Baptize Me in a River of Fire

she/her, bridal mystic native dyke leftist catholic “I am consumed, and You feel like forever”

[wariteres]

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

[wordpress-blaze-7923175]

Testify To Love

"With every breath I take I will give thanks to God above, for as long as I shall live I will Testify To Love."

Founding member of the award winning Christian group Avalon, Michael Passons, who was pushed out of the group for being gay, joins former Avalon member Melissa Greene and gay country artist Ty Herndon to re-imagine the hit song "Testify To Love," creating a totally awesome queer anthem.

Source: Testify To Love

[sellic]

[wariteres]

(all of you are getting my writing exercises because my writing blog is not currently in the "supernatural undead god-king lesbian" part of the story, and you people, my beloved mutuals, will understand what I'm trying to do)

So what would you say to me, if I brought you back? 

For a moment a half-imagined half-envisioned image flitted across Meg’s thoughts, saturated with warmth and vibrant color. She saw herself standing in a sun-drenched plaza made of cream-colored stone, the shadows cast by nearby trees stark and sharp-edged, and she saw Del perched atop a bench with her boots planted where people usually sat, head tilted in interest as she listened to her retinue debating some question of philosophy, and she felt the thread between them draw taut with anticipation as each grew aware of the other. She pictured herself crossing the plaza and turning Del’s head toward her with one hand and kissing her, and running her other hand through her lover’s dark hair, and saying – 

Babygirl, are you eating enough? 

As quickly as it had come, the image vanished, replaced with Del’s spluttering laughter. She sounded somewhere between indignation and exasperated acceptance. 

You cannot open with that, she said, in the way that made it impossible for Meg to tell if she was serious. 

Why not? You don’t eat enough, you always look about to fall over. 

So you walk right up to me and call me babygirl?! What am I supposed to say to Keva?

Why are you thinking about Keva when I’m kissing you? 

Because, Del said, somehow sounding like she was about to explain something really obvious without actually making a noise, you’re coming back to when my court is new. At this point he’s basically a bull in a pasture with no cows to defend – 

You talk about Keva that way?

To his face, if necessary. 

Bold of you, isn’t it? 

Not if it’s me. I can say whatever I like. 

Yeah, yeah, you keep saying that. ‘If you write the stories you get to pick the dialogue’, but do you have to sound so smug about it?

Yes, Del said, just as smugly. Meg giggled, feeling herself slide deeper into the conversation. Anyway, Keva’s going to freak out if some woman he’s never seen before comes up and sticks her tongue in my mouth. 

Oh, like Ohan’s never done that before. 

A flicker of bemusement passed between them, up and down the line. Meg could feel that Del was trying not to laugh. 

I will neither confirm nor deny that he’s done that before. 

So he’s definitely done it. 

That’s not what I said.

It’s what you implied, though, Meg retorted. 

Ohan’s a man!

Yeah, but Keva’s still definitely seen you getting kissed with tongue before. 

Why are you so sure Ohan kissed me with tongue?

Because it’s Ohan, obviously. Meg didn’t have to elaborate, choosing instead to pointedly remember the way that he’d looked at Del when she’d been sprawled out on the pentacle altar, still blood-drenched and shuddering and smelling the way astronauts said space smelled. 

Del, for her part, kept her silence, which only made Meg’s giggles grow into laughter. Finally, she said I’m still never isekai-ing you if you open with babygirl, and broke into laughter herself.

I’m not, I swear I’m not, Meg protested. She rolled onto her back, lifting her left hand and looking at it. The red thread wound about her ring finger was technically just as invisible and intangible as it had been since she found it there. Still, she could tell it was there, aching and almost burning against her skin. If she closed her eyes it stood out starkly in the geography of her room and her body, glowing in the dark. If she followed it, she was sure it would lead to Del, wherever Del happened to be. It was a comforting thought, filling her with warmth as surely as the sun in the unreal plaza would have. 

I don’t believe you, Del told her, and it made her burst out laughing. 

You shouldn’t, she said. It’s not my fault you’re babygirl. 

Sometimes I’m a man, when the situation calls for it!

Yeah, I know, Ohan’s more into you when you’re a man. But what, men can’t be babygirl? That’s not what Tumblr says. 

Be nice to Ohan, Del said, deftly changing the subject. He’s as gay as you are. You’d cry if I came back as a man. 

I would not! Now it was Meg’s turn to splutter indignantly. 

Oh, yeah? Del teased. What would you do?

… call you babygirl, Meg said with a smirk, and ask if you’re eating enough.

Del groaned, the sensation rumbling around in Meg’s thoughts like it was really a sound. She muttered something that sounded like ‘the Internet was a mistake’. 

Oh, now you think that? It’s a little late! Meg shot back.

I’ll go back and rewrite the last half of the twentieth century, Del replied. She was almost pouting. That’ll show you. 

They were both laughing, at each other and at the absurdity of the conversation. Their thoughts joined and curled around themselves, and Meg caught flickers of a mind far vaster than her own, holding them to her like they were sparks she could catch from a bonfire or stars falling from the deep blue vault of heaven. But past the laughter and the banter was a lingering heaviness that she recognized as weariness, deeper than bone-deep, coming up from the earth itself. It sprouted up through the love that lay over both of them, taking root in her own chest to match her lover. 

Where are you? she asked. What are you doing? 

She shut her eyes, casting her mind out, tracing along the blazing red thread. Whatever world it occupied was different from the layers faeries and humans and aquatics and the airborne lived on, invisible even when you slipped between them and yet just as real, binding them together. Del could slide from layer to layer like shedding a coat or sitting down on a chair, moving through all of it effortlessly; Meg wondered if the string was like that. She felt a little like she was a fish and the whole world had turned to water, or like her lover was at once fundamental and primordial and central to the construction of every layer and like she was something new and alien and unexpected. 

Working, Del answered her. They met halfway, or felt like they did. Meg saw glimpses of the long white hallways and spotlessly clean rooms in Lilly Memorial, and of the shadowy brick arches of the catacombs. 

Wilhelmina Weiss won’t like that, Meg warned. She’ll come complaining at you again about the perils of monarchy and the consent of the governed. 

Wilhelmina Weiss can cope, Del said. Besides, she wants to rule the world herself, where’s she get off talking about representative democracy? 

It had taken her lover all of five minutes to emerge back into the world like a newly-hatched chick, shake off the blood – mostly Meg’s – and vitreous humor that had coated her, tie back her hair, and declare that she had work to do. Ohan had seemed to know immediately what she meant and had lost no time fetching clothes and taking half a dozen messages, which Del had dictated matter-of-factly in a handful of different languages. She’d moved and spoken like a conquering hero or a general mustering her troops before a momentous battle, shrugging on a long coat with gold braid over a waistcoat and trousers that made her look a little like a crossdressing mezzo soprano. Meg, for her part, had been entirely in the dark regarding what this work was meant to be, at least at first. When they’d made their way out of the maze of nested layers that surrounded the little shrine at the center of the world, stumbling out into the streets of human Indianapolis, and Del had instantly locked eyes with a woman sitting against the polished stone of a skyscraper and then moved right to her side with all the unerring earnestness of a cannonball, and the woman had looked at her like she’d hung the moon and all the stars, the question had been answered. 

She’d been busy ever since then, with humans and part-humans and faeries alike, coming home late to the house in Meridian Hills and leaving early. Meg didn’t see her often, but they talked nearly without ceasing, in the privacy of their thoughts. Today, it seemed, she was splitting her time between Lilly Memorial and whoever she could call to her from the Courthouse layer. She liked healing people, body and mind and soul. She liked erasing medical debt, and filling bank accounts, and reconciling families, and officiating marriages, and finishing transitions by way of total body transformation, and cutting her wrists open to let anyone drink from her who needed it. She liked rearranging the world so mortgages and cars were paid off and apartments were mysteriously rent free. She liked paying for groceries. She liked watering flowers with clouds that never rained on anyone, and resurrecting insects from the dead, and pulling carbon dioxide from the air. And she liked helping people, and people were drawn to her, even though she’d never announced herself. She loved them, and would not refuse them, even if it meant staying up until four in the morning and convincing a terrified freshman at Seven Steeples not to kill himself. She reminded Meg of Bastian in Endings and Beginnings, coming into the Silver City anonymously at sunset to heal anyone he could. Kings were gifted with healing magic, according to Winsterhand, and could not resist the call of their people. 

For thusly shall the true king be truly known, Meg quoted, thinking in Del’s direction. The warmth she got back in return felt like a hand squeezed in weary gratitude. Will you be home tonight? 

Yes, Del told her. I’m weary beyond measure. 

