you ever reflect on how quickly the Lord can change you as a person? it's absolutely wild
NASA
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
art blog(derogatory)
Three Goblin Art

Kiana Khansmith
DEAR READER
wallacepolsom

Kaledo Art
RMH
almost home
occasionally subtle
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

No title available
Monterey Bay Aquarium
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

ellievsbear
YOU ARE THE REASON

Product Placement
Peter Solarz

seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom

seen from United States
seen from Denmark
seen from Japan

seen from Denmark
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Bulgaria
@yourlocalcatholic
you ever reflect on how quickly the Lord can change you as a person? it's absolutely wild
Icon “ Immaculate Heart of Mary”
Saint Gregory with Saints Domitilla, Maurus, and Papianus, 1607, Peter Paul Rubens
Medium: oil,canvas
For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. - Malachias 1:11
St. Elizabeth of Portugal in gloria Michelangelo Pittatore –1860
“Sta. Isabel reina de Porgutal, patrona de la V.O.T. de Penitencia de N.S.P. Sn. Francisco de Stgo. de Chile” St. Elizabeth Queen of Portugal Patroness of the venerable third order of penance of Saint Francisco Santiago de Chile José Gil de Castro –1820 Stgo. Chile.
Detail of miniature of the Crucifixion, with Christ at the centre and two others, one on each side, crucified alongside him, with a skull and bones at the bottom of the Holy cross.
Hey, I just want to say thank you so much for being so open about your experience as a witch and the road you were on before eventually shifting to the Path of Christ. I myself used to practice pagan witchcraft, specifically astrology. I loved it so much because I already loved astronomy and really enjoyed "categorizing" things, but eventually I became extremely entrenched in astrology and it's actual mechanisms- because instead of how most people view it, which is essentially a buzzfeed quiz to tell you which bread you are, I began learning more and more things about the real subject, and began to increasingly use it as a pseudo spiritual tool to calculate everything and everyone around me, including myself, which heavily fueled the major anxiety that I had at the time and still struggle with today. So from the bottom of my heart, as someone who also has experiences with these pagan practices, I really appreciate you being so open and being someone that I can personally relate to. I'm praying for you and your journey to God!
It makes me so happy to hear that my testimony is reaching other people and touching other people's hearts. Admittedly, I often feel shy (mainly in IRL settings) about sharing my experiences with leaving paganism because I am ashamed of my past. Sometimes it's easier to gloss over that period of my life, but it is so so important to share because paganism and witchcraft are becoming increasingly popular in this day and age.
Thank you so much for your prayers. God bless!!
I totally get this feeling, and you're so right. Honestly it baffles me how many Christians are oblivious to the EXPONENTIAL increase of pagan worship and witchcraft. It is literally alarming, but when I mention it to other Christians (typically those who are probably about 5+ years older than me, so sort of a generation or older) they're all like: lmao what are you even talking about? and it's so, so frustrating. This is completely unrelated to the message I sent you, but it legitimately is frustrating how (in my person experience) so many Christians of older generations are so out of touch with the youth that they don't even see just HOW much these pagan practices have seeped into the youth's environment. Like honestly it feels like an epidemic sometimes.
On that note though, I also think that's just another reason as to why I appreciate your openness so much. The youth needs to KNOW what this stuff truly is, what it's like, how it detriments us, and why it's not the Way. So please never be ashamed of your story, though I'm sure you know that. Honestly it is such a beacon of light for our fellow Christians also dealing with these issues!
Yup - it's everywhere. Even in Christian circles I see the influence of New Age practices. I'm working at a Christian daycare this summer and so far have had two people ask me my zodiac sign in the last month: one was one of the staff and the other was one of the kids.
If a kid is being raised through public school, there is a high likelihood that they will be exposed to things such as zodiac signs, horoscopes, and other tools of divination (I know I was exposed to it from other classmates growing up). Most kids don't know what the Bible says about divination or witchcraft, so they won't pick up that zodiac signs are something to avoid. Most will see them almost like a type of personality quiz, as harmless as finding out which Divergent character you are on a Buzzfeed quiz.
Saint Agnes and the Lamb Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) (attributed to) Victoria Art Gallery
Hey, I just want to say thank you so much for being so open about your experience as a witch and the road you were on before eventually shifting to the Path of Christ. I myself used to practice pagan witchcraft, specifically astrology. I loved it so much because I already loved astronomy and really enjoyed "categorizing" things, but eventually I became extremely entrenched in astrology and it's actual mechanisms- because instead of how most people view it, which is essentially a buzzfeed quiz to tell you which bread you are, I began learning more and more things about the real subject, and began to increasingly use it as a pseudo spiritual tool to calculate everything and everyone around me, including myself, which heavily fueled the major anxiety that I had at the time and still struggle with today. So from the bottom of my heart, as someone who also has experiences with these pagan practices, I really appreciate you being so open and being someone that I can personally relate to. I'm praying for you and your journey to God!
