweat soaks Joan’s brow, dripping down her face, but she’s too scared to move from her stiff position. Her back muscles hurt from sitting like a statue for so long- how the hell does Death look so relaxed? Then again, he doesn’t really have much to worry about.

He doesn’t have to worry about the possibility of being mutilated or dragged to Hell or that that figure in the corner has been getting closer and closer as the minutes passed by.

“Do you think every human deserves to live?��

The question came out of nowhere, really. Death had been asking mostly trivia up until that point. He tittered at Joan’s stunned expression, then raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Well?”

“No.”

Joan didn’t hesitate because she knew it was the truth. Not everyone deserved to live. Rapists, pedophiles, serial killers, racists, homophobes, terrorists, abusers- they didn’t deserve life. People like them deserved to die.

And anyone who doesn’t believe that is a fucking idiot.

“Do YOU think every human deserves to live?”

Death scoffed. “Of course not.” He peered at Joan, really analyzing her for the first time. His yellow slit eyes raked over the girl, making her feel uncomfortable and violated. “You know, you and I think a lot alike. Not many humans give ‘no’ as their answer. They think optimism will make them seem like a good person. It’s pathetic.”

Joan just nodded silently.

“Now...where were we? Oh, yes.” Death leaned in, “Which queen suffered the most?”

Joan furrowed her eyebrows. The whole point of the show was to not compare, especially traumas, but...

“Katherine Howard.”

Come on- clearly K Howard had it the worst. The girl was violated by four different men before she was an adult! None of the other five stories combined could possibly rank to the fifth queen’s suffering.

“Honestly, I think the same!” Death said, “I mean- what is UP with the whole ‘one of a kind, no category’ gimmick? How stupid! Last time I checked, being a victim of sexual abuse doesn’t make you ‘one of a kind.’ Why would you even think of it that way?“

Joan nodded slowly.

“I agree,” She said, “Um- here’s my next question: Is this question false?”

Death raised his eyebrows and cooed in obvious interest.

“True.” He said, smirking. “My turn. Do you resent the queens?”

Joan actually recoils. Death laughed.

“I-”

Did she? Did she resent the queens? Surely she didn’t... She couldn’t! The queens were perfect! How could anyone ever hate them?

“No.”

Death almost looks disappointed.

“What’s worse than death?”

“You’re living it.”

Cold sweat drips down Joan’s face. It stings her eyes and is salty on her tongue. She hears noises all around her, but doesn’t dare to look. She already knows “Terrance” is on his knees beside the salt circle and his leaning his face in right next to hers. She can smell the rot on him.

“Have you ever wanted to hurt the queens?”

Death’s questions are definitely ramping up in darkness. Was the time close to ending? Is that why he’s getting deeper?

Joan shut her eyes tightly for a moment, but opened them quickly when the fear of losing sight of Death nagged at the back of her mind. Before her, on the other side of the mirror, the being is waiting patiently, eagerly for her answer.

“Sometimes,” Joan breathed, “Yes.”

Death smiles a wicked smile.

“How interesting,” He purred, then gestured for Joan to ask her question.

“Does God exist?”

“Unfortunately.” Death groaned, then laughed. He inspected Joan again. “How would you hurt the queens?”

Joan felt her stomach ache. She didn’t like that question. She didn’t want to think about actually hurting the queens, even if she’s considered it one or two times before.

“I- I haven’t really given it any thought.” She answered, then quickly sputtered out her next question before Death could comment, “Does the Bible speak the truth?”

“Of course not.” Death said. “My next question is this: If I were to give you a task, would you do it?”

“Depends,” Joan said, “What would the task be?”

Death held up both arms in a shrugging motion. “I don’t know! Pick up my dry cleaning? It depends! Don’t put me on the spot like that!” He then laughed that horrible laugh again. Once he contains himself, he says, “Time is ticking. The game is almost over. I want to switch things up before we end. I have a dare for you.”

Joan nods.

“Stab yourself in the hand.”

That flush of icy cold dread floods through Joan’s system again. Every part of her being screamed at her to refuse, there will be other offers or questions she could make up for, but she knew that was just false hope. Like Death said: time was almost up. She couldn’t risk refusing and docking more points (if she isn’t in the negatives already, that is).

“Fine.” She forced out through her teeth.

She reached for the pen in her pocket, but Death held up a hand.

“Don’t use that inky thing,” He said. “It won’t get the job done. Please- allow me.”

He flicked his wrist and a large carving knife appears out of thin air and clatters to the floor in front of Joan. She stares at it for a moment, then picked it up, setting her left hand down in its place. She took a deep breath, screwed her eyes shut, and plunged the blade down.

Joan couldn’t choke back the scream that burst from her lips. She cried at the pain, sobbing in horror when she looked down to see the knife practically pinning her hand to the floor. Dark red blood pools around her fingers, gushing and spurting like spigot from the wound when she pulls the blade free. She cradled her wounded hand close to her chest, weeping weakly.

“Very good,” Death cooed, clapping.

Joan raised her eyes slowly and Death smirked at how lit up they were, almost like hot coals.

“I have a dare for you.” Joan growled, her voice low and dangerous.

“I accept.”

“Change your eye color to blue.”

For a moment, Joan swore she saw the slightly twitch on Death’s features. She watched him close his eyes, sit their silently for a moment, then open them again.

They were still yellow and slit.

“I cannot.” He said. However, he wasn’t angry or irritated at being stumped, rather amused. “Next...what is the flying speed of a swallow?”

Joan ripped off of a strip of her shirt and wrapped it around her bloody hand, hoping it would be a good enough substitute for real bandages for now.

“African or European?”

Death grinned. And that grin only grew wider as the candles around Joan went out until only the one behind her remained lit.

"̸̡̢̢̣͓͚͖̪̼̪͑͊̈́͋̀́̾͗͘ͅT̷̼̺͈̮̜͔̙͂̋̉͋͛̈̿̀̕͜͠͝i̸̢̹̙̼̠͓͚̖̗͔̮̔̌͂̓̐̊̈́̔̃̕m̸̡̱̤̱͙͎̦̱͙̪̻̓̅͌̉̀̈́̐̄͒̌̕͘͝e̸̟̳͒'̸̗͎̞̙̋̎̓́́͑̉͐͑̈́s̷̰̬̙͖̲̩͚̥͈̝̩̻̻̮̭͂̀̐̓̑̓͌̓̀́̐̐ ̷̡̳͍̗͉̝͔̃̑͛̀͊͌͆̌̒̃̔͘̚͠ͅû̵̞̠̣͉̻̖̅̓̄̏͝p̷̛͖͎̮̖͇̬̮͉̥̲͈̟͊̃́̃̏̇̇͛͗̅̕͘,̷̢̧̧̹͈̗̝͙̪͉̖̆̈́ͅ ̸̲̩̥̇͂̓͌̀̋͗̀͛̚J̵̼̣̋ö̴̡͕̺̪̠͓̹͔̂͝ą̶̡̜̭̤͖̭̫̝̘̆̂̾̐͊̾̒̂̏n̶̛̛̬̦̥̠̮̐̓̃̋̍̒̂͐̂̽ͅ.̴̪̰̩̀͊̑̐́̂͗̍̐̈́̚"̴͍͆͛́̈́̈́̍͆̀͗͘͝͝

It was almost impossible to breathe. Joan can barely hold herself together- the tears are flowing freely and she can’t get them to stop. She would say a prayer for her damned soul if it weren’t for the whole atheist thing, and she worried that Death would get angry at her for it, even if it was said in her mind, which he couldn’t possible read (or, at least, she hoped he couldn’t).

Still, she bowed at the waist and thanked Death for the game.

“Let’s tally up the score, shall we?”

Joan first saw blood start to spread across Death’s midsection, then a sharp sting struck her in the stomach. She hissed in pain and lifted her shirt slightly, as did Death, and they both saw tally marks upon their flesh.

Death had twenty-three.

And Joan watched in shock as a twenty-fourth tally carved down through her skin right before her eyes.

“Congratulations, Joan Meutas,” Death says, “You’ve won. What is it that you wish for?”

#six the musical #six the musical tour #six uk tour #six the musical fanfiction #six the musical fanfic #six fanfiction #six fanfic #six fic #six ff #tour jane seymour #jane seymour #tour joan on the keys #joan on the keys #tw: religion

30 notes · View notes

flyingmustachio · 5 years ago

Text

You know I think maybe some of the rigid polarization issues we’re having here in the U.S. over the past couple of decades especially, might be due to how our concept of family has changed? The bubbled-off, nuclear family of just mom dad and kids living together only really became widespread in the 1950′s or so. Before then, grandparents or other relatives very frequently lived together.

I always think about how my perspective would be different if I had been raised with my extended family always around. Many cultures raise children even more communally. In many Native American cultures, for example, the role of primary child-carer goes to the grandparents. What would my concept of “mother” be like if I never expected to be raised by her? What roles would she take in my life? How would my feelings towards her be different than under my current conception of “motherhood”?

I imagine that if I were raised in an extended family situation, I would have been exposed to many more viewpoints from the very beginning of my life. In the U.S. children don’t have such close relationships with their extended family. Even with the closest families that visit their extended relatives frequently, it’s simply not possible to attain the kind of intimate relationship you develop by living with and being by around someone directly in your home. The parent’s here authority is seen as pretty exclusive. I feel like there’s a culture of heavy silence, if you will. Even if you are an aunt or cousin or grandfather of the child, you are expected never to contradict what the parents want the child to learn. For example, some parents will get upset if a friend or relative explains something to their child that the parents wanted to censor from the child’s knowledge until they were older. I have seen Christian parents get angry that a family friend admitted they were Buddhist in front of the child, or worse, gave a basic explanation of their differing religion or political view. That’s why there’s always so much hullabaloo around gay representation in our media - “But what am I supposed to tell my kids?!” is a constant talking point, as if it were the rest of the world’s job to keep the existence of homosexuality secret so as not to contradict their personal parenting decisions.

