this is my religion blog @aprilsjesusblogging - Tumblr Blog

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My main is aprillikesthings and this is my sideblog for religion posting because I was feeling shy about making earnest Jesus posts on my main

Things to know:

I'm Episcopalian, I'm gay and poly, I'm in my 40's

Big fan of Mary* and lots of saints**

Became Episcopalian as an adult after a long period of atheism, and have since read a ton of books, prayed the Daily Office off and on, gone on a pilgrimage in Spain, joined Education for Ministry (a four-year religion class aimed at laypeople, I start year four this fall), and been confirmed :D

I have a vulgar and irreverent sense of humor

If you know me from my main, it's fine to follow me here, and vice-versa

*especially Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Our Lady Star of the Sea **including but not limited to: St James the Greater, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Margery Kempe, Pauli Murray, and my Great-Aunt Stella

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aprilsjesusblogging

Happy feast day of Pauli Murray!

Prayer from the Episcopal church:

Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

More info about Pauli here! She was a lawyer and a huge part of the fight for women’s rights and civil rights and was queer and later in life became an Episcopal priest.

(Icon by Kelly Latimore)

aprilsjesusblogging

I’ve been praying the rosary as part of a Novena and every time I’m like “oh right, I like doing this,” lol.

I know this. And yet it took me needing something to kick me into doing it!

It’s just so perfect as a meditation tool, and centered on Jesus and his mom? It works for my ADHD brain weirdly well.

Also despite buying two more very lovely rosaries, I keep using the dirty and visibly worn one I took on the Camino. At this rate I am going to actually break the string on it. 😬

aprilsjesusblogging

There's been more than once during this Novena I've been hoping to get through my prayers before an edible or a benadryl kicks in

I admit this is the first time I'd already had a drink before starting AND had taken an edible

I MADE IT THO

aprilsjesusblogging

I actually did it for all nine days! I’m proud of myself

Especially since I wasn’t going through the usual sets of Mysteries? I found a set about Our Lady of Guadalupe that I adapted a little. So it was the same Mysteries every time.

iscariotapologist

do you believe* individual consciousness continues after death

yes and i have more or less specific ideas of what the afterlife is

yes but i have no specific concept of what it will be like

yes but in an altered form

no but i believe in some form of afterlife

no and i have no belief in an afterlife

other nuance

idfk 🧘

results

Remaining time: 5 days 23 hours

*interpret "belief" expansively

#yes but in an altered form #I don't think we can understand what heaven is like until we're there

lizardvangogh

NT Wright lecture drinking game, take a shot when he says:

• jolly well

• etcétera

• it’s all gone horribly wrong

• well hang on

• [mentions one of his books]

• [mentions epicureanism]

#we're using one of his books in bible study and now I have to look up a lecture

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aprillikesthings

One day and three hours until @bluedandylyon's plane is supposed to land, and both of us have confessed to being too excited to sleep, which means we're both currently wired AND sleepy

Thoughts and prayers for Azul to get here safely and without hassle are appreciated

aprilsjesusblogging

hylaarborealove

aprillikesthings

One day and three hours until @bluedandylyon's plane is supposed to land, and both of us have confessed to being too excited to sleep, which means we're both currently wired AND sleepy

Thoughts and prayers for Azul to get here safely and without hassle are appreciated

#putting this here too #...I didn't know the world cup was happening when I bought those tickets #there's a game between mexico and ecuador today in mexico city #which is where theyr'e flying out of #but also: probably not a lot of people flying from CDMX to guadalajara (and then to portland)#on a budget airline at 6am the morning the day after the game #and hopefully the streets will be reasonably clear when they're going to the airport #IN ANY CASE #my OTHER worry is them getting through customs/border control after they land in portland #they have a valid passport. a tourist visa. a letter from their employer.#i'm still so anxious about it #yes that's what the novena has been about #I won't be able to relax until we've left the portland airport #I haven't seen them in person since mid-February ;_;

aevum-meditations

Traditionalism (tradition for the sake of tradition) is religion emptied of spirituality, a corpse. But spirituality rooted in modern individualism which eschews religion is a noncommittal disembodiment of the shared communal encounter across time and space. Only when letter and spirit are seamlessly one, mutually informing one another is the Word made incarnate.

Of course, one has to begin somewhere, perhaps alone, perhaps initially only partially informed. It may involve a long journey just to find a home. There are examples of such gradualism, such as St. Augustine or Evelyn Underhill. Not all conversions necessarily involve sudden epiphanies of blinding light, but take many years, sometimes even with detours, all just in order to truly begin. This was also the case for T.S. Eliot, as he write in Four Quartets:

…If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.

speakthewordonly

every time someone says protestant when they mean american evangelical should have to contend with a sort of force ghost apparition of me shaking my head

#plenty of Protestants follow the traditional church calendar (lent etc)#plenty of Protestants do the Eucharist once a week at least #some Protestants do Marian and saint devotions #if you mean Baptist/Pentecostal/“non-denom” fucking say that

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notaplaceofhonour

kinda hate the (almost exclusively pejorative) term “organized religion”, as if the only form of religion is some kind of diy spirituality you do by yourself. kind of hyper-individualistic really.

and a big fuck-you to religions where their entire thing is being community-focused.

tf did a minyan ever do to you?

aprilsjesusblogging

I’ve been praying the rosary as part of a Novena and every time I’m like “oh right, I like doing this,” lol.

I know this. And yet it took me needing something to kick me into doing it!

It’s just so perfect as a meditation tool, and centered on Jesus and his mom? It works for my ADHD brain weirdly well.

Also despite buying two more very lovely rosaries, I keep using the dirty and visibly worn one I took on the Camino. At this rate I am going to actually break the string on it. 😬

aprilsjesusblogging

There's been more than once during this Novena I've been hoping to get through my prayers before an edible or a benadryl kicks in

I admit this is the first time I'd already had a drink before starting AND had taken an edible

I MADE IT THO

nightbringer24

There's a creationist arguing that since recorded history began roughly 6000 years ago, that backs up the Young Earth Creationist narrative... just because the figures near enough line up.

And he's another fucking Baptist too!!!!

What sort of water are they being baptized in? Forget the chemicals in the water than turns the frogs gay, I want to know what turns these people into whatever they are!

ceruinus

Haha can you believe I was raised in one of those churches?

What makes them nuts is being indoctrinated from their earliest days to believe in literal biblical interpretation and young earth and so on. They believe it because they're deluded or have deluded themselves into it.

The real tragedy is that they force it onto their children by isolating them (homeschool). This is why I have such a distaste for homeschooling and think it should be stringently controlled, and also why I am so suspect towards people who homeschool.

nightbringer24

The bit that gets me with the whole thing, is the sheer bad logic of everything involved.

So many times that I've seen these guys talk, they always have to use some... MASSIVELY extra-Biblical concept: a concept that is decidedly not in the Bible or even talked about by anyone more theologically informed than them, to try and say the Earth is 6000 years old, and yet looks to be billions of years old.

The two big ones are "God created the Earth 6000 years ago but put in embedded age and history (aka fake age and history) to make it LOOK billions of years old" and "Time ran faster for a period of those 6000 years before a certain point then it slowed down to as we know it is".

Which I respect less than the guys who just go "Science and history is wrong, the Bible is right on all things".

ceruinus

Baptists are also traditionally teetotalers and prohibitionists, and to this day use grape juice instead of wine for communion. This is obviously insane if you think about it for like two seconds.

To put it mildly, they pretty much just believe in whatever thing the loudest and most popular and politically-appealing preacher is saying. They don't actually care about what is in the Bible or what Jesus did or said. They care about what they've been told is correct Baptist belief.

nightbringer24

Oh yeah, I've seen the grape juice thing. Embedded Age guy said Jesus turned the water into grape juice not wine, despite him taking EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE BIBLE WITH A STRAIGHT FACE.

I don't even think some of these guys believe in something a preacher said. I think they see themselves as THE authority on the Bible and no-one else. I seem to remember Embedded Age saying that if Jesus came down and told him he was reading the Bible wrong, he'd essentially tell him to piss off. So... proper casual blasphemy there.

lordascapelion

“Why does this insular group believe this dumb thing? They must be be-”

Group psychology. It’s always group psychology. People love their in groups and having an outgroup enemy. They’ll assemble mythologies that flatter their identity as part of their group.

Across every political faction, weird religion (or lack of religion), subculture or fandom, people will revert to these types of things. It’s human nature.

isaacsapphire

Uh, do any Protestants actually use wine in communion? I always figured that half the reason the evangelicals stuck to grape juice was just being cheap tbh.

There’s an old joke about a pastor responding to someone arguing about prohibition with him by mentioning that Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine with, “I have always been very embarrassed about that” or “Jesus made a mistake”.

entanglingbriars

All of the mainline Protestants use wine (some may offer grape juice, I'm not sure), I'm not sure about Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Fundamentalists but I know not all of them have a blanket prohibition on alcohol.

theopenaltar

United Methodists use grape juice in line with that of Methodists at large—unsurprising when you learn that the reason grape juice was invented by Thomas Bramwell Welch specifically because of his beliefs in Methodism and the temperance movement. Other than that, from my experience, the other mainline denominations either use wine exclusively or both wine and grape juice, depending on the congregation.

I believe the majority of Pentecostals, or at least a large portion, use grape juice as well, but due to the nature of most evangelical denominations being, by nature, decentralized, there's a wider variety in practices and views. I believe my church growing up (Pentecostal, Assemblies of God) actually used real wine, even though that specific sect by-and-large is abstinent.

I don't personally care one way or the other for a variety of reasons, especially since, at the end of the day, I would say most Protestants hold a symbolic view of Communion as opposed to transubstantiation. That's how we get things like the bread and water in Mormonism.

aprilsjesusblogging

The Episcopal Church believes in the Real Presence--aka Jesus is in the bread and wine, but how it works is a Mystery. Individual Episcopalians range from memorialism to transubstantiation, and I honestly don't know where on that spectrum the average person sits.

And we do use real wine (which is actually usually sherry or port), but every Episcopal church I've been to had grape juice as an option for anyone who asked.

The church I attended in my early 20's was a United Church of Christ that only did communion once a month and was definitely memorialist, so at my first Episcopal church service I wasn't expecting real wine for some reason and nearly choked on it!

creature-wizard

If Jesus intended for self-hatred to be part of the religion he taught, he wouldn't have said to love thy neighbor as thyself.

many-sparrows

You know what, tell me of the real-life miracles you’ve encountered. Anything from the relics at your parish that ooze oil to God keeping you alive when you didn’t think you could stay. Give me something mystical to hold to.

#the comments/tags on this are so good #I can't think of any physical miracles I've experienced #just moments of Presence #the most meaningful to me personally was on the Camino #sitting in the chapel with the medieval stone baptismal font #in the church of O Cebreiro #they had a copy of the San Damiano cross #and the floor was full of prayer candles #and I sat on a little wooden folding chair to meditate for a bit #and then I just. wasn't alone in the room.#but the thing is--the biggest feeling I was getting from God was gentle amusement:#'you're trying so hard. you don't have to try that hard.'#God tells me this 2/3rds through a literal pilgrimage lmaooo #runner-up being the moment I knelt in front of St James' supposed relics at the cathedral and had an overwhelming moment best described as:#'holy fuck what if he's really in there'#look I've read the legends. it's unlikely.#but I am no longer willing to rule out the possibility okay #tbh I think my coming back to faith was a miracle in some ways #I re-told that story in bible class this week bc someone hadn't heard it.#and one of the women there said 'I love hearing you tell your story.'#and that meant a lot to me ;_;

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valtsv

psalms-and-spells

This image actually came from an anti-Catholic blog that purposely tags wrong, but I find that it brings me comfort. It does not matter how many times you reach out. He will be there for you. Again and Again.

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