If you’re not following the Gay Subtlety blog…
that needs to change.
gaysubtlety.wordpress.com
“Easter Sunday doesn’t dismiss the anguish of Holy Saturday, but gives it purpose and direction. The resurrection doesn’t negate the suffering of life, but gives us the strength to declare that even in the throes of our suffering there is hope and the beauty of redemption; tear-choked voices can find a song, bruised feet can learn to dance, and weary hearts can beat with passion.”
“I mean, I’m going to just assume that straight people don’t know what it’s like to spend all day worrying over how straight they feel and wondering if other people can tell. ‘Oh crap, a beautiful woman! Was I staring? I think I was. Was someone watching me stare? Everyone must have noticed my eyes dilate. That man over there looks like he’s judging me. Great, now I have to leave the country…’ ‘Did I play this sport too competently? Ugh, I hate myself…’ ‘That old woman said she had a niece I should meet… does she think I like girls? How did she find out? Oh god, what if she tells my mom?’ ‘Maybe if I just wear scarves and skinny-jeans no one will question my sexuality.’”
"The cure to any discomforting situation or painful realization or heavy moment within one’s life, is driving. Nothing will take away the feelings of failure like a never ending road, a rolled down window, a six speed manual, a music collection of epic and speaker-destroying proportion, and (of course) a pack of cigarettes. Drive until you have left it all behind you. You will eventually have to return to it all, however the miles you’ve put between you and a rude reality will strengthen your resolve."
"You’re never, ever ready. There will always be really good reasons not to act, to jump, to trust. Faith and doubt are not opposites; in a church pew on Sunday morning there is as much genuine and even anguished doubt as in all those four a.m. darkened bedroom arguments with Nobodaddy. You can still wrestle angels once you believe in them. You will mess up and convert badly, for bad reasons, and misplace your trust, but the alternative is isolation and an impossible, crippling autonomy."
"I don’t love Christian community because I get to spend time with people “just like me,” though Christ-followers do share certain unshakeable foundations. I love Christian community because it reminds me that I am united in purpose and worship with a bunch of crazy people around the world who aren’t like me at all and who reveal Christ to me in ways that would be otherwise unknown."
"The bravest decision I’ll ever make is the decision to follow Jesus with both my head and heart engaged—no checking out, no pretending."
Rachel Held Evans
"Picture yourself when you were five. In fact, dig out a photo of little you at that time and tape it to your mirror. How would you treat her, love her, feed her? How would you nurture her if you were the mother of little you? I bet you would protect her fiercely while giving her space to spread her itty-bitty wings. She’d get naps, healthy food, imagination time, and adventures into the wild. If playground bullies hurt her feelings, you’d hug her tears away and give her perspective. When tantrums or meltdowns turned her into a poltergeist, you’d demand a loving time-out in the naughty chair. From this day forward I want you to extend that same compassion to your adult self."
Kris Carr (via martaunderthesea)
(Source: sincerely-elaine, via diaryofaskinpicker)
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It is likely that [views on homosexual practice] will continue to be a source of conflict within the church. We have a choice: We can divide, or we can commit to disagree with compassion, grace, and love, while continuing to seek to understand the concerns of the other. Given these options, schism or respectful co-existence, we choose the latter.
We commit to disagree with respect and love, we commit to love all persons and, above all, we pledge to seek God’s will. With regard to homosexuality, as with so many other issues, United Methodists adopt the attitude of John Wesley who once said, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may.”
"A Way Forward, Submitted to the United Methodist General Assembly by Adam Hamilton and Mike Slaughter (via heyodavo)
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Most of us live as if we believe that the surest path to happiness is that which spins out endlessly and offers up the least resistance, but traveling that path is a futile business. I’ve confessed elsewhere that I assume that the highest form of freedom is not the ability to pursue whatever whim or fancy may strike us at any given moment, but rather the freedom to make choices which will promote our well being and the well being of our communities. And such choices often involve sacrifice and the curtailment of our own autonomy. To put this another way, happiness, that elusive state which according to Aristotle is the highest good we all pursue, lies not at the end of a journey at which every turn we have chosen for ourselves, but along the path marked by choices for others and in accord with a moral order that may at times require the reordering rather than immediate satisfaction of our desires.
This vision of the good life does not play well in the society we have made for ourselves. In fact, it has become counter-intuitive. If it is ever to gain any traction, it cannot be merely preached. It must be lived and its beauty must of its own mysterious accord draw us in. This is, I believe, Dreher’s great accomplishment. He has faithfully and honestly written that beauty into his story so that it may speak to his readers, may they be many.
"From Michael Sacasas’ wise, generous review of Rod Dreher’s The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. Read on. (via wesleyhill)
Summer Plans (MK I’m copying you)
- learn how to cook (with Kate. Gotta learn how to be domestic)
- write my book (not necessarily finish it, but find a goal.)
- make art. (specifically, play with ink and acrylic and those other media I haven’t touched in a few years.)
- relearn calligraphy basics
- read Lord of the Rings
- find some antique wood crates. Also get those craft ones from Michaels and paint/refurbish
-reread the Inheritance cycle (and finally finish the last book!)
- go to those restaurants I haven’t been to
- sculpt unicorns (yes)
- learn how to use my typewriter (and buy a new ribbon)
- take Toby to the dog park at least once a week
- do a portrait of Bailey (finally)
- portrait of Blue for the parentals
- go to at least 3 horse shows for photo opps
- go camping
- read those books L assigned to me (and compile the rest of my reading list.)
