Baptize Me in a River of Fire @wariteres - Tumblr Blog

this is a personal blog that’s largely focused on Native Catholicism and queer Christianity at large; please keep in mind that I am one person and not an objective source of Truth

bucephaly

Kananesgi brings the fire

Custom zippo lighter featuring Kananesgi ama, the water spider, who brought fire to the people in the Cherokee first fire story

Had a lot of fun designing this and I'm so happy with how it came out!

the Christian messaging in Nolan’s Odyssey is not the part of this film that made me feel the most insane but it’s certainly Here and Worth Considering

yeyinde

Collins is gone.

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

wīya ispīh iyiniw-kiskīyihtamowin pasikōpayiki kāwi askiy ta-iyihyīmakan

venustapolis

Christ Praying on the Mount of Olives (Hans Thoma, 1893)

peast

if you are in the Thunder Bay area, the Whitesand First Nations families who have evacuated their homes burning down in Ontario are requesting supplies or monetary dnations

Source and most frequently updated post

OP last updated: July 15th

dragon-in-a-fez

actually I think you should be normal about ordinary citizens of authoritarian countries and yes that applies even to that country you're thinking of right now

dragon-in-a-fez

"but they support [dictator] and [violent action]!" okay is it possible that a combination of propaganda, election rigging, and authoritarian crackdowns on dissent could lead a population to look like it supports something most people would find distasteful under more reasonable circumstances

#and that extremists are loud and amplified by authoritarian and aspiring authoritarian governments #because it looks like popular support #and that international media doesn’t cover domestic protests necessarily #and that the narrative of ‘we are all okay with this’ is propaganda #it’s possible to be very against an authoritarian government while also understanding that they don’t speak for the people #and that the people do deserve freedom from this and are often fighting for it #condemn governments loudly and often #condemn all extremists in the same way #but crucially uh #never believe authoritarian regimes’ messaging #always look for dissenting views from others from that country #in equal amounts to the official stories

Catching up after a few days away from tumblr and HOO BOY did I miss the Discussion. I think you're super correct when you frame both the way women are supposed to aim for The One to Fix All Problems as well as single Catholics treating singleness as A Trial To Endure, problems which are inherently intertwined under amatonormative and sexist views of relationships and sex. I also think that we can be biphobic a different way and point out that women who decide they're not waiting for Mr. Right can also be equally pressured to find Miss Right, and note that even queer people treat being single as a Trial to Endure (though in a different way, not specifically relevant to your immediate discussion, which I understand. it's a good discussion to have. but i do not like amatanormativity. period. the queer community also has discussions on relationship norms it must have)

The difficult part with conversations about amatonormativity is that same-sex desire and same-sex relationships are so vilified in Catholic spaces, and (at least where I am) the expectation that if you're an openly queer Catholic and you want to be taken seriously as a member of your parish you will be celibate and refrain from considering desire/yearning/etc is so omnipresent, that I feel uncomfortable connecting arguments about the pressure to be in a relationship with anything to do with queerness in a religious setting. It's true that women can be pressured by their communities to find the right girl just as much as the right guy, but it's also true that for a lot of out Catholic lesbians the message is "sex drive? what sex drive? desire for companionship? what's that? loneliness in the absence of a romantic relationship? you can't have that". so the subject of amatonormativity here is both relevant and Deeply Fraught.

because ultimately Church and parish culture are telling two groups of women two different things.

on the one hand, if you're not willing to be rock-solid in your conviction that you're a Celibate Dyke, you're going to get bombarded with pressure to marry a man and have children and become primarily a wife and mother in the eyes of your community.

on the other, you're essentially dooming yourself to a lifetime of people good-naturedly asking why you don't say you suffer from same-sex attraction, why you identify as gay, if being aspec/arospec is some kind of medical condition or side effect of another problem, why you feel upset that you can't have the kinds of relationships other people have when you Know that you going out on a date with another woman is sinful, etc.

and the latter problem is deeply frustrating to me because I would seek out another woman as a domestic life partner if not for the bridal mysticism thing! I do in fact sometimes grieve that there are human-dating-human experiences (sometimes including sex, which I do occasionally find myself wanting, and including romance because I'm intensely romance-favorable even as I rarely find myself naturally experiencing it) that I won't get. I do often feel lonely because my wife is playing the Odysseus to my Penelope and insisting I wait for the entire length of my life before we're properly reunited. the assumption that all of us are celibate and therefore essentially sexless, and we're only safe to be around and acceptably orthodox because we treat same-sex desire like it's actively evil, is itself homophobic and more or less inescapable in a lot of places.