You’re really not eating enough, Meg said. In her mind’s eye she could see Del’s face, and traced an imagined hand over it. You’re talking like a fantasy novel again. 

You think it’s sexy when I do that. 

Well, Meg began, feeling a blush creep up over her cheeks, well, look, you can’t keep doing this, you’ll burn out. 

I won’t, Del said. She meant it. They need me. I can’t refuse them. She raised an equally imagined hand, gripping Meg’s wrist like it was a lifeline. Their eyes met. For a moment, the exhaustion was shared between them, a vast empty gulf spread across two sets of shoulders, and then it was gone. 

I’ll have dinner waiting when you get home, Meg told her. 

I’ll find something good to put on the TV, Del promised, and leaned forward and kissed her. 

Meg opened her eyes. She hadn’t left her room, hadn’t moved from her bed. Still, she could feel the fire in her chest that conversations with Del always left her with, and she got to her feet with a spring in her step. 

I’m still here, you know, Del told her; it made her smile.

That’s the end of a conversation! It was romantic! You know, dramatic tension, scene changes, that kind of thing? 

Hard to pull off when you never leave, though. Meg got the distinct impression of Del picking lint from her braided coat and smirking. 

You have no sense of romance, you know that? 

As soon as she’d said it, she knew she was doomed. Memory flooded her, curated by Del and by her own traitorous mind – the hand pulling her out of the blood in the cenotaph at Seven Steeples, the dance they’d shared in the vision Del had granted her of the Silver City, the dance they’d shared on the back porch of Meg’s house at the end of her very first day as a homeowner that she thought she’d dreamed, and most vivid of all, the pentacle altar in the shrine at the center of the world, the vines piercing through her and streaming upward, the way she’d woven song and intent into a desperate cry that had pulled Del out of the void between worlds and into her arms. Her breath caught in her throat. Her knees went a little weak. She could feel Del smiling at her. 

Unfair! she protested with as much venom as she could muster. It wasn’t much. 

Plenty fair, Del corrected her. Now go for a walk, you’ll feel better. 

Meg imagined making a rude gesture, but she went down the stairs anyway, resisting the urge to grin from ear to ear. 

[wariteres]

look guys not everybody in my life can appreciate the fact that the central love story of my books is based on the only love story I've ever personally experienced

but you, my beloved followers and mutuals, YOU get it

[psalms-and-spells]

“How could Judas betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver?”

Guys we have Christians joining the military for a college degree. We see people betray Jesus for money everyday. If you are American you live in a country that betrayed Jesus for money and power.

This is not some foreign concept. It’s an action you see on the daily. There might even be a chance you have betrayed Jesus.

Judas is not the exception, he is the rule.

[wariteres]

(all of you are getting my writing exercises because my writing blog is not currently in the "supernatural undead god-king lesbian" part of the story, and you people, my beloved mutuals, will understand what I'm trying to do)

So what would you say to me, if I brought you back? 

For a moment a half-imagined half-envisioned image flitted across Meg’s thoughts, saturated with warmth and vibrant color. She saw herself standing in a sun-drenched plaza made of cream-colored stone, the shadows cast by nearby trees stark and sharp-edged, and she saw Del perched atop a bench with her boots planted where people usually sat, head tilted in interest as she listened to her retinue debating some question of philosophy, and she felt the thread between them draw taut with anticipation as each grew aware of the other. She pictured herself crossing the plaza and turning Del’s head toward her with one hand and kissing her, and running her other hand through her lover’s dark hair, and saying – 

Babygirl, are you eating enough? 

As quickly as it had come, the image vanished, replaced with Del’s spluttering laughter. She sounded somewhere between indignation and exasperated acceptance. 

You cannot open with that, she said, in the way that made it impossible for Meg to tell if she was serious. 

Why not? You don’t eat enough, you always look about to fall over. 

So you walk right up to me and call me babygirl?! What am I supposed to say to Keva?

Why are you thinking about Keva when I’m kissing you? 

Because, Del said, somehow sounding like she was about to explain something really obvious without actually making a noise, you’re coming back to when my court is new. At this point he’s basically a bull in a pasture with no cows to defend – 

You talk about Keva that way?

To his face, if necessary. 

Bold of you, isn’t it? 

Not if it’s me. I can say whatever I like. 

Yeah, yeah, you keep saying that. ‘If you write the stories you get to pick the dialogue’, but do you have to sound so smug about it?

Yes, Del said, just as smugly. Meg giggled, feeling herself slide deeper into the conversation. Anyway, Keva’s going to freak out if some woman he’s never seen before comes up and sticks her tongue in my mouth. 

Oh, like Ohan’s never done that before. 

A flicker of bemusement passed between them, up and down the line. Meg could feel that Del was trying not to laugh. 

I will neither confirm nor deny that he’s done that before. 

So he’s definitely done it. 

That’s not what I said.

It’s what you implied, though, Meg retorted. 

Ohan’s a man!

Yeah, but Keva’s still definitely seen you getting kissed with tongue before. 

Why are you so sure Ohan kissed me with tongue?

Because it’s Ohan, obviously. Meg didn’t have to elaborate, choosing instead to pointedly remember the way that he’d looked at Del when she’d been sprawled out on the pentacle altar, still blood-drenched and shuddering and smelling the way astronauts said space smelled. 

Del, for her part, kept her silence, which only made Meg’s giggles grow into laughter. Finally, she said I’m still never isekai-ing you if you open with babygirl, and broke into laughter herself.

I’m not, I swear I’m not, Meg protested. She rolled onto her back, lifting her left hand and looking at it. The red thread wound about her ring finger was technically just as invisible and intangible as it had been since she found it there. Still, she could tell it was there, aching and almost burning against her skin. If she closed her eyes it stood out starkly in the geography of her room and her body, glowing in the dark. If she followed it, she was sure it would lead to Del, wherever Del happened to be. It was a comforting thought, filling her with warmth as surely as the sun in the unreal plaza would have. 

I don’t believe you, Del told her, and it made her burst out laughing. 

You shouldn’t, she said. It’s not my fault you’re babygirl. 

Sometimes I’m a man, when the situation calls for it!

Yeah, I know, Ohan’s more into you when you’re a man. But what, men can’t be babygirl? That’s not what Tumblr says. 

Be nice to Ohan, Del said, deftly changing the subject. He’s as gay as you are. You’d cry if I came back as a man. 

I would not! Now it was Meg’s turn to splutter indignantly. 

Oh, yeah? Del teased. What would you do?

… call you babygirl, Meg said with a smirk, and ask if you’re eating enough.

Del groaned, the sensation rumbling around in Meg’s thoughts like it was really a sound. She muttered something that sounded like ‘the Internet was a mistake’. 

Oh, now you think that? It’s a little late! Meg shot back.

I’ll go back and rewrite the last half of the twentieth century, Del replied. She was almost pouting. That’ll show you. 

They were both laughing, at each other and at the absurdity of the conversation. Their thoughts joined and curled around themselves, and Meg caught flickers of a mind far vaster than her own, holding them to her like they were sparks she could catch from a bonfire or stars falling from the deep blue vault of heaven. But past the laughter and the banter was a lingering heaviness that she recognized as weariness, deeper than bone-deep, coming up from the earth itself. It sprouted up through the love that lay over both of them, taking root in her own chest to match her lover. 

Where are you? she asked. What are you doing? 

She shut her eyes, casting her mind out, tracing along the blazing red thread. Whatever world it occupied was different from the layers faeries and humans and aquatics and the airborne lived on, invisible even when you slipped between them and yet just as real, binding them together. Del could slide from layer to layer like shedding a coat or sitting down on a chair, moving through all of it effortlessly; Meg wondered if the string was like that. She felt a little like she was a fish and the whole world had turned to water, or like her lover was at once fundamental and primordial and central to the construction of every layer and like she was something new and alien and unexpected. 

Working, Del answered her. They met halfway, or felt like they did. Meg saw glimpses of the long white hallways and spotlessly clean rooms in Lilly Memorial, and of the shadowy brick arches of the catacombs. 

Wilhelmina Weiss won’t like that, Meg warned. She’ll come complaining at you again about the perils of monarchy and the consent of the governed. 

Wilhelmina Weiss can cope, Del said. Besides, she wants to rule the world herself, where’s she get off talking about representative democracy? 