- save enough money to get a puppy in September :)
- Woodburn the Daring Greatly quote
"The real issue in the Christian community was that it was conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about whether the Bible was true or whether America was a good country or whether last week’s sermon was good, you were not so loved."
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (via bran098)
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“For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.
Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.”
"Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (via godinthebrokenness)
Instagram's Envy Effect | RELEVANT Magazine
One of the BEST articles I have ever read.
“Because community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters.
But seeing the best possible, often-unrealistic, half-truth version of other peoples’ lives isn’t the only danger of the Internet. Our envy buttons also get pushed because we rarely check Facebook when we’re having our own peak experiences. We check it when we’re bored and when we’re lonely, and it intensifies that boredom and loneliness.
When you’re laughing at a meal with friends, are you scrolling through Pinterest? When you’re in labor with your much-prayed-for-deeply-loved child, are you checking to see what’s happening on Instagram? Of course not. We check in with our phones when it seems like nothing fun is happening in our own lives—when we’re getting our oil changed or waiting for the coffee to brew.
It makes sense, then, that anyone else’s fun or beauty or sparkle gets under our skin. It magnifies our own dissatisfaction with that moment. When you’re waiting for your coffee to brew, the majority of your friends probably aren’t doing anything any more special.
But it only takes one friend at the Eiffel Tower to make you feel like a loser.”
home (I) | A Subtle Shipwreck
My blog. (I also updated my “about” page if you don’t know who I am.)
"We say, ‘vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you, but the last thing I want you to see in me.’"
Brene Brown
Why I love Melinda Selmys
Because her blog is incredible.
sexualauthenticity.blogspot.com
“In the case of the homosexual community, the blessing which chastity is supposed to confer on people is the blessing of disinterested friendship. A lot of people make the mistake of believing that such friendship is somehow a degraded or lesser form of love, a consolation prize that is thrown to the gays in place of a more fulfilling, erotic love. This is not true. Genuine friendship is more fulfilling, not less fulfilling, than erotic love. Eros, desire, is naturally demanding and hungry, a point which Socrates makes in the Symposium. Even within marriage it is a very long and difficult process to transform this love into truly generous self-giving, and it is only possible because children are born to pull the couple out of themselves and out of the cycle of need and fulfilment that naturally characterizes eros. Friendship is much more generous, and much more able to fully see and appreciate the other because the vision of the beloved is not obscured by one’s own desires.” - Systems of Grace, 4/9/13
“I’d never been much good at being feminine, not at being feminine by the standards of my culture in any case. I had never fit in with the girls, never liked make-up, bra shopping, or watching Thursday night drama’s and romantic comedies. This feeling of alienation from other women led me to develop a severe sour-grapes complex. Femininity, I determined, was weakness, blathering superficiality, back-biting slanderousness, self-conscious promiscuity, a lack of self-respect, and a general willingness to lie down and let men take advantage of you. The entire notion of traditional femininity, I thought, had been constructed by men, for the benefit of men, in order to subordinate, subjugate and sexualize women. I wanted nothing to do with it.” -I Just Wanna Be a Woman, 5/26/12
“I have an on-going difficulty with telling my conversion story, because the part of it that is the least interesting to me is the part that other people are most interested in. They want to know how I went from being a lesbian to being straight. The truth is, I don’t think that I even necessarily did that: it’s very rare for anyone to be exclusively homosexual (that is, to be unable to have reasonably successful sex with members of the opposite sex.) If you make a clear and unilateral decision not to have same-sex relationships, there’s a certain chance that your libido will take the path of least resistance and swing in the opposite direction.” - Morbid Beauty, 12/13/11
-“The need for communion has to be fulfilled through strong friendships, same-sex friendships in particular in the case of queer people. Same-sex attraction, at least in my mind, is constituted by a disordered sexualization of an ordered desire for close communion with members of one’s own sex.” -Creative life, communion, and the git of self, 12/9/11
-“The problem is that in the “hate the sin, love the sinner,” distinction, the second meaning is almost invariably meant, or at least implied. Most Catholics don’t go around saying “Hate the sin, love the sinner” about any other group — and it leads to a kind of behaviour that singles out homosexuals. There’s also the fact that the emphasis is generally on ‘hate the sin.’” - Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner, 8/23/10
-“In popular discourse, sexual orientation is generally understood as a pattern of physical attraction. This is problematic because it conflates involuntary physical arousal with a capacity for on-going emotional intimacy, fidelity and sustainable desire. Most people will recognize that there is not necessarily a direct relationship between immediate attraction and success in long-term relationships. A man who prefers blondes may happily marry a brunette, and a woman who is attracted to aggressive, dominating types may find it impossible to sustain an emotionally fulfilling relationship with such men.” - not her blog, but an article she wrote: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/assessing_californias_ban_on_conversion_therapies
-“The call to repentance comes after, not before, the healing, the feeding, or the deliverance. Christ begins by finding out what it is that His people need and then offers the thing that they are hungry or thirsty for. Only once He has established His credibility by making it clear that He is able to deliver on His promises does He tell people to ‘go and sin no more.
We very often have this backwards. We point out that Christ told the woman in adultery to stop committing adultery, and so we think that we are following Him if we go around telling sinners not to sin. What we’ve missed here is that Christ doesn’t tell the woman not to sin until He has dealt with all of her accusers.” - The Gift of Chastity, 4/6/13
