[camelcigarette]

i'd do anything in the world to be normal

[velvetmasonry]

Paw prints on a 15th-century Flemish manuscript

[havingapoemwithyou]

Concerning that prayer i cannot make by Jane Mead

[downtothemarrow]

La Chimera (2023)

[godmechanic]

We do not even begin to pray unless we are first touched by 'the inner wound of love', which impels us to seek ever more direct and personal experience of Christ, comparable to the relation of married love; once touched by our lover, we can no longer be content with what is mediated of his love in the Church, through 'angels and prophets', but desire to transcend even the freedom and rationality proper to mankind and receive the direct supernatural enlightenment of the Word. Origen gives voice to the longing which has never been quenched in any religious tradition, the passion, not for 'intellectual' ecstasy or even for a mystical absorption, but for direct, palpable assurance and experience of the sweetness of a God who enters into intimacy with his creatures.

rowan williams, the wound of knowledge

[divinum-pacis]

A Christian pilgrim rests her head while praying during Easter Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the site where according to tradition Jesus was crucified and buried, in Jerusalem’s Old City, Sunday, April 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

[exhaled-spirals]

« Tenderness is the art of personifying, of sharing feelings, and thus endlessly discovering similarities. Creating stories means constantly bringing things to life, giving an existence to all the tiny pieces of the world that are represented by human experiences […]. Tenderness personalizes everything to which it relates, making it possible to give it a voice, to give it the space and the time to come into existence, and to be expressed. It is thanks to tenderness that the teapot starts to talk.

Tenderness is the most modest form of love. […] It appears wherever we take a close and careful look at another being, at something that is not our “self”. Tenderness is spontaneous and disinterested; it goes far beyond empathetic fellow feeling. Instead it is the conscious, though perhaps slightly melancholy, common sharing of fate. Tenderness is deep emotional concern about another being, its fragility, its unique nature, and its lack of immunity to suffering and the effects of time. Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself.

Literature is built on tenderness […]. »

— Olga Tokarczuk in her Nobel speech, December 2019

[lindazahra-deactivated20180610]

IRAN 1964 Roland et Sabrina MICHAUD 

[magdaleneanthony]

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, But am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne (1633)

[alexander-james-ink]

Why are you distant, beloved? The veil is torn.

[tanyushenka]

Photography: Baalbek, Lebanon, 1950. Photographer:  Dr. Darrell Crain.

[camelcigarette]

i don't want to be alone anymore

[jesuschristtheprinceofpeace]

Today is a solemn day. Christ has carried His Cross, taken the insults, suffered tremendous pain, and has died. Seemingly all hope is lost. The Man who claimed such riches defeated by wood, nails, and hatred. It is a day to reflect on the cost paid by Christ who laid down His life for us. What a blessing, such grace, from a terrible event. Let us share in the grief of His mother who saw her Son take from her, let us too endure the loss of friendship that Mary felt, let us experience the devastation that disciples did. But we know not to lose to hope, we know what is coming. So in amongst the grief and reflections on the cost of sin, let us stay at the foot of the cross and worship and give praise. Let us stay true to Our Lord on this Good Friday.

[thedireful]

The fear of becoming a saint or the regret of not dying.

[theinwardlight]

“It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them or to improve them; it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.”

— Charles de Foucauld (via theinwardlight)

[brucespringsteencomments]

[soracities]

Town of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, 2000. ph. Bruno Barbey