Nothing will be impossible with God. @iseult-blanchemains - Tumblr Blog

Last year sure was A Year, and the biggest thing of all I never openly mentioned on here — but that may be changing soon, as it gets more widely known among my in-person circles. It is a Glorious Impossible, to borrow L’Engle’s phrase for the Incarnation, and I would love to share my dream with y’all. Perhaps soon!

iseult-blanchemains

Well, last year was also A Year, for some of the same reasons and some very different, and things didn't move as quickly as I'd anticipated, so I'm only just now getting around to announcing this.

(And I've been working on it and talking about it for over two years now and it still feels a little weird to say it right out like this:)

I'm looking into the possibility of Baptist convents becoming a thing.

#far more abundantly #I was a martyr girl learning how to live and a lot of the time I don't know how to do it but this ---#this has really helped #there's oodles of healing-journey stuff tied up in this that I didn't go into

simena

Helmer Osslund

#it caught just the way summer evening light looks #art #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

losangelesqueens

Feminists might kill joy simply by not finding the objects that promise happiness to be quite so promising. The word feminism is thus saturated with unhappiness. Feminists by declaring themselves as feminists are already read as destroying something that is thought of by others not only as being good but as the cause of happiness. The feminist killjoy “spoils” the happiness of others; she is a spoilsport because she refuses to convene, to assemble, or to meet up over happiness.

Does the feminist kill other people’s joy by pointing out moments of sexism? Or does she expose the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated under public signs of joy?

Does bad feeling enter the room when somebody expresses anger about things, or could anger be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through objects get brought to the surface in a certain way?

Feminists do kill joy in a certain sense: they disturb the very fantasy that happiness can be found in certain places. To kill a fantasy can still kill a feeling. It is not just that feminists might not be happily affected by the objects that are supposed to cause happiness but that their failure to be happy is read as sabotaging the happiness of others.

The Promise of Happiness by Sara Ahmed

#mmm #many thoughts #which I am too groggy to do justice to at the moment but there's definitely something here #in my circles to be happily unmarried is equated with feminism (derogatory) (suspicious)#and because of the fallen human instinct to grade things people often take the statement 'being unmarried is fine' to mean 'marriage is bad #because we can't say two different things are good at the same time!#so my cheerfulness is often seen as an attack on the One Way To Be Happy (for women) (men can do other things)#and it gets very tiring when people assume you're out to tear down the institution of marriage every time you say anything #but that's not what I'm doing! and it remains true that some people are called to celibacy! so I will go on saying it and being tired

catchyvideos

OP theaverycottage on TikTok ♡

#were I to suddenly get rich this is the kind of thing I'd put in people's houses #< was raised on the Magician's Nephew #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

gothredy

#bats #art #this will be me in the Kingdom

lamignonette

#glimpses of the Kingdom #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

intosnarkness

legit the best advice i can give you: feed your friends

any time someone is in any kind of crisis or upheaval, offer to feed them. tell them they don't have to choose what it is if they can't make decisions, just ask about allergies and preferences and tell them you're just gonna make food happen at their house.

friend having a baby? delivery gift certificate to order food to the hospital after the kid shows up.

someone's relative passes away? offer to make them dinner.

buddy gets laid off? ask if you can order them lunch.

pal stuck in a depressive episode? offer to drive them to fucking mcdonalds, if that's what they want.

people in crisis are tired and sad and angry and the last thing most of them are doing is thinking about feeding themselves. so if you have the ability or time or money, providing that is always, always a good move.

legit i do this all the time, and it is 100% always appreciated. i have taught all my friends that when something happens, we feed each other. it makes people feel extremely cared for, and I cannot recommend it enough.

sandersstudies

Right after I reblogged this I found out a friends’ mom was hospitalized — this is such a good reminder

If you can, provide disposable plates/utensils and save them from doing dishes — when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, bulk paper products were our most appreciated gift

#you don't have to wait to become the Italian Nonna you want to see in the world #and it's so fun to feed people #food makes other things possible #food is an assertion that life is good over against the other things that make eating hard #making it is a thing you can do for people when you're not sure what you can do for people #(and sometimes it gets you called 'sweet' in front of two people who are currently pretending not to know each other #and in one case not to know you either #who both know very well that you are not any such thing)#love is stored in the food

geopsych

Looking in the other direction from the previous post, clouds in the west lit by the sunrise, 21st of May 2018

