godisineverything

[godisineverything]

The thing is, until you get past the mindset of "justice=punishment" you will never be able to create lasting change. We have actual proof that punitive justice creates more crime and makes criminals more violent. We have actual proof that rehabilitation reduces crime and recidivism. But some of y'all are so stuck on this idea that the wrongdoer must be punished for justice to be done that you will choose sating your need for revenge over actually moving toward a better world every time. And that's sad!

[godisineverything]

[godisineverything]

[godisineverything]

Details from Garofalo’s Annunciation (1481)

[godisineverything]

God loves you.

[godisineverything]

So, there’s this thing I’ve noticed that happens when folks learn that I’m a queer Christian.

When other Christians learn this, they stop treating me as a fellow Christian, and treat me as just queer.

And the opposite happens in queer spaces. When queer folks find out, they stop treating me as a fellow queer, and treat me as just Christian.

It’s only in spaces for queer Christians that I am allowed to be both.

I don’t know, I am just having feelings about the forced stripping of my identity and the forced exclusion from communities that I have every right to. Something something you don’t want to deal with complexities so you vilify them.

#lgbtq

[godisineverything]

[godisineverything]

ruach

what ushers these tiny leaves across asphalt, small sounds like fluttering pinions? or simply, simply, who moves and grows the garden? i spread my palms and clutch at nothing but the breath of God, the only faithful wind. i long for flight, Lord. take me under Your wings. j. p. berame, first featured in The Lit Exhibit: Rituals (New York City, June 2019); published in Joyful Light (OMF Literature, September 2019).

[godisineverything]

[godisineverything]

eid mubarak to everyone who celebrates!! may it fill your hearts with joy and peace 🤍🤍🤍

[godisineverything]

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours II, 25, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

[godisineverything]

“Let God love us into people of love.”

John Mark Comer on Psalm 59

[godisineverything]

Judas gave into despair judas gave into despair judas gave into despair. Peter denied and repented. The prodigal came home. The prostitute fell at His feet. The publican was justified. At the 11th hour the thief confessed His kingship. Fall get up fall get up. It’s ok it’s ok. It can be ok.

[godisineverything]

[godisineverything]

Christianity is a lifestyle—a way of being in the world that is simple, nonviolent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established religion (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. We could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain throughout most of Christian history and still believe that Jesus is our personal Lord and Savior or continue, in good standing, to receive the sacraments. The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on earth is too great.

― Richard Rohr, OFM, Yes, and...: Daily Meditations (2013). Rohr identifies one of the fundamental theological errors of the Southern Baptists.

[Robert Scott Horton]

[godisineverything]

“Jesus was not sent by God to die in order to appease a violent deity, nor did he defeat the powers by dying on the cross. his death was not an atoning sacrifice or a way of bringing a scapegoat mechanism to light. It was a political murder meant to sow terror and to undermine hope. His violent death exposes the domination system as oppressive and violent. His resurrection challenges the ultimate power of the system and invites us to be people of God here and now where oppressive systems remain powerful and must be challenged. Jesus teaches us how to live and shows us the risks of living God’s compassion in an unjust world.”

— Walter Wink, The Human Being (via queertheology)

[godisineverything]

Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers, Each soft spring recurrent; It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the Eleven apostles; It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes The same valved heart That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered Out of enduring Might New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded Credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, Not a stone in a story, But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of Time will eclipse for each of us The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb, Make it a real angel, Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in The dawn light, robed in real linen Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed By the miracle, And crushed by remonstrance.

John Updike, Seven Stanzas at Easter