The daily offices are so subversive that I’m amazed The Regime hasn’t banned them. If the daily recitation of the Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis don’t radicalize you then you may not make it.
styofa doing anything
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JBB: An Artblog!
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@hulga-joy
The daily offices are so subversive that I’m amazed The Regime hasn’t banned them. If the daily recitation of the Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis don’t radicalize you then you may not make it.
When I say I want a biblical wife
What people think I mean: I want a wife who is passive and subservient
What I really mean: I want a wife who is totally willing to drive a tent spike into a tyrant’s head should the opportunity arise.
My husband @triadic sent this to me and what can I say?
First Look from Dune (2020) directed by Denis Villeneuve
eee
Holy Monday: Of Mountains and Fig Trees
A homily on Mark 11:12-25, preached “at” the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, Alabama, on Holy Monday 2020, Coronatide
I would speak to you in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
The passage I’ve just read describes events that took place on Monday in Holy Week. After Jesus arrives triumphantly in Jerusalem on Sunday, he retreats to Bethany with his disciples that evening. And then, on Monday, he returns. And, Mark tells us, as he makes his way back to Jerusalem, he is hungry. We follow him in the narrative toward a fig tree, and as we do so, we should probably already be wondering if there is some symbolic significance in Jesus going to examine a tree to see if it is bearing fruit. Perhaps as Jesus neared the leafy tree, his disciples remembered the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “[T]hus says the Lord: Like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt…. I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they are utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their ancestors.” Would Jesus likewise use this fig tree to teach some lesson, offer some parable, as the Old Testament prophet did?
Jesus finds no figs on the tree, only leaves. And within the earshot of his disciples, he pronounces a curse on the tree: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”
But Mark doesn’t let us, the hearers or readers, linger there with our questions about this strange incident. He briskly cuts to a new scene. Jesus arrives in the Holy City and heads straight for the temple. And the one who had formerly touched the sick and the young with such tenderness now begins to create a ruckus — to put it mildly. In the temple were money changers who helped pilgrims streaming in from the Diaspora exchange their foreign coins for Tyrian shekels so that they could buy the animals they needed for the required sacrifices. Interrupting this entire exchange, in strides Jesus and begins to tip over the moneychangers’ tables. Coins rain down on the temple floor like confetti. He quickly takes charge, as if he is now the presider over the temple’s functions: “he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.” And with that, he momentarily puts an end to the temple’s regular worship. Everything grinds to a halt.
But what does this all mean? Shock and confusion must have been mingling in everyone’s minds. What has Jesus just done? And why?
Finally, Jesus speaks: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
Those who have ears to hear, upon hearing Jesus say this, may think of another of Israel’s prophets — Jeremiah, whose words we heard a moment ago — and his famous sermon of judgment on the temple. Jeremiah once pictured the temple as a sort of Batcave for the unjust flee to after finishing their escapades. By day the wicked in Israel oppress immigrant sojourners, orphans, and widows, and by night, as it were, they retreat back to their lair to count the spoils of their conquests. They sing to themselves, says Jeremiah, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” They hum along merrily counting what they’ve stolen from the poor, all the while trusting that the temple will shield them from any judgment they might otherwise fear.
But Jeremiah warns, speaking the word of the Lord to the people huddled in the temple for safety, “Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’ — only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord.”
Jesus — a new Jeremiah — rebukes God’s people in the same way. Do not think, Jesus says in effect, that you can persist in all your injustice, your exploitation, your idolatry and find sanctuary in the temple. The temple will not save you when the judgment comes. And it is on the horizon even now.
And then, that evening, Jesus leaves again and goes out of the city, presumably back to Bethany. The next morning, Tuesday morning in that holiest of weeks, as Jesus and his disciples head back toward Jerusalem, they see the fig tree that Jesus had cursed the day before “withered away to its roots.” Then, Mark tells us, Peter recalled Jesus’s curse and blurted out, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”
Many readers of Mark over the centuries have been struck by how he has constructed a sort of literary sandwich with the way he describes Jesus’s actions with the fig tree and in the temple. He has put the two halves of the fig tree story — the two pieces of “bread” in the sandwich — on the outside, so to speak, and in between them he has put the “meat” of the sandwich, Jesus’s visit to the temple and his disruption of the buying and selling happening there.
