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Praying for your family. I'm so sorry for your loss ❤️🕊️

thank you <3 i appreciate it

#grief tw

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he just passed away last night. ill probably be sad about it later, right now i don't really feel anything about it at all. hasnt sunk in. pray for my mom though

my grandpa is dying fairly slowly from leukemia and my mom has been so upset. im feeling like it's real for the first time, will anyone who believes in prayer pray for us? im just really sad

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he's requesting to get put on hospice today <\3

my grandpa is dying fairly slowly from leukemia and my mom has been so upset. im feeling like it's real for the first time, will anyone who believes in prayer pray for us? im just really sad

#i think i agree with him.... #when i heard they were putting him on chemo i just thought no not at his age #he isnt going to be able to do that #and i was right #very sad

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my grandpa is dying fairly slowly from leukemia and my mom has been so upset. im feeling like it's real for the first time, will anyone who believes in prayer pray for us? im just really sad

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And after the fire...

A still small voice.

[@ardvarzk]

#my sister made this for me for Christmas and its everything ive ever wanted

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Something something let the little children come to me for they will inherit the kingdom of god

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@pagesofkenna YES YES YES

the first person in the bible to give God a name is hagar (a slave woman) who called him "the one who sees me"

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– Christine de Pizan, "The Book of the City of Ladies" 1405 (x)

‘‘My lady, he says that Nature is completely ashamed when she sees that she has formed such a body, as though it were something imperfect.”

‘‘But, sweet friend, don’t you see the overweening madness, the irrational blindness which prompt such observations? Is Nature, the chambermaid of God, a greater mistress than her master, almighty God from whom comes such authority, who, when He willed, took the form of man and women from His thought when it came to His holy will to form Adam from the mud of the ground in the field of Damascus and, once created, brought him into the Terrestrial Paradise which was and is the most worthy place in this world here below?

There Adam slept, and God formed the body of woman from one of his ribs, signifying that she should stand at his side as a companion and never lie at his feet like a slave, and also that he should love her as his own flesh.

If the Supreme Craftsman was not ashamed to create and form the feminine body, would Nature then have been ashamed? It is the height of folly to say this! Indeed, how was she formed? I don’t know if you have already noted this: she was created in the image of God. How can any mouth dare to slander the vessel which bears such a noble imprint?

God created the soul and placed wholly similar souls, equally good and noble in the feminine and in the masculine bodies.

Woman was made by the Supreme Craftsman. In what place was she created? In the Terrestrial Paradise. From what substance? Was it vile matter? No, it was the noblest substance which had ever been created: it was from the body of man from which God made woman.”

#christian feminism has always existed #because god loves women #observations derived from the bible in 1405 #christianity

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update god is love

omw to learn about the love of god from the existence of kitties will report back at some point

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Do you go to church

Not really. For a very long time I didn't go because I had too much anxiety and depression and church services just brushed up on my mental injuries and it just hurt too badly. I've had a much greater capacity to handle disagreements with people even when the beliefs I hold are informed by some traumatic experience - something I have not had the mental energy to do in the past. But even after recovering more I still don't really feel the desire to attend.

The way I see it, there are three main reasons to go to church. First, it's important to have a community that can encourage and support you when you're having a bad time, as well as to just talk to, get advice from, and generally just not be alone. I'm really lucky to already have a community of Christians who can mentor and encourage me, so that isn't really something I would go to church for, and I'm not quite in a place where I'm healthy enough to go to contribute by mentoring other people.

Second reason is to worship God with other people. I find i can't connect to God through worship at church because I find the singing and the crowd so overstimulating. I also find worship really personal and I'm just not comfortable doing that in a big group of people I don't know. So that doesn't really benefit me spiritually.

The third reason is the teaching. Because of my background, I just don't find most sermons at churches in my area very helpful. I just think most of the time pastors tackle subjects that need more than an hour to be fully fleshed out, and I think they're trying to reach as big of an audience as possible. Im not trying to sound like I just think I'm so special or anything but I've found that I just have to work really hard to apply the sermons to my life, whereas I could pretty easily find podcasts and books that are more tailored to the type of spiritual content that I need.

I think I'd probably be better suited to a house church environment since most of my issues are just "big church scary & unhelpful" but I haven't gotten around to finding one and I feel pretty fulfilled as I am right now.

#asks #do you go to church #hi anon :) #theres so many new people here and i dont know why LOL where di u guys come from im so confused #you are all welcome though o/

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— August 8, 2022

Sometimes, you can tell things are wrong just by the way they feel. Not always. But sometimes. I can feel the way that hatred consumes me. The way that wanting to punish others for their crimes against me burns like a never ending all consuming pit of fire in my stomach. I can feel that reaching out to grasp justice for myself is beyond me. Lovingly, tenderly. It would never be enough. And it would kill me.

I also know, with everything in me, that people are valuable, and grief is a sacred and appropriate response to death. Life is sacred. There is such a thing as evil. These are all things I know. Not because I can defend them. But because intuitively, I can see that the results of believing them result in something good. 

“Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. 

Can you give it to them?”

No. And trying would kill me.

For the last few months I have tried in a desperate anguished dash to find answers that do not exist, with levels of proof that would be impossible. I woke up in the morning barely willing to stand up, possessed with fear, rage, and despair.

I wanted to know for sure, I wanted to be safe and held, and secure. I wanted to reach out and grasp hold of the universe. 

But the Universe will not fit in my hand.

It is too big. It will crush me.