I feel like we Americans are raised in tiny cultural bubbles to some extent. Most of us don’t encounter anything new that really challenges our assumptions until quite late - even into adulthood. Some never end up having any of their beliefs shaken at all, simply because they never encounter anything different enough to make them reconsider their perspectives. If you are born in a family that trends in one religious or political direction or other, you tend to stay in that religion and party, because your parents alone control what type of people, media, news, and perspectives you have access to. Your brain develops in an environment specifically tailored towards those beliefs. Your perspective matures in a place where you are intentionally hampered from too deep a knowledge or insight into opposing views. Anyone who believes differently from your family is “othered.” On the more severe end, which I can speak to directly as I was raised for some of my childhood in a Charismatic Catholic mini cult, anyone who believes anything different from the chosen narrative was outright dehumanized. They were dangerous. Of course we were supposed to love everyone, but oh, our lesbian neighbors, your Wiccan friend, they’re under demonic influence, you know. It’s not that they’re evil, they’re just wounded. They’re not yet saved. Better to pity and pray for them from afar, and be careful not to spend too much time with them, or else they may open you up to demonic influences too!

I remember once my mother shaking her head and saying to me, her voice full of exasperation and disappointment “I JUST don’t understand why you don’t have more friends like you!” At the time I was just confused. My friends were like me! We all liked books! We all liked each other’s music and humor! It took me a while to realize that she meant “why don’t you have more friends who are Christian.” And not just Christian, but our specific brand of Christian. We even avoided relatives who thought too differently. I could spend as much time as I wanted with children of other cult members, with freedom, but my friends from public school had to be vetted, and time spent around them was limited, and with more supervision.

I feel like this is why so many college graduates get told they “changed” after college, or even that they got “ruined.” It isn’t until college that some of us even learn assumption-challenging information. I know for me I DID change during college, simply because I learned so much information I had to expand my perspective on everything. I basically learned whole new ways to think and evaluate. Even if you start to question things, in this kind of bubbled-off environment, from the child’s perspective there can be IMMENSE pressure to toe the family line. In families that have very heavily curated the child’s environment and social contacts, deviating from “acceptable” opinions too far could mean losing contact with not just your family, but your entire community. Not just through direct shunning or disowning, but through coldness or constant arguments or proselytizing. It’s difficult to maintain a deep relationship with a family who only tries to reconvert you every single time they talk to you.

Americans also don’t travel much - lots of us who live near enough the borders have been able to go to Canada or Mexico, but a huge chunk of Americans never get the chance to leave the States at all. If they do it’s maybe one cruise that goes only to touristy places that already fit their mental stereotypes. I am lucky enough to have family in London, and have had the chance to travel to Europe several times in my life. Traveling is such an important way to expand your perspective, and most of us simply can’t afford to do it.

So here you’ve got a lot of Americans being raised with extremely limited points of view, in separate media bubbles that they continue to stay in into adulthood, to the point where the views of the other political side are completely nonsensical to you because they’re coming from a perspective that you can’t even imagine because you barely know it exists. And in the worst, most culty cases, where you and everyone you’re close to share a cultural identity based on demonizing the “other side,” you’re going to be afraid, deep down, to challenge any of your beliefs because it might mean having to rethink your entire world view, and be considered to be under demonic influence yourself.

Obviously this nuclear family isolation is on a huge spectrum. Most U.S. families are not in cults, and many U.S. families are very open-minded. But I think it’s enough of a thing to be a thing, if that makes any sense.

But if I had been raised in an extended family or in a family model where child-rearing authority were spread out to more adults, whether related or not, I would have had SO much more depth of social knowledge. If I had been allowed to have deep relationships with and rely on and ask questions of more adults, I feel like it would have been much easier to understand other’s perspectives, much quicker. Even if all your relatives are of the same religion or political party, they’re bound to have a much wider range of opinion than a few carefully curated friends who agree completely.

I would really love if someone from a communal-parenting culture would weigh in, I’d love to hear your perspective on this.

#sociology #polarization #media bubble #communal parenting #brain development #child rearing #extended families #socialization #cultural bubbles #U.S. culture #U.S. problems #nuclear families #I think this is also part of why Americans are generally so ignorant to other cultures too #Many of us are basically raised to believe people exactly like us are the only 'real' people and everyone else is odd or dangerous

2 notes · View notes

asecretsummer-rpg · 5 years ago

Photo

Name: Joyce Clayworth Age: 28 Sexuality: Bisexual Gender: Female Portrayed By: Mia Healey Availability: Closed

“Well, I believe God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, so... I think this town will come through it.”

→ Background

Joyce grew up in a highly Catholic family with her older siblings Nicole and Finn. She was the baby of the family and truly spoiled by her mother, which she thought made her big sister Nikki a little jealous at times. Honestly, her sister was a bit wild and rebellious and Joyce didn’t quite know how to relate to that. She was always doing what she was told, following the rules, going to Church and volunteering. She liked her life and she did good in school, though she was closer to her brother than her sister. They just seemed to mesh better, maybe they were more similar. She was friends with almost everyone, Joyce made a point of being kind and welcoming and open to whoever she came across, and she found herself able to fit in with a lot of different groups, though some people did just see her as some weird religion freak. That’s not all there is to her in the slightest but if some people didn’t want to know that then that was fine with Joyce. The people who wanted to be in her life were the ones who mattered.

→ Back to Baberton

Joyce was very close with her father and, when he died a few years ago, she was devastated and the whole thing changed her. She doesn’t understand why her father would have to be struck down like that. A day like any other and his car went off the road. Their mother actually went as far as to ban her sister Nikki from the funeral altogether and this did upset Joyce but she was never one to really speak out against her mother, it was disrespectful but she also thought that her mother was disrespectful towards her sister a lot of the time. Joyce and Nikki may not have been very similar but they were still sisters and Joyce was a lot more accepting and understanding than their mother was, and so was Finn, but Nikki never took the time to understand that. She just saw them all as the big bad enemy, lumped them in together and the relationships have been very strained since she was a teenager. At the moment, Joyce volunteers at a homeless shelter and she works part time at the local library. She’s always been a big book lover with a vivid imagination and she’d like to maybe some day write children’s books.

→ What’s Her Secret?

Has been suffering with a crisis of faith and identity since her father’s death. Joyce doesn’t really know what she has to hold on to anymore and it’s scary to feel like your beliefs have been ripped from you. She feels like she’s going to fall any moment and Joyce doesn’t know how to get herself back.

Joyce is bisexual, something which she has been prompted to keep secret thanks to her very religious upbringing. Perhaps even contributing to her crisis of faith in some sense.

Was molested by a youth pastor when she was young, something which she has done her absolute best to pray away and "forgive" and convince herself it wasn't her fault or it wasn't his fault, or it happened for a reason, or God never sends us more than we can handle... but truthfully she has just always felt sick about it, dirty, and she hates that someone she used to look up to as one of God's messengers could have done something like that... isn't it wrong? Isn't it very ungodly?

#town rp #secrets rp #pll rp #scream rp #takenf #mia healey

5 notes · View notes

viampythonissam · 6 years ago

Text

Intro, continued...

It was then I became obsessed with death and the occult, desperately trying to make contact with my grandfather through anything possible. Being clairaudient, I was expecting to hear a message from my grandfather all throughtout the whole funeral and mourning period, but to no avail. So in my desparation, I went into research, and stumbled upon things such as the ouija, seances, and many more. I even considered dabbling into necromancy, just in order to hear from him again. His death broke me so much that I was for the most time wishing I were dead too. I had suicidal thoughts but somehow something has prevented me from attempting. It could be I'm too chicken to hurt myself (getting hurt by other things besides self-infliction doesn't scare me though) or the thought of my mother crying over my dead body is another thing that would crush my heart.

I started questioning my religious beliefs then. We were Roman Catholics, and we go to church, but not too often. I am very religious though when I was a child, having been schooled in a private Catholic school, and I know all the prayers by heart; but it all changed. I felt resentment for praying so hard but never getting answered. That everything happens for a reason. A reason still so vague to me to this day, which I continue to believe was the same reason of the breaking apart of this family and eventual downfall. The family is in ruins, and the family home is crumbling apart. My father's only brother, my uncle Aldrin, died a little over two years after my grandfather; and his widow and only child, my cousin, was estranged ever since then, because of inheritance issues. My father decided to sell the house, my childhood home because of this; splitting the family fortune already so that we can all go off our separate ways and stop the bickering. The only thing that's keeping him from doing so is my grandmother who is still so attached to the house built by my grandfather.

At 16, I eventually traversed my way into the craft, dabbling on it. There was a kind of pull into these mystics that appealed to someone like me. Was it power? Was it danger? Mystery, perhaps? Or maybe I just got all too familiar with the unknown for me to be comfortable chasing after it? This craft, shunned by my faith since the dawn of time and even killed tons of people because of it, felt like home to me; learning it felt like retracing my steps back from where I came from. There was a sense of calm, relief, and freedom learning the ways of the earth, elements, and spirits and those who came before. Its unrestrictive nature was a stark contrast to the repressive and dominating teachings of the Catholic scriptures. Wherein Christianity demands a million things to do and not to do to save your soul, the craft only ever wanted you to do anything you want, just as long you harm none, even yourself. I have a lot of arguments to make against my old faith, that's why I consider myself an agnostic in all fairness. That's a topic for another day.

When I got to college at 17, I applied for nursing school under my father's wishes. It was in my misfortune to be enrolled in a school with a toxic environment of sorts: unhealthy clinic hours, unreasonable school workload, toxic Christian classmates who bombarded me everyday with bible verses and inviting me to join Sunday worship thingies. I am very respectful of other's beliefs and opinions but I really have a bone to pick with the Born Agains because upon knowing I am interested in dark movies and occult, they've started telling me that the Devil has a grip on my soul and that I should stop it so that my soul can be saved. They're even worse than the Mormons and Witnesses who knock on your door at certain days. I'd just ignore it and they'll go but BAs will stop at nothing to guiltify me of being possessed and that I need deliverance. It was also the time my parents went to Australia for work because of the failing finances due to to my late grandfather's hospital expenses, my uncle meeting his untimely demise, and my uncle's greedy widow who already demanded their inheritance even though my grandmother was still alive. My best friends of highschool also attended different schools and pursued different career pathways which left me feeling more isolated and unsure of myself. These issues fed my undiagnosed depression and relapse of suicidal thoughts all throughout my 4 years in nursing school. It was a mix of emotions, a rollercoaster ride of disappointments, achievements, first-time experiences, full independence. All without a proper support system. Nevertheless, I grew wiser while treading the craft, and for the first time since I lost my grandfather, I felt safe and sound and complete.

