PSA for Religious Men™
Purely being a man does not qualify you to give women theological guidance.
Cosimo Galluzzi

Origami Around
wallacepolsom

Andulka
RMH

titsay

JBB: An Artblog!
Xuebing Du
noise dept.
No title available
taylor price

tannertan36
One Nice Bug Per Day
No title available
YOU ARE THE REASON
Stranger Things
KIROKAZE
Jules of Nature

blake kathryn

⁂

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@a-certain-life
PSA for Religious Men™
Purely being a man does not qualify you to give women theological guidance.
The best notes written in manuscripts by medieval monks
Colophon: a statement at the end of a book containing the scribe or owner’s name, date of completion, or bitching about how hard it is to write a book in the dark ages
Oh, my hand
The parchment is very hairy
Thank God it will soon be dark
St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing
Now I’ve written the whole thing; for Christ’s sake give me a drink
Oh d fuckin abbot
Massive hangover
Whoever translated these Gospels did a very poor job
Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night
If someone else would like such a handsome book, come and look me up in Paris, across from the Notre Dame cathedral
I shall remember, O Christ, that I am writing of Thee, because I am wrecked today
Do not reproach me concerning the letters, the ink is bad and the parchment scanty and the day is dark
11 golden letters, 8 shilling each; 700 letters with double shafts, 7 shilling for each hundred; and 35 quires of text, each 16 leaves, at 3 shilling each. For such an amount I won’t write again
Here ends the second part of the title work of Brother Thomas Aquinas of the Dominican Order; very long, very verbose; and very tedious for the scribe; thank God, thank God, and again thank God
If anyone take away this book, let him die the death, let him be fried in a pan; let the falling sickness and fever seize him; let him be broken on the wheel, and hanged. Amen
what does oh d fuckin abbot even MEAN
an abbot is the head of a monastery so it just means “fuck my boss” basically, an abbreviation of “O damned fuckin Abbot”. this is what it looks like:
Brasenose College MS 7, f.62v
The Small Forgiveness
Following the Way of Jesus means forgiving those who’ve wronged us. When we’re reminded of this, we usually think of someone who has hurt us deeply. We wonder if it’s ever possible even to want to forgive such a person, let alone actually forgive them.
Maybe we’ve been a victim of sexual abuse. Maybe we’ve been attacked, mistreated, or betrayed. Forgiving such things requires a Big Forgiveness.
But there is also a Small Forgiveness, which can eventually help us get to the Big Forgiveness. The Small Forgiveness can be practiced all day long, every day of the week.
The Small Forgiveness means forgiving reality for not being what we want it to be in any given moment.
It means forgiving the people in the long line at the grocery store. And forgiving the checker who isn’t moving fast enough for you.
It means forgiving the driver stopped ahead of you for not moving the instant the light turns green.
It means forgiving the next door neighbor whose yard isn’t up to your standards. Or the neighbor who goes outside to make loud phone calls.
The Small Forgiveness can be offered to a day that’s too hot or windy or rainy for your comfort. It can be offered to the letter carrier who gets to your mailbox before you can leave a letter there that you want mailed that day.
The Small Forgiveness is all about forgiving life for not being what you want when you want it. Sometimes it’s easier to forgive life this way than to recognize our sense of self-importance or entitlement.
And it is certainly a way to let go of judgment, impatience, frustration, and irritation. To find peace.
It’s even a way to cultivate gratitude—and a sense of humor.
Best of all, a daily practice of the Small Forgiveness can be just the practice we need to try the Big Forgiveness. And to eventually be healed of the grudge, resentment, or hatred that poisons our lives.
mood: st margaret of antioch beating the devil with a hammer
‘am i Having A Brain Problem or Being a Shithead’: a short procrastination checklist
aka why tf am i procrastinating on The Thing (more like a flowchart, actually)
lots of people who have executive function difficulties worry about whether they’re procrastinating on a task out of laziness/simply wanting to be a jerk or mental struggles. this checklist might help you figure out which it is at any given time! (hint: it’s almost never laziness or being a jerk.) (obligatory disclaimer: this is just what works for me! something different might work better for you.)
1) do I honestly intend to start the task despite my lack of success?
yes: it’s a Brain Problem. next question
no: it’s shitty to say one thing & do another. better be honest with myself & anyone expecting me to do the task.
2) am I fed, watered, well-rested, medicated properly, etc?
yes: next question
no: guess what? this is the real next task
3) does the idea of starting the task make me feel scared or anxious?
yes: Anxiety Brain. identify what’s scaring me first.
no: next question
4) do I know how to start the task?
yes: next question
no: ADHD Brain. time to make an order of operations list.
5) do I have everything I need to start the task?
yes: next question
no: ADHD Brain lying to me about the steps again, dangit. first task is ‘gather the materials’.
6) why am i having a hard time switching from my current task to this new task?