It had taken her lover all of five minutes to emerge back into the world like a newly-hatched chick, shake off the blood – mostly Meg’s – and vitreous humor that had coated her, tie back her hair, and declare that she had work to do. Ohan had seemed to know immediately what she meant and had lost no time fetching clothes and taking half a dozen messages, which Del had dictated matter-of-factly in a handful of different languages. She’d moved and spoken like a conquering hero or a general mustering her troops before a momentous battle, shrugging on a long coat with gold braid over a waistcoat and trousers that made her look a little like a crossdressing mezzo soprano. Meg, for her part, had been entirely in the dark regarding what this work was meant to be, at least at first. When they’d made their way out of the maze of nested layers that surrounded the little shrine at the center of the world, stumbling out into the streets of human Indianapolis, and Del had instantly locked eyes with a woman sitting against the polished stone of a skyscraper and then moved right to her side with all the unerring earnestness of a cannonball, and the woman had looked at her like she’d hung the moon and all the stars, the question had been answered. 

She’d been busy ever since then, with humans and part-humans and faeries alike, coming home late to the house in Meridian Hills and leaving early. Meg didn’t see her often, but they talked nearly without ceasing, in the privacy of their thoughts. Today, it seemed, she was splitting her time between Lilly Memorial and whoever she could call to her from the Courthouse layer. She liked healing people, body and mind and soul. She liked erasing medical debt, and filling bank accounts, and reconciling families, and officiating marriages, and finishing transitions by way of total body transformation, and cutting her wrists open to let anyone drink from her who needed it. She liked rearranging the world so mortgages and cars were paid off and apartments were mysteriously rent free. She liked paying for groceries. She liked watering flowers with clouds that never rained on anyone, and resurrecting insects from the dead, and pulling carbon dioxide from the air. And she liked helping people, and people were drawn to her, even though she’d never announced herself. She loved them, and would not refuse them, even if it meant staying up until four in the morning and convincing a terrified freshman at Seven Steeples not to kill himself. She reminded Meg of Bastian in Endings and Beginnings, coming into the Silver City anonymously at sunset to heal anyone he could. Kings were gifted with healing magic, according to Winsterhand, and could not resist the call of their people. 

For thusly shall the true king be truly known, Meg quoted, thinking in Del’s direction. The warmth she got back in return felt like a hand squeezed in weary gratitude. Will you be home tonight? 

Yes, Del told her. I’m weary beyond measure. 

You’re really not eating enough, Meg said. In her mind’s eye she could see Del’s face, and traced an imagined hand over it. You’re talking like a fantasy novel again. 

You think it’s sexy when I do that. 

Well, Meg began, feeling a blush creep up over her cheeks, well, look, you can’t keep doing this, you’ll burn out. 

I won’t, Del said. She meant it. They need me. I can’t refuse them. She raised an equally imagined hand, gripping Meg’s wrist like it was a lifeline. Their eyes met. For a moment, the exhaustion was shared between them, a vast empty gulf spread across two sets of shoulders, and then it was gone. 

I’ll have dinner waiting when you get home, Meg told her. 

I’ll find something good to put on the TV, Del promised, and leaned forward and kissed her. 

Meg opened her eyes. She hadn’t left her room, hadn’t moved from her bed. Still, she could feel the fire in her chest that conversations with Del always left her with, and she got to her feet with a spring in her step. 

I’m still here, you know, Del told her; it made her smile.

That’s the end of a conversation! It was romantic! You know, dramatic tension, scene changes, that kind of thing? 

Hard to pull off when you never leave, though. Meg got the distinct impression of Del picking lint from her braided coat and smirking. 

You have no sense of romance, you know that? 

As soon as she’d said it, she knew she was doomed. Memory flooded her, curated by Del and by her own traitorous mind – the hand pulling her out of the blood in the cenotaph at Seven Steeples, the dance they’d shared in the vision Del had granted her of the Silver City, the dance they’d shared on the back porch of Meg’s house at the end of her very first day as a homeowner that she thought she’d dreamed, and most vivid of all, the pentacle altar in the shrine at the center of the world, the vines piercing through her and streaming upward, the way she’d woven song and intent into a desperate cry that had pulled Del out of the void between worlds and into her arms. Her breath caught in her throat. Her knees went a little weak. She could feel Del smiling at her. 

Unfair! she protested with as much venom as she could muster. It wasn’t much. 

Plenty fair, Del corrected her. Now go for a walk, you’ll feel better. 

Meg imagined making a rude gesture, but she went down the stairs anyway, resisting the urge to grin from ear to ear. 

[not100bees]

"You have to quietly hold your nose and vote for Graham Platner despite his cartoonishly excessive list of flaws, otherwise you want Republicans to win." > A bunch of people who made their inability to be quiet about the flaws they perceived in a candidate for a much much higher stakes election.