Then I met my elementary school sweetheart again in my final year and we became a couple. He was a sweet guy, smart and responsible. We had our similarities, our quirks, but we also had differences. I was already quite a learned witch, studying tarot and palmistry as my supposed-to-be expertise, when he told me how he wanted to be baptised as a Born Again (he and his family are Roman Catholics as well). He told me how he was deeply affected by the one time he went to a worship service of his friend's church. This struck a chord in me, a subtle reference to my beliefs. At the time, I have fully believed he is the man I'm gonna settle for, the one I'm gonna marry. He's everything I have hoped for then: he's finished school, on his way to a very decent career on a ship as a marine engineer. He's from a good family as well. Well-mannered, and not to mention that we've got a pretty long history way back when we we're 10 or so. He even made a subtle proposal of a civil marriage before he hops on board the ship. I know it was betrayal of myself, but I love this man so much so, I am ready to submit myself to him.

Worst decision of my life. I started to try and mingle with Christians so I may understand just why I needed to be saved. I joined worship services and sang with them against my own beliefs. I taught myself to be like them just so I could fit in, so that I may have friends. In return, they've burned all my books and tarot decks. Even my Slipknot t-shirt that my grandmother bought me was not spared from the Christian pyre. Said that it's to release me from the grip of the Devil. They even did deliverance to me. For a while I thought I was given a new lease on life and that this is the only right thing to do. I was easily convinced since it was the most trying time of my life so far: I was killing myself reviewing for the nursing licensure exams, my parents are already coming to get us and live away in Australia for good, my bf and I hit rock bottom and broke up (the girl who is the 3rd party confessed to me that they're having an affair, and that she was so guilty she can't sleep at night knowing we are good friends and they're doing this behind my back, also I've noticed red flags about him that made me doubt him a bit. I factored everything and the dots connected like a damn constellation so I've called it quits), and I was caught in an identity crisis because of inner turmoil. Maybe it was a time of personal upheaval and the mix of situations was too much for me to handle. Maybe it was a good thing though that I never got baptised because my life just got much more complicated after that.

So I did pass the licensures, ex and I never got together again, I went to live to Australia, but I never recovered from the inner turmoil thing; which made me spiral down again the depression lane, this time in its dangerous, ugliest and darkest recesses. I was fighting with my parents which I never did before, I was angry all the time. I started drinking then and I was exhausted all the time I just want to sleep. All the activities I've enjoyed before like sketching, playing the piano, afternoon strolls, and cooking for the family, I've totally lost interest in. My health deteriorated and I cut off and isolated myself from my friends overseas, ignoring their messages and emails. I tried to cope up by immersing myself in Christian songs and scriptures but it was not enough. I was still empty and numb. I was like a zombie, waking up just enough not to get late for work, then go home after, eat unhealthily, play video games, chug a bottle or two of beer, surf the net for worthless and trivial things, and sleep very late, like around 3 to 5 am, only to wake up again a few hours later for work. This was a vicious daily cycle that went on for 4 years. The only reprieve I had was my video games, and my sombre playlist, just enough to block the deafening screams of suicidal thoughts and ideations before I go to sleep. There was also a time I was going home from my internship waiting for the train home, that I thought of just jumping on the train tracks to end the struggle and pain. I was more than ready to attempt as I felt braver now. That was the time I lost all fear for death. Hell, I was ready to buy a rope at Bunnings too as well. But at the back of my head, the same sad picture of my mother crying over my dead body stops me from doing such thing. They said the deliverance was supposed to stop these things, but guess what? It was it that brought it back. It was supposed to keep the demons away, but it did the opposite, and felt so trapped in a cage of deceit and lies. I was supposed to be saved, but why did it felt like I was dying?

It was then I pondered over everything that's happened in my life so far. Where did I fall, where did I stand tall, where did I pick myself up? I thought long and hard enough and decided to start off where it began to crumble: back home. Retracing my steps back to Manila, now 25, I found my old stuff in my old room, before things happened. It reminded me of my simple life and my freedom and innocence. Back when I had complete control of my life. Back when I was the master of my fate. I let the people around me convince me that the man from the sky take the wheel, and it damn well crashed. A head-on collision with a destructive force. I decided to go back to my roots, the one where I felt best. And embracing it tighter than ever and promising to never betray it anymore for any reason.

My ex is now preparing to marry his girlfriend of 3 years. We met accidentally and forgave him already. I'm happy for him and that hopefully his happiness continue on. My old friends are still my friends, but there's already a notable gap between which I do not intend to close at all anymore. I do have new friends now and I keep a healthy distance from them whilst making a worthwhile connection. I am now preparing to enter med school in August and become a surgeon someday. The old house is in shambles, and I realized that a house is not a home, but the family that lives in it. I miss my parents and that my family will always come first, but I am happy to be more independent now and live by myself while studying medicine. Things are well between me and my cousin (my late uncle's child) and that I have forgiven his mother already for the hurt and trouble that they caused us. We see each other as he visits me and grandmother here at the old house every 2 months. When BAs, Mormons, and other religions try to do bible study to me, I am now assertive to tell them that I am agnostic and that I am firm in my beliefs. I am now recovering from my self-destructive ways and more optimistic and living healthier. Love is around, but it felt to me that I have lots to undertake first before I commit myself to someone again. I have backlogged so much that my time has to be devoted to the craft, my family and myself first before anything else. I am trying hard to pick up all the pieces and it seems things are finally going back in its right place. And the craft, after all these years, welcomed me back with open arms without any questions, like a mother does to her child. The sun, moon and the stars never shone brighter before, the day I returned home and answered its longing call.

Now. I have to let this off my chest now once and for all. Pleasure. Why is it a sin to pursue whatever makes you happy? Why must you endure pain just so you can be saved? Isn't that a crooked logic? Why must you be averse to your own will just so you get into a good place in the afterlife? I am only human, I am flawed, but it isn't my fault because I was born and created this way. Why must I be punished for something that is natural for me? If being free and happy costs me a one-way ticket to Hell, then I'd best be off. If my witchcraft, which teaches the opposite of your tyrannic religion, is a surefire way to deliver me there, then I'll make sure I will be a remarkable witch and enjoy my lifetime, and be very ecstatic to march down the fiery highway to Hell after I am gone. But I will never again submit myself to a narcissistic, psychopathic religion who has to kill millions of innocent people, and shun and humiliate people who think in contrast, just to justify and preach the existence of their god and its scriptures. My argument does not end with this and I will not back down anymore in defending my faith.

The craft is my world, and nature is my home. I am a daughter of those who came before, of those who are truly enlightened, of those you can never ever kill. I am a witch, and you can never take that away from me again.

*** Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading, if you did. I hope you had something to take from my story and may it help you with whatever is botheringvor troubling you right now.

May the journey of life be kind to us all. Blessed be! ❤

1 note · View note

apenitentialprayer · 6 years ago

Text

Wrote an editorial concerning Intercessory Prayer, and how we can become more attentive in our duties as intercessors, for my college’s Catholic Newsletter. Gonna include it under the cut.

