🕊️

be patterns, be examples

[bunnybakery]

the immaculate heart sacred by damien hirst

acrylic, stainless steel, sterling silver barbed wire, preserved bull's heart, dove's wings preserved in formaldehyde

[bodidarma]

Saint Margaret of Antioch (detail)1475

[forked-tongue-blasphemer]

Isopod

British Library, Harley MS 3244, c. 1236-1250, folio 64r

[lohengramm20-deactivated2023070]

St. Brendan the Navigator giving Holy Communion to a mermaid

[mawmenny]

[syrenki]

i went to the intersection of the sacred and the profane and everybody knew you

[thunderstruck9]

Olga de Amaral (Colombian, 1932), Sol cuadrado No. 16, 1994. Gesso, acrylic and gold leaf on linen, 144.8 x 90.2 cm.

[mindofserenity]

— Surah al-Ma'un (Small Kindnesses), 107th surah of the Holy Quran

[eesirachs]

i'm co-writing a paper on "cell theopoetics" with my biosemiologist brother. thinking of the holiness of chemistry reactions, not only in the dish but in the body of the chemist. of god couched in laboratories. of co-becoming, theopoetic and leaky, within experimentation

[eesirachs]

This contribution is a conversation, ongoing and consuming, between two siblings. The first, Samantha ****, is a PhD candidate in theopoetics (or, theology through the vein of poetics), researching co-becoming in religion. Co-becoming is the theopoetic notion of touching and being touched, of reciprocity, of the lyrical leaking of things. The second presenter, Jack ******, is a senior research associate in Cambridge, MA, developing assays that can assess how proteases engineered to cleave IgE (the human antibody responsible for allergies) can be evaluated. Cleaving is the biochemical recognition that un-clings antibodies, rendering them impotent, or relatively impotent. Cleaving and co-becoming, this conversation thinks, are related terms: to cleave is to touch, to be touched in return. It is the un-gooeying of bodies that, in turn, renders bodies gooey together. “In your experiments, are you left unchanged,” theopoetics questions biochemistry. Biochemistry responds, not listlessly: “never.” This conversation notes the irony that, in cleaving cells, the body responsible for cleaving is brought closer to them; the biochemist is never not created new in the creation of chemical recognitions. This is cell theopoetics, the catholic (lowercase c) and unconventional theory wherein treatment of cells represents a religiosity of the one enacting the treatment. The laboratory comes to include, in this, the very body of the chemist.

[beguines]

God is relation, full stop. He is like reality in this regard. Consider an electron, the fundamental unit of all matter. No one has ever seen one. They really don't "exist" until we turn our attention to them. The physicist Marcelo Gleiser says that "exist" may be too strong a word to use for an electron. I take God's existence to be much the same, though for God "exist" is too weak a word. We don't know what the existence of God is. We have no idea what the word "exist" even means in the context of God. What we do know—or what I know, I should say—is that God doesn't exist until I turn my attention to him. Relation brings him into being, or, more accurately, enables his being to be perceived, experienced, shared. My attention—and the precise quality of that attention—is absolutely involved. I realize this is unorthodox at best, heretical at worst. But it is my experience of being in the world and of being with God. "The feeling remains," as Teresa of Avila says, "that God is on the journey, too."

Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman, Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian

[portalibis]

Sol, Lead votive plaque, Roman, probably 3rd century CE

[lgbtqiatext]

[fierysword]

[Mary is] a living continuation of God’s presence and guidance among His people. Just as God led the people of Israel through the wilderness by a pillar of cloud, so now the Mother of God is shown to be a “rational and living cloud.” The ancient cloud veiled the unapproachable glory of God while leading His people toward the Promised Land. The Theotokos, likewise, veils the divine Word of God in her womb, and through her intercession, guides the faithful toward the kingdom that has no end.

In the 10th century, when Constantinople faced danger from foreign threats, the Theotokos was witnessed in a vision, appearing above the faithful and spreading her veil as a covering of mercy… [Mary] continues to shelter the people of God with her maternal care.

“All you born on earth, with festival lamps in hand, in spirit leap for joy; and all you the heavenly angelic orders, join in and celebrate; and honoring the sacred wonders of the Mother of God, sing the joyful salutation, “O rejoice, Theotokos, all-blest, ever-virgin pure!” - Ninth Ode Katavasia of the Theotokos

Angels join the faithful in celebrating, for they too marveled at how the same divine presence that once overshadowed the tabernacle deigned to dwell in the womb of a Virgin, and now overshadows the faithful in every generation.

To sing of the Theotokos as a “living cloud” is to confess that God still walks with His people. In her, the fiery glory of the divine presence is made approachable, and through her prayers, the journey of the Church continues toward the land of immortality. “Rejoice, Theotokos, all-blessed, ever-virgin pure!

On Tuesday last week, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Protection of the Theotokos, known in Greek as Agia Skepi. Every year, the Greek O

[zeuxox]

St Margaret’s Well, Binsey

[asincereoffering]

Clara Bella Dunham (1901–1967)

Variations of the Cross

Circa: 1940-1950

[germanpostwarmodern]

Church St Gertrud (1963-65) in Cologne, Germany, by Gottfried Böhm. Photo by Theresa Dietel.

[primulaceas]

Flower Fairies of the Spring by Cicely Mary Barker