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University of Utah Joins Gaza Solidarity Encampment Wave

Salt Lake City, UT — Students at the University of Utah joined the wave of campus protests demanding that their school, which has close ties with weapons manufacturers, divest from Israel and condemn the genocide in Gaza. Under the gaze of a multi-agency police response, over 300 protesters and students joined by faculty rallied at the admin building, marched to Presidents’ Circle and started an occupation by setting up tents. “Netanyahu, you cant hide, we charge you with genocide!” chanted the anti-genocide students. The students declared the university renamed as the People’s University. “We will be staying here until our demands are met,” a speaker told the crowd. As images of police violently suppressing student movements across the country have spurred some faculty to unite with the movement in recent days, University of Utah faculty joined student protesters, some holding signs reading “hands off our students.” Students and supporters settled into the newly established encampment for the evening. Speakers say they plan to stay until their demands – including the school divesting from Israel and arms manufacturers – are met. These protests come as dozens of encampments have sprung up on at least 50 campuses across the nation and 10 campuses across the world. A non-university encampment in Jackson Square New Orleans was erected for a few hours before being violently repressed and evicted.

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🇵��💚 A mariachi band joins the Columbia encampment!

🔹 Original caption: A mariachi band joined the encampment and sung Cielito Lindo to students at Columbia. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, sing and do not cry, because singing cheers up, pretty little darling, our hearts.”

🔸 Sources: Wear The Peace and Gerald Dalbon (footage)

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#fuck the police #acab #1312

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Something to think about.

I started asking nicely.

Please take your meds? You'll feel better once you do.

Could you throw some cleaner in the toilet bowl real quick?

Please empty the dishwasher?

Do us a solid and sweep the floor?

It works more often than berating myself. Of course your body doesn't listen when you attack it. No one wants to cooperate with someone who doesn't respect them.

You don't have to speak to yourself with the same disrespect and annoyance that your caregivers used for you, especially the ones who didn't understand you.

It won't always work. Nobody works all the time, not even the people who unrealistically demand that you should. And at least you didn't squander the good will you had with yourself over something that wasn't going to get done anyway.

#adhd #neurodivergent

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NAMIKI Hajime（並木一 Japanese, b.1947）

Dogwood 8   2011   woodblock print   11 ½" x 11 ½"    via

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cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

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Archangel Gabriel and a sleepy kitty near the gates of Kazanskiy cathedral in Feodosia, Crimea. August 2023

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Interior of the Don Bosco Chapel in Brasilia by Rick Ligthelm on Flickr

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while kissing my cat's little head: you're a problem *smooch* you're a terror *smooch* you're a menace to society *smooch smooch smooch*

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Intercessory living

There’s a pattern.

Someone asks Jesus to heal them. Jesus asks them if they believe that He can heal them. They say yes.

Then Jesus heals them because of their faith. Sometimes He even tells them as much.

It’s a pattern we see repeated in just about every healing story. Except today’s Gospel.

Jesus heals. As He always does. Only this time, it’s because of someone else’s faith.

There are four people who can’t get their paralyzed friend through the crowd around Jesus. So they open a hole in the roof. And lower their friend down to Jesus.

And that’s where things break from the pattern. Instead of waiting to be asked, Jesus responds to the faith of – the people who opened a hole in the roof. And heals the man.

Not because the man was a good person. Or because he deserved it. The Gospel doesn’t even tell us that he asked for it.

Jesus heals the man, because his friends asked for it.

Because of their faith, the reason for their actions. Because of their intercessory living.

If you’ve ever wondered what God wants from you, this is it.

God’s not looking for people who always know what to say and what to do. Who never make a mistake. Who always get it right.

God’s not looking for perfect people.

God’s looking for people who have a heart for Him. Who are grounded in prayer, because there’s no other way to have a heart for Him.

Who understand the importance of praying for others, of intercessory prayer.

Who aren’t worried about whether the people they are praying for deserve God’s grace and mercy.

God loves people who are grounded in prayer.

Who aren’t afraid to let their prayers spill over into action.

Whose intercessory prayers overflow. Into intercessory living.

Who aren’t worried about what people will think if they open a hole in the roof.

Today’s Readings

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“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

A story of discovering scripture’s depictions of a God who is more than male.

The following is an excerpt from God’s Tapestry: Reading the Bible in a World of Religious Diversity in which author W. Eugene March has a revelatory conversation with his mother. For the entire passage, see this google-books link.

Some years ago I received an unexpected phone call from my mother. She was clearly agitated and thought I would share her concern, a theological concern. She was agitated about the language that had been used in fashioning a prayer to God in a study book that she and other women in her congregation were using.

…The issue was a prayer on which feminine metaphors were employed to describe God’s love for Israel. Wombs, labor pains, and nursing at nurturing breasts were used in a prayer to God. When Mom and her Bible study friends read this prayer, the explosion was not pleasant. And not surprisingly, an unofficial ‘denominational’ publication circulating widely in her congregation fanned the fire of my mother’s zeal to denounce perceived heresy.

It took me several minutes to get her calmed down enough for us to talk reasonably. When I did, I asked her to read the offending prayer to me. As she did, I recognized the clear influence of Isaiah. I said, “Hey, Mom, that language is straight out of the Bible.” She said, “It is not!” I said, “Yes it is!” “Is not!” “Is too.”

Finally, I asked her to get her Bible and we had a long-distance Bible study of some selected verses from the book of Isaiah:

For a long time I have held my peace, I [God] have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant. (Isaiah 42:14)

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her – that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. For thus says the [Holy One]: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:10-13)

After she had read those verses, there was a long pause, and then she said, “When did they put that in there?” “It’s been there all along,” I replied. “Well,” my dear mother continued in a somewhat subdued tone, “why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” That is one of the questions that prompted this book. There are so many misconceptions about what the Bible does and doesn’t say, so much ignorance among otherwise well-educated, capable people. In my experience, the people in the pews are often well ahead of the clergy when it comes to the matters that really count in the way we order our daily lives and structure the communities in which we live. Their attitudes are usually based on what they recognize from their own experience of life. But they need knowledge about the support the Bible can offer and encouragement and permission from their leaders. They often think that what they believe must be heretical or offbeat, since no one assures them otherwise.

Further Reading:

Explore the posts in my #God beyond gender tag 

See this post in particular

See this timeline of feminine language for God throughout Christian history 

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🇮🇸Iceland

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angel who hides in an abandoned torah ark