Earlier this semester, I had said that I wanted to talk about creating a stronger Catholic identity among our membership, and that one of the primary pillars of the Catholic identity was prayer. Prayer, the communion of both the individual and God, the individual and God's community, and the community with God, is essential for Christians everywhere. I would go as far as to say that it is probably one of the most important elements of our lives. The Christian tradition has usually broken prayer into several categories; prayers of petition/intercession, prayers of adoration/praise, prayers of thanksgiving, and prayers of contrition/repentance. Today, I would like to discuss prayers of intercession in particular. While Jesus Christ is the sole Mediator between God and humankind, being Himself the marriage of the Divine and human natures, Christians are nonetheless called to act as intercessors between God and other people. In the very letter in which Paul tells us that Christ is our sole Mediator (1 Timothy 2), this statement is preceded by this command to pray for, or intercede, for our worldly leaders. James likewise tells us to pray for each other (5:12), and Jesus Himself tells us several times to pray not only for our loved ones, but our enemies as well. I find a lot of very devout Christians often downplay the importance of petitionary prayer (the act of asking God for things), an issue that I might address sometime in the future. I am grateful at least that intercessory prayer (a form of petitionary prayer focused on asking for things for other people) does not seem to have this same negativity attached to it. I'm sure that we all at some point spontaneously pray for those people around us. But how thoroughly do we perform this duty? In the following paragraphs, I'm going to write out a daily plan of intercessory prayer that may act as a template for all those who feel that they don't pray enough for those around them. I know that I certainly don't. In making this list, I'm going to further divide this daily plan into three parts; people I pray for daily, types of people I pray for daily, and strangers I pray for at least once. People to Pray for Daily I think that we all have certain people that we should pray for on a regular basis. These are people we should mention by name in our prayers, people who are close to us, or at least should be. I think that the most obvious candidates for this list is our immediate families. This means that right off the bat, we're going to have varying sizes of this list. That's okay. In particular, I'm going to have a list a little longer than most people. In addition to my parents, I have six siblings, so I'm adding eight names to the list right off the bat. Another group of people we may want to pray for are those who have immediate authority, whether worldly or religious, over me. I'm not talking about presidents or Popes, but pastors and bosses. People who have authority over us who we interact with on a day to day basis. In that case, I have three people I can add to the list; first is Father Paul, our pastor here at our college, who I see either three or four times a week. I would add my boss, as well, as I see him five days a week (sometimes more, if I visit my store on my days off). Finally, there is my faculty adviser, who is helping me to write my thesis paper, who I see once or twice weekly. In addition to these people, I am going to be adding my godparents and my godson. While not my "natural" family (well, technically my godparents are; they are part of my extended family), they nonetheless have chosen to bind themselves to me spiritually. You'll notice that all these people have a direct claim on me. There is a close bond between me and them, and every one of these fourteen people have a special claim on me in some way. Types of People to Pray for Daily In addition to those individuals who we pray for daily, there are certain groups of people whom we should be praying for daily. Because we need to remember that we pray for people, and not abstract concepts, I would recommend making a list of people who belong to the groups you want to pray for, and each day cycle through the people on the list. Potential groups that I would choose include friends, homeless people, important leaders, and enemies. Although each individual group may have larger lists of people within them, I will be picking one member from each group to pray for; essentially, I am adding four more people to pray for every day. Friends are an easy group to pick people from. Make a list of your friends and acquaintances to keep with you. Include, of course, people you speak to every day, but maybe include those whom you have not spoken to in a while. In addition to the many friends I have at the Newman Center, for example, I might add a person I knew from a particular class I have taken, or even people from elementary to high school. This list might be pretty long - don't worry about it being exhaustive. Add who immediately comes to mind, and if overs come up over time, you can always add them to the list. The homeless may be a little more difficult to the average person. I find most people either ignore the homeless, or give them a dollar and quickly go on their way. By making adding them to the list, I have made a challenge for myself; it is not enough to just give people money. I need to talk to them, to learn about them. I think that, at this moment, I can add quite a few people to this list; individuals from the homeless communities that cluster around Queens Center Mall, and around Center City in Philadelphia. But even with those approximate ten names, there are so many other people who I pass on a daily basis whose names I don't know. This makes me not only pray for them, but interact with them as well. And let me tell you, many of the homeless in our world are so isolated that every bit of interaction they can get is welcome. Our leadership is important as well. This includes religious leadership, like our Pope (Francis) and our Archbishop (Timothy). But it also includes our president, vice president, senators and representatives, and local council members. Something I love about living in New York is this; currently, we have Republican leaders on the federal level and largely Democratic leaders on the local level. This means that, wherever you stand on the political spectrum, chances are that you'll be praying for someone you don't like. And that's good. When was the last time liberal Christians prayed for Trump's well being? When was the last time conservative Christians said something nice to God about Ruth Ginsburg? We're not supposed to limit our prayers to those who agree with us politically, and the current political climate helps to ensure that this will not be the case. The final group I mentioned may be the most vague for most of us. When I say "enemies," I could include ideological enemies whom I have never met (Islamic fundamentalist preacher Zakir Naik, youtube personality The Amazing Atheist, and the egregiously anti-Catholic Evangelical Jack Chick would fit this category for me). But I want to push further than that; what about those people who I know personally but don't like? People who annoy me, people who genuinely bother me, people who make me angry? It may be easier to pray for people who we never met than these people who provide immediate annoyances on a regular basis. While I wouldn't rule out the first type of "enemy," it is the more mundane everyday "enemies" that I would recommend focusing on. And remember, this particular group of people should be on everyone's list; we are under orders from God Himself to pray for our enemies (Luke 6:27-36). Spontaneous Intercessory Prayers The people I listed above are people (or groups of people) that I think we should pray for every day. But what of those people who we don't know too well, who we may never see again? The guy with the purple mohawk on the bus, a mother and her three children in the supermarket we're shopping in? Just because we don't know their names, or won't see them again, doesn't mean we shouldn't pray for them. If you don't pray for them as you see them, that's fine; after you pray for those you normally pray for, take a moment or two and think of all the people you saw today. Pray for anyone who sticks out in your mind. In the previous two categories, I created a minimum number of people I should pray for every day; eighteen people, of which fourteen are prayed for daily, and four come from rotating lists of four groups of people I feel like I should pray for. With this final category, I acknowledge that there is no maximum number of people to pray for. Sometimes, we will be sticking to people from the first two categories in our daily prayers. Sometimes, we might add one, two, or even five or more people. This category of spontaneous intercession is just that - spontaneous. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now that I spoke about the particular people I'll be praying for, I encourage you to make a list of people, and people belonging to groups of people, you should be praying for. Before we end the discussion, there is one more thing I want to discuss. On some days, we may just list the people we have made in our prayers for God. "Heavenly Father, please look after x, y, and z." That's okay; sometimes we don't have much to say about particular people. But at the same time, we should avoid making this a checklist. Pay attention to what goes on in the lives of those who have made your list. Make your intercessions intentional. "Lord, please look after x" and "Lord, x is feeling down today because his father is out of state, please try to cheer him up" are both basically the same statement to God; He knows what x needs. But intercessory prayer isn't just about asking God to help other people. It's about developing relationships with people by investing in that relationship. God gave us the wonderful gift of intercession that we may become more mindful about those who live around us. If intercessory prayer isn't being used in such a way that we become a little more aware of the minutiae in the lives of those around us, we are failing to utilize this gift fully. With this in mind, maybe try making a list of your own, and take ten or twenty minutes to focus on the people on those lists every day. Who would you add to your list of people to pray for every day? What groups of people would you add, and how many people can you list in each group?

#prayer #Christianity #Catholicism #Newman Center

12 notes · View notes

alarriefantasy · 7 years ago

Text

I’ve been updating my blog, and some of my fic rec lists, so I figured it’s time I update/do a proper - Enemies to Lovers Fic Rec. I hope you all enjoy this!

ABO

The Tale of Two Kingdoms by larriebane Words: 24k Tumblr: @larriebane

ABO-universe with modern language mixed with some new and old traditions, no technology exist (cars, phones, electricity etc.)

Prince Louis of Doncaster finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time as the feared Hijackers from Cheshire come to claim their annual pray of omegas. He is taken away and transported to a strange country that Louis has been taught as the enemies’ land. When unforeseen events take place and even more unlikely savior turns up, Louis’ all previous beliefs are being proved wrong. Will love save the two kingdoms and form an alliance after several centuries of feuds between these bordering countries?

where the lights are beautiful by twoshipsdrifting Words: 31k

Harry wasn’t wrong about that, not in a general sense. Lots of omegas did seek out rich alphas and betas, hoping or planning to go into heat at the right time. Plenty of omegas saw this as their duty, especially if their families weren’t well off. Worse, Louis couldn’t honestly say he’d never thought about it. If that had been his life, his goal, Louis would feel pretty good about himself now. As it is…Louis feels like shit.

.:. .:. .:.

Or the accidental bonding a/b/o fic.

Like Candy In My Veins by littlelouishiccups Words: 31k Tumblr: @littlelouishiccups

“Um…” Harry said slowly after a moment. “Okay. That’s… this is… Let me get this straight.” He lifted up a hand and swallowed. “You told your family that you have a boyfriend… and my name was the first one you thought of?”

“Harry Potter was on TV, alright? It wasn’t that much of a stretch.” Louis pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t believe he was explaining himself to Harry fucking Styles. He couldn’t believe he was stooping this low. “Forget it. I’m sorry I even thought about bringing you into this.”

Harry snorted. “What? Did you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend or something?” (Basically the A/B/O, enemies to lovers, fake relationship, Christmas AU that nobody asked for.)

I'm On the Hunt Now (I'm After You) by AFangirlFantasy Words: 56k Tumblr: @afangirlfantasy

Omegas haven’t been able to shift into their wolves for two hundred years. That is, until Louis Tomlinson changes everything.

Or...an AU where Alpha Harry and Omega Louis have a lot more than falling in love to deal with after The Mating Ceremony.

pray for some sweet simplicity by delsicle Words: 237 Tumblr: @emperorstyles

Louis is the only omega to ever make it in the cut-throat world of competitive motorcycle racing—that is, he would be if anyone actually knew about his identity. Now, his sights are set towards competing in—and winning—the European Grand Prix, the biggest and most difficult race of the entire year, so he can disappear underground for good. He’s close enough, too, until an alpha sports journalist is assigned to follow Louis’s every move as he prepares for the event of his career.

Or, an AU where motorcycle racing is the biggest sport in a heavily divided world, Louis is trying to take control of his own destiny, and Harry is in for more than he bargained for.

Religion

Baby Heaven's in your Eyes by theboyfriendstagram Words: 120k Tumblr: @theboyfriendstagram

Or a sixth form!AU where Harry is the fucked up bad boy with too many problems, Louis is the perfect rich boy with too much money and their schools are right across from each other. They meet at a party and that’s the last (and maybe the only) thing they need.

Turning From Praise (Punk!Harry Christian!Louis) by capriciouslouis Words: 128k Tumblr: @capriciouslouis

Louis has had a strict Christian upbringing that he never realized he resented until he meets Harry Styles, a boy who lives to rebel and doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. But the better he gets to know Harry, the more he begins to realize that maybe Harry does care. And maybe “the children who God forgot” are closer to God than the devout will ever be.

Shake Me Down by AGreatPerhaps12 Words: 208k

Tumblr: @agreatperhaps12

Harry's new to college, fresh out of Catholic school and conversion therapy camp, and Louis runs the campus LGBTQIA organization.

Royal/Pirate

Sail into the Sun by orphan_account Words: 31k

Prince Louis Tomlinson is sick of the closet. Harry Styles is a con man with a hatred of rich people. Louis needed a way out, Harry needed a husband. It was a mutual agreement. Doesn't mean they have to like each other.

All The King's Men by sacredheart (orphan_account) Words: 39k

Louis is an arrogant, self assured prince who falls in love with a charming thief named Harry during his youth. However, years later, a revolution is sparked amongst the frustrated commoners... and Louis's former teenage romance is leading it.

Liberté by larriebane Words: 64k Tumblr: @larriebane

AU. 1647. “Pretending you don’t have a heart is not the best way to not get it broken. It’s just the easiest.”

Or the pirate AU I always wanted to write

Wear It Like A Crown by zarah5 Words: 141k Tumblr: @zarah5

AU. As part of a team of fixers hired to handle a gay scandal in Buckingham Palace, Louis expects Prince Harry to be a lot of things—most notably a royally spoilt brat. Never mind that the very same Prince Harry used to star in quite a number of Louis' teenage fantasies.