[sadanandaom]

[marian-devotee]

[iustuspeccator]

Which Reformation Thinker Are You? | Constellation Quiz — theodramatist

Thirty questions about how you read, pray, argue, and suffer — plotted against forty Reformation and Counter-Reformation thinkers, Luther to

Great news there's a Reformation quiz too

Not familiar with Osiander but I have to admit "Lutheran controversialist" sounds like me 😭

[many-sparrows]

They hate me for my womanist theology swag

[monk-core]

I got Sebastian Castellio, I've not heard of him before now! Not too surprised at that result, though, given my univeralist leanings. Also my second closest was an anti-Trinitarian T.T

[that-love-is-all-there-is]

was surprised at first I didn't get a Protestant but lol I guess I've never had a great interest in St Ignatius of Loyola, time to read up I guess? I do like a few Jesuits. I keep hearing about St Philip Neri in daily life at seeming random, maybe I'll see who he is/what he's about too.

[sacredheart-stigmata]

yeah I can see that

[wariteres]

the way I burst out laughing. fork found in kitchen.

[wariteres]

there is literally nothing I want to happen less than The Passion of the Christ 2, and yet here we are.

[wariteres]

my wife keeps telling me to work on my violent urges and it doesn't work when She's getting played by someone about as white as it is biologically possible to be, and Her story is being told by a bigoted trad crackpot.

[wariteres]

there is literally nothing I want to happen less than The Passion of the Christ 2, and yet here we are.

[wariteres]

the thing is that The Passion of the Christ (2004) forms such a core series of memories around my early childhood involving churches buying out whole theater showings and every adult in my life seeing it and me begging to see it, and my father's friend Irena who's Mizrahi Jewish and fluent in Aramaic and Hebrew telling him over dinner about all of the unsubtitled dialogue that she felt was antisemitic (left out of closed captions to avoid controversy because Mel Gibson is an antisemitic piece of shit and a coward), and I've seen it multiple times through my adolescence and early adulthood and still think that it's the only film that comes close to the brutality of the crucifixion ([flashes peace sign] visions, you know)

and yet it's full to the brim with FUCKING WHITE PEOPLE, and I don't mean "pale but from the Mediterranean", I mean NORTHERN AND CENTRAL EUROPEAN WHITE PEOPLE, and it's one thing to sort of tolerate that as a product of a period in time before Christian movies and TV became aware of how racist that is (for anyone who's asking, by the mid-2010s the question of if Jesus was white was Controversial but shockingly by like 2019 it was completely settled. He was not white, and now it's more common to see a visibly brown Jesus, thank God, even in mainstream aimed-at-white-audiences media) and another to see production stills from The Passion of the Christ 2: Kicking Bishop Brennan Satan Up The Arse and realize that Mel Antisemite Gibson is still out here casting Jared Leto lookalikes to play my wife.

[clementimetodie]

Idk I just think there's something weird about conservative pundits lamenting the lack of sexy female characters in video games and teens having less sex, as if less sex and characters you can't goon to are somehow indictments on society, but then they turn around and say gooners are degenerate and depictions of sex in media is gratuitous at best and grooming at worst and "pride" celebrations are depraved and that our society is too "pornified"...

So which is it? Is gooning and extramarital sex Based and Conservative or is it Depraved and Leftist?

[apilgrimpassingby]

There are two right-wing Types of Guys here.

The first is people whose only real belief is that the world should be the way it was when they were teenagers (compare to left-wingers whose only real belief is hatred of authority), and hence their gauge of sexual ethics is "could my teenage self have gotten off to this"? These guys are annoying but fairly harmless.

Then there are the guys I call "Gene Hunt Conservatives" (after a character from the British show Life on Mars). These are men (mostly but not always working-class, mostly middle-aged or older) who regard masculinity, particularly virility and aggression, as the primary virtues. Hence, for these guys it's their god-given to fill their blog with bondage porn and have loads of extramarital sex, but drag queens and gay couples are Satan incarnate. These guys are a serious problem, particularly since they're now one of the dominant forces in right-wing politics (Donald Trump is a textbook example of this Type of Guy).