If Mark has constructed this sandwich to make a point, what is it? It seems that Mark wants us to connect what happened with the fig tree to what happened in the temple. Jesus pronounced judgment on the fig tree, and it withered away to the roots. And, likewise, Jesus pronounced judgment on the temple too, in a way, and a couple of chapters later in Mark’s Gospel, he says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” The temple itself — the site of God’s presence, the place to worship the only true and living God — will be destroyed.
We cannot overestimate the sheer horror that Jesus’s words would have conjured up for his disciples. (It is perhaps not completely unlike what we are living through right now.) The destruction of the temple represents the end of the only world that made any sense to Jesus’s disciples. It was the center of the Jerusalem, the Holy City. It was the center of the world, the place where heaven and earth meet. It was the mountain that Isaiah said would endure forever: “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” How could it ever be that the temple would be destroyed — again? Were such an unthinkable event to happen, it would mean the collapse of everything Jesus’s followers held dear. Where would they offer sacrifices? Where would they worship? Where would they pray?
And Jesus, turning to them and, I imagine, gesturing with his arm toward the temple mount, says, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.”
Strangely, mysteriously, Jesus indicates that his disciples will live to see the destruction of the temple but that — even so — they may continue to trust God as they always have and pray as they always have. Even the unthinkable — even the collapse of the world — cannot prevent God from hearing the prayers of his people.
“So I tell you,” Jesus says — I tell you, not the chief priests, not the scribes, not the Romans who think they own the temple; I tell you on my own authority — “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” On the basis of his authority as the world’s true Lord who will, in a few days’ time, die and rise again, Jesus promises that those who come to God through him, in his name, will ultimately see their hopes fulfilled. They will pass through the fire of divine judgment, and they will be saved.
Friends, I feel, some days, as if I am watching the destruction of the temple, the collapse of civilization, the beginning of the end of life as I have always known it and taken it for granted. But what I hear when I turn to the risen Lord Jesus is the assurance that even though Jerusalem itself might be overrun, there is nothing that will thwart God’s determination to be always and forever the God who hears and answers prayer.
“Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea… The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
And amen.
Schools Closed? Are You Freaking Out? Some Unsolicited Advice From a Homeschool Mom
Hello! I have six kids, ages 3 to 15, and I’ve been home schooling for ten years.
Judging from social media (always dangerous), it seems like a lot of you are distressed and overwhelmed at having to deal with your kids’ schools being shut down for weeks or even months due to COVID-19 concerns. I would like to offer some encouragement and support.
Remember it’s only temporary.
I’ve seen a lot of Instagram influencer types throw up daily learning schedules, and this is a great idea to keep you from going crazy. But also: be gracious and gentle with yourself and your kids if the schedule doesn’t get executed perfectly or at all. This is an incredibly disruptive time for everyone. Just keep going. You aren’t going to singlehandedly ruin their entire education with a few weeks of trial and error.
You do NOT have to replicate what your kids would get in a formal classroom. You do NOT have to replicate what your kids would get in a formal classroom. You do NOT have to replicate what your kids would get in a formal classroom. You can’t. You don’t have a classroom, you don’t have an education degree, you don’t have years of experience wrangling large groups of learners. But you don’t need those things to make sure your children are still learning.
If your district is offering e-learning alternatives, take advantage of them! If not, don’t panic. Here are some resources which may help. I’ve tried to list only resources which are very cheap or free, and which can be done independently by students or give very specific guidance to parents and instructors so you don’t have to come up with a lesson plan:
Math-- Khan Academy and Prodigy (prodigygame.com) are free and excellent resources. Prodigy does offer the option of a paid membership but you don’t need it to get access to the math. (Math Mammoth) is extremely inexpensive (especially the e-books) and great for focused review and support of specific math concepts.
Science-- TOPS Science units are short (usually 4 weeks or so), thorough lab guides for a range of grades from early elementary through high school. The authors work very hard to make sure all the experiments work and can be done using common household items, and they give very specific instructions on what to say and do with your students. These have been my favorite homeschool science resource, hands down. The e-book options are less than $20 each, many much less.
Reading/ Writing/ Grammar-- Bravewriter makes great literature guides that combine grammar, writing mechanics, and literary analysis over the course of 4 weeks, each on a single book. If you’re not sure which level is right for your kids, the BW community offers tons of support. And the guides are very much open and go-- you do NOT have to be an experienced teacher to do this. $10-$12 on one guide will last you a month. Read aloud to your kids every day. Even your older kids. Even your teenagers. My husband is currently reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels to our 13yo and 15yo every evening. They voluntarily turn off screens and come running when he announces it’s time.
Critical Thinking-- Do logic puzzles together. Pick an interesting looking documentary on Netflix and watch it together. Do you agree with what the filmmaker is saying? Do you think they have their facts correct? Why or why not? How could you find out for sure?
History-- Pick a place and time period. Find age appropriate library books (if your library is physically closed, use their online resources like Overdrive/Libby, Hoopla, and Scholastic) about that place and time. Read them (together or independently) then draw a picture/ act out a story/ write a paragraph about what you learned. What would it be like to live in that time? What would be exciting? What would you be afraid of? What would the laws be like? What would you eat and drink and wear? What would you do for fun? If it’s something from recent history, call or FaceTime an older friend or relative and ask about their experience of it.
PE-- Do yard work together. Take long walks together. Go to the park. Find Youtube videos demonstrating kids’ yoga or bodyweight exercise and do those. Play Just Dance.
Art-- gather up all your crayons and colored pencils and markers and play-doh (or make some, there are hundreds of recipes for home made play-doh online) and put them all in the middle of a clean table with some blank paper. The kids will do the rest. OR find some high-res images of great works of art online and look at them together. Look at them quietly for a really long time. What’s going on here? What do you think the artist is trying to do? Look for little details that help tell the story in the picture. How many can you find?
Finally, and most importantly:
Remember that you love your kids and they love you. Trust me, as an introvert with lots of kids, I have definitely had days when I was ready for a neat bourbon at 4pm 3pm right after at lunch. But on those days what has helped is letting go of my need for solitude and learning to slow down and really observe and attend to these interesting, complex, thoughtful human beings that are my kids. You might even have fun spending this unexpected time together as a family. Or at least not hate it as much as you think you are going to. ;)
Pretty sure I’ve seen that coffee table IRL.
Needless to say, I am HORRIFIED.
‘All that you need to know about boars can be summed up in the fact that if you wish to hunt them, you must have a specially made boar spear. This spear has a crosspiece on it to prevent the boar from charging the length of the spear, driving it all the way through his own body, to savage the human holding the other end.’
-Boar and Apples, T. Kingfisher
fuck OFF
Note that pigs are also HUGE. So, yes, they ARE slightly larger pigs.
So I grew up in the city and have never seen a pig in real life and I just googled it and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS
I thought they were like labrador sized, like, fat labradors, not mini-cows.
every time I see this post there are more people discovering how fuck off huge pigs actually are and I love it I thought this was a thing everyone knew but clearly not and I’m laughing
This is me with our Tamworth boar, a heritage breed closer to their wild cousins than the Yorkshire above. I am a fully grown, average sized human. He was a gentle sweetie who, sadly, is no longer with us. His name was Mr. Big.
FUCK OFF
Forever laffin’ at people who don’t understand how enormous, terrifying, and tenacious wild boar are.
They’re like if bears had knives protruding from their closed mouths and Didn’t Know When To Quit. Their survival instincts when they’re wounded aren’t “run away and minimize injury” it’s “take the thing that hurt you down with you” They also make sounds like someone crossed a pig with an alligator.