School

A Month With the Tomlinson Clan by Larry_Klaine_Stylinson Words: 14k

Harry and Louis have always hated each other, but when Harry's mum and sister have to go out of the country, Harry needs a place to stay, and Anne decides to ask her friend Jay if he can stay at her place.

18 by aclosetlarryshipper Words: 15k Tumblr: @thedarkestlarrie

Harry hates Golden Boy Louis and he's pretty sure the feeling's mutual. It's too bad they're forced into parenthood together during the home ec baby project.

Featuring accidental fathers, an improv performance gone wrong, and an altruistic game of spin the bottle.

And I'll judge the cover by the book by harrystylesandstuff Words: 73k

At twenty years old Harry has his life figured out. He’ll graduate from the private University of Buckingham and move to Oxford to study journalism. He’ll meet someone who shares his values and accepts who he is, and apply everything his successful parents have taught him.

At twenty-two years old Louis has no clue what he wants in life. He’s not sure he’ll pass the year and doesn’t know where he’ll go after that. He spends his time smoking away his doubts about himself with his friends and all he cares about is making sure his family doesn’t fall apart.

They don’t belong together.

Or a Private University AU where Harry is a queer posh prince, Louis is a closeted troublemaker, and neither expect to understand each other the way they will.

Soft Hands, Fast Feet, Can't Lose by dolce_piccante Words: 112k Tumblr: @haydolce

American Uni AU. Harry Styles is a frat boy football star from the wealthy Styles Family athletic dynasty. A celebrity among football fans, he knows how to play, he knows how to party, and he knows how to fuck (all of which is well known among his legion of admirers).

Louis Tomlinson is a student and an athlete, but his similarities to Harry end there. Intelligent, focused, independent, and completely uninterested in Harry’s charms, Louis is an anomaly in a world ruled by football.

A bet about the pair, who might be more similar than they originally thought, brings them together. Shakespeare, ballet, Disney, football, library chats, running, accidental spooning, Daredevil and Domino’s Pizza all blend into one big friendship Frappucino, but who will win in the end?

Unbelievers by isthatyoularry Words: 136k Tumblr: @isthatyoularry

It’s Louis’ senior year, and he’s dead set on doing it right. However, along with his pair of cleats, a healthy dose of sarcasm and his ridiculous best friend, he’s also got a complicated family, a terrifyingly uncertain future, and a mortal enemy making his life just that much worse. Mortal enemies “with benefits” was not exactly the plan.

Or: The one where Louis and Harry definitely aren’t friends, and football is everything.

Supernatural

once upon a dream by thedeathchamber Words: 33k Tumblr: @louehvolution

Louis is psychic and gets caught in the middle of a murder investigation led by FBI Special Agent Harry Styles.

aka. the Medium/Criminal Minds-inspired AU no one ever asked for.

Even Angels Have Their Demons by AFangirlFantasy Words: 52k Tumblr: @afangirlfantasy

Louis is appointed the role of Guardian Angel, and his first mission is a boy named Zayn Malik. Unfortunately, it seems that a certain Demon has gotten to him first.

Or... an Angel/Demon AU where Angel Louis hates Demon Harry, but somewhere along the way that stops being so true.

Luscious blood by Deidei Words: 116k

Louis Tomlinson, a human, has been living in poor living conditions together with his mother since he was born. Ever since he can remember he has loathed the stronger, faster, more developed kind that rule this world; Vampires. But will his opinion change after he meets his soul mate that is an arrogant, royal vampire named Harry Styles…

Run Like the Devil by benzos Words: 138k Tumblr: @churchrat

Harry stops pouting, but his frown is still fixed in place. “Are you sure?” he asks. “You know it’s your soul you’re signing away.” He sounds…sad? No, that’s not right, but there’s something.

Christ. This is the most incompetent demon Louis’ ever met. If he hadn’t seen the red of his eyes he wouldn’t believe he was a demon at all. How’d he get this job if he isn’t trying to convince Louis to deal? Or is it just another trick? A ploy for sympathy?

“I’m sure,” Louis says. “Come over here and kiss me.”

*Supernatural AU. Louis hunts demons; Harry's the strangest demon he's ever met, and he keeps fucking meeting him.

Other

Three French Hems by 100percentsassy, gloria_andrews Words: 19k Tumblrs: @100percentsassy, @gloriaandrews

In which Louis is a designer at Burberry and Harry spends December wearing Lanvin… and Lanvin… and Lanvin.

After Hours by Velvetoscar Words: 26k Tumblr: @mizzwilde

Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are the bane of each other's existences. Unfortunately, they're already in love--even if they aren't completely aware of this minor detail.

[A "You've Got Mail" AU]

Love's Truest Language by summerwine Words: 48k Tumblr: @smrwine

The first part was meant as a joke. He didn't really expect Harry to buy anything. It was just Louis’ way of softening the ‘get the fuck out’ blow.

“Where's your order forms, then?”

“I don't want your flowers.” Louis chided before directing all of his attention to the arrangement in front of him.

Harry laughed under his breath as he stood to his full height, “Who said anything about them being for you, love?”

Taken Over By The Feeling by whyidontknow1 Words: 53k

After almost a year of increasingly troubling behavior, Louis agrees to let his sister live with him. It's a last resort before more drastic measures are taken by their mom.

Harry Styles runs Given A Chance, a program for troubled and disadvantaged teens out of the bakery he owns. He offers the kids in his program what he believes they need to start on a different and better path for their lives.

Louis learns all too quickly that Harry's goodwill does not extend to him. Only because he happens to remind Harry of an ex he'd rather forget. It's not the smoothest of beginnings, but in the end Louis' own issues might be the real problem.

somethin' bout you by missandrogyny Words: 59k Tumblr: @missandrogyny

Of all the government agents in the world, Louis had to go and land the most charming one.

You Drive Me Round The Bend by TheCellarDoor Words: 77k Tumblr: @donotdialnine

In which Louis is a spoilt rich kid who’s always on the phone while he drives and Harry is a struggling musician making his way down the mountain. It’s just a matter of time before they crash and burn.

Hate Me To The Moon by harrystylesandstuff Words: 83k

The last thing Harry wanted was to spend his entire summer stuck with his dad's new fiancée and her kids. He wants no more when he learns she's a very religious dictator, raising a sixteen year old nun and a clean cut potential priest ass kisser.

Everything takes a slightly different turn, however, when Harry finds out his future step-brother is actually the rude stranger he caught sucking off a guy in a pub, far from the reserved Christian his mom thinks he is...

AU where Harry is a sexy nerd, Louis is a great actor, and they both pretend to hate each other's guts to convince themselves they're not feeling things future step-brothers shouldn't feel...

Off The Record by Tomlinsontoes Words: 90k Tumblr: @pianolouis

Louis is an out of control teen heartthrob, Harry is hired to get him back on track and they both hate each other while they secretly don't.

“I'm not your personal assistant you know,” Harry says once he gets there and Louis lets him in and he shoves the bag into his hands. “I'm your publicist.”

“I know that,” Louis smiles a devilish grin patting Harry in the middle of his chest as he takes the bag, “but look at you personally assisting me,” he says looking in the bag and pulling out the Cheetos. I also know that my PA turns his phone on silent at night, and clearly, you don't. Waiting for a booty call or something?” Louis says turning on his heels and scurrying over to his sofa and plopping down. Harry swears he sees a puff of orange dust soar into the air when Louis opens the bag. He's amazed that couch is as clean as it looks.

Dance to the Distortion by Lis (domesticharry) Words: 96k Tumblr: @domestic-harry

Louis accidentally breaks Harry's camera lens and in order to get it fixed, they decide to participate in a romantic couples study. The only issue is that they are not actually couple. Well that and the fact they cannot stand each other.

more than just a dream by spit_on_me_larry Words: 122k

Louis Tomlinson loves his life, he really does. It's just that he's constantly on the verge of everything completely going to shit. He's disorganized and clumsy and hotheaded and just a little bit ridiculous.

And then he meets Harry Styles. Harry is the type of person Louis hates. It seems like everything comes easily to him. He's rich and brilliant and everyone loves him and he has his life impossibly and perfectly together.

Louis detests Harry Styles. Except for the inconvenient fact that he can't seem to get Harry out of his head.

#enemies to lovers #hate to love #larry stylinson #larry fics #larry fic rec

540 notes · View notes

woodworkingpastor · 5 years ago

Text

Bible Study Deuteronomy 6:5-9 Hebrews 5:11-6:3

Metaphors of Bible Study

During our worship last Sunday, we did something that is typical in Church of the Brethren congregations (and likely in others, too): we gave Bibles to our children entering the 3rd grade. Carol brought the Bible that had been given to her when she was about that age; you may remember I’ve done that in other years and done the same thing. We give Bibles—along with a replacement guarantee that if the kids wear them out, we’ll give them another—because we want to impress upon them that reading the Bible is important. I know of one congregation that takes note of how many people bring their Bibles to worship each Sunday and posts that number along with the attendance and offering. They say that the things you measure are really the things most important to you!

Church of the Brethren theologian Dale Brown’s talks about the importance Brethren have placed on Bible study in his book Another Way of Believing. He describes the ways people view the Bible with the metaphor of a nicely wrapped package, and how sometimes people miss the gift of Scriptures because of they are focused more on the wrapping than the gift.

Some people are put off by the wrapping the Bible comes in. They don’t approve of some of the stories that are, quite frankly, X-rated. Others have been taught such a watered-down version of Scripture that their Biblical worldview begins to unravel as they start to realize the complexities of life and faith. I’ve known quite a number of people whose commitment to peace causes them to want to throw out the entire Old Testament.

Others are more in love with the wrapping that the gift. They honor the idea of the Bible more than they wrestle with the way the Bible is intended to change our lives. Often people focus so intently on a few favorite stories that they miss—or ignore—those stories that offer an even more challenging view. I’ve heard a lot of evangelistic invitations based on Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” I’ve never heard an evangelistic invitation based on Jesus’ words to the rich young ruler, “sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Why is that? We use the language of being “born again” so frequently that even non-believers know what it refers to. But sell your possessions? That seems too personal a thing. It’s odd, that as a pastor I might be seen as having the right to ask you to give your life to Jesus but not your car! Rich Mullins one said that this is “why God invented highlighters... so we can highlight the parts we like.”