It makes me so happy to hear that my testimony is reaching other people and touching other people's hearts. Admittedly, I often feel shy (mainly in IRL settings) about sharing my experiences with leaving paganism because I am ashamed of my past. Sometimes it's easier to gloss over that period of my life, but it is so so important to share because paganism and witchcraft are becoming increasingly popular in this day and age.
Thank you so much for your prayers. God bless!!
https://twitter.com/LailaMickelwait/status/1228601617143828480
As a recently recovering porn addicted female, radical feminists are not cherry picking when they pull this crap up.
I have come across so many videos of women who are clearly in pain saying, “stop” and “no” and “I don’t like this” and bursting into tears while men ignore them. One of the last videos I saw before quitting had a man telling a woman she’d do the thing if she loved him/that she had to prove it. This is not healthy, playful kink that everyone enjoys. This is fucking abuse.
i broke and went on pornhub (about half a year ago, after a month of trying to be porn free) and out of curiosity i clicked on the number one video in poland and it was a girl stuck in a washing machine being raped by her brother while crying and repeatedly saying „no”.
that was the last time i watched porn.
Again, y'all seem to don’t know what acting is.
There are some sex kink called cnc….
@obsidianthunderwolf None of this is ‘acting’, all the sex acts, all the physical violence is real, it’s not choreographed like a fight scene in a Hollywood movie, it’s not faked with computer FX or prosthetic body parts. Every sex act you see in porn is real, the only ‘acted’ parts are the scenarios around the sex, like the ‘exit interviews’ which the female porn performers have to fake, if they want to get paid at all.
@itsmeuendi I wish porn-apologists would make up thier minds, porn can’t be both completely faked and also a true recording of the porn performers’ real-life sexuality.
Nah, it’s still acting. And the actors consent to be in that situation. Don’t like porn, don’t watch it.
Do people not realize that they’re some people that like to do this kinda stuff? Don’t get me wrong I’ve heard some horror stories of actual things going on with trafficking, but not every single crying video is real or actual women being trafficking. Christ almighty if they see petplay they’ll say it’s bestiality it the idea of making women seem less then human despite a large number of men being into it aswell
Vanilla People Not Knowing Kink is 90% Elaborate Roleplay: Example #2,740,876
Are you really claiming that the electric shocks aren’t real, that the punches are all pulled? You think porn performers can act that well? The women who do BDSM porn are not part of the ‘scene’ (which is full of abuse anyway), they are drug addicts desperate for money, or they are 18-year-olds who have done 2-3 porn shoots as ‘fresh faces’ and now their only option is BDSM porn.
Oh, yay. Slut-shaming. How feminist of you. (And also putting down people who have a substance abuse problem. How compassionate.)
Plus yes, most of it is simulated. Because that’s what ACTING is. Also, eighteen is legal age in the United States. I don’t see you get too upset about young men who end up doing gay porn.
Also, next time show me a site that isn’t a radical feminist site or a Fundie site, okay? I’m not gonna believe a damn thing these people write because there’s not a whole bunch of balanced research going into them.
How on earth is pointing out all the abuse in the sex industry ‘slut shaming’? Do you really think hiding behind empty slogans is a substitute for a good argument?
Porn is not acted, every single sex act in porn is real, and I don’t know how you can possibly even try to argue otherwise.
I am against gay porn just as much as I am against any other type of porn, gay porn has just as much violence and degradation in it as het porn, and all the same tropes of coercion and inequality.
It is very obvious you are not looking at the links, my blog post on the BDSM scene directly quotes women who were in the ‘scene’, and the other two links describe mainstream documentaries about the sex industry, hardly ‘fundamentalist’!
you prudes really don’t get it do you ?
when she’s crying she’s acting
when she’s smiling she’s not acting
when she says “it hurts” she’s acting
when she says “I love it” she’s not acting
when an advert on TV presents women as domestic servants it’s wrong
when a video on a porn site presents women as sexual slaves it’s good
women’s sexual liberation takes place in a literal cage
now stop annoying people with your weird considerations about women’s well being, ok ? it’s off-putting and makes us think about someone other than ourselves
For both porn addled bonobos in this thread: i wouldnt give a shit even if it WAS “only acting.” Because somebody jacking off to people screaming or being put in harm, pain, or humiliation causes a pavlovian response to sexual abuse scenarios. And we dont even have to explain how that bleeds into “real life”
“The actors consent to being in that situation” yeah and i consented to clocking into a welding job where my booth was feet away from a ceiling high stack of rusty scrap metal and other awful conditions cause i wanted money. That doesnt mean i like it. That doesnt mean the porn actors liked it. And you know what it says of you if you like projecting yourself into sex someone doesnt want?
and why is it almost always women being subjected to violence? hm 🤔
“Sexual liberation”- literally inside a cage
And we still have idiots to side with it.
Because it’s women who are abused.
Why do they call any criticism of the porn industry “slut shaming?” Like do they think we look down on these women? It is well documented that pornhub has real rape videos of minors on their site. One teenager begged them for a year to take down the video of her rape and eventually had to pretend to be a lawyer to have it removed. And why is “sexual liberation” always meant to make sex available to men rather than giving women the power to say no?