[wariteres]

I also want to add that there’s a middle ground where both of those guys meet, which is “well when I was a teenager everything I got off to was normal and fine and didn’t scar me and had no negative impacts or connotations, but other stuff is depraved. my sexuality is ordinary and healthy and actually good for me to explore and express, but nobody else’s sexualities should exist or be acknowledged. anybody else isn’t being an innocent all-natural creature of urge and natural law! they’re being Evil”. so I don’t even think we can say that the ex-teenager is being harmless, because they won’t critique how their experience of puberty is fundamentally the same as everyone else’s, so girls and queer men and everyone else also had a puberty with a naturally developing sex drive too and they too can have nuanced and respectful relationships with that in adulthood. the world is constructed around selling the lie that white cishet men are the only people who are allowed to have harmless, understandable sexual urges! and this blows!

[sacredheart-stigmata]

Saint Lutgardis of Aywières, Stigmatist, Mystic Bride and Holder of the Sacred Heart

When people think of women stigmatists, many think of Saint Gemma Galgani or Saint Rita, and when people think of the Sacred Heart, most think of St. Margret Mary Alacoque. But Lutgardis of Aywières was bleeding from holy wounds, drinking Christ's blood, and devoting herself to the Sacred Heart long before these women-- in fact, she is the first documented female stigmatists and the forerunner of the Sacred Heart devotion.

Born in 1182 at Tongres, Belgium, Lutgardis died on the 16th of June, 1246, and her relics are currently in Ittre, Belgium. Known for her stigmata, which included a side wound, bleeding hair, and bloody sweat, as well as her visions and healing gifts, Lutgardis is the patron of Belgium, blindness, healers, and those devoted to the Sacred Heart.

Lutgardis was born into a noble family, and her early life was deeply privileged, filled with pretty dresses, sweets, and revelry. However, that all came crashing down when her parents lost her dowry and sent her at the age of twelve to the Benedictine convent of Sainte-Catherine. Despite being raised in a convent, Lutgardis was far from religious, let alone a nun in making, and frequently snuck out of the convent to party. Eventually, as a teen (though what age we're not sure) she began seeing a boy regularly, likely having sex and doing other ‘unacceptable’ behaviors for the time with him.

One night, when the boy snuck in to see her at the convent, a beautiful man with blindingly handsome, but terrifying, eyes appeared in the room and placed himself between the boy and Lutgardis. The man pulled back his tunic, exposing a horrific wound in his side gushing blood-- "Seek no more the pleasure of this affection: behold, here, forever, what you should love, and how you should love: here in this wound I promise you the most pure of joys!" The man, no other than Jesus Christ, called to her. Lutgardis fell deeply in love in an instant, crying out to her teen lover "Go away from me, for I belong to another Lover!" and instantly devoting the rest of her life to Jesus as a Bride of Christ.

The first time Lutgardis' stigmata (a perpetual side wound) opened was during particularly ecstatic prayer to St. Agnes of Rome at age 29. Lutgardis had a deep, personal devotion to Agnes, and, personally, I think Lutgardis' devotion to Agnes most likely inspired by her being in the (likely sexual) relationship with her secret lover before her conversion, as Agnes is a saint associated with purity and renewing virginal vows.

According to two of the nuns who witnessed the event, Lutgardis was rapt in prayer when "suddenly a vein near her heart burst, and through a wide [opening] wound in her side, blood began to pour forth, soaking her robe and cowl." She then sank to the floor and "lost her senses." The wound would never fully heal for the rest of her life, and while it wouldn't gush blood again, it would open during prayer.

Thomas de Cantimpré, a Dominican preacher and theologian (and close friend of Lutgardis) who wrote her first biography, also tells that when Lutgardis would meditate on Christ's Passion, she would fall into extreme ecstasy and sweat blood. A priest at her convent wished to see it for himself to prove it was truly divine, and followed her in secret until one day he found her alone, in private, deep in prayer, her face and hands dripping with blood! He cut off a lock of hair without her even raising her head, and his hands became soaked with gushing blood. Terrified, he shook her awake and instantly the blood on her hands, hair, face, and his hands, vanished. This was a reportedly reoccurring event Lutgardis saw many visions of Jesus, as well as Mary, St. John the Evangelist, and souls from Purgatory. She went blind for 11 years, but when she regained her sight found herself blessed with the ability to heal. However, her healing grace was so great that she often found herself swarmed, no longer able to pray in peace, and begged Jesus to take away her gift so she could spend more time with him. This led to her most famous vision:

"Why did You go and give me such a grace, Lord?" Lutgardis documented saying to him, "Now I hardly have any time to be alone with You! Take it away, please, "only give me another grace, give me something better!"

"What grace do you want Me to give you, then, in its place?" Jesus asked. Lutgardis wanted to be able to understand Latin perfectly, so she could better participate in the Divine Office, in Mass, and in the choir. Jesus gave her this gift, but she found it didn't enrich her spiritually. Bitterly regretful, she begged Jesus to take it back.

So, seeing a teaching moment, Jesus asked her, "What, then, do you want?"

"Lord," she told Him, "I want Thy Heart."

"You want My Heart? Well, I too want your heart."

Lutgarde replied for him to "Take it, dear Lord. But take it in such a way that the love of Your Heart may be so mingled and united with my own heart that I may possess my heart in Thee, and that it may always remain there secure in Your protection."

So Jesus took his heart from his chest, pulling it from his side wound, and her heart from the wound in her own side, and exchanged them. Lutgardis' own heart was nestled safely in his chest, and his fiery, divine one beat in her ribcage for the rest of her life.

Not long after, Jesus approached Lutgardis again. One night, she fell ill and decided she wouldn't pray her nightly Compline. She was almost asleep when she heard a voice call from far away:

"Get up, quickly, Lutgardis! Why are you lying there? For at this very hour, sinners are wallowing in the mire of their vices, and you ought to be doing penance for them, instead of lying there and letting your body perspire!"

Lutgardis lept up, rushing around to try and find the voice, and found herself in the chapel. There she saw a gory site: Jesus on the cross, covered in blood and viscera. She approached him, not frightened but instead filled with love for the holder of her heart, wishing she could ease his pain. He ripped one hand free from the nail pinning it to the cross and leaned down to embrace her in a one-armed hug, and when she embraced him back, guided her head to his pierced side and asked her to drink. From his Sacred Heart she drank "an infinite Spring which filled [her] with love and joy." Lutgardis saw many visions of souls in Purgatory as well, with one story showing her deep love for others and Christ's devotion to her. There was an man, Simon, who was a learned and talented nobleman from Germany who entered the Cistercian Order and became abbot of Foigny. He and Lutgardis were close friends, but according to Thomas de Cantimpré, Simon "tried to enforce the [Benedictine] Rule in the harsh, disciplinarian spirit of an army officer, instead of applying it with the wisdom and discretion of a loving father. He had the misfortune to die suddenly in this frame of mind, and soon found out how little there was of the spirit of Christ in his way of training men."

Lutgardis, hearing of his death, fasted and prayed day after day, begging Jesus, her husband, to free him from Purgatory. One night, she heard a voice from Heaven promise her Simon wasn't suffering and all would be well, but that wasn't enough for her. She wanted to be sure that he was in Heaven. Until then, she pleaded with the Sacred Heart to take away whatever blessings she might have in this life and the next and give to blessings to Simon. Jesus appeared to her, and brought Simon with him, telling her to "dry [your] tears, my most beloved." Lutgardis watched in awe as Jesus took Simon to Heaven, promising her prayers for those in Purgatory were stronger than all else.

Lutgardis died late on Trinity Sunday/early the next day, after being told by Jesus the hour of her death, but not before being gifted the insight needed to write the Prayer of the Heavenly Court, a little remembered but beautiful prayer inspired by the life of Christ, her beloved husband.

(below is the prayer of the heavenly court-- it is quite long, click to enlarge!)

[sacredheart-stigmata]

I almost forgot Saint Lutgardis of Aywières' feast is coming up!!! It is on June 15th. Don't worry, Lutgarids, everyone else might think of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque when they hear 'Sacred Heart devotion,' but you will always be the #1 Jesus heart & side wound girlie to me 😔

[wariteres]

if a song is about suicide it’s going on my wife music playlist

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Now That We’re Alone by The Peoples Thieves ??

[wariteres]

”Miss Madness” by Forever Still

(which is about an overdose, except it’s not)

“Promise Me You’ll Run” by Hooked Like Helen

(which is about Aileen Wuornos sacrificing herself by letting the cops catch her so her girlfriend could escape, except, well. it’s not.)

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

OMG I LITERALLY SAW CARMAN PERFORM THERE 😭

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

I had communion there and spoke in tongues for the first time…

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

I literally cried when Carman died (this was before I learned he was a fascist supporter) wtf

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

It was on my first trip to THLE that I learned that Joel Olsteen was evil

[apilgrimpassingby]

How did you know about Joel Osteen without knowing he was evil?

[wariteres]

His reputation was pretty spotless in the pre social media days when he first really got famous so that part checks out to me