hey Big G i have questions

Spiritually? I'm a feral street cat He live-trapped and is now trying to coax out from behind the toilet with lunchmeat (religion-oriented sideblog)

[yellingatgoldclouds]

Sup, pinned and first post, I’m Forged (follow from @forgedobsidian). This is just a place to put my own thoughts but esp the thoughts of others concerning Christianity, religion, etc. Mostly reblogs.

[almostanastronaut]

Steven Greenberg, “Wrestling with God and Men” - Author’s conversation with Rabbi Eliashiv in Jerusalem

[koshercosplay]

“Twice the power of love” is my new favorite description of bisexuality

[kaylapocalypse-deactivated20201]

Anyway I’m crying because that’s the best and most genuine description of how it feels to be bi that I’ve ever heard.

[physicsgoblin]

to all artists painting the same thing over and over and to all writers writing the same story over and over

[madebymaryssa]

[screenshot of black text on white background]

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun.; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

[/end screenshot]

[vimeddiart]

Last month's patreon art! Jesus fanarts 🍷

[weil-weil-lautre]

The presence and apparent absence of God are felt in the heart, giving blissful happiness or a most painful longing. [...] God takes hold of the soul both in faith and in contemplation. Revealed truth is not simply accepted by a natural decision of the will. The message of faith comes to many who do not receive it. this may also be due to natural motives, but there are cases in which there is a mysterious incapacity: the hour of grace has not yet come. The indwelling by grace has not yet begun. But in contemplation the soul meets God himself who takes hold of it.

Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, 138

[iscariotapologist]

oh my god it's julian's dayyyyyy

[ohholydyke]

Happy feast day to St Julian of Norwich (yes ik she’s only canonized in the Anglican Church I don’t care she’s a canonized saint to me the anglicans got this one right) the best anchoress to ever live

- Penned the famous all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well line

- Wrote about a Christ who willingly chooses to become permanently disabled out of love for humanity and how this elevates the honor and dignity of the disabled body

- Lowkey a universalist?? She hedges it by going “of course disclaimer here I agree with the church” but fully espouses a theology in which all shall be saved and all shall be restored to Christ and thus all shall be well

- Had a cat

- Gave us gems like the world is a hazelnut

- Apparently cast Satan out of her anchorhold “the power of Christ compels you” style

- Was a renowned teacher and frequently sought after for advice in her community and by pilgrims including the famous Margery Kempe

- Seriously go read revelations of divine love/the shewings of Julian of Norwich it’s so good it changed my relationship with religion

[fierysword]

She also spoke of God as a mother!

[ohholydyke]

SHE ALSO SPOKE OF GOD AS A MOTHER

[dailyclassicart]

Martinus Rørbye - "The Palatine Chapel in the Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Italy" (1842)

[nn-ee-zz]

The first depiction of Mary and Jesus

[nn-ee-zz]

Before thousands of artworks made by hundreds of masters in the span of centuries, it’s clear that the first drawing was made by the hands of a child who just loved his mom

[weirdreindeer]

[lydiardbell]

[robbie-is-a-bug]

“Are you saying that Jesus isn’t fully man” he’s literally not. He’s half deity. Why did you word it like that?

[creature-wizard]

“Jesus was fully human and fully divine” is conventionally accepted doctrine. It’s called the hypostatic union. It’s in the Athanasian creed.

[mcgravin]

Sounds like wormnoodless is recapitulating Eutychianism (Christ exists in one nature and of two), which was rejected by the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451, instead adopting Dyophysitism (Jesus Christ is one person of one substance and one hypostasis, with two distinct, inseparable natures: divine and human), which is still the main belief of most major denominations.

Sorry, wormnoodless, you’re a heretic.

@apocrypals, do I have it (mostly) right?

[apocrypals]

Correct

Anything other than “fully God, fully man” is heretical

[squidspawn]

#sometimes the nature of tumblr is that someone accidentally reinvents the great schism (1054) all over again

[scrunchie-face]

Losing my mind over the gospel of Luke being like “they wrapped his body in linen cloth and laid him in a tomb” after the beginning of the story being “they wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger” like

I’m absolutely feral

[scrunchie-face]

When your Holy Week post doubles as a Christmas post because narrative parallels are the bomb

[mademoiseli]

When he was born he was watched over by his adoptive father Joseph.

When he died he was wrapped in linen cloths by another Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.

[lord-kitschener]

I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love

I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on

‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.

[durnesque-esque]

My new favorite mordern interpretation is this work, José y Maria by Everett Patterson (http://www.everettpatterson.com)

I had to look at this like FIVE TIMES to register all the layers of symbolism going into the piece by Patterson. 

The hoodie as a veil. 

Weisman cigarettes

Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker. 

No Vacancy sign on the motel. 

Dove sticker over Maria’s head. 

Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head. 

The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”

The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’

The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet. 

It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!

Ugh.

New favorite interpretation of the nativity. 

[alextheraven]

Ezekiel 34 15-16 on the phone

[clockworkvulpine]

Good news sticker above José

Maria sitting on a donkey

Shepherd Watches advertisement in the newspaper

Gloria sticker on the payphone

[bending-sickle]

from an exhibit of nativity sets in barcelona (2023), with jesus born next to atm machines (top), in a war-destroyed movie theater (middle), and in an alley (bottom, featuring graffiti saying “coronavirus”, “no human being is illegal”, and the anarchist symbol)

[determinedapathy]

@apocrypals

[apocrypals]

Reblogging to share art without inviting “actually it wasn’t a stable” correction discourse

[iscariotapologist]

Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus

[heavensghost]

god is real to me in the same way a caterpillar makes a chrysalis not knowing what happens next, I am living for the hope of it all

[yellingatgoldclouds]

there’s something so frustrating and painful about my sib saying ‘we need community. no one is meant to go through faith alone.’ when the faith communities so often reject me (unknowingly, since im very closeted, but still)

part of me knows I’d do better in a faith community that welcomes and celebrates queer faith but again. closeted

[iscariotapologist]

Carter Heyward, The Redemption of God

[lingering-sunrise]

[Image ID: From an experiential standpoint—that is, from within the experience of being human, our right-relation among ourselves constitutes our love of only standpoint—our voluntary participation in making God. To love humanity is to befriend God. The human act of love, befriending, making justice is our act of making God incarnate in the world.

In relation to God, as in any relation, God is affected by humanity and creation, just as we are affected by God. With us, by us, through us, God lives, God becomes, God changes, God speaks, God acts, God suffers and God dies in the world. To say that God dies is not to speak "merely" metaphorically. It is to suggest, for example, that in the death of each of six million Jews, a creating, liberating, and sanctifying presence was, in fact, exterminated from the world. Destroyed. Killed. Literally—actually, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually— removed from the world—forever. God died in Auschwitz, which is not to say that God was not active in the liberation of Auschwitz by the Allies in 1945. The constancy of God is the activity of God in the world wherever, whenever, and for whatever reason, humanity acts to create, liberate, and bless humanity. /end]

[unum-necessarium-deactivated202]

~ Julian of Norwich, icon by Kara Gillette