Ł. M. (D.) S. (B.)

Who told you that you were naked? | he/him | pol/eng/tok | in my twenties | cognitive science, linguistics, biblical studies | twitter refugee

[many-sparrows]

Everybody get gayer and more religious now!!!!!!

[gayleviticus]

this meme is a holy icon to me

[louisegluckpdf]

idiot doesn’t even realize all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well 🙄

[shenzi-hemlock]

Touching grass is not enough, some of y’all need to touch the hem of His garment.

[winged-thinged]

*voice of someone who knows nothing about any world religions except for American Evangelical Protestantism, Tumblr Woke Reform Judaism, and Tumblr Woke Commie Jesus* why do you guys keep criticizing *Christianity* and *religion* as a whole when actually, every single problem in the universe was invented by American Evangelicals in the year 1983

[lukaszmichal]

Semi-Arianism? No thanks, I’m a homosexual, not a homoisexual

[demigirl-in-christ]

how am i supposed to love a world that killed the perfect man

[many-sparrows]

same way he did, I think

[insomniac-arrest]

people talk all the time about “primal instincts” and it’s usually about violence or sexual temptations or something, but your humanity comes with a lot of different stuff that we do without really thinking about, that we do without being told to or prompted to

your average human comes pre-installed with instincts to:

Befriend

Tell story

Make Thing

Investigate

Share knowledge

Laugh

Sing

Dance

Empathize with

Create

we are chalk full of survival instincts that revolve around connecting to others (dog-shaped others, robot-shaped, sometimes even plant-shaped) and making things with our hands

your primal instincts are not bathed in blood- they are layered in people telling stories to each other around a fire over and over and putting devices together through trial and error over and over and reaching for someone and something every moment of the way

[full-moon-phoenix]

~“Your primal instincts are not bathed in blood.”

My god this is beautiful. Such a refreshing change of pace to the constant glorification of instinctual human violence.

[thechekhov]

Primal Human Instinct pack also includes bonus instincts such as:

imitating weird noises made by other animals

playing with water

the urge to eat anything brightly colored and jelly-like

touching things that look like they will move in a funny way

seeing faces in literally everything, including toast

jumping up to see if you can bap the top of that doorway

saying ‘ow’ when something unexpected happens, even if it doesn’t hurt

[sleepybabushka]

If me and you are made in God's image, that includes disabilities.

If me and you are made in God's image, that includes mental illness.

If me and you are made in God's image, that includes intellectual disabilities.

If me and you are made in God's image, that means He feels your pain with you.

[hoovesandfloorpaws]

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

<3 Proper way to help these lil buddies on their way <3

[jenjen4280]

If you’re in the habit of helping small creatures, as I am, here’s how for snail. Prob also applicable for aquatic snails.

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

hey, I was just at "things got better" island and everyone there is talking about how excited they are to meet you

[switchblade-dragon]

Hey yeah so this post literally kept me alive for like 6 months. Thank you. And OP is so right. Everyone on this island became my best friends. And guess what? Now they can't wait to meet *you* and they talk about you every single day.

[agnosticmysticism]

it's generally a weird allegation made by christians about atheists that has no basis in fact, but personally, yeah, I am mad at god for not existing

[lukaszmichal]

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him and scold Him for that.

[iquillnotgiveup]

Happy Ostara everyone!!

Reminder that Easter is actually a pagan holiday that was appropriated by Christianity. Just like Christmas.

[apenitentialprayer]

Reminder that this is literally a hypothesis made by 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm, who no credible historian takes seriously anymore. Easter, the Christian holiday, was celebrated more or less universally by Christians before the year 325 - we know that because the Council of Nicaea debated how the date of Easter would be observed. You'll also note that the name of this holiday in non-Germanic languages is typically the same word (or words derived from the same root) used to describe the Jewish Passover. In Spanish, both are Pascua; in Romanian, Passover is Paştele and Easter is Paști; in Greek, they are both Πάσχα; in Russian, Passover is Песах and Easter is Пасха. The English "Easter" does come from Eostre, which is related to Ostara. But that is simply because after Charlemagne's conquests of the Saxons between 776-782, he gave Germanic names to the months of the Latin calendar that he imposed on his new subjects. The Christian holiday fell in the month of Ostarmanoth (Eostre's month), and eventually became identified with the month that it took place in among the Germanic languages. So while the name "Easter" may be connected to a goddess named Eostre, this relatedness involves several degrees of separation, and to claim that Easter is "actually a pagan holiday" based on its name in English is like saying the Fourth of July is "actually a holiday about Julius Caesar."

