#apostatizing

Are you stuck with glass bones and paper skin? Sick of just having pedestrian magic to your name? The professors are holding a special class for the squishiest of mages, clerics, and archers, where they may learn close-quarters self-defense if they’re ambushed by an enemy. [Grants Gauntlets +1]

mission board starter for @apostatizing and @breidabloom

Zephia would never call herself a "squishy mage" but it seems she has put herself in a position that she is meant to be teaching a seminar on self-defense. How curious. Why her of all people? She knew that she was strong, but anyone else would guess that she was just a typical mage looking at her. Except for Lord Sombron, he had always known the true strength lingering within her.

She smiles at the two kids before, well... more at the one who did not happen to be from Elyos. Luckily, she is not stuck with one of those little royals who seemed to plague her so much. Or even worse: the Divine Dragon. Still, that orange that burns as bright as the desert sun reflecting across the sand blazes her heart, driving another stake into her as if to push home the point that she would never be the good that everyone wished to see in this world.

"How wonderful to have you both here for this little lesson! I simply couldn't be more excited to impart such useful life lessons upon you children." Her words are through gritted teeth, trying to keep up a smile as to not terrify the poor little Blue Lion. As for Panette, she didn't care what the girl thought of her. Surely she shared the same sentiment as her liege, if she had even bothered to remember who Zephia was at all.

@apostatizing ;

Night had fallen in the academy courtyard. With a star-covered sky, and blessed with a clear, cloudless night, it was the optimal conditions for someone to take a quiet, evening walk.

Niamh was one of those people. For her, the walk was supposed to be quick - she only wanted to familiarize herself with the location. However, Niamh did not account for another person being present. Nor did she account that the person she'd spot would immediately catch her interest.

But alas - there Niamh was, a few feet away, fixated on this mysterious stranger. And although Niamh had picked her location to observe from with care?

@apostatizing | an office is a definite upgrade from the confession box. obvious reasons. there are windows, for one, so it doesn't feel nearly as stuffy while he was sitting in there and listening to people's concerns for hours. two, and pandreo thinks this while he stretches and sprawls across his chair until he feels the muscles in his calves threaten to conspire against him, there was plenty of leg room. more than he could say the confession box that they keep over at the cathedral and more, he expects, than the old girl could've offered him at his own church.

still, he didn't exactly—need one.

hearing someone out was almost exclusively situational. you couldn't make people just open up to you because you told them to. so, he doesn't see much of a point in having a space that probably wouldn't see much use anyway? ' hey, stop crying; let's talk about this back at my office halfway across the monastery, huh? ' but saying as much wasn't enough to get the church authorities to back down on it, and he wasn't going to be the one making things difficult over something that didn't really matter in the first place. so, office hours—he has those now.

and just like he thought, not a soul to be seen.

he'd have better luck sitting in the open market with a sign that said ' free hugs. '

Silence, Shusaku Endo. New York: Taplinger, 1999 (Link is to an in-print edition from a different publisher).

Summary: Endo’s classic novel set in seventeenth century Japan during the persecution of Christian missionaries and converts.

This summer, I reviewed Makoto Fujimura’s Silence and Beauty, a reflection on Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo’s Silence, the history of Christian mission in Japan,…

Why I am Not a Calvinist

I was raised Catholic, and if there’s any confusion among Protestants reading this, that means, “Roman Catholic,” or my preferred label of “Romanist.” Their dogma is about as far from Calvinism as ideologically possible, but that’s not why I have a problem with Calvinism. Considering my conservative view of God’s Word, it’s a wonder that I don’t embrace Calvinism; some of the best Bible scholars,…