Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️
Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️
It has been a while since a corporation needed shaming fir rushing the holidays. But here it is on December 30th, and my local Wawa has....THUS FUCKING THING.
The amount of shame needed for the C-Suite approving this approaches Cersei Lannister levels. For the Love of God, PLEASE at least try to wait until Mardi Gras or Groundhog's Day. It isn't even New Year's Eve!!!
“I want a faith that is expansive and not exhaustive.” — Dr. Autem Clay
Dr. Clay’s statement challenges the kind of religion that has become more about boundaries than bridges, more about being right than being whole. Expansive faith understands that God is infinite — and so our experience of the Divine should be, too. When your faith is expansive, you start to see God in places you were once taught to avoid: in the artist’s brushstroke, in the activist’s march, in the laughter of children, in the quiet resilience of the brokenhearted.
Expansive faith makes room for questions. It allows doubt to be a doorway instead of a dead end. It teaches that curiosity is not rebellion but reverence — because only those who believe God is big enough to handle their questions dare to ask them.
To live with expansive faith is to reject the lie that holiness and humanity are at odds. It’s to remember that rest is a spiritual discipline, joy is a sacred act, and love is the most powerful form of worship.
Exhaustive faith leaves us spiritually dehydrated; expansive faith fills our cups until they overflow. Exhaustive faith divides; expansive faith connects. Exhaustive faith isolates; expansive faith embraces.
If your faith leaves you feeling smaller, more fearful, and more disconnected from yourself or others, it’s time to ask: Is this faith expanding me or exhausting me?
God never called us to live in spiritual burnout. The call has always been to live abundantly — to have life that flows freely, love that heals deeply, and purpose that grows continually.
So may we all follow Dr. Clay’s wisdom and choose a faith that stretches our compassion, widens our imagination, and deepens our capacity to love.
Because true faith doesn’t drain you — it develops you.
It doesn’t exhaust you — it expands you.
Let’s build faith spaces that expand our capacity for love, justice, and grace — and let go of the versions that leave us gasping for air.
once again thinking about "the lottery" by shirley jackson.
imagine there was a man in the story who went around giving speeches about the importance of the lottery as a tradition. He said the casualties were unfortunate, but also an inevitable price of freedom. Imagine he treated those who sought to end the senseless cycle of violence with condescension and derision, calling them idiotic, naïve, and diseased.
yet when that man was selected for the lottery and stoned to death, everyone mourned him and said how unfair it was that a bright young family man should die so soon. And when people pointed out that this man was killed by a system he adamantly defended and worked to perpetuate, they lost their jobs and were shunned from the community as insensitive and monstrous.
Imagine. Hypothetically. For no particular reason.
Sometimes, even in the end-stage capitalist Hellscape that we live in, one hears of good news from the most unlikely sources. I close tonight with this gem from the wilds of Reddit. Be blessed!
prguitarman
dededos
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
discoholicmusic
kianamaiart
2087
snowghoul
