[rose1water]

Every blade of grass has an Angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow"

— The Talmud

[sailermoon]

all my life I’ve felt like this guy

[eesirachs]

does the wilderness ever end

no. but then it ends

[beguines]

In Romans 8, one of the most important texts in the New Testament, Paul echoes Exodus's way of relating affliction, its articulation—or lack of it—and salvation. He zeroes in on "groaning" and uses the same Greek word as does the Septuagint in Exodus. After noting the groaning of the nonhuman creation, he continues: "We ourselves . . . groan inwardly while we wait for . . . the redemption of our bodies . . . Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words." The Spirit can inhabit inarticulacy. As you can imagine, I find this immensely comforting.

Poets and theologians, each in their own way, are in the word business. It's a great business; I have certainly loved it my whole life and every day of it. God uses our words—sometimes. But God doesn't depend on them. Neither does our salvation. Some of the most important things in life happen wordlessly.

Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman, Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian

[miaofeng]

[thunderstruck9]

Arnulf Rainer (German, b. 1929), Totalübermalung Rot (Zumalung), 1957. Oil on chipboard, 26 x 40.5 cm.

[coruscanttojerusalem]

Today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, sometimes called "apostle to the apostles" for her being the first witness to the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene is described in Scripture as a woman from whom seven demons were cast out (Mark 16:9, Luke 8:2), who stood by Jesus at the foot of the Cross (Mark 15:40, John 19:25), and who was the first person to whom Jesus appeared after his rising from the dead (John 20:11-18).

I used to be annoyed with the tendency of Church authors to conflate Mary Magdelene, Mary of Bethany (John 12:3, who may also be the woman with the alabaster jar in Matthew 26:7, Mark 14:3, Luke 7:37), and the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). It seemed so unnecessary to me for the Church to ascribe a life of sexual sin or even prostitution to Mary Magdalene without Scriptural evidence.

But it now seems very appropriate that Christians should follow Jesus here in his teachings about mercy. With the emphasis the Church places on virginity, following Christ, it might seem to many that their sexual sins disqualify them from great holiness. As usual, the Catholic Church wants to emphasize two great goods: sexual purity and the restoration of repentance. In ascribing to Mary Magdalene the sexual sins of the other women, perhaps even a past life of prostitution ("tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of heaven before you" Matt 21:31), spiritual writers find both virginity and repentance at the foot of the Cross in Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Even more, the liturgy assigns a passage from the Song of Songs to St. Mary Magdalene's feast day:

"The Bride says: On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves– I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek Him whom my heart loves. I sought him but I did not find him. The watchmen came upon me, as they made their rounds of the city: Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves." (3:1-4b)

The Church here implies the beauty that even misspent love will find its renewal and its purpose. In this interpretation, the love that is in St. Mary Magdalene's heart, the love that she wasted in sin, is still there and finds its true calling in loving Jesus Christ. There is a purpose to that love; personality does not cease when one follows Christ but it finds what it was always meant to do. What is wasted on men is overflows beautifully in Christ. Nothing is lost when it is given back in love to the One who gave it.

[camelcigarette]

i know about your love and about your forgiveness. what shall i do with so much, i, who am so little?

[julia-miraclerat]

Can you believe it! Torn apart by dogs again!

[likeafieldmouse-deactivated2015]

Gustave Caillebotte - The Floor Scrapers (1875-6)

Original on top, later version below

“Despite the effort Caillebotte put into the painting, it was rejected by France’s most prestigious art exhibition, The Salon, in 1875. The depiction of working-class people in their trade, not fully clothed, shocked the jurors and was deemed a ‘vulgar subject matter.’ 

The images of the floor scrapers came to be associated with Degas’s paintings of washerwomen, also presented at the same exhibition and similarly scorned as ‘vulgar’”.

[camelcigarette]

reading the hebrew bible will cure my depression #speakingmytruth

[patronsaintofweepingmothers]

"three sleeping babies" (2008), susan s.

[achesspiece]

in chess the queens can kill each other which is toxic yuri and the kings can never get within a square of each other which is doomed yaoi

[spiritualinspiration2]

[tomb-mold]

tonights gonna feel like a pre-raphaelite idealized reimagining of the medieval world painting

[suffraebb]

[beguines]

I certainly have experienced many moments when my own faith seems to be answered—or, maybe more accurately, fulfilled, a moment of being so replete and consummate that the word "faith" just falls away. How to make a life out of these moments? How to turn this mystical sense of God into a daily faith? How to simply rest in God? These are questions I still struggle to answer.

Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman, Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian