seek peace, and pursue it

verena • she/they • quaker & lutheran • ⚓️🩶🕊 main: @notajoinerofthings

[sorrrowfull]

[morsaclizombi]

[wandering-jana]

Oxford University Church.

Oxford, England

March 2017

[existential-celestial]

ruach

what ushers these tiny leaves across asphalt, small sounds like fluttering pinions? or simply, simply, who moves and grows the garden? i spread my palms and clutch at nothing but the breath of God, the only faithful wind. i long for flight, Lord. take me under Your wings. j. p. berame, first featured in The Lit Exhibit: Rituals (New York City, June 2019); published in Joyful Light (OMF Literature, September 2019).

[briarhide]

In light of some of the many things happening across the world this year, I thought this Pride Month needed a special illustration.

Happy Pride Month, may we all stay safe, look after each other, and keep painting our rainbows, no matter what. 🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[psikonauti]

Nesting in the crown of Mary at St. Ottilien Archabbey, Oberbayern, Germany.

[toxictiktoks]

[butchdykejesuschrist]

You can love your neighbor and not love God, secular people do it all the time, with great success. The reverse however, is not true. If you do not love your neighbor, than you can not love God. Any Christian that would send away the immigrant, the queer, the poor, or the marginalized - would nail Christ to the cross. The Holy spirit dwells in the detention center and prisons, the bath houses and whore houses, the section-8 housing and the homeless shelter, for we are all made in the image of God.

[holytranny]

By all means not an expert, but progressive Christian’s saying they won’t get “political” when discussing Christianity or on their religious blog is a little strange and misguided. Homie the Bible IS POLITICAL and radically at that. Feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, anti-violence, and anti-war is political. Taking care of our planet, Uplifting your community, and loving your neighbor is political. Politics isn’t just discourse on policy, politics stretches and defines every part of our life. By finding the good in humanity you participate in politics, and that’s a good thing I promise.

[many-sparrows]

Burn, burn, burn Zach Bryan

Scarlet hedgehog cactus

Sermon notes

La Carita (Charity) Carlo Dolci

John 1:5

"God's preference is to be heard and God's preference is to be understood."

Blessed Pentecost! God is a God who wants to speak to you and They don't prefer one language. They are so, so much bigger than a pulpit or the church or Sunday mornings. God will speak in whatever ways you can hear; let yourself listen to the tiny whispers and the little gestures and the tongues that sound foreign to those around you. Hear Them in everything, no matter where They're speaking from.

It's so special to me that Pentecost was the last Sunday before pride month this year. God called me back through the exploration of my own queerness; He spoke to me through the radical, transgressive love I saw. Letting that part of myself out taught me how to embrace God's creation, including myself, just as it is. My religion taught me how to love recklessly and without hesitation, my queerness taught me how to love even the people I am told not to.

The Holy Spirit is reaching for you, desperate to anoint you with Their light. Let yourself reach back.

[beonella]

[centurions-faith]

Isaiah 9:2

The people who walked in darkness, have seen a great light; those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.

[centuriespast]

Interior view 12th century Photo Benedictine abbey church, Mont-Saint-Michel (Manche)

[reader-twisted]

[quasi-normalcy]

I've reached the point where cynicism is a major turn-off for me. You're not smarter than idealists, and you're not helping.

[quasi-normalcy]

Funny that the stereotypical cynic is an idealist who aged out of it. In my experience, the reverse is true. I was an extreme cynic as a teenager and then I noticed how profoundly limiting it was, and also that "cynics are cool and smart" was a message that was being constantly reinforced by corporate media for some reason.

[quasi-normalcy]

#yes! cynicism reads as very juvenile to me#and yes prev often stemming from teen pain

Yeah, like I see black-pilled people on here and my default reaction isn't "oh, these must be world-weary old warriors who've lost their faith in humanity", it's "these people are in their 20s and need a hobby"

[quasi-normalcy]

I also think that the present era has proven that authoritarian leaders don't actually want a population of wide-eyed idealists, they want a population of jaded assholes who are convinced that everyone is lying, any resistance is either a scam or doomed to failure, and nothing can ever get better.

[and-her-saints]

this could've been an email a prayer

[bobemajses]

Ceiling of the synagogue in Szeged, Hungary.

The emancipation of Hungarian Jews in the 1860s manifested itself in many synagogues built at the end of the century, which constituted sacred centres of the empire. Such were the great synagogues of Budapest, Pozsony/Bratislava (Slovakia), Nagyvárad/Oradea (Romania) or Szeged, whose Moorish/ Oriental style refer to the thousands of years of Jewish history. Or the impressive synagogues of the great Hungarian plains, Hódmezővásárhely, and, above all, Szabadka/Subotica (Serbia), which used the motifs of the “Hungarian Art Nouveau”, devised by the architects of Budapest, for the expression of their identification with the Hungarian nation.