Racing with the stars

+|𝙰𝙿𝙾𝙻𝙻𝙾|+

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙶𝚘𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚌, 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚑𝚎𝚌𝚢, 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚂𝚞𝚗.

ᴀʀᴛ ʙʏ ᴍᴇ, ʜᴀᴢᴇ.

Love is justice.

Justice for the poor, the downtrodden.

Evangelicals look at justice as something separate from love. Like it’s just him destroying their enemies.

Justice looks like feeding the hungry. Clothing the naked. Healing the sick. Visiting those in prison. It’s justice for them. And it’s also love.

When people say God is justice, they envision their enemies burning in hell.

In reality, it’s Christ healing the sick. Loving the tax collector. It’s kindness. I’m action.

They want a conquering king for a God. But what they got, what we got, is a God that is humble and lowly. They want a conquester but got a peacemaker. They wanted a God of blood and war. But they got a God of comfort and admonition.

And contradiction exists within nature, rains bring forth plants and life, and also can be torrential floods that kill and destroy.

Some people do die for a short period of time, and are then revived and go on living.

Creativity and imagination can create beautiful art and theatre, and also too much can cause delirium and derealization and psychosis.

There’s endless examples in nature, mirrored in the myths.

When we look at the world around us, we can find divinity everywhere, in the environment, our relationships, our habits, our food, our water, our technology, our whole lives.

Hygienia doing some babysitting it seems, and another example of the back wings rather than the head ones!

Prior to its transformation into one of the most sacred hubs for Orthodox Christian monasticism, Mount Athos was inhabited by Ancient Greeks who practiced their ancestral polytheistic faith. Several villages and cities lined the peninsula where monasteries now stand, and upon the highest summit there stood a temple to Zeus, the father of the gods, along with a colossal statue. Both the statue and the temple were recorded to have still been standing all the way into the 5th century CE, as recorded by the Byzantine Christian lexicographer, Hesychius of Alexandria.

According to the oral tradition passed on by the monks of Athos, the statue was made of gold and ivory, similar to the colossal icon of Zeus crafted by Phidias at the Temple of Olympia-- one of the Seven Ancient Wonders. During festivals and celebrations, the statue would be carried down from the summit in procession.

The true fate of the statue is unknown, but according to at least one monk, it was hidden in a cave somewhere on the mountain.

Opus sectile (marble floor inlay) from the Hadrian's Villa , near Tivoli in Italy. Early 2nd century

Eclipse of the Sun: Diana's Farewell to Apollo

What I'm mainly talking about here is the community aspect. Ancient religions used to be part of the culture, and as I understand it, there wasn't really a concept of "personal religion" (maybe outside of mystery cults) as everyone in the community participated in the same rites together.

But now, it's simply not possible to do things that way. Religion became a personal belief and practice rather than a societal custom, and because we're a minority religion with almost no real-world spaces dedicated to us, most of us are solitary practitioners with very little sense of community outside of the internet.

Of course, historically, people didn't worship at temples the way modern people go to church, but I think it's okay to want to rebuild a religion that does have this aspect. Religions influence each other all the time, and while we should make sure to maintain the core of our religions, we should also allow for a modernisation of our practices so that we can build a thriving religious community.