(And of course in Church contexts being a bridal mystic or telling people I'm focusing on my relationship with God and seeing where God leads me will shut down a lot of criticism or scorn - if they know I'm a lesbian, they praise my faith and my devotion, and if they don't, they do the same thing anyway for different reasons. I am privileged there in ways other queer Catholics aren't, and so I want to try and speak up for them, particularly if they're bringing partners, spouses, or children to Mass.)

even other queer Christians often take this route, which is even more upsetting. the amount of people I've met who see their desires, their yearning, their loneliness, their aching hearts, as some kind of sign of inherent sin is really upsetting to me. there are queer Christian organizations and movements I can't condone or comfortably endorse or share space with because their philosophies and theologies around queerness essentially involve going "God made me horrible and inherently evil in a uniquely twisted way, and I can't trust any of my feelings because they're not directed at the right kinds of potential partners, and I don't understand why He made me this way but I'll suffer through it for Him" and I just don't think that's how this works. I think it's possible to have a healthy respect for and appreciation for all aspects of queer life while still being celibate, should that be what you feel God is calling you to be.

(the conversation around sex acts is even more fraught, and one that I don't feel comfortable dictating to any of my fellow queer Catholics about, because of all of this pressure and the histories of prejudice and bigotry and overt hostility - ultimately I pray that each of us is moved by the Spirit to the path God wants us to follow, be that total celibacy or civil marriage or chaste life partnership, and that God will see how we are striving to obey and to follow and have mercy on us for any errors in judgment. I think God's way more likely to be angry at us for forgetting to love our fellow man even when we disagree with their choices than angry at us for failing to be sufficiently insistent that you can't be sexually active and be a queer Catholic, basically. and I disavow any theology that argues you must be perpetually ashamed of yourself as a natural extension of your status as a queer Christian of any kind.)

so ultimately I agree with you that the queer community at large needs to have conversations about amatonormativity like Yesterday, but the queer Catholic community is imho much more in need of spaces that allow them to express themselves authentically. this includes those of us on the ace and aro spectra, because even though the criticisms we face for being ace and aro and therefore less likely to be interested in relationships of any kind are much reduced they're still present.

a-silly-poll-side-blog-yay

You just teleported to the last movie you watched! how is it going?

good

bad

great

awful

FUCK YOU I'M IN THE BACKROOMS NOW

dead

results

Voting ended onJul 10

#pre-Removal baby!!! let’s goooooo #also I might get to beat Thomas Jefferson to death with his own copy of homoerotic Scottish poetry and that would slap

ultimately what I find myself most confused by is that I don't think it's an inherently biphobic or even really controversial statement to say that the ways that marriage are treated as a panacea for every problem a woman has, and the ways that True Love are marketed as the ultimate goal, serve to distract women as a class from seeking more equality and from critiquing the institutional misogyny and sexism still present within marriage as a social state. I'm not sure what about my objections to the marketing package around Finding The One read as so inherently anti-women-who-marries-men, because they revolve around frustrations based in women's experiences as a marginalized underclass, and they have been echoed in my real life by women who are themselves married to men. in many cases I learned of these grievances from married women who both found marriage worthwhile and wanted to complain about the societal problems they stumbled into as an unintended result of their choices. I'm not sure why they read as something they're not.

wanting to chime in to say i dont think your points are invalid or even that out there, but as a queer woman who is married to man, that kind of take always sucks to see. one of the most difficult elements of marrying my husband is how it has shifted the way other queer women see me. the biggest sacrifice i made was no longer being seen as feminist and queer and progressive. especially with the added layer of religion. i am no longer a valid queer christian because i am a queer christian in a hetero marriage with kids, yknow? so i understand anon being frustrated. youre "allowed" to say whatever you want, but some things can be perceived a certain way, and others are "allowed" to feel iffy about that

I haven't been implying that women who marry men are automatically less feminist, queer, OR progressive. I've been venting about the expectation of heteronormativity and the ways it's impressed upon Christian women, and the ubiquity of women treating marriage to men like it will fix some fundamental thing about them. I agree with what you're saying - if I had been making those statements, people would be within their rights to be upset with me! But I haven't been and I genuinely don't understand why there's an impression otherwise. Critique of the ways the institution of marriage is used socially, and the ways that particularly straight women respond to marriage, and the insidious ways it replaces what I think should be our closeness with God that supersedes all human bonds, doesn't imply that women who choose to be married to men are anything other than women who choose to be married to men.

I am not anon, nor straight, nor did I unfollow you, but since you asked ppl in general there's one (1) single line gave me mixed feelings, depending on what you meant by that, so I would like for you to explain it. "even the happiest marriages to men involve sacrifices that must be made for the sake of functioning under patriarchy." what makes you think that? imagining here, say, a leftist/progressive man who was totally willing to listen and respect his wife and her feminism and have his errors corrected. what sacrifices would she have to make? are you referring to the relationship between a man and woman or more about how society would see them, ex, see the woman differently once she's married and thus, idk, denying her a certain type of career? if it's the first option, I think it's dangerous to think like that and become complacent to patriarchy due to resignation; kind of "men will be men, women will always have to make sacrifices to be with men," especially with men who are willing to try and be better. but if it's the latter, what exactly do you have in mind?

Being a married woman with a husband will cause you to lose out on a lot of things socially and materially.

Getting married to a man will impact your career progression - it shouldn't, but it will. It will change how people at your job see you, how they talk about you, what they expect of you in the workplace. Your chances of being shunted into a majority-female lower-paying lower-prestige pink collar career path are much higher, and your chances of your bosses seeing your job as less important than your husband's go up too. Doctors are now, on average, going to default to asking your husband about major decisions just as much as you, and all conversations are going to include some element of assumption that you will someday want to have children. You're expected in many places to change your name and take your husband's name. You're going to be presumed to be tied to his career goals. You're going to be expected to default to his social schedule. You're going to face all kinds of slight or lesser sexisms and misogynies that you didn't before as a married woman, and that will be a sacrifice - as a single woman you had more opportunities and more avenues for self-expression. You are giving all of that up, and taking on more societal consequences, in exchange for your marriage.

That is what I was talking about. There are material losses involved in marriage, and the tradeoff is love. Even the most Godly, most understanding man is not going to be able to counteract the whole patriarchal structure for you.

I do think that's worth venting about, and critiquing, especially since there's such intense social pressure especially in Christian circles to marry a man and perform heteronormativity.

wariteres

it is both completely insane and cruel to tell women we're doomed to an unfulfilling life or a life apart from God if we choose to be with a man. Men who are awful or ungodly choose to be, it isn't in their blood, and any opinion other than that is victim blamey as fuck to women in bad relationships with men

note the lesbian flag in my icon, the 'lesbian' in my header, and the constant references to lesbianism that I make in my descriptions of myself

as a lesbian in a religion that is full to the brim of constant pressure and messaging that True Spiritual Fulfillment is found in heterosexual marriage to a man, and as a Christian feminist who is deeply concerned about this messaging for non-dyke reasons, I am occasionally allowed to vent about how the women around me seem exceedingly eager to be with men and how spiritually and psychologically concerning I find this.

as a Catholic specifically I am allowed to criticize the ways that parish culture and particularly American Catholicism encourages all women to seek out heterosexual marriage when the fundamental tenets of our faith hold that marriage is a vocation that not everyone is called to

as a former Evangelical I am allowed to criticize the ways that the faith I was raised in treated marriage, and particularly the idolatrous ideas we were sold about how our husband was Our Perfect Match Chosen For Us By God To Fulfill Us Forever and how we would finally feel complete and be able to reach our true fulfilled potential as women once we were married

what I said was that marriage to a man will not replace God or give you the fulfillment that an intimate relationship with God will bring. this is something I was taught from birth by the married women in my life who were themselves devout Christians, and it is a message I internalized early because my mother especially was very concerned about me becoming 'boy-crazy' or being susceptible to pressure to marry. she was worried about this because that's what happened to her and she didn't want her daughter inheriting that mindset, particularly in the midst of early-2000s purity culture.

men as an oppressor class are collectively something I am allowed to be upset about and I won't apologize for that.

at no point did I say that men were awful inherently. part of the reason there is such a thing as a patriarchal oppressor class is because men consistently (as a class, not necessarily individually) choose to behave badly toward women in service of maintaining their power over us. that's a use of their free will that I am allowed to critique vehemently as a fellow child of God.

I think you're angry at things I didn't actually say, and I'll be praying for you. Have a blessed day.

wariteres

additionally, anon, I think you're seeing my bafflement and confusion at the idea that women would enjoy dating men - a thing that exists because I am an autistic aspec/arospec lesbian and I do not enjoy dating or being in relationships with men - as some kind of objective statement about the inherent ungodliness or unholiness of men. I am allowed to, on a personal blog as a layperson, express frustration at the fact that there are immense amounts of social pressure on women to date and marry men. I am also allowed to be upset at the fact that many of these women do not enjoy the experience but will not remain single out of a fear of social pressures that fixate on their unmarried status. I am a feminist, I am a homosexual, and I am speaking after a lifetime of living in a Christian subculture that was vocally hostile to both of those things. I would actually like to continue this conversation if you can be civil; I think you're misinterpreting a lot of my points because you're taking any criticism of the institution of heterosexual marriage as a criticism of specific situations that I simply am not thinking of.

anyway for everyone else I also encourage your thoughts. do I hate men as an oppressor class too much, just the right amount, or not enough? my askbox remains open.