[faustandfurious]

One advantage of not really having a strong sense of gender identity is that you’re very [shrug emoji] about how people gender you. Sometimes people call me by she/her pronouns and sometimes they go with he/him pronouns and on the internet people often default to they/them, and neither option is entirely right but also, fuck if I know what would be right, and I don’t particularly care. Therefore I’m perfectly happy to outsource my gender identity to the people around me who actually need to figure out which box to put me in. I don’t need to talk about myself in third person, so really my pronouns sound like a you problem.

[faustandfurious]

My pronouns are I/me and the rest is for someone else to deal with because I have better things to do.

[faustandfurious]

Very fond of macrolabels, like “queer”, that provide zero extra information. Is it genderqueer? Is it romantic/sexual orientation queer? Is it queer as in “none of your fucking business what’s in my pants and what I do with it and with whom”?

[randomslasher]

This is actually probably the first time I’ve ever read something that accurately describes my relationship with gender--ie, ‘my gender is me and my pronouns are a you problem’--so thank you for that!

[ober-affen-geil]

#you cannot gender me in a way that matters

[a-queer-seminarian]

'Religion has been defined as designed to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. We do well to think of the parables of Jesus as doing the afflicting. Therefore, if we hear a parable and think, “I really like that” or, worse, fail to take any challenge, we are not listening well enough. Such listening is not only a challenge; it is also an art, and this art has become lost.

Down through the centuries, starting with the Gospel writers themselves, the parables have been allegorized, moralized, christologized, and otherwise tamed into either platitudes such as “God loves us” or “Be nice” or, worse, assurances that all is right with the world as long as we believe in Jesus.

Too often we settle for easy interpretations: we should be nice like the good Samaritan; we will be forgiven, as was the prodigal son; we should pray and not lose heart like the importuning widow. When we seek universal morals from a genre that is designed to surprise, challenge, shake up, or indict and look for a single meaning in a form that opens to multiple interpretations, we are necessarily limiting the parables and, so, ourselves.

If we stop with the easy lessons, good though they may be, we lose the way Jesus’s first followers would have heard the parables, and we lose the genius of Jesus’s teaching. Those followers, like Jesus himself, were Jews, and Jews knew that parables were more than children’s stories or restatements of common knowledge. They knew that parables and the tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way, to challenge, and at times to indict.

We might be better off thinking less about what they “mean” and more about what they can “do”: remind, provoke, refine, confront, disturb...'

- Jewish Scholar Amy Jill Levine in Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (2014)

[cruciform-solidarity]

“Look closely at the lilies of the field—how they grow.”

Matthew 6:28 (trans. David Bentley Hart)

“Observe and learn from the lilies in the field, and how beautifully they grow.”

Matthew 6:28 (trans. Sarah Ruden) 

[apenitentialprayer]

καταμανθάνω (katamanthanó)- to thoroughly or carefully consider, to grasp something conclusively. αὐξάνουσιν (auxanousin), from αὐξάνω (auxanó) - (1) to make grow or increase, but also (2) to promote, honor, or exalt. Huh.

[ineedahiddencorner]

12/23/21

.

.

.

Tonight I had one of the first real prides in my polyamorous relationship.

The lateness is not for a lack of good in the relationship, or a lack of being grateful for the situation.

But it was one of the first times that I'd specifically felt such abundance of gratitude that it turned into a joyful pride.

Previously, no matter how much I know there's good in the relationship, I've still felt some amount of internalized monogamy/internalized external pressures that made it feel like all the good was within its own bubble. Still there, still real, but still.. somehow separate from the 'real world.' As if the physics that made this work only worked within our context and not within the rest of the world.

But then, a few factors have played into this. First, Steals and I actually discussed the situation - which I hadn't realized how much I'd still been containing at Dance until that discussion was had. I guess once my closest dance friend and I had actually talked about it, it made it seem like the rest of the place could know and it would be fine. (Also cleared up other details in that discussion as well, but that's a separate note.)

Second, I've been reading more of the Deconstructionists Playbook. While I recognize it is very logically affirming and that yes it is written by like-minded people, there have been multiple instances where I've read others elaborating on thoughts I'd already believed, been starting to consider, or that I need to hear - all of which have been building up small degrees of self-trust. (Which to one part of me sounds dangerous. But to the other part, it feels like I can finally stand my ground.)

((Bonus thought: fundamentally, it's just refreshing - multiple other people with similar faith backgrounds have reached the same conclusions as me. Maybe it's okay after all!))

Finally, today's conversation with Sequins. She was discussing toxic monogamy showing up in her life and how it frustrated her. And while I related to her issues, it also caused a wonderful feeling to wash over me - the relief of a stance outside all that. Obviously polyamory is not automatically/fundamentally better; they're just two separate relationship types. But the lessons I've learned and the understandings I've come to, which all genuinely feel the most comfortable, have stemmed heavily from polyamory.

Not just polyamory. But from Taco in particular. Really from both Taco and Bandana in their own ways. But in the ways I'm thinking of, specifically from Taco.

Namely, interacting with other friends and ex's, and not having any hangout with someone of former or potential romantic interest be a threat. Also handling new romantic interests and being honest with the partner. Also, that honesty extending not only to external interests, but internal tensions as well as praises. That level of communication means the world to me.

This is long and rambley and I feel my brain getting tired. Thoughts are harder to string into full sentences. But I will end on this note:

Even though very in my head, I am grateful and proud of my current relationship. Others don't need to understand it for me to see the good that has come from it - and not just good within it's bubble, but good in relation to the rest of the world.

The good is also not just due to its polyamorous nature, which has helped me reevaluate my position on many monogamy 'conflicts'; rather, it is specifically because it's a relationship with Taco. Who in particular has modeled many new 'physics' that feel much more natural to me.

Gosh I hope this all made sense. I suppose we'll find out in the morning.

But if you see this - thank you, you. Really for more than the new perspectives, but in the vein of this post, also being particularly grateful for those perspectives.

[ineedahiddencorner]

12/13/21

.

.

.

I finished college today!

I know many folks do eventually, and I know I am very much privileged and have not lived through the hardships others face, but it's still a big deal to me. I spent so much time when I first transferred just crying. I remember hyperventilating on the freeway home multiple semesters in, and even halfway through my time there thinking very strongly that graduation was only an "if."

Of course I'm still waiting on final grades. Maybe it's too soon to celebrate. But if I pass all my classes, I want to take graduation photos in the stairs and corners where I sat and cried. Just to let my younger self know that hey. We did it. And you ended up okay. 💜

[beguines]

Richard Kearney, Anatheism: Returning to God After God

[haltraveler]

As someone who used to think this way I think it comes mainly from the prevalence of fundamentalist young earth creationist types in the US especially. So if your primary source for what the Bible is are people who absolutely believe that the Bible IS supposed to be a literal transcribed word of God, then of course you’ll think of it that way. 

As an adult I’ve begun to appreciate religion for much the same reasons that are given here, even if I myself remain agnostic in terms of theistic belief. 

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Yup. Nearly every believer picks and chooses, especially abusive and bigoted fundamentalists. The difference is those who choose for the least harm, and those that choose for the most harm.

[fierysword]

I’ll never understand why antitheists want evangelicals to be right so badly

[weltenwellen]

Anis Mojgani, from “Here I Am”, Songs from Under the River: A Collection of Poetry

[saltqueer]

Did a bit of embroidery of a quote from RQG 182! big thanks to RQO and Creating the Line for encouragement ^_^

[beforevenice]

Storms don't come to teach us painful lessons, rather they were meant to wash us clean.

// Shannon L. Alder

[beguines]

But God is not an object in the way these things are objects. God cannot be grasped the way other things are grasped by our normal ways of knowing and perceiving. For us to move deeply into God's deep movement in us, "whose margins are God's margins," as R.S. Thomas puts it, the senses must learn to abide in stillness.

Martin Laird, O.S.A., A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation

[arterialtrees]

And God said to the soul: I desired you before the world began. I desire you now As you desire me. And where the desires of two come together There love is perfected.

Mechtild of Magdeburg, 13TH Century was a Beguine and mystic whose book, The Flowing Light of Divinity, described her visions of God.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

not meeting all of your parents expectations does not make you a disappointment or a failure or anything near a lost cause.

[beguines]

The divine is not cut off from the physicality of the universe. God's activity in history is providing creative love that radiates freely from the divine realm to regenerate human efforts according to God's purpose. Where there is oppression and bondage, God's love seeks to eliminate them and bring liberation. God's freedom allows the divine holiness to work to restore what human hands have perpetrated against God's creation. By exploiting the earth, humans struggle against the will of God, whose beloved creation is reflected in wholeness rather than in fragmentation. All life on this planet forms one community. Hurting one member of the community harms the rest of the community as well as the heart of the Creator. Wholeness requires being an integral and interdependent part of a whole. It involves practicing God's holiness by doing God's will toward self, neighbors, and the whole of creation. Wholeness means discovering that our lives depend on God's love and mercy and on our own interdependence with the entirety of creation. Wholeness is discovering, acknowledging, and enacting greater goodness.

Fadi Diab, "Soil, Wholeness, and Liberation: Palestinian Commensal Theology"

[primulaceas]

Mary Oliver, "Blue Iris." Devotions

[soracities]

“My soul is light My body heavy with memory and places.”

— Mahmoud Darwish, from ‘Mural’, Mural (trans. John Berger & Rema Hammami)

[chirhos]

no, you are not "running from God". He's in front of you

[chirhos]

you're running laps on a track and He is sitting in the inner field waiting for you to tire yourself out and come sit with Him

[chirhos]

i'm not going to @ the person who said this but this post is about my personal experience. I made a choice to come back to Christianity after years away and I was awed and amazed to realize that God had been waiting for me the whole time. This post does not mean 'it is inevitable that you, too, will become a Christian'. This post does mean 'if Christianity calls out to you, know that God is waiting for you and He knows you before you know Him'.

Also, I am a Christian and have a Christian worldview. This is a Christian blog. In my day-to-day life, I would never say something like this to secular or non-Christian friends. This is something that I said, as a Christian, to an audience of my followers who I assume are mainly Christian or interested in Christianity. I don't just go around saying 'you will inevitably obey God' to people who don't believe that.

I am someone who carries trauma from Christianity and being raised Christian. I am also someone who believes that God has been with me my entire life, and will continue to be, regardless of what I do or how I feel. For me, this is the greatest comfort in my life. If the shoe doesn't fit, just move on :)

[queerprayers]

If God exists he isn't just churches and mathematics. He's the forest, He's the desert. He's the ice caps, that are dying. He's the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts.

He's van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell. He's the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons. He's every one of us, potentially. The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet. And if this is true, isn't it something very important?

—from "At the River Clarion," Mary Oliver (Evidence, 2009)