i’m having fun doing what i’m doing: it’s okay to have fun doing a thing! if task is time-sensitive, go to next question.
i have to finish doing what i’m doing: might be ADHD brain. can I actually finish the current task or will I get trapped in a cycle? does this task really need to be finished?
the next task will be boring/boring-er than the current task: ADHD brain. re-think the next task. what would make it exciting? what am I looking forward to?
I might not have enough time to complete the task: ADHD brain wants to finish everything it starts. (if task is time-sensitive, go to next question)
i just want to make the person who asked me to do it angry: sounds like anxiety brain trying to punish itself, because I know I’ll be miserable if someone is angry at me. why do i think I deserve punishment?
no, I seriously want to piss them off: okay, i’m being a shithead
7) have I already procrastinated so badly that I now cannot finish the task in time?
yes: ADHD brain is probably caught in a guilt-perfection cycle. since I can’t have the task done on time, i don’t even want to start.
reality check: having part of a thing done is almost always better than none of a thing done. if I can get an extension, having part of it done will help me keep from stalling out until the extension deadline. i’ll feel better if I at least try to finish it.
no, there’s still a chance to finish on time: ADHD brain thinks that I have all the time in the world, but the truth is I don’t.
reality check: if i’m having fun doing what I’m doing, I can keep doing it, but I should probably set a timer & ask someone to check on me to make sure I start doing the task later today.
8) I’ve completed the checklist and still don’t know what’s wrong!
probably wasn’t honest enough with myself. take one more look.
if I’m still mystified, ask a friend to help me talk it out.
hope this helps some of you! YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE DON’T GIVE UP ON YOU
This is…entirely too real lol
Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.
Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together. You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits. Frankentrees.
As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.
On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.
But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:
[source]
I am both amazed and horrified of nature as we all should be
I love how trees are like “fuck it, I’ll deal” at literally everything. Forest fire? Cool, my seeds’ll finally grow. Upside down? Branches, suck, roots, leave. What’s this new branch? Eh, welcome to the tree buddy.
I need to be more like tree
I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.
what kind of professor did these students have that they needed to prove him wrong so badly that they literally dug up a tree, flipped it and put it back in the ground?
Sounds like y’all’ve never heard about the Tree of 40 Fruits. Well, it’s exactly as it sounds. Sam Van Aken, an artist based in New York, decided to try his hand at grafting (e.g. the process by which you attach the branches of a different tree to a host tree).
As artists are inclined to do he decided to push some limits and over the course of a few years he grafted over 40 different fruit onto the host “ including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.”
It has a fruiting period lasting from July to October and this is what it looks like when blossoming.
Shit’s tight yo.
Also we have a group called the Guerrilla Grafters. A group who started in San Fransisco with the goal of grafting fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same type.
Most cities have fruit trees that simply don’t produce fruit because having all these would be a mess and inadvertently providing unregulated food to people comes with a lot of legal risks I suppose. These grafters seem to think otherwise and have taken it upon themselves to try and bring fruit trees back to urban areas.
HOLY SHIT
THE LAST ONE
Solarpunk as fuck!!
Reblogging for “I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.”
Improvise, adapt, overcome
(Via Orthodox America)
Scientists invented fabric that makes electricity from motion and sunlight. To create the fabric, researchers at Georgia Tech wove together solar cell fibers with materials that generate power from movement. It could be used in “tents, curtains, or wearable garments,” meaning we’d virtually never be without power. Source
Y'all are fucking idiots. Clean energy will NEVER be enough to replace the energy we have now. We’d have to tear down DOZENS of forests just to fit enough windmills and solar panels to get even a QUARTER (probably less, tbh) of the energy we can produce now.
Yeah, sure, when they’ve already calculated that a few square miles of panels in the empty ass Arizona desert could power the whole nation. But ok, fracking and the diminishing petroleum supply is worlds better.
Nevermind that windmills are often most efficient off the coast. There they take up no land, impact no trees, don’t pollute the water, and are conveniently located where winds are often strongest anyway.
And solar panels can literally be built into roofs of buildings and in empty areas like deserts. The sun strikes the Earth with the same amount of energy in an hour that our civilization uses in a year.
But yeah, it would be impossible for us to ever have enough energy from clean sources.
Durr hurr technology is bad and I would rather light shit on fire than have clean energy
