#the mystery of faith

[scobbe]

The thing that most people don’t understand about Christianity (including, I think, a great deal of Christians) is that you cannot convince anyone of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ - like spreading the Gospel is one thing, but you literally as a human being cannot ‘bring someone to Jesus.’ That is entirely the work of grace and the Holy Spirit.

This has been somehow lost in all the yelling of televangelists and billboards, in all the clamor and ugliness that paints religion, especially Christianity, with broad strokes of arrogance and obnoxiousness. The thing is, though, the actual quiet subtle work of the Spirit is so beautiful, so supple and silent, that it cuts through all that ugliness like a beam of sunlight into a darkened room. Someone can ask, “How can you believe all that religious bullshit??” And it’s like, it’s so easy, I can’t even tell you. I hardly have to do a thing, it’s just there.

But that’s the work of grace and the Spirit.

[mrs-trophy-wife]

Call forth things that are unseen as though they were seen, and the unseen becomes seen.

[fitzvackertheritzcracker]

all of this vanilla extract shitposting is cutting into my vanilla cookie making time

[culturevulturette]

[erinwantstowrite]

put so much thought into this and i'm finally of the opinion that in a LoF au with Gravity Falls, Peter is the Mabel to Tim's Dipper despite them not being twins (like Dami and Peter are joked about). I just couldn't pass this up,,, so yeah here's an early doodle for Halloween in our world where they dressed up as Mabel and Dipper

[imminent-danger-came]

WHAT WAS HE GOING TO SAY. WHAT WAS HE GOING TO SAY! WHAT WAS HE-

Sun Wukong: "Kid—new armor isn't going to cut it! We have to hit Azure with everything we've got! You can't just, ignore this whole part of your power because it scares you!"

MK: "I-"

-

LITERALLY WHAT. WHAT WAS IT. MK HONEY SWEETIE DARLING WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO TELL WUKONG HERE

[celestial-raposa]

[voicemailvoicemail]

I think before trying to publicise and defend your headcanons about Stanley Pines you should maybe do some research about what being broke and homeless is really like. And also keep in mind that he was poor, not stupid.

[ego-osbourne]

John Sketches

Hi you might see me be really focused on Faith: the Unholy Trinity for a while. Been playing through it nonstop for the last few days, getting all the endings and collectibles and achievements. Currently I have all but one (the Good Christian Boy achievement… practicing to get it).

I defo want to draw more with it, but for now have some first-attempt John Ward doodles <33

[fruifruit]

updated designs for my eos team + new name for partner!! if you saw me accidentally post this on my main no you didnt <3

[satanasvincit]

Moon Phases - Laura Graves

[fictionadventurer]

The worst part about reading in a genre where you have low expectations (in this case, Christian historical fiction) is that when a book impresses you, you have no idea if it's actually good or if you're just overly impressed because it was a fraction of a degree better than the usual garbage.

[beloved-of-john]

Different anon here to ask more rosary questions!! So, you said that you're supposed to pray while contemplating the holy mysteries: does that mean there are like specific prayers you're meant to say? Sorry if this is kind of a dumb question, I'm still a baby Christian and I'm definitely not very familiar with Catholic traditions and practices.

There are no dumb questions, only questions you've never been taught the answer to, and I'm happy to help if I can! I think a visual demonstration would be easier than me describing it so...

These ↓ are my rosary beads, and where my fingers are spanning is a decade.

You can identify a decade because they're separated by isolated beads. It's called a decade because it consists of 10 beads. In the traditional rosary, a Hail Mary is prayed on each of the beads in a decade. The Hail Mary prayer is as follows:

Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen.

So now the mysteries. A different mystery is contemplated on each decade, while praying the Hail Marys. For example, today (at time of writing) is Tuesday, so you would contemplate the sorrowful mysteries. The first sorrowful mystery is The Agony in the Garden, so I would contemplate Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane while praying the 10 Hail Marys and keeping track of them on the beads. As you can see there are 5 decades in a rosary, and there are 5 mysteries in each 'set' of mysteries. A mystery for every decade.

And that's how you contemplate the mysteries! For a list of all the mysteries and what days to pray them, check my previous ask (just search the #asks tag on my blog) and for what to do with the rest of the beads, I'll attach a helpful guide below.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thinking thoughts about Abuela being back and with this backstory about her being taken in by charlatans and Eddies whole catholic guilt thing and how the two things kind of play into one another as an exploration of faith and being taken in by something.

Abuela giving all her money to the tarot card readers etc because she was searching for something - for connection (with Abuelo) - trying to recapture what she had lost, and How Eddie has spoken about trying to re-find the magic he had with Shannon - how Eddie hasn't actually fully reconciled the Shannon of it all when it comes to relationships and how his Catholic guilt connects into that.

How Marisol as a physical representation of Catholicism is part of that narrative - how Eddie is entering a place where he has to chose his path - in order to move on from Shannon he needs to fully square the hole - catholic or non catholic. And how that needs to happen first - before he can begin his queer journey!

[venacoeurva]

...I know people in this day and age think any collaborative effort can fix things, often despite reality (ex. the MULTIPLE tumblr blackout protests over the last like 10 years across different owners of tumblr that didn’t change shit),

but I think going out of your way to buy things from tumblr en masse as a “well then they’ll be profitable and won’t have to change things to resemble profitable sites!” as if the CEO/higher ups are personally going to see this and not AT MOST just go “oh we made money, sick, Anyway.” is just. the most naive and frankly 5-year-old level of problem solving unrealistic idea if you think about it for more than 5 seconds. People are just so blinded by naive optimism it’s painful.

Staff isn’t going to see your purchases and go on a full redemption arc and restore porn in spite of payment systems’ massive stigma against it or Apple’s restrictions and never ever try to mimic Twitter or TikTok again, or whatever the fuck you’re expecting, they’ll keep focusing on shit tweaks that resemble other sites because those are what keep investors who think they know tech and user wants hooked and they think new people from other sites will come over for that instead of the fact these people are typically escaping those kinds of features.

Staff isn’t your friend, their vying for support like they’re your buddy who is hitting hard times and has been here holding your hand all these years is deliberate corporate marketing, they’re an arm of a corporation that spits in the face of LGBTQ+ people and especially black people for daring to post about themselves while touting themselves as The Queer Site! A diverse site! Look at this AMA we’re doing with someone about Black History Month! and you’re doing nobody a service when you’re unintentionally rewarding a service for getting worse because they will not know nor care about your motives, they just care that they got money and will continue making it worse regardless of you. They’re a corporation, not a small business ran by 10 people who are trying their best. People throwing money at Staff already encourages them, let alone when you buy into the weird parasocial shit they try with us which will continue as they see success with that method.

Like the mere idea of everyone buying the crabs to gift to make the site profitable is just unrealistic (especially in this economy with such terrible inflation and in NA there are issues with the weather and fires, on a site that mostly consists of groups of people who are typically low income or unable to work???), it feels very much like the gofundme pages people set up to raise money for celebrities who have debts who will be fine regardless and definitely don’t need your help. Corporations and CEOs are not your friends, they never will be. They do not care about you and they’re not some poor uwu victim of circumstance.

TL;DR half-assed blackouts aimed at companies that don’t care (that I have seen over and over) and “cr*b day” type efforts are incredibly dumb and will change nothing, and they will not change anything, just encourage them since they see they’re making money during their current marketing schemes, if they notice at all. You pitying them like they’re a poor innocent person is exactly what the corporation wants.

If you want to make a difference give that money to an artist or lgbtq+ people who basically get flagged as mature for Existing, or people who get their posts flagged for criticizing the site, or something, someone who gets screwed over by this site on the regular. It will do far more good than that whackadoo type pipe dream and sit down and think for a second, please.

[erinwantstowrite]

grayson being the boy wonder in his universe and peter being the webbed wonder back home :(

they're so intertwined it's insane