Enter the spirit world
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Enter the spirit world
How it works. (2)
This is why an addiction doesn't just go away even when someone understands that it is killing them. This is what it means to be trapped in a vice. A trapped person may be someone that is trying to get out, but CAN'T. This is how that works.
No vice is intended to be such, but that's what it becomes. It is meant for a good reason, and it tries to satisfy something that the person really does need. The problem is that the means they chose to do so can't deliver what that person expects it to. The addiction does not achieve what it promised, yet always promises that it will. That's how people get stuck in them.
Yet for the person who has nothing that truly satisfies them, or has no way of satisfying the actual need they intended to, this faulty attempt is all they have to work with. They still need that thing, and they aren't wrong for needing it, but they are settling for less than what works based on the fear that there is nothing that can fully work.
The cure begins with just being honest, for nothing less is sufficient. Nothing less.
Be honest with yourself. You cannot heal what yourself until you face what you are. You cannot lend aid to another person until you understand what's happening. For truly, correction without understanding is repulsive for the one that is suffering. Re-read that. (And now read The Death of Ivan Iliych by Dostoevsky ;) )
Be honest. There's so much more waiting beyond that point. If you don't get what's going on, and you avoid all opportunities to learn about it, how do you expect to help the one who needs you? What will you have to offer them? How will you ever get to that point?
No matter how comforting they may be, and how honestly well-intended they are sought after, carnal pleasures are not truly beautiful... no matter how much beauty they contain. This is not because they are ugly, but because they are not sufficient to the full human person.
Every lie contains a partial truth, and the best lies appear very beautiful for this reason. However, they are always a partial beauty, which is why we are drawn to them, yet never fully beautiful, which is how they manage to kill us. Don't accept being numbed when true healing is being offered to you. Please don't give up.
How it works.
This is why an addiction doesn't just go away even when someone understands that it is killing them. This is what it means to be trapped in a vice. A trapped person may be someone that is trying to get out, but CAN'T. This is how that works.
No vice is intended to be such, but that's what it becomes. It is meant for a good reason, and it tries to satisfy something that the person really does need. Those aren't the issue here. The person trapped in them is not evil (DUH) and the things they are addicted to aren't spooky taboo magic things that turn a human being into a monster (They don't.) Vice is evil simply because it boxes a person into a lifestyle that prevents them from realizing all that they could become. The problem is that it can't deliver what that person expects it to. The addiction does not achieve what it promised, yet always promises that it will. That's how people get stuck in them.
Yet for the person who has nothing that truly satisfies them, or has no way of satisfying the actual need they intended to, this faulty attempt is all they have to work with. They still need the same thing, and they aren't wrong for needing it, but they are settling for less than what works based on the fear that there is nothing that can fully work.
The cure begins with just being honest, for nothing less is sufficient. Nothing less.
Be honest with yourself. You cannot heal what yourself until you face what you are. You cannot lend aid to another person until you understand what's happening. For truly, correction without understanding is repulsive for the one that is suffering. Re-read that. (And now read The Death of Ivan Iliych by Dostoevsky ;) )
Be honest. There's so much more waiting beyond that point. If you don't get what's going on, and you avoid all opportunities to learn about it, how do you expect to help the one who needs you? What will you have to offer them? How will you ever get to that point?
No matter how comforting they may be, and how honestly well-intended they are sought after, carnal pleasures are not truly beautiful... no matter how much beauty they contain. This is not because they are ugly, but because they are not sufficient to the full human person.
Every lie contains a partial truth, and the best lies appear very beautiful for this reason. However, they are always a partial beauty, which is why we are drawn to them, yet never fully beautiful, which is how they manage to kill us.
Infographic: 7 simple ways to grow in holiness before noon
The street light keeps these leaves warm so they haven’t fallen out yet.
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It looks like the street light is setting the tree on fire
Jupiter’s moon, Callisto.
Only They Pronounce My Name by Faryn Hughes
Pan’s Labyrinth tribute for Gallery 1988’s Crazy 4 Cult show.
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I am a person. I am alive. i can think, and I can feel. I desire that others and myself will be granted the freedom to be every aspect of what it means to be human, and so I’m willing let go of eternal comfort for eternal life.
"It's important that the misconception that Catholicism is synonymous with ineffective birth control is laid to rest."
"The debate is not between contraception and NFP, it's between contraception and chastity."
Though the question remains: "how am I supposed to show them I love them without sex?"
Chastity makes it so you have to stir up within yourself creative ways to express love. This one form of intimacy comes intuitively natural to us: sexual intimacy. Others may not be so discreet, not so at the forefront of our minds, and thus need to be explored and learned for ourselves... Chastity teaches us these. It does this by giving us the freedom to have time and space to learn them, rather than always prompted into action and preoccupied with the first desire that vies for our attention. It gives us room to accomplish so much more than we could think of with our first inclination. We can be more thoughtful, more purposeful, more real with each action we take. Chastity lets us explore the full spectrum of human love and affection, instead of always going with the first thing we can come up with and taking the depth of our ability to desire unity for granted. It can run far deeper, and run over into areas of our lives beyond physical unity, or that which seems most apparent. We can own it, embrace it, and love people through it, this desire of ours. We can use it as a tool for even greater good, instead of just being pushed around by it out of fear that it cannot be controlled. Have a little more faith in yourself, please? :) http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/122.html Although sexual intercourse will be advertised always as new, interesting, and captivating, "they are trying to make up in techniques what they lack in substance". It is true, that sex is all of these things, but it is not the ONLY thing that has all of these qualities. Thus, sex will never rectify the need to express such intense love for another person in a VARIETY of ways. Sex alone is not variety, although it is promoted to be such by constantly dividing it into parts. It's our human attempt to make it seem infinite by showing infinite divisions, although it still is is not infinite in its external applications. We do not exist in a constant state of sexual intercourse. However, if we were to still rest on the faith that sex is universal in its nature, we either shut up our feelings of affection into this one area of life, as if were the only area that mattered, and thus never allow ourselves to be fully alive with love at all times... but only when we are having sex. Or, we try to bring sex into multiple arenas of life, so that we can feel this way without finding new varieties of expression to match other situations... and thus compromise our freedom to explore the vastness of human emotion.
Does this sounds like our society? Maybe just a bit? *rolls eyes* Your ability to be chaste always, in your sex and in your abstinence, is a testimony to the fact that there is more to love than sex. That there is more to intimacy than physical proximity, and that there is more to unity than sexual encounters. Which we all profess to be true, as seen in the ideas and dreams we surround ourselves with, but we do not match our lifestyles to show it while we are awake and living it out. Thus, we end up fighting to preserve something in the world we don't even preserve in ourselves.
And then we get sad when it doesn't seem to work and when we encounter seemingly insurmountable logical absurdities in our moral divergences with other people. And then we give up, or we fail in our high dreams by trying to achieve them with base and irrational means, contributing our part in the demise of others and the propagation of unequal societies. (Thx Darwin <3) Accomplishing nothing because we lack the space and time to do so when we follow only what we are first presented with. (Thx again, Darwin) Going with our first inclination as the only thing possible, and then get confused by people who see more possibilities.
Let's rectify those absurdities right now, so that we know what to do from here on out:
Sex is a form of unity, rather than unity a form of sex. Sex is an expression of love, rather than love an expression of sex. Furthermore, you can love completely and fully without ever having sex, either with a specific person or ever in your life (if that were the condition you were in) simply because sex is not a requirement for full and complete love to exist.
Love is far bigger, and unity far more diverse. Chastity is your testimony to this. It demonstrates to others that you are governed by more than what is at the forefront of your mind. Unity of all of you, no matter what situation you are in. You may love just as purely and intensely in ALL of them.
Said in another way, you are free from ever being forced to give up any bit of your love for the other. It may burn always, forever, with no logical absurdity to extinguish your efforts as a rational. human. being. That is why purity is so beautiful, chastity so necessary, and marriage so sacred.
As far as couples and sex is concerned: Chastity, and periods of respectful and thoughtful abstinence, "keep you from taking your [spouse] for granted, because [they're] not always accessible to you. It helps [both of you] to be better lovers, because not every kiss needs to lead to the bedroom, that [you] can learn other forms of expressing intimacy." You can love without sex. Not all sexual intercourse is an expression of love, and not all sex is loving. Love can exist in its entirety without sex, because sex is only one means of expressing love. Practicing chastity makes this apparent.
Sex is a beautiful and clear expression prompted by a certain situation. Clear, and rational, and thus able to reflect the larger pattern in its outward form. Just as chastity allows us to do when we are in other situations.
Could you imagine the stability of a marriage that knows so many ways of expressing love that are not sexual?
Or a world that didn't rely on sex to show each other how much they love each other? Maybe we'd be unified as a species, like that beautiful and strong marriage. One that was bonded by love in both instances of sex and instances of abstinence, always chaste. We would have true variety in human endeavors, and allow people to flourish just as they are. #vocations
Maybe we'd actually get somewhere instead of going around in circles. And we wouldn't sacrifice the lives of other people to satisfy our own selfishness.
Have we forgotten that sex is not something universally experienced by all people? Yet individuality, humanity, and virginity are? We are born in a state of chastity, and as virgins, and we go on to have sex later in life. We don't have to give up our chastity when we experience changes in our marital state, because we had it from the very beginning of our individual person. We can let our purity and our individuality guide us, and thus our chastity too. Because it all comes from the same source. We can be exactly who we are, and we never have to change or give up who we were born as.
Not everyone will go on to have sex, and not everyone needs to (Thx again, Darwin) so stop basing your morality in something that cannot apply to all people by its limited nature.
No matter how many ways you divide it, re-categorize it, and define it, it will never become universal. It will just be more defined.
And you lose the chance to define the rest of the universe you live in, because you are far too preoccupied. #lovewins #beauty #love #chastity #liberation #sacrificallove Who's to say someone else won't take that opportunity of your weak will to keep you that way? If our society never focuses on anything else... maybe we're being kept that way. Weak and preoccupied and busy and unaware, and we're smiling and going along with it as we are lead to our grave.
Shutting ourselves out of our rational mind, out of our creativity and imagination, and keeping far away from any opportunity to make the world a better place for someone being crushed under our opulence,
Because it FEELS GOOD. And we would sacrifice freedom before we'd sacrifice comfort. Yet we'd be willing to sacrifice the freedom and comfort of someone else to keep our own.
SERIOUSLY?
If you gave me the choice between abstinence and sexual love as our society presents it, I'd choose abstinence every time. Because the infinite inward divisions to make up for a lack of outward growth may contain a partial good, but are simply not good enough.
I'd rather stay completely me as an individual and as a singly complete person than be partially in a relationship.
I'd rather be a clear sign of human freedom as a single person than sacrifice this for the comfort of a relationship. How could I bear the thought of keeping others trapped and miserable because they’ve never been shown a way out... if I chose to stay inside even though I see it?
I'd rather love in a way that doesn't compromise my ability and desire for logic than give away my ability to reason.... to sacrifice the tools I need to clearly approach and proclaim the universe for the fleeting comfort of my emotions.
I want both, in a singular system. I want them to be united in me instead of assuming only one may be the real me. I want the the full spectrum of what it means to be human, and so I’m willing let go of eternal comfort for eternal life.
And so I will love in a way that permits the existence of both, as parts of one system instead of two debating realities I must fight between or give away.
Chastity.
http://www.catholicmarriageprep.com/green-sex
When someone tells me birth control and abortion are not ideal, but are still necessary because people simply can't be expected to be chaste... "the sound of settling". Are you saying that we should just bite the bullet and deal with a substandard solution to get by because people can't handle the real solution? Really, is that what you consider an acceptable mindset to make decisions? And you expect your efforts to be making the world a better place? Such rationalization. Wow. And you still wonder why people are depressed and sad all the time? You are telling me that your only reason for supporting birth control and abortions is not because they are our best option, but because people can't possibly expected to do what's right all the time. (And some might say: Stop making it the woman's fault! What about cases where she did nothing wrong, but someone did wrong to her? These services should be acceptable then!) (But don't we expect men to do what's right as well? A sub-standard action is acceptable for when men hurt other people? Are you sexist in your expectation, and only caring when that expectation to do the right thing no matter the cost falls on the women? Even when it's not her fault that expectation still stands, because men are just as accountable.) (And people freak out at the very thought of that, so they say: let's make neither one accountable. Abortion and birth control should be acceptable all the time, because we can't possibly hold men to such a standard, so we shouldn't hold it to women either. And then they turn around and complain about the intrinsic misogyny in our society... even though their decision was prompted by not wanting to hold men to the same ethical standard as women. So they brought everyone down. (And they call it equality based on the way it looks, not on the way it was created. And they point out how superficial American standard of beauty are as if they didn't contribute to it.) Similarly, you treat others as if they can't handle such an expectation because they are weak. And instead of finding ways to make them strong, you You regard them as inferior to yourself and patronize them. You don't expect them to be able to make the same contribution as other people. You lower your standard for them, because you don't have faith that they can meet it just because of who they are. You didn't even give them the chance, and then you turn around and call out people that don't treat mental illness as a real issue in someone's life. And you genuinely wonder why people have them, never questioning your contribution so deeply ingrained in the way you regard them through your worldview. And you get so angry with our justice and education systems and our embedded racial and ethnic social stigmas for THE VERY SAME THING. A band-aid, a pill, a bottle of formula, when all they needed was real healing. A quick, sub-standard fix because no one has the time to care. A snake for a fish and a stone for a loaf of bread. It is giving up on someone. Sending them out to the hall because they are distracting the other kids from learning. They're education doesn't matter. They just need to be managed so they don't hurt anyone. It's when no one ever expects anything out of them. No one regards them as having a contribution that matters, just as an impulse to control for the greater good of everyone. That person can be classified as less important so that everyone else can be free from a responsibility to care about them. They have too much impulse or intelligence or emotion, so they must be reduced rather than expected to channel it well. And then when they have too little of what we consider a valid contribution left, let them kill themselves with "dignity". You say that you adjust the standard of human morals so that everyone can reach it, but you really just want to feel as if you have always surpassed it. You make it lower for them, so that you are above it. Because you're just so special, you're above the moral capacity of all humans. You are a hypocrite. You assume a parental role in someone's life so that you can feel superior to them, keep them weak so that they need you, lord your power and control over them (economically, emotionally, psychologically, whatever). You want them to stay a child, to never grow up and be an adult on their own. You tell them you are helping them get better, which is true, but only to a certain point. You never fully heal them, because then they wouldn't need you anymore. You don't go so far as genuinely wanting them to succeed, because their failure is how you establish your own self-esteem. You need them to fail to feel needed. Well then I guess war isn't ideal, but we are simply too weak as a species to refrain from it. Plus, it creates jobs and stimulates the economy. And the porn and drug industries too. We condemn the pain and suffering they cause, even though we have to keep enough people interested to keep buying their services. And the crime industry, because someone needs a job, so we have to make enough criminals to catch. And we'll change what it means to be a criminal so we can catch innocent people when no one's doing something wrong. And we know consumerism is killing the planet, but we need to always need something to buy because it's good for growing the economy! Quality is low and conditions are bad for people that make things, but that's what we've sacrificed for this greater good. What makes it greater, I wonder? Likewise, too many people and not enough food, so we have to kill some of them and sterilize others from making them instead of controlling ourselves. Though let us remember that we are far too civilized to rip the hearts out of innocent people on an altar to a Mayan god. And we are far too enlightened to make systematic purges in society to reduce social and economic stress. We just settle for similar practices because we don't have any faith in ourselves to do the right thing. And we nap peacefully in the glow of our perceived self-righteousness while other people burn in agony. Apparently chastity is just too high an expectation for others, and ourselves, yet we expect that those same people will be able to handle world peace? And we get UPSET when people can't handle it?! How do you propose we become strong? You don't. You just complain that we are weak. If you can't even control yourselves, nor make any effort to try, why should you condemn a person when they lose control in another way? You settle for something sub standard, because you don't want to have to deal with your own hypocrisy. You don't have faith in even yourself (and so you project it onto other people). And everyone settles in a different way, so they appear to be motivated by different things. And we have wars.
When someone tells me birth control and abortion are not ideal, but are still necessary because people simply can't be expected to be chaste... "the sound of settling". Are you saying that we should just bite the bullet and deal with a substandard solution to get by because people can't handle the real solution? Really, is that what you consider an acceptable mindset to make decisions? And you expect your efforts to be making the world a better place? Such rationalization. Wow. And you still wonder why people are depressed and sad all the time? You are telling me that your only reason for supporting birth control and abortions is not because they are our best option, but because people can't possibly expected to do what's right all the time. (And some might say: Stop making it the woman's fault! What about cases where she did nothing wrong, but someone did wrong to her? These services should be acceptable then!) (But don't we expect men to do what's right as well? A sub-standard action is acceptable for when men hurt other people? Are you sexist in your expectation, and only caring when that expectation to do the right thing no matter the cost falls on the women? Even when it's not her fault that expectation still stands, because men are just as accountable.) (And people freak out at the very thought of that, so they say: let's make neither one accountable. Abortion and birth control should be acceptable all the time, because we can't possibly hold men to such a standard, so we shouldn't hold it to women either. And then they turn around and complain about the intrinsic misogyny in our society... even though their decision was prompted by not wanting to hold men to the same ethical standard as women. So they brought everyone down. (And they call it equality based on the way it looks, not on the way it was created. And they point out how superficial American standard of beauty are as if they didn't contribute to it.) Similarly, you treat others as if they can't handle such an expectation because they are weak. And instead of finding ways to make them strong, you You regard them as inferior to yourself and patronize them. You don't expect them to be able to make the same contribution as other people. You lower your standard for them, because you don't have faith that they can meet it just because of who they are. You didn't even give them the chance, and then you turn around and call out people that don't treat mental illness as a real issue in someone's life. And you genuinely wonder why people have them, never questioning your contribution so deeply ingrained in the way you regard them through your worldview. And you get so angry with our justice and education systems and our embedded racial and ethnic social stigmas for THE VERY SAME THING. A band-aid, a pill, a bottle of formula, when all they needed was real healing. A quick, sub-standard fix because no one has the time to care. A snake for a fish and a stone for a loaf of bread. It is giving up on someone. Sending them out to the hall because they are distracting the other kids from learning. They're education doesn't matter. They just need to be managed so they don't hurt anyone. It's when no one ever expects anything out of them. No one regards them as having a contribution that matters, just as an impulse to control for the greater good of everyone. That person can be classified as less important so that everyone else can be free from a responsibility to care about them. They have too much impulse or intelligence or emotion, so they must be reduced rather than expected to channel it well. And then when they have too little of what we consider a valid contribution left, let them kill themselves with "dignity". You say that you adjust the standard of human morals so that everyone can reach it, but you really just want to feel as if you have always surpassed it. You make it lower for them, so that you are above it. Because you're just so special, you're above the moral capacity of all humans. You are a hypocrite. You assume a parental role in someone's life so that you can feel superior to them, keep them weak so that they need you, lord your power and control over them (economically, emotionally, psychologically, whatever). You want them to stay a child, to never grow up and be an adult on their own. You tell them you are helping them get better, which is true, but only to a certain point. You never fully heal them, because then they wouldn't need you anymore. You don't go so far as genuinely wanting them to succeed, because their failure is how you establish your own self-esteem. You need them to fail to feel needed. Well then I guess war isn't ideal, but we are simply too weak as a species to refrain from it. Plus, it creates jobs and stimulates the economy. And the porn and drug industries too. We condemn the pain and suffering they cause, even though we have to keep enough people interested to keep buying their services. And the crime industry, because someone needs a job, so we have to make enough criminals to catch. And we'll change what it means to be a criminal so we can catch innocent people when no one's doing something wrong. And we know consumerism is killing the planet, but we need to always need something to buy because it's good for growing the economy! Quality is low and conditions are bad for people that make things, but that's what we've sacrificed for this greater good. What makes it greater, I wonder? Likewise, too many people and not enough food, so we have to kill some of them and sterilize others from making them instead of controlling ourselves. Though let us remember that we are far too civilized to rip the hearts out of innocent people on an altar to a Mayan god. And we are far too enlightened to make systematic purges in society to reduce social and economic stress. We just settle for similar practices because we don't have any faith in ourselves to do the right thing. And we nap peacefully in the glow of our perceived self-righteousness while other people burn in agony. Apparently chastity is just too high an expectation for others, and ourselves, yet we expect that those same people will be able to handle world peace? And we get UPSET when people can't handle it?! How do you propose we become strong? You don't. You just complain that we are weak. If you can't even control yourselves, nor make any effort to try, why should you condemn a person when they lose control in another way? You settle for something sub standard, because you don't want to have to deal with your own hypocrisy. You don't have faith in even yourself (and so you project it onto other people). And everyone settles in a different way, so they appear to be motivated by different things. And we have wars.
We adore you O Christ and we praise you...
"because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world."
It is by bearing this burden, the one that everyone else found their own way to escape from, that God offered redemption to the world. It was through his bearing of a burden he did not deserve that he redeemed us.
God was lashed. God was stripped naked. God was humiliated and killed by people that believe in God. Can such a thought be beautiful to those who love God? It is horrifying to consider such atrocity done to our Beloved. But this disgust is a product of human vanity. Of denial. Of such efforts to escape the pains of love.
For God is present even when he is being lashed, even when he is stripped naked, even when he is killed by those who believe in him, is he not? To deny the presence of beauty in such a situation is to deny the presence of God. To deny the crucifixion of God is to deny God himself. Verily, is it that God of Love cannot allow such things, or is it that we do not want him to allow such things? Yet our insisting that God not die for us may be an attempt to fight for beauty, but only to the extent that your human perspective allots to you. And this is simply not good enough. It betrays the fact that you fear beauty will go away if you can't see or feel it... and thus you rely on your own eyes to see beauty. You sacrifice the infinite reach of love for the boundary of your senses. When confronted with the idea that everything we truly love, that all that is beautiful in the world might be spat on and mocked, do we love it less? Does abuse to something beautiful make it beautiful no longer? If we cannot bear our God being abused, is it because we love him for who he is or for what we want him to be? And when we say "Anywhere but there, anything but this, my Lord!" what makes us different from those that escape love in other ways? That hide their soul in other things? That bury their talents and their genuine self out of fear of failure or weakness? Do we doubt the strength of God in situations we only know weakness? Cannot God be strong in the ways we are weak, and give us his strength when it is not our own? You say that you cannot believe such abject and undeserved suffering to be love because you don't see a logical reason for doing likewise. This is a product of human vanity: to strive for goodness only to the extent of human logic. Verily, why should you accept undeserved suffering if you are measuring it upon what it may gain for you? Vanity. It is the beginning of the end. And thus, you have no way to hang on to beauty when the end comes... at the harvesting of the world when your gain cannot measure anything, in the hour when the light source you relied on to look for goodness fades away and the only light you have left to go by is that of God. You are blinded because your eyes have not adjusted to such a light. You are avoiding the end of this measure because it is what you know, it is the end of what you can know all by yourself. This is the very place where life and communion with God begins, when he can give his life to you. To avoid this betrays that you are afraid of following in footsteps of our God, and of living in union with him. It produces two scenarios: You may still love God, but you don't want to have to love like this, so you deny these steps to be God's. Or you hate God because you don't want to love like this, the way he does, so you deny God altogether. Denial. Escapism. Although everything stays. Everything comes back around. Everything returns once again, even the things you deny. Even the things you mock and spit on and kill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNnfuvC1LlU So, let's go back to this idea of redemption. Return. Returning to God. Redemption not by destroying our crosses, for that is what we did ourselves to run from love the first time. Rather, God's offers us redemption by bearing our each and every failure to rise to our crosses upon his own. He takes the burden he didn't deserve, to settle a debt he didn't owe. Does this mean we have no talent to offer, no reason to give of ourselves? Of course not. He redeemed us, lifting the crushing debt that paralyses us from moving forward, one that we had no way to lift ourselves out of, so that we could have the freedom to run to him once again. Through example, through the cross, through a life guided by love alone no matter what the pain, God's giving us a way to bear it ourselves. God loved us through every divine way of his nature, and also loved like us through the weak and limited tools we have as people… to show us how to love with what we have to work with. No matter what we have, no matter what we are given, no matter what other people give to us. Through this redeeming act, we are granted the way to always try again rather than a reason to never need to try. We have a means for never giving up the hope within us, no matter how cursed and ugly a life we are given. Even when all we have is isolation and squalor and pain and dejection and lost friends. Even when all we can see is filth, when we are steeped in desolate misery. When we cannot escape the horrors of our minds, when nothing is beautiful. Even the very filth can show us the beauty of God because of his willingness to endure filth for us. And so we don't have to give up on hope and faith and love, we don't have to remain a slave to our compulsion to avoid things (and people) that appear horrific and dirty and cursed to our human eyes, we don't have to walk away sad and disappointed even when we sing to the world from our very souls and all we are given is filth and sorrow and disappointment in return. And maybe to be like God, in his image, is to bear others likewise. To die for others every day even though they didn't give us any reason to deserve it. To make sacrifices for them because we love them, not because we are socially compelled to. To offer up our loneliness and others' misunderstandings of us and frustration at our own weakness as fuel for the fire that softens our hearts and purifies our intentions. Nothing can force us to give up, no matter how hard we sweat, no matter how painfully we bleed. Because we carry God even within ourselves, and we commune in this living by the very gift of his life to us. Death has no compulsion over us, and the devil has no power against the name of God. Though we may argue with him to stay mystical and far off because we are afraid of the implications his sacrificial love has in our own lives, he comes right to us and pours himself out on us. He washes us so that we aren't forced to cover up our capacity for filth with clothes to feel beautiful. We can stand before him in our nakedness, bearing all of what we are to him. And we can wash the beaten and broken world with our sweat, and dry it with the words of love breathed upon our lips, Our breath exhaled becomes not the barren stench of empty misery but a sweet perfume of God's presence. For no matter where we find ourselves, we still nurture the fruit of love in the garden of our soul, in our very core. Through his redemption our sweat, our blood, or breath, the nakedness of our very soul can proclaim the presence of God. So that God clothes us from the inside out. And we bleed not in vain upon a desolate and dejected world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phGDR9y912s