[apilgrimpassingby]

Hell, it's not just in non-Germanic languages - most of the Germanic languages have names for Easter derived from Pascha. As you can see on this map, the festival is called Pasen in Dutch, Páskar in Icelandic, Páskir in Faroese, Påske in Danish and Norwegian, Påsk in Swedish and Pace in Scots.

About Eostre - it's kind of a disappointment that all the discussion about her goes back to "does Easter come from her?" On the one hand, that's understandable, because the passage in the Anglo-Saxon chronicler Bede's work The Reckoning of Time, wherein he says that the pagan Anglo-Saxons held feasts in honour of Eostre during Eostremonath and that this is where the name "Easter" comes from, is (aside from some placenames and personal names) the only mention of her in the written sources.

But, enter Proto-Indo-European studies. The languages of Europe and northern India (and Iran and Kurdistan) can be demonstrated to descend from a common ancestor language, Proto-Indo-European, reconstructed by comparative linguistics. Hence, some scholars have also tried to compare deities with similar names and attributes to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European religion.

Hence, from Eostre, along with the Greek Eos, the Latin Aurora, the Hindu Uṣas, the Iranian Ušå and the Lithuanian Aušra we get *H₂éwsōs, and so, from the better-attested ones, we can get a good idea of what Eostre was like. And the prognosis is not good for Eostre being the origin of Easter customs.

*H₂éwsōs was an eternally-reborn-but-never-dying dawn goddess described as the "Daughter of Heaven" and as "shining" or "wide-shining". Her limbs are "rosy-fingered", "golden-armed" or "rose-armed" (Greek), "golden-handed", "with good fingers" (Hindu), her body is "gold-coloured" (Hindu), "golden-yellow" (Latin) or "golden" (Latvian). She is described as having silk and saffron clothes and gold sandals and travels on a white horse or a chariot pulled by white horses. (West, M. L., 2007, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.218-224). No eggs or bunnies in sight.

[fictionadventurer]

I still think that Christian fantasy hasn't made enough use of the early Church as inspiration. Whether in Christian or secular fantasy, belief in divine beings tends to get lumped together as one thing. Either a god or a pantheon of gods is meant to read as a stand-in for Actual God, the one real one in contrast to all the fake ones, or there's a New Faction that has arbitrarily decided their god is the Best God and is destroying the old ways.

But I think fantasy worlds could get a lot of mileage out of the fact that Christianity and paganism are two fundamentally different concepts of the divine. Pagan gods tend to be in the world and part of the world. They exist in a higher realm that is superior to the mortal world, but it's still within the universe. A pagan deity is in competition with other creatures. It often has physical needs and a need to be worshiped. The Christian concept of God, on the other hand, is outside the universe. He created it all and needs nothing from it. He can break into the world, but does so without destroying or displacing or competing with anything else already in it--the way the burning bush can be lit up with fire, but not consumed, or how Christ can have a divine nature while still having a fully human nature.

In a pagan worldview, they considered the early Christians to be atheists, because they did not believe in any of these of-the-universe gods. They were not just two different factions of the same "believing in the supernatural" team. They have fundamentally different concepts of what supernatural even means. And that is so fascinating to me and I feel like it's something that hasn't been touched on enough.

[kitty-i-swear-to-gosh]

Thinking about when God is teaching Jonah about mercy and he gives him a nice leafy plant and then the plant is withered by the sun and Jonah really liked that plant and he's mad that it’s dead! And God says, “Are you angry, Jonah?” And Jonah says “Yeah! Angry enough to die!”

And God’s like, “Exactly. So Am I.”

AND THEN HE DID. FOR US. FOR ALL OF US.

Jonah‬ ‭4‬:‭5‬-‭11 ‭NLT‬‬

[sacredheart-stigmata]

I wish I felt connected to the divine mercy devotion, but alas, the painting of Jesus is too white and too scary. His eyes stare into my soul but not in the good way. also his beard is silly looking

[sacredheart-stigmata]

[elbys-hysterics]

have you considered. The original one.

[sacredheart-stigmata]

How did we go from these lovely muted colors and gentle expression to Barbie Jesus with no light in his eyes. How did we fall so far (/light hearted)

[lukaszmichal]

And how do we feel about this modern remake by fr. Jacek Hajnos OP?

[many-sparrows]

On Easter, the biggest Love ever known rewrote the cosmos, balanced the moral scales of the universe, and defeated death. Love reigns supreme! It has freed us and made all things new and possible.