Their head and neck alone can be like the size of an entire human torso.
Also forever laffin’ at people who think pigs are tiny, ‘cause we designed those things can get in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds in ideal circumstances.
It’s like when people assume Tuna must be small because they’ve only ever experienced them in hockey puck form.
Like seriously why the fuck y'all think everyone FREAKED THE HELL OUT when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in Wizard of Oz? It’s because pigs are HUGE and weigh a shitton and would crush her in an instant.
also dont they eat like, basically anything?
YUP. Pigs will eat people, if given the chance. They dgaf.
That’s why boar hunters use a team of very tenacious dogs to hold the boar so they can be speared without fucking you up. The dogs wear body armour.
I’ve heard stories of people shooting boars, and if it didn’t kill them, it just pissed them off.
how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?
…“how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?”
Very carefully, I would imagine.
WIld boar babies are rather cute, like living humbugs…
…but the adults and their ferocity have been associated with warriors for thousands of years, from Mycenaean Greece (a helmet made from sections of boar tusk)…
…through Celtic Europe (reconstructed carnyx war-horns and standards)…
…Ancient Rome (the crest of Legion 20 “Valeria Victrix”). A couple more legions also used a boar as their crest - I wonder did they squabble over which was the “right” one the way a couple of Swiss cantons had a little war over whose bear was best…?
…then Anglo-Saxon and pre-Viking helmet crests…
…right up to the late Middle Ages (here the white boar badge of Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England)…
…and the blue boar badge of the Earl of Oxford, more usually represented by the De Vere arms, quarterly gules and or, in the first a molet argent.
After Richard was defeated at Bosworth in 1485, there was a run on blue paint as inn-signs were changed to reflect new loyalties since Oxford was on the winning side…
And pigs will definitely eat people.
It gets mentioned in the movie “Snatch”, the book/movie “Hannibal” and the webcomic “Lackadaisy Cats”, among numerous other fictional sources, and IRL it’s suspected to be the reason why numerous missing persons have stayed missing.
More here (another comment to this same OP) and here (slightly different).
Here’s some boar-hunting armour for dogs, ancient…
…and modern…
…and the modern one looks very like a simple style of ancient…
So when Odysseus’s old nurse recognizes him by the scar he got from the boar-tusk slash that almost killed him… now you get the resonance.
This post…it just really went places on me.
I hope you read this entire post, and that it made your entire day so much better, even if just for a few moments, like it did mine.
Google feral hogs Texas and see what they are doing in my state. It’s a war we are not winning.
Let’s just say if I ever needed to hide a body, I’d just go find a pack of feral hogs. They’re everywhere. And they will eat anything.
That’s so sad wiretap play Despacito
it’s a boomer meme, sir, but it checks out
Correct.
happy christmas to my favourite story of all time
I cannot even begin to imagine how hurtful it must be for children of rape, kids in foster care, and people with disabilities to hear over and over and OVER again that they’re the exception. That THEY are the people who everyone uses to argue why abortion is okay. They are always the people who are told it’s okay if they don’t live because they’re a burden. GOD ABOVE HELP US, YOU MATTER. If no one else tells you, I’m telling you now you’re WORTH fighting for, you’re WORTH IT. You deserve to be alive. You’re just as precious and valuable and beautiful as anyone else and I pray with all my heart that you never forget that.
I love Little Women and really want to see a Little Women movie that does it justice but I’m absolutely put off about seeing the latest Little Women movie installment because everything I’ve seen and read about it absolutely horrifies me.
Co-sign.
“If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it”
— G.K. Chesterson (via robbieraylynn)
Overheard in our living room:
“YUM! This baby is unusually crunchy.”
COSIGN
I first met him 21 years ago, and now our relationship is the subject of a new movie. He’s never been more revered—or more misunderstood.
