#religion tw maybe?

[icara-mack]

back again with my entry for the @sixteenth-day-event <3

prompt was: church prime in summer

I finished this.. 2 minutes ago! I am normal. tumblr probably ate the quality, RIP

inspired very heavily by a piece I saw a couple weeks ago 🩵

(trying to find the user for credit so if anyone recognises the background layout! Tell me! I referenced from memory and am pretty sure the og was on tumblr)

[pigswithwings]

this'll be the last oceanblr post. promise. is everyone here familiar with niche aquatic events btw

0 notes 🔁❤

🐋 simplecetacean Follow

haha might fuck around and let my body become an unidentifiable mass that washes up on several shores and won't decay and will be mysterious to scientists for years upon years

🐋 simplecetacean Follow

might fuck around and bite off a man's leg but leave the rest of him alive, kickstarting a violent and all-consuming battle between us

🐋 simplecetacean Follow

might fuck around and absolutely troll this guy named jonah

18.2K notes 🔁❤

🦑 strawberry-squidz Follow

Squids that destroy ships and squids that have never seen a ship shouldn't be fighting. They should be kissing. That's why this pride month,

1.5K notes 🔁❤

🌑 greatbitesharkof87-deactivated Follow

lol im floating by this sandbar and theres sooo many humans gathered near the shore. looked out of the water earlier and theres a big old whale body just sitting on the beach, hope nothing bad happens lmaooo

🎣 marlingardens-deactivated Follow

top ten posts that make you feel like it's the 1970s in Florence, Oregon

🐙 ask-an-argonaut Follow

HELLO???

34.7K notes 🔁❤

🌿 misc-manatee-mutters Follow

pacific ocean superiority this & indian ocean superiority that. when will you guys focus on the real problem, the blood ocean

267 notes 🔁❤

🔍ms-magnap1nna Follow

Made a new friend today. Everyone better cheer and clap or I'm dragging you into the hadal zone

🐌 justasnailfish Follow

:}

2.9K notes 🔁❤

🌙 fishoftheabyss Follow

What do Epipelagic Zoners even do? Like it sounds ridiculous up there. Ooh, there's rain! Wow, a coral reef! I might even hop out of the waves a couple of times for funsies! Tf do you even have over Abyssopelagic Zoners. Go to shell

🌱 kelps-forests43 Follow

cranky because you've never seen the sun huh

[aphidclan-clangen]

Ollie how are you ALIVE??.

boy has so much mental illness it’s insane

[jo-harrington]

TW: Death and Catholicism

Eddie as someone you meet at a funeral.

You’re a great-niece, he’s a grandson’s friend. You both really only knew the deceased distantly but in different lights.

To Eddie she was the lady who pinched his arm, fed him too much food, asked if he had a girlfriend, and said she knew some nice girls if he was having trouble dating. To you she was the lady who pinched your arm, fed you too much, asked if you had a boyfriend, and said she knew some nice boys if you were having trouble dating.

Nice to him. Rude to you. That’s just who she was though. To everyone. She had her favorites.

But you’re both there for your cousin more than you’re there for yourselves.

He ends up sitting near you at the funeral home, dressed in black. Well, everyone is. But it’s how you wear those black clothes. You both wear a comfortable shroud while everyone else shuffled in dresses that don’t fit and shoes that pinch and rented suits with ties that choke.

Funeral homes have formative memories for both of you. You bond over it in those drawn out minutes…hours where you connect with strangers only to probably never see them again. For him, it’s his mother and in return he gained a love of heavy metal and the inexplicable need to March to the beat of his own drum just like she did. For you, a grandma you were too young to really know.

“You and Danny have that in common then,” he tries to lighten the mood. “Dead grandma’s.”

“I think everyone gets a dead grandma at some point. Sometimes even two.”

“That’s fair.”

“Mine died on my 5th birthday though,” you tell him truthfully. “So I think I had it worse off than he does.”

“Gotta hold him to that then. He’s a cocky shit.”

“Yeah he is. He still holds some Mario Kart victory over me from when we were 7.”

You both fumble at the church as you seek out a familiar face—although for you it’s a sea of familiar faces you wish you didn’t have to see—and you guide him through, to you, partially forgotten prayers and the sitting and standing and you even hold his hand during the Our Father. He doesn’t let you go because he feels you shake with the uneven ground of your faith.

“I don’t do church anymore,” you whisper.

“Me either,” he whispers back. “Would you believe me if I told you people used to think I worshipped Satan?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I might currently worship Satan?”

“No shit.”

“Meh, anything that isn’t Jesus might as well be Satan to my mom so it’s not that much of a stretch.”

