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— Rūmi 🌸

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“ḫiṭṭi aḫṭû ana damiqti tēr / anna ēpuš šāru litbal / gillātūya maʾdāti kīma ṣubāti šuḫuṭ”

“The sin that I committed, turn into good. / The wrong that I did, let the wind carry away. / My many sins, strip away like a garment”

— babylonian ersahunga [hymn for forgiveness]

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[poetic-lungs]

tremble if God forgets you tremble if God remembers you

— Eduardo C. Corral, excerpt of “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel”, from Guillotine

[324732]

Gol-Ghaltan: the Iranian Baptism of Flowers

🌸On a warm spring day, tiny infants are rolled among soft, fragrant petals that their mothers and grandmothers have picked for them with loving hands & quiet prayers, as part of the Iranian gol-ghaltan ceremony, to mark the arrival of a baby's first spring.🌸

[stkateri-deactivated20260526]

“A man commiting numerous sins does not please the devil. Even a man committing great sins, and turning others against the Lord, doesn’t truly satisfy the devil, because he knows that God is a God of endless love and mercy. But when a man despairs and thinks God will not forgive him, when man chooses to hide his face from God, finally the devil rejoices.

-Saint Anthimus of Chios

[divinum-pacis]

“We cannot pray to You, O God, to banish war, for You have filled the world with paths to peace, if only we would take them. We cannot pray to You to end starvation, for there is food enough for all, if only we would share it. We cannot merely pray for prejudice to cease, for we might see the good in all that lies before our eyes, if only we would use them. We cannot merely pray “Root out despair,” for the spark of hope already waits within the human heart, for us to fan it into flame. We must not ask of You, O God, to take the task that You have given us. We cannot shirk, we cannot flee away, Avoiding obligation for ever. Therefore we pray, O God, for wisdom and will, for courage to do and to become, not only to look on with helpless yearning as though we had no strength. For Your sake and ours speedily and soon, let it be: that our land may be safe, that our lives may be blessed”

— Rabbi Jack Riemer (We Cannot Pray to You)

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[audryair-deactivated20231018]

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Shi'i Muslim women visiting the Shrine of Our Lady in Lebanon

Catholics around the world honor the Virgin Mary during the month of May, in a practice dating back to the 13th Century. But they are not the only faith that greatly admires the Virgin Mary – enter Islam. Built in 1908, the Shrine of Our Lady draws thousands of Muslim visitors to the religious site, located in Harissa, Lebanon.

“All of [the Muslim visitors] have a lot of respect for Lady Mary,” says Father Younen Obeid. “This respect stems directly from the Quran, the holy book of Islam, which references Mary 37 times — even more occasions than the Bible. The 19th chapter of the Quran is in fact named after Lady Mary and tells the story of her life and how she came to give birth to Jesus, though Islam does not hold the belief of Jesus’s divinity.”

Randa Youssef, a Muslim woman from Beirut, says that she likes to come to the shrine to ask for forgiveness. “I hope she listens to us so that she may give our prayers to God.“

[Huffington Post]

[existential-celestial]

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Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco / Almond Blossom by Vincent Van Gogh

[iscariotapologist]

Verna J. Dozier, The Dream of God

[alexander-james-ink]

Why are you distant, beloved? The veil is torn.

[dreamstars]

[coloradocowgirlforchrist]

“The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else. It gives them a clarity of compassion that can find good in the most terrible criminals. It delivers them from the burden of judging others, condemning other men. It teaches them to bring the good out of others by compassion, mercy and pardon. A man becomes a saint not by conviction that he is better than sinners, but by the realization that he is one of them, and that all together need the mercy of God!”

– Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

[apenitentialprayer]

Eventually, we know that we are all saved by mercy in spite of ourselves. That must be the final humiliation to the ego.

Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M. (Hidden with Christ)

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وَمَن يَتَّقِ اللَّهَ يَجعَل لَهُ مَخرَجًا وَيَرزُقهُ مِن حَيثُ لا يَحتَسِبُ ۚ وَمَن يَتَوَكَّل عَلَى اللَّهِ فَهُوَ حَسبُهُ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ بالِغُ أَمرِهِ

“...and whosoever is mindful of God, He will always make for them a way out of difficulty, providing for them from sources they never could imagine; and whoever trusts in God, He is sufficient for them, for God will certainly carry through what He Wills.”

— Qur'ān, 65:2-3