#there is no saving bobby marks like jesus lord

[lyriumsings]

i’ve tried every option to keep bobby from roasting this poor harriet lady and every single time he drags her thru the mud i cannot why is bobby so fuckinh funny

[americachavez]

did cas really tell dean to kneel before their new god? did that actually happen? i thought him beating the shit out of dean in that alley was the most unrestrainedly horny thing this show had ever done ACTUALLY you know what scratch that new question: top horny moments from the cw's supernatural (2005 - 2020)

getting this ask feels like my sins of the last week have been weighed against the Trials I Have Gone Through since the premier of supernatural on the wb in september of 2005 and I’m not sure if it is a punishment or reward

some notes before we begin:

the ep with dean’s male siren was like, conceptually horny but not actually that horny because the dude was uglie. I’m sorry to this man

all you sam girls out there. I respect you but I do not respect jared padalecki who is JUST tall and has zero sex appeal. but those eps where he’s like, drinking ruby’s blood and then eating her pussy are. you know. I’ll give you that

I am ONLY UP TO SEASON 10 so fair warning this is not comprehensive but the horniness does seem to drop off sharply after the mark of cain is no longer in play lol gotta love a good demon murder tattoo plot

this is easily the most insane thing I’ve ever done, including the destiel manifesto

S1 EP12: the scene where dean gets healed by the faith healer, on his knees with a hand in his hair and looking somewhere between religious ecstasy, brain death and an orgasm. starting this list off great

S1 EP22: azazel possessing john winchester. no I will not explain further if u know u know <3

S3 EP10: dean being taunted by a dream version of himself, this is where we first got the daddy’s blunt little instrument line. still burned in my hippocampus a good 13 years later thank yew

S4 EP1: dean crawling out of his own grave covered in grave dirt. hot. the HANDPRINT. HOT. also tangent but this reveal after the s3 finale was WILD back in 2008 I hollered in my dorm room after canvassing for obama. simpler times man

S4 EP 1: cas’ intro scene. the barn. the shadow wings. the hair??? getting stabbed in the chest by the man you just pulled out of hell. getting aaaallll up in that personal space. his little eyebrow. “you don’t think you deserve to be saved.” OUTRAGEOUSLY FLAMING

S4 EP02: “I dragged you out of hell I can throw you back in.” <<< this angel tops. mark dean down as scared and horny etc

S4 EP16: this ENTIRE EPISODE but specifically the part where dean tortures alastair as some kind of foreplay and then alastair kicks his ass. carved you into a new animal. jesus.

S4 EP16: wait I forgot about the part where cas also gets his ass kicked and looks all....hm. dazed and covered in blood while he’s on his knees and about to die. yeah.

S5 EP4: I mean this entire ep is unfairly horny considering everyone is dying of a zombie plague and hasn’t showered in like, 4 years but if I had to pick one hmmm. the dean/dean interrogation scene with the panty kink yeah I know it’s not original but hm. it happened. also misha collins just being able to convey that CAS IS A FLEXIBLE SLUT with a single roll of his shoulders. who SAYS this man can’t act!!!!!

S5 EP18: the ALLEY SCENE. DEAN DOESN’T FIGHT BACK. CAS HOLDS HIM UP OFF THE GROUND AND THEN THROWS HIM ACROSS THE ALLEY. WHY DID EVERYONE THINK CAS COULDN’T TOP. you all had brainworms.

S5 EP18: when cas locks dean in the panic room to stop him from saying yes to michael and “well cas not for nothing but the last person who looked at me like that I got laid” I hate this show. wait I think the blow me cas line is in this episode too what the fuck were they on here

S6 EP5: the scene where dean gets turned into a vampire. between the old dude who I think calls dean a pretty boy (??) and soulless sam....watching??? no ******* but there were just some absolutely foul energies in that scene and I still do not understand WHAT they were thinking

S6 EP20: cas doing a double smite on two demons by slamming them to the ground and then shoving another demon back in its vessel and then smiting him in the same motion. TOP. ENERGY.

S6 EP22: season 6 is possibly cas’ horniest season because he’s like, going through angel puberty after getting his first boner for dean, but the final cas eps are. whoof. cas eats a bunch of souls and proclaims himself to be a new god in order to handle said boner, and then the season ends with cas telling them to bow down and profess their love to him, their new lord, or he will destroy them. note: the way this is framed makes it look like cas is only staring at dean while he says this, even though sam and bobby are also there. the season ends with dramatic zooms on both cas and dean’s faces respectively. this made me actively regret ditching this show after s5 lol

S8 EP??: literally EVERY SINGLE PURGATORY FLASHBACK. cas dean and benny are all purgatory hot in the “pop 10 cranberry pills and risk the UTI” kind of way but also. dean being the hot girl bottom between two tops who hate each other. I really. whew. I need to go take a shower.

S8 EP17: if I get canceled for including the crypt scene on this list I blame you bud. but dean on his knees begging a brainwashed cas to stop killing him WAS sexy. how many times has dean been on his knees in this list wait there’s another one coming up next jsldjfsldkjf

S9 EP2: abaddon getting dean on his knees (YEAH) and pulling his hair and praising him for always coming when called HELLO???? the only thing that ruins this is dean says “I can’t tell if we’re gonna fight or make out” because this is the CW and they won’t let him say fuck

S9 EP6: ah. this entire episode is Emotionally Horny but the horny horny part is when they’re in the car and dean is telling cas to unbutton his shirt and. watches. I know this was on my destiel manifesto but I need it here too

S9 EP9: cas, covered in blood, slitting another angel’s throat and eating his grace after getting tortured. that shot alone made me understand why this website was so goddamn horny for misha collins for nearly a damn decade

S9 EP11: MARK OF CAIN BABEY. cain watching dean beat up a bunch of demons as an audition for taking on the mark, while crowley also is a fucking voyeur to the whole thing. cain is also a hot silver fox with daddy energies. I said what I said

S9 EP 16: dean getting the first blade. he’s chained to a pillar and being menaced by a foppish dandy who wants to add him to his “collection��� (WOW). dean then kills him with the blade and whew. murder is sexy sometimes

S9 EP21: dean being pinned against a wall by abaddon’s power, then using the mark of cain to break her hold, calling the first blade to him psychically and then killing her. god the mark of cain is hot

S9 EP23: dean waking up with the demon eyes NUT

S10 EP2: demon dean beating up that dude with the boring backstory and kicking his ass. really was a go on baby I got your flower moment because I hated that dude and I love demon dean

S10 EP3: demon dean being chained up and taunting sam about how his brother is gone, then hunting sam through the bunker. demon dean in general was VERY fun for me, someone who loves trash

S10 EP9: dean going berserk and killing a bunch of pedophile rapists/child abusers. I’m sorry I know this show is trying to preach morality at me about monsters and unnecessary murder and humanity or whatever but we blew past that like 8 SEASONS AGO. also the mark of cain is sexy

S10 EP14: the rest of this list is really gonna be mark of cain stuff isn’t it look I’m here to have fun. cain and dean’s fight. cain continuously tossing his mane of hair back and taunting dean with the picture of what he’s going to become, who he’s going to kill. dean begging cain to tell him that he can stop, and then ultimately killing him. rip daddy.

S11 EP4: again I have not watched this however. every shot of this episode is PRESTIGE TELEVISION because driving a muscle car is sexy. and especially the shot of dean all beat to hell and begging his car to start and giving her a little kiss from his fingers to her dash. ugh. masculinity.

S12 EP10: the bearded salt-and-pepper daddy look returns, only it’s an angel this time and he’s wearing a vest and shirtsleeves and he swordfights with a hot redheaded lady in a suit and an eyepatch. this show is good sometimes!!! and oh fuck lol I just realized this is the same guy who played krissy’s hot hunter dad in s7 probably the first guy who’s hotter as an angel than a hunter. huh.

S12 EP 11: dean riding larry the mechanical bull to “broomstick cowboy.” I have no idea where this factors into the ep but I have seen. the youtube clip

S13 EP23: from what I can tell s13 is way more emotionally horny than boner horny, although dean burning cas’ body was sexy. but the horniest part was dean saying yes to michael and then michael taking over and saying “thanks for the suit.” we are going to ignore the silliest fight scene in existence as well as the final shot ending on a FREEZE FRAME like a goddamn tiktok

S14: not gonna pick a specific moment because I have not watched yet!!! but michael dean is hot. idk why michael is weirdly hot and I cannot stand any iteration of lucifer on this television programme. it should be the reverse but I’m forever an older sibling stan apparently. someone who is catholic could probably explain this better.

S15 EP13: genevieve padalecki and danneel ackles fight flirting as ruby and anael I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY HELD OUT ON THIS TILL THE LAST SEASON

I know I am missing things but this is already an absolutely incomprehensible screed. I know I’m missing shit from the latter seasons but give me time I’m pacing myself

[drivingsideways]

For @the-ever-present-julie, based off this tumblr post.

Five times Dean and Cas kissed and never talked about it, and the one time they did and still won’t talk about it. 

Five.

It's not like Dean hasn't thought about it before.

That first month after he crawled his way out of his grave? He'd never told Sam or Bobby, but that entire month, hell, more like three,  he'd been convinced that it was all just one of Alastair's tricks. That Alastair had moved on from the crude, visceral pleasure of blood and guts and shredded flesh to this—letting him dream, and then, right when he'd let himself believe it, that the impossible had happened, Alastair would take it away.

The sick fuck.

But two could play that game, alright?

Dean- Dean was good at this. Dean knew Alastair, like calling to like in the putrid depths of hell. Dean would find a way to trip him up, it was like that time with the djinn. Find the thing that didn't fit, the thing that was impossible to explain, and then tug at that thread until it all unraveled.

Well, he didn't have to look too far.

Castiel, angel of the Lord, who made his ears bleed, and his stomach swoop—well— come the fuck on, there was no possible way his mind could have generated this. This was Alastair, through and through, Alastair who had put him on the rack and taken more pieces out of him than he'd known existed, who'd worked him over and over and over, and somewhere along the way learnt enough about Dean that he'd—

The handprint buzzed and ached and tingled and Castiel's blue, blue eyes had looked right through him, and said things like you don't think you deserve to be saved, and if  I tell you something, will you keep it a secret, I'm not a hammer, and no, this would not be the thing he let himself believe, this would not be one more way that Alastair broke him. In the backseat of his car, Anna had fitted her palm onto the scar, her delicate, smooth palm too small for it, the whorls of her fingers caressing the edges, and it had been electric, and all wrong, because it wasn't her mark that Dean carried on his friggin' re-hymenated body (it wasn't her who had gripped him tight and raised him from perdition, and Dean's body knew it in a way that Dean wasn't going to think about, let alone—)

That sonuvabitch Alastair would not break him with a fairy tale that innocent people told their children, angels watch over you, but his mother had not been innocent in all of this, had she, she had sold Sammy to the Devil, and Castiel had laid a hand on his shoulder (but had not touched his mark, why hadn't—) and had looked at Dean with something like sorrow, and didn't seem to mind when Dean called him Cas, brought him down to his level, and fuck, here he was again, out of options, out of luck, out of fuel, and his brother was someone he didn't recognize.

The sickest thing was how that was the part  that had felt real, felt painful in a way that Alastair could have never devised. Dean's soul was putting himself in the hands of a demon bitch, and there was fuck all that Dean could do about it. This was how he broke then, in the words of a prayer, the first he'd ever said, and he hadn't  known whom he was praying to, but it had been Cas who showed up, eyes bluer than any summer sky Dean had ever seen, face striated by the colours of a vending machine, and said, faith is a good sign, Dean. What was it a sign of, Dean would have liked to know, and it wasn't faith, not by a long shot, but what could a creature like Castiel have known of desperation?  Castiel who stood close, too close, but had touched him only twice, who'd said, it's not blame that rests on you, it's fate, and yeah, that was fucking Winchester Gospel for you, cursed from the start, the two of them, before they were in the womb, born under a bad sign.

But Cas had helped, and Dean had begun to think—but of course, Cas left, and there was only poor, stupid Jimmy Novak, and then Cas was back, but not really, Cas was a stranger, and Dean didn't know when he'd stopped thinking of Cas as a stranger, and just, strange—

 Dean had laid one across Castiel's marble-face that didn't shatter, tried, because what else could he have done? This is real, this is the only thing that's worth it and even before the disappointment of having Cas leave could sink in, the handprint had buzzed and ached and tingled  as Cas pressed him against a wall and pressed a palm against his lips and then bled on the floor, for Dean, (whom he didn't serve) and Cas had said, I'll hold them all off, go save him, but of course it had been too late, because that was the story of Dean's life, too late, too late.

Cas comes back, and oh look, Cas has learnt what desperation means, after all. There's something wild in his eyes, that he tries to hide but doesn't succeed when he says, we need God, it's not theological, it's strategic, and if Dean had a moment to take a breath, he would have wanted to sit Cas down, and say, listen man, I understand it, but this is a road to nowhere, you're only going to waste your time, you gotta stop loving what can't love you back, and yeah, that'd have been hypocritical of him, but so what, that was pretty low down on Dean's laundry list of sins.

But it's the Apocalypse, and as it happens Dean's got his own shit to deal with, and Cas isn't his responsibility, so what if he just died for Dean or whatever, alright, Dean owes him, but not like that.

And now it's the end of the world, their last night on earth, and Dean's not too late to make Cas smile at him, confused but fond, and Castiel's smile is nothing like Jimmy Novak's. Cas is nothing like Jimmy Novak who'd just been a naive man in an ugly suit, and well. He'd promised Cas a good time, and Dean's not got a lot to give Cas, by way of thanks or comfort or anything, and what had Cas said that time? Everything on earth is pain, but that's only cause he doesn't know, the good parts, the best parts, and before Dean can chicken out of it, he's pressing Cas up against the Impala, and Cas is letting him, goes willing, pliant, staring at him, eyes wide, and Dean sees the moment it happens, the small hitch of breath he takes, that Cas, who doesn't need to breathe makes, and his eyes dart to Dean's lips and flash up again, and Dean's kissing him, and it's—riding a comet—

Cas doesn't know how to kiss.

But that's fine, that's a-ok, because Dean does, and Dean can show him, and Cas is a quick learner, zero to six hundred in twenty seconds or less, and now it's Dean who can't breathe except in loud, panting gasps, Cas's warm, strong hand wrapped with his around their dicks, not enough slick, a little too rough, too painful, perfect, perfect, and Cas is eating his face, teeth sharp and painful on Dean's lips, eyes still wide open and unblinking, the freak, but his gaze is hot and ferocious, and Dean's eyes flutter shut again on a moan, because Dean's burning, has been burning all this time, he realizes, for this, for—

Cas rips his sleeve off, jacket and shirt, both gone,  and then his hand is there, and Dean's coming, wet, thick and nasty all over an angel's hand, he should be going to hell for this, except Cas hadn't let him stay there, and hadn't thrown him back, and this was real, Dean shuddering, face hidden in the crook of Cas' neck, trembling, his knees giving way, but Cas' got him, the hand on his shoulder slipping lower, around his back to hold him up, holding him in place,  and Dean should— he should—

 Four.

He  wakes up alone in a motel room, and there is a tomorrow, and then the  day after, but no Cas, and then there is two thousand fucking fourteen, and Cas is still there in the ruins that Sam and Dean made of the world , jesus fucking christ on a candy stick, Cas is still there.

Cas is broken, because Dean did that to him, and Cas kisses him, once, open mouthed and filthy, and then draws back and says, the day I decide to stay, make sure I don't, please, if you ever cared even a little, promise me, and then Cas goes off to die with even-more-of-an-asshole-future-him, because that's just how he rolls.

 Three.

He shouldn't.

If that mook Zach's little thought experiment had taught him anything, it should have been this- that Cas was off limits.

That he shouldn't keeping finding ways to keep him close.

He shouldn't keep finding ways to kiss Cas, but that's exactly what he does.

The world's ending around them in slow motion and they are fucking.

They're fucking in dank, stinking alleys, blood running down Dean's chin, and Cas licking it up, and feeding it back to him, tongue practically molesting Dean's tonsils, fingers squeezing his neck, rubbing against each other fully clothed, until Dean's coming in his pants. They're fucking on stained  bedsheets of grimy hotel rooms, lights flickering, crackling, every electronic instrument in a five mile radius gone haywire, the smell of ozone and jizz making Dean dizzier, as Cas pounds him through four successive orgasms, each more spectacular and painful than the last, Dean's body a limp rag after. They're fucking squeezed together in the backseat of the Impala, Dean hunched over Cas, occasionally knocking his head on the roof, but he can't stop, won't stop, nothing has felt this good, a thick fat dick inside him, filling up his empty places, and  Cas slack-mouthed, and eyes closed under him, hands wrapped around Dean's biceps so tight that Dean's gotta wear long sleeves through the hottest summer in three centuries, so that Sammy won't ask.

Sam knows, of course he does.

Cas isn't subtle when he turns up, dishevelled, hair sticking out in five different directions, looking pissed off and tired; shrinking, somehow, but still with that crackling power about him, and not looking at anyone or anything except at Dean, like all the roads he's taken looking for God have only led him straight back to Dean. Sam's taken to clearing his throat awkwardly, and hot-footing it out of hearing range the moment Cas appears, and just as well, Dean doesn't have it in him anymore to be quiet, sprawled wide open on the bed, hands twisting in the sheets as  Cas fucks him fuck, fuck, fuck,  jesus fuck,  if he hadn't already gone to hell, surely this would send him there, profaning this holy thing of god, whose tongue was made for songs of praise and worship, and is instead all the way up Dean's ass, dragging an orgasm out of him.

It's alright, he reasons, on the days Cas is gone, and Sam is there, but gone.

Cas and him, they're not so different after all. They're both the disappointing sons of deadbeat dads, and Cas is losing his wings and his faith at approximately the same speed that Dean's losing everything and everyone, and the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and there's no way to fix it, no way to undo it, and he's going to have to kill the love of his life, and if this is his consolation prize, he's going to take it.

(Dean loves taking it.)

Dean will take it and he doesn't want to talk about it, and hey, apparently, neither does Cas, so that's peachy, that's perfect, and Dean shouldn't, but he does, and Cas lets him, and he does, right until Sam gets thrown into the pit, and Dean doesn't.

Cas' grace knits him together, once more, and then he's gone, and so is Dean.

 Two.

Cas comes back.

But he's more of a stranger than he'd ever been, even in that barn, what feels like a lifetime ago, and he won't talk, and sure as fuck won't listen, and his blue gaze when it meets Dean's is cool as lake water, as if Dean doesn't know what Cas sounds like, strung out of his mind with pleasure, from having Dean hold him down with a binding sigil and fuck him raw.

As if they'd never been friends, and perhaps they hadn't, that was just what it was like in the war, and the war was over, and so were they.

Cas is all impatience, and anger, and sullen resentment, brittle in a way that scares Dean if he really thinks about it, because it's Cas, and something's wrong, Dean can feel it deep in his bones, just like he knew with Sammy, but he—

Look, if Cas wants to reach him, he knows how to call.

But then it's too late (again) and there's a war (again, or it was never over, why is it never over), only this time it's Cas that Dean needs to kill, really kill, and fuck if he knows how, but in the end, all he can do is watch as Cas walks into the water, and all that's left of him is a stained, torn trenchcoat.

Dean keeps it.

He can't look at it, can't stand to, that entire year, but he keeps it.

And then Cas comes back (again), but then he's gone (again) and what had Dean expected, really?

And Dean's tired, ok, so tired, so tired and sick and done, and the war is still on—maybe he shouldn't have left Cas, maybe he should have tried harder, maybe he should have called, maybe it wouldn't have all gone to shit, if Dean hadn't screwed it up once again, hadn't failed—

 "Cas"  he says, squinting against the sun on his face, up at where Cas is perched on the roof of the Impala. "Why are you covered in bees?"

The air is filled with a humming that Dean's only 90% certain are the bees.

"They like me, Dean," says Cas, as though that were a reasonable explanation, and fuck knows, maybe it was, in that fucked up noodle of his. "They wanted me to stay with them."

Shit, fuck.

Dean rubs his hands over his eyes.

"You maybe want to come inside and talk?"

Crazy or not, they needed all the help they could—

Cas hops down from the car, and the bees rise up in an angry, buzzing cloud before settling back.

"Lose the bees first", says Dean, and then regrets it, when Cas stands before him naked as a new-born.

"Dude!" yelps Dean, "Come on! Where the fuck are your clothes?"

"I—", says Cas, sounding lost and forlorn as he stares down at himself. "I'm not sure. The bees didn't like them."

And fuck, like this, Dean can see that Cas is just skin and bone, pale skin stretched over prominent ribs, hip bones jutting out—

"Well, mojo them back from wherever you left them", Dean growls, "There's a sandwich in it for you."

Cas looks up, hopeful.

"Peanut butter?"

"Sure", says Dean and hopes to god the vending machine has  something that resembles a sandwich. "But get some.." he waves his hands, not looking at Cas, because it hurts to see him like this.

There's nothing like a sandwich in the machine, so he ends up instructing Cas to wait for him in the room while he makes a quick run to the nearest store. He picks up some orange juice and bananas while he's at it, along with the bread, peanut butter and jam.

"This is very kind of you, Dean" says Cas, as he sits (fully clothed, in his hospital scrubs and trenchcoat), his hands in his lap.

"So, what, you need to eat these days?" Dean queries. "You look like you've just spent six months on a fad diet".

Cas looks away, up at the ceiling.

"The grace is more useful for other things" he says, "There's so much to do. So many creatures in pain. I forget to."

"Listen", starts Dean, because he can guess where this is coming from, hell, it isn't like—

"Is my sandwich ready?"

Dean slides it across the table, and watches as Cas wolfs it down.