“I am often asked what Fred would have made of our time—what he would have made of Donald Trump, what he would have made of Twitter, what he would have made of what is generally called our “polarization” but is in fact the discovery that we don’t like our neighbors very much once we encounter them proclaiming their political opinions on social media. I often hear people say that they wish Fred were still around to offer his guidance and also that they are thankful he is gone, because at least he has been spared from seeing what we have become. In all of this, there is something plaintive and a little desperate, an unspoken lament that he has left us when we need him most, as though instead of dying of stomach cancer he was assumed by rapture, abandoning us to our own devices and the judgment implicit in his absence.”
“[…] What makes measuring Fred’s legacy so difficult is that Fred’s legacy is so clear. What he would have thought of Pam Bondi’s politics is one thing; what he would have thought of Pam Bondi is quite another, because he prayed for the strength to think the same way about everyone. She is special; there has never been anyone exactly like her, and there never will be anyone exactly like her ever again; God loves her exactly as she is.”
Oh, gosh. What a moving piece. This is the part that got to me: “Won’t You Be My Neighbor? became so popular because it makes people cry unashamedly, because it shows what radical kindness actually looks like, because it depicts a man who gave his life to what turned out to be a hopeless cause—the cause of sacralizing mass media. He was a genius; he had superpowers; he might as well have been a friendly alien, thrown upon the rocks of our planet to help us find our way to the impossible possibility that we are loved. But he lost. He knew what he was up against; he knew from the start that the fragmentation of the jump cut would lead to the fragmentation of everything else, and that the fragmentation of everything else would lead us to the first and final temptation, the temptation of hatred. He lost, because the great conceit of the internet is that it has unveiled and unmasked us, that it shows us as we really are and our neighbors as they really are, and that hate is more viral than love. How would Fred Rogers have responded to Twitter? He would have signed up for an account, @ZZZ143, #YouAreSpecial; he was not one to back away from the fray. But Twitter is a platform consecrated to the eternal pie fight—to the purposes of protest, complaint, and particularly punishment—where nobody is special and nobody is invulnerable. Who would have been Fred’s first troll? Who would have taken it upon themselves to “school” Fred, to “call him out,” to “educate” him? Who would have told him that his faith in us was misplaced, and informed him—and us—that Mister Rogers was wrong?“ He wasn’t wrong, though. Do you think Mr. Rogers didn’t know people are sinful? The work he did-- letting people know they are loved unconditionally, calling out goodness from people who don’t see themselves as good-- was his intentional participation in building the kingdom of God. And it always looks like defeat if we don’t take the eternal into account.
This is a nice and moving article and the documentary was a nice and moving documentary, but as long as the article and books and documentaries and movies don’t take into account the explicit gospel of Jesus and the hope of the resurrection-- a hope Mr. Rogers certainly had-- they’ll be nostalgia pieces or anguished laments, mourning because this good man is gone and the world feels so much more terrible without him in it.
Ah, but the world was terrible even when Fred Rogers lived and moved on this earth, and terrible it will continue to be as long as we are subject to sin and death. But when Mr. Rogers’ Lord and Redeemer returns and completes the work of the resurrection, it will be clear to whom the victory has belonged, all this time. Mr. Rogers knew it, and that’s why he could fight the good fight with so much valor and love.
Every time we gather at the Lord’s table with our fellow Christians, we’re already feasting with our forever family.
“During one of those eavesdropping moments, while the kids lounged with Netflix and I folded laundry, I thought about the movie’s general message of hopefulness—’Keep moving forward!’ the Robinsons shout in unison—and I began to imagine how one of the many earnest youth pastors I encountered in my teens might use the storyline for a devotion at Youth Group Movie Night:
‘Lewis [the time-traveling hero of the film] can keep moving forward because he’s seen the future and he knows everything will turn out all right. [Holds up Bible.] Well, guys, if you read this one all the way to the end, you’ll know that everything turns out all right! So you can keep moving forward, too.’
Which is fine, I guess, but—like all the youth pastors I conjure out of my imagination—he’s being kind of a doofus and largely missing the point.”
I wrote a thing! Here is a link to the thing. I hope you enjoy the thing.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Best moment.