Not to mention, even the kink.com types that are all “aha! But they recorded a consent video before and after!”
Yes. And if my boss asks me how I like my job at Arby’s while the CEO’s doing a tour, I’m not gonna say my manager’s got the emotional intelligence of a tapeworm.
And even the vaunted kink dawt cool had a few scandals where their male talent and producers were accused of raping women, and ignoring safe words, and ripping one woman’s vagina due to a rough scene.
Oh, also they had an unregistered and unlicensed active firing range in the basement (soundproofed, naturally!), and coke everywhere.
Because when you combine assault rifles, stimulants, horny men with coke dick, and women tied up and gagged…
What could go wrong!
the acting in porn is a fucking meme and you fucks wanna tell me that these abused women can act oscar-worthy suddenly
porn rotted their brains away
“the acting in porn” that’s why there have been entire subreddit communities dedicated to clips where the women are in pain, genuinely screaming instead of “porn moaning”, and clearly intoxicated and/or dissociating. that’s why men so often talk about doing things to women intentionally to elicit certain reactions - choking her out of nowhere to watch her face while she’s scared, slapping her without discussing it first to see her get angry, “accidentally” pulling out and “putting it back in the wrong hole” to hear her scream or cry.
and former pornstars have come forward and talked about how often they’re forced to perform sex acts they didn’t agree to beforehand or else they won’t get paid. how many of them developed addictions just to cope with their “job” because it was slightly less traumatizing to be raped and abused while they were high and not even mentally there. how many of them left the industry due to permanent injuries as a result of how violent their scenes were - vaginal and anal tears, perforations, prolapses, pelvic floor dysfunction, STDs because their ‘co-stars’ lied about being tested, urinary and/or fecal incontinence, etc.
it’s “acting” - in the sense that the women are acting like they enjoy it. but what’s being done to them is real. the slaps are real. the choking is real. the punches, the kicks, the hair pulling, they’re real. the penetration is real. the vomit is real. the violence is real.
How do you make the decision to go from pagan to catholic? What was the breaking point that told you it wasn’t right?
I’m no witch, never been comfortable with the use of magic so I never honestly practiced anything. But like I’ve called myself pagan for years and never have I found a community where I didn’t feel like an outsider. I’ve talked to many pagans, introduced my best friend into it and watching him get so into it in a almost obsessed way has made me feel even more so like an outsider. Sometimes I can tell he’s disappointed that I don’t see the beauty in the magic or tarot like he does. I’ve been feeling so lost and my family has never been church goers so it’s not like I have any idea how I’m supposed to go about any of it. 
Early on when I was exploring Christianity again, I came to an impasse. I realized that there simply was no way to have a foot in both worlds; there was no way I could be both pagan and Christian. I had a choice: the Christian God or the pagan gods. At first it started out as “well I’ll just take a break from paganism to explore Christianity and see where that takes me”, but that quickly developed into a complete renouncement of my pagan past. What started out as “dipping my toe in the waters” soon became submersion.
What happened between the toe-dip and the submersion was a lot of research and a lot of prayer. I read the Catechism that my RCIA director gave me and buried myself into Scott Hahn’s books. I had a list of topics that I disagreed with the Catholic Church on, and one by one I researched the Church’s teachings on each of those topics. One by one, the teachings of the Church trumped my previously held beliefs. Granted, before my conversion I knew very little about what I actually believed (in regards to topics such as abortion, marriage, sex, etc.). The worldview I once adhered to as a pagan crumbled, and I no longer could defend staying with my pagan gods.
I definitely know where you’re coming from. No matter what pagan community I found myself in, I felt like an outsider. I too felt lost and unfulfilled. Because I lacked connections, it was rather easy for me to disappear from my pagan circles as I explored Christianity. My family was never big about religion or church either, so I was completely alone in my pursuits. I just decided one day to email a local church, show up to Mass one evening, and from there it became a domino effect. I soon signed up for my parish’s RCIA class, found myself a sponsor, and with each passing day I became more and more enveloped into Christianity.
If I had to summarize, the main reasons why I chose Christianity over paganism are as follows:
1. Paganism left me spiritually starved. No matter how many offerings I gave, how many prayers I said, how much devotion I gave to the gods, I was in constant desolation. My mental, emotional, and spiritual health were devoid of life as a pagan. The Bible, on the other hand, answers my emotional needs more so than any other religion or psychologist.
2. The teachings of Christ are infinitely more reliable and truthful than the teachings of the pagan gods that I followed. I realized that the worldview perpetuated by the pagan gods was not the truth. Rather, truth was in Christ alone. Everything that the Bible and the Church teaches has the ring of truth to it. C.S. Lewis perfectly captures how we must approach Christ: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
3. The historical evidence of Christ’s life AND His Resurrection cannot be ignored. There is so much evidence of the Resurrection that any historian would say that it absolutely did happen, but they reject it because it is a supernatural act.
Hauptaltar / high altar, “Wieskirche” oder Wallfahrtskirche zum Gegeißelten Heiland auf der Wies / Wies Church of the Scourged Saviour, near Steingaden, Bayern (Bavaria). (August 2013)
built: 1745-54