#light #landscapes #in every wood in every spring there is a different green #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

scorchroots

I've never loved anyone as much as I love Ursula Le Guin

#hilarity and felicity #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

blondebrainpowered

Cat paw prints in the medieval floor tiles of the 12th century CE St Peter Church in Wormleighton, England

#cat walked across them and someone decided to fire them anyway #without re-shaping or anything #and someone decided after firing they were still usable for the church #and someone decided to put them print-side-up instead of hiding that side underneath #people have always been people #medieval art #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

Well, guys, it looks as if we're beginning to put together A Baptist Breviary in earnest. Not that it's going to be available for use within probably at least the next year; these are huge projects and take a lot of time even when you're not starting from scratch.

And speaking of time, I don't know, barring either a miracle or a catastrophe, where I'm going to get some! I have enough to do to keep up with my regular work as it is. But God provides both the work and the way to get it done, when it is him providing the work.

#we've been praying for “co-foundresses or something” for me #and the “or something” we got last week was a group of guys formerly known as sketchy joining me for Vespers #the next night one of the elders --- whom I've invited before and has turned me down --- asked to Observe #(and still hasn't told me his impressions)#so something is definitely happening though I'm not sure what #called-kept likes to joke about me being a genderswapped St Francis --- starting a men's order before I get a women's #(the St Clare analogue is already a little brother to me #with *all* that that entails)

climbhighsleeplow

Wild Poppies, Columbia Gorge, Washington

#best I love September's yellow #the way they GLOW #the entertaining episode of the queue in question

rainformation

formative years? aren’t they all?

absolutejamer

show me a permanent self and i will show you a facade or a corpse

#last spring when I said 'God you're going to have to do a controlled burn of my heart' and then uh #he did

iamfitzwilliamdarcy

you ever just get the ick about eating in general

#the last few days I tell you #it used to be like this every time but it hasn't in a while #so now it's harder to get used to

through-gayas-eyes

"One of the coolest examples of creative living that I’ve seen in recent years, for instance, came from my friend Susan, who took up figure skating when she was forty years old. To be more precise, she actually already knew how to skate. She had competed in figure skating as a child and had always loved it, but she’d quit the sport during adolescence when it became clear she didn’t have quite enough talent to be a champion. (Ah, lovely adolescence—when the “talented” are officially shunted off from the herd, thus putting the total burden of society’s creative dreams on the thin shoulders of a few select souls, while condemning everyone else to live a more commonplace, inspiration-free existence! What a system . . . )

For the next quarter of a century, my friend Susan did not skate. Why bother, if you can’t be the best? Then she turned forty. She was listless. She was restless. She felt drab and heavy. She did a little soul-searching, the way one does on the big birthdays. She asked herself when was the last time she’d felt truly light, joyous, and—yes—creative in her own skin. To her shock, she realized that it had been decades since she’d felt that way. In fact, the last time she’d experienced such feelings had been as a teenager, back when she was still figure skating. She was appalled to discover that she had denied herself this life-affirming pursuit for so long, and she was curious to see if she still loved it.

So she followed her curiosity. She bought a pair of skates, found a rink, hired a coach. She ignored the voice within her that told her she was being self-indulgent and preposterous to do this crazy thing. She tamped down her feelings of extreme self-consciousness at being the only middle-aged woman on the ice, with all those tiny, feathery nine-year-old girls.

She just did it.

Three mornings a week, Susan awoke before dawn and, in that groggy hour before her demanding day job began, she skated. And she skated and skated and skated. And yes, she loved it, as much as ever. She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy. Skating made her feel alive and ageless. She stopped feeling like she was nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties. She was making something of herself, making something with herself.

It was a revolution. A literal revolution, as she spun to life again on the ice—revolution upon revolution upon revolution . . .

Please note that my friend did not quit her job, did not sell her home, did not sever all her relationships and move to Toronto to study seventy hours a week with an exacting Olympic-level skating coach. And no, this story does not end with her winning any championship medals. It doesn’t have to. In fact, this story does not end at all, because Susan is still figure skating several mornings a week—simply because skating is still the best way for her to unfold a certain beauty and transcendence within her life that she cannot seem to access in any other manner. And she would like to spend as much time as possible in such a state of transcendence while she is still here on earth."

From : BIG MAGIC - creative living beyond fear. By Elizabeth Gilbert.

#good advice #the entertaining episode of the queue in question