I can also testify to the Arizona desert being empty ass. And the California desert. And the Nevada desert.
also…no forests were cleared to make space for Denmark’s windmills and yet they regularly produce so much power that it covers almost all of the country’s power needs. Oh, and then there’s the times when the windmills generate 140% of Denmark’s power needs. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/denmark-wind-windfarm-power-exceed-electricity-demand
Friendly reminder that oil pipelines are a scam.
The fact that anyone can believe a limited amount of dinosaur oil is more plentiful and efficient than moving air or fucking sunlight is proof that entire populations can be completely brainwashed.
And don’t forget wave and geothermal power.
The best place to install solar? Parking lots! Here’s the Community Mercantile in LFK:
Not only can it supply almost all the power needed for stores that build these, it also reduces ambient heating from the roasting pavement and keeps cars covered from the elements.
Everyone wins!
The ways we can produce sustainable, renewable energy grow by the year. There is zero reason to keep maintaining oil and natural gas industries!
“The bible has been translated so many times!”
We have the original manuscripts karen. We have our pastors go to seminary to study the original greek/Hebrew linda. Do you think they get their credentials from a cereal box becky.
#op is right and should say it#literally ppl only use that argument when the bible says something they don’t like its ridiculous#you wouldn’t say it about the illiad???#you would say it about friggin greek literature #whats yer deal abt this??
how dare you keep this absolutely stellar commentary in the tags
To my understanding, I thought that we don’t have many of the original manuscripts, but rather many copies of the texts in which we can weed out outlying passages and form a majority consensus of what the text is.
But also, the basis of our faith should not be in if we have the original manuscripts or not, because it is grounded in the work of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel of Christ whom God the Father has and continues to draw His children. There is a peculiar glory in the text which we can see by His power. Once that glory is made known, we cannot deny its truth. But yet some see and do not see, hear yet do not hear. Only God bestows that. Yet we do everything we can to make that glory known.
Christianity is not about evidence, but it is about revelation. People witnessed Christ’s miracles and yet did not believe. This in itself can indicate to us that it is not a guarantee if we show people evidence of Christianity’s truth that people will believe. It is ultimately by revelation, a revealing, that people come into the faith.
Your confusion is based on the use here of “original manuscript.” We do not have any of the autographs, that is, we have no copy of parchment that we can say with certainty was written on by the actual author of the book in question. We don’t have Paul’s verified handwriting anywhere.
We do, however, have literally thousands of manuscripts that were made during the normal useable life span of the autographs. These are copies made during a time and usually in a place when they could be directly compared to the originals. Of the thousands we have, there is so little variation that we can say with certainty what the original manuscript said in about 99% of the text, and nothing crucial to doctrine or practice is contained in the bits up for dispute. Aside from this, we can reconstruct almost the entire NT just from quotes by the first century of church fathers. The point is, we have an abundance of documents that far outstrips any other ancient work and they are far closer in time to the originals than anything else we can verify. We do not have the autographs, but we know what they said with a precision that cannot be matched by any ancient document that goes unquestioned.
This is important. Yes, there is a step of faith between recognizing historical value and trusting in Christ that requires something beyond this argument. But let’s not downplay the role that recognizing historical value has.
And beyond that, the is value in being able to verify the translation of scripture, because there have been and will continue to be times where, either accidentally or deliberately in pursuit of an agenda, it gets changed, subtracted from, or added to by those translating it. It’s important to be able to look back so that when cults, heresy and the like do pop up, you can go back and say “no, here is what was actually written, and here is the change you’ve made to serve your own ends.“
There is a whole field of study, textual criticism, that looks at when, how, and why parts of the Bible have changed from the earliest known manuscripts as well as how disagreements between contemporary early manuscripts were reconciled, how we know what was added and changed, etc.
A good book that is a pretty accessible introduction to textual criticism that covers some of the best-known and best-documented changes in the Bible is Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman. You don’t need any previous knowledge about textual criticism, languages, or scripture to get something out of the book (though some existing knowledge about the Bible is helpful). I read it a few years ago, and it really changes how one approaches reading scripture. You’ll never read a single verse of the Bible without reading the full context and checking the footnotes ever again.
When Catholics get a new name for Confirmation
