Tell a Braver Story

I like and follow from @thewatercolours. The stories are true: “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.” - St Irenaeus

[lost-without-my-boswell]

There’s something wrong with him

[siena-sevenwits]

Everyone should be named after common, everyday nouns. When I see a certain fruit, I can shout, “Cherry!” with joy. When I see a rabbit, I can shout, “Bunny!” But if I want to shout “Frodo!” I have to, I don’t know, see a picture of Elijah Wood or something. Because we don’t have any generic things kicking around called frodos.

Somebody please start referring to some everyday object as a “frodo,” so that I can do this. It will count as dialect. It will count as slang. It will count as a regionalism.

[pommegf]

sights on the southwest coastal path, Cornwall.

[siena-sevenwits]

Yet another reason I’m glad I have work. Your weekends (whether at the week’s end or not) are the most wonderful thing in the world when you have work, and it’s so much easier to enjoy them, and see how they gleam.

[takofukkatsumi]

Reblog this and tell me what was your biggest crying over a piece of fiction. You can be vague if you don't want to spoil.

[au-academy]

Kelsier: *Notices the way Vin jumps when someone makes a sudden movement and instantly knows exactly how to make a family and home for her and takes up the role of the father she never had

Kelsier: *Pewter drags for a whole day to go and save the lives of an army that is now useless to them

Kelsier: *Jumps into an execution to save Spook

Kelsier: *Saves Elend's life just because Vin loved him and he loved Vin

Kelsier: *Would anyday sacrifice his life for any of his friends and people

Sanderson later to fuel his plot: Oh, forgot to mention, he was a psychopath

[nooneinnportant]

Okay, but what if Elend Venture got Vin's last name instead and became just Elend?

[siena-sevenwits]

The boardgames meetup was called off, so I picnicked. Took a container of Greek salad with chicken down to the water in the park, and sat on scarves arranged into a picnic blanket and bloodied my knuckles trying to open a bottle of cherry ginger ale with a key. Never did get it open. Now for work at the library (though first I’m letting myself read from the book which I read a chapter of each time I come to the library.)

[intercal]

leaving a bad review of The Art of War on Amazon so my enemies don't buy it

[misscrazyfangirl321]

It's vital to have a trusted friend who you can tell "Hey this is the completely illogical stuff my brain is saying."

Sometimes they don't even have to say anything back. Just being able to hear it out loud or see it written down can be enough for you to snap out of it.

[water-aesthetics]

[siena-sevenwits]

Goodness

- The doctor flushed my right ear out, and I can hear out of it again for the first time in nearly a month. It feels incredible.

- The apples on our tree are growing bigger!

- I did some organizing I had been putting off, and my space feels better.

- It’s exciting to have found so many books yesterday. I also found a Bible story book for the small ones.

- RSVP’d to a wedding.

- You know how I was desperate in my job search last year, and applied everywhere just trying to find something? A bowling lane that was looking for a counter attendant just emailed me to let me know they reviewed my application - my application I sent in November or December- and were impressed, and are offering me an interview. Yay!!! (So, so grateful I have my museum job.)

- It has been sunny, and I will never take that for granted again. (My sister’s house flooded three times this summer, and my parents’ house once. And both have been trying to sell.) I love rain in itself, but thank God for the improved weather.

- Going to play boardgames with friends today.

- I got the video of Midsummer Night’s Dream, and my roommate and I wandered through random moments of it, just letting our hearts be full of love for the kids and the show.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Me: If I don't get married I'd *thinks of a bunch of selfish things to do*

St Paul: *stares intensely at me*

Me:

Me: I'd dedicate myself to study, service, and silence.

St Paul: *nods approvingly*

[entanglingbriars]

I'd like to protest that there's no way St. Paul thought silence was a virtue. St. Paul was always one question asked away from delivering a five-hour rant.

[apenitentialprayer]

Someone's got to pull out the tweet about how holiness comes in many forms; how Joseph doesn't speak a single word in Scripture, and how it's doubtful that Saint Paul had a thought that he didn't publish

[frangipani-wanderlust]

I am convinced that Paul and Peter would not have had the falling-out that they had if either one of them knew how to shut up for five consecutive minutes. 😆

[mariam-en-christo]

One of the best things I've done for my faith is learn about the nuances in the original meaning of "Kyrie, eleison." It's almost always translated as "Lord, have mercy," and while this made sense in the way the word "mercy" was used centuries ago, it doesn't really line up with the contemporary English meaning. Today, "have mercy" feels pretty solely like pleading to a judge to be pardoned for a crime and can make the church feel like a courtroom rather than a hospital for sinners. However, the original English (and Greek) meaning was far broader and quite far from this legalistic meaning. "Eleos" was the Greek translation in the Septuagint for the Hebrew word "חֶסֶד," or Chesed, which refers to a steadfast love grounded in the covenant. Furthermore, while we now know they aren't actually etymologically related, "eleos" sounds a lot like "elaion" (olive oil, used for light and medicine), and the Church Fathers (like St. John Chrysostom) associated the two deeply. When early Christians prayed "Kyrie, eleison," what they meant was something closer to: "Lord, pour out Your healing grace unto me and soothe me." They weren't so much pleading for a mitigation of punishment as they were pleading for God to hold to His Covenant with His people, which entails the treatment of sins and comfort through distress. So mentally, when I hear or say it, I translate it internally to "Lord, heal us," or "Lord, be gracious." This really helps me genuinely mean it and put my heart into it when I say "Kyrie, eleison" during the Divine Liturgy, or another liturgy.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I think it would do people a lot of good, both mentally and societally, if they started thinking of at least some of their actions not as good or bad, or moral or not, or fun or not, but as whether or not they’re the behavior of someone who lives in a society.

On Friday, I got a notification that I had a package. My apartment has package lockers that FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL/etc. deliver int and when they register a package to me, I get a code emailed/texted to me that I can use to pop the locker open.

I didn’t remember getting a package, but that happens sometimes. I preorder a lot of things and Bookshop doesn’t always let you know when they’ve finally shipped something, or a friend surprises me, or whatever. So I put some clothes and shoes on and went over to the leasing office building to get the package.

It was not for me. FedEx is gonna FedEx.

So I picked it up out of the locker and went to the leasing office staff to hand it to them. They were kind of closed for lunch, so I was contemplating what to do if they weren’t in. It had the address. I could walk over there and deliver it maybe?

‘Cause see. A lot of people apparently just shut the locker and are done with it. But if I did that...how would this person know they had a package or where it was? How would anyone get the package back out of the locker, now that the system registered it as retrieved? They don’t have the code, and the code is expired anyway.

I could just leave it in the locker. Or take it out of the locker and dump it to the side where it could be pilfered; the exact function the package lockers exist to prevent. It’s not my package. Not my problem.

But it costs me a tiny bit of inconvenience and time to place it in the hands of and appropriate custodian and save a bunch of other people a lot of inconvenience and time. I live in a society. Society is designed to save everyone across the society as much time and effort as possible cumulatively.

Sure, it’s easier and faster to just shove your shopping cart out of the way and pull out. Not your problem. You don’t need the cart anymore. Except now the cart is blocking other people’s cars and other parking spots and can ram into cars and people and some poor worker is going to have to go track it down. You have saved yourself a tiny amount of time and inconvenience and in doing so wasted everyone around you’s time and convenience.

Sure, you could put your neighbor’s mail from a government agency with an URGENT stamp in your mailbox and mark it “NOT AT THIS ADDRESS.” Or you could. Just. Pop it in their mailbox or slip it under their door (I’ve been having mail problems recently okay. Give the USPS more money).

You don’t have to wait an extra 5 seconds to hold the door for someone just behind you. But. Like. Come on, man, really? (Unless you're entering a secured area with restricted access, because that causes a separate cache of problems)

Weighing how much time and effort something is going to cost you compared to how much time and effort it will save everyone else around you cumulatively is...well...pro-social way to think. There are obviously always going to be exceptions and a balance to things, especially if the cost to you is much, much higher proportionally.

We live in a society. We live in many societies.

You can leave your dishes all around your house. But whoever has to do the dishes later (even if it’s you!) is then going to have to remember or know this happened, figure out where they all are, pick them up, deal with any spills/etc. that incurred, and return them to the kitchen and then was them. Was that really worth just putting them in the kitchen earlier? Maybe. But probably not.

“But what do I get out of that?” Firstly, you’re a tarpit. Secondly, you get all of the time and energy everyone around you has saved you by also being a functioning member of a society.

Societies work because we’re all contributing so the burned is distributed, just the way people can walk over a bed of nails but not an individual nail. We all take up a small part of people’s burdens that aren’t necessarily ours so we all have better lives.

Consider: how pro-social is your behavior? Sometimes pro-social behavior is a huge undertaking for massive gains elsewhere. But so much of the time it takes an extra 30 seconds, an extra minute.

And what little pro-social tasks can you tally up lately to feel proud and accomplished of yourself? It’s good for you. Try it out.

[awesomebutunpractical]

Look, look, I'm not going to say relatable characters aren't a good lovely thing, okay? My issue isn’t that blorbo from your shows is just like you for real, that's fine. That's good even. Enjoy that.

The myth is that it's the primary, or only, way to enjoy a story. Seriously, if you can't sympathize with a fictional character who isn't like you, then that's a skill you might want to practice. Curiosity is a strong way to start.

[bowditch]

there's a whole approach to literature for children in education that considers most fiction to be "windows." in this approach, it is crucial that children read a lot of stories, especially historic fiction, and that those books are about people, places, cultures, and ideas outside the child's experience.

the belief is that this practice will carry into adulthood and will also help a kid develop an understanding of the world that comprehends their personal life is not the "default." it helps develop empathy for those who don't look or act like them. it is incredibly important that a kid encounter many, many, many books where the protagonist does not represent them except in ways that foster the connection between the child's concept of self-identity and the idea that everywhere, always, people have been people.

it is helpful to read a story about someone whose life is vastly different from your own and then develop empathy via recognizing that they, too, are scared or shy or hopeful or hurt or lonely or growing. and it is additionally very important that those "relatable" details do not cause a mental rewriting of that character to be "just like me."

when you've had that reading experience enough times, it becomes even easier to read about people you don't find relatable at all. you now have the scaffolding to accept that someone who isn't like you at all and doesn't respond or feel the way you do is shaped by things in their own lives that are different than your own, or have lived similar experiences but had another reaction to them. and you can read a story and enjoy it or take something away from it without ever sympathizing with a character, or via finding compassion outside your personal understanding, because you have internalized some of the vastness of human experience.

all this to say that OP is entirely right. i love my blorbos that i find relatable. they can be an important processing lens for me. but if that is the only way you engage with fiction, especially if you find yourself reacting very personally and defensively to how other people talk about those characters as if they are attacking you, then give yourself the education you didn't get earlier: read books about people who aren't like you. read short stories and essays and historic fiction and modern day lit written by people from other places and times, representing themselves or their own experiences, and become comfortable with the sensation of looking through windows into lives that don't look like yours.

if you read a lot of fantasy or scifi, maybe you think this is already true. but look closer: are your blorbos acting in a way you would act? are the characters, regardless of setting, experiencing their world via the way they were written with a lens very much like your own? that's okay for fun! those books aren't necessarily BAD. but look for things where you don't understand or instinctively agree with how characters behave, where the cultural norms are fully accepted and lived by the characters, where the context is unfamiliar, and then spend time with that. let it stretch you. let it linger while you think about how you feel, and what it means, and how it impacts your perception of other people.

be curious! lean into wanting to know and learn!

[awfullybigwardrobe44]

Why don’t you go for a walk with God in the cool of the day and maybe you’ll calm down