Rambles

laura.

[jspark3000]

I’m learning how to say “no” without feeling guilty all the time. I’m learning how to say “yes” to the things that are healthy and wise. I‘m learning to pull back, keep distance, find safety, and where to draw the line.

[yesdarlingido]

For me, being a man has meant a constant confrontation with standards of masculinity. I grew up in a culture where the term “biblical manhood” was often used, and so I looked at Jesus as the ultimate example of masculinity like my christian community told me, and for a while, I was fine with that because I was a sensitive kid and Jesus seemed like a sensitive and caring guy. Eventually, though, I noticed that the men who followed this ideal of biblical manhood often would attribute qualities to Jesus that I never would have expected. The more I moved towards this ideal of masculinity, the more I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, and I noticed that no man in my life seemed like he was comfortable with who he was either. At this point, I’ve decided that there is no way to achieve masculinity. The boy who eventually becomes a man in his own mind inevitably feels weak at some point and is pulled along towards more and more toxic forms of masculinity. My hope now is that men of the younger generations will learn from movements like feminism and see the freedom that can be found in throwing away useless gender norms.

The Liturgists Podcast episode, “Man”  (via yesdarlingido)

[cravefoodie]

Homemade Crunch Wrap Supreme (Taco Bell Copycat Recipe)

Ingredients

1 lb ground meat

1 packet taco seasoning mix

6 burrito size flour tortillas

6 tostada shells

1 cup of sour cream

2 cups of shredded lettuce

1 diced tomato

1 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend

Nacho Cheese

Instructions

In a skillet or large cooking pan, cook and crumble the ground beef over medium-high heat. When it is no longer pink, drain the grease.

Place meat back into the pan and stir the taco seasoning mix as well as the water it calls for on the packet. Cook according to the package instructions.

Warm up the nacho cheese sauce in the microwave and set aside.

Place the flour tortillas on a plate and warm in the microwave for about 20 seconds.

Lay one tortilla on a flat surface. Spread a couple of tablespoons of nacho cheese in the middle of the tortilla.

Place ½ cup of taco meat on top of the nacho cheese.

Next, add the tostada shell, a thin layer of sour cream, lettuce, tomato, and lastly, the shredded Mexican cheese.

To fold into the actual crunchwrap, start with the bottom of the tortilla and fold the edge up to the center of the fillings. Keep doing that, folding as tight as possible, as you work your way around the tortilla.

Spray another skillet or cooking pan with cooking spray and heat over medium heat. Place the crunchwrap supreme, seam-side down, onto the skillet. Cook for 2-3 min., or until golden brown.

Flip over and cook the other side for another 2-3 min or until golden brown.

Cook the rest of your crunchwraps and eat immediately.

[alwaysbewoke]

It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension. He merely brings out the hidden tension that is already alive. Last summer when we had our open housing marches in Chicago, many of our white liberal friends cried out in horror and dismay: “You are creating hatred and hostility in the white communities in which you are marching. You are only developing a white backlash.” I never could understand this logic. They failed to realize that the hatred and the hostilities were already latently or subconsciously present. Our marches merely brought them to the surface. How strange it would be to condemn a physician who, through persistent work and the ingenuity of his medical skills, discovered cancer in a patient. Would anyone be so ignorant as to say he caused the cancer? Through the skills and discipline of direct action we reveal that there is a dangerous cancer of hatred and racism in our society. We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it. Only through this kind of exposure will the cancer ever be cured.

– Martin Luther King Jr

for the next time someone tells you that black people fighting for their rights is “how we got trump,” “the reason why racism is on the rise” or some other bs. 

[jspark3000]

It’s unfair to rush someone into forgiveness. It’s powerful and necessary, but forgiveness isn’t a one-time moment that magically seals up the wound. It takes a deliberate, daily battle over a lifetime. That occasional angry twitch doesn’t mean you’ve failed at finding peace; it’s only part of the process, and ignoring it could be worse. The hurt was very real, because it meant something. That’s no excuse to hold a grudge for long, but no one is allowed to rush your healing, including you. No one can just “get over it.” But I do hope to see you on the other side, where there’s freedom. You can take all the time you need, and I’m with you.

[existential-celestial]

“You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clapclap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

[jspark3000]

The only time a Christian should be first is when they’re the first to apologize, first to confess their mistakes, first to care and humble themselves. Never to compare or compete with another’s worth, because we got the heavenly riches and it’s enough to go around: first.

J.S. Park (via jspark3000)

[wordsthatyousay]

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis

[hermuis-blog]

if you see someone being interrupted in a conversation, acknowledge them, don’t let them be pushed to the side. if you see someone lagging behind, walk beside them. if someone is being ignored, take the step to include them. always remind people of their worth. it hurts when it feels like you’re being forgotten. that small gesture can mean a lot.

[yesdarlingido]

Jesus thinks there are two kinds of people in the world:

our neighbors, whom we are to love,

our enemies, whom we are to love.

Sarah Miles

[dragadiddle]

No matter how theologically trained my brain is, my heart is still prone to forget. So once more today, I will remind myself of the truths of the Bible, not because my brain needs to be taught a new concept, but because my wandering heart needs to be ushered back into the throne room of grace.

Paul Tripp (via dragadiddle)

[ruinedchildhood]

[sweetcribs]

The guy is black GUARANTEED!

[liketherazor-blog-blog]

The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the uncoverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.

George Mueller

English Missionary

as quoted in John Piper, Desiring God

(via dragadiddle)

[love-diaries]

As long as you are pretending, you will never be healed.

(via love-diaries)

[yesdarlingido]

How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.What is true is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one can see clearly.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (via yesdarlingido)

[anti-capitalistlesbianwitch]

[wnq-psychology]

“Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people, he said—it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you—perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace—but you don’t share anything that matters with them, then you’ll still be lonely.

Johann Hari | @wnq-psychology

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

(via wnq-writers)