But if my illustrations are becoming a bit uncomfortable, then, “good!” I certainly need you to have some uncomfortable questions for me, too. A Brethren view of Scripture recognizes that you don’t build a spiritual foundation simply by accumulating favorite Bible stories while ignoring others. We seek to be transformed by all of Scripture.

As we consider the Scripture this morning, we might wonder if something like this was happening in the congregation of Hebrews. Maybe they had fallen into a kind of spiritual lethargy, content with just the parts of God’s story they knew, comfortable in their knowledge of their salvation, not bothered by growing into a faith that challenged the status quo of the day.

But this is not the way we are to be.

Eugene Peterson gives us a different metaphor for Bible study, one that should be helpful to our congregation, because as a group we seem to prefer dogs to cats. Peterson describes the ideal method of Bible Study in the same way he used to watch his dog chew on a bone.

Living in Montana, their dog would often find the remains of a deer that coyotes had killed and would bring a bone back into the yard. The dog was proud of its find and would dance around with it and show it off for a while. But after a while the show was over; the dog would take the bone over to a shady spot in the corner of the yard and go to work on the bone: gnawing, turning it over and over, licking it. The dog would even growl a bit, perhaps not unlike a cat purring. There was only one thing in the universe important to the dog in those moments: getting as much out of the bone as was possible.

Peterson’s quote is a reminder that the purpose of Bible Study is not to pass a test, it is to assimilate all of God’s word into our lives so that our lives leads to behavior that conforms to Christ. Brethren church leader Dan West once said of the Bible and Bible Study,

“For me, the New Testament is a gambler’s handbook giving rules for betting our lives that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life” (Another way of believing, 107).

In the sixteenth century, Franz Agricola was a Catholic priest opposed to the Anabaptist movement. In his criticism of them, he said,

As concerns their outward way of life they are irreproachable. No lying, deception, swearing, strife, harsh language, no intemperate eating and drinking, no outward personal display, is found among them, but humility, patience, uprightness, neatness, honesty, temperance, straightforwardness in such measure that one would suppose that they had the Holy Spirit of God! (The Naked Anabaptist, 58).

These believers were members of a marginalized faith community with no political or economic power to speak of. They had set all of their hopes on the transformation the Holy Spirit would bring in their lives as they met together to study Scripture and lovingly hold one another accountable for what they were learning through the text, and the biggest insult one of their opponents could level against them was that their lives gave every evidence of the Spirit’s presence.

The importance of Bible study in community

This, sisters and brothers, is the direction our life in Christ should be heading. This is the Bible study we should create margin for in our lives.

It is what the Deuteronomy text is pointing too. The last several sermons have included Scripture from this part of Israel’s history. They are crucial texts because when Moses has the people in front of him, they do not yet have much of an identity. They hadn’t yet worked out in their lives what it meant to live as God’s people when there were other people and other options all around them.

How many of you remember a conversation either with your parents or your kids that went something like, “Why can’t we do this? All our friends are!” The answer (sometimes) is, “This is the way we think life works best for our family. One day you’ll have your own children, and you’ll get to work these things out the way you deem best.”

Something like that is going on in Deuteronomy 6. God knows that these people need to get God’s ways deep into their lives, so God gives them what boils down to very practical advice: memorize these laws; talk about them with your family; make signs of them so the physical presence of this teaching calls them to mind as you come and go.

I’m impressed at how practical this advice is. It’s the equivalent of taping a note onto the front door in the evening so you don’t forget to take something important with you the next morning.

God wants to impress upon us the importance of taking personal responsibility for spiritual growth. It will not happen by default. It’s why our stewardship series this fall is a bit different: there’s more to our life together than just our money.

We Brethren have long understood that spiritual growth has a significant community component to it. Brethren have typically been suspicious of personal interpretations of Scripture because we know that our hearts are biased in our own favor. Studying Scripture together brings a few benefits:

We each have different gifts and experiences that shape what we bring. In seminary, some of the most insightful Bible lessons I learned came from our Counseling professor. His insight into how people related with one another was invaluable for our study.

We can correct one another’s error. Culturally, we place great importance on “personal” or “private” truth. But the Bible is interested in our conforming our lives to God’s truth. We’re not always right.

The priority of Bible study is one reason why this is a theme in our Margin study series. How do we need to create space in our lives to study Scripture with one another? While there are many ways this can be done, our primary method is through Sunday School. As you consider your commitment to the church in 2020, will you continue in Sunday School? If you don’t have a class, will you find one? I urge you to pray about this.

0 notes

crazy-pastry · 8 years ago

Text

So I’m posting my essay here cuz it kinda fits the theme and I’m really happy with it.

TW for physical abuse, addiction.

My memory starts at about age 3. It’s my brother throwing me into a wall. You see I was born into a well-meaning but highly dysfunctional family, with two alcoholic parents and two half-brothers. One of whom, as I would come to realize much later in life, viewed me as a way to get back at a stepmom – my mother - he viewed as evil. He would later say she abused him. I was too young to know for sure, but if it’s true then, well, I guess the shit rolls downhill.

One night when I was about 8 or 9, my other brother long gone by now, the younger of the two decided he wanted to go live with his biological mother. I sat in the kitchen and listened, with no small amount of satisfaction, as my father berated this monster I had been forced to live with to the point of tears for wanting to leave a situation my young mind couldn’t even fathom was wrong. All I knew was that my life was about to get a lot better, and it did, to an extent.

My parents for their part did the best they could, given their issues. When they were sober they were good enough parents, but at night, and presumably after a lot of drinking, I would often awake to my father’s screams and my mother’s crying. Something I can always be proud of is that I, still very much a young child, was the one to break up the fighting, not my much older brothers. Maybe they were just used to it, and I wasn’t. Some nights this whole scene played out multiple times, and especially after my brothers left it became increasingly difficult to ignore.

Outside of the home was, for a little while, a place of refuge for me. I lived in a good enough neighborhood, with lots of kids around. Unfortunately I was soon to find out that I was not like them. Something I haven’t been honest about, if honest is the right word, is that I was actually my parents’ third son, not their first daughter, not originally anyway. My first inkling of what I wouldn’t be able to put into words for many years to come was when I was told by the parents of my favorite, female, friends that I was no longer allowed to play with them. I was very confused, as I did not get along with the neighborhood boys at all. But gender is a powerful thing in peoples’ minds, so I was shoved into this box that I didn’t fit into at all. Suddenly even the outside world became confusing and unpredictable.

I can recall as I got older sitting in church – I was raised very Catholic – praying that someone would come along right afterwards and kill me, that way I could go straight to heaven and maybe finally be a girl. It’s really the only thing I cared about at that point in my life, because certainly nothing else was keeping me here. I saw no other way, because there was no other way back then. I became obsessed with being a good Catholic and doing everything I was supposed to do. I even asked a priest about it once, and he just said he would pray for me.

And so went my life for many years, until by age 21 I found myself working in a liquor store. This is relevant because on my 21st birthday I came home with quite a large amount of free alcohol, already well on my way to becoming an alcoholic just like my parents. It was that night, after we all went to bed, that I sat in my room quite inebriated and decided to see a therapist about transitioning to female. Truthfully this wasn’t the first time I thought about it, but this time I followed through.

He was a night enough man, who had already transitioned himself, but was I think quite unprepared for me. I had so much to talk about, but he was the type to write you a letter to get hormones and then off you go. I was hesitant at first but I took him up on his offer, and soon I was on a couple meds for the first time in my life. I was nervous of course, but at the same time very excited.

So I came out to everyone and that all went fine. I was lucky actually, that’s very unusual in my experience. Pretty soon I was living as a woman. Things were looking up, relatively speaking, but I was still drinking myself into oblivion every night and couldn’t hold down a job. So I saw a therapist for the second time, this time a little more serious about it. I got clean, and after several months of that was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, and Borderline Personality Disorder, the last two being a result of trauma. I wasn’t hugely shocked by it. They say it runs in families, and I had my suspicions. Still it was good to put a name to everything, to finally start fixing things. I got on a lot more meds and felt more stable than I ever have in my life. In truth I was a little naïve.

With Bipolar, you just take your meds and hope they work. Usually, after some time, they stop working and need to be adjusted. This usually involves a hospital visit in my case. Being manic, for me, isn’t the happy go-spend-a-thousand-dollars sort of thing. It’s more like being temporarily schizophrenic. I’d always dealt with it on my own before, but it gets worse over time. The kindest thing anyone has ever said to me was when my therapist got really blunt with me and said I should expected a hospitalization about once a year, and to treat it like heart disease or diabetes – something completely outside your control. I say kind, because this is what allows me to make room for all these struggles in my life, and not force myself to go beyond my means.

To me identity is a hard subject to write about without going into something personal, so I don’t talk about it very much. How exactly do you go about untangling who you are from the alphabet soup of mental health issues, along with issues of gender and sexuality? I don’t necessarily think the things I have gone through in life - my identity as an abuse survivor, my hard-won fight to live as a woman - define me entirely, but they have, in large part, made me who I am today. I talk often to friends and family about these things, because I despise living in the closet, so to speak. I have been bullied and silenced enough in life, and I wouldn’t change who I am today, damage and all, for the world.

1 note · View note

angelofberlin2000 · 8 years ago

Link

Our culture seems to be addicted to doing things easy and fast. We want our internet connections easy. My nieces go into seizures if connecting to the internet takes longer than five seconds. We want setting up our computers to be easy. We want using our cellphones to be easy. We want our food fast. We even want mass to go fast.

The temptations of Christ show us that sometimes the fast and easy way is not only bad for you, but it could be positively demonic. Who is Jesus Christ to us? I would like to submit for your consideration that the temptations of Jesus in the desert give us a privileged insight into what kind of Savior he was to us. It would stand to reason that the better we know the identity of our Savior, the better worshippers and followers we will be of that Savior. I would like to suggest that the great virtue that Jesus exhibits in these temptations could be called POVERTY OF SPIRIT.