Reblogging for all this year’s neophytes! Welcome!
Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
WHY AM I FUCKING ROARING WITH LAUGHTER AT THIS
I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money.
“A scam” people are fucking wild.
This happened to me, too. A woman had used WIC for the majority of her stuff (which I say from personal experience is such a long and embarrassing process) and to buy the remainder of her groceries, which included diapers and wipes, she used a card, and it got declined. I bought the other $30 of her groceries because hey, I’ve been there, and now I’m not. She was extremely emotional and began to cry and even hugged me. My mom called me on the drive home and could tell I had been crying myself, asked what was wrong, and when I told her what happened, she berated me for being “duped.” I couldn’t believe she could be so disappointed in one of her children for doing something- nice? Is that the hill you want to die on? Getting mad about people needing groceries?
I once paid for a woman’s bill at the vet…it wasn’t a big one, but she was trying to pay for some medication for her dog, and her card was declined. And her lip started trembling, and she says “I don’t get paid until Tuesday, would he be ok until then?”
So I just told them to add the $20 something onto my bill, and I thought she was going to break down crying right there.
And I don’t care if it was a scam or not. Just do nice things for people sometimes.
Do good recklessly.
I think “Do good recklessly” would be fantastic word art to hang on one’s wall. Artistic people, go!
Story time. I had a sick kid who spent a lot of time in the NICU, in cardiologists offices, and in the ER. I also went into kidney failure shortly after giving birth and began growing weird lumps in places lumps shouldn’t be. At the end of the first two years we had mortgage style medical debt. It was also the perfect opportunity for the economy to freefall and we became a single income household for an uncomfortable period of time.
We may have been eating ramen and on-cor meals every night but I had far too much pride to ask for help.
That Christmas all of our holiday shopping was done at The Dollar Tree. The girls were given $10 to buy things for their favorite people and we made crafts to fill in the gaps. I didn’t want to steal their joy even though I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough gas to get to work the next week. To them ten dollars was $100… to me it was figuring out how to make the grocery budget stretch a little extra.
As we were about to checkout my oldest daughter walked up to me and handed me a stack of gift cards. Confused and concerned she may have pickpocketed someone (she could be shifty at that age) I asked her to tell me where she got them. She pointed to a lady fleeing out of the store and said “she told me to give these to you after she left. She asked me if you were a good mom. I told her you were and she gave me the whole pile”. Needless to say I spent the better part of the next thirty minutes ugly crying in the middle of the dollar store.
The cashier told me she would come in every few days during December and look for a family who seemed like they could use it. There was $300 in gift cards and that was just enough to get some bills caught up with a little extra to spoil the kids.
Be someone’s dollar tree lady and shame on anyone who tries to smother your compassion.
The ancient Celtic virtue of “Gart,” or “openhandedness.” Those who are able help those who need help. Not so we can buy our way into Heaven. Not to set our Karma aright. Not to give ourselves a warm fuzzy feeling. But because it is what an honorable person does.
BLESS THIS POST. BE GOOD RECKLESSLY PEOPLE. 😜
have y’all ever had communion bread that was just so….nasty? like i know we have to suffer as christians, but do we really need to have whole wheat bread as the body of christ?
my old church used hawaiian bread. my standards are high
Some old housemates of mine were Syrian Orthodox. At their church different members of the church took turns baking the bread that would be consecrated for the Eucharist. This was all well and good until one woman baked raisin bread. This led to the memorable occasion of a rather flustered priest, who had not seen the bread until that moment, declaring, “This - except for the raisins - is the Body of Christ.”
EXCEPT FOR THE RAISINS omg
Raisins are just dried grapes though, and wine is his blood so really its like a two in one shampoo & conditioner except with jesus
like a two in one shampoo & conditioner except with jesus
since technically there is no male and female bc we are all one in Jesus Christ…. would that make our collective nipples “god-presenting”? discuss.
lydia do you accept constructive criticism on your posts
no. god herself whispered this post into my ear. defying it would be blasphemous.
I love you all.
I just saw an exit poll that showed that 89% of white evangelicals went for Brian Kemp in Georgia’s gubernatorial election. I want to ask all of them, "Give me specific examples of things in Kemp's platform that are compatible with the teachings of Christ. Cite Bible verses and (for extra credit) defend your choice of translation."
And honestly, if any of you reading this want to answer me, this is NOT a rhetorical question. I genuinely want to know where you’re coming from here.
Originally posted on April 16, 2017
Gardeners should always dress in indescribable glory.
This is actually based on this meme made by a swell pal of mine: