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@fiddlespoons
having anxiety is like being given permanent unwanted custody of a halter arabian. like okay buddy is it panic time again. cool you probably need more exercise and an apple and then maybe you'll calm down.
taking my stupid walks for my stupid mental health with my stupid hypervigilant brain horse
thoroughly enjoying the notes on this post because it's equal parts people with anxiety going "yeah that's what it's like" and people with arabians going "yeah that's what they're like"
“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
This is your reminder that Queer Liberation Library is ONLINE, FREE and DOESN'T require a preexisting library card and needs only MINIMAL INFORMATION to sign up for. And they have titles in both EBOOK and AUDIOBOOK and in both ENGLISH and SPANISH.
FUCK YEAH WE DO
queer books, for free! (anyone, anywhere in the USA can sign up for a membership)
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
I once saw an article put it this way: often "this is problematic" is used to shut down discussion of a thing, by casting a sweeping but vague judgement. But really if used at all it should start a discussion about what the problem is.
“Do you like that show?”
“I certainly enjoy the self indulgent version of it I wrote in my head after it began to disappoint me.”
i feel totally normal about this and the scope of my desire is completely average
*looking at myself in the mirror*
Fanfiction is supposed to be cringy. You're allowed to write bad. You're allowed to be cringe. Fanfiction is supposed to be self indulgent. You're allowed to be cringe. Let yourself be cringe. Fanfiction is supposed to be fun. Stop putting arbitrary rules on yourself and be free.
writing challenge!
open up your document and put words in it
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I cannot get over how Catholic Wake Up Dead Man is. (And also how agnostic.)
Yes, obviously there's a Catholic priest as the main character -- but what I mean is no one's Saved.
(Note: I'm atheist but raised Catholic in a Jesuit parish. I'm going to say some possibly-nice things about Catholicism, BUT this is not an endorsement. Do not find Jesus on behalf of this post.)
gifs via @luke-thompsons (x).
The thing to know about Catholics is that most of us aren't converts. We don't wait until we're old enough to actively say 'Save us. We want to be part of this.' we get dunked before we have words and spend the rest of our lives grappling with that and the Church has to put up with whatever they've decided to take in until the Pope says something about it. It's an "ask for forgiveness not permission" sort of attitude.
We're an old curmudgeon of a religion that got most of its evangelizing out of its system in the 9th and 11th and 15th and 16th and also 17th centuries. Nowadays, most Catholics assume that other Catholics will have enough children to cover anyone who ages out -- and we've been here some 2000ish years besides -- so recruitment isn't something that Catholics really think about. You will never have a Catholic knocking on your door unless you've invited them.
Instead, Catholics proselytize through good works. (Look up the Catholic Worker Movement and hospitality houses if you want to know more.) In this idea, you shouldn't need to say the J-word, or quote a single word of the Bible, or ever even speak at all; God doesn't reach down, He reaches through you. The Jesuit idea is that your hands become Jesus' hands, just as through transubstantiation the host is the Body of Christ. I cannot emphasize enough how much the washing of people's feet on Holy Thursday was Important to the priests where I grew up. The idea is that, if you do good works and you bring the Holy Spirit into the world through acts of caring, hope, mercy, and, yes, grace, that others -- whether they call it God or not -- will bring Jesus and the Holy Spirit into their lives.
Which is exactly what Jud does with Blanc.
In this reading, Benoit doesn't have to stop being an atheist for him to be touched by God through Jud and moved by the Spirit.
No one is "Saving" anyone!!
No one has to "endorse" one another! No one has to be "right"!
Jud's Catholicism "wins" in this story not by "Saving" Benoit's soul or having him turn from his heretical, atheistic, homosexual ways, but by changing him through grace in that moment in a way Benoit will remember and carry.
And God works through Benoit in this reading, too!
gifs via @barry2018-2023 (x).
There's an old Catholic story of an old woman, Sadie, who goes to the church and prays every day to win the lottery. Every day, for years, for decades, she pleads her case. Pleads for God's help. Until a booming voice sounds from the Heavens: SADIE. BUY A LOTTERY TICKET.
(This is very much the Catholic ethos about waiting around for miracles.)
In this reading, Blanc is Jud's lottery ticket.
It would probably take more words than you'd want to read to explain why an atheist being the place to look makes a certain Catholic sense (something something about looking in weakness to find strength, the sinners to find Jesus, something about our sense of humor, etc.). Please trust me at this point that it is.
And Jud, being the paragon of a good Catholic here, buys the ticket.
-- Note that Jud doesn't win by working harder, or being more stringent or more faithful or more pure -- he wins by opening himself up to what the Spirit sends him (even if it is a middle-aged dandy detective with a penchant for theatrics).
From an American (derogatory) perspective, many doing media analyses are so used to Protestantism that we expect the right v. wrong, Saved v. Sinner dichotomies the medley of various big-box protestant denominations flavors American evangelizing and spiritual stories that we mightn't spot exactly how Catholic and spiritual this story is (far beyond it simply taking place in a church with a priest).
But Jud v. Wicks is a key example of the internal struggle of Catholicism as long as I've known it. When I was a kid, I knew it as the Jesuits v. the Diocese (i.e. a specific order versus location-based power). Nowadays, you might see this English v. Latin; standing v. kneeling; standing on the altar facing the parishioners v. away. But that's a whole other Too Long Post.
Now, you've listened to me ramble on enough about Catholicism.
Let's talk about the agnosticism.
gifs via @phantom-threaded (x)
First off: Our key figure -- arguably the protagonist of the movie -- is an atheist.
That in-itself doesn't mean the movie is necessarily agnostic -- God's Not Dead has an atheist as one of the main characters.
But the text also accommodates this. Nothing that happens in the movie can be explained by a miracle. Benoit still solves the case through logic, reason, observation, and just plain facts. He walks into the church because the police were about to be right behind him. He gives Martha grace because he sees the impact Jud's actions have on the people he serves. The story stays in-line with the long tradition of exposing hoaxes and dispelling magical explanations. If atheists have evangelizing parables, they're whodunit mysteries.
Jud is just the kind of character we atheists hope theists mean to be, or at least strive for. If theists must exist, one might say, might they at least look more like Jud than Wicks (the kind we tend to be much more familiarized to).
And Benoit still hasn't found Jesus when it's all said-and-done.
gif via @sophsun1 (x)
In the end, the whole church and every person in it is revealed to be some kind of false, exploited, or both -- reflecting what real institutions do to the people who often believe in them the most. Showing how the social technology of faith builds very concrete consequences. From Cy and Lee's blatant mercantile pursuits to Simone and Samson and Vera's losses for the direct benefit of the Church and Wicks. And Martha who is both.
Simone doesn't find her miracle in a cure -- but in something that could be delivered in ACT therapy.
Benoit walks away an -- albeit perhaps a bit kinder -- atheist.
Yet -- as much as it is a text that grapples with the Church, it does not attempt to crush the bedrock of any initial faith.
gifs via @phantom-threaded (x)
It is not a text that is specifically against -- anti-theist -- to the Church.
Outside of Benoit's initial comments, it doesn't linger on the more shocking of the Church's recent sins: the Church's habit of covering up and perpetuating pedophilia and sexual abuse between priests and youth members; it doesn't mention any of the historical Jesuit (and other Catholics') colonialism or conquests or cultural genocide of much of South and Central America.
Both perspectives are woven together in a way that both parties can walk away feeling their views a bit stronger.
Not that that's a bad thing.
For one thing, it's a mystery movie. Not a homily.
For another, with how large the world has become and how easy it is to get into bubbles, I think we're going to have to live for a very long time with people who are, in some ways, fundamentally antithetical to ourselves. And we're still going to have to build towards something with each other.
The priests at my perish growing up were like Jud. Seriously. I'm not joking. I'm sure they weren't perfect people and they had skeletons in their closets like the rest of us, but when they were moved to a different perish and the Father Wickses of the world were moved in, you could tell.
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