There's a bit of jam that gets stuck to the corner of his mouth, and Dean gestures at it, and then, when Cas looks confused, reaches out to—

Cas flinches.

Dean freezes, hand stuck awkwardly in mid-air, throat closing up.

He leans back, withdrawing his hand.

"You've got some jam smeared at the corner of your mouth, like a goddamned three year old, Cas".

"Oh", says Cas, and it vanishes.

Dean swallows the guess you don’t mind wasting your mojo on that then, that sits on his tongue, and Cas finishes his sandwich, suddenly quiet, staring down at his sandwich,  though it wasn't like he'd been saying anything before, but it's a different sort of quiet between them now, filled with all the things that Dean wants to scream at him, and can't.

Cas doesn't touch the bananas, but slurps the orange juice, loudly.

Dean watches as Cas licks his lips, tongue darting out to taste the last of it.

When he looks up, Cas is looking at him.

He feels his cheeks heat, caught out.

"You’re sweet", says Cas, suddenly. "Sweeter than all the honey in the world".

And before Dean can process it, he leans forward, brushing his lips against Dean's; a butterfly of a kiss, and then he's gone, in a quiet whoosh, and Dean's left alone, and when he wets his suddenly parched lips, he can taste the faint bitter-sour flavour of canned orange on them.

 One

Well, Dean's not making the same mistake twice.

There's no way he's gonna leave Cas behind.

Where's the angel, he asks, as he hacks his way through Purgatory, where's the angel?

Cas, he prays, c'mon man. Don't do this to me.

Cas, please.

Once he gets slashed by something, some kind of hellbreed that seemed half werewolf, half vampire, and it's pretty bad, but somehow he manages to lose them, holed up high up in cave he'd discovered in some time ago. The view's spectacular from the ridge or would be, if the hills and valleys and forests weren't teeming with things that were out for his blood, and Cas'.

He manages the staunch the bleeding. The gash isn't too deep after all, but he's gonna have to stay put for a couple of days. But then the chills start, and he thinks, shit, shit. Starting a fire is a sure way to get killed, no way he's gonna be able to take on anything more dangerous than a field mouse right now, and fuck, he's exhausted, suddenly, and ok, this wasn't good, the ground seemed to be rushing up to meet his face—

 He's warm.

Cocooned in the softest of embraces, safe, untouchable.

"Mom?" he whispers, "Is that you?"

A hand brushes over his forehead, light and gentle.

He struggles to open his eyes, which seem to be refusing to cooperate.

It's not mom.

"Cas" he rasps, bleary eyed, throat drier than a desert. "Cas?"

"Shh" says Cas, "You're safe now. Rest, Dean."

And it's true, Dean can feel it, cradled here in—Cas' wings, he thinks, sleepily, unable to hold on to the thought. Those are Cas' wings he can feel, sheltering, soft, warm.

"You found me", he mumbles, "I've been looking for you."

"Shhh", Cas rumbles, "Don't talk. It's alright."

"Cas."

A feather light press against his mouth, and then another, and then a third.

"I'm here", Cas whispers, "Dean. Rest now."

But when he wakes up, he's alone.

If it weren't for the healed gash, skin smooth and untouched, every aching muscle restored like he'd been checked into a fancy spa for a month, he'd have been certain he dreamt it.

Then they get topside, and he wishes it had only been a dream, and not one more thing he'd have to forget.

 (Plus One)

 Sam's here, finally.

Bobby had been right, time sure passed different around here.

Sam's here now, and it's perfect.

Almost.

Cas isn't around.

Or he's everywhere, but nowhere where Dean can see him, reach out and touch him.

When he asks around, he gets vague answers.

Ellen says, oh, I think Jack and Cas are in some other planetary system this week.

Two weeks later, by Dean's counting, Rufus says, you just missed him, boy, he was here helping fix my roof not half-hour ago.

Jack says, looking embarrassed, uh, I sent him on a mission, to, um, uh, Andromeda, and then, uh, I have to go, nice seeing you again, Dean, and vanishes before Dean can whup his ass for lying to his family.

Dean gets into the Impala; tells Sam he's got a supply run to make.

"You've got like a 100 cartons of beer, Dean",  says Sam.

"Not beer, Sammy."

Sam gives him a long look.

Dean shrugs, look, it wasn't like Sam didn't know.

Sam nods, once, lips quirking a little.

"Good luck, then" he says.

Dean flips a finger at him.

"C'mon, Baby" he says, as he pulls onto the road, "Take me to him."

 Baby's never let him down.

 Of course, Cas has gone and set his feathery ass down somewhere on the highest mountain that Dean has ever seen, the top of it half hidden in a swirl of clouds. There's only a narrow trail, no way to take Baby up, so he parks her under the shade of a leafy tree of some species he's pretty sure isn't found on earth, and shrugs off his jacket, wrapping it around his waist.

Jesus, but Cas could be a real dick, and it wasn't like Dean didn't already know that, but, wow.

 The trail is narrow, though not very steep, and the foliage dense for most parts, as he begins to climb. There's a river or a small waterfall somewhere, he can hear the sound of it, a muted roar. Up and up it goes, through plants and shrubs- or things that look like plants or shrubs, he can't be sure of anything here, he's realized. Occasionally, a small woodland creature of indeterminate origin will cross his path. Some of them stop and stare. One or two get experimentally close, while he stands as still as possible, and lets them acclimatize themselves to his scent. The foliage isn't dense enough to block out all sunlight, and every now and again the path will emerge onto an outcrop of rock and grass, probably intended as a rest-stop for the weary. Dean's only slightly out of breath, though the air gets cooler as he goes higher. But the sun is warm enough for a sheen of sweat to form, making his t shirt stick to his spine.

He sinks down onto a convenient grassy knoll and takes a few breaths. Clouds float lazily over the valley below, that stretches out farther than his eye can see. The river he's hearing winds through it, clear and blue, through acres and acres of green and violet, and brown and red. He turns his face up toward the sky.

Was it possible to get sunburn in Heaven?

Well, he was going to find out.

He turns his head a little.

He's about half way up the mountain, he estimates.

Given the position of the sun, he's been climbing about three hours.

Making me work for it, huh, buddy? Dick move, Cas, gotta tell you that.

Something rustles in the grass near him: a tiny grass snake, slim and green.

Snakes in paradise, wow, wasn't that theologically wrong or something?

But it gives him a beady eyed look and slithers over his outstretched palm and then away, unbothered, leaving behind a fleeting sense of dry leather.

Dean sighs.

"Cas?" he says, softly. "You're waiting for me, right?"

He doesn't know what he'll do if Cas isn't.

The thought makes his heart triphammer in his chest, fear gripping it.

What if he was too late, again?

But he's got to believe that he's right about this.

That he's here because Cas is ready, finally, to let Dean find him.

In those years after Purgatory, they'd never managed, somehow to make it work.

Every time Cas left—every time Cas came back—it got harder, somehow, to say, don't go, please, I need you, forgive me, stay.

Dean- he'd just become angrier and meaner, falling deeper and deeper and this was a grave that even Cas couldn't pull him out of. And then, when he'd been ready-almost—that second time in Purgatory, it had seemed like Cas wasn't ready, though surely, he knew, why else had he stopped Dean—

But the joke was on Dean, because Cas hadn't known, and then it had been too late. Cas was slipping through his fingers one more time, beatific in his joy, as he threw himself into the pit for Dean, and Dean had known, had known, that it was the last time.

 When it was all over, he had waited.

Hope was a thing with feathers.

He had waited for Jack to bring Cas back to them, to Dean.

But Jack hadn't.

No way that Jack hadn't sprung Cas from the Empty, there was just no fucking way that would have happened, so that meant that Cas didn't want to see Dean.

And alright, maybe Dean deserved that, maybe that was his penance, and he would do it, gladly.

He wouldn't complain, and he'd go through the rest of his life with a piece of him missing, and it was what it was, there were things you couldn't undo, there were sorrows that had to be borne.

On the bad days, after a hunt that went wrong- there were, after all, still some of those—he'd lie  in bed, every tendon and muscle and bone aching, and when he closed his eyes, he'd try to will himself back there, to that cave in Purgatory, the safety and comfort of Cas' shelter, and the sweet press of his lips against Dean's.

Sweeter than all the honey in the world.

 He blinks awake.

Apparently he'd taken a nap, though given that the sun was still steadily beating down on his face—and yes, you could get sunburn in heaven, thanks for nothing Jack—it hadn't been too long.

It takes another two hours, and he's almost giving up hope, wondering whether he's going to end up just spending the night alone on this mountain after all, when he breaks through a particularly dense grove and finds himself in a middle of a garden.

The garden- in flagrant, dizzying bloom around a cobbled stone path that leads to a small wooden cabin nestled against the wall of the mountain- has an occupant.

Dean feels like his breath was punched out of him.

My true form is as tall as the Chrysler building, Cas had once said, the lying liar that he was, because he's probably twice as tall. He's all iridescent wings that span twenty feet either side, and a dozen wheels spinning in different directions and something that looks like blue flames trailing the edges of his wings, and Dean is—

Jesus.

Cas turns toward him at that, and Dean senses his-shock?- before the almost unbearable brightness dims slowly, coalescing into a familiar shape.

"Not quite", says Cas. "Hello, Dean."

Dean's feet seem locked to the ground, and Cas doesn't make a move toward him either.

"Hi", Dean breathes out, the air rushing out of his lungs with the word. "Cas."

Cas has switched out the trenchcoat and suit for comfortable looking pair of white linen pants and a loose short tunic of sky blue, that match his eyes, and there's what looks like a week's worth of stubble along his jaw.

"Heaven can't afford a razor?" is what Dean says next, like the idiot he is.

Cas' eyes crinkle. "I've been told it makes me more attractive".

What, who- no- fuck.

Dean's already up in Cas' space before he realizes it.

"Who told you that?" he rasps, and up close he can see the flecks of grey in the stubble, and at Cas' temples, and yes, it made him breathtakingly hot, but damned if Dean was going to— "They were lying, just so you know."

Cas is smiling at him.

"Dean," he says, softly.

Dean reaches out to run a finger against his jaw, going against the grain, ends up with his fingers resting lightly against Cas' cheek, just under his ear.

"You’re a dick" he says, softly, "you know that?"

Cas nods.

"I've been" starts Dean, and then finds he's out of words, takes a shuddery breath instead, furiously trying to blink away the wetness in his eyes.

Cas's hands cup his face, warm and sure, and he draws Dean's forehead down to his.

"I know", Cas says, softly. "But I would do it again if it meant I saved you. I would do it all again."

"I should have told you," whispers Dean, "I'm sorry I wasn't brave enough."

"Dean", says Cas, softly, "You've always been enough."

Above them the sky starts turning a fiery orange as the first of the suns starts to set.

Cas' wings- which he hasn't tucked away- take on a metallic shine, but they feel warm, and safe, just like Dean remembers.

Dean kisses him, softly, once, then again, then again.

"Sweeter than all the honey in the world", he whispers, glad that there's nobody to hear this but Cas.

"You don't even like honey", says Cas, after a moment. "You never let Sam put any in your tea."

Dean draws back.

"You don’t remember", he accuses, genuinely horrified.

Cas' brows draw together in a frown.

"What?"

"You kissed me! And said—well you said what you said! Back in the day when you were all crazy!"

"Which time?"

Dean groans, thumping his head onto Cas' shoulder.

Cas buries his nose in Dean's hair and tucks him closer in his embrace.

"I remember" he confesses, quietly, after a moment. "But I thought you'd want to forget it."

"Cas", Dean, sighing, as he turns to nuzzle the soft, tender skin beneath Cas' ear, placing a small kiss there, as he presses closer. "Let's never talk about this again, ok?"

[mayonnaisetoffees]

Mayo's Fic Recs

List of my favourite fics below the cut; this list is a WIP and completely personal taste; a mix of fandom classics and lesser knowns

Please remember to leave comments and kudos for the authors and podficcers!

*shows particular favourites

Fandoms currently included: Spn, Merlin, Les Mis, BatFam

Fics That Changed Me Fundamentally

Loaded March*** by Footloose. Merlin | E | 1.26M(Series)/ 35k (First part) | 188k hits (First part)

The reason SAS Captain Arthur Pendragon can’t keep a communications specialist in Team Excalibur because none of them are good enough. And then Lieutenant Merlin Emrys gets assigned to his squad, and Arthur does everything he can to prove that Merlin isn’t good enough, either. Except he is.

You can read all about my thoughts on Loaded March here, here, and here. Basically this fic series is beautifully written, has absolutely delicious UST, has found family, magic, and high stakes. It’s been part of my life for almost a decade now, I made friends through LM that I still have to this day, and it genuinely changed me as a person. Plus there are 78k of Extras to itch that I Finished Now What scratch. Parts 1-5 have been podficced and you can find them in works inspired by this one in each part.

Down to Agincourt*** by Seperis. Supernatural | E | 1.12M(Series)/ 154k (First part) | 73k hits (First part)

The world’s already over and they’re already dead. All they’re doing now is marking time until the end.

S7!Dean is transported back to the aftermath of where 5x04 The End left off. Much like LM, DtA was one that I avoided for a while. I didn’t think it would be my thing. I’m not usually into End!verse, it sounded so bleak from the summary, and it sounded so long for something I wasn’t sure about. If you’re reading this and nodding along? You are as much a fool as I was. Yes, it’s the end of the world. But it’s not over yet. This is a beautiful journey in what it means to be yourself, how to survive the end of the world, a How-To for Coups, and a study in food as a love language. I only read this fic this year, but like LM, it has genuinely changed me. Map of the World has been podficced.

Supernatural

Let’s start with the current hyperfixation. All of these are at least passively Dean/Cas unless otherwise stated. I've split into ones from my first time around in the SPN fandom and more recent ones because the vibes are actually really different and it took me some time to adjust (Not in a bad way! In a time has passed they have grown as characters way)

Old-School SPN (AKA the Classics my first time around)

Canon-Compliant or Divergent

Home in Motion* by nomdeplume13 M | 232k | 48k hits

Castiel swore he was done with spur of the moment decisions that permanently changed Dean Winchester's life. A year after the angel's most disastrous, his newest may present the largest challenge of dean's life: Fatherhood.

Did someone say kid!fic in canonverse? This is perfect. Canon divergence from the end of S6. Cas saves a baby from a neglectful mother and gives him to Dean to raise. They all move in with Bobby. Great OCs. Bobby considers Cas his son. Listen everything I say here will not be able to begin to encompass how much I love this fic. Just trust me on this one.

Named* by RC_McLachlan M | 95k | 95k hits

Jesus Christ is dead. Somehow, that isn't the worst part of Dean's week.

With a summary like that, need I say more? No but I'm gonna. This is one of the funniest fics I've ever read, but it doesn't take any emotion from the serious moments, if anything it heightens them. There are so many quotes from this I think about all the time. It was written in 2010 and so there's a bit of misogyny/character assassination of Anna in places.

Second Childhood by CloudyJenn (read by exmanhater) G | 16k (1h30) | 10k hits

"Dude, I can't do this whole thing by myself," Dean said with far more desperation leaking into his tone than he liked. It would just be too much to make it through hell and death and Lucifer only to have Castiel bail on him because of a frigging baby.

They beat the Apocalypse (OG-S5) and then Sam gets de-aged by a spell. I've listened to this so many times I know it by heart, it's an ultimate comfort fic to me.

Defy Any and All Expectation* by Tenoko1 (read by Tenoko1) M | 138k (14hrs) | 37k hits

Chuck's newly released books tell of another war between Heaven and Hell. Team Free Will sets out to try to defy prophecy, only to realize there is a lot more at stake and amiss than the not-quite-accurate words of one Prophet of the Lord. Along the way, Dean and Cas' relationship continues to evolve into something neither expected or were prepared for, all of their lives transforming in ways no one could have expected. But with no shortage of cases, monsters, and mayhem, it's going to require the help of new friends and old enemies if they're to have a hope of saving the world one more time. Alternate Season Six.

So this is a re-written version of Tenoko1's The Path We Choose which I don't think is around anymore. By the time I was reading the re-write as each chapter came out, I knew every single line of TPWC and it wasn't all that much shorter. It's such a perfect canon divergence because they are all 100% in-character. If you're into podfic, you already know what an absolute gift 14 hours is, but if you have never tried podfic before, Tenoko1 is a fantastic place to start. Her voice is soothing and energetic and her Cas sometimes comes to mind when I'm reading fic in Misha's place (sorry Misha)

His Fucking Kids 'Verse by 8sword M | 96k(Series)/ 3k (first part) | 26k hits (first part)

Jesus, the school should just have a parking spot labeled, “Reserved for the Novak-Winchesters,” because Dean’s getting sick of having to cruise around the parking lot looking for a spot every time he gets a call from the principal about Emma.

Emma survives and Dean and Cas are raising her and Claire. This fic series will make you laugh, make you cry, and (nowadays) make you wish Emma had survived to be a part of Wayward Sisters.

One Species Too Many by wallmakerrelict E | 22k | 37k hits

While Dean is laid up for a month after breaking his leg on a hunt, Cas decides that it's a perfect time to adopt a litter of kittens. But even though he's gotten better since Purgatory, Cas still isn't quite the same as he was before fixing Sam's head, and being trapped in a cabin with him for weeks on end is making that all the more obvious to Dean. When Sam takes off on a hunt, Dean has to figure out on his own how to navigate his new relationship with Cas while also helping to raise a bunch of fuzzballs that aren't even cute. Not even a little bit. (Well, maybe a little bit.)

Dean breaks his legs, and honey!Cas brings home some kittens to foster. It's achingly sweet and also painful because you know Dean wants to fix Cas but there's nothing to fix. It is tagged for ableism for this.

Tripping* by Hatteress E | 49k | 78k hits

That time the universe decided Dean belonged with Cas and wasn't afraid to pull out the big guns to make it so. Big guns in this case being obsessive fangirls, archangels turned tricksters and overly enthusiastic cupids. Welcome to Dean's life.

Alt!S5 and it is beautiful. Also any fic with Missouri is an automatic win.

Broadway Musical by Grifitings M | 12k | 79k hits

This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle. The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at. Or, the romantic comedy where Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle are destined to get married, Castiel is given the task of playing matchmaker and fails terribly, the entire Heavenly Host becomes a sitcom audience, God warns against male pregnancy, and Jimmy Novak is incredibly unimpressed with angels in general.

Jimmy deserves a sainthood and frankly I don't even want to hear about crack if it's not on the level of the Host yelling at Cas not to touch the butt.

Classic AUs (AKA AUs from my first time around)

Try Something Tuesday by almaasi E | 48k | 144k hits

Dean Winchester teaches a third-grade class. He's new to this whole ‘bisexual’ thing - but by pure happenstance, he meets Castiel: a particularly dapper male librarian who moonlights as a substitute teacher. Dean's curious and Castiel is willing, so why the hell not? Except, fate never intended it to be one-time-only...

This was one of the first spn fics to really really stay with me and it never really left.

Rock 'n' Roll Queer Bar by ChasingRabbits E | 127k(Series)/ 8k (Part1) | 29k hits (Part1)

Ellen and Jo Harvelle run Harvelle's Roadhouse, a bar that unintentionally becomes a beacon for wayward queer souls. Her employees: Dean, the smartass runaway with a big heart and bigger mouth; Castiel, the college drop-out turned hippie; his (surprisingly heterosexual) trouble-making brother Gabriel; and Charlie, who has been told several times that the back room is not to be used for after-hours Dungeons & Dragons games. But there's a lot of love in this place, and a new family for anyone who may otherwise be without.

This series. If you've ever felt unsure or out of place or anxious or just really felt like no-one understood you, this fic is for you. I first found this series when I was coming to terms with my queerness and I genuinely think it was invaluable. Also I am a sucker for the go for a dinner at Cas's family and end up storming out trope.

Play It All Night Long by janie_tangerine (read by Tenoko1) NC17 | 43k (4hrs)

The rom-com-ish one where Dean hosts a late night radio show, Castiel is a regular listener of his who starts calling one day and ends up calling more often than not and Dean finds himself liking it. This, until one day Castiel calls for not exactly petty reasons (just before Dean's brother Sam is visiting with his girlfriend for spring break) and things get very, very crowdy at his place. He also doesn't know it's just the beginning of it. Also features Gabriel, Chuck, Andy, the Roadhouse crew and a huge amount of music quoted. Especially Bob Dylan.

Again, this podfic has got me through many a night of insomnia. Cas calls in after a particularly shitty day and it all goes from there.

New-School SPN (AKA post-2014)

Canon-Compliant or Divergent

Tall Grass by aeli_kindara E | 57k | 28k hits

“I think we should have a garden,” Cas says. Dean looks up from his beer. He hasn’t had that much to drink, but Cas still has a vague look of unreality about him, a splash of living color that doesn’t fit in the bunker’s echoing stillness. Dean didn’t hear him coming. A lot of the time, Cas is so unobtrusive it feels like Dean has the bunker to himself, with Sam away. Dean shakes his head to clear it. “A — garden?” he repeats.

There is a reason you will see this recced time and time again. It healed parts of me I didn't know needed healing.

So Says the Sword* by komodobits E | 85k | 73k hits

The briefing was simple: ‘Stand guard over the Michael Sword until the battle is ready to commence. Await further instructions.’ Castiel doesn’t mind working security duty; he was briefed shortly after the initial salvation of the Sword from the pit, and again before taking up his position. He knows what to do. However, it’s easy to forget that the green room isn’t real. Time moves differently there, the space ever-changing to make a prison of mountains, cathedrals, salt flats, orchards, and whatever Castiel was led to believe about Heaven’s greatest weapon—Dean Winchester is something entirely unexpected

I saw ssts mentioned in like every single If you're getting back into the fandom READ THIS rec list. For good reason. It's described as "canon-adjacent in that seasons one to three happened exactly the same, but when Dean goes to Hell, he is not raised by Castiel". It's one of the most interesting concepts I've read and it's one of those fics where the writing style will stick with you. Castiel POV in a way you've never read before.

Aching in the Absence of You* by sobsicles E | 95k | 9k hits (in 5 days)

Brittle and battle-worn, Cas looks at him over coffee one morning and says, "I need to go," and Dean instantly knows that he's not coming back. He's not really sure how he knows it, but he does. It settles into the pit of his stomach, curling hot and tight like something he instinctively wants to tear out with his bare hands. He takes a breath, and it gets stuck in his throat, hitching there. It hurts, hurts, hurts when he finally exhales. "Yeah," Dean says, "of course you do," and he nods jerkily as he looks down at his phone. He doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't look up from the screen when Cas gets up and leaves the room. He doesn't finish his coffee, or move for a long time. By nightfall, Cas is gone.

If you don't already know sobsicles, I am delighted to introduce you to the person who will smash you to pieces with a hammer to put you back together Kintsugi-style. This one is post-finale but without 15x18 (it'll make sense as it goes). Cas says he's going to leave again and again Dean doesn't ask him to stay. Full of lines so beautiful they'd make Shakespeare weep, Sobsicles has this way of writing that is so evocative and paints such a clear picture. Fair warning, if you're Dean-coded, this might be A Lot.

dumbassery, denial, doing (the three d's to the destination)** by sobsicles E | 108k | 25k hits

Freedom is just one adjustment after the next. ~~~ Cas hums again. "I think you already have. It's been months since everything settled. All that's left to do is...get used to it, and perhaps—" His voice stalls out, uncharacteristically, and his gaze roams Dean's face with intensity. When he speaks next, his tone is a little raw. "Perhaps what one does with peace is...whatever they want." "What if I don't even know what that is?" Dean grumbles, arching an eyebrow in challenge. "'Cause I know damn well you don't just mean good food and a good bed and time in Baby, not simple wants like that. You mean—ya know, the big things, the wants we didn't get to have before." "Yes," Cas agrees. "If you're not sure, figure it out." "Easier said than done."

Yes, two sobsicles recs back to back. This one I read first and it still holds such a special place in my heart. A sign of a good fic is being able to picture it perfectly. The sign of an amazing fic is that when reading this I was so in Dean's shoes I could feel a pool cue between my hands and Baby behind my back. And I sobbed like a baby in this. It has probably my favourite ending ever. It's genuinely beautiful. If you don't read another on this list, read this one.

Teaching Poetry to Fish by aeli_kindara M | 52k | 14k hits

In which Castiel teaches poetry to fish. Also, himself. Also, eventually, Dean. (A series-long story, diverging slightly from canon after S14.)

The ultimate Cas character study and interwoven with poetry.

So There It Is, I've Said It All by PorcupineGirl (read by Ceewelsh) G | 4k | 13k hits

"Why, do you have something you need to say to me that you don't think I'll like?" I think I'm in love with you. "Yeah. I guess so."

Dean figures out he's in love with Cas then can't stop thinking it. This is genuinely beautiful and if you've ever had trouble actually saying the thing you're thinking, you'll relate to Dean here. I recently did the podfic for this.

you won't find this place alone by amidsizedfrog G | 9.5k |

When Claire said she was dropping out of college to pursue hunting full time, Dean said, “right,” and left the room. Or, the cross-generation conversation about formal education, choosing your own path and figuring out what it looks like to find a family. Or, in other words: "But what I do have is a GED and a give-'em-hell-attitude, and I'll figure it out." - Dean Winchester

This is a beautiful look at education in the hunter world, and I love anything that looks at Dean and Bobby's relationship and this does it perfectly. Also best cameo ever.

Seek to Know You Better by ahurston E | 33k | 23k hits

Dean and Cas, a long stretch of highway, and 36 questions empirically designed to make two people fall in love. As if they weren't already.

This is perfect. It has a lovely slow pace like it has the vibes of an indie film if that makes sense? Like it's two guys going from place to place talking. It was an instant favourite.

Newer AUs (AKA more recent AUs)

And This, Your Living Kiss* by opal_bullets M | 57k | 69k hits

Only a very few people in the world know that the celebrated and reclusive poet Jack Allen is just Kansas mechanic Dean Winchester, a high school dropout with a few bucks to his name. Not that it matters anymore; life has left him so wrung out he never wants to pick up another pen. Until, that is, a string of coincidences leads Dean to auditing a poetry course with one Dr. Castiel Novak. The professor is wildly intelligent, devastatingly handsome...and just so happens to be academia's foremost expert on the poetry of Jack Allen.

When I asked which fics were absolute must-reads for someone who'd been out of the fandom a few years, this was said repeatedly. But what really got me to read it was everyone actually told me more about what it meant to them than just the summary. It's a study in poetry, a study in learning who you are and who you used to be, and a reminder that it's never too late.

The Graveyard Shift* by riseofthefallenone, PurgatoryJar E | 620k | 175k hits

Dean’s favourite coffee shop, The Graveyard Shift, is only open after the sun goes down. Which is perfect for him, because that’s exactly when he craves coffee the most while doing the overnight at the fire hall. The coffee shop’s owner is pretty perfect too, but it’s kind of a bummer that Dean never gets to see Cas during the day. In a world where the supernatural live more or less in peace with the rest of humanity, it’s a little impolite to ask Cas just what he really is - or what his dark past entails.

A fantastic magical realism fic - magical creatures live and work with humans. Gabe and Cas run a coffee shop, Dean is a fireman, and the burn is slow and delicious and the intrigue kept me reading for like a week every single spare minute.

Painted Angels by WinJennster E | 106k | 162k hits

Author Castiel Novak has finally hit the big time, with a book based on his failed college relationship with a brilliant painter. He's put all his pain behind him, but at a book signing, he comes face to face with Dean Winchester for the first time in twelve years, and the reunion doesn't go like Cas hoped. Dean's a broken man, with a lot of scars and secrets, shoulders weighed down by his demons and self loathing. Cas sees a second chance with the man he's never stopped loving, but Dean's moved on, and is about to get married. Sam launches a "brilliant" plan to reunite his brother and his best friend, but Cas is worried it will all blow up in their faces, and he'll go through the agony of losing Dean a second time.

The first part of this I actually saved back when I was first in the fandom but I never got around to reading it (I had a To Read folder of 100+ fics that I absolutely dove into when I got back into spn) and the rest of the series finished in 2016 so I'm counting it in this section not the other. On the one hand, I wish I'd read this when it first came out. It's beautiful and heartbreaking, and so visual. On the other hand, I think I appreciated it a lot more now than I would have seven years ago. The parallel of me coming back to the old fandom that I loved dearly with Cas coming back to see someone and places he loved so much really hit. (Although coming back to the spn fandom was much easier and much less heartbreak!)

Finale Fix-Its (yeah fuck you Dabb that this has to be a whole category)

The Goldenrod Revisions by aethylas M | 66k | 15k hits

A rewrite of Supernatural’s final two episodes, expanded into a five episode arc - in which Chuck needs to be defeated, Castiel deserves to be saved, and the characters in this story get a very different ending.

Script format re-write of 15x19 and 15x20 into a 5-episode finale fix-it. As far as I'm concerned, this and chocolatecakecas's American Pie fanvid are the Supernatural finale.

break the skin (to break the barriers)* by sobsicles M | 30k | 9k hits

The first time she meets him, he's nothing more than an almost-missed appointment. ~~~ Dean is silent for a long, tense moment, then he gruffly says, "It's not for banishing the angels. It's to summon them. So, it doesn't—it's not to get rid of 'em, but to draw 'em in." Mitzi can't help but glance up at him at that. His voice is so heavy with so much unexplained pain, and she doesn't understand why, or what angels have to do with it. She knows religion can impact people. She's very aware that it can get complicated, and that it can be a huge source of pain for someone, but Dean sounds grievously wronged, somehow, as if it's a truly personal thing. She pushes through, focusing back on her job, clearing her throat before murmuring, "Well, I guess we all want angels to visit us sometimes." "Just the one," Dean mumbles. "Your guardian angel?" Mitzi asks. Dean breathes out, "Something like that. As close to one as an angel will ever get."

Therapy through getting tattoos and telling your life story to someone who obviously doesn't think it's real. Outsider!POV not just done well, but done literally the best.

Kingdom Come by ahurston E | 17k | 10k hits

Cas wakes up on the coast of Maine. He makes his way home.

I don't know if this counts as finale fix-it as it's more fuck the finale we're ignoring that. There's just so much love and care in this fic.

The Family Business by chai_lattes M | 16k | 5.5k hits

It's all over. It's been weeks since Chuck's defeat and Cas' return from the Empty. There are no threats on the horizon, no apocalypses to stop, but there's something that keeps the Winchesters from being happy. Something that's maybe always been there. On their way back from a hunt, they find John Winchester, back from the dead.

If you're anything like me, you start rubbing your grubby little hands together at the tag John Winchester's A+ Parenting like yes let's address this! This is one of the best examples of John coming back and how it jars with the life that they have built. Also Claire and Jack getting to share screentime!

Merlin

If I have a forever fandom, it's Merlin. I've always kept one foot in this fandom, and it introduced me to fandom, and most importantly to podfic which kinda had an impact. All Merthur unless stated.

Canon-Verse

Seven Magpies by syllic (read by lunchee) E | 33k (3hr15) | 58k hits

Arthur opened his eyes a minute later to the sight of seven magpies streaking across the top of the clearing, their shapes dark against the white clouds and the muted grey of the sky. He tried to remember what it was that seven magpies meant—he'd had a nurse who had sung the rhyme to him as a child—but couldn't. Arthur wakes up somewhere he doesn't recognise, but where he clearly belongs.

Okay so this is an AU but it's Canon-AU so it's going here. Fantastic role reversal fic that you will be thinking about for weeks.

and from your grace, i fell by TheDragon (read by Ceewelsh) T | 4.6k (41mins) | 13k hits

“Where’s Merlin?” he asks the maid. “Where’s that idiot of a Court Sorcerer?!” “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty. I thought you knew,” the maid replies, not daring to look him in the eyes. “He’s taken ill.” “And he couldn’t be bothered to tell me himself that he would be unable to attend today’s council meeting?” Arthur questions, voice full of acid. “He hasn’t woken since he collapsed two days ago, Sire,” the maidservant says, blissfully unaware that what she’s saying the power to stop Arthur’s heart in its tracks.

When I first read this, it had me completely transfixed. I could not stop reading. It was so raw and so full of emotion. I was then lucky enough to get TheDragon in our exchange, so I did a podfic for it and it's probably the most proud I've been of one.

Modern AU

The Student Prince* by FayJay (read by FayJay) M | 145k (15hrs) | 696k hits

A Modern day Merlin AU set at the University of St Andrews, featuring teetotal kickboxers, secret wizards, magnificent bodyguards of various genders, irate fairies, imprisoned dragons, crumbling gothic architecture, arrogant princes, adorable engineering students, stolen gold, magical doorways, attempted assassination, drunken students, shaving foam fights, embarrassing mornings after, The Hammer Dance, duty, responsibility, friendship and true love...

A classic is a classic for a reason. I'm also pretty sure this introduced me to podfics so like special place in my heart x2. Did you know if you filter AO3 by hits on Merlin, this has 426k more hits than the second result? Now that is a Fandom Classic.

Drastically Redefining Protocol* by rageprufrock (read by lunchee) E | 46k (5hr30) | 269k hits

In which Prince Arthur meets Merlin and all hell promptly breaks loose.

As I always say, if this can happen to me and I still love the fic, nothing is going to change that. Arthur hides from his duties in a cupboard and gets stuck in there with a chainsmoking med student.

Fundamental Imperfections by Starlingthefool (read by bravenclawsome) M | 12k (1hr35) | 123k hits

In which an argument about Dickens leads to a Twitter scandal, broken bones, midnight conversations, and transatlantic longing. (Or, an AU with Arthur and Merlin as moderately famous authors.)

This fic has everything: Charles Dickens, long distance texting, Morgana choking a Sherlock cosplayer with his own scarf. This is the ultimate comfort fic and I compare all fics to this even when they're incomparable. I never read the sequel because it was WIP and I was waiting for it to complete, it hasn't been updated since 2015 and apparently ends on an unhappy note, so if you're going to read the sequel you have been warned.

Les Mis

Modern!AU

Overzealous Oddities by YassHomo e/R, Courf/Cosette/Marius, Comb/Ép | G | 6.4k | 4k hits

Courfeyrac: Remember when I smashed our tv and we laughed about it? Enjolras: No. Courfeyrac: Let me rephrase Courfeyrac: I've smashed our tv, lets laugh about it.

I love me a text fic and this is in my opinion the best one around. Just look at that summary. I have quoted that so many times.

But Paris was a very old city and we were young* by GingerNinjaAbi E/R, Courf/Jehan | M | 99k | 42k hits

Perhaps somewhere in between all the cups of coffee, shots of tequila, sunny March days, terrible lumpy jumpers, love, cigarettes, drunken nights and the desire to change the world they'll all leave Paris with a degree in something. Or not. Grantaire's money is on no. But he's a pessimist who's hopelessly in love, so perhaps his opinion shouldn't count.

The ULTIMATE modern!AU tbh.

Tagged by Salomonderiel E/R, Courf/Jehan | E | 155k | 28k hits

So there's this artist. He could probably be compared to Banksy, but he's a lot more... cynical. He shares rooms with a poet who braids his hair with flowers, in a flat near Covent Garden they rent from a short-tempered shop keeper with a penchant for fans and who'd do anything if you mentioned Poland. Sometimes, the three of them will go and deface public buildings in London whilst completely smashed off their heads. And then there's this, shall we say, 'revolutionary'. He has a band of other revolutionaries, who all meet at this cafe by Borough Market. He shares rooms with his best mate, a philosophy student, spends too much time with a flirty guy who has a thing for poets, goes boxing with a guy in a red vest, wants to punch the wet sop who drools on the blonde waitress and is getting tired of this guy who keep breaking his laptops through sheer dumb luck. Thank god the hypochondriac's there to keep an (slightly too) attentive eye on their stress levels. The revolutionary thinks the graffiti artist's work is a waste of space. The artist thinks the revolutionary's campaigns are a waste of time. And all the while, the poet and the flirt drool over each other in the background...

This is perfect and it's funny and it's beautiful and it rips my heart out multiple times.

Canon

To Be Free by kjack89 (read by Ceewelsh) Gen, Cosette/Marius | T | 3.8k (32mins) | 375 hits

Three blows from a bayonet had transfixed Combeferre’s breast, followed by a fall from the barricade as he rapidly lost first blood and then consciousness. But neither of these, it seemed, was enough to kill him, as much as later he might perhaps wish that they were.

I read this because it was on a list kjack89 did of their favourite fics which don't necessarily have the same hits traffic. It's nothing I would have usually read (canon era, not e/R, MCD) but I am so glad I gave it a go. It's a study on what if Combeferre had survived the barricades too and the guilt. This stayed with me for days afterwards until I eventually messaged kjack89 to get permission to podfic it.

BatFam

Canonish (I don't know differences between canons but these are all they're superheros fics)

Robins United by laceymcbain (read by reena_jenkins) Gen | T | 49k (6h15)/ 19k (2h25) (First part) | 103k hits

Bullets, knives, a three story fall, even a fucking crowbar hadn't managed to keep Jason down permanently, but Dick Grayson (and the rest of his "family") was going to kill him with kindness.

The ultimate batbros series. Also if you haven't heard reena_jenkins' podfics before, you are welcome. Pre-pandemic I took a lot of public transport and reena_jenkins kept me sane.

batcoons by drakefeathers (read by reena_jenkins) Gen | G | 6k (49mins) | 14k hits

Jason and raccoons have a lot in common. (Additionally: his so-called family are much bigger pests than the stray animals hanging around his safehouse.)

This is funny, it's heartwarming, and it's a really good character study.

AU

Here Comes the Sun by batsy_rocks Clark/Bruce | T | 19k | 20k hits

Clark Kent is a kind-hearted reporter working in the big city. Bruce Wayne is a stressed dad of four with no idea of what he's doing. Then they meet.

Bruce Wayne is a Tired Single Dad™. It's genuinely such a sweet fic.

[bligh-lynch]

And It Came To Pass In Those Days

23d December 1995, Lynch Mountain, Tempest, West Virginia For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. _________ Carl Sagan, Contact

          Throughout his life, Pappy was known by many names, but it was one Christmas Eve that he truly felt he earned the only one that really counted.

           He began as Gustavus Simeon Lynch, but was very soon Gus. His birthname was too grandiose an appellation - it was given to him in gratitude by his father, Simeon, for Gustavus Olafsen, a Minnesotan of Swedish extraction who saved Simeon's life from the debacle onboard the USS San Diego during the Great War. But it proved too highfalutin for the boy who grew into a man.

           That boy, Gus, was too often a cutup who disobeyed his Pa and had his hide tanned more times than he could count. He and his delinquent older cousin, Allen, would get drunk on badly-made shine out in the woods - they would play music together under the white oak on the other slope of the low mountain that belonged to their family, and Allen would tell him, hitting his fiddle with his bow gently to make a singular dulcet tone, Gus strumming his banjo to accompany, the old family legend that their ancestor, Patrick Lynch, had planted the great druid as but an acorn to mark his property when he came over from Ireland. Twice, Allen had kissed him passionately when they were both drunk - love, love, careless love - as Sodomites would, making him promise to never tell a soul, and though later in life Gus became concerned with both drink and sin, when he remembered those Summer afternoons underneath the mighty boughs of his family oak with his cousin, his first friend, his first love, all he could do was blush, and sigh, sad for bygone days.            Years later, Gus heard that Allen, who married a girl he didn't love and fathered a child who grew up in the family as Cousin Bobby he didn't want, ended up going crazy and ripping out his own teeth, an eerie repeat of Gus' own father losing his teeth at a young age also.            Hoping to be better than a backwoods moonshiner who did furtive and sinful things, the boy, Gus, became a man, with a new name to match: Private First Class Gus S. Lynch, Company E, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. He and his boyhood friend from Quinwood, Ralph Pomeroy, were shipped off during the Korean Conflict, where they stuck together because their fellows mocked their thick accents and yokel way - slights that he, Gus, never forgot or forgave. But, soon enough, there was that hopeless situation at a place that history would remember as Triangle Hill - Gus was one of the key witnesses to Ralph Pomeroy's dauntless actions that led his friend to be awarded, posthumously, the Medal of Honor.            Then and there - seeing Ralph E. Pomeroy dedicate himself to something so completely larger than himself - Gus determined that he, too, would dedicate himself to something, and he fell on his knees, beseeching the sky above him, to say that he would devote his life to God.            Soon, though he wouldn't care much for it, he became Corporal Gus S. Lynch, Silver Star Medal, but he scarcely remembered those October days in 1952 - his bright blue eyes, remarked on by his superior officers, always blurred by the tears as only men put through that awful fire can understand, blinded by dust and smoke...as though possessed, he dragged what injured he could, the same men who mocked him for being a hillbilly and who would pointedly ask if he was born in a coalmine or if he wore shoes but whom he swore to protect nonetheless, back to the medic tent, again and again and again, no man left behind.            There were gruesome spectacles that would make any man doubt the sanity of the world, and still a lesser man repulsed by humans for the rest of his life, but Gus was swallowed in humility by his friend's actions and he wanted to somehow be brave himself - not for himself, but for the spirit he saw Ralph Pomeroy summon.            And for these courageous actions - that he never, not once, felt courageous for - he had a Silver Star pinned to his breast by General van Fleet.            When he returned home, honorably discharged back to West Virginia and back to the mountains, he wanted to make good on the promise he had made to the Almighty for saving him in Korea, and so he took the G.I. Bill money and crossed the border to Virginia to attend Bluefield College, where he read the Theology he would need to preach the Good Word and save souls for the Lord.            In time he graduated, and he took still yet another name: Reverend Gus Lynch - he grew the thick, handsome chinstrap beard he would wear for the rest of his life, and, taking inspiration from the travelling preachers that comprised many of his proud ancestors, he rambled up and down the Appalachians in his big white Surburban, praising Jesus and baptizing the anointed, down to the river to pray, studying on that Good Old Way.            Two fateful things happened as he journeyed from place to place, filling the spiritual needs of the wayward.            The first was in Pennsylvania and not too long after New York, because they happened so close together. There, the people gave him names too, but this time they were bigoted slurs: redneck and hillbilly and inbred, they mocked his accent and his manners and his earnestness, so that Gus found himself rather like Jonah, wishing that these Yankees, like Nineveh, would perish rather than find salvation. He never forgot how those prejudiced Northerners treated him, treated him different, simply because of who he was and where he was born - he had met kind Negros, strong in the Lord and the love of their families, down in the Carolinas, and he knew they had it far worse than he did, but that made him all the more bitter, how man could treat his fellow man, regardless of how he spoke the English tongue, or even the color of his own skin.            This led to the second event: one night at a revival in Summersville, having returned to West Virginia feeling he should go back to put down roots in Tempest - soured forever on the idea of rambling after his experiences up North - he met a beautiful little slip of a girl, dark-headed with soft grey eyes, who had a ready and sarcastic wit.            Her name was Iris - Iris McComas, named for where her people had settled in that tiny coal town in McDowell County, many, many years ago.            She was the prettiest thing in the room, with the purple-and-gold silk corsage she wore of her namesake, an iris...Gus' eyes followed her everywhere, finally, he got up the nerve, and he asked her to dance, and soon they got to talking.            "Ye were in Korea?" asked she.

           "I were," answered he. "Served with Ralph Pomeroy."

           "Oh my, he was a hero."

           "He was."

           "If the army had more Pomeroys we'd've won that war."

           Gus' expression turned serious. "We did have an army of Pomeroys - but y'only hear bout the famous ones."

           "What a sad thing ta say - are ye a sad man, Mr. Lynch?"

           "When the occasion calls fer it, my dear."

           "My dear?" She gasped, pretending to be offended. "How forward!"

           "Well then what would ya like me to call ye?" He gave that famous smirk, a crooked half-smile that many people knew him by. "My doe?"            She burst out laughing. "Sly, too! My word, I can scarcely tell what kind o'man y'are - are y'always like this, Mr. Lynch? A man of God but a mystery ta women?"

           "When the occasion calls fer it--" The smirk grew. "My dear."            It was mid-December and the stars outside shone diamondiferous to join with the lavender half-moonlit snow - the congregation gathered together before they dispersed to sing one more hymn:            Go! Tell it on the mountain!            Our Jesus Christ is born!            And as they stood together to sing, Iris put her hand in his.            They took to courting, and soon were married, a fairytale, and they gave each other twenty-four of the happiest years of each others' life - they moved back together to Tempest where Gus became senior pastor of Living Hope Baptist Church.            But it did not begin auspiciously.            When Gus passed his thirty-fifth year, he was beset with toothaches that would not go away, wracked with pain that no medication or herbs would seem to salve. This went on for a week straight, until - one night - and to his horror, he found his eyeteeth, both of them, were being pushed out by something new in their place...when Iris came into their bedroom she flung her hands to her mouth as he turned to her so that she could see: for in his mouth were two, long, sharpened, canine ­fangs.            Gus had always been aware of the morbid stories, the haints and the phantom creatures and the deep, shadowy weirdness that crawled all over Tempest, all over Adkins County - there were family legends for nearly each of the little clans that called this obscure corner of the Greenbrier Valley home, the Barnes and the Lightfoots and his own family, the Lynches...but he never thought that he would be privy, let alone part, of his own ghost story, his own monster-tale.            Now he understood - now he understood the story about Cousin Allen, ripped out his own teeth and had taken to the drink too hard and died pitifully young...now he understood why his own father had a set of ivory chompers rather than what God gave him.            Some malign ancestral curse had curdled in his blood and manifested itself as a hideous mutation of the mouth, something that made him look for all the world like a creature of the woods more than what he was - a man adapted for hunting and timber and subsistence living now reabsorbed by the forest he so loved to be a haint, a creature, bewitched and obscene to the world of men.            At first Iris tried to help by filing his new additions down, blunting them so people would not notice - but horrible to relate, night after night, the things grew back, sharpened themselves to points as a form of growth. Several times they tried this, panicked husband and supportive wife - several times they were thwarted, right back to where they were.            Desperate, and without recourse, they did, together, the only thing they thought left - even though he had not drank in years, Gus procured some fine whiskey from his friend, Ironside Lightfoot, guzzled it down until he was three sheets in the wind, and instructed his wife to take a wrench and do the unthinkable.            When she was done, the teeth kept in a small box under his bed to remind him that this was not some kind of hideous vision sent to him from a Hellish delirium, near-feverish with pain and drink, and his mouth full of bloody cotton gauze, he looked on his wife with tears streaming forth from those uniquely blue eyes, begging her to forgive him for whatever sin he had done that had led him to be changed, however momentarily, into a monster.            "Oh Iris - woman - what ye must think o'me - what kinda man I am--"            "Gustavus Lynch," Iris answered without hesitation, "I know exactly what kinda man y'are."            "N'what--" he was scared to finish the question. "What kinda man that be?"            She said nothing - she just hugged him tight, and reached for his hand, taking it and squeezing it close to her own heart.            They passed this crisis together as husband and wife, and with new teeth, dentures, procured from a dentist down in Roanoke, their life resumed its sunny way.            Never did they talk about it, not once, even when Gus was troubled, year after year on the same day ever since, by quare visions of icy blue streams deep underground...when he would awake, dazed and vulnerable in the dead of night when nightmares seem realest, he would feel for his wife's hand, grasping her fingers into his own to feel grounded and unfraid once again.            When they built their big house on Simeon Lynch's ancestral lands, on the day they knew their hard work was finished, she put her hand in his and squeezed it - when it became apparent she was with child, and told him the news, she took both of his hands and brought them to her belly... when she was in labor and he prayed over her, his heart full of joy and fear, she squeezed his hand again, as hard as she could - when the infant boy, who they named Gustavus after his father and so went through life as Junior, reached manhood and brought home a kind, mousey girl from Wetzel County to introduce as his fiancée, she squeezed his hand once more.            They were blessed to have lived so full and fruitful, all those years together.            But it all did not last.            After, soon after, Iris contracted cancer of the breast, and she fell very ill very suddenly, she wasted away and was in great pain, such that there was nothing the doctors in Charleston could do.            On her deathbed, she put her hand in Gus' one last time, and she said to him: "Oh, I finally know what kinda man y'are, Mr. Lynch."            And with his eyes once again blurred with tears as they had been all those years ago in Korea, Gus answered: "N'what kinda man that be - Ms. McComas?"            "Why - yer the man who loves me..."            Then her hand slackened, it fell away - Gus' hand was empty, and she was gone.            Gus knew he would never get over her and indeed he never did, and for years after would regard the day of her death - a clear, azure-skied day in October - as little short of cursed. Every year on her birthday, on the anniversary of their marriage, and to commemorate the day she died, he would pace up the side of his mountain and lay by her graveside, with space for him to be buried beside her when his time came, a bundle of her namesake, amethyst and gold ­­- iris.            One night, a year or two after her passing, driving back to the house that he and Iris had built and which now stood lonely and empty without her in it, Gus parked his Jeep that he had gotten by trading in his old Suburban on the side of a dirt road - he got out, and took a look, on a whim, above him, to the Winter stars.            He had wrestled and grappled with the questions - theologically, spiritually, even psychologically - and still he had come up empty, empty as the indigo spans that one would have to traverse to get from star to star, how to properly mourn, how to properly grieve.            And then he knew.            He just - knew, somehow, a revelation, an epiphany, that she was up there...he knew, somehow, that in the crystalline twinkling of the stars, the same stars that twinkled just the same way the night they met, that she was watching.            And - that she would not want him to be like this, not after all this time, all this wasted energy trying and wishing and praying for things that could no longer be.            So he got back in his car, laid across the steering wheel and wept, one last time, and he let the heavens have her, let her watch over him and never let him go.            Even after this the grief he felt never went away, but it was eased some after Junior had his own son, Gus' grandson, born en caul and destined for either second-sight or greatness or both, named Bligh after a distant patrilineal descendant - he had been too afraid to ask his son about his teeth, if it what happened to Gus had happened to Junior, but he was told by Susan Anne he had needed dentistry to fix some kind of abnormal growth...and knew the unspoken truth.            Too soon, tragedy roared back into his life, another October day, this time grey and rainy, when Junior and his wife, Susan Anne, died in a car crash - Junior's Eldorado had careened off a sharp turn, killing them both, with little Bligh Allen, who had just turned five, miraculously surviving in the backseat.            It was all, all enough for Gus to invoke old Job, and to have his faith, so sure even before his conversion all those years ago, shook so hard he wondered if Hell could hear it: why, why after so many years of faithful service, would God curse him so? Was it not enough to rob from his beloved, for whose touch he pined every day for the rest of his life - now his son, now his daughter-in-law too?            And if I am a Christian,

           I am the least of all--            But this was how Gus would soon become Pappy, the name that stuck at first as a tease and thereafter as how he would be known forever after, even amongst folk in Tempest outside of his own family - because his grandson Bligh, started calling him that.            Bligh had always been a strange child - the circumstances of his birth alone were the subject of some comment, not just being en caul but having to be delivered in Barnes' veterinary office because of a great and terrible storm that at last blew down that old druid that Gus and Allen would play music under, but this was joined with his oddly quiet nature, as though observing everything around him in a troublingly mature kind of way. He did not speak as other children did - when Archie Lightfoot, the latest scion of that storied family which antedated Gus' own and the son of Gus' friend Ironside had his own son, Andrew, he was, by contrast, a bright and happy child, a chatterbox whose constant babbles exasperated his father...yet Bligh remained uncomfortably quiet.            Then, one day, Junior, passing the peculiar newcomer to Gus to hold, murmured in babytalk: "Go see ya Pappy, go see ya Pappy now--" And Bligh burst out, his first words, when he was safe in Gus' arms: "Pa-pee! Pa-pee!"            Junior was dumbstruck - but Gus, Pappy, was transported with happiness.            He had been his grandson's first word.            But...when Bligh came to live with Gus after his parents died, he did not like it, and made it a point, in his own sullen preschool-age way, to let Gus know he did not like him, throwing monstrous tantrums - howling like a wolf, which Gus would shake his head the hardest at - throwing his toys, refusing to come out of his new room in Gus' house, except to hastily eat and then steal back upstairs. It was bad enough that because of this withdrawn, traumatized behavior at school it was recommended he'd be held back a year, but really it seemed like there was no way, no way at all, for Gus to get through to his grandson, damaged in his young existence by being robbed of his parents.            Weeks turned into months - Gus tried to cope the best he could, Christmastide drew nearer and he did his yearly rituals, cleaning for Baby Jesus' birthday and putting up a fresh, fragrant pine for a Christmas tree, all while his grandson remained dangerously introverted and reclusive.            And then, finally, it occurred to Gus - what had happened to him nearly a decade before, ruminating on how Iris was gone, and what Iris would have wanted, and where Iris still was.            Little Bligh would have to somehow see the same thing.            So, carrying that little hope in his heart that he could fix things that shone distant but clear like the Star of Bethlehem, with the memory of Pappy as the boy's first word, on the eve of Christmas Eve, Gus came into the boy's room, and instructed him in a firm voice to get on something warm, they were going to go outside.            It took some doing - thrice more did he have to be told, and the last time in a loud clear voice that was almost a threat - but eventually little Bligh tumbled down the steps and, his grandfather putting a guiding hand on the small of his back, they came outside. Gus made sure that Bligh followed every step he took, so that he would not get lost - eventually they came down the mountain, a gentle slope that was easy to traverse up and down, and arrived just where Gus needed them to be.            The night was a masterpiece of Appalachian Winter - silent, neither sound nor movement, with a light snow dusting the ground that made a faint crunch beneath the feet. The cold was not biting or unpleasant as there was no wind, so that there was only the rejuvenating crispness that enlivened the nerves and thickened the blood.            They came to a great, ruined, rotting tree - the big druid that his ancestor had planted, where Gus and his cousin would play music together, and where Gus had his first kiss, all those wistful bygone years before.            Gus gently took his grandson's wrist.            "Ya seen this tree here, boy?"            Bligh shook his head - Gus let go, kneeling to his level, pointing.            "This tree here fell the day ye's born...n'yer great-great--" He paused, tittering to himself. "Well let's say a feller ye n'me's both related ta, waaay back when - he planted it!"            A spark of something like recognition seemed to wash away the sulky stubbornness that had possessed the boy's face lo these many weeks.            "Someone - we related ta?" Bligh asked, his voice quiet to match the night.            "S'right," Gus affirmed with a grin. "Our ancestor - our family been here a long, long time, understand."            Bligh nodded, slowly, as though absorbing what his grandfather was telling him.            "I want ya ta see sumthin else, too--"            Using his boot, Pappy kicked part of the hollowed-out trunk of the old druid-tree hard - there, on the inside, was a cluster of phosphorescent vegetation, an unexpected symphony of fulgently radiant light hiding in the tiny cavern of the oaken log.            Bligh recoiled - he had never seen anything like it before in his life.            "Wha - wha?!"            "Walk while ye have the light," Gus pronounced resolutely. "Lest darkness come upon ye - see that there glow?"            Bligh nodded, his eyes wide with amazement.            "That there's foxfire - it shines right here on the Earth sometimes - like the stars shine up in Heaven."            "H-Heaven?" Bligh asked, his voice suddenly hushed. "Like - where Ma and Pa live now?"            Now it was Gus' turn to nod. "Yes, boy - yes indeed." He swept up his grandson to lift him up so that he could see the stars shining - Heaven - above them.            As he held Bligh up and then set him on his shoulders, he called out in his loud, clear voice that he used at Living Hope:

           "Consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the Moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained!"

           Right as Bligh grabbed hold of Pappy's head to balance, and just Pappy had finished - he sucked in an amazed breath.

           Of course he had seen the stars, and of course he had asked about them, but he had never - so like a little boy - understood, in focus, what infinity meant, what the constellations and asterisms and shapes of the heavens meant, what lay beyond his playroom and the kitchen and the trees and the backyard.

           And it was the words of King James that made him understand - the Word of the Lord that Pappy knew and practiced and had a bon mot for, sometimes clever and sometimes poignant, since that terrible day in that faraway place of Korea when he had devoted his life to the Good News.

           Bligh's eyes beheld the stars not for the first time, but for the first time that really mattered.            "Them stars up ere, boy - lookin down on us - there's ya Ma n'Pa, up ere - there's ya Mamaw Iris, who ye never met, but who - who woulda loved ye all the same..."            "They - up there?"            "That's right boy - all of em, watchin over us."            And then grandson murmured the first true words of coherence in months:            "Pappy - I wish they wudn't up yonder - I wish they was here."            "Well me too, boy - me too." He sighed, swallowing back a wave of emotion that came with the words. "But we down here, for the time bein - n'we gotta make the best o'what the Lord God gave us." He took a hand to reach up and stroke his grandson's cheek. "So happens - the Lord God gave me a little boy - a little boy named Bligh."

           A long silence followed, which Gus gently broke:            "Just like em stars bove us shine, boy - n'like the foxfire aneath the log - I'll always shine fer ye. They watch over us up ere - but down here--" He let himself grin, for the first time in he couldn't remember approaching something like inner peace. "Down here - ain't nuthin gonna happen ta ye, long as I'm around - ain't nuthin ever gonna happen ta the boy the Good Lord gave me."

           The Winter skies of West Virginia provide intangible proof in their starry voids of the ancient and the impossible, so that on a clear cold evening, with one's head tilted up to behold brumal Orion in the frigid air that turns the breath into the steamy vocabulary of Fafnir, it seems perfectly feasible that - on a night just like this - the Virgin Mary had a baby boy.

           Go! Tell it on the mountain! O'er the hills and ev-ry-where!

           And there was time enough for Lovecraft's mad spaces, and there was time yet still for Tyson's patient navigations, because there was time enough for little Bligh, already an orphan and doomed to a life against the grains of modernity, to understand the cruelty and the meanness of existence - but now he was wonderstruck, starstruck, at the cosmos that swirled above him in chilled clarity, the very Universe that Pappy's God in wisdom untold had designed and made, and so could he understand that this same cruel, mean place was also, at the very same time, full of kindness and love.            "Pappy?" he heard his grandson whisper.            "Yeah boy?"            "I'm - I - I'm sorry..."

           Now Gus - Pappy - felt that the wall that needed to come down had come down, now he knew that he could raise his grandchild and shelter him and protect him and guide him into manhood and carry on the Lynch name with honor and with pride and respect.            Now - now Pappy lowered him down so that they were face to face, so that their identical eyes, gelid, frozen-over, but warm in this and all the Winters they would share together, now met.            He pointed, down the mountain slope, the trees that twinkled with ice, and he whispered: "G'out with joy." He grinned an encouraging, knowing smile. "Be led forth with peace - the mountains -n'the hills shall break forth before ye into singin, and all the trees o'the field shall clap their hands..."            He hugged his little grandson so tight he knew he would never forget.            And right then, right that very second - everything was worth it.            There had been a road here, there had been a journey undertaken, ever since Iris had blushed to see him watching her across the room at that little church in Summersville - ever since he had clutched Ralph's body in Korea and begged for him, screaming, to get up, to wake up - ever since he would join his cousin's melody on the banjo on those fine Summer days.            They were all gone...but Bligh, his grandson, his blood, his flesh, his true legacy, was here.            And of all the names, all the titles, all the ways he was or would be looked at - none of them would ever matter as much as the one that this serious, black-haired boy would foist upon him:            "Pappy," little Bligh said again, and his eyes glimmered and became overfull with tears.            Gus - Gustavus, Pappy - grinned at him, a full and proud smile, and kissed him gently on the cheek.            "S'right boy," he whispered, but loud enough that the silent night of the approaching Christmas Eve allowed it to echo across time, space - and names. "I'm yer Pappy."

[go-redgirl]

Kim Clement Prophecy 2014 of  Donald J. Trump Election Chosen By Almighty God Who He Called His ‘David’.

234,010 views

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INDIVIDUALS/COMMENTS/POSTS:

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dnglbry OH MY WONDERFUL DEAR GOD!!!WE MUST GET BEHIND THIS GREAT BRAVE MAN!!!!!

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REPLY Who is this April Like Trump or not......he WAS God’s elect!!! So take it up with God.....good luck with that.....

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Jose Ramirez I choose Trump from day one in the primary election! Latinos for Trump!!! Trump 2020!!!

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REPLY Caroline Rothstein God bless the Trump family

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REPLY lacc980 This prophecy is getting fulfilled now, please follow this prophecy

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REPLY rudyrod100 I've watched this twenty times at least, gives me chills every time and makes me glad I voted for Trump. God Bless America!

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Passionate Truth Network REPLY Viviana Hetnandez The Lord's hand is upon president Trump..Thanks to our Lord Jesus Is coming to pass now..  Allelulla!

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REPLY Passionate Truth Network Look at all the prophets in the USA speaking "GLOOM & DOOM" over America! Kim Clement said it wasn't time for the destruction of America...so there are some prophets who prophesy incorrectly...but Kim Clement and Mark Taylor have been very accurate in the prophesies they have given!

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REPLY marianne carlson "The enemy will try to put a witch in the white house."..Hillary is a practicing witch and is a part of a coven...has been for years.

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REPLY Barbara Sneller Jehovah God is at the helm. His WILL be done!

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REPLY MZ ANGEL Oh, God, let Your will be done on Earth!

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REPLY Terry Sigmon We need to pray for our President. This man is unbelievable. The hate that this man goes through don't seem to phase him. He is one the toughest man I've ever seen. Pray for his safety. His life is in danger. He cannot be bought like most politicians and they hate not being able to control him. Never has a president funded his own campaign and donated his pay to charity. GOD BLESS YOU DONALD J. TRUMP. GOD BLESS YOU. PLEASE PRAY FOR HIM.

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Passionate Truth Network

REPLY Pata Mo Thank you Father for President Trump!  Thy will be done Father ❤️🇺🇸

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REPLY Truther777 Q just said "we have the gold"  Q said it would bring down the federal reserve that's been robbing the people

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l kern watch how potus turns around and salutes the soldier at the stairs. that was real appreciation for the service of another human being, and Melania believes the words of her prayer. America is blessed.

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REPLY sjurdurkjv Wonderful. I'm crying for the first time in 25 years

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Cheryl Clarke No doubt whatsoever that Donald J. Trumps being elected Potus is sure divine intervention as there ain’t any person at present on earth who could possibly achieve what he has/is not only for his beloved USA but the world..Americans should be so grateful to have such a great leader..

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GOD IS GOOD, GOD IS THE TRUTH.. BLESSINGS TO MR PRESIDENT, MELANIA AND ALL AMERICANS

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REPLY Kerry Weston I liked Donald J. Trump before he ran for president and he has turned out to be the best president we've ever had.  Unlike all the others, he speaks the truth and actually does what he says he will do.

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Passionate Truth Network REPLY Theresa Petekiewicz The Giants of the Federal Reserve in the Rothschild family. The giant of George Soros and the giant of NWO and the giant of national debt. Amen Lord Jesus you are all-powerful all-seeing and all-knowing. We need to pray daily for president Trump and all the white hats.

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REPLY Stev op62 THANK YOU LORD For coming to Save Us ! I Love You

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Summer Raines Love POTUS Trump & FLOTUS Melania!!! ❤💙

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Cookie N Creams God bless TRUMP... sending love to TRUMP from the United kingdom... His a good man.. b4 he ran and after he won.. he has kept his word... PRESIDENT TRUMP is the peoples PRESIDENT... God bless you AMERICA.. TRUMP 2020

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Carola Press Deliver this nation from evil Lord God! We call upon your name!

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Tread Softly I love my President and my First Lady they are beautiful loving and caring people!

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Leona Sammy God said he will built a wall for protection around this country . so why people against Trump building the wall to protect the broader

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REPLY Jose Roberto Menendez God bless our President, God bless America.

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Eric Trevi Two Supreme Court Judges have recently been appointed by President Trump.

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REPLY Victorious Pauper ISRAEL ......IS...... FOREVER !!!!

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Lisa Bannon God Bless Kim Clement!!  Always and RIP what a great prohphet ... Sadly will be missed...

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REPLY hexencoff I hope that everyone is as honored as I am to have the privilege to say that we lived among the greatest of men like Kim Clement and our beloved President Donald J Trump!!! RIP Kim the world is by far a lesser place without you!!! Soar with eagles my brother for you have earned your wings I only pray to one day join you!!!

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Jorge Hernandez God choice nothing will stop his desire...2 terms

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REPLY angi seb AMEN OUR GOD DOES NOT LIE MAGA ......😘😘😘😘😘😘

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mary howland Thank God  for giving  us Trump  for  our  president. I believe  Kim  is a true  phrophet of God. I pray  for  all  of  us and God  bless  our  country.

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REPLY Linda Bezecny Dear Lord Please Product  Our President Donald Trump! Keep Him From The Evil Doers!  Like The Ones Who Killed President Lincoln,  Kennedy And His Son, And Brother! Also The Insanity Of Shooting President Reagan! Amen. \O/

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Cheryl Clarke Melania Trump is a Flotus Americans at last can be so very proud of...beautiful, stylish, classy, speaks “5” languages fluently...wowwwww what a combination!!!

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Diana Prince wow, such beautiful singing by that young lady. Gave me goosebumps.

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REPLY xee doll I wish they would say the Lords Prayer more often 🙏🏼

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Yoleta Trujillo Focus! Don’t be weary in well doing. It is our responsibility to not faint. Be the Spiritual Warriors God called us to be!

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Geri Messina Does everyone know all that has been going on behind the scenes to implement the plan as God briefly described here? There IS a magnificent plan that is brilliant and could only have been orchestrated, implemented by God!

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Lisa Bannon Thank you father God! For our President Mr Trump and his beautiful wife, I'm proud to call our first lady, thank you and praise you Yahweh praise you always...

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Anthony Lucky Powerful! Give glory to the Lord! Thank you for putting this together. Blessings to this channel.

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Sofiani Adams Thank you to our father in heaven for sending President Trump to us. Thank my dear Lord..AMEN.

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IP Rainwater It's happening now...Q

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Eileen Q Patriot I just learned about him - he's amazing.

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Chi88LuckHolistic

GOD BLESS AMERICA AND GOD BLESS POTUS!!!  GOD anointed President Trump to save America eventually the world from the destruction by the deep state.

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Ed Bernardo THAT'S why he was crying out to God in the Rose garden. He was overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit, crying out to God.

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REPLY Many don't agree with me but there was a massive red Tsunami that happened on the just passed midterm elections, Does anyone realize the victory the Republicans just got in the Senate?

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REPLY Darryl Cole I MISS KIM ( R.I.P.) & would love to have a Cool Ministry like that..!!! I'm a Drummer if anyone has Ministry like that and needs MUSICIANS  let me know... We're Good & Ready...!!! and have all the equipment(PA)and instruments....,!!! Praise God

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REPLY Angela Becerra Thanks to God! Thank you Mr.& Mrs. TRUMP.....

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REPLY Janice Andreyka Kim Clement will be missed.. God bless his family !

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REPLY Bobby D I was weary of Mr Trump when I heard he was running. I was afraid for the American people 🇺🇲 Though I'm from Ireland 🇮🇪 I KNOW GOD & have  always believed and knew, AMERICA was Chosen by God. And now I believe God has chosen Mr Trump & His Beautiful WIFE. God Bless America 🇺🇲 and God Bless your President 🇺🇲 Shine on, Shine on, Love & Blessings from Ireland America ❤️❤️❤️🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪

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REPLY Renee Mendias This is SO Powerful!! Listen to it again and again, embrace and pray it, witness it come to pass in the present age!

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REPLY YO All I can say is "WOW", this is amazing! AMEN!!!!

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REPLY matt noah Today president Trump and leader Kim of North Korea met! Looking back on these prophecy wow, what an awesome God we serve! Lord God continue to bless Donald Trump with your wisdom!

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REPLY Oh No GO MELANIA!!!!! Woot woot!!!!! 👍👍👍💐💐💐💐💐💐🇺🇸

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REPLY LARRY FARVER THANK GOD FOR KIM AND TRUMP. MOSTLY FOR JESUS.

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REPLY Gerardo Sanchez The earth and heaven will pass but! my words shall never ever pass amen to the Glory of God for ever. GBUA

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REPLY Marti True Tears in eyes.  My heart is full

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REPLY Tammy Eaton Jesébel was a Baal-worshipping CRUEL WOMAN-she was INVOLVED WITH THE OCCULT—likewise HILDEBEAST will NOT become PRESIDENT-she did  NOT ASCEND.  She HAS the SPIRIT OF JEZEBEL!  Hillary’s LUCIFERIAN WORSHIP is being EXPOSED.  It’s been DISMISSED as FAKE NEWS-THAT is because they’re SCARED!

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REPLY inhisfootsteps That plan is happening now. as of 5/1/2018

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REPLY CLAY Thomas I'VE NEVER HEARD A FIRST LADY SAY A PRAYER, LET ALONE THE APOSTLE'S PRAYER. (JESUS GAVE IT AS AN EXAMPLE TO THE APOSTLES) The Apostles said 'Lord teach us to pray', the Lord said in Luke 11, a model of prayer for the Apostles to follow. A template if you will. 1. To glorify God and praise His Hallowed name 

2.To support and pray for His Kingdom to be reflected on the Earth

 3. To assure us that we will always and every day have the Holy Bible with which to feed us through the Holy Spirit  

4. To forgive us our sins as we confess them to Him with a contrite heart and in turn forgive those who cause us pain and sorrow in our daily lives (for they know not what they do)

 5. God  will not allow us to bear a burden we are not capable of bearing, He knows exactly what we can handle (lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,  the believer will be delivered from the pain and suffering of the world, through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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John Nowakowski The other "Snowdon" was Jullian Assange...

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Jack Frost Hell kill the giant just as David did, with faith. Hallelujah!!!!!

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Lovie Love God continue to bless the USA 🇺🇸 with this President and his family.  TRUMP 2020.

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latafairam A true servant of God.

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ChildOfGod 22 Amen!!! Trump will carry out God's plan!!! Two supreme court Justices and a third retiring in January 2019!!!! Amen! God bless President Trump!

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REPLY Peggy Turner - Blue Marlin Real Estate God has BLESSED our Nation once more with a President after God's own heart.

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REPLY mary trammell Israel Is FOREVER!

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REPLY J Leo We love you Mr. And Mrs. President!!! Thank you for being REAL...being true Patriots. God bless you. MAGA!

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REPLY Jennifer Ward God Bless President and Melania Trump!! Hallelujah!!! Go God!!!

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REPLY jennifer wilson This is a Gold Mine for me.  Thanks you LORD.

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REPLY Sammie Germany That is our beautiful First Lady.

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REPLY patricia belgrave DEAR   GOD- DO NOT LET YOUTUBE TAKE THIS VIDEA DOWN- IF THEY DO- PLEASE PUNISH THEM. AMEN.

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REPLY Amy Manus True,True prophet of GOD!! #ISRAEL IS FOREVER!!!!!!!!!😇👼👏

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REPLY M1M P Wow - the church of God needs to wake up for a slumber

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REPLY JC 1 He was rejected by the Republicans because they said: this man is a child in politics.

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REPLY Ted Nanc

Beautiful prophet of God.........

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REPLY Dan Mefford Absolutely amazing

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REPLY Joseph Bezzi GODBLESS PRESIDENT TRUMP the Glory and Praise to FATHER GOD ALMIGHTY

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[darylmerrill]

Bite-size advice for men in 140 characters or less.

I asked the question on Twitter a few years back, Can you send me your best "guy advice" in 140 characters or less? Here a few of the responses I got back from professional football players, pastors, radio personalities, scholars, authors, leadership gurus, and a bunch regular great guys.

“Our greatest fear as men shouldn't be of failure but in succeeding at things in our marriages and families that don't matter. At the end of the day loving God thru humbly serving our wife and family remains one of the greatest ways to show them Christ.” Shannon Zabroski @shannonzab

“A man is someone who is built for others, not himself. Our nation has too many 20-60yr old boys but a huge shortage of men. A great house has a great man cave in it, a great home has a great man who caves into the needs of his family in it.” Chris Brown @_chris_brown 

“Jesus said make yourself low if you wanna go high. Manhood is all about service. Always look to do things that are below you.” Clint Gresham @Gresh49

Zinzendorf's thoughts: 1) "I have but one passion… It is He, it is He alone." 2) "Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.” David Perkins @DavidPerkins

“Always take responsibility. Work hard wherever you're at. Strive for humility in everything. Don't be afraid to ask for help.” Ryan Huguley @RyanHuguley

“Manhood and leadership are conjoined. Charisma is not a must, however, vision is. Fight to be the foundation of society.” Jasper Lukose @JJLukose

“Value is determined by how many you serve, not how many serve you.” Dan Rockwell @Leadershipfreak

“Keep it in your pants. Seriously.” JUSTIN WISE @JustinWise

“Live with the desired end in mind. Then, as much as it depends on you, intentionally discipline yourself to get there.” Ron Edmondson @RonEdmondson

“As men, our highest duty is living in light of sonship. Identity as a son can only come from revelation of God as a father.” Brandon Cormier @BrandonCormier

“Manhood is synonymous with leadership. Men were created to reflect God’s image to the world. We must embrace the Helpers (Holy Spirit and wife).” Lee Cummings @lee_cummings

“Be a man, not a boy.” Jeff Goins @JeffGoins

“Knowing who God is is the only way of knowing who you are.” Calvin Lindstrom @PCLindstrom

“Pray with your wife. Go see a counselor. Deal with your junk.” Carey Nieuwhof @cnieuwhof

“Sitting quietly in the presence of God is one of the most difficult things for a man to do. It's also one of the most important.” Joshua Becker @joshua_becker

"You are going to disappoint someone, don't let it be your family.” Dave Ferguson @daveferguson

"Never justify your love for inadequacy with the sentiment you set aside for the victim it makes you.” Steve Sisler @stevesisler

“Let Jesus alone be your role model!” Greg Boyd @greg_boyd

“Go to counseling immediately.” Casey Graham @CaseyGraham

“Mark 10:43-45. True greatness is serving others but our serving doesn't save us. We are saved by His serving us on the cross.” C.J. Mahaney @CJMahaney

“Reject passivity - accept responsibility - lead courageously - expect God's reward.” Robert Lewis from Karl Clauson @KarlClauson

“You aren’t a man by fitting the macho stereotype, you're a man if you deal with your junk, not passively, take ownership, think with your head (the real one).” Gregg Giamalva @GreggGiamalva

Luke 10:27 ... “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jim Daly @DalyFocus

“Consistency in following Jesus is a more realistic goal than perfection. Consistency will win you the respect of those around you.” JL Rivera @metanoiajawbone

“For every Christian guy with a "Father Wound." Relax. THE FATHER actually likes you. Do your best, then take a nap”. Larry Osborne @LarryOsborne

“Being a male is a matter of birth...being a man is a matter of choice!” Alan Platt @AlanPlattFC

“Real strength begins when you can freely admit your weakness because God's power is available to the humble man.” Kenny Innes @kennyinnes

“Talk to Him about the experience. Enjoy His grace and insight. Ask for help. Repeat.” Gary Haugen @garyhaugen

“LIVE deliberately. LOVE devotedly. LEAD decisively.” Brian Houston @BrainCHouston 

Colossians 3:19, 23, 24 - “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them��� Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Nathan Merrill @NathanMerrill 

“Equip your guys with good reasons for their faith and train them to deliver their reasons with gentleness and respect.” Hugh Ross @RTB_HRoss

“Always do the responsible thing.” Bobby Schuller @BobbySchuller

“Accept Responsibility. Reject Passivity. Lead Courageously. Live by Faith.” Chris Estrada @Pchrisestrada

“Ps 112:7- He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.” Frank Damazio @frankdamazio

“In a culture that continuously demeans women and their sexuality, Godly masculinity has become profoundly counter-cultural.” Phil Vischer @philvischer

“Protect your integrity. If you have Integrity, people won't forget. If you don't have Integrity, people won't forget. Ps. 78:72” Michael Branson @michaeldbranson

“Be strong. You never know who you are inspiring.” Daryl Merrill @darylmerrill

[margaritas-and-melancholy]

I’ll be your savior and you can be mine (destiel)

Word count: around 4230

Foreword:  Foreword: This is my first EVER fanfic so I apologize if it is a little slow or if there is too much or not enough of something. It starts of pretty normal at the beginning but gets pretty sickly sweet by the end- just warning y’all...

Also its like half 2 in the morning so sorry

Sam threw the newspaper down onto the stained motel table and looked over at Dean cleaning his colt whilst humming Metallica under his breath.

“Hey, I think I found something” Sam said “It looks like our kind of thing”. Dean looked up hardly looking enthusiastic about the prospect of another job.

Him, Sam and Cas had just come from a rather nasty case of a small but powerful witch coven who had been selling revenge potions to unsuspecting clients. Those spells would then turn against the client themselves and after a trail of fairly gruesome deaths the Winchesters had got involved. It had been a simple enough hunt but both boys had got thrown around  badly and even after Cas had healed the two of them Dean could still feel the effects of after hunt exhaustion starting to weigh him down.

“Oh yeah?” Dean asked and sighed with a resigned face “Shoot. What is it”. Sam picked the article back up and skimmed over it.

“Harvey, North Dakota” Sam read “In the last two months, three couples at a marriage counseling retreat ‘Serenity Falls’ have been found dead”.

Dean frowned and shrugged “Why is that our kind of thing? I know a lot of the news is actually monsters but you do know serial killers still exist right Sammy. Humans can be monsters too.”

Sam raised his eyebrows argumentatively “Dean I know. But serial killers don’t normally kill their victims leaving no visible marks on the body and still somehow managing to liquify their heart!”. At this Dean paid attention pulling a face of disgust.

“Liquified?” He repeated. Sam stood up, shrugged his jacket on and started to stuff things back in his bag.

“Yeah” Sam stated “And only the heart, coroner opened up the bodies and it was completely gone...mush” .

Dean grimaced “Ohh that's just nasty”. He also stood up and began throwing his weapons back in his duffle bag. “Okay so we wait for Cas to come back then go”

Soon after that the motel door opened and Cas stepped into the room carrying two large bags of takeout. “I brought the food” he announced to the boys and then turned to look at Dean with a satisfied smile “And I brought pie!”

Dean grinned back at Cas “Awesome!” he said looking at Sam pointedly “He never forgets you know”. This brought on an epic eyeroll from Sam who otherwise ignored Dean and turned to the angel “Cas we found a case, ready in 10?”.

Dean could see Cas smiling proudly behind him and chuckled softly. He thought it was so sweet how his friend was always trying his best to get exactly what Dean asked. Dean remembered back to a bashful Cas telling him the story of when he terrified a store clerk half to death trying to get pie and smiled more.

---

They all gathered their belongings and piled into the Impala settling in for the relatively short three hour drive ahead. Dean immediately turned up the radio jamming in a beat up Zeppelin cassette and starting to sing along in a gruff, off key tone whilst the car sped onto the highway.

Sam groaned “Jesus Dean you need to get new music, at least stop singing...please?!”. Dean grinned in mock offense “What do you mean Sammy, you love my singing”

“No Dean, you love your singing “ Sam retorted “Cas and I really don’t, right Cas?”

Cas shifted uncomfortably in the backseat “I don’t really mind, I quite like it”. This caused Sam to snort and turn away to smirk at the window with a face that said ‘Of course you do’.

The truth was Cas did like Dean's singing. Sure it wasn’t good, or anywhere even near in tune but driving in the car and shouting along to rock music was one of the few times Dean ever seemed relaxed. Cas enjoyed seeing Dean completely peaceful, watching the crinkles around his eyes and frown lines smooth out on his forehead, softened by the music.

He was glad that Dean, with so much hardship and struggle in his life was just able to let go of his fear, anger and self-loathing and Cas would just sit and quietly watch the joy radiating from Dean's face like sunlight for as long as it was there.

When they arrived in Harvey, ND it was around 10pm so instead of going to visit the retreat they decided to park straight at a motel to try to have the first half decent nights sleep in days and plan for the next morning.

They ordered a room with two kings as usual and were so used to the side glances of the staff at 3 men sharing a 2 bed room they didn't even notice the eyebrow raise of the receptionist. Of course they didn't particularly care what the staff thought. It wasn’t as if they were going to be able to explain that Cas was an angel of the Lord and as such didn’t need to sleep.

---

After yet another greasy dinner of cheap burgers, and Sam complaining about the lack of green within their diet, Sam and Cas sat at the small room table with Dean perched on the end of a bed strategizing about how they were going to scope out what had been going on.

“We can’t do the FBI routine Dean” Sam insisted “It's a couples retreat with psychiatrists...that means patient confidentiality” he stressed.

Cas nodded “So then we go undercover at the facility?” he asked unsurely. This was what the boys usually resorted to when they needed to shed the fed suits. He had really been trying to understand the hunter lifestyle and wanted to prove he was an asset to the boys. He was done feeling like dead weight.

Dean frowned at Cas and looked at him pointedly “Cas it's a retreat for couples... you get that right?”.

“Yes Dean” Cas replied simply.

“Well I don’t see any couples here, do you?” Dean asked roughly. He could feel his face getting hot immediately after asking the question and seriously regretted it. He deliberately looked away from Cas and felt his stomach knot for a second imagining what he would respond.

Cas then narrowed his eyes in confusion “No...but that's what ‘going undercover’ means right? Pretending”. Immediately Dean relaxed and gave Cas an easy smile replying

“Yeah sure”

At the same time Dean couldn't quite understand the small pang of disappointment that he felt at Cas’s answer. He shook his head slightly just to himself and put the weird feelings down to exhaustion, why would he be feeling disappointment! It wasn't as if he swung that way and in any case Cas was his closest friend, that would just be weird.

But as Dean looked up to Cas he found the angel staring intensely at him with an indiscernible expression clearly deep in thought and If Dean didn’t know any better, slightly sad.

“Well obviously me and Sammy aren’t gonna do it and so that means you and Sammy will have to go” Dean said as if there really was nothing left to be said. Sam tilted his head to the side and looked at Dean firmly.

“Actually no..” He started “You and Cas need to be the couple here, I’ve got research to be doing for Bobbies case in Minnesota and I’ve got to start digging into the lore to find an explanation for the liquefaction”. Dean opened his mouth to start argueing but Sam cut him off with a smile “Do you want to do the research instead Dean?”

Dean snapped his mouth closed and got up to go to the bathroom grumbling “I swear to God if they make me talk about my feelings I’m going to-”

Sam laughed after Dean rolling his eyes and saw Cas looking a little bit worried. “If Dean really doesn’t want to go with me we can do something else right?” Cas asked looking almost pleadingly at Sam. Inwardly the younger winchester grinned, he wasn’t going to let them get out of this one so easily. It was high time Dean and Cas sorted out the awkward tension that had been growing between them in the last couple of months. Sam was fed up of being caught next to weird silent stares between the two of them.

Sam smiled reassuringly at Cas and brushed off his concern “Don’t worry he doesn't mind, he is just trying to be macho”

Cas nodded slowly only seeming a tiny bit less confused. “Right” he replied and abruptly stood up and went to the window to stare out into the dark parking lot.

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day Sam shook his head in a mix of frustration and amusement. Angels were strange.

---

The next morning Cas and Dean drove to Serenity Falls retreat and parked the Impala outside a high wrought metal fence that hid the massive white building complex inside. As they walked towards the main gate beautifully landscaped gardens came into view with fountains and pastel lawn chairs. The main building itself had probably been a large mansion before it was converted into the retreat and it was beautiful with statues and trailing roses climbing up the walls.

Dean grimaced “I’m going to be sick” He waved his hand in the general direction of the picturesque building “Seriously if we don’t at least get to kill something after this...I’m going to be pissed”.

Cas frowned, he knew Dean well and was already beginning to anticipate how difficult the next weekend here was going to be.

Still, while Cas was here on the job he was determined to enjoy himself, even If he did have to drag Dean kicking and screaming all the way. He imagined Dean felt uncomfortable with pretending to be in a relationship with him but for Cas it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

It had felt like his pretense had been going on for so long that now ironically was his chance to finally be honest with how he felt. 

Ever since he raised Dean from perdition he had felt deeply bonded to what he now very much considered his human. 

Cas watched as Dean fiddled with an intercom on the gate and he let his eyes rest on Dean's bicep where his handprint had been.

When Castiel had first left heaven he didn’t understand what it was he had felt about Dean. He had assumed it was normal for an angel to feel that way about the human he had saved, and had fought a war with. 

But that criteria would also apply to Sam and Cas’s fondness for Sam couldn’t even hope to begin to compare to the strength of emotion he was flooded with every time he even looked at Dean. 

Every time he looked at his hunter he was hit with a new wave of love for Dean; joy at being in his company and pride that Dean trusted him so implicitly. He also was filled with terror, because for a human who seemed so strong and rough, Dean was so so breakable, so vulnerable and easily damaged.

Dean pushed open the gate and held it open to let Cas through. They both walked up the long driveway to the main entrance in silence. Looking at the angel from his peripheral vision Dean saw Cas deep in thought as per usual and he wondered what he was thinking about now.

Entering the lobby the men approached a shiny white desk where a thin blonde was gushing down the phone brightly. Dean looked around the glossy room covered in heart motifs and snorted in disdain.

“May I help you?” Deans judgement was cut short by a loud interlude by the pretty receptionist. Usually this was when Dean would start his conquest on her but he felt no desire to flirt and no attraction even though she was clearly very attractive. Anyway, Dean thought, it would ruin the case if he were to start flirting with her when he was supposed to be Cas’s boyfriend.

“Uhh yeah hi” he replied brightly “The names Winchester, we called this morning, we have an appointment with the head councillor?” As if to validify his words he casually slung an arm around Cas’s shoulders and squeezed him closer.

He nudged Cas who took the cue and also smiled encouragingly at the girl. “Right of course. Well If you would just…” Dean missed most of what she started to say when he felt the solid grasp of Cas’s arm snake around his waist and his hand rest lightly against Dean’s hipbone. He glanced at Cas but he wasn’t looking back and so Dean swallowed hard and shut up.There was something about the ease and comfort of the gesture that meant it wasn't that awful after all.

Dean looked back up at the receptionist who was looking at him expectantly. Damn. “Sorry what?” Cas tapped his free hand on Dean's chest and then pushed a sheet of paper towards him.

“The paperwork honey, your signature” he gently reminded Dean.

“Oh yeah” Dean half laughed shortly still shocked from the effortless way Cas had touched him. Of course Dean knew they were supposed to be acting but was that strictly necessary?

He glanced down and yet again felt the surge of adrenaline rush through him at the fact Cas had written ‘Dean and Castiel Winchester’. Dean wouldn't even begin to admit it but he liked the sound of that, he like it a lot.

He signed the paper and pushed it back to the receptionist who filed it away and got up to lead them to their appointment. Dean looked over Cas’s face and the angel turned to meet his gaze smiling serenely at Dean's subtle eyebrow raise.

Not being able to question Cas’s behavior out loud, Dean simply let himself stare into the depths of Cas’s eyes. He just allows himself to marvel at their perfect tint of blue, letting a fuzzy warmth build up in his chest. Friends could appreciate how the other was good looking Dean thought; he was straight, not blind.

Still Dean broke away from the intense staring match first at the sound of the receptionists piercingly friendly “follow me”. Immediately he felt a cold hollow ache take hold of his chest like a loss for a memory he didn’t have.

Without thinking he slipped his hand into Cas’s as they walked along the corridor feeling his soft skin and warmth next to his own calloused hunter palms. Although not looking directly at him, Dean could still see and feel Cas’s surprise as his full lips parted slightly and his pupils dilated in shock.

The receptionist dropped the two of them off at a doorway at the end of a long corridor marked Dr. Feliciano. The door was open and the girl gestured that they go directly inside.Still keeping hold of Cas’s hand Dean steered him to the two chairs on one side of a long mahogany desk. On the other side was a smart looking woman, probably in her 50s with light grey hair neatly pinned back in a french twist.

Dean sat whilst Cas used his other arm to pull his chair closer to Dean and also sat. Cas then moved forward minutely so that their thighs were just touching and they could feel each others body warmth from the point of contact. Dean felt his muscles jump as if he had been shocked with electricity and tried not to tighten his grip on Cas’s hand in surprise. Instead he smiled broadly at the Doctor opposite them.

“Hi” He nodded at her. And she beamed back at them, her face crinkling at the corners from years of smiling. It was easy to see all of her wrinkles were laughter lines as she gazed tranquilly at the ‘couple’.

“Hello” she spoke, her soft tone matching her gentle appearance. “It's lovely to meet you both”

“Its great to be here” Cas insisted enthusiastically and in the back of his mind Dean couldn't help but agree, sitting stress free with his favorite person - who wasn't his brother of course- and perhaps the heavy presence of love and happiness was rubbing off on him. Dean decided not to care just then, he could do with a bit of zen in his life.

The doctor sat back in her chair and extended her hands. “So, why specifically are you two boys here...what do you want to work on in your relationship”. Dean was not prepared for that, he opened and closed his mouth trying to think of a convincing answer and stared fixedly at Cas.

Thankfully his angel came to the rescue and looking measuredly at Dean replied “Honesty, sharing what we really feel” and glanced back at the doctor who was nodding understandingly.

“That's very common boys, many people find it hard to reveal their true feelings to others or to express just how profound and deep those feeling may be”. Dean just nodded without paying much attention. He was too occupied with what Cas had just said.

It sounded sincere but surely Cas wasn't that good of an actor. He felt a little spark of happiness rise up in his stomach before he squashed it and returned to business mode, there would be time to ask Cas about it later.

“Soo, how did you two meet?” Dr Feliciano asked. Dean half laughed and replied

“He literally saved me from hell”. Both of them smirked at this, they didn’t even have to lie about anything.

She gave them both a sympathetic nod “It is important to have people close to us and in a relationship that we can lean on to help us defeat our demons”

Dean was torn between finding her blind accuracy hilarious and thinking about all the times that he had really needed Cas and Cas had always been there for him, a rock that never left even when it felt like everyone else had deserted him.

He was reminded of something Cas had said long ago “I always come when you call”.

His angel had always been there to raise him up; not only from hell but from his own personal hell in his mind. Huh. His angel. He hadn't noticed that he had been thinking that but he guessed it was true, Cas really was his personal guardian angel. Dean wondered why. There was no apocalypse any more, heaven was stable. Cas could have gone a long time ago but he had stayed.

The doctor sat up and announced “Okay so now we have discussed what you want to work on I will make up a schedule for you both. Take a day off today, enjoy the garden, we also have sports facilities and a restaurant to enjoy.”

---

All three of them started to get up and the doctor herded the men outside the door pressing a piece of paper in Castiel's hand with a room number written on it. “Take this down to reception and give it to Jenny. It's your room. Sessions will start at 11am tomorrow-have a good day boys”

They both smiled and thanked her before heading back down the busy corridor. “It's not exactly a day off though” Dean grunted “We need to find where they keep patient records and soon before it gets too quiet around here”

“Dean, we still need to find our room” Castiel reminded him whilst reaching back to grab Dean's arm in order to stop him getting stuck behind a large group of chattering couples exiting a yoga studio.

“Yeah we do” Dean agreed and licked his lips nervously “And I need to talk to you Cas” he said pulling his arm away from Cas who narrowed his eyes and stared at dean questioningly but said nothing.

They quickly made their way down to the lobby and were guided to the residential wing of the building which was decorated in tasteful neutral tones and calm blues.

“Well thank god” Dean muttered closing the door of their room once they had both entered “At least this is less freakin girly”

“Umm yeah” Cas murmured and Dean turned to see what was preoccupying him. Oh. Of course this was a retreat for couples, so only one bed. But then Dean's brow furrowed, so what? Why would Cas make a big deal about that now since he doesn't even sleep. Unless their dynamic had changed so drastically in one day….

Dean just needed to spit it out. So clenching his fists with the effort of looking Cas directly in the face he began “Cas..” . Cas returned his look with a more guarded glance of his own and stepped closer towards dean, sliding off his trench coat.

Dean huffed out a breath heavily. Before they arrived he and Sam had convinced Cas to change out of his suit and put on jeans instead. They had actually bought his own clothes so the fitted black t-shirt he wore perfectly outlined his lean but defined muscles in his arms and back. Dean had to drop his gaze in order to concentrate repeating in his head “Not gay, stop looking, stop being creepy”.

Whilst repeating his mantra to his shoes Dean hadn't noticed Cas stepping closer to him until he felt a light touch on his arm where his scar used to be and he felt the heat rolling off Cas’s chest warming his own skin. He looked up and all thoughts of personal space evaporated along with his will to resist the temptation to look at Cas.

Standing under the light all the features of Dean's personal savior were thrown into perfect detail. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds and Dean allowed his eyes to roam over Cas’s collarbones, the soft skin of his neck and the sharp angles of his jawline finally sinking into the depths of the blue eyes which seemed to pierce his soul.

Dean cleared his throat and started again “Cas what you said back there” his voice began to waver “about being honest with our feelings, what did you mean?”. The end of the question came out raw and vulnerable.

Cas couldn't believe Dean was letting him get this close, he had suspected perhaps the hunter had reciprocated his feelings but never imagined he would openly share them like this. It was now or never and Cas knew he had to take his change even if it meant rejection and heartbreak.

“I meant I need to be honest with you Dean” He whispered “About my feelings for you”. Cas gently placed his hand on the side of Dean's face molding it to his cheek. In response as if by instinct Dean felt himself lean into Cas, eyes fluttering closed and breathing out hot air across Cas’s palm.

“Dean. I love you.” Cas murmured as he caressed down Dean's cheekbone sliding his fingers across his lips to stop him replying “I love you, and I need you. I need you more than God, more than Heaven, more than my purpose because you are my purpose now. I want to care for you and protect you, I want to grow with you and know that everyday I can wake up and see you next to me”. 

He let his hand fall from Deans face and stared at Dean not bothering to conceal the fire in his eyes, the desperation for Dean to want him back.

Dean felt the loss of Cas’s hand on his face like the rip of a band aid coming off and it hurt. But the pain suddenly made everything snap into focus for the first time in years Dean could see Cas clearly without any of the filters made of excuses he had used.

“I love you too Cas” Dean choked out eyes dampening slightly as the dizzy revelation shook him to the core.

They were not sure who moved first but suddenly they were in each other's arms gripping each other as tight as they could and nuzzling into necks- the type of embrace that would bring comfort and solace after the pain of being separated for so long. Then Cas placed a simple kiss on Dean's lips which turned into many soft and sweet, loving kisses, each one healing the other, making up for every day they had missed out on.

They passed the evening in this way sat on the bed in mostly silence and declarations of commitment to each other. Each gentle kiss was a reminder of how they never had to be alone again. Dean often stopped to repeat “Cas, I love you” or to slide his hands over the smooth hard planes of Cas’s back and stomach as if he were trying to memorize every inch of Cas’s skin.

And when the night came both men simply lay next to each other under the covers legs tangled together with Cas snuggled under Dean's arm resting his head on Dean's chest. He prefered it this way round, not because he was slightly smaller, he had already made his preference for taking control clear, but because this way he could always hear Dean’s heartbeat.

His hunter was so brave and so good, so loving and giving. He was so broken, fragile and delicate. But as long as Cas could hear Dean’s heartbeat he knew his hunter was safe.

Sooo, what do y’all think? This might end up being a part one if I feel like writing more :)

[johnchiarello]

Christian- Muslim dialogue

CHRISTIAN- MUSLIM DIALOGUE

Exodus 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Exodus 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

https://youtu.be/-x4Bz60irJo  Christian- Muslim dialogue

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/1-15-17-christian-muslim-dialogue.zip

https://youtu.be/0i-V7qr7Kbg   Corpus Christi- Questions [I posted the video yesterday- but wanted to tag it to a post- Because I talked about current world issues as well, things that I feel are relevant right now]

ON VIDEO

.Muslim encounter at Kingsville Fire Dept.

.What makes Christianity unique?

.Muslims shared some of the same concerns as many Protestants

.Iconoclast controversy

.Expressions of the Trinity

.The development of the office of Bishop- 5 main cities

.The ‘pre’ renaissance that took place within Islam

.Aquinas responds to Islamic apologists [13the century]

.Ad Fontes

.Florence Italy- the Medici’s

.Gnosticism

.I bought him a Persian bible

.Erasmus- Luther

.Protestant Reformation

.My Muslim friend [at Timons]

.Who gave Bobby a ride?

.Wycliffe- Huss- Coverdale

.Guttenberg came just in time

.Catholic church warned ‘you will have too many splits’.

.They indeed were correct

.I quote from the Quran at the end

PAST TEACHING [Past teaching I did that relates to today’s video- verses below]

https://ccoutreach87.com/islam/

https://ccoutreach87.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

JOHN 6

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

https://youtu.be/--3fJK_dqiU  John 6

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/7-3-16-john-6.zip

GALATIANS [Links]

https://ccoutreach87.com/2016/12/26/galatians-1/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2016/12/30/2nd-samuel-3-homeless-friends/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/02/galatians-2/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/10/galatians-3/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/12/the-seed/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/16/galatians-4/

 ON VIDEO-

.See the quads

.it was a test

. ‘We don’t have enough money for the ministry Jesus’?

.What did Jesus do- multiply the money- or the bread?

.Don’t  leave the crumbs behind

.Nungesser’s bowling alley

.The acid trip

.Manna a sign

.A little Greek stuff

.Zwingli

.Lake Geneva

.Renaissance

.Florence- Italy

.Medici family

.Aquinas

Aristotle

.Greek lexicon

.Proof texting a no no

.Hocus Pocus?

.Fundamentalism

.Aldous Huxley

MY LINKS [verses below]

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/further-talks-on-church-and-ministry/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/house-of-prayer-or-den-of-thieves/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/overview-of-philosophy/

MY LINKS ON JOHN

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/amos-5/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/jesus-christ/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/father-abraham/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/the-flood/  John 3

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/the-well-john-4/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/john-5/

[parts]

The renaissance was the 13-14th century revival of culture and learning that was lost for centuries- It began in Florence Italy.

The catch phrase for it was ‘Ad Fontes’  meaning ‘back to the sources’- both in philosophy- as well as in Christian learning.

This began a revival of studying the Greek New testament again from its original language.

The Catholic Humanist- Desiderius Erasmus [15-16th century] - re introduced the New Testament in the Greek version [He was referred to as a Dutch renaissance Humanist- as well as a Catholic Priest and scholar]

Now- Erasmus was a critic of the Church- like Luther- but chose a ‘middle road’- he did not join the breakaway Protestant Reformers- but chose to stay within the fold of Rome- while speaking out against the abuses he saw.

But his first Greek translation of the New Testament did indeed set a spark- because it allowed the Priests to see the bible in its original language.

And Luther was actually teaching this book of Romans to his students in Germany when the Reformation began.

Today the Catholic Church [as you can see in the official Catechism that I have been posting] does indeed teach the bible as God’s Word.

The divisions between Protestants and Catholics are many- but they did agree that the bible was the Word of God.

Some Protestants do not know this- they think the church holds Tradition higher than the bible.

No- the church does believe that God speaks both thru tradition- and scripture.

They see the tradition of the church as simply another means by which God uses the church [Magisterium] to explain scripture- but the Catholic Church does not elevate tradition over the bible.

And indeed- it was a catholic scholar- Erasmus- who introduced the first Geek version of the New Testament.

NOTE- Erasmus disagreed with Luther on the doctrine of Predestination- which I covered in the last video. Luther was for it- Erasmus was what we would call ‘Free Will’.

In his writings- which were very influential- he wrote in Greek and Latin- the language of the elites.

He did this on purpose- for his target was the influential leaders of the Church.

He rejected offers of money- because he did not want to align himself with any particular movement- so he could be an independent writer with no strings attached.

He had many criticisms of the Catholic Church- and was very influential for the later reforms- those we see at the Council of Trent [Though the church criticized him- they said he ‘Laid the egg that hatched the Reformation’].

He taught that the church/priests/popes should be the servants of the people-

He rejected the idea that the Priests/leaders made up the ‘whole of the church’- but he believed all believers made up the true church.

Erasmus was a firebrand in his own way- rejecting the language that Luther and some of the reformers used [they were vulgar at times]-

Luther respected the works of Erasmus- he thanked Erasmus for debating with him on the nature of Justification by Faith-

He disagreed in the end- but said this debate was at the heart of the gospel- and was glad that Erasmus was willing to engage.

 RENAISSANCE ARTISTS-

The famous renaissance artists- DaVinci- Michelangelo- Raphael- used their artwork as a form of knowledge- the images taught things- they were not just paintings.

DaVinci’s most famous work was his painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican.

It took him 4 years to complete.

The renaissance period- from about the 13/14th century to the 17th- [though there was a sort of Renaissance that took place- yes- in the Islamic world before the European Renaissance] was marked by what we term Humanism.

Today we associate this term with ‘secular Humanism’ which often has a bad connotation- especially among Christians.

But it meant something different back then.

It was a new focus on breaking the limits off of man- and for man to excel in knowledge and skill- and to see man as having value.

There was somewhat of a break away from the church in a sense- in that the church and its teachings were not the only source of wisdom for man.

But- Jesus himself taught that ‘the Sabbath was made for man- not man for the Sabbath’- so- the Humanist spirit- elevating the value of man- does have a Christian basis in my view.

Leonardo daVinci [15/16th century] was what we refer to as a true Renaissance man- meaning his knowledge was in many fields- not just art.

He actually considered himself a sculptor first- then an artist- though he is most famous for his Fresco mentioned above.

Here’s my study on The Reformation-

https://ccoutreach87.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

And my past teaching on the Western intellectual tradition-

https://ccoutreach87.com/western-intellectual-tradition/

 VERSES-

Isaiah 42:19

Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blindas the Lord's servant?

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

2 Corinthians 5:7 [Full Chapter]

(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.

14 But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.

16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water:

[parts]

HISTORY OF EVERYTHING- 3

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Heb. 11:13

https://youtu.be/qJ5mLkAvdbQ  3minute tour

https://youtu.be/VZcQte2_7kU  3 History of everything

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/6-24-16-3-history-of-everything.zip

MY LINKS-

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/history-of-everything-1/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/20/history-of-everything-2/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/romans-updated-2015/

 ON VIDEO-

.Animal shelter

.Brexit

.CNN- what’s  worse- Golf talk- or actual golf?

.See Hahn

.Do you know the way to San Jose- I mean Diego

.Church- world history

.Alexandria Egypt

.Florence Italy

.Renaissance

.Luther and Erasmus

.Wittenberg

.Saint Ann- save me!

.Saint Augustine

.Hippo North Africa

.French Revolution

.Holy Roman Empire

.Anglican Church

.Puritans

.Bloody Mary

.Skewed Polls

. CNN- Martians or Golf?

 Yesterday I wrote on the Brexit- https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/the-well-john-4/  and don’t want to rehash the whole thing again.

But Today’s video goes a bit more in depth on the whole subject.

The history of man- and his desire to have an independent state [country].

From the era of the Reformation https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/protestant-reformation-luther/ - to the Puritans coming to America- to our breaking away from ‘our king’.

Yes- we too were Brits at one time- British colonies to be specific.

And we didn’t like Parliament taxing us- without representation.

So- we didn’t just ‘vote’ to have the Brits off our back- we shot and killed them!

When president Obama sided with Cameron [the British Prime minister] and sort of threatened ‘if you break away- you will be at the back of the line as trading partners’.

This upset the Brits- because it was coming from a country- that broke away from them!

But it is in the nature of man to want his own- independent- country.

In the bible- we see this accomplished- not by might-

Jesus had some men on his team- who were called Zealots.

The wanted a radical revolution- but Jesus said the kingdom was not about physical violence.

But we would gain our ‘independence’ by him going to the Cross for us.

We would then be beholden to no earthly empire- but become strangers and pilgrims in the earth- we would be citizens of a heavenly kingdom.

So yes- all people lean towards independence- and it seems like the Brexit will expand to other EU nations.

Whether that’s a good- or bad thing- time will tell.

But it seemed kind of condescending for the American media- and president- to give them a lecture on how they were a bunch of bigoted rebels- when we continue to celebrate every July 4th.

Get it?

PAST POSTS [verses- news links- below]

THE CROSS

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/1-30-16-devil-went-in.zip

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/1-28-16-the-cross.zip

https://youtu.be/pNQPQXvK3PU The Cross

https://youtu.be/1FiOQ0GVPA0  Fix it

https://youtu.be/Ag22VN7G2IU Hayden case

https://youtu.be/AbKv3FxqiEs Simple man

https://youtu.be/hnGmk0Lr32I  Devil went in

  ON VIDEOS-

Note- I’ve commented on the Hayden case the last few weeks. At the end of this post I pasted some of

[parts]

I have taught in the past how some of our Founding Fathers were influenced- heavily- by Enlightenment thinking.

[parts]

Alexander sought to implement the ideals of his teacher- he wanted to unify the known world under one people/culture- a belief that Aristotle held- a sort of ‘unified theory’ [Einstein] that would seek to bring all learning/knowledge together under one supreme [Divine] principle.

 Alexander’s experiment was called Hellenization- which was the Greek worlds attempt to impose Greek culture/language on all their conquered enemies- and at the same time allow them to hold on to the their own culture too. Alexander did amazingly well at this experiment- at the young age of around 24 he had accomplished most of his mission. The cities were a sort of composite of Greek culture mixed in with their own culture- this is where we get the modern term Cosmopolitan.

 Alexander died young and his kingdom was divided between 4 generals- one of them- Ptolemy- would himself make it into the history books because of his keen intellect.

 The system of cosmology developed under him would last [and work!] until some 17-18 hundred years later when it was overthrown by the Copernican revolution during the time of Copernicus and Galileo.

 Alexander’s generals would do their best to carry on the system of Hellenization- and other nation’s generals would keep the system going even after Greece fell. One of them- Octavian [Roman general] makes it into the history books by another famous name- Julius Caesar.

 Alexander established a great library in the Egyptian city of Alexandria [named after him] and many of the great writings were preserved during this time.

 The writings of Aristotle would be discovered again during the time of Thomas Aquinas [13th century Catholic genius/scholar] and this would lead to Scholasticism [a peculiar school of thought developed/revived under Aquinas] and give rise to the Renaissance.

 Okay- before the birth of Christ- the Jewish people resisted the imposing of Greek culture upon them- you had the very famous resistance under the Jewish Maccabean revolt- where the Jews rose up and fought the wicked ruler Antiochus Epiphanies- and till this day the Jewish people celebrate this victory at Hanukah.

 Eventually Rome would conquer the Greek kingdom and the Jewish people were allowed to keep their culture and temple- yet they were still a people oppressed. Hassidism [getting back to the beginning] developed during this attempt to not lose their Jewish roots- the Pharisees of Jesus day came from this movement.

 Alexander was pretty successful in his attempt to unify language- even though the bible [New Testament] was written by Jewish writers- living under Roman rule- yet the original bible is written in the Greek language.

 Bible scholars till this day study the Greek language to find the truest meaning of the actual words in the bible [I have a Greek Lexicon sitting right in front of me].

 It would take a few centuries before a Latin version appeared on the scene [the great church father- Jerome- would produce the Latin Vulgate].

 Yet it would be the re- discovery and learning of the Greek texts [under men like Erasmus- and the Protestant Reformers] that would lead to the Reformation [16th century] and other movements in church history.

   The Jews had various responses to the empires that ruled over them during various times.

Alexander the Great instituted Hellenization- a sort of cultural compromise over the people he conquered.

They could keep their religious/cultural roots- but would be subservient to Alexander and Greek rule.

Some Jewish people rejected any compromise- we call them the Essenes- they moved out of town- so to speak, and lived in what we refer to as the Qumran community.

This was a few centuries before the time of Christ- and this was where the Dead Seas Scrolls were found in the 20th century.

A Bedouin boy was looking for his goats- threw a rock in a cave right off the Dead Sea- and that’s how we found the scrolls.

The scrolls might have been hidden there by the Essenes-

Now- when my friends asked me about them- I told them that it’s been a while since I read up on any of this- but to the best of my memory the thing that made them significant was the fact that they were very old manuscripts- from the bible- and they backed up what we had had all along.

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(1235) 2ND CORINTHIANS 12- Before I get into a long history discussion with you guys, let’s hit a few verses. Paul says ‘when I was with you, did I gain a profit from you, take advantage of you?’ or ‘when I sent Titus, did he gain a profit from you?’ He then goes on and says the fathers lay up money for the kids, not the other way around. He says he has spent out of his own pocket for them, and he will continue to do so. He says he does all this so people won’t have the excuse ‘he’s just in it for the money’. Notice, Paul himself did not have the common mindset we see in ministry today. Often times financial appeals are made from Paul’s writings in Corinthians, these appeals often say ‘we are not asking for ourselves, but for you’ it is put in a way that says it would be wrong to not take money from people. That in some way not taking an offering would violate scripture. Paul flatly said he did not take money from them for personal use, nor would he. When the modern church uses Paul’s other sayings in this letter to appeal to giving, we need to share ‘the whole counsel of God’ not just a few verses that fit in with what we practice. Now, Paul speaks about being caught up into ‘heaven’ [Gods realm-Paradise] and hearing truths from God that were not lawful for men to speak. He states that God gave him truth that came from Divine revelation. If you skip a few pages over in your bible, you will hit Galatians. In the first chapter he says how after he was converted he did not confer with the other leaders at Jerusalem, but received teaching straight from God. Let’s discuss what revelation is, how we come to know things. The last few centuries of the first millennium of Christian history you had the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ which was a political/religious union of church and state. Under the emperor Charlemagne the territories of the empire were vast. Those who came after him did not have the same control over the regions that were vast. Eventually you had a form of rule arise that was called Feudalism; the sections of the empire that were too far to benefit directly from Rome would simply come under the authority of the local strongman [much like the present dilemma in Afghanistan, I think it’s time to get our boys out of that mess]. People would come under the authority of a ruler and he would lease out land to the citizens and they would benefit from his protection. The citizens were called Vassals and the land was called a Fief. At one point king John of England would do public penance in a disagreement he had with the Pope and all of England would become a Fief under the rule of the Pope. Now, this would eventually lead up to the development of the strong nation states, an independent identifying with your state/region as opposed to being under Rome and the papacy. This type of independence would allow for the 16th century reformation to happen under Luther. If it were not for Frederick the Wise, the regional authority in Germany where Luther lived, he would have never had the protection or freedom to launch his reformation. Luther also had the influence of being a scholar at Wittenberg. Around the 12th-13th centuries you had the first university pop up at the great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The word university simply meant a co-operative effort from two or more people. It applied to many things besides learning. It was also during this time that the church began to develop a system of harmonizing Christian doctrine; she began to do systematic theology. The writings of the Greek philosophers [Aristotle] were rediscovered after centuries of them being hidden, and the great intellectual Saint Thomas Aquinas would wed Aristotle’s ideas with Christian truth. This became known as Scholasticism. Aquinas believed that men could arrive at a true  knowledge of God from pure reason and logic. But man could not know all the truths about God and his nature without ‘special revelation’ [the bible and church tradition]. All Christians did not agree with Aquinas new approach to Christian truth, the very influential bishop Bernard would initially condemn Aquinas over this. Bernard said ‘the faith that believes unto righteousness, believes! It does not doubt’. The Scholastic school taught that the way you arrive at knowledge was thru the continuous questioning and doubting of things until you come to some basic conclusions. These issues would be debated for centuries, and even in the present hour many argue over the issue of Divine revelation versus natural logical reasoning. Tertullian, an early North Afrcian church father, said ‘I believe because it is preposterous, illogical’ he became famous for his saying ‘what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens’ meaning he did not believe that Greek philosophy should have any part with Christian truth. Origen, his contemporary, believed the other way. So the debate rages on. Why talk about this here? Some believers ‘believe’ in a type of knowledge called ‘revelation knowledge’ they mean something different than the historic use of the term. Historically ‘revelation’ meant that which God revealed to us THRU THE BIBLE, not something outside of the bible. For instance, the first canon of scripture put together was by a man called Marcion. His ‘bible’ contained the letters of Paul and parts of :Luke. He believed the revelation God gave Paul was for us today, not the Old Testament or the historical gospels. He was condemned by the church as a heretic. The point being some took Paul’s writings about receiving knowledge from God as an indicator that what God showed Paul was different than what the church got thru the other apostles. In point of fact the things that God revealed to Paul, or to you or me; all truth is consistent, it will not contradict any other part of Gods truth. Paul’s letters are consistent with the gospels, not in contradiction. When believers cling to an idea that their teachers are sharing ‘special revelation’ or a Rhema word that is somehow above the scrutiny of scripture, then they are in dangerous territory. Paul did appeal to his experience with God as a defense of his gospel, but he backed up everything he said with Old Testament scripture. God wasn’t ‘revealing’ things to Paul that were outside of the realm of true knowable ‘truth’. You could examine and test the things Paul was saying, he wasn’t saying ‘because God showed it to me, that’s why I’m correct’. So in today’s church world, we want all the things we learn and believe to be consistent with what the church has believed thru out the centuries. Sure there are always things that are going to be questioned and true reform entails this, but beware of teachers who come to you with ‘revelation knowledge’ or a ‘Rhema word’ that goes against the already revealed word of truth.

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(1427) THE LORD GAVE THE WORD; GREAT WAS THE COMPANY OF THOSE THAT PUBLISHED IT- Psalms 68:11  In the 14th century you had the Oxford scholar, John Wycliffe, challenge the church and publish an English bible that would be understood by the common man. His view of the true church was that all those who believed in Christ comprised the mystical Body of Christ thru out the ages; he held to the same view that many believers would later embrace. His works would eventually influence John Huss, the great Bohemian priest, and Huss too would preach a doctrine of the universal church which transcended institutional boundaries. In the 16th century William Tyndale would take up the charge to get the bible into the hands of the common man; he longed for the day that the simple plowman would know the scriptures as well as the trained clergy; Tyndale would die for the faith [as Huss] but would pray/prophesy that God would touch the heart of the king of England and make his word known. Henry the 8th would eventually place an English bible into every church building thru out his realm. The history of God getting his word into the hands of the common man is great, many divine interventions [or inventions!] came along just at the right time to aid in the efforts. Guttenberg would invent the printing press in the 15th century and Luther’s reformation would take off as his books and tracts would get published by the boat loads [as well as many other great teachers’ stuff- like Erasmus Greek New Testament bible]. The institutional church would resist the free flow of these writings, they feared that the people might teach wrong doctrine, or that the masses might interpret the bible in a wrong way. Were these fears groundless? Not really. Many did mess up in their reading of the bible, and others would start their own sects based on faulty interpretations. But for the most part God was in the business of getting his word out to as many people as possible. I have found over the years that believers have a sort of blind spot when it comes to the ‘sacred’ modes of transmitting the bible. For instance many well meaning men believe that the process of meeting in a building on Sunday, and the bible being preached to as many as you can get to come to the meeting; many feel that this expression [being only one of many] is the actual God ordained way of getting the bible taught to the people. Many who hold to this singular idea, to the point where they feel the doing of this is actually called ‘the local church’ will look down upon other means of getting the word out. The explosion of the internet has truly been the printing press of modern times. Many average believers now have the ability to reach the world from their computers; are their dangers with this process? Sure. Will some teach wrong stuff? As Sarah Palin would say ‘you betcha’. But all in all people should embrace the reality that we live in a day where once again the average saint has the ability to get the word out to the masses with little, or no cost. I don’t want people to get me wrong, going to ‘church’ to hear the sermon is fine [most of the times!] but the bible does not teach the concept that the meeting of believers in buildings on Sunday is actually called ‘the local church’. For sure this is an expression of ‘local church’ it is a way that many believers have come to practice their faith; but it would be wrong to exalt this view of church to the point where we hinder others who are getting the word out in many different ways. In the New Testament, the ‘local churches’ referred to communities of believers who lived in your city/region- the term does not refer exclusively to meeting in a lecture hall environment to hear a lecture! Psalms says God gave the word and great was the company of those that published it; lets rejoice in the fact that we live in a time where a great company of people can ‘publish it’.

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(527)       I was reading on a movement of Christians out of Austin who left the concept of ‘church’ as being the ‘place we go to on Sunday’ and have relocated their families to the lower class areas of town. These are Chinese believers who are seeing ‘church’ as community. I also remember reading an article a few years ago on ‘out of church Christians’. The article spoke on why so many people are ‘leaving church’ and addressed a lot of good things. Later in the article the writer then talked about ‘coming back from the wilderness journey into the church’. He still ‘saw’ church as the Sunday meeting. He misread what God was doing. Those who have left the ‘Sunday church model’ are not ‘in the wilderness’ so to speak. They are seeing ‘church’ as the entire community action that they are involved with. This is much different than simply ‘seeing’ the people who are ‘leaving Sunday church’ as disgruntled or dissatisfied believers. The new paradigm [really not new, it was around for the first few centuries] sees the actual community of people as ‘the church’. So for these to then see ‘going back to the Sunday model’ as coming out from the wilderness is not seeing the heart of the movement. I also read the critics who are against the ‘emergent model’. Some feel that they are giving in to liberal trends in theology [I am sure some are] and are fighting against the community model thinking they are ‘defending the faith’. You don’t have to embrace theological liberalism to see this new way of doing church. The first century Apostles were certainly not theological liberals, but they viewed church as community. I just thought I would share these few thoughts today, hope it helped. NOTE; Another interesting fact about the ‘out of the church building’ movement is that the Lord allowed for there to be a whole new way to communicate this truth thru the internet. During the time of the reformation you recently had the printing press invented by Guttenberg. It’s like the Lord opened up a door of mass communication right at the time of him raising up prophetic voices who would speak into the church at large. There were new groups of believers for the first time publishing all these small articles [Tractarians] and these writings were having a tremendous impact on the church. So today you have the availability of the net to allow the ‘common voices’ to speak into the church at large. This is actually part of the concept of the corporate voice versus the singular one [Pastor]. Many home church movements see the teaching of Paul in Corinthians as telling the church to all have an input, not just one main speaker. This is what is happening thru the net. Many voices are being heard. You then of course have the danger that our Catholic brothers raised during the reformation. The Catholics [some] believed if the bible was translated from Latin into the common language there would be all sorts of interpretations and stuff. Some of this came true! You had certain radical people who started ‘Waco’ [Muenster Prophets? If I remember well] type cults during this time. And it was a result of individuals coming up with their own ‘private’ interpretation of scripture. But the answer wasn’t to stifle the church, but to allow all believers to freely read and see the truth of God, despite the danger of a few going off track. So in the world of ‘being on line’ you can see a real revolution take place, are there possible areas of danger? Sure. But overall the internet has become a ‘printing press’ for the modern reformation! NOTE; another result of the reformation was the fact that many new believers would no longer ‘pay tithes’ into the old system. The instigating factor of the reformation was the abuse of indulgences, a money issue! So likewise today you are also seeing the strong ‘tithe or you are under the curse’ versus ‘give to your brothers in need’ mentality. It is only normal for those dependant on the tithe to fight against this. They see all the good things they want to accomplish, and they realize it can’t be done unless so many people tithe. The new churches are getting away from this. They see the actual concept of all Gods people living every day as ‘the church’ to be the real ‘change factor’ in the world. They don’t view the need for lots of money to come into the institution, they see all the people as the ‘institution’ and therefore the act of releasing them into the harvest will have a greater effect than all the money in the world.

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(594)             . Let me cover some church history. I have had someone argue with me about the history of Islam. Not a Muslim, but a Christian who was saying ‘why do you say Islam started in the 7th century, it started around the 11th’. My answer was ‘Muhammad lived in the 7th century’. Not to hard to see this. So I thought I should cover some history. During the time of the rise of Islam, the Christian church was already dividing from east and west. After Constantine [4th century Roman emperor] consolidated the Roman Empire in the 4th century he set up the capital city of the eastern empire, Constantinople [named after him]. As time progressed the western church would take on the form of Roman Catholicism, the eastern [Constantinople area. Modern day Turkey-Istanbul] would be known as ‘Orthodox’. Though the official split of eastern and western [Catholic-Rome!] churches occurred in 1054 AD, yet the division started years before. The official split is called ‘the great schism’ of the 11th century; it would not be until 500 years later that the church would have her ‘reformation’. The official reason for this split was over a rather silly thing. For centuries the Catholic church had an expression that said ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father’ than they included ‘he proceeds from the father and the Son’. Well the eastern brothers didn’t like Rome telling them what to believe and used this as the official reason to ‘have the schism’. To be honest the divisions were coming for years. After the Roman Empire consolidated under Constantine, he tried to strengthen the eastern territories of his empire and for centuries you had the struggle for which region would be the most influential. At first you had 5 major areas that were divided under 5 main Bishops. As time went on the argument would be ‘which bishop has the most say so’ and it was really a power struggle. Finally Rome said ‘the bishop of Rome is the FIRST AMONG EQUALS [a term that many in the Protestant strain of the discipling movement would later embrace] he holds Peters seat’ and this is really where the divisions started. Eventually Muhammad would rise and Islam would take control of the eastern capital. This later became the reason for the crusades. The Catholic church wanted to regain the territories that she lost in the east. The eastern churches are very much Catholic in many ways. They also hold to a view of Christianity that sees man being ‘joined’ with God and becoming pleasing to God thru Christ’s grace uniting with us and making us like him. A perfectly scriptural view, but a different emphasis from the strong intellectual power that you read about from the western fathers of the church. The Catholic church is noted for her social action in ways that the eastern church is not. So both of these communions have good things to bring to the table. The Orthodox [eastern] churches would not be affected by the major social and political upheavals that took place in the west. The Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment had major impacts on western Christianity, while not affecting the eastern church in the same way. During the 13th- 15th centuries you would have ‘pre reformers’ rise up in the western church. John Wycliffe, the great Catholic Priest who was at the center of learning in France would become known for his translating the scriptures into the common language. Then you have John Huss and John Knox [3 Johns, scripture says 3 fold cords are not easily broken!] who would have their own influence in western Christianity. At this time you had whole movements of believers who would be seen as neither ‘western or eastern’ but restorationist [the restoring of the early practices and beliefs of the church] Peter Waldo would be the Father of the Waldensians and in the 12th century you would have the Albigenses in the south of France. These groups would be looked upon as ‘cults’ [though the term was not used yet] by the traditional church. So you can see how the church has been growing and reforming ever since the first century. Even though we see many divisions that exist till this day, there are strides being made for unity. The eastern and western church are very close to‘re uniting’ once again. While I do not personally hold to the doctrine of the Pope being the occupier of Peter’s seat, I also see him as a Christian man who is striving for unity in Christ’s church. Some believe the whole attempt for outward unity is futile. The more ardent Protestants see it as ‘the one world church of the anti christ’ I reject that language out of hand. Well I hope you got something out of this short overview of world history [real short!].

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Part of the achievements of Constantine was his development of the eastern half of the Roman empire- whose capitol was named after him- Constantinople.

  Over a period of years the early Roman church fought over whose bishop would have more influence- the bishop of Rome [Pope] or the bishop in the east.

 Many bishops in the Catholic Church have disagreed over the influence of one bishop being greater than the others [the idea that all the bishops should have an equal voice at the church councils is called Collegiality].

 This has caused splits within the Catholic Church thru the centuries [the last big one in the 19th century].

 Eventually the early church split- and the Eastern Church separated from Rome.

 The eastern empire [called Byzantium- the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church] officially split in the year 1054.

 Now- in church history we call this the Great Schism- even though the Protestant split which took place in the 16th century was greater in effect.

  Okay- the Protestant reformers split over various issues- I have an entire study on the blog about this.

  But the main issue became what we call justification by faith.

 Over the centuries many good men- and average church goers- lost the main message of the New Testament- which was a message of being saved by the grace of God.

  Many well meaning Christians were struggling to do penance in a way that sort of earned them their salvation thru works.

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ELI’S BOOK

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/11-24-15-elis-book.zip

https://youtu.be/aCvpeqQ33vU

ON VIDEO-

.Why did Paul work to support himself and others?

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VERSES-

2Samuel 1:1 Now it came to pass after the death of Saul, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Amalekites, and David had abode two days in Ziklag;

2Samuel 1:2 It came even to pass on the third day, that, behold, a man came out of the camp from Saul with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head: and so it was, when he came to David, that he fell to the earth, and did obeisance.

2Samuel 1:3 And David said unto him, From whence comest thou? And he said unto him

[parts

VERSES-

John 1:5

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

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   LU9��R

[bligh-lynch]

And It Came To Pass In Those Days

December 23d, 1996, Lynch Mountain, Tempest, West Virginia For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. _________ Carl Sagan, Contact           Throughout his life, Pappy was known by many names, but it was one Christmas Eve that he truly felt he earned the only one that really counted.

           He began as Gustavus Simeon Lynch, but was very soon Gus. His birthname was too grandiose an appellation – it was given to him in gratitude by his father, Simeon, for Gustavus Olafsen, a Minnesotan of Swedish extraction who saved Simeon's life from the debacle onboard the USS San Diego during the Great War. But it proved too highfalutin for the boy who grew into a man.            That boy, Gus, was too often a cutup who disobeyed his Pa and had his hide tanned more times than he could count. He and his delinquent older cousin, Allen, would get drunk on badly-made shine out in the woods – they would play music together under the white oak on the other slope of the low mountain that belonged to their family, and Allen would tell him, hitting his fiddle with his bow gently to make a singular dulcet tone, Gus strumming his banjo to accompany, the old family legend that their ancestor, Patrick Lynch, had planted the great druid as but an acorn to mark his property when he came over from Ireland. Twice, Allen had kissed him passionately when they were both drunk – love, love, careless love – as Sodomites would, making him promise to never tell a soul, and though later in life Gus became concerned with both drink and sin, when he remembered those Summer afternoons underneath the mighty boughs of his family oak with his cousin, his first friend, his first love, all he could do was blush, and sigh, sad for bygone days.            Years later, Gus heard that Allen, who married a girl he didn't love and fathered a child who grew up in the family as Cousin Bobby he didn't want, ended up going crazy and ripping out his own teeth, an eerie repeat of Gus' own father losing his teeth at a young age also.            Hoping to be better than a backwoods moonshiner who did furtive and sinful things, the boy, Gus, became a man, with a new name to match: Private First Class Gus S. Lynch, Company E, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. He and his boyhood friend from Quinwood, Ralph Pomeroy, were shipped off during the Korean Conflict, where they stuck together because their fellows mocked their thick accents and yokel way, slights that he, Gus, never forgot or forgave. But, soon enough, there was that hopeless situation at a place that history would remember as Triangle Hill – Gus was one of the key witnesses to Ralph Pomeroy's dauntless actions that led his friend to be awarded, posthumously, the Medal of Honor.            Then and there – seeing Ralph E. Pomeroy dedicate himself to something so completely larger than himself – Gus determined that he, too, would dedicate himself to something, and he fell on his knees, beseeching the sky above him, to say that he would devote his life to God.            Soon, though he wouldn't care much for it, he became Private First Class Gus S. Lynch, Silver Star Medal, but he scarcely remembered those awful October days in 1952 – his bright blue eyes, remarked on by his superior officers, always blurred by the tears as only men put through fire can understand, and blinded by fire and dust and smoke…as though possessed, he dragged what injured he could, the same men who mocked him for being a hillbilly and who would pointedly ask if he was born in a coalmine or if he wore shoes but whom he swore to protect nonetheless, back to the medic tent.            There were gruesome spectacles that would make any man doubt the sanity of the world, and still a lesser man repulsed by humans for the rest of his life, but Gus was swallowed in humility by his friend's actions and he wanted to somehow be brave himself – not for himself, but for the spirit he saw Ralph Pomeroy summon.            And for these courageous actions – that he never, not once, felt courageous for – he had a Silver Star pinned to his breast by General van Fleet.            When he returned home, honorably discharged back to West Virginia and back to the mountains, he wanted to make good on the promise he had made to the Almighty for saving him in Korea, and so he took the G.I. Bill money and crossed the border to Virginia to attend Bluefield College, where he read the Theology he would need to preach the Good Word and save souls for the Lord.            In time he graduated, and he took still yet another name: Reverend Gus Lynch – he grew the thick, handsome chinstrap beard he would wear for the rest of his life, and, taking inspiration from the travelling preachers that comprised many of his proud ancestors, he rambled up and down the Appalachians in his big white Surburban praising Jesus and baptizing the anointed, down to the river to pray to study on that Good Old Way.            Two fateful things happened as he journeyed from place to place, filling the spiritual needs of the wayward.            The first was in Pennsylvania and not too long after New York, because they happened so close together. There, the people gave him names too, but this time they were bigoted slurs: redneck and hillbilly and inbred, they mocked his accent and his manners and his earnestness, so that Gus found himself rather like Jonah, wishing that these Yankees, like Nineveh, would perish rather than find salvation. He never forgot how those prejudiced Northerners treated him, treated him different, simply because of who he was and where he was born – he had met kind Negros, strong in the Lord and the love of their families, down in the Carolinas, and he knew they had it far worse than he did, but that made him all the more bitter, how man could treat his fellow man, regardless of how he spoke the English tongue, or even the color of his own skin.            This led to the second event: one night at a revival in Summersville, having returned to West Virginia feeling he should go back to put down roots in Tempest – soured forever on the idea of rambling after his experiences up North – he met a beautiful little slip of a girl, dark-headed with soft grey eyes, who had a ready and sarcastic wit.            Her name was Iris – Iris Jones, whose family name had been something else afore her great-granddaddy had renamed them from an unpronounceable jumble of Cumbrian letters for a tiny coal town in McDowell County where the family had all settled many, many years ago.            She was the prettiest thing in the room, with the purple-and-gold silk corsage she wore of her namesake, an iris…Gus' eyes followed her everywhere, finally, he got up the nerve, and he asked her to dance, and soon they got to talking.            "Ye were in Korea?" asked she.

           "I were," answered he. "Served with Ralph Pomeroy."

           "Oh my, he was a hero."

           "He was."

           "If the army had more Pomeroys we'd've won that war."

           Gus' expression turned serious. "We did have an army of Pomeroys – but y'only hear bout the famous ones."

           "What a sad thing ta say – are ye a sad man, Mr. Lynch?"

           "When the occasion calls fer it, my dear."

           "My dear?" She gasped, pretending to be offended. "How forward!"

           "Well then what would ya like me to call ye?" He gave that famous smirk, a crooked half-smile that many people knew him by. "My doe?"            She burst out laughing. "Sly, too! My word, I can scarcely tell what kind o'man y'are – are y'always like this, Mr. Lynch? A man of God but a mystery ta women?"

           "When the occasion calls fer it—" The smirk grew. "My dear."            It was mid-December and the stars outside shone diamondiferous to join with the lavender half-moonlit snow – the congregation gathered together before they dispersed to sing one more hymn:            Go! Tell it on the mountain!            Our Jesus Christ is born!            And as they stood together to sing, Iris put her hand in his.            They took to courting, and soon were married, a fairytale, and they gave each other twenty-four of the happiest years of each others' life – they moved back together to Tempest where Gus became senior pastor of Living Hope Baptist Church.            But it did not begin auspiciously.            When Gus passed his thirty-fifth year, he was beset with toothaches that would not go away, wracked with pain that no medication or herbs would seem to salve. This went on for a week straight, until – one night – and to his horror, he found his eyeteeth, both of them, were being pushed out by something new in their place…when Iris came into their bedroom she flung her hands to her mouth as he turned to her so that she could see: for in his mouth were two, long, sharpened, canine ­fangs.            Gus had always been aware of the morbid stories, the haints and the phantom creatures and the deep, shadowy weirdness that crawled all over Tempest, all over Adkins County – there were family legends for nearly each of the little clans that called this obscure corner of the Greenbrier Valley home, the Barnes and the Lightfoots and his own family, the Lynches…but he never thought that he would be privy, let alone part, of his own ghost story, his own monster-tale.            Now he understood – now he understood the story about Cousin Allen, ripped out his own teeth and had taken to the drink too hard and died pitifully young…now he understood why his own father had a set of ivory chompers rather than what God gave him.            Some malign ancestral curse had curdled in his blood and manifested itself as a hideous mutation of the mouth, something that made him look for all the world like a creature of the woods more than what he was – a man adapted for hunting and timber and subsistence living now reabsorbed by the forest he so loved to be a haint, a creature, bewitched and obscene to the world of men.            At first Iris tried to help by filing his new additions down, blunting them so people would not notice – but horrible to relate, night after night, the things grew back, sharpened themselves to points as a form of growth. Several times they tried this, panicked husband and supportive wife – several times they were thwarted, right back to where they were.            Desperate, and without recourse, they did, together, the only thing they thought left – even though he had not drank in years, Gus procured some fine whiskey from his friend, Ironside Lightfoot, guzzled it down until he was three sheets in the wind, and instructed his wife to take a wrench and do the unthinkable.            When she was done, the teeth kept in a small box under his bed to remind him that this was not some kind of hideous vision sent to him from a Hellish delirium, near-feverish with pain and drink, and his mouth full of bloody cotton gauze, he looked on his wife with tears streaming forth from those uniquely blue eyes, begging her to forgive him for whatever sin he had done that had led him to be changed, however momentarily, into a monster.            "Oh Iris – woman – what ye must think o'me – what kinda man I am—"            "Gustavus Lynch," Iris answered without hesitation, "I know exactly what kinda man y'are."            "N'what—" he was scared to finish the question. "What kinda man that be?"            She said nothing – she just hugged him tight, and reached for his hand, taking it and squeezing it close to her own heart.            They passed this crisis together as husband and wife, and with new teeth, dentures, procured from a dentist down in Roanoke, their life resumed its sunny way.            Never did they talk about it, not once, even when Gus was troubled, year after year on the same day ever since, by quare visions of icy blue streams deep underground…when he would awake, dazed and vulnerable in the dead of night when nightmares seem realest, he would feel for his wife's hand, grasping her fingers into his own to feel grounded and unfraid once again.            When they built their big house on Simeon Lynch's ancestral lands, on the day they knew their hard work was finished, she put her hand in his and squeezed it – when it became apparent she was with child, and told him the news, she took both of his hands and brought them to her belly… when she was in labor and he prayed over her, his heart full of joy and fear, she squeezed his hand again, as hard as she could – when the infant boy, who they named Gustavus after his father and so went through life as Junior, reached manhood and brought home a kind, mousey girl from Wetzel County to introduce as his fiancée, she squeezed his hand once more. They were blessed to have lived so full and fruitful, all those years together.            But it all did not last.            After, soon after, Iris contracted cancer of the breast, and she fell very ill very suddenly, she wasted away and was in great pain, such that there was nothing the doctors in Charleston could do.            On her deathbed, she put her hand in Gus' one last time, and she said to him: "Oh, I finally know what kinda man y'are, Mr. Lynch."            And with his eyes once again blurred with tears as they had been all those years ago in Korea, Gus answered: "N'what kinda man that be – Ms. McComas?"            "Why – yer the man who loves me…"            Then her hand slackened, it fell away – Gus' hand was empty, and she was gone.            Gus knew he would never get over her and indeed he never did, and for years after would regard the day of her death – a clear, azure-skied day in October – as little short of cursed. Every year on her birthday, on the anniversary of their marriage, and to commemorate the day she died, he would pace up the side of his mountain and lay by her graveside, with space for him to be buried beside her when his time came, a bundle of her namesake, amethyst and gold ­­– iris.            One night, a year or two after her passing, driving back to the house that he and Iris had built and which now stood lonely and empty without her in it, Gus parked his Jeep that he had gotten by trading in his old Suburban on the side of a dirt road – he got out, and took a look, on a whim, above him, to the Winter stars.            He had wrestled and grappled with the questions – theologically, spiritually, even psychologically – and still he had come up empty, empty as the indigo spans that one would have to traverse to get from star to star, how to properly mourn, how to properly grieve.            And then he knew.            He just – knew, somehow, a revelation, an epiphany, that she was up there…he knew, somehow, that in the crystalline twinkling of the stars, the same stars that twinkled just the same way the night they met, that she was watching.            And – that she would not want him to be like this, not after all this time, all this wasted energy trying and wishing and praying for things that could no longer be.            So he got back in his car, laid across the steering wheel and wept, one last time, and he let the heavens have her, let her watch over him and never let him go.            Even after this the grief he felt never went away, but it was eased some after Junior had his own son, Gus' grandson, born en caul and destined for either second-sight or greatness or both, named Bligh after a distant patrilineal descendant – he had been too afraid to ask his son about his teeth, if it what happened to Gus had happened to Junior, but he was told by Susan Anne he had needed dentistry to fix some kind of abnormal growth…and knew the unspoken truth.            Too soon, tragedy roared back into his life, another October day, this time grey and rainy, when Junior and his wife, Susan Anne, died in a car crash – Junior's Eldorado had careened off a sharp turn, killing them both, with little Bligh Allen, who had just turned five, miraculously surviving in the backseat.            It was all, all enough for Gus to invoke old Job, and to have his faith, so sure even before his conversion all those years ago, shook so hard he wondered if Hell could hear it: why, why after so many years of faithful service, would God curse him so? Was it not enough to rob from his beloved, for whose touch he pined every day for the rest of his life – now his son, now his daughter-in-law too?            And if I am a Christian,

           I am the least of all—            But this was how Gus would soon become Pappy, the name that stuck at first as a tease and thereafter as how he would be known forever after, even amongst folk in Tempest outside of his own family. his grandson Bligh, started calling him that.            Bligh had always been a strange child – the circumstances of his birth alone were the subject of some comment, not just en caul but having to be delivered in Barnes' veterinary office because of a great and terrible storm that at last blew down that old druid that Gus and Allen would play music under, but this was joined with his oddly quiet nature, as though observing everything around him in a troublingly mature kind of way. He did not speak as other children did – when Archie Lightfoot, the latest scion of that storied family which antedated Gus' own and the son of Gus' friend Ironside had his own son, Andrew, he was, by contrast, a bright and happy child, a chatterbox whose constant babbles exasperated his father…yet Bligh remained uncomfortably quiet.            Then, one day, Junior, passing the peculiar newcomer to Gus to hold, murmured in babytalk: "Go see ya Pappy, go see ya Pappy now—" And Bligh burst out, his first words, when he was safe in Gus' arms: "Pa-pee! Pa-pee!"            Junior was dumbstruck – but Gus, Pappy, was transported with happiness.            He had been his grandson's first word.            But…when Bligh came to live with Gus after his parents died, he did not like it, and made it a point, in his own sullen preschool-age way, to let Gus know he did not like him, throwing monstrous tantrums – howling like a wolf, which Gus would shake his head the hardest at – throwing his toys, refusing to come out of his new room in Gus' house, except to hastily eat and then steal back upstairs. It was bad enough that because of this withdrawn, traumatized behavior at school it was recommended he'd be held back a year, but really it seemed like there was no way, no way at all, for Gus to get through to his grandson, damaged in his young existence by being robbed of his parents.            Weeks turned into months – Gus tried to cope the best he could, Christmastide drew nearer and he did his yearly rituals, cleaning for Baby Jesus' birthday and putting up a fresh, fragrant pine for a Christmas tree, all while his grandson remained dangerously introverted and reclusive.            And then, finally, it occurred to Gus – what had happened to him nearly a decade before, ruminating on how Iris was gone, and what Iris would have wanted, and where Iris still was.            Little Bligh would have to somehow see the same thing.            So, carrying that little hope in his heart that he could fix things that shone distant but clear like the Star of Bethlehem, with the memory of Pappy as the boy's first word, on the eve of Christmas Eve, Gus came into the boy's room, and instructed him in a firm voice to get on something warm, they were going to go outside.            It took some doing – thrice more did he have to be told, and the last time in a loud clear voice that was almost a threat – but eventually little Bligh tumbled down the steps and, his grandfather putting a guiding hand on the small of his back, they came outside. Gus made sure that Bligh followed every step he took, so that he would not get lost – eventually they came down the mountain, a gentle slope that was easy to traverse up and down, and arrived just where Gus needed them to be.            The night was a masterpiece of Appalachian Winter – silent, neither sound nor movement, with a light snow dusting the ground that made a faint crunch beneath the feet. The cold was not biting or unpleasant as there was no wind, so that there was only the rejuvenating crispness that enlivened the nerves and thickened the blood.            They came to a great, ruined, rotting tree – the big druid that his ancestor had planted, where Gus and his cousin would play music together, and where Gus had his first kiss, all those wistful bygone years before.            Gus gently took his grandson's wrist.            "Ya seen this tree here, boy?"            Bligh shook his head – Gus let go, kneeling to his level, pointing.            "This tree here fell the day ye's born…n'yer great-great—" He paused, tittering to himself. "Well let's say a feller ye n'me's both related ta, waaay back when – he planted it!"            A spark of something like recognition seemed to wash away the sulky stubbornness that had possessed the boy's face lo these many weeks.            "Someone – we related ta?" Bligh asked, his voice quiet to match the night.            "S'right," Gus affirmed with a grin. "Our ancestor – our family been here a long, long time, understand."            Bligh nodded, slowly, as though absorbing what his grandfather was telling him.            "I want ya ta see sumthin else, too—"            Using his boot, Pappy kicked part of the hollowed-out trunk of the old druid-tree hard – there, on the inside, as a cluster of phosphorescent vegetation, an unexpected symphony of fulgently radiant light hiding in the tiny cavern of the oaken log.            Bligh recoiled – he had never seen anything like it before in his life.            "Wha – wha?!"            "Walk while ye have the light," Gus pronounced resolutely. "Lest darkness come upon ye – see that there glow?"            Bligh nodded, his eyes wide with amazement.            "That there's foxfire – it shines right here on the Earth sometimes – like the stars shine up in Heaven?"            "H-Heaven?" Bligh asked, his voice suddenly hushed. "Like – where Ma and Pa live now?"            Now it was Gus' turn to nod. "Yes, boy – yes indeed." He swept up his grandson to lift him up so that he could see the stars shining – Heaven – above them.            As he held Bligh up and then set him on his shoulders, he called out in his loud, clear voice that he used at Living Hope:

           "Consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the Moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained!"

           Right as Bligh grabbed hold of Pappy's head to balance, and just Pappy had finished – he sucked in an amazed breath.

           Of course he had seen the stars, and of course he had asked about them, but he had never – so like a little boy – understood, in focus, what infinity meant, what the constellations and asterisms and shapes of the heavens meant, what lay beyond the playroom and the kitchen and the trees and the backyard. 

           And it was the words of King James that made him understand – the Word of the Lord that Pappy knew and practiced and had a bon mot for, sometimes clever and sometimes poignant, since that terrible day in that faraway place of Korea when he had devoted his life to the Good News.

           Bligh's eyes beheld the stars not for the first time, but for the first time that really mattered.            "Them stars up ere, boy – lookin down on us – there's ya Ma n'Pa, up ere – there's ya Grandmamma Iris, who ye never met, but who – who woulda loved ye all the same…"            "They – up there?"            "That's right boy – all of em, watchin over us."            And then grandson murmured the first true words of coherence in months:            "Pappy – I wish they wudn't up yonder – I wish they were here."            "Well me too, boy – me too." He sighed, swallowing back a wave of emotion that came with the words. "But we down here, for the time bein – n'we gotta make the best o'what the Lord God gives us." He took a hand to reach up and stroke his grandson's cheek. "So happens – the Lord God gave me a little boy – a little boy named Bligh."

           A long silence followed, which Gus gently broke:            "Just like em stars bove us shine, boy – n'like the foxfire aneath the log – I'll always shine fer ye. They watch over us up ere – but down here—" He let himself grin, for the first time in he couldn't remember approaching something like inner peace. "Down here – ain't nuthin gonna happen ta ye, long as I'm around – ain't nuthin ever gonna happen ta the boy the Good Lord gave me."

           The Winter skies of West Virginia provide intangible proof in their starry voids of the ancient and the impossible, so that on a clear brumal evening, with one's head tilted up to behold cold Orion in the frigid air that turns the breath into the steamy vocabulary of Fafnir, it seems perfectly feasible that – on a night just like this – the Virgin Mary had a baby boy.

           Go! Tell it on the mountain! O'er the hills and ev-ry-where!

           And there was time enough for Lovecraft's mad spaces, and there was time yet still for Tyson's patient navigations, because there was time enough for little Bligh, already an orphan and doomed to a life against the grains of modernity, to understand the cruelty and the meanness of existence – but now he was wonderstruck, starstruck, at the cosmos that swirled above him in chilled clarity, the very Universe that Pappy's god in wisdom untold had designed and made, and so could he understand that this same cruel, mean place was also, at the very same time, full of kindness and love.            "Pappy?" he heard his grandson whisper.            "Yeah boy?"            "I'm – I – I'm sorry…"

            Now Gus – Pappy – felt that the wall that needed to come down had come down, now he knew that he could raise his grandchild and shelter him and protect him and guide him into manhood and carry on the Lynch name with honor and with pride and respect.

           Now – now Pappy lowered him down so that they were face to face, so that their identical eyes, gelid, frozen-over, but warm in this and all the Winters they would share together, now met.

           He pointed, down the mountain slope, the trees that twinkled with ice, and he whispered: "G'out with joy." He grinned an encouraging, knowing smile. "Be led forth with peace – the mountains –n'the hills shall break forth before ye into singin, and all the trees o'the field shall clap their hands…"

           He hugged his little grandson so tight he knew he would never forget.

           And right then, right that very second – everything was worth it.

           There had been a road here, there had been a journey undertaken, ever since Iris had blushed to see him watching her across the room at that little church in Summersville – ever since he had clutched Ralph's body in Korea and begged for him, screaming, to get up, to wake up – ever since he would join his cousin's melody on the banjo on those fine Summer days.

           They were all gone…but Bligh, his grandson, his blood, his flesh, his true legacy, was here.

           And of all the names, all the titles, all the ways he was or would be looked at – none of them would ever matter as much as the one that this serious, black-haired boy would foist upon him:

           "Pappy," little Bligh said again, and his eyes glimmered and became overfull with tears.

           Gus – Gustavus, Pappy – grinned at him, a full and proud smile, and kissed him gently on the cheek.

           "S'right boy," he whispered, but loud enough that the silent night of the approaching Christmas Eve allowed it to echo across time, space – and names. "I'm yer Pappy."

[darylmerrill]

Bite-size advice for men in 140 characters or less.

In honor of our Men’s Influence Seminar happening at Christian Life THIS Saturday (It’s not too late to join us 8AM-noon.) I asked the question on Twitter, Can you send me your best "guy advice" in 140 characters or less? Here a few of the responses I got back from professional football players, pastors, radio personalities, scholars, authors, leadership gurus, and a bunch regular great guys.

“Our greatest fear as men shouldn't be of failure but in succeeding at things in our marriages and families that don't matter. At the end of the day loving God thru humbly serving our wife and family remains one of the greatest ways to show them Christ.” Shannon Zabroski @shannonzab

“A man is someone who is built for others, not himself. Our nation has too many 20-60yr old boys but a huge shortage of men. A great house has a great man cave in it, a great home has a great man who caves in to the needs of his family in it.” Chris Brown @_chris_brown

“Jesus said make yourself low if you wanna go high. Manhood is all about service. Always look to do things that are below you.” Clint Gresham @Gresh49

Zinzendorf's thoughts: 1) "I have but one passion… It is He, it is He alone." 2) "Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.” David Perkins @DavidPerkins

“Always take responsibility. Work hard wherever you're at. Strive for humility in everything. Don't be afraid to ask for help.” Ryan Huguley @RyanHuguley

“Manhood and leadership are conjoined. Charisma is not a must, however, vision is. Fight to be the foundation of society.” Jasper Lukose @JJLukose

“Value is determined by how many you serve, not how many serve you.” Dan Rockwell @Leadershipfreak

“Keep it in your pants. Seriously.” JUSTIN WISE @JustinWise

“Live with the desired end in mind. Then, as much as it depends on you, intentionally discipline yourself to get there.” Ron Edmondson @RonEdmondson

“As men, our highest duty is living in light of sonship. Identity as a son can only come from revelation of God as a father.” Brandon Cormier @BrandonCormier

“Manhood is synonymous with leadership. Men were created to reflect God’s image to world. We must embrace the Helpers (Holy Spirit and wife).” Lee Cummings @lee_cummings

“Be a man, not a boy.” Jeff Goins @JeffGoins

“Knowing who God is is the only way of knowing who you are.” Calvin Lindstrom @PCLindstrom

“Pray with your wife. Go see a counsellor. Deal with your junk.” Carey Nieuwhof @cnieuwhof

“Sitting quietly in the presence of God is one of the most difficult things for a man to do. It's also one of the most important.” Joshua Becker @joshua_becker

"You are going to disappoint someone, don't let it be your family.” Dave Ferguson @daveferguson

"Never justify your love for inadequacy with the sentiment you set aside for the victim it makes you.” Steve Sisler @stevesisler

“Let Jesus alone be your role model!” Greg Boyd @greg_boyd

“Go to counseling immediately.” Casey Graham @CaseyGraham

“Mark 10:43-45. True greatness is serving others but our serving doesn't save us. We are saved by His serving us on the cross.” C.J. Mahaney @CJMahaney

“Reject passivity - accept responsibility - lead courageously - expect God's reward.” Robert Lewis from Karl Clauson @KarlClauson

“You aren’t man by fitting macho stereotype, you're a man if you deal with your junk, not passively, take ownership, think with your head (the real one).” Gregg Giamalva @GreggGiamalva

Luke 10:27 ... “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jim Daly @DalyFocus

“Consistency in following Jesus is a more realistic goal than perfection. Consistency will win you the respect of those around you.” JL Rivera @metanoiajawbone

“For every Christian guy with a "Father Wound." Relax. THE FATHER actually likes you. Do your best, then take a nap”. Larry Osborne @LarryOsborne

“Being a male is a matter of birth...being a man is a matter of choice!” Alan Platt @AlanPlattFC

“Real strength begins when you can freely admit your weakness, because God's power is available to the humble man.” Kenny Innes @kennyinnes

“Talk to Him about the experience. Enjoy His grace and insight. Ask for help. Repeat.” Gary Haugen @garyhaugen

“LIVE deliberately. LOVE devotedly. LEAD decisively.” Brian Houston @BrainCHouston

Colossians 3:19, 23, 24 - “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them… Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Nathan Merrill @NathanMerrill

“Equip your guys with good reasons for their faith and train them to deliver their reasons with gentleness and respect.” Hugh Ross @RTB_HRoss

“Always do the responsible thing.” Bobby Schuller @BobbySchuller

“Accept Responsibility Reject Passivity Lead Courageously Live by Faith” Chris Estrada @Pchrisestrada

“Ps 112:7- He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.” Frank Damazio @frankdamazio

“In a culture that continuously demeans women and their sexuality, Godly masculinity has become profoundly counter-cultural.” Phil Vischer @philvischer

“Protect your integrity. If you have Integrity, people won't forget. If you don't have Integrity, people won't forget. Ps. 78:72” Michael Branson @michaeldbranson

“Be strong. You never know who you are inspiring.” Daryl Merrill @darylmerrill