In response I turned away from what I used to believe. Without certainty, who can believe anything? I gave up my studies. I got sick, and I started to read again.

There was a character in my story who had to make a hard decision. He was deciding whether or not to kill someone he hated, who was inconvenient and dangerous. His friend tried to talk him out of it and said, “You get darker when you think about this.” 

And then I understood.

I do believe in certain things. I have ideas I believe in because of stories, experiences, myself and my intuition. I believe that people are valuable, and I am certain enough to stake my life on it. 

I can not reach out and grasp the Universe but I can look inside and know myself. And I can look out and see other people. And I think maybe, just maybe, I can know God exists because it feels true. Because when I stop trying to know everything and just choose what applies more to what I know for certain, then I can believe in God.

Maybe I can’t know the details this way. Exactly what's going on, or what is going to happen. But one thing I can know for sure is that God is love. I just do. I believe it as surely as I love my dead friends, as confident as I am in the sun, as much as I know the rain.

I am not the holder of justice. I am not the keeper of truth.

I am Lilac. And I believe in love. And self sacrifice. And in Self Titled, and in the Lord of the Rings. I believe in sunsets, and in silence, and in holding my friends while we cry. I believe in honor and I believe in grief. I believe there is something in the whisper. 

I believe in God.

If he cares about me believing in the Bible, eventually, I will. 

Until then, this is enough.

#eslyea #i think im feeling better about believing in the bible #im going to read some christian existentialism #i will return on this

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I’ve kind of thought this for a whole year but I haven’t been able to talk about it because I was scared of admitting that I’m not sure about something in the face of a world of people who seem to be so sure about everything. But I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve realized it isn’t just me and I’m finally ready to defend it.

There is no perfect truth. There is no knowable, findable truth, no way of proving, no certainty, no guidebook on existing. There is no concrete material love, there is no justice, there is no findable law that is complete and written on golden tablets for us to discover left behind by the gods. At some point every single person is found with absolutely nothing, because there is, at the end of the search, and the end of suffering, at the end of reaching out trying to grasp the universe, there is nothing to be found. There is no perfect truth.

When you are completely in the dark, when you are alone, when you have been stripped of the ability to blindly have confidence in your mind and your sense to divine the reality of the divine, everyone is left with a decision. What do you choose?

I’ve come to the conclusion that everyone, at least everyone who is alive, chooses to believe. And they choose to hope.

There is no exception to this that I am aware of at this moment. Atheist philosophers choose to believe in themself, they choose to believe in humanity. In the face of the inability to find some law above nature, some universally binding law that explains in completion right from wrong, atheists still choose to believe that kindness is better than cruelty, that there is love, and they choose to place their hope in humankind. 

G.K. Chesterton chose to place his hope in God. He chose, when presented with different possible realities, to choose the reality that was beautiful. He chose the reality that allowed him to say thank you. He chose the belief that seemed to be correct, that seemed to be beautiful, that seemed to explain the oddities of the world, the oddities of life, and that seemed to allow for both the unrelenting just and the unrelenting merciful. But he didn’t know. He believed.

C.S. Lewis chose to believe in the fairy tale. He chose to believe in beauty, he chose to believe that if there is a fairy tale as beautiful as christianity that he would like to believe in it. He chose that the world of Christianity seems to be more complete, it seems to be more beautiful, then even if it is wrong it is worth believing in. If there is no God it is worth it to live as much like a Christian as possible because life is better when you are pretending than when you are living in the real world.

My decision to choose Christianity is not intellectual dishonesty, or at least, it is not any more intellectually dishonest than any other person.

I was worried that if I wasn’t willing to let go of God when provided with an impossible conundrum then I would never find truth. And tragically, heartbreakingly, it turns out there is no perfect truth to discover. It is not handed to us in Christianity, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Islam, or Atheism, or anywhere or in anything. There is no truth to be grasped. The universe will not fit in my hands.

So what next? Do I just give up? Do I lie down and die? Do I stop believing in justice, in kindness, do I stop believing in the weight of grief hanging over all living creation, do I stop hoping to be rescued? Do I stop loving God? Do I give up?

I can’t. Maybe it is not true, maybe it isn’t provable, maybe it isn’t knowable. But it is necessary.

To be human is to hope. It is to choose life. It is to believe. Where else can I go? Where else can I go? What else can I do but believe, to romanticize life, to be sure of what I hope for and certain of what I cannot see?

I choose to believe. I choose to struggle. I choose to hope.

I choose Jesus because I love him. I choose him because I love the philosophy his religion has produced, I choose him because for some reason he allows me to grieve, to mourn, to have hope, to be held and loved and cherished. I choose him because for some reason, the people who believe in him have loved me. They have held me and known me and even if he isn’t real his idea has inspired kindness I will never forget. If God is real I saw him in their eyes, and I heard him in the tenderness of animals, and I heard him in the whisper. I choose to love him.

I want to know but there is no knowing and there never will be, not for me or for anyone. There is only hope. And I hope.

#thoughts #i am so tired #but i feel very free

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If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? ― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

#life of pi

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Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. 

― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

#narnia #i am building up to something

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Petunia ‘Headliner Starry Sky Burgundy’. I think they’re supposed to have more of those tiny light dots scattered over the dark parts but this is how mine look.

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i wish everyone with religious trauma a very happy and gentle easter. i hope you feel cared for and loved today

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Hey I just want to say thank you for what you do! I'm a follower of Jesus as well, and it's really refreshing and encouraging to see someone like you on this site answering people's questions kindly and with love. God bless you <33

thank you ♥️

#asks