He doesn’t ask where your mom is. Where the rest of your immediate family is. And it’s nice for that to be the first time not to have to answer that question.

You continue to hold hands as the casket is sealed behind a stone wall, as your aunt and her secrets get locked away forever. Eddie remarks that it’s weird to bury people behind walls instead of in the ground. You think it’s weird that he thinks it’s weird; it’s all you’ve ever known.

You offer to show him around the big mausoleum if he plays his cards right.

It’s a joke. You both know it’s a joke.

But after Danny approaches the two of you once the service is over, and thanks and hugs are shared, he stands there with his hands in his pockets and stared at you expectantly.

“So?” He shrugs. “Grand tour?”

You’re speechless but you nod.

“And I know a place that does a good eggplant parm san—”

“Eggplant Parm Sandwich,” you nod. “Cue’s. Off Wolf Road? Yeah it’s my favorite.”

“Mine too. We can get some lunch?”

“Sure.”

And you both think as you walk around the silent cemetery.

You think your aunt must not have been so bad, and he thinks she must have been as good as he always thought she was.

Because she filled her promise of introducing you both to someone nice after all.

[dirtytransmasc]

Alicent and Aegon are so Virgin Mary and Jesus coded, in a sick and twisted way that it barely makes sense, but at the same time just... does.

a mother and her child born damned from the start, yet she loved him to her core, accepting her fate, accepting she would lose him and then herself.

she carried him, birthed him, raised him, loved him, devoted her very being to him... she lost him, grieved him, lost her mind in his absence. the gods her only respite, yet, when she needed them most, when she needed them to protect her son, her baby, her reason for being, where were they?

[mygraine]

guys would i be clowned on if i made christianity - based mogai terms . . .

[navyal]

[wyrm-with-a-why]

Today has just been me realizing I might have religious trauma???

[mommyclaws]

Hawkfrost moved closer and dropped his voice. "Starclan let it happen."

His breath was hot on her cheek, "If Starclan is real, they must think it's okay. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they don't exist."

Mothwing’s Secret is so fucking sad….

[rouge-the-bat]

so often i see people equating hierophilia with religious trauma and im just over here like. actually im just into it bc its hot <3 xoxo

[monsterfuxkermarya]

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman.

And I, unfortunately, am a lot like the type o-negative song, simply titled “Christian woman”. I will never be like the nuns at my church or the dedicated mother doting on her children, either.

I give into temptation. I lust and give into the sins of the flesh. I beg to serve and be served sexually. I want to be on my back or knees.

But, Christ, oh Corpus Christi. The purest lamb, son of god and carpenter.

I bow my head in shame when I see someone pray. I wonder what it’s like not to struggle with your religion. I sob violently when I pray, ashamed of who I’ve become. I know the child I used to be is wondering where I went wrong, why I no longer try to believe. I cry for her when I pray.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. And I’ve failed to meet so many expectations put upon me.

I curse like a sailor. I steal alcohol occasionally. I’ve gotten high. I masturbate at least three times a week. I skip church. I refuse to kiss and venerate the cross or priest, not out of disrespect, but shame and loss of belief. I don’t venerate the icon and I refuse to go to confession. I can’t look at an icon without my eyes welling up with tears in shame. When I was forced to go to church I was told I had to take communion, even if i hadn’t prepared or fasted. I felt so ashamed that I took your body and blood, knowing I had in no way prepared for it.

I was once the lamb covered in mud because time and time again I ran away from the herd and got stuck in a bush of thorns. My once beautiful coat is muddied. My skin is bruised and cut. My soul is tainted.

I can only hope that my sins will be washed away at the pearly gates. My coat will sparkle a fresh white, my bruises and cuts gone, my soul pure.

Because as I am no lamb anymore. I am the goat. The devils creature. My eyes have turned into slits because I judge people. I have grown horns to defend myself. My coat is so matted it becomes thin and bristly. My tail is jagged and torn.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. And I, unfortunately, pray for forgiveness every Sunday night. The same night I usually find my fingers knuckle deep in my virgin sex.

I beg to be saved, to be cleansed by the holiest of holy water. I grip my prayer rope tightly and beg for this round of Our Father’s to be the one I stick to. I weep every time I go to confession, so ashamed of the sins I’ve committed.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. But Jesus would still wash my feet, right?

I still have a favorite set of Bible verses I say to myself when I’m scared. The small child in me repeats them when the sky lights up with thunder and lightning in the dead of night. Joshua 1:9 and Ephesians 2:8-10 repeat every time I have to do something I’m scared to do.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. I feel weak when I can’t continue my fasts because I get light headed and nauseous on my period.

I feel so unclean and ashamed of my period, even though it is a miracle and a blessing to be so healthy. I cry when my cramps hit, not only because of pain, but shame, knowing our savior went through so much more to save us. I writhe in pain for hours, hoping my suffering will make up for my sins.

My suffering will never make up for my sins. It will never make up for the people I’ve hurt and driven away. It will never make up for all the times I pushed Lord Christ away.

My back aches. My head pounds. My throat is dry and my eyes strain. My feet are sore. I know that if I were to come back to the light, be the lamb once again, my pain and suffering would subside. I could once again bask in the healing light of the Lord. But I feel as if I’m too far gone. My body has contorted into that of a goat, devilish and angry. I must defend myself as I have no God to guide me anymore. I strayed too far from his light.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. And I can barely look Father John in the eyes.

He’s been my priest since I was a kid, I love him dearly. But I can’t even fathom telling him these thoughts. Having a person I’ve known since I was a kid know my struggles. I’m scared he’d bash me for falling so far from the light.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. I fear the day that lent starts. It’s marked on my calendar with a question mark. March 18, 2024: lent starts?

It’s not a question because I don’t know when it starts, I’ve been aware since the beginning of the year. It’s a question because Am I Gonna Participate This Year? Will I go to vespers, will I go to confession, will I read the gospels, will I attend the matins services, will I fast, will I? Will I?

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. And I know all my actions and words cast shame upon my family.

My dad’s side of the family is from Greece. My grandma, God rest her soul, was a devout Greek Orthodox Christian. I know the farther I fall from my faith the more shame I put upon her and all her family before her.

My mom converted to marry my dad in the Orthodox Church. I wonder if she struggled with her faith as much as I do.

I am, unfortunately, a Christian woman. And my church is unfortunately my second home.

And I am estranged from my second home.

It brings me so much guilt and pain to step into my church, but the second I smell the incense and the chanting hits my ears I know I am home. The incense is infused with rose, the chanting in soft Greek and Arabic. I used to be able to chant with them fluently as a kid. I used to ask my dad what certain geek words meant. He’d spend hours explaining it if he had the time back then.

Oh, and the theotokos, the bearer of god, mother of the savior. I was so infatuated with you. I’d draw your icon in my sketchbook. I’d talk to you like you were my own mom as I waited to confess alone. I can’t imagine the pain you went through when you saw your son get nailed to the cross.

I weep in front of your icon now. I look at you and oh holy Jesus the Christ and weep. I have fallen so far you look like tiny dots of light from where I lay in the darkness.

I used to walk around the church in circles, looking at each and every icon. The portraits of saints, the depictions of the holy gospels, the last supper, Christ raising from the dead, Lazarus raising from the dead. I used to ask Father John who a certain saint was if their icon was really unique and look them up later.

I miss Lazarus Saturday and eating Lazarakia with my brother. I miss eating dolmas and plain rice as potluck instead of the usual feast because it was lent. I miss breaking the fast at three in the morning because that’s when the service finally ended when it started at 10:30 PM. I miss playing tsougrisma with my family. I miss screaming “Alithos anesti!” With the congregation. I miss trying to respond “indeed he has risen!” in as many languages as possible on Easter Sunday.

Because I am no longer a fortunate Christian woman. I am an unfortunate Christian woman.

And I long to go to church and not question the teachings.

And I long to make palm crosses with my mom and her friends.

And I long to read at the matins services and chant in the choir.

And I long to breathe in the incense and leave smelling like it.

And I long to be held in the warm and loving embrace of our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ.

And I long to say, “forgive me a sinner”, to be met with a soft hug and the loving response, “God forgives and I forgive” at forgiveness Sunday.

Forgive me a sinner, for I am an unfortunate Christian woman. I have sinned against thee.

[draconic-hazard]

I was possesed by a vision and had to make it real

[fluffycannibals]

heaven's blinding light

[pencilpat]

I GET TO DEVOTE MY LIFE TO HIM

I GET TO SING LIKE THE CHERUBIM

---

Intruality religious imagery drives me insane, and I mean batshit. Click for quality, tumblr destroyed this.

[peridotglimmer]

Another lovely walk this morning, to the church once more because I had an appointment to chat with the pastor. Which basically consisted of me crying a lot, including in her arms, and also laughing together and gaining a lot of insights into my brain. But it was very cathartic, and I've got a new appointment for next week.

(also I love that the church has the rainbow flag out front (and they also have one on the altar))

[vypridae]

is there such a thing as religion apathy (does not participate in religious stuff (minus what family makes us participate in) and doesn’t have bias against any religions)