the apostle that fits you—

Hi, I’m considering Catholicism at the moment, it’s beautiful! Serious question tho, how do you navigate confession and examination of conscience as a progressive Catholic? (I’m also queer and do believe I can be both, just need some tips)

do you feel closer to jesus or god

bracha for flag burning on the 4th

there are codes for how to treat a US flag with “respect” and “dignity”, they are treated with extreme ceremony and reverence and meanwhile are said to embody a whole slew of hypocritical ideals, and we are mandated to ritualistically pledge our allegiance to it in public schools.

In today's state of hyperactivity, where boredom is not allowed to emerge, we never reach the state of deep mental relaxation. The information society is an age of heightened mental tension, because the essence of information is surprise and the stimulus it provides. The tsunami of information means that our perceptual apparatus is permanently stimulated. It can no longer enter into contemplation. The tsunami of information fragments our attention. It prevents the contemplative lingering that is essential to narrating and careful listening . . . In the process of digitalization, . . . information acquires an altogether different status. Reality itself takes on the form of information and data. For the most part, we perceive reality in terms of information or through the lens of information. Information is an idea—that is, a re-representation. When reality takes the form of information, the immediate experience of presence withers. When digitalization gives everything the form of information, reality is flattened.

The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner had he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom, or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment face, and are up against a force majeure. Their art is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one mood, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting. It is all wrong, he thought, to imagine paradise as a never-changing state of bliss. It will probably, on the contrary, turn out to be, in the true spirit of God, an incessant up and down, a whirlpool of change. Only you may yourself, by that time, have become one with God, and have taken a liking to it.

Before they took Eve out of him, Adam was something both. He was Adam but he was also Eve. “Male and female He created them.” He was both then. Even if it was only one rib of Adam that was Eve, how could Adam have ignored such a part of himself? How could all of womanhood have been stored in one man’s rib and he not notice? He had no concept that she would one day be somebody else. That womanhood was his. His originally. His at the formation of man. A grain of womanhood, inside his chest. A man seeded with a feminine side so powerful it would grow the vast diversity of women. There’s no way he didn’t notice. There’s no way he didn’t see that seed, that rib, as part of who he was. After all, he was made in God’s image then.

christians trying to get queer people staying closeted or celibate, and especially those invested in queer people entering/maintaining cisgender heterosexual relationships, often use language of sacrifice: god asks us to give up our desires. doing god's will isn't always easy or what we would choose for ourselves. it doesn't matter what the world tells us is acceptable. we can't give in to cultural norms. we can't always trust ourselves. sacrifice your desires and longings and needs and lay them at god's feet.

ID: painting of a man kneeling in prayer in some cell-like room, with his body and head glowing brightly. his head is dismembered and bleeding in a cross sigil, while the person who holds a bloody knife cowers in a corner.