I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.
This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.
This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.
But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.
I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.
I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.
I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.
I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.
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forbes gojo’s house cleaner cleaning their bedsheets for the fifth time this friday 😔
"Gojo-kun," the older woman huffed, voice still gentle yet stern as she spoke to the younger man that she'd been taking care of since he was a child. Quickly pinching his bare side, back littered with angry marks and love bites, as she walked past him with an armful of white bedsheets, clicking her tongue, "I don't think Gojo-sama would be delighted to hear her son is being a pain to his wife."
"What do you mean —" he almost spit out of his water as his childhood nanny passed by, her shorter stature swallowed by his upright build. His blue eyes immediately took sight of the white fabric that she was holding, and his thoughts instantly recounted the iniquitous matrimony he had with his wife — not even a few hours prior.
the sheets were probably still damp — fuck.
Quickly rushing toward her, Satoru took the sheets from the older lady, blushing as he fumbled over his words, "I-I'll get this, Hirota-san, you go down and rest, " he flashed her an awkward, apologetic smile, "she's still sleeping right now."
Fed up with the countless times she had to cover for his mess, but also feeling sympathetic towards you, "the poor woman's always being swindled by you," she grumbled before making her way down the stairs, wondering how on earth he didn't get you pregnant by now...
++ on Fridays, that would be Satoru's job to do (: usually, he'll be good to put the sheets in after moving his wife to the other bedroom... but this particular day, he was being a bad boy.
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Do What I Cannot
This is based on My Graveyard Song because I was captivated by the idea of Danny’s parents burying him alive. That’s basically the only part I took though. This is about him being confronted with his parents again once freed.
This is unedited so feel free to point out mistakes. Contains graphic description of violence.
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The Justice League’s newest hero has been a wonderful asset, truly! Phantom is a rather powerful hero and even though some of his methods are a little questionable he follows the ‘no killing’ rule more strictly then some of the long-term members. Even if it’s just because he doesn’t want to deal with them as ghosts it still counts. Some of the more magical people have an idea that Phantom is more powerful then he’s letting on, but they don’t push it. After all he’s still just a teenager, they don’t really want to have him dealing with universal threats either.
Honestly even if he weren’t a hero Batman at least would have kept him around for the impressively positive affects he has on Red Hood. Jason had been calmer and more reasonable then he had been since his resurrection since digging up that grave and teaming up with Danny. It was just a little unsettling sometimes honestly, sometimes his eyes would glint with the green of the Lazarus waters and everyone would tense up prepared for an aggressive outburst only for Jason to announce he needed to find Danny and leave. The more suspicious minds found it odd, but they figured it was just because Phantom could calm Jason down and didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Really the only problem was that knowing Phantom had alerted them to a potential new source of threat that they really knew very little about. The JLD knew some but not enough and the ways they had to fight ghosts were clunky and unreliable, they needed weapons that would work on ghosts. Not Phantom obviously, though the overly cautious ones privately thought about him too, just in case you know? And there weren’t many people who specialized in such tech, so of course their search lead them to the Drs. Fenton.
The magic users thought their methods were crude and crazy but had to admit they clearly worked so maybe it would be best to invest in at least some of their tech. At least to study and see if it could be improved on. So they were invited for a meeting, and it was decided Phantom would Not be told. Mostly because they didn’t want to stress him out and also because they’d learned these two were ‘shoot first ask questions later’ types who apparently didn’t believe there was such a thing as a good ghost so they might actually try and kill Danny on sight, which would be awkward.
The presentation they gave to the Justice League was predictably unhinged and they knew well enough to take all of it with a grain of salt, especially the part about all ghosts being evil. Danny had already explained it to them, that ghosts were driven by obsessions which meant they behaved differently then humans but the majority only lashed out when something got between them and their singular passion. Some were different, some had malicious passions and some were more complicated. Diana and J’onn both looked like they were trying hard not to pick a fight but they’d all agreed to smile and nod till they got access to the tech.
There was a familiar sudden chill in the room, looking around Batman could tell a few others felt it too, though Flash was typically oblivious.
“Oh dear,” J’onn whispered before Phantom appeared.
“Hey guys what’s up?” He asked, cheerful but slightly accusatory, they should have known better then to think they could keep the meeting from him. Before they could think of anything to say Danny’s eyes caught on the Fentons and narrowed.
“GET DOWN!” Jack yelled pulling out one of those stupid blasters from somewhere.
“What a perfect chance for a demonstration,” Maddie said, sliding on a pair of gantlets.
“You-you don’t recognize me, do you?” Danny asked, and for a moment he looked hurt, then something happened none of them had ever seen before, his eyes turned red. The toxic green they were used to changed to a deep, blood red and his feet touched the ground as he stalked forward. Jack shot, Danny didn’t break stride, a green shield blocked the blast like it was nothing. Maddie tried to lung and was immediately hit in the gut by one of Phantom’s ecto-blasts, knocking her back against the glass.
Batman leapt up and tried to lung and stop Phantom only to hit a wall that rippled with green, a bubble surrounding the ghost and the two hunters, invisible until struck.
Danny grinned, shark like teeth on full display without any mirth, white hair whipping in an unfelt wind, flowing so it almost looked like flames. “I guess I look a lot different then I did when you buried me alive huh? How long did you leave me? Because you ‘couldn’t kill you son’ so you thought it would be more merciful to lock me away till everything human about me rotted.”
“No,” Maddie gasped, recognition suddenly sharp and painful on her features.
“Yes ‘mom’,” Danny snarled bitterly. Jack tried to shoot again but the blaster was knocked out of his hands so quickly no one was sure what hit him before it could fully charge. “YOU MADE ME! AND YOU ABANDONED ME! You’re lucky someone found me, I would have gotten strong enough to break out on my own eventually and if I had I would have destroyed everything.”
“Oh my god, his parents?” Diana nearly whispered. Batman understood how she felt, Danny didn’t like to talk about how he’d ended up buried ‘alive’, that his parents were the ones who had done it… that was horrific. It made sense why he had never been able to speak about it, but Damn that would have been good to know before they had invited Danny’s abusers to give a presentation on weapons that had no doubt been used to hurt him. And now.. what? They couldn’t get to Danny, it seemed like he had gotten to the point that Raven did sometimes when her emotions overwhelmed her, could they get to Danny? Could they stop him from doing something he might regret?
“You are not our son,” Maddie hissed, her breathing still coming in a harsh wheeze from the blow to her stomach. “Danny is dead! He’s gone. You’re just an acto-entity imitating him, and not even well, you’re just a parasite.”
Danny seemed to be losing some control of his form, it was stretching, getting taller, his fingers curling into dangerous claws tipped with the blackness of the star studded void. “Pathetic mortals, you act as if you will never die, but you will join my kingdom. Perhaps it will be punishment enough to become what you hate, perhaps not. Perhaps I will speed up the process so you can’t hurt anyone else,” He snarled his hands beginning to glow with familiar green of his energy blast.
“Danny stop!” Superman said, hitting the burier to try and get through but not even he could break it. Danny didn’t seem to be responding to them though he was hesitating.
Batman was resigning himself to watching Phantom kill his once parents before Jason walked by him. Batman wasn’t usually taken by surprise, but he was shocked, and worried, both because he could see the green glow of pit madness through the eyes of his helmet, which was worrying, and because he walked through the burier keeping the rest of the heroes out like it was nothing.
He walked to Danny, taking his hand, there was a soft sizzle as the gathered green energy burned Jason’s hand without him even seeming to notice. He pulled Danny down to the ground from where he was floating, pulling the young hero into his arms. Danny let himself be pulled into Jason’s arms, the green energy fizzling out as he wrapped his own arms back around Jason’s waist, hiding against his chest. As the anger faded he slumped against Jason’s chest.
Just as the heroes were breathing a sigh of relief and relaxing Maddie went for the dropped gun. But she wasn’t fast enough as Jason drew his own pistol, the one with live ammo, and put a bullet in her head. Diana cried out in shock and Batman froze as blood and brain matter splattered over the watchtower floor and her body slumped. Before anyone could recover Jack followed, another shot executioner style and Batman had to turn away.
The watchtower was completely silent, enough so that he could hear Phantom’s soft sniffles as he cried into Jason’s chest. When Batman looked back Jason had holstered his gun and was just holding Danny Close. The green had faded enough from his eyes that it seemed safe, Batman approached warily and wasn’t surprised to find that the invisible burier was gone now that both the Fenton’s were dead.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said softly as he heard the approach, without emerging from his hiding place in Jason’s arms where he seemed to feel safe. “I wasn’t actually going to kill them, but I guess my want to, my emotions, were strong enough to make Jason respond. I didn’t mean to call you that way.” He looked up at Jason, his eyes green again though red rimmed from tears.
“It’s alright, I would have done it anyway,” Jason growled, holding Danny even tighter. “I’ve killed people for less, they deserved it.”
Batman took a deep breath forcing himself to keep his cool about his son’s constant flouting of his no killing rule, now was not the time to make Phantom feel worse. “Jason why don’t you take him down to one of the sitting rooms so he can calm down.” No doubt Phantom was reliving trauma, and grieving because even if he wanted them dead they had been his parents.
Jason nodded and scooped Danny into his arm who let out an indignant little squawk and insisted he could walk while making no attempt to actually get down. Jason ignored Danny’s performative complaints and kept the young hero’s head hidden against his chest so he wouldn’t have to see the corpses of his parents while Jason carried him out of the room.
Now, how best to deal with the aftermath of… all this. And later on he really would have to ask Danny and Jason what he’d meant by Jason responding to his energy, because it seemed like there might be something more to their relationship then just Danny calming Jason down and that was worrying to say the least.
Part 2: here
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So like. Jamie comes to watch one of Phoebe's matches, and she completely eats shit the entire time. Can hardly hold onto the ball for two seconds, trips over her own feet more than once, shoots twice and misses both times, passes to the wrong person, etc. and her team is just completely annihilated. Like. 0-7 annihilated. Demolished
As soon as time is called, she immediately walks off the pitch in tears and goes to Roy, who of course picks her up in her wet, muddy kit and kisses her forehead and tells her not to worry, there's always next week, she did him proud going out there and giving it everything she had, etc.
And Phoebe looks so small and innocent and pitiful, crying and cold and wet in her tiny little kit, and she's already so disappointed in herself and heartbroken over the score and all she wants is comfort and warmth and Roy gives her that without even thinking about it because she's a fucking child and it's a fucking game. And she knows he'll pick her up and comfort her so intrinsically that she doesn't hesitate a single moment.
Jamie just watches them and thinks about all the hours he spent crying inconsolably in locker rooms after losses, so anxious he'd throw up, stalling, not wanting to leave because he knew his father would be waiting for him when he did. Knowing there would be no comfort until he could see Georgie again.
And seeing it from the other side - being the adult in the situation - just gives him this renewed wave of fury and disgust for his father because how could anyone. How could anyone look at a precious, defenseless little child in that state, crying and desperate for comfort, and beat and berate them until they bled and cried and begged for forgiveness. Over a fucking game. How could you even think to do that. How could anyone.
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