First, I will quickly review the temptations so that they are all fixed firmly in our minds.

In the first temptation, Satan asks Jesus to use his divine power to escape his physical hunger. Jesus had not eaten for forty days, and so Satan asks him to transform a stone into a loaf of bread.

In the second temptation, Satan shows Jesus the kingdoms of the world and tells Jesus that he will hand over those kingdoms if he will fall down and worship him.

In the third temptation, Satan takes Jesus to the top of the temple and demands that Jesus perform a little show for him to prove that he is God–throw yourself down and then have angels catch you.

What do all these temptations have in common? In all these temptations, Satan asks Jesus to compromise. He asks Jesus to take the easy way out. We know that Jesus can transform water into wine, he can make a few loaves multiply into a few thousand, and he can change his own body into nourishment. There is no lack of nutritional miracles in the Gospel. So what’s the big deal about one little stone to bread for himself? That’s the key. If Jesus would have changed that stone into a loaf of bread, it would have been completely selfish–for him alone. Those other miracles that have to do with nourishment are for the sake of the faith and salvation of other people. Jesus did not come to the world for himself, but for others. And he reminds Satan that there is more than one way that we can be nourished. “One does not live on bread alone.”

The first dimension of poverty of spirit is a total reliance upon the heavenly father to nourish us. Life can be hard. We are often tempted to take shortcuts by nourishing ourselves with games, sex, food or any number of distractions. But to be nourished by those means that we no longer have God nourishing us–and you are what you eat. If you sustain your soul with junk then do not be surprised that you feel as if you have a sluggish, confused soul. Nourish yourself with prayer, fasting and works of charity, and then BE surprised by feeling peace, joy and love.

In the second temptation, Satan tells Jesus that he will give him all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus simply worships him. At first, this may sound like a strange compromise–of course Jesus would never worship Satan. But what if you look at it this way. Satan tells Jesus that all those kingdoms are his. They will go to hell. They are part of my kingdom. But if you worship me, I will give them to you. Compromise. Cut corners. No one’s watching. You want a kingdom. You don’t have to die for it.” I could see the God of love being tempted by such a suggestion–the possibility that if he worships Satan, he might actually save a number of people from eternal damnation.

Let me explain further. I find that it is interesting that Jesus does not dispute with Satan about the fact that the kingdoms of the world have been handed over to Satan. Ever notice that? The reason why Jesus came to earth was to establish the kingdom of God in the middle of the kingdom of the Evil One. And how does he do that? He does that by suffering and dying on a cross, not by fighting for a throne and lording it over others.

So the second aspect of poverty of spirit is the willingness to suffer as we live out our vocation, not compromising by worshipping other false gods in order to take short cuts.

The third temptation involves Jesus throwing himself down from the temple so that angels can catch him. This is another easy way out – Satan says, “You want worshippers? I’ll show you how to get worshippers. Do something flashy and dramatic. Throw yourself down and have angels catch you. Then you’ll have worshippers. Who needs a lousy cross when you can have angels?” Like I said, this is another short cut. Jesus knows that his gospel is going to be a hard one to hear and even harder to accept. This temptation makes me call to mind that there are many churches that are filling up because they provide something flashy and dramatic rather than the sacrifice of the cross. They are full of people who have been duped by this particular temptation of Satan. Instead, what a Catholic mass offers is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It seems that Jesus was tempted by the possibility that if he used his miracles to be flashy and dramatic, he would save more souls? Try to take note of how Jesus uses his miraculous powers. It is always simply to heal or to build the faith of those around him. As a matter of fact, there are many times that Jesus performs a miracle and then demands that the healed person stay QUIET about it.

The third temptation says “no” to worldly prestige. Jesus responds to Satan, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” The one with poverty of spirit does not demand that God perform miracles in order to believe. The one with poverty of spirit uses his or her talents only to build up another, not to build up one’s self to be noticed.

I think what I find that all three temptations have in common most of all is this: they all suggest that Jesus take his cross and throw it down: feed on bread, wealth, and worldly prestige. Take the short cut. Use your divine power to get what you want. Compromise your identity and worship something else alongside the Father, and I’ll give you what you want.

And what is the opposite of that? What was Jesus called to do? He took up his cross and was nourished by doing the will of his heavenly father. He used his powers for the good of others, taking no wealth or prestige for himself, even though he deserved everything in the world. We deserve much less than Jesus deserves, and yet we often ask for much more out of life than he ever dared to ask. Without compromise, Jesus focused on his mission to serve and save others. But what about us? Have we lost sight of the fact that we are supposed to pick up our cross daily and follow him? Have we lost sight of the fact that we were put on this earth not just to save ourselves, but to help others into heaven?

Ultimately, the reason why poverty of spirit is such a great virtue is this: it is through this kind of renunciation and sacrifice that we empty ourselves of selfishness and actually become vessels that actually bear the spirit of God. Satan fears that. And that is why Satan tries to fill us up with everything else BUT that. A flute needs to be empty to play music. The tabernacle needs to be empty to hold the body of Christ. And sometimes our hearts need to empty out if they are to bear the Spirit of God.

With this in mind, I would like to give y’all a little homework. It is quite simple. I would like each of you to sit quietly somewhere the next time you get the chance and place yourself in the desert with Jesus during his forty days–because that is indeed where we are during these forty days of Lent. You find yourself confronted by Satan who proposes three things that take you away from your cross and your mission in this life, something that takes you away from being nourished by your heavenly father and worshipping him alone. Maybe pray about those things in this very mass, and even share the ones that aren’t too sensitive with family and friends What are those three temptations?

Because once you know what they are, you know what you need to address for the rest of this season. May God grant us all the grace of poverty of spirit.

(x)

(picture by James Tissot, Jesus Carried up to a Pinnacle of the Temple )

#catholic faith #art #james tissot #temptation of christ

3 notes · View notes

paulbenedictblog · 5 years ago

Text

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News Trump administration moves to protect prayer in public schools and federal funds for religious organizations - The Washington Post

News

The Trump administration is transferring to fortify protections for school students who're seeking to hope or adore in public colleges and proposing changes to safe it more uncomplicated for non secular teams that provide social services to catch entry to federal funds, a trend that comes as the president seeks to shore up improve amongst evangelicals.

9 federal businesses, including the Training Division, the Division of Effectively being and Human Services and the Justice Division, are advancing principles that can lower requirements for these non secular organizations. The strategies would resolve on an Obama-technology executive uncover that compelled non secular organizations to suppose the folk they attend that they'll receive the same provider from a secular provider.

In the Oval Plot of work on Thursday, President Trump gathered with Training Secretary Betsy DeVos, televangelist Paula White and college students who talked about they'd faced non secular discrimination in public colleges. Trump talked about his administration became as soon as engaged in a “cultural war” to defend college prayer from “the a long way left."

“In public colleges spherical the country, authorities are stopping college students and lecturers from praying, sharing their faith or following their non secular beliefs. It's solely unacceptable,” Trump talked about. “Tragically, there is a rising totalitarian impulse on the a long way left that seeks to punish, restrict and even restrict non secular expression.”

Some consultants talked about a gigantic selection of Thursday’s dispositions retread used ground and might maybe perchance well unbiased have faith shrimp impact. Courts have faith made obvious that college students have faith the simply to hope in college — as long as the prayers are now now not led by lecturers, coaches or principals and fabricate now now not disrupt studying.

DeVos talked about her department plans to remind colleges that college students and lecturers have faith a constitutional simply to hope in public colleges, and that scholar-led non secular organizations must catch catch entry to to public facilities valid as secular teams fabricate.

The steering furthermore clarifies that lecturers, directors and coaches are now now not permitted to lead college prayers or devotional readings of the Bible, “nor can also unbiased college officials exercise their authority to strive to persuade or compel college students to rob part in prayer or different non secular actions.”

“Our actions at the present time will provide protection to the constitutional rights of faculty students, lecturers and faith-based institutions,” DeVos talked about. “The department’s efforts will stage the taking part in subject between non secular and nonreligious organizations competing for federal grants, to boot to provide protection to First Amendment freedoms on campus and the non secular liberty of faith-based institutions.”

The steering, which largely updates guidelines issued by the Bush administration in 2003, will furthermore require college districts to certify they fabricate now now not have faith regulations that battle with college students’ simply to hope at college and instructs states to whisper the Training Division if a criticism arises against a college district over prayer. The department does now now not have faith similar reporting requirements for states when a college district is accused of different types of discrimination.

Below most modern regulations, faith-based services — equivalent to health-care entities, child welfare organizations and academic nonprofits — need to give beneficiaries ogle of the services’ non secular personality and the simply to catch services in numerous places. The services furthermore have faith to safe cheap efforts to refer beneficiaries to a different provider if the actual person receiving services is unhappy. The govt.relies on businesses and nonprofits — a gigantic selection of them faith-based — to provide a gigantic selection of social services, including resettlement of refugees, organizing housing workshops, facilitating adoptions and offering court-ordered drug medication.

The Trump administration announced principles to pause the notification requirement. Administration officials talked about that it became as soon as unfair to power non secular services to present these notices when secular services faced no such requirements and that the requirement unfairly forged non secular organizations as suspect.

Representative of quite loads of businesses -- including the Justice, Veterans Affairs and Housing and Metropolis Construction departments -- did now not return calls seeking tell.

Civil rights teams talked about the recent regulations will dismantle protections save in web web site by President Barack Obama to steadiness the rights of faith-based services with these of LGBTQ folk and different teams which have faith historically faced discrimination. Critics furthermore accused the administration of utilizing the flag of “non secular freedom” to present more taxpayer dollars to Christian teams.

Camilla B. Taylor, an attorney with the LGBTQ civil rights community Lambda Correct kind, talked about the changes would have faith an impact on big swaths of govt contracts. She talked about when folk assume of non secular teams and social services, they “assume a neighborhood soup kitchen in a basement.”

“But we're talking about govt grants to the tune of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of bucks. And an increasing selection of, they are besides contributors of the public from receiving services in step with who they are,” Taylor talked about.

Some consultants criticized the administration for distorting fact, asserting there is scant evidence that college students who're seeking to hope are being averted from doing so.

Charles C. Haynes, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum who has knowledgeable numerous of faculty districts on matters linked to faith, talked about the steering fed a wrong story that prayer in public colleges is below attack. He talked about the overwhelming majority of faculties appreciate a scholar’s simply to prayer.

“It’s overdrawn and seriously political to cope with up this so-known as college prayer fight going,” Haynes talked about. “Here's in quite loads of how a manufactured crisis which capability of it performs neatly politically to tell, ‘We resolve on God wait on in colleges.’ ”

The Rev. Stan J. Sloan, chief executive of Family Equality, which helps same-intercourse families, talked about, “Another time, the Trump administration is inserting the non-public beliefs of taxpayer-funded provider services above the wants of inclined teenagers, families and folk they attend."

“Folk in want must never have faith to resolve on from their like identity or faith and accessing services they want and have faith paid for with their tax dollars,” Sloan talked about.

The president and chief executive of the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legislation firm in Texas that specializes in non secular freedom cases, praised the administration’s run.

“The non secular freedom of The usa’s public college college students and lecturers does now now not pause at the schoolhouse gate. These days’s guidelines command that promise,” First Liberty president Kelly Shackelford talked about in a statement. “We are furthermore grateful to the President for his actions at the present time protecting the rights of Americans by ending non secular discrimination by insist and federal businesses.”

In the Oval Plot of work on Thursday, Trump invited college students who talked about they faced non secular discrimination to fragment their tales. One Catholic scholar talked about a teacher pressured him to wipe ashes from his foreheadon Ash Wednesday. A Muslim lady talked about she faced bullying for sporting a head masking at college. One more lady, a Christian, talked about her college in Texas suggested her she can also pray handiest in non-public. Attorneys despatched a letter to the college, and directors mercurial reversed course.

The run comes as Trump seeks to bolster his backing amongst conservative evangelical Christians in the lead-up to his reelection suppose. Two weeks ago, he held an match at El Rey Jesús church in Miami to dispute the formation of a coalition, Evangelicals for Trump. There, he furthermore announced his administration’s intent to “safeguard college students’ and lecturers’ First Amendment rights to hope in our faculties.”

Subsequent week, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom is decided to hear a case that can also expand how non secular colleges catch entry to taxpayer funds.

The case emerged in Montana, where the insist constitution prohibits public dollars from going to non secular colleges. When the insist created a tax-credit ranking scholarship fund, a voucherlike program that lets in taxpayers to receive buck-for-buck tax deductions for his or her donations, it barred beneficiaries from utilizing the funding to ship their teenagers to non secular colleges. A family sued, setting the stage for a case that can also resolve how states can cope with an eye fixed on voucher programs.

Lisa Rein contributed to this file.

0 notes

killingthebuddha · 7 years ago

Link

In my last life, back in the late 1990s when I was a fundamentalist missionary in Papua New Guinea, I came upon the online magazine Killing the Buddha.

Although I was quite aware that my life as a fundamentalist was nearly over, I did not know that I had about four years before any ontological aspect of my faith would be gone. How was I to know? In my heart, I knew I’d broken away from the body of Christ, calved like an iceberg. Unmoored I was, slowly drifting away, and my identity as a Christian melting.

I truly, consciously, thought in those terms.

On especially searing days there so close to the equator, I’d cheerfully joke to one fellow missionary or another that I was like the Wicked Witch of the West, “melting. I’m melting!” It made me both sad and secure knowing those fellow missionaries had no idea I was referring to my spiritual status. Sad, because I really had for some time of my Christian career experienced something of a romantic relationship with Jesus and the idea of that relationship disappearing grieved me. Secure, because I had long ago learned to not trust my fellow fundamentalists with anything remotely heretical.

As many readers of KtB know, it is stifling to be a fundamentalist.

Killing the Buddha was a breath of fresh air for me. Its early writers were so daring in the things they said, so very sincere and yet not at all adolescent.

And authentic. If there was any one trait about KtB that most drew me, it was how very real, how very true to life as I knew it the KtB writings were.

Back then, I pretty much valued authenticity as much as food and air. I had a couple friends who, although also fundamentalist missionaries, were brilliant with their open honesty about their struggles to live the Christian life. Once, one went so far as to say he thought “God must be some sort of evil cosmic masturbator because he seems to get off on our failures.” I nearly moved away from him when he added, “Or maybe he’s into voyeurism. You know, how he watches all we do. ‘Be careful little hands what you do, for the father up above, is looking down in love, be careful little hands what you do.'” I half expected to be hit by the lightning I thought God would strike him with for such authenticity. I feared it arcing from his body to mine.

So it was that when I encountered similar, daring authenticity in Killing the Buddha, I became a hungry, devoted reader of every new piece posted on its website.

And then came Bent, by Peter Manseau, a short fiction piece that came out at the end of 2000. Here was the story of some ancient monastics who spent so much of their lives on their knees in prayer that their femurs became permanently bent.

Had I ever been that devoted? I asked myself. Despite having left the comforts of America, despite having dragged my family to live with me as I worked as a missionary in a remote mountain tribe, despite that sort of dedication, I knew I didn’t have the same level of devotion as the monastics who bent their femurs from praying for hundreds upon hundreds of hours on their knees.

Maybe that’s what I needed to revive my faith, to keep my long dark night of the soul from completely annihilating any last shred of authentic, ontological aspect of my Christian life.

So, surreptitiously, I went to a Roman Catholic bookstore, in order to find for myself what I hoped might be the sort of prayer book the monastics of old might have used.

Once, several years before, I had visited the store to purchase an anthropological monograph with material about the culture of the tribe I had been seeking to evangelize. The bookstore was part of what is known as the Melanesian Institute, an organization, as I recall, dedicated to academic research and publication of material related to the peoples of Papua New Guinea. How it was affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church I do not know. But I do remember that there was enough affiliation that when a leader with New Tribes Mission, the fundamentalist mission society of which I was a member, learned about my intention to go there to get the monograph, I was strongly warned to be careful. He admonished me to remember that Satan was the true leader of Catholicism.

That first venture to the bookstore was several years before my faith was waning so precipitously. I had gone there truly expecting to see drunken priests and cowering little boys. What I saw, instead, was a very well organized, very inviting bookstore.

Bear with this digression: I love bookstores almost as much as I love books. The first time I walked into Portland, Oregon’s, Powell’s Bookstore I got tears of joy in my eyes. I felt like I’d entered some form of paradise. So in love did I fall with Powell’s that I used to joke with those I felt safe that “if there is a heaven, it must be something like Powell’s.” Back to the Catholic bookstore in New Guinea . . .

I had already been living in Papua New Guinea for several years when I walked into that bookstore to purchase the monograph and it was the closest thing to a Western-style bookstore I’d seen in the country. Right away, I felt at home. Since I figured it was highly unlikely that any of my Protestant fundamentalist cohorts would show up, I let myself enjoy a solid half-hour of book-browsing. Only once did the quiet nun wearing a light blue habit ask if I needed help. She bowed politely as she backed away from me and returned to the cash register.

And so it was that I returned to the Roman Catholic book store and bought a small, red, leather-bound missal. I had been surprised and pleased with how much of its text was Scripture. It was not what I expected.

My thought was that it could not hurt to assist my re-devotion, as it were, to fervent, sacrificial, down-on-my-knees prayer, as I’d read about in Peter Manseau’s story, with the same sort of prayers made by those whose femurs became bent.

And so, thank you Peter Manseau, for a year or so I staunched the flow of my bleeding, wounded-by-severe disappointment-and-doubt heart with a new regimen of prayer.

Daily, ninety minutes before the sun rose, at its almost never changing near-equatorial time of around 6:30, I quietly stole out of my bedroom and went to the east-facing veranda, got down on my knees and prayed. My ritual was ecumenical: I first prayed as a Protestant, “Dear Jesus this and dear Jesus that”. Then I opened the missal and prayed from it. I followed that with praying through a portion of the Psalms. Finally, I knelt in in silence, waiting and hoping to hear back from God. This whole process took all of forty minutes.

I had determined to follow this regimen for one year. Occasionally, I added to the forty minutes and supplemented them with twenty minutes of lectio divina, sacred reading. This was something I’d read about in an issue of Christianity Today, the Time magazine of American Evangelicalism.

For the first few months, I felt a slight bit of the old-fashioned zeal for Jesus and His way that had driven me to become a missionary in the first place. A couple times I may have even moaned with that zeal, thinking of Teresa of Avila and her orgasmic prayers.

Alas, that flicker of zeal faded, and after a half year of spending each morning on bended knee, I knew it wasn’t going to work. My faith was not coming back.

But I am not one to give up easily. So I kept at it for the full twelve months before finally owning up to the fact that –apart from shoving my hands into the pierced side of Jesus–there was nothing that would stop my doubts.

It was over. I bent myself to the breaking point. My femurs snapped.

My faith had melted completely away.

(Too many metaphors? Not for us who are given to finding purpose and meaning at nearly all costs.)

It took me nearly ten years to go public with the reality of my departure from God. That ten years included six more years in the ministry, the death of my marriage, estrangement from my lovely children, the death of a second marriage, triggered by my announcing I no longer believed in God and that I was attracted to men.

Now, here I am, out of the closet as an atheist and bisexual man for these past five years or so . . .

I am happier now. For me, giving up on God felt like I imagined it felt for Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress to be relieved of his sin. God was a burden for me. Even when I had some modicum of genuine ontological experience with God, I found Him very burdensome. And not at all easy.

God knows, if there is a God (I actually think of myself as a non-theist; one who just doesn’t have a place of substance for God; I don’t think of myself as anti-God, which is for me what the term atheist implies), that I tried. Like McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, when he accepted the challenge of his insane cohorts to rip up the massive cement fountain in their asylum and throw it out the window so he could escape, “At least I tried, goddammit, at least I tried.”

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes