elby's back

name: elby

religion: christian. proud anglican.

ethnicity: 唔識華夏文化嘅中國人

culture: confucian. ru. “Out of all virtues, the first is filial piety; out of all vices, the worst is licentiousness” and allat. also taoist and buddhist (the kind with bodhisattvas).

sexuality: gay? bi? queer

academic pursuits: many humanities, with the occasional physics

other blogs: @autode-fide (even more religious sideblog) and @objet-petit-eyyy (where I dump any guilty fixations I develop over my tumblr lifespan)

everyone needs to read genesis with a critical eye. Jacob is a literal magician.

hobbies: idk anymore, have a wall of text:

Deep Water Chora

Gege feels foreign to the tongue of a 香港人 in Cantonese it sounds more like gawgaw Gawgaw or maybe Kʰɐi̯³³-gaw gnawing on his kʰɐi̯³³-tɐi̯²² somewhere in the recesses of Sham Shui Po the smell of roast duck and plum sauce wafting into a 唐樓 from the roast duck gawgaw got at lɐu̯²¹ ha geh market with Ah Suks and Ah Sums advertising sale of raw pork 24 dollars per kilogram か　I dont know I never go to the butchers Homeless people rest in Tung Chau Park and the idol of 關公 blesses the new siblings and someone recites

Thou hast ravished my heart my sister my spouse Ngŏh kè tsź mooî à ngŏ hkè sanfoŏ à ĭ king kik ngŏh sam 愛慕

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

The first is people whose only real belief is that the world should be the way it was when they were teenagers (compare to left-wingers whose only real belief is hatred of authority), and hence their gauge of sexual ethics is "could my teenage self have gotten off to this"? These guys are annoying but fairly harmless.

I have spend the last hour looking at videos of the tragedy in central Venezuela, a 7.4 earthquake rocked the country at around 6 pm local time, demolishing dozens of apartment buildings and an unknown number of smaller homes, it also damaged the main airport of Venezuela, Maiquetia, the Caracas underground metro, a naval academy, a petrochemical plant, a bus terminal and many malls.

The death toll is so far not known but feared to be in the hundreds, possibly thousands, and as more videos pop up, the worse it seems.

I currently live in Barranquilla so we didn’t even feel it, my in-laws live in Maracaibo where they did feel it, but the damage was minimal and so far no one has been reported as injured, so thankfully I was not directly or indirectly affected.

I used to travel to Caracas a lot in the early 2010s, I know some of the affected areas, its hearth wrecking to see the level of destruction, the country was barely starting to recover after Maduro was ousted by the US, and now this earthquake has set the country back years.

I honestly do believe now its in the thousands of deaths, so many videos and images of collapsed buildings keep popping up on social media, with the screams of people trapped inside captured by helpless civilians who can do nothing but shout words of encouragement and pray, as Venezuela, rocked by social and economic collapse thanks to years of the Maduro socialist regime, is simply unprepared to deal with this tragedy.

I wasn't raised in a parish that 'cared' all that much about the sacredness of the Eucharist, for lack of a better word. One day, at like, 10 years old (?), the child ministry leader asked if I wanted to take the Eucharist for the first time. I honestly didn't even understand why we did communion, but everyone else was doing it, so I just kinda shrugged and started taking it.

Then I left the church, and years later, I came back.

I never took communion at my new church after returning. It didn't feel right. Even though I didn't believe in transubstantiation yet, it felt so much more important than it had when I was younger. I started paying attention to the service more, the priest's movements, the eucharistic rite prayers, etc. It was clicking that this was something special, and I didn't feel like I had the right to take it. I was embarrassed, uncomfortable, and, honestly, kinda scared. So when I came up each week, I received a blessing instead of the Host.

I don't remember the date this happened. I honestly don't feel like I should--I feel like it's the right thing, that it is 'just another Sunday' in my head. I think it happened in Advent? It was my first Advent back in the church. I had been thinking about re-confirmation. My denomination doesn't do that (once you're here, you're here forever), but I felt like I needed to do something in front of everyone to prove I belonged. Some kind of penance, or like I was an outsider that needed to earn his place. I honestly, looking back on it, I felt like that chapter in John where Peter is on the lake shore cooking with Jesus after the resurrection. The scene with the 'do you love me'? 'you know i do' exchange after Peter had denied Jesus. I felt like I had something to prove to God. I wasn't worthy. I didn't have the right to be in these pews. Which was silly-- my old church had been genuinely unsafe; I doubt Christ minded that I left to protect myself. I really think he's just glad I'm back.

ANYWAYS. I walk up to get my blessing. I'm suddenly shaking, and my stomach hurts, and everything is just too much. It was just another Sunday, nothing special, and I'm losing it. And I get on my knees before the altar, and look at this beautiful old painting we have of Mary holding the Christ Child behind the altar, with angels on either side. And I took the Host in hand, and dipped it in the Blood, and took what I see now as my real first communion. No fancy clothes. No ceremony. No one knew what this moment was but me and Him. I went back to the pew and cried and cried. It was quiet tears, but I felt cleansed. Like they were my own blessed baptismal waters.

Anyways, the day rarely sticks out to me now. It is just another day. Another seat at Christ's table. And I think it's a good thing that it feels simple and mundane like that, though I can't really articulate why. But that's my 'miracle'. It wasn't much of one, but it was my own, private first communion, and it means the world to me, even if it